Mahz

Mahz's Dev Journal

Yes @Mahz, a follower vs. a friendship system would solve things pretty well. Perhaps even have it have the extra feature to notice if two people follow each other and suggest changing it to friendship?

@Ellri

I'll just keep iterating on top of the current stalker system and see where it takes me.

Would an optional tweak to the invisibility system be to show a rougher idea of when someone was last on?
Rather than say "21 minutes ago" on the last online, have it show "last 24 hours" or "last two to seven days" "eight to thirty days" "More than a month ago"?

@Ellri

Hmm, this is a decent idea. But I think we'd have to dig in to what invisibility-mode is for and what people are trying to get out of it when they use it.

The invisibility system, as far as I can tell, is really just intended for temporary privacy. Like when you tell someone you can't reply to a roleplay tonight because you're going to bed but you get on in an hour to PM your main squeeze and want to avoid the awkward "I thought you were going to bed..." confrontation.

Until someone corrects me, it seems like permanent invisibility-mode is an anti-feature. Maybe it shouldn't be something you just set and forget for eternity.

How will the chat system work when compared the IRC?

@Ellri

The IRC channel is an independent beast that simply coexists with the guild. It's a chill hangout outside the guild's jurisdiction and it's been that way for years. It's not something I care to disrupt.

The guild's on-site chat system exists to integrate with the site. Leads to features like group chat channels, IMing someone when they're online, chat RP, "looking for party" type channels, etc. Also, the chat server is implemented as a general web-socket server which will give me a foundation for building real-time notifications for the guild.

Mahz's Dev Journal

I threw together a basic chat system here: roleplayerguild.com/chat

Work in progress.

I think I'll spend Saturday finishing it up.

Mahz's Dev Journal

@SilverRain I think raw post count is the wrong metric to reward, but I do like the general idea of people accumulating "trinkets" of some sort over their time at the guild. While it's still in a fledgling state, I hope the trophy system will address this in one way as it matures.

@LegendBegins Darn. Well, a temporary hack is to simply put a space before >This< so that it's not flush up against the side.

Like:

>This<

Mahz's Dev Journal

Do we have an estimated growth rate/userbase size?

@LegendBegins

~30% growth since Jan of this year (since the second rewrite launched). Things like server issues aside, the guild likes to grow at about 7% each month which was true even back in 2007 when it originally launched. And, interestingly enough, the guild generally has its biggest months when I'm away. Just coincidence, I tell myself.

Mahz's Dev Journal

(The social groups is something that I don't think works well. Seen it on other forums and it is pretty lame so another variation may have to be looked into)

@NuttsnBolts

Yeah, since the guild used to use vBulletin, it had user-run groups for years. But the implementation was always pretty bad. IIRC, the forum didn't expose many ways to stay on top of each group's going-ons, so it was common to forget about the groups you were part of beyond manually clicking through each one to see if anybody responded to you.

I like the spirit of user-run groups though. I like giving users the tools to self organize and all that. I even like the idea of letting a group act as a sort of subforum that doesn't show up on the homepage instead of the gimped approximation of a subforum that vBulletin groups had.

I would need to address the problems of my experience with vBulletin groups and steal ideas from modern post-vBulletin approaches to groups. I could probably come up with something pretty good.

Going off topic here, but I race remote control cars on a weekly basis and my club has had a similar issue with recruiting in new members. We'll occasionally get kids that come down and view the track, but they rarely come back because it's a bit too pricey for them and their parent (I have about 2 grand worth of gear and electronics). What we started doing was we put together a package that people can look at and we've listed all the parts and their approximate pricing, giving people links to where to buy it. It's about $600-700 and we mention that it's about the same price as a new gaming console, minus the games, and gets the kids out of the house. So far it's had a good response with people slowly finding that the hobby is not as expensive.

I mention that because it's a similar scenario to what's here. I'm still new so I remember when I was jumping round some sites looking at each opportunity. What drew me into the guild was when I logged into the chat widget and watched the general discussion for a bit and said hi. I got a response and was told, "please join, kill like it". We just need to make that friendly atmosphere useful, maybe showcase a member occasionally on the front page or some works, more guides and articles (which is already increasing) and things like that to demonstrate that you'll be missing out if you *don't* join.

@NuttsnBolts

Good point, really.

Some guild features kind of sell themselves by being immediately visible to guests. For instance, I like that guests can see that we have a contest system on the sidebar and a feed of latest checks/roleplays. But the rest of the guild's offering is a secret.

For example: the Arena's new (but fledgling) ranked-game system would've instantly appealed to me back when I roleplayed. But it's not obvious to even our existing members that we have it... much less how it works.

Another example: I recently created the start of a trophy system and awarded the winners of the contests so far. It's another feature that the guild effectively hides from even its current members unless you chance across someone's profile that has a trophy.

The old guild used to have a welcome panel for guests on the homepage that enumerated its basic stats and features. It even had a link to a "Quickstart Guide" to show people how roleplaying works and how our IC/OOC system organizes a roleplay. That quickstart guide was once one of the guild's most viewed topics. I should put something like that welcome panel back together so guests can skim the guild's offering in one place.

Finally I think it's important to point out that the Guild's activity is gradually increasing aside from the dip in activity from that "exodus" towards the end of last year (the guild has since caught back up to where it was pre-dip). In other words, I don't want to give anyone the impression that we're trying to save a sinking ship.

Mahz's Dev Journal

@Mahz
I see one of those says "More people." What if the Guild had some sort of draw, something that made it unique above all other RP forums, other than the fact that it's 100% custom, since that will be come more apparent as time goes on.

@LegendBegins

Yeah, when implementing features, I've been trying to navigate a middleground between "basic features that everyone expects from a forum" and "custom/unique guild features".

Of course, the lack of some core forum features is also what makes other forums more pleasing to use than the guild. But the guild and its userbase are always growing and improving despite what probably seem like my best efforts to stop it.

Mahz's Dev Journal

Got another crazy idea, @Mahz... Two levels of invisibility: Everyone and non-friends. Might work best once the friend system is more complete, as it would need some way to not simply be for someone to add X as friend to see if they're online or not.

Perhaps "Visible to all", "Visible to my friends" & "Visible to none"?

@Ellri

Yeah, not sure what this feature's end-game looks like at all.

Might even change "friends" to "follows" to reflect the one-way direction of the system.

I'm wary of disclosing too much information though. The nice thing about the current system is that it's simply a tool for your own use. Broadcasting to someone "Mahz befriended you" seems like a violation of my privacy and will just make me think twice about befriending someone. I also don't want to create a system where you follow someone, so that they aren't following you, and go "thought we were friends - guess not :(".

Maybe I can tease out a Following (one-way) vs Friendship (mutual) system (or implement that within the same system) without violating privacy and create awkward social scenarios for people.

Mahz's Dev Journal

Feedback Form Results

(Showing everything with more than 1 vote)

85	delete convos/PMs
38	friends/ignore list
26	better search system
25	email/realtime notifications
23	delete topics/posts
17	more bbcode options
16	more GM/coGM powers
12	autosave drafts of posts
12	live chat system
9	user-made groups (like the original guild)
8	font options for posts
7	way to navigate to specific pages
6	better mobile support
6	custom RP tabs
6	18+/mature forums
6	ability to organize convos into folderes
6	integrated dice system
5	more user profile customization
5	better website design
5	ways to prevent roleplay death / encourage activity
4	more people
3	more social features
3	more tags
3	separate Anime into its own section
3	ability to comment on statuses
2	dedicated world building section
2	sort subforums by genre
2	mod enforcement of rp skill level
2	custom backgrounds on RPs
2	report post/user system
2	track view-count for topics
2	ability to set some “roleplay availability” status and find other RPers this way
2	change “go to last post” to “go to first unread post”
2	visitor messages (messages on uesr profiles)
2	buttons to link to specific pages in a thread
2	WYSIWYG post editor
2	theme for visually impaired

Lots of really good feedback, ideas, and solutions I'd never considered before.

I wish the guild was my full-time job so I could just build everything.

RP Tag Requests

Yeah, I think one good example of core vs community tags would be to have a core "Fandom" tag that then can be fleshed out by some combination of community tags.

Seems to me that this idea of core vs community tags is a good one, it just predominantly seems to be a UI challenge rather than a conceptual one.

Finally, good point on pruning out unused tags. I also like a simple idea of requiring a mod to click Approve/Deny of every community tag before they actually become a selectable option, just to ward off basic abuse.

Mahz's Dev Journal

Gotta wonder how this all is going to work once I let GMs create custom tabs.

Fortunately that feature is so invasive that it's a long way off.

I'd like to publish the results of my feedback form (from last week) soon.