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Snarkpit v6 Alpha - all visitors please read!
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 Re: Snarkpit v6 Alpha - all visitors please read!
Posted by larchy on Thu Jan 22nd at 4:21pm 2009

Hello and welcome to the latest version of the Snarkpit.

This is a live test of the new site version, prior to moving the snarkpit.net domain across to this new site. If you encounter any problems do not panic! smiley Simply tell us so we can fix the issues in the 'Snarkpit v6 Bugs' sticky.

Be aware that the current database is incomplete. It is based on a snapshot of the snarkpit.net database from early December 2008, and has undergone significant largescale changes which will help us to better organise the site's content.

Maps, articles and downloads which are missing from this test site will be gradually added to bring things up to date. This is possible due to the small amount of content which has to be moved.

Any forum topics or posts (including this one) will be wiped when we move the domains across. A snapshot of the original/current site's forum posts and topics will be taken closer to the changeover time and moved over to here.

Changelog for Snarkpit v6:
Show spoiler

Major changes
- Move to a new host (hurrah!)
- themes re-enabled, alternate blue theme added
-games database reorganised, which has helped greatly simplify the maps/downloads/articles sections - check them out!
-search engine friendly URLs for articles!
-discussion topics for maps and articles all linked up with the forums, as well as displaying on the actual map/article pages
-new tags added, such as the spoiler tag above and pagination tags for articles
-User control panel redesigned

I hope everyone will enjoy the work that has been done and find the site generally improved. Please post any comments and feedback below.

NB - do not post bugs in this thread, post them in the 'Snarkpit v6 Bugs' sticky.




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 Re: Snarkpit v6 Alpha - all visitors please read!
Posted by Riven on Sat Jan 24th at 10:47am 2009

Here's a list of a few features I'd like to see implemented into this build...
  • Clicking the "new post" icon in a thread will take you to the 1st post you haven't read. Check this forum for an example of what I mean over at Interlopers. (I dunno if you have to be logged in order to use it :/ ) -In their forum, they have a separate button that does this task.
  • -Can we include a drop down list option box that lets you select how many posts you want to show per page in a thread? (from 10-20-50-100?) -This would be a universal option in your control panel. I remember the old site having this feature. I liked it a lot.
  • Please bring back the "Welcome (your username here)" message/link at the top of the bar; I like to view my profile, and assuming that others like to as well, that link makes it easy for them.
  • I don't know if people found this annoying or not, but to allow auto-locking topics in the general banter forum if they haven't been responded to in over 4 months. This would only apply to the general banter forum. -And admins would have the ability to make certain threads (that we wouldn't want to sticky) never lock. -Like the "Recently found" threads... -Or would that be too confusing for users and not necessary?
  • This is just my personal opinion and am quite coy in mentioning it, as I think other sites recognize it... But I think people need to know who their admins are. On the old site, Lep made it so that those users' names would be highlighted a different color, or we could do what Interlopers does and have just the word "Moderator" or "Administrator" under their posts. If people are having problems, they need to know who to go to. -And or who to fear.
  • Does it make sense to add the (memberlist) button to the top of the control panel page as well? (same place).
  • also add a drop down list arrow to show more maps per page as well when viewing them.
  • -For the Maps page; I kind of liked the idea of having a main menu page. As it stands on the older version of the site still on the Globat server, when clicking the maps page, it would show a list of all the games on the left, allowing you to see their icons along with them (which is fairly important IMO, and helps people associate their maps with the games) The dropdown lists used for sorting now are fine, and would remain on the top bar, but just a main page to look back on would be nice I think.
  • hovering your mouse over the rating of maps should show the alternate text dialogue box of how many ratings that map received instead of just listing the number of stars.
  • Because it's commonplace for people to abandon their maps, I think there should be an option to do so that adds an "Abandoned" stripe across their pictures just like the "Beta" stripe we have now.
  • I don't know if this would require a new DB entry, but for map profiles, I'd like to see their original post date and THEN their last update date. Is there an entry for this already on the DB to filter through a recordset as new info on a map's profile?
  • I think it makes the site more user friendly, if by clicking on article thumbnail images in the articles list brings you to the article itself instead of limiting it to just the "view article" button.
  • I know we don't have new list of iconsets yet, but for now, could you add the functionality for "Hot topic" threads? -Any thread with 50 posts or more becomes a 'hot topic' and receives a different icon. -We can use a placeholder icon for now...


That's all I have for now. The new site looks amazing, and I'm loving the new features and organization! smiley


Blog: www.playingarchitecture.net
LinkedIn: Eric Lancon
Twitter:@Riven202



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 Re: Snarkpit v6 Alpha - all visitors please read!
Posted by Le Chief on Sat Jan 24th at 11:40am 2009

For the articles page I think it would be a good idea if the title of each article was a link to the article, because I was browsing the articles page and I wanted to read one of the articles (for bug finding purposes) and I instinctively moused over the title of the article only to my horror to discover it wasn't a link! I had to search for like 1.5 seconds and I saw the "view article" button.

By the way, the sites looking real nice, the new changes are awesome! smiley


Aaron's Stuff



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 Re: Snarkpit v6 Alpha - all visitors please read!
Posted by larchy on Sat Jan 24th at 4:54pm 2009

Thanks for the feedback guys, sounds good! Will get working on things over the next week and really polish things up nicely!


I'm not sure where the 'welcome <random peon>!' link would fit Riven... if its a link to your profile that is missing then maybe a 'view your profile' link on the control panel page is what's needed?


About the maps page... the current main menu page on the globat site is what I came up with to be able to organise the old database system, and it got absolutely ripped and slated by ppl who said it looked awful smiley That's why I went to the trouble of reorganising the games database to simplify the layout.

However... maybe some sort of front page would be nice, and we could have a 'latest maps' and/or maybe even a 'random maps' section(s)... or whatever. Will have a think smiley


A lot of things are just stuff that's been overlooked really... a note for who the admins are for, article names not being clickable etc... no worries, will fix. Number of ratings when hovering the star icon is an excellent idea and quicker to change than me typing this sentence smiley


Oh, and you may want to have a look over the games admin section Riven. I changed a few game names, but most still need cleaning up... I'll get round to it eventually. Also added a thing to upload game icons for each theme... got a couple of new ones, will make some more at some point!


The private messaging doesn't quite look right... the formatting for the posts looks off, will have to have a play around with that.

thanks guys, massive help, appreciated smiley



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 Re: Snarkpit v6 Alpha - all visitors please read!
Posted by larchy on Sat Jan 24th at 7:43pm 2009

Article names made clickable on the articles list page.

Hovering over stars now shows number of ratings for both maps and articles.


----

btw I think the number of posts etc per page was limited because the database would have died on globat if ppl could increase it.

I'll add a posts number select menu nps for the forums... for the maps page I ain't so certain. I was actually thinking of taking it down to 9 (current is 12) per page to save bandwidth... although we've got unlimited bandwidth here so I don't think it's a big deal. Don't wanna take the micky tho smiley



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 Re: Snarkpit v6 Alpha - all visitors please read!
Posted by larchy on Sat Jan 24th at 9:04pm 2009

Number of forum topics that are displayed when viewing a forum is now selectable from your control panel > edit profile

smiley



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 Re: Snarkpit v6 Alpha - all visitors please read!
Posted by Riven on Sun Jan 25th at 12:07pm 2009

Quoting larchy
Oh, and you may want to have a look over the games admin section Riven. I changed a few game names, but most still need cleaning up... I'll get round to it eventually. Also added a thing to upload game icons for each theme... got a couple of new ones, will make some more at some point!


I don't have level 4 access on this version of the site smiley so I can't see what you're talking about.

Quoting larchy
Number of forum topics that are displayed when viewing a forum is now selectable from your control panel > edit profile

Yay! That's great! (side note: MAN, I'm LOVING the new host! I can check out all these new things so quickly now! it's awesome! /side note)

Quoting larchy
btw I think the number of posts etc per page was limited because the database would have died on globat if ppl could increase it.


So, you're saying it will not be good for the new host either?

Quoting larchy
However... maybe some sort of front page would be nice, and we could have a 'latest maps' and/or maybe even a 'random maps' section(s)... or whatever. Will have a think smiley


I understand the work done to the games database, and I wholly accept it. I think that is a better idea, I just like the idea of a fully formatted list on the first "Maps" page to help people get a grasp with exactly how many maps we have in our DB. I know the drop down box has them all and the number of maps beside them, but if one person is looking through the icons, because they saw an icon on the front page and wanted to see the maps for it, the drop down box can't offer that. I dunno; it just makes sense to me to add a formatted list like on the globat site.

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'm not sure where the 'welcome <random peon>!' link would fit Riven... if its a link to your profile that is missing then maybe a 'view your profile' link on the control panel page is what's needed?


Really? It doubles as another way to show you're logged in (other than seeing login/logout at the top) I think it's important enough to push the "hi, welcome our newest member ____" phrase to the side. I don't think it will look too cluttered eh? -Of course it only shows if you're logged in.

That's all the time I have now; I will look into the site some more later, I need to get to bed smiley. I'm thinking about giving Orpheus a call to jog his memory on all the features he requested on the old site as I know he was a major proponent in its development. Hopefully he'll have something good to say smiley


Blog: www.playingarchitecture.net
LinkedIn: Eric Lancon
Twitter:@Riven202



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 Re: Snarkpit v6 Alpha - all visitors please read!
Posted by larchy on Sun Jan 25th at 12:21pm 2009

oops, sorry... old database innit smiley Access changed!

No the new host will be fine with showing more forum topics... it's just globat was so slow and the database timed out with relatively small queries that I wanted to try and limit the load as much as possible else the whole site would grind to a halt... especially with lots of users. The new one is working as it should, no worries... although I still want to restrict showing extra stuff to registered users - no point having resources raped by non-members smiley

Yeah could probably squeeze the 'welcome <blah blah>' message into where the newest member thing is... I was thinking about where the controls above that are as there wouldn't be enough room without squashing the main logo.

Yus, no doubt Orpheus can tell me everything I've done wrong again smiley j/k


Oh, and any thoughts on what sorts of limits we can have for uploading maps now? Given that we have unlimited bandwidth and disk space and a POST upload limit of 50MB? (as opposed to a few measly MB with globat)

I did do a little work on an upload progress bar when uploading maps etc and had a flash one working at one point (just as a test, wasn't properly integrated with the site) but IIRC it was gonna take a lot of time to fix up and I wanted to get lots of other stuff done first. It's something I'll probably work on in the future which would be good if we started allowing larger uploads.



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 Re: Snarkpit v6 Alpha - all visitors please read!
Posted by larchy on Mon Jan 26th at 10:14am 2009

Latest maps rss feed added!



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 Re: Snarkpit v6 Alpha - all visitors please read!
Posted by Riven on Wed Jan 28th at 7:31am 2009

Did I tell you how much I love the quick reply feature! -It's awesome; I think it might actually encourage more people to post more often!

Anyhow, I finally got around to calling up Orpheus the other day, and we had a good long hour chat (and I'm sure my long distance bill will be out of the roof!), but it was totally worth it. He visits a lot more than I thought, he just doesn't have time to post. So, he tends to follow the main discussions, and he always checks his pms. Which was his first point when I asked him about the new site.

As you guys know, He and Leperous were very VERY tight-nit amigos on the old site. And as a result, He could tell Leperous what he thought the site should have and Leperous would find a way to implement it. About 98% of all the features and items on the old site came directly from the mind of Orpheus, and by the end of our conversation, I was convinced they were. Of course, a lot of the other members delivered their feedback to make the site what it was, much how we're doing now!

So what did the great Orpheus have to say? I was afraid to ask at the time, but his general good-will and fun-loving nature showed through, and I was able to chock back a good dialogue with him, but good lord, that man can talk up a storm!

So on with the advice. I want to specify firstly, Orpheus really hasn't gotten the chance to check the site out a whole lot. Where he lives, they still don't have internet, and the DSL is expected to be laid in within a year or so (so they say), so his comments were pulled from memory of the old site and comparing what he knew with his little experience on the new site. Of course, I tried focusing his attention on a lot of the new features that larchy has implemented to let him know we have a good guy working on this. With that he had plenty to say.

So, one of his first comments was on the "private message" system. The way it was designed on the old site, was there were two boxes. An "Inbox" & "Outbox". Unread messages in the Inbox were bold and had a different icon associated with them. Clicking on it, would open up a JavaScript window with the message in it and a button to reply to. Clicking the reply button loaded the reply form page in that same JVS window. "It was convenient" He said. The Outbox had a different story. The Outbox was split into two sections. The top section contained "Read" messages; the bottom, "Unread" messages. The two repeatable regions were totally separate from one another and had the appropriate titles to go along with them. "All on one page; simple".

The color scheme: The reason for the color pallet on the old site, was purely Orph's idea. The yellow gave a high contrast against the black allowing him to read everything easily. The old site had 6 different themes, one of them being a "56K" theme, which is what he recommended for our site. Many of you will remember Orpheus being very big on image resolution and dimensions. He suggested if there were another important theme to add, it would be a 56K theme for those people out there who still have to live with it (and he assured me there are). Of course, he was mentioning this in the context of the Globat server, which isn't a big dilemma now when we transfer the site over to our new hosts, but I'm all for the idea of a 56K user theme. How many other sites have that feature! BTW, he likes the new oldschool theme, and after mentioning his like of a blue theme, I quickly replied: "we're already testing that one out right now!". So I think we're on the right track!

Moving on! I had mentioned in a feature request list not too long ago asking for a better way to highlight messages on the front page if you had any so that you could take notice. Well, Orpheus took the next step: On the old site, he had Leperous actually bold AND color the text bright red to let it stand out against the black background (and I think the font size was increased a little too) so that there was no way you could miss it. -I am tending to agree now as well. I also like how on the other version of this site, you could see in parentheses how many messages were waiting for you too; is it possible to re-fit that in too you think? -Not a big deal really.

Another small feature he had implemented on the old site was the "who's online?" page. On the old site, it would open in a JV window as well, so you could continue surfing the site, and be able to refresh that window and see constantly who's on the site. The list itself actually didn't list the current active members in alphabetical order either, no, it listed them from the top down, the members' join date order. The earlier members were listed at the top, and later joiners at the bottom. Fan service really, but back then when the pit was still more active, it was a lot of fun to see and catch who were the original members on the site. -I never noticed the feature myself, but looking back on it, I remember Orpheus being at the top of the list quite often. "It was a way of showing active rank".

The admin titles. Orpheus used to be an admin, but I learned that Leperous was very strict with the privileges, and even though the two were good buddies, Lep would constantly turn on and off admin ability for Orph, leaving him not caring any more, until he started noticing exactly what Lep was calling himself. Lep saw himself as the "Uber Lord" and all other members were his minions. And his title on his profile reflected that, and that was something Orph found wrong. I told him about the different level accesses we have on this site, and the names to go along with them. He agreed that there should be some indication on who's an admin and who's not, just don't go naming them "Uber Lord" or anything like that. "That kind of mentality drives people away."

The other features he was able to recall at the time were the User rating system and the snarkmarks. The user rating system was put in place to show people who to stay away from, and who to look for. Simply put, it was an option much like the rating systems on maps now, that allowed other uses to rate a user's performance on the site. Options 1-5. It was successful for the most part, and gave you another clue about the person when viewing their profile. -If this were to be re-implemented, there should still be entries for it in the DB. -I'm all for it. As for the snarkmarks, I let him know we follow post count solely now. The snarkmarks were a way of showing user activity on the site, and encouraged users to take advantage of the other features (rather than just posting in the forums) I remember personally that adding a tutorial on the site would have given you a butt load of snarkmarks. then adding maps, then downloads, then when someone would make your response the correct response to an editing problem, and the one for making a post. You could display them proudly and it made sure most editing questions would get answered, but we don't have that feature yet.

The last thing I wrote down from the mouth of Orpheus was his constant reminder throughout the conversation to "not make the Database so complicated. "Keep it simple" He said. Too much complexity drives people away. that's why there have always been so few forums. So, I hope we can live up to his ideals of a mapping community in the near future! As soon as he can get his internet back, he says, he'll be up on here as active as he used to be, so the pit is definitely will see a rise in activity one day again!



Blog: www.playingarchitecture.net
LinkedIn: Eric Lancon
Twitter:@Riven202



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 Re: Snarkpit v6 Alpha - all visitors please read!
Posted by larchy on Wed Jan 28th at 8:52am 2009

That's really awesome Riven, thankyou very much for taking the time to talk with orpheus and write all that. It's enormously helpful to me because I otherwise find it difficult to know what the main part of this community is thinking, especially members who have been involved designing earlier versions of the site.

When I started the redesign I had little to go on other than the relaunch thread, so everything was a blank canvas. That said, I think I've followed a few things you mention above.

For instance one of the main things I wanted to do when I first saw the original site was to bring out all the great content and make it as easy to access as possible, because even main sections like the maps were hidden away and buried beneath a myriad of obscure links. Simplifying how the content was displayed was one of my main aims, and now with the changes tot he games/mods database tables and the new site's maps/downloads/articles sections I think I've finally achieved that fully.

I've also tried to combine some of the old database tables together to (considerably) reduce the number of sql queries, duplicated info and increase database integrity&coherence. I think I took out about 8 tables altogether (some legacy ones still remain, unused), and there are only two main ones left that I want to eventually combine in the future. So yus, simple is best! For the db and the content.... incidentally all the code I've written I've done my best to keep as basic as possible in case someone else comes along in the future. There are a few bits of more advanced code in there, but 95% of it is written out the long way to make it easier to edit.

When it came to certain aspects of the design I prettymuch copied the way that major successful bits of code/site do things. For example the private messages system is prettymuch copied from phpBB, but the 'snarkpit way' sounds interesting - will have a think about that!

When it comes to opening popup windows, that is something I wanted to keep to an absolute minimum because it is universally accepted to be annoying and reduce usability. Certainly this applies to requiring javascript to view something. JS is fine for adding additional 'optional' features - like the spoiler tags or quick reply here, or the sort options on the maps page - but for actually requiring it to be able to view content on the site.... well, that is a big design nono which is why the new site doesn't do that. The only pages that did need it were the addmap/editmap pages, but that wasn't a big deal because it wasn't restricting actually viewing the site's content, and even that isn't needed with the new v6 site.


Soo... hopefully you can understand where I'm coming from with some of the decisions I've made.


The admin titles... funny you should mention that. I noticed the old titles you mentioned when I redid the site and wasn't sure whether to keep them as you'd all be used to them, or make them something less.. er... obnoxious smiley I wasn't really sure what to call each access level, so hope the current titles are ok.

Also, all the access levels were unchanged by me because it's not my site to run and I've no idea who should have what level... so Orph just has whatever lep had last set him I guess. You've got full access Riven and you can change the level by clicking on the moderate button when a user posts, or using the dropdown menu on a user's profile... so that's all up to you m8 smiley If there's anything needs changing that there's no function for then just lemme know. Only reason I have full access is so I can see all the options and make sure they're ok/working... last thing I'd want to be doing is taking any liberties and start acting as a mod or something smiley

Hope you noticed I already added titles to the forum display :P See you found the flags too smiley

Most of the other things are stuff I didn't know about or never got told how it worked/that it was needed. Most of it sounds good so I'll run through everything and try and get what I can implemented! Snarkmarks are still there in the database so I can add the code to support them again smiley


The only thing I'm unsure about is the 56k theme because a)I've already done a bit of work on reducing the site bandwidth (you'll notice all the forum buttons are different now etc... that's part of it as well as the more obvious stuff) and would find it difficult to improve things in most places beyond actually removing all images or something drastic, and b)if it does happen it'll not be for a while as an extra theme would be too much to do right now unfortunately.

As you mention it, I made the 'messages' thing at the top go bold and white when you have new pms on here... but I've changed it to red to make it stand out even more smiley I could add a count of unread msgs like on the old site, but I'm struggling for space in that area.

---

One last thing... I made a new forum for discussion threads for articles & downloads... d'ya think they could go in the maps forum and just have one big 'maps/articles/downloads discussion forum'?

Also, what about things like the radiant editor forum? Looks a bit dead now? How about mergin the HL/HL2/Radiant editing forums to just an 'editing' forum?





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 Re: Snarkpit v6 Alpha - all visitors please read!
Posted by larchy on Wed Jan 28th at 5:01pm 2009

Haven't finished working on this yet, but...






I think that is looking much better! Has the split layout you mention above which I think works really well for the inbox... although I think it makes more sense to keep the sent/outbox rather than splitting messages you send to people. smiley



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 Re: Snarkpit v6 Alpha - all visitors please read!
Posted by Riven on Wed Jan 28th at 10:41pm 2009

Quoting larchy
Certainly this applies to requiring javascript to view something.

Yes, that would. I agree that to require it would be a big NoNo, but on the old site it was an option you could select in your control panel. By default it was on I think, but I think it should be off by default on this site. Turning it on might allow separate windows to pop-up instead for selected options (like the users online and messages). Something to think about down the road maybe. -I thought it was convenient on the old site. But much like the 56k theme, that's something that doesn't need to happen right now. -That's something I'd like to get other people's opinions on first anyway before you ever spend time developing it.

Quoting larchy
so hope the current titles are ok.

The current titles are fine, so no worries smiley

Quoting larchy
Hope you noticed I already added titles to the forum display :P See you found the flags too

Yup! I love the new flags option. I wish There was a way to add it automatically for everyone. I think when the time comes to switch to this version of the site, I'll make a front page post highlighting all the new features.

Quoting larchy
an extra theme would be too much to do right now unfortunately.

Not a problem; I totally understand. You should do what needs to be done first!

Quoting larchy
One last thing... I made a new forum for discussion threads for articles & downloads... d'ya think they could go in the maps forum and just have one big 'maps/articles/downloads discussion forum'?

I much prefer those forums to be separate. The maps forum is a big place And deserves it's own separate section simply because of the nature of this site. We're a mapping community, and That forum will have different features than the others I think. The Articles/Downloads forum is fine and I don't think it "clutters" the forums database at all. Actually when I mentioned it to Orph, he loved that idea. So, let's keep it the way it is!

Quoting larchy
Also, what about things like the radiant editor forum? Looks a bit dead now? How about mergin the HL/HL2/Radiant editing forums to just an 'editing' forum?

I thought about that, but most of the time when people post editing questions they tend not to mention which game it is for, and having them both in the same forum will only delay the confusion even more. So, having two different forums lets people know what they're about to read. Let's keep the HL and HL2 editing forums separate, they are two totally different engines and require different knowledge bases. As far as the Radiant forum goes: yes it is dead, and I think it should be merged into the Half-Life forum with little "Radiant" titles displayed over just those posts from it. -The is my work around for not having to actually delete those posts and lose that data. But yes, I would like to get rid of the Radiant forum (Orpheus agreed with us as well in that regard).


Blog: www.playingarchitecture.net
LinkedIn: Eric Lancon
Twitter:@Riven202



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 Re: Snarkpit v6 Alpha - all visitors please read!
Posted by larchy on Thu Jan 29th at 8:20pm 2009

Currently everyone does have a default country flag, but it's blank. I did try adding a little globe picture, but it didn't look very good. Setting a default flag is no problem whatsoever if either you or I can find a decent one.

Merging radiant and HL forums is no problem. I'll add '[Radiant Editor]' in front of any radiant thread titles. I'll do this when we do the final globat db dump since the forums/topics/posts will need to be relatively up to date and so will be wiped anyway... I'll have to save this feedback thread when that happens tho!


Profiles m8! added shiny bits!



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 Re: Snarkpit v6 Alpha - all visitors please read!
Posted by Le Chief on Fri Jan 30th at 3:36am 2009

I'm not very fond of the user rating system to be honest. I think its really easy to abuse and mislead. For example, somebody A might get into a fight with somebody B and somebody A might rate somebody B 1/5, than the two guys might become friends again but somebody A forgets to change his rating for somebody B back to 5/5. Or perhaps somebody C might make a crap map and somebody D constructively criticizes it but somebody C takes offense to it and rates somebody D 1/5.

There used to be a n00b member on the site called thehalflifedude and he was trying to remake Half-Life 2 in Half-Life 1 which larchy, is impossible. And we where constantly trying to help him and steer him in the right direction but the kid was moody and took our advice the wrong way (this is the same kid who changed all of his posts when he realised he was wrong) and his rating of me would always change from 1/5 to 5/5 and back to 1/5 and so on so fourth. I just didn't like the user rating system.

If the decision is made to implement that feature, than I ask you to have an option to display your rating.

Other than that, I agree with pretty much everything Riven has relayed from Orpheus.


Aaron's Stuff



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 Re: Snarkpit v6 Alpha - all visitors please read!
Posted by Riven on Fri Jan 30th at 6:27am 2009

Quoting larchy
I'll do this when we do the final globat db dump since the forums/topics/posts will need to be relatively up to date and so will be wiped anyway... I'll have to save this feedback thread when that happens tho!


Ok, I think you know what I'm talking about, but for just clarification's sake so that we don't have any problems down the road:

Yes to merging Half-Life Forum AND Radiant Forum together [NOTE: NOT Half-Life 2 Forum! That forum should stay by itself with out ANY merger whatsoever].

Ok, I just wanted to establish that for later down the road smiley

Yea, adding [Radiant Editor] should be fine!

About the Profiles. I like the new tabs on the left! Very snazzy! One thing though, if I select the downloads tab (for example) and that user has 2 or 3 downloads, if I visit another user with 0 downloads, I get a blank slate saying 0 downloads. -The problem is I'm so used to visiting profiles on the SnarkPit, That I expect their maps to load up first every time. It's neat that the site 'saves' which tab you last viewed from profile to profile, but I think it would be much better to ground every profile when you load the page up to it showing the "maps" tab first; blank or not.

About user ratings:
Quoting aaron_da_killa
If the decision is made to implement that feature, than I ask you to have an option to display your rating.

Well, IMO, being able to disable your rating would defeat the purpose of having a rating system. The only people who would do that would be people with poor ratings.

Perhaps, when viewing your own profile there could be a button that says: "report rating abuse" and it would send an automated pm message to all the super admins. Then the admin could open a dialogue through the pm service with that user, and could change that user's rating by selectively blocking other user's ability to rate that person and removing their rating from his/her list therefore making it more true. -Does that make sense? or would it become too complicated then?

Here are some more feature requests! smiley smiley

  • Aaron mentioned copying user links to the Links page but under their own section. I wrote that down and gave it some thought, and figured it would be pretty neat. I would like to see it implemented. Of course, in your edit profile page, you could check a box to have it not show on the Links page. But by default it should.
  • On the Change E-mail page, it would be nice to see what your current e-mail is before you go changing it (if you haven't visited in a while or have a lot of e-mail address)
  • I like the "no image" default picture you've placed for articles, I think the same should be done for maps too!
  • Also if viewing someone's profile, maybe a little section showcasing that person's current signature? (it would show their siggie regardless whether the person selected to "always show my sig by default" in their posts or not. It's info about them and I don't think it should be excluded. Also, when going to change your signature, the form for it is necessary, but just like you can see your current photo and avatar, it would be nice to see your current sig next to the form before you decide to change it!
  • On the front page of the old old site (Lep's version) you could see exactly how large the pit currently was by seeing a line of text that read:
    Quoting old Snarkpit
    6155 active users have made 142045 forum posts, created 2307 maps and written 208 articles. This is SnarkPit v4.5. Welcome to our newest member, downloader!


    I'd like to see this line on the front page again! [Note: I know we already have the Snarkpit version number and the "Meet our newest member" section on the top and bottom, but perhaps (just for the front page only) you can add a space below the main nav bar and above the news and spotlight that gives the info I just posted AND tells you how many users are online! (clicking on the "# users online" would send you to the "users online page" of course!) -This should be a default value that anyone sees when visiting the site, logged in or not. It helps show people how big a community we really are and might attract them.

  • About the listed info on profiles. The globat site has it so that there is a separate section for Stats, now I prefer the tabs on the top right (don't change it back please smiley ), which leaves the "User posts:" section apart of the info block now. I just hate how it's not formatted whatsoever. It makes it hard to read what's title, and what's info.
    Looking around, I found I like how Interlopers formatted their info: Interlopers standard profile page. I like our contacting setup, so don't change that. But I do like how they have the titles like: "Username:" & "Location" one color and the actual info: "stoopdapoop" & "Ann Arbor, MI" as another color with everything lined up in an invisible table. If you brought back the Sats section again, I think you could combine the "Joined date", and "last visited" titles with the "User posts". And like where it might say: "aaron_da_killa's profile has been viewed #### times, just say "This Profile has been viewed: #### times" -and that can also be added to the stats section as well.
  • I know you plan to update the BBcode help page with more info about the functions we have, but could you add an auto "color" tag (err, I mean colour* smiley ) to all posting forms and have either a list of all the colors with names (which I've found here) or a little drop down list box that has all the colors available and you just select which one you want to use in the post. (The list would also have each color word actually colored). That example took a good five minutes, but with the above feature mentioned, it could take less than 1! smiley
  • About Snarkmarks: First thing's first, they MUST be labeled as "snarkmarks", not "snarkpoints"! smiley

    next thing: I don't know the old forumla Lep actually used to calculate the score, (perhaps you could find it?) But I've talked with a few members about it (if they remembered) and recorded as much as I could. But before I bother mentioned what the calculations were, I found out that everyone seems to be leaning towards the snarkmarks. -They were fun! The cool thing about them was that they recorded everything you did on the site, not just post count. So it made things weighted and encouraged certain actions. If when we get the rating systems all synced up and working, AND when you make it so that a person must click the actual download link before they can rate a map, the snarkmarks can add value to rating other peoples' maps. AND the higher rated your maps are, the more points you get! Same goes for rating other people. the more people you rate, the more points you can get, and the more people that rate you, the more points you can get (depending on their rating) If someone rates you as a 1 you may lose some points. So, before we begin discussing how much everything would be worth, I'd like to wait and see if you can actually find the old equation?
  • Mentioning that reminds me... The old pit had a page you could visit that listed the top aspects of certain categories. I don't remember where he placed the link to it, but it was one of those hidden features you had to find on your own. The page had categories like: Most downloaded download; most viewed map; most viewed profile; user with highest posts; user with highest rating; user who's rated the most people (and how many people) User who's rated the most people with 1s and then with 5s; User with most posts; User with most articles; Most viewed article.... You get the idea. Just kind of the "hall of fame" page so to speak.



And that's all I can think of for now. I'm sure that'll keeps ya busy for a little bit, smiley Na, no worries, these are just more ideas, you sift through them how you please smiley



Quote
 Re: Snarkpit v6 Alpha - all visitors please read!
Posted by larchy on Fri Jan 30th at 8:58am 2009

The profile tabs are not saved between profiles. I coded it so that it defaults to whatever you have most content for will show by default, ie if you have 4 downloads, 2 maps and 1 article it will default to showing downloads.

I haven't coded the recent posts thing yet.... obviously.

-----------------

I thought about restricting ratings to people who have downloaded a file when you mentioned it a while ago. The problem with it is that I think it's going to be unworkable.

The point of it would obviously be to prevent people who haven't downloaded a file from rating it, but even if you could record this you wouldn't be able to know if they'd actually used the file or not. If someone wanted to get round this all they would have to do would be to click the download link - all I could do would be to record that click, but they wouldn't even have to go through with the download. Being so easily circumventable basically makes the idea useless.

Another problem is recording who has clicked, because unless someone is logged in I can't really record anything to identify that person that isn't changeable. If a user is logged in I can record their user id, but what if they downloaded a file when they weren't logged in, then logged in to rate it? They'd have to dl the file again because I wouldn't have a record of their first download.

You could restrict file dls to only logged in members, but obviously this would be enormously restrictive and ultimately pointless when it'd still be easy to circumvent the check.

Thus, I can't see a practical way of implementing this that wouldn't be totally ineffective.

-----------------------

User links on the links page would not be a problem, we could have a separate section below the main links. However, there are over 7000 user accounts in the database. How practical would it be to have a page with thousands of random links? It would just be a spam fest. It would also be enormously helpful for automated bot accounts spamming the db with porn links, of which there were hundreds (possibly thousands) before I implemented the registration CAPTCHA which has slowed them down a bit.

You could add admin oversight to this, but I would think that you'd end up being spammed to death.

Making sure links stayed current would also be an issue.

----------------------

I didn't put the map/article/user/dl counts on the front page because generating those counts is expensive, especially for a main landing page. There is a faster way of doing it, but it would not return precisely correct values.

However, if you want them back then it'd probably be ok unless the site started getting ultra-busy.... there are quite a few smaller counts in various sections and things are ok. It's the posts one I'm worried about smiley

I also didn't put any user online counts on the main page as there aren't really many people online at once... but yeah, could do, no worries.

----------------------

Yeah the user profile stats are all lumped together and it looks crap... I just chucked them there yesterday and didn't have time to do any more work on the profiles, so it's half finished really. I'll break them up a bit so they're more easily readable. I took the separate stats section out because the info can go further up now (and the 'view all' links are in the tab sections), and it moves the profile text higher up the page.

Tables? TABLES??!?!?!? XHTML1.0 DUDE!

--------------------------

They're actually called 'snarkpoints' in the database, so thats probably why that's happened.

--------------------------

I had an idea which may address the concerns about users randomly rating files etc and abusing the user rating system.

Obviously rating something/someone requires you to be logged in. How about restricting the ability to rate something based on some arbitrary value like, say, 10 forum posts or 100 snarkmarks.

This certainly isn't foolproof, but it would restrict ratings to people who have actually participated or added something to the site.

I like the idea of restricting it to people with so many snarkpoints since, if they are awarded by other users or for uploading content, it would restrict being able to rate something to people actively contributing to the site.

I don't think you'd have to set the bar too high, just high enough to give newbies time to find their feet.

How about:

Every post - 1 snarkmark
Each map - 100 snarkmarks
Each download - 50 snarkmarks
Each article (once approved) - 100 snarkmarks


We could also use this as a safety mechanism for the site. For example there is nothing currently stopping me registering an account, adding a map, uploading for its images some pornography with an xxx site address on, and having it appear on the 'latest maps' section of the front page.

We could restrict anything showing on the front page like that to user accounts with over 200 snarkmarks (or whatever) too... again it's not perfect and the numbers will need thinking about (I could just add two maps, get 100 marks each and then I'd be on the fp for instance)... but for any auto-bots or trolls who don't immediately know the system on joining it might possibly be a good thing to have.

------------------


Everything else sounds ok... some stuff I was gonna do anyway... will work through it smiley

Production may be slowed while Operation Anchorage is completed smiley




Quote
 Re: Snarkpit v6 Alpha - all visitors please read!
Posted by fishy on Fri Jan 30th at 11:38pm 2009

hi guys
I've not been around the pit often enough to really know what could need tweaked, changed, removed,implemented etc. so there's not much I can add to this. Just some of the points that are fresh in my head after reading all that^.

First up is the snarkmarks ($M)thing.

Every post - 1 snarkmark sounds about right, but the old system had some other crazy stuff factored in, like + 0.1 x any submitted maps rated 3/5 or more. That's not the exact numbers, but it can be used to pay a slightly higher going rate to people that contribute more.

Each map - 100 snarkmarks - Considering how easy 100 forum posts are, compared to a full blown map, I'm thinking this might be a bit low. Maybe drop the post marks to 0.1 smiley

Each download - 50 snarkmarks. Again, downloading a file is even easier. Two clicks of a mouse could wipe out hundreds of hours of intense mapping. I'd definately make this a low, if any, reward. An open invitation to earn thousands of $M while raping your bandwidth.
Unless of course I'm ranting up the wrong tree, and by downloads you mean cotributers of models/prefabs/textures etc. In that case, I'd still be a lot more conservative than 50. I'd be looking at around 10, and that's would be me being generous.

Each article (once approved) - 100 snarkmarks. I'm finding it hard to justify giving the same reward to an article as to a map. Mainly because I know that I've lost track of the amount of hours that I personally put into maps, but that's not to say everyone else will. The same is true of the articles that people submit. Some are very well thought out and presented, while some have obviously been written by someone more used to using crayons than computers. But it's still safe to say that a sloppy article is still much less work than a sloppy map, which makes articles a less worthy, but still important, teaching tool. 25 would be my feelings towards them.

Could the $M be multiplied by the rating of the submission? Like a map gets rated 4/5, then the mapper only gets 80$M from the possible 100$M, or a poor 2/5 article only gets 10$M from the possible 25.

I know I've gotten a bit longwinded about these $M's ( to a point that I challenge anyone to find a longer post of mine. Reward for the finder, 10 $M's. ), but one more thing.{edit]ok, 2 more things[/edit] I'm not very good at maths terminology, so there's probably a name for this that I don't know, so we'll call it a score magnet. Like a magnet that sits on number 5 on a scale of 1 - 10. This is for rating stuff, btw. If the 1st rating is a 10, the magnet holds it back a bit, say at 9. A 2nd score of ten pulls it a bit closer to the top. The magnet gets weaker as more people rate whatever it is, until after 10 or so ratings it's magnetic properties have been sucked dry. That's more of a ratings thing than a $M thing, so I'll move on to the 2nd other thing smiley . Transferable $M's. Used as a reward or bribe or bday present etc. Make $M currency.

There was something else, unrelated to $M's, that I've forgot now. Heh, these things happen on Friday nights. smiley



Quote
 Re: Snarkpit v6 Alpha - all visitors please read!
Posted by larchy on Sat Jan 31st at 8:16am 2009

lol they were just figures plucked out the air, yeah whatever... 1000 for a map etc, +20% for each additional map or something?

And yes by downloads I did mean models/prefabds etc, not the number of times something has been clicked smiley



Quote
 Re: Snarkpit v6 Alpha - all visitors please read!
Posted by larchy on Mon Feb 2nd at 10:17am 2009

Quoting Riven
Yes to merging Half-Life Forum AND Radiant Forum together [NOTE: NOT Half-Life 2 Forum! That forum should stay by itself with out ANY merger whatsoever].


Would the HL2 forum be better renamed 'Source Engine Editing' or something similar?




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