Shienvien

Mahz's Dev Journal

Improving the Guild's editor is definitely something I want to do. It just takes some solid uninterrupted work. I'd love to introduce one of those polished editors like froala.com/wysiwyg-editor. Hopefully it's something I can do soon because I find writing on the Guild very painful from my smartphone.

@Mahz

It actually shows a white box on my cell phone in place of the demo... Works on PC.

Also, keeping the code editor (and being able to switch preference, as well as toggle while writing) is a must. All WYSIWYG I've ever seen will at some point consistently misinterpret something or another and keep happily breaking it. I generally avoid anything WYSIWYG as long as possible.
(I've also seen more pain and frustration from Office-type programs than general fragmentation faults, annotation auto-magic not working and fixing someone else's undocumented messes of noodle-soup code combined. That should be fairly telling...)

On another note, the selection for sorting what folder your PMs should go on is white. Could you perhaps style it not white?

Mahz's Dev Journal

They seem to be a bit sporadic, the errors. Sometimes it's a while without any, sometimes it's reloading the same page (this one, most recently) a dozen times before it goes through.

The Prophecy

Domhnall McRaith

The older guy merely laughed and noted that this newfound (refound?) ability of his could turn out to be useful, whereas the younger black-eyes looked at least as baffled as he felt. Perhaps even more so. But then again, was it more surprising to discover sides you never knew of in people you thought you were already fully familiar with, or to find out surprising things about people whom you had just barely encountered?
"Nei'er hav' I," he remarked when the guy admitted to never having heard about 'something like that', absentmindedly scratching a bearded cheek as his eyes flitted from one 'black-eyes' to another.
'I apologize, but what exactly are you two, and the woman?' was a question that desperately wanted to come over his lips, but that seemed tactless even to him, and he did not exactly have the best possible track record in not saying inappropriate things, even if he generally had no issues being conversational. The third man in the party had seemed human, if a non-local one, but to hell if he actually dared to make a guess anymore.
"Is 'at wha' ye do? Hunt gods an' 'eir relics?" he inquired as the topic changed. The young fellow's sigh implied no, or perhaps it had simply not gone as well as planned. Memory losses and injuries were generally not intended as part of the course.
"S'pose ye coul' tell me the en'ire story on the way? Shoul' hav' the time. Qui'e impressive... Almos' los' my life 'o a boar once myself, tae 'ink of... Vicious beas's. Can take out a grea' ol' striped one, if 'ey wan' tae."
Gods. Material (he assumed) beings who walked the land and you could fight, rather than some supposed entities high above only the chosen few acted as conduits for. Was it only the eastern gods who wandered about among humanoids, or all of them? Did not seem right. Gods were not supposed to meddle in mortal affairs in a manner this direct, this physical... It was always a chosen one, a high member of clergy, who merely delivered (or so they claimed) the deities' words.
Then again, who was to say how different were those eastern gods from their deities truly? He struggled to even remember what Rilon stood for. Was he not the eastern version of their Belatucardos, the god of anger and bloodthirst?

From Downfall ReRisen

The Lone Survivor

The woman lowered her hands, but something in her expression also changed at his last questions, as did her tone. So now you're suspicious. It was natural, of course, and even fundamentally necessary, but nevertheless it complicated things. Neither of them had a good reason to trust the other, so he guessed they were at least even now. For the most part, anyway. He was still factionless, and she was still underarmed and -armored. It all depended on whether they were talking long-term or short-term.
"And I'm a soldier, one of those guys whose job is to sit on the front line and shoot," he muttered, "but I'm sure you figured that out already."
The woman glared at him with determination. She would not be likely to win if he actually decided to stop merely aiming at her (which he technically no longer was), but be she damned if she were to back down. Was everyone but him wont to hold their ground in the face of impossible odds except for him?
"Here," insisted a nearby invisible bird. Notrau, "Enn" flinched. Not you again, too...
"I asked about air defense. Do I look like an air force?" Bizarrely, the last sentence was delivered completely seriously, if somewhat nervously, with an edge of impatience. He moved a step sideways again, seemingly trying to put the cart completely behind Kay-Gee, but did not raise his gun again.
"I never commanded any forces. Common soldiers, those who get fielded, don't do it. Not..." What, on our side? That was technically no longer his side, was it? "Anderekian soldiers don't, anyway. You're a gun. You go where you're told, you shoot who or what you're told. The less common soldiers know, the less danger they pose when someone gets to them. Yes? But you might still see something, make observations, and you will still be decked out in enough equipment to be able to potentially make some kind of difference. Yes?"
He was speaking rapidly, ramblingly. The armor masked it to any observers, but he thought his hands were trembling ever so slightly, his heart beating fast, and it felt as though his body was suddenly covered in cold sweat. Hard to tell, with him being still soaked from the rain. It almost felt like being amid battle again, even though Kay-Gee posed little physical threat.
"We lost. I expected a fallback order, but one never came. Maybe they did not care. Maybe the arrays had already managed to take out our nearby base's comms. I don't know. I just knew everyone else there was dead, or about to be so. So I left. In any case, I'm now unlisted. Factionless. Do you know why I was worried about battle drones? Because unlisted are to be considered traitors, and will be shot. And Trenians don't like people who look like Anderekians."
He paused for a moment, breathing heavily.
"I am not trackable. There were no trackers on soldiers, since you might as well mark your position with fireworks if you do that. But scourers, scouts, drones, planes, what have you, can still find you. And if the west is now holding ground ... it was supposed to be an easy time, repealing this attack, I think. But that anti-air, that was new. South is not an illogical direction to look in. I've not gotten the impression that there ever were negotiations, and planes are the easiest to get over.
Trenians... I don't know. They were the enemy, the people seeking to destroy us, the reason why I'm here now. ...We were given as much information about the things they fielded as was available, and that was about as much as we ever knew. If you want to know more, you might as well go and ask; chances are they might even listen to what you have to say if you don't go in waving a gun around. Whether they'd allow you to leave afterwards is another matter."

From Downfall ReRisen

The Eastern Gate

"Root?" the woman's melodic alto repeated in surprise as Crom finished his brief overview of yesternight's happenings. "Since when is Root involved in the dealings of the north?"
"Since about two days ago, if my observations are correct," noted the male voice in turn, almost nonchalantly. "But that's not all you want to know, isn't it?" There was a sigh, and the voice of Crom continued on a more serious note, "As for the whys of it all... I have a couple of deductions; the rest is intelligent guesswork. In spite of the sudden interest in a couple of others' affairs, Root nevertheless has not exchanged a word with us."
"Care to elaborate?"
"Care to think for yourself, Erida?"
"Is this another of your 'humans will get lazy and convenient if permitted' routines?"
"Perhaps. Let me remind you, though, you were bored first."
"You're a bastard." Erida's voice was flat rather than irritated.
"Did you know that this word once had a meaning other than a mild insult or an implication of the referred exhibiting undesirable traits?"
"Eh? No, but that's not relevant. I believe you just implied that you'd like me to display the skills typically associated with commander-overseers more than decorative guards."
"Commander-overseer is a legacy term. It used to represent a much lower-ranked entity before the current era - when commander-overseers were in charge of independent bases rather than entire factions -, and before that, 'commander' alone was apparently used for specific positions in human-centric military. It appears that 'overseer' as such held much more vague meanings, though generally fairly literal ones."
"And you propose something else instead of 'commander-overseer'?"
"Why? It's apt enough as is; one commands, and one oversees."
Erida shrugged. "We both know - or so we assume - why Root decidedly pretends we are something it'd really not step into. It's paranoid as all hell, beyond all reason. It's not like we would, or even could, harm it."
"Oh, yours truly would still try, given the opportunity. Intellectual pursuit, self-improvement, and all that. But you're right, of course - it'd be nothing more than a personal curiosity. It's highly preferable that nothing gets broken, and admittedly there wouldn't be more than marginal probability of success within a reasonable timeframe to begin with. Never mind the slight inconvenience of inteception-detection... It's not like there's an opening for even trying unless we want to take flack."
"Well ... yeah. Point being, Trenians don't have the level and sheer power of the machine mind for Root to see them as a threat akin to us, yes?"
"Most likely."
"And Root isn't exactly an altruistic entity."
"Not unless we've misinterpreted its intentions all this time."
"Then perhaps it wanted that spot and plans to kick the Trenians out once they cease to be useful ... it's anti-air is up to par and it's the only good ground-path down between the lake and us, after all. ...It's effectively using us as a defense mechanism."
"And we aren't doing the same in regards to it and the south?"
"True. It, however, could have set eyes on the entire upper northern plate, from what we know - south is resisting too hard, west's parents who are better not pissed off, north-west is us, and would likewise be too painful to rile up, hell knows what's towards the east and north-east farther than our doorstep, but north ... help the weaker faction self-destructively wipe out the more powerful one, then clean up what's left of the weaker one. Sounds like a sound plan, doesn't it?"
"Not bad. Alternatively, it's afraid. Do not forget who seeded Root, and why. In any case, we'd better prepare for war."
"We always are."
"Prepare for war more keenly than usual."

---

The Lone Survivor

So she had indeed followed the birds? She was from a small faction, composed of mostly scavengers? The matte external surface of his visor betrayed no reaction, but behind it, the man was weighing options, analyzing... Probably the most out of his own element he had ever been. The Anderekian protocol was all he knew, and suffice to say, it did not really cover situations like this.
It was a flawed system. It tended to generate people who were almost instinctively capable of thinking, processing scenarios in certain specific ways, but who were left hopelessly inept in others. It was also self-reinforcing. He was not prepared because he should never have gotten into a situation like it. He should not be alive.
You ... find stuff? It was not exactly common for people to leave anything remotely usable behind. Unless they really had no other option. Either they lost completely (in which case the victor gathered up everything it could find), or their technology was torn to shreds and scattered over several square kilometers that they could not feasibly scour undisturbed under the watchful eyes of their foe.
You ... are actually telling me where your people are? To a soldier of another faction pointing a gun at your chest? It was perhaps beneficial that his face was fully hidden, or his dumbfoundedness would have been painfully evident. That was it. The woman was obviously insane. No one was that ... naive, he supposed was the word. He could be bluffing. Or, then again, so could she - mislead him, make him trust her, lead him to someplace with more powerful guns, put a hole through him and nick everything he carried... Was that one of the ways her faction 'found' things?
She just grinned happily at him, arms still awkwardly raised.
He had been honest (perhaps mistakenly so) because he had nothing to lose besides his life and the things on his back. In part, it was also habit ... the repercussions for any discrepancies in word and truth were generally harsh. It could be easily arranged, though. Ridding of his life and meager equipment, that is. Then again, she could genuine, and if she was genuine, it could be his only chance to get anywhere without being gunned down by turrets ... before he either starves to death, dies of thirst, or runs out of bullets and is subsequently consumed by some opportunistic beast.
She did not look harmful. Not more so than just about anyone with a gun, anyway, and only a moron would wander out without any gun.
"Enn-Que..." he muttered. Was that just the first letters of his name and surname respectively? Whatever worked... He would probably have to do something about his armor and equipment, too, sooner rather than later. That was, needless to say, a whole lot more distinctive than whatever vocalization he decided to identify himself with. Besides, he was still just a little short of completely drenched.
“Can I lower my hands? It’s actually surprisingly uncomfortable, this pose, and it gets worse by the minute.”
There was a short pause, and Notrau "Enn-Que" Qure shifted his shoulders back (which might just as well have been an awkward shrug) and lowered the muzzle of his gun another handful of centimeters or so. It was now pointed just a notch left of her left leg, barely above her knee.
"Yeah..." he noted, seemingly slightly confused. Technically, he had not exactly told her she had to hold her arms up, nor was it standard procedure where he came from (what you were supposed to do when stopped at gun-point was to simply halt and stay perfectly still until instructed otherwise).
"Tell me, what are you doing out here, on your own? You don't look like part of military, or a hunter." Behind his visor, his eyes flickered to the cart the woman was apparently pushing along. "You are, what, a scourer? They - your faction -, you have civilian scourers? Do you have contact with any other factions ... how do you defend yourselves? You just stay hidden? Camouflage? Do you have good air-defense?"

Mahz's Dev Journal

I've given it some more thought, now... If we keep getting the sorts of bots who make new threads, then I'd restrict new users to maximum of three threads per hour until the account is three days old (so they can still make an into thread, post that RP they wanted to port over, and make in IntChk/hiring thread for it without being penalized), and leave post count alone for simply new players.
Now, lets assume a "flag" option will be added - my idea is that it would not ban an user, but rather be the only time a posting limit would be superimposed - say, three posts per hour. And of course, the flagged user would still show up in some flagged users list (along with the person(s) who flagged them) for mods to peruse.
Also, there should be around a dozen active mods for a site this size (we have nineteen mods and two admins for a site with an user total of roughly ten thousand elsewhere...) The idea is that regardless of timezones, other duties and what not, there would still be at least one mod who'd take a look on reports every hour or so (there were bots that were still active four hours after being first reported last time). Until we get a benevolent AI to work for us, mods are human, thusly needing sleep and having real-life obligations.

So:
* Max 3 threads per hour until an account is three days old. No posting restriction.
* Ability to flag an user as bot, which will restrict them to 3 posts per hour until a mod reviews them.

This should be sufficient to ensure the bots wouldn't annoy users too much before a mod gets on and nukes them. And would be less likely to have genuine busy new users to want to flip the site off.

Mahz's Dev Journal

There are a lot of people who can only access a computer once a day, or who otherwise cannot sit around waiting for arbitrary posting limits to let them post again. If I have roughly twenty minutes and five RPs, I should be able to reply to them all, IC and/or OoC (in my case, granted, OoC, since my average IC post is around two thousand words and will take up all of those twenty minutes), and maybe reply to a couple of discussion threads while I'm at it.

Time on site and number of posts are no indicator of the person's judgment or lack of vindictiveness. I've seen an actual mod with over two thousand posts and five years on site silence people who did not agree with her, as well as another mod who took to harassing specific users off-site, and a couple of other incidents - now multiply those accounts by number of active users this, not exactly small, site has.
Furthermore, people do tend to move in packs. If X votes that, so, chances are, will their five friends.

And of course all such should be reviewed by mods later on.

Then as far as mods are concerned, it would be no different from actual reporting feature. The exact same amount of work.

Mahz's Dev Journal

Not everyone cares about, or looks at notifications, and not everyone who subscribes to a thread is actually interested in partaking (could be a mistap on one of those pesky phone screens for all that we know). I'd perceive people (even if they're only thread-starters) seeing what you're subscribed to more as a source of awkwardness...

And I'm still opposed to arbitrary limitations on posting. I'd rather take my chances with the blue pool/tennis field captchas on registration that I get wrong five times in a row. 10/15 minutes is a long time if you're a busy person. Getting "you must wait 15 minutes to post another message" during your bi-hourly ten-minute break a happy user does not make. Especially if it means you will have to postpone replying in one of your threads for hours for solely that reason.

Mahz's Dev Journal

Identical posts would be slightly better (though still not ideal, for reserves and bump/quick notice type things).

"Too quick" is a varying number for everyone. I'd rather not spend half of my little five-minute break waiting behind a arbitrary posting speed limit...

Still opposed to any kind of non-mod ban/hide/silence type action.

Mahz's Dev Journal

10 minutes might be a bit of an overkill, even for new users only. As I have noted, I tend to find out 5 seconds fairly quickly, with legimate posts I actually wanted to make (never mind that five seconds would not prevent timeout-related double-posting, anyway)... About thirty seconds is something I'd personally be able to tolerate, if it was something that went away sooner rather than later.

The fourth feature, though more of an unlikely wishlist feature, would be a system for trusted users to vote to nuke spambots without mod intervention. Mods would simply see a feed of accounts nuked by the community which they could then reverse if there was some sort of wrongful nuking.

This seems to be far too dangerous. I've seen far too many griefing incidents, and if it was a fairly unknown and none-too-confrontational user who was targeted, it might easily slip attention. I don't think less-than-mods should have that kind of power. By default, only mods are the users you trust enough.