Captain Jordan

Mahz's Dev Journal

<Snipped quote by Celaira> Good call. As for the rest of the tags, you can generally combine them to give a sense of where the setting is. It'd be nice to do custom tags (like 'cyberpunk') but a lot of them are niche roles. 'Steampunk' might well be popular enough to justify a tag, however.

@HeySeuss

Just have Cyber, Steam and Punk tags, then people can mix and match. /me eyeshifts.

Mahz's Dev Journal

Wait ok so i just saw the deletion of the little lines under the headers and i was wondering if there was something to replace that? bc i was just using them to make the lines as dividers and now that theyre gone i was wondering if there was another option?? whoops sorry im bad at putting thoughts to paper so to speak and this isn't like super duper important, but i was just wondering--

@LetterA

Maybe an [hr] tag, @Mahz?

Mahz's Dev Journal

Hey, when I make quotes without the @QuoteMention, does it still send a notification? The green post creation confirmation bar seems to suggest it does.

BBeast

Well, does it?

Mahz's Dev Journal

Just added tag support for the General Checks forum. I was wondering why nobody was using the tag system til I saw that it wasn't enabled. <Snipped quote by clark> I'll add some more tags this week. Also, yeah, I want GMs to be able to set the status of the RP for new players. Instead of a tag, I'll just have it be a setting you can toggle between on the edit page. @LegendBegins, @Captain Jordan, @UltikanaRe: The only powers a GM needs are those that help them organize and manage the collaboration. I don't see how allowing a GM to go "Nope, nobody can ever post in this topic again" is helpful in any way. Their powers involve game-specific things like whether there is room for another player or not. There are ideas for how we can "end" roleplays and get them out of the inbox, so to speak, but I think allowing GMs to close a roleplay and walk away is not the answer.

@Mahz

I have no opinion either way. I merely think it's important for there to be a clear statement. "GM's word is law" is disingenuous if they have no power to enforce such law. In light of your comments, may I suggest, "Guild rules trumps GM rules. For everything else, GM rules apply." instead of, "GM's word is law."?

Mahz's Dev Journal

It's a conundrum that I pointed out earlier. I'll quote the relevant part of my post here:

Is this something where a mod would be needed? If so, then you have the other consequence of taking the decision out of the GM's hands (and the GM runs the RP, not the mods). If the mods are simply there to carry out the GM's wishes, then what's the point of not allowing the GM to perform that action in the first place? Who has the power here? The GM? The Player? The Mods? Nobody?

@Captain Jordan

If the mods are in charge, then don't give the illusion that the GM's word is law in her/his own roleplay. If the GM's word is law, then they should have the ability to enforce it. Any middle ground is going to cause confusion and hypocrisy.

Mahz's Dev Journal

However, many will abuse the system and simply begin to change the spelling, or otherwise modify banned words in order to bypass the filter. People tend to be very creative when doing things they are not allowed to do.

@LegendBegins

Hold the phone! People try to abuse systems? No way! Actually, I thought that's what moderators were for. And ban lists. And rules like "be Fonz cool." Don't overthink it.

Mahz's Dev Journal

<Snipped quote by UltikanaRe> But that would require moderation, and would make filtering impossible. It's easier to have a broad list of tags, fit for most (if not all) circumstances while keeping the list manageable.

@TheMaster99

I honestly don't think it would require as much work as you think. A report system could be useful here (any word on that, @Mahz?), but simply have a list of banned terms (which would probably include sexually explicit content and whatever stupid things get reported) that cannot be made into tags. Filtering would work best with that auto-complete system that Mahz devised for Co-GM names, apply that same technology to tags and it would be possible to facilitate tag discovery without having to list out all tags, or do those silly tag maps or other awful things. Some popular tags could also be suggested, based on searches or newly-created RPs. These are all suggestions, however, but I think a custom-tag system is not too prohibitive.

Mahz's Dev Journal

But here's a larger one: coloured text. A common practice, that I'd be flabbergasted if you hadn't seen, is people using coloured text to differentiate between different character's dialogue. Colours that are easy to read on one background would be next to invisible on another. Oh, you could figure out what colours are legible across all backgrounds and limit yourself exclusively to those, but it'd be a headache and an unnecessary extra layer of complication for something that's supposed to reduce confusion.

@KeysOfKayes

Easiest way to deal with color fonts is to simply find the troublesome fonts on lighter/darker themes, and via CSS assign backgrounds to the colors so that they're legible. Much like Mahz's styling for inline coding used to be. It still can be a bit of an eyesore, but it won't make text invisible or make someone go blind trying to read it. Besides, it depends on the color scheme, the more white you go the harder the colors become. Sticking to a lighter grey or beige helps this effect. As far as fantasy goes (too many posts to quote directly), why not simply generalize the tooltips and add a Fantasy tip? There's definite contention about what high fantasy is, as such I disagree with HeySeuss' (and Wikipedia's) inclusion of Harry Potter as high fantasy. For me, high fantasy is generally a world where humans are not the main race, so Tolkein's Middle Earth would be a perfect example. Narnia fits well, but Harry Potter still has humankind as a the main race, creatures and human-like monsters are still in the minority. But that's why I think fandom tags, once user-made tags are implemented, will be far more useful for eliminating those arguments. People who create their own fantasy worlds are entitled to their own definitions (just like how GIF is pronounced with a soft G :P).

Mahz's Dev Journal

Mahz is on a roll today!

Mahz's Dev Journal

<Snipped quote by whizzball1> I'll consider this sort of feature when there are actual co-GM-/GM-specific powers. <Snipped quote by Captain Jordan> Some day™. The auto-suggestion system was easy to hook up for the co-GM form since you can only add one at a time, so the auto-suggestion UI can just take over the entire input. But the new-convo form is a comma-delimited list of usernames, so it'll involve some thinking + refactoring to implement.

@Mahz

What I've seen other sites use is the auto-complete textbox to find a name, but then the name leaves the textbox and appears in a non-editable list with [X] boxes to remove entries.