Shienvien

@Mention Notification Error

Is it perhaps feasible that the poster had first accidentally tagged you, then edited to include the second part of the user's username?

Mahz's Dev Journal

That's why the proper use of capital and non-capital letters is fundamental. Helps you tell a BIOS from bios, species from nations, the speaker referring to oneself from imaginary number or iterator counter, model names from random nouns, classes from functions...

Mahz's Dev Journal

Block user in the sense of "user can no longer send PMs or leave VMs to me" - yes.
Hiding all posts by said user - preferably not, that leads to some threads being horrible mangled messes (just imagine you two accidentally joining the same RP...). If someone is being disruptive on public forums, mods.

On another note - did this new forum ever have e-mail notifications? It appears some people in a RP I'm in appear to be missing those, which occasionally leads to some goose-hunts.

The Prophecy

@cthulu: ...Did the new forum ever send e-mail notifications? I thought it was a feature that died with the old vBulletin site, and hasn't been reimplemented yet (might remind the site owner about it, since I tend to feature in the dev thread anyway).
Good to know life hasn't completely eaten you yet, in any case!

(What are you studying, by the way, if you don't mind me asking?)

From Downfall ReRisen

The Lone Survivor

Initially, it had been hard to rationalize his own physical reaction to this confrontation, encounter, whatever one wished to term it. There were no guns pointing at him, no shells or shrapnel to tear through flesh and bone, no scorching plasma or mechanized monstrosities that could crush you under their treads. Just one lone woman with equipment that was no match against his, and she was not even trying to come across as being capable of meaningful retaliation. Not willing to endanger her faction, yes, but they both knew she would have had no chance against him if he went on offense. Never mind that he had had a gun pointed at him by guards of his own faction more times than he cared to count. Why, then?
The stakes were not functionally all that different, were they? If he could not convince this woman he was not a threat, that he did not intend to undermine what she stood for, if she decided to eliminate him, he would most likely die the same he would if he took a bullet, no? If she decided he was a threat, and he let her go, her whole faction would turn hostile, yes? And not only was it likely that she was one of the very few who would as much to care to listen, but finding another faction within walking distance which also had someone who would listen... What were the chances? If he failed now, it would be a death sentence after all, after he had lived (deserted) to see this day, albeit a much slower one.
Never mind that he had trained for war, had been in multiple skirmishes, and hearings had protocol, things he was supposed to say and how. No protocol for circumstances like this. Stakes were similar to what they would have been in battle, but he did not have a bloody clue what he was doing, and thus he had panicked.
Even as he finished his - what was it, an explanation? Justification? Plea? - he remained uncertain, watching the woman's - Kay-Gee's - face. She did not appear as defiant anymore, more ... regretful, was that it? In the end she merely sighed, finally offering him a smile.
“So you need a place to hide,” she stated, opting to gaze at the ground rather than him. If anything, it at least signified that she no longer expected him to attack. Did not feel the need to follow his every movement and be prepared to counter his actions. Somewhat awkwardly, he shifted his gun fully onto his hip, removing his hand from the trigger and placing it on the middle of the barrel - seemingly more to keep it pointed harmlessly at the ground but also far enough away from his feet than anything else. His other arm fell uselessly to the side.
"I guess," he noted, tone somewhat uncertain. 'To hide' seemed to imply that it was only a temporary setup, something one did until the circumstances changed. But they were hardly liable to change - being unlisted was permanent. "A place to be would perhaps be more apt way of putting it. To serve and live in."
He was silent again, listening as the woman described her faction's defenses. It seemed bizarre, not having any military. Sure, he was aware that Trenians had "civilian" settlements, but those, too, were generally guarded by at least a few units. And only manning anti-air when you expected trouble? It was not like they handed out warnings... It did not seem like it would be safe, or even remotely enough to have any kind of effect on the outcome of a flyover bombing. They - his old faction - had known to expect an attack last night, since they had picked up a part of the convoy moving out, but planes were much faster... Wherever the anti-air the Trenians had fielded the last night was from, it was not from Eighfour. And if someone did decide to target them, they would have barely anything to put up serious fight with.
"People are afraid of the fog, mostly," he muttered. "And they don't want to spread their forces out, risk running into something that can take them out, or being left beyond contact-range. Or having forces out of response-range, should they be needed somewhere else. Things like that."
"Here," insisted a bird. Maybe they were getting tired - bored? - of the interaction taking so long.
Clutching the barrel of his gun harder than was perhaps necessary, he listened in silence as the woman continued - not about the situation he had gotten himself into, but ... naming conventions? When the woman looked up at him again, she found him standing almost unchanged from before.
84-kiloton nuclear bomb. Nukes we a bit out of his expertise, but that was probably enough to level her entire faction if it went off, given that Eighfour really was as small as he had been led to believe... Still, he was confused. Was it a test of some sort?
"Why are you telling me this?"

Mahz's Dev Journal

I get too many superfluous notifications as is...

It takes five to fifteen seconds for a VM. If you care enough to want to say hi, it isn't too much of an additional effort. A generic hello button is a bit too impersonal, and will probably end up being a typical annoy feature more than anything.

Mahz's Dev Journal

Perhaps a listing of preferred pronouns would be better rather than just strictly gender? Just so we don't run into the issue of sex/gender/identity and the discussion that often follows them. Like she/her/hers, he/him/his, they/them/their and others like those. It may be less aesthetically pleasing than the current system now, but perhaps it would be a little bit more sensitive to non-cisgendered people.

@Undine

I agree that being able to choose between the pronouns she/he/they, and having an "other" option with a little insert field (codewise functioning not unlike user titles?) would be the most inclusive, least likely to incite any debates, and probably the most relevant (as people most likely would be most interested in knowing what to refer to someone as - with nb/fluid, you won't exactly know). The "other" option would probably net you a few joke answers, but it's entirely your fault if people decide to take your joke answer seriously.

Mahz's Dev Journal

So... "For women" means it's pink and inexplicably breaks or wears down thrice as fast. (Or perhaps I'm confusing sex icons with razor blades. But it's still pink.)

I personally also use female/male/intersex/hermaphrodite/nondistinct to strictly denote sex (physical) and man/woman/non-binary/genderfluid/bigender/agender/attack helicopter/other to strictly denote gender (identity).

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.