Mahz

Hello Guilders~!

Welcome.

Mahz's Dev Journal

I'd like to bring back the "user status" system that the Guild used to have long ago -- probably this weekend to take a break from whatever I come up with for the v1.0 search system. New forum platforms (like forums that use Xenforo) usually have this feature, and it's one of the most requested features since relaunch.

I often find it helpful myself. For example, I'd like to set my status to "Currently working on a search system" so people can see what I'm working on despite my activity in this thread.

Other examples of useful statuses:

- "I'm visiting grandma so I'll be away til mid-April" (3 days ago) -- Signal to your friends that you're away but will be coming back.
- "Currently writing post for <name of roleplay>" (12 min ago) -- Signal to your fellow players that your next post is imminent.

Statuses can be up to 140 chars.

So that people will actually read your status, I'm thinking of including it as a small button next to the "bio" button. When clicked, it can pop up a small window that shows the status with a small form that allows you to comment on it or rate it like you can a post. Perhaps the button even saturates into some color when you haven't read the user's latest status.

What do yall think? Any better ideas for how the status should be displayed on posts? It'd be possible to display the [possibly truncated] status directly on the post, but I'm reluctant to add clutter to posts.

Mahz's Dev Journal

Quick question on that,@Mahz... How will the above system handle it if a user disappears from the guild while having Active RPs? Will those RPs remain tagged as active, or will you have some means for dealing with such?

Or for that matter, if the GM goes away?

@Ellri

Yeah, there will be some way to handle this. An aggressive solution example would be to automatically demote a roleplay from a user's active roleplays list if they are inactive. A conservative solution would be for a moderator to review these cases.

There are a lot of existing roleplays right now where the GM is MIA yet the players are still participating in the roleplay. I'd like to eventually roll out a system for remaining players to elect a new co-GM that can, for example, update the tags and mark the roleplay as "recruiting". Maybe I can introduce this with the report system -- one of the options you can pick when creating a report is new co-GM election or something.

Mahz's Dev Journal

Loving the changes, especially the mobile friendly and new functionality.

• Is it necessary to show the disabled page navigation? I know that not having them would throw off the alignment so perhaps something as simple as below would work. The element won't be rendered but will still take up space to preserve the alignment.
  
  li.disabled{
visibility: hidden;
}
• We can hide forum sections, is it possible to also have users able to hide the widgets on the right as well?
• in post links on headers for those long, wiki article like posts. Would make things easier for those detail obsessed GMs.
  [url=#setting]setting[/url]
[h1=Setting]somethingsomething[/h1]
• Is there any way to have some sort of infinite pagination for the forum and topic views as seen on things like a facebook or twitter feed?

@TheFake

- In general I prefer the principle of least astonishment in UIs which involves showing buttons in a disabled state rather than hiding them, but I think pagination is a good candidate for hiding the non-options. Thanks, I'll play with it.
- I'd eventually like users to be able to hide the sidebar. Right now it'd be kind of a pain to implement a collapse because of how the HTML is structured. Also, at the moment until the sidebar/forum matures, I kinda like that I can rely on the sidebar being visible to all so that I can eventually put more important information on it. It's something I'm willing to give up eventually though.
- Support for anchor navigation (for example, table of contents) would be hot. Agreed. Great feature. Random crazy idea: Allow author to opt-in to an autogenerated table of contents for their post based on header tags.
- Infinite loading/scroll is a plan I'd like to implement eventually for sure. Particularly once I've implemented the view that allows users to filter down the list of all roleplays/checks.

Good feedback, thanks!

Mahz's Dev Journal

<Snipped quote by Ellri>

I know absolutely nothing about coding, but could it be possible to apply something like an [old] tag based off the most recent activity of the topic?

@Aeonumbra

I have a rough idea outline for a system that can solve a variety of problems.

- A user can mark a roleplay as one of their "Active Roleplays". There are various ways of enforcing this that I don't want to ponder right now, but it can include things like: you can only post in roleplays on your "Active" list, a GM with a roleplay open to applications must manually add players to the "Active" list before they can post IC, etc.
- As a roleplay dies or comes to a conclusion, users remove the roleplay from the list of active roleplays.
- Roleplays are considered inactive/dead/concluded when the last person removes the roleplays from their list of active roleplays.
- Inactive roleplays simply don't show up in searches by default unless user opts in to viewing them.
- Before a GM can remove a roleplay from their list of active roleplays, if there are any active players, they either must elect one of them as a co-GM (so the roleplay can continue) or they must wait until there are no more active users. There will be some system to demote a roleplay from someone's active roleplays list if the user themself is inactive.

Some features that follow from the above system:

- You can see the roleplays someone is currently in and manage this list yourself.
- You can view the players currently participating in a roleplay.
- GMs of application-only roleplays can gatekeep users from posting IC until they are approved.
- The system overall now has a concept of active roleplays and inactive roleplays which can be used to reduce clutter in search results and the forums altogether.
- You can easily tell when a roleplay is dead or not, or if anyone is going to be posting in it anytime soon.
- Users are more likely to be upfront with other players -- instead of silently slinking away never to be seen again, they now may deliberately remove the roleplay from their active roleplays list.

I'm not really ready to brainstorm this feature yet, but those are some ideas.

Mahz's Dev Journal

Hey @Mahz, would it at all be possible to have to where new replies of topics are bolded and after said topics have been viewed they go back to normal?

@Altered Tundra

Yeah, that's a feature of the system that tracks read/unread posts in general. It's on my short-term list of essential features for sure.

Also, one thing we do wonder a bit on... Do you think that it is possible to auto-apply certain tags to older topics? Some sort of script to browse topic titles and add a few general tags as necessary? Or would such a feature be more effort than it is worth? A good year of backlogged topics without more than the Casual/advanced/free tags would restrict somewhat on topic results.

@Ellri

I think a reliable technical solution is infeasible. I'd rather incentivize humans with reasons to update the tags of their old roleplays. These incentives will accumulate as the tagging system matures and the Guild leans on it for features.

The tag system is currently in such an infant state that a topic tagged "Nation" and "Advanced" doesn't actually show up in both forums yet -- just the forum it was created in. It certainly has some ways to go! Also, I'll eventually let users recommend tags for their old roleplays with inactive GMs and I'll manually add the tags myself.

Mahz's Dev Journal

I've been wondering this for awhile and I don't know if this has been answered so please forgive me if it has but will any kind of notification of subscribed posts in the future? What I mean to say is that a new notification section was added but it only notify for a new PM message sent. I find this to be a bit useless since the number also appears next to the PM button as well. However, when a post is made to a subscribed thread, it never notify you. I tend to work in PMs but I find that when I do not, they tend to be forgotten or I miss a post that has been sitting for days or someone else doesn't notice that a post has been written for days.

@Akayaofthemoon

Yeah, that's a basic feature I want to build very soon. Currently you only get notified for PMs, when you're mentioned in a quote, and when your username is mentioned.

There are random basic features like this that I'll be working on over the next couple months.

For example, right now I'm working on the ability to search for posts/PMs which is another feature that's sorely lacking.

Mahz's Dev Journal

What are yall's main uses for a search feature, like what are the kinds of searches you find yourself doing/wanting the most? I'd like to prioritize the features yall want and perhaps yall have use-cases I haven't thought of.

One thing I'd like is a quick way to see my own posts in a topic:



(That link would essentially be a shortcut to a search for all posts by user "Mahz" with a filter of topic_id = 42)

Hello!

I also tend to write oddly in OOC, I keep pressing enter when I move onto another topic.

@AkaylaTheWriter

- I do that sometimes, too.
- I just make my post into a list of random thoughts when I am too scatterbrained to form my thoughts into paragraphs.
- Welcome to the Guild

Mahz's Dev Journal

<Snipped quote by Mahz>

What about fixing the tabindex problem with the post box?

@Captain Jordan

It's on my to-do list. I basically need to make a toggle beneath the editor that binds/unbinds the tab-key-override handler to the tab key and saves the preference in a cookie. Facebook has/had something similar: a checkbox for "Enter sends the message" vs entering a newline into your message.