Message Board
| Message Board > Site bugs/ideas > Points, Groups and worklogs |
| October 27, 2005, 16:04 | |
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Fiona
games are terrible -9616558 posts 
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Okay I had an extended conversation with Frim last night, that stemmed from talking about his points system. In short I fucking hate the idea, on that note, I don't like the idea of ranks and I don't like the idea of having a post count. I don't want to have any sort of elitism going on, a points system is easily cheated, mods probably wont keep it up and you'll get users protesting over points being taken away. If someone needs to be punished then it's gotta be pretty bad, so warn them once and ban them second. The current ranks are funny but pointless, outsiders wont "get it" and when they're called Dutch they might freak out as if we were racist. If they were made meaningful, you get to a point where people are gloating over a high rank and posting a lot to get it, we've all seen this on DIV-Arena, no? A post count has the same vein of problems. I say have none of them, anyone disagree? ---- Second I had a great idea for groups, my idea comes from the fact BS could be a place for developers to hang around, but it culd also be a place for teams of developers to use it as a hub for team discussion and showcases, not to mention recruitment. So here is what happens, a person has a great idea for a game and wants to round up a team, s/he gets a couple of people interested and so comes to BS and requests a group to be formed for his/her game team. They also supply a small 20x20 icon. An admin creates the group and makes the person the requested it the leader. The leader can then go around adding people to the group. The group gets a secret forum, only the group members, mods and admins can read it. In addition a group-worklog is created. Whereas on a single user one, only one person can post and edit entries, the whole group does on this one, it acts as a sort of press release to the public. The icon comes into play when above everyones avatar, on thier posts, is a little icon for every group. Making it easy to see who is a part of what while browsing the forum. The icon should probably link to the worklog. ---- So there's my ideas, what does everyone think? Thoughts? Thumbs up? Flames? ____________ laffo |
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| October 27, 2005, 16:46 | |
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Woody
HEAD BLACK MAN 722 posts 
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I don't like points either but I disagree with getting rid of post counts. It lets visitors know who has been here a while and who is a stupid noob. No one with any common sense would spam to get a huge post count - it's not a problem on most forums and if it becomes a problem here we can replace their avatar with a crying baby or something. The second idea is great but I don't know if anyone will use it. ____________ boredome is the bitter fruit of too much routine |
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| October 27, 2005, 17:09 | |
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Frimkron
Frustrated Megalomaniac 703 posts 
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You forgot one, Fee - I had an idea to replace points or post counts as a way of showing who's been around a while and should be appreciated. I know its kinda cheesy, but what about having "user of the month" and "game of the month", "article of the month" etc. The admins or moderators or whoever decide on one person and one game etc to be celebrated as x of the month, with a short paragraph acknowleding why they're/its so great. In fact the whole community could submit nominations anonymously - that could work too. It's just be a neat little way of showing our appreciation for the most helpful or skilled people. We could keep the previous x of the month's archived for people to read. Obviously the same person couldn't be x of the month twice on the run, and this would only work when we have a large enough bunch of people coming here. [edit] Can I add as well that I really like the groups idea. People on div arena were always trying to start up team projects - but when people tried to the div forums as their base, they had to keep posting threads that got lost in the spam, or stuck to one long project thread that wasn't very good for having multiple discussions at once. Others went and set up their own forums to discuss their team project. But then you've got yet another url and login to remember. Plus you've got to have somewhere to host your forum etc etc and its not easy to get new people involved. I think it we provided this feature for free to dev teams so that they can use boolean soup as their base of operations, then its going to be a great reason for people to keep coming back here. Even if it doesn't get used (I think its very unlikely that it won't), I just think that its a really thoughtful gesture from us. Like saying "we beleive in indie developer teams and we'll support you all the way". This is what I feel BS is all about. Can I suggest that we allow the groups themselve to set whether the forum is visible to non group members, whether non-groupies can post there, and so on. Some teams might not care whether people read what they're doing, and in fact might want non-group people to contribute to discussions to get other opinions or in the hope that other people will be interested and want to help out. [Edited on October 27, 2005 by Frimkron] ____________ |
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| October 27, 2005, 17:26 | |
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Frimkron
Frustrated Megalomaniac 703 posts
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Oh - and another idea. These ideas have all come from the idea of having icons beside your username rather than a rank title, by the way. We've got icons for admin and moderators - though I've tried to design them so that they don't imply any kind of superiority. (Admin is a spanner and moderator is a vacuum cleaner/broom - not decided which yet). You'd have an icon for each group you're in and an icon if you're user of the month for that month. Anyway - this other idea. On the Adventure Games Studio forums they have icons under their username to show what skills they have and are willing to offer. There's something like an icon for artist, musician, coder, plot writer, etc etc. I thought it would be a nice idea to have something similar on Boolean Soup. [Edited on October 27, 2005 by Frimkron] ____________ |
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| October 27, 2005, 18:08 | |
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Frimkron
Frustrated Megalomaniac 703 posts
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I was talking to wood on msn and he doens't think having a post count would be such a problem - people should be intelligent enough to know that its just the number of posts made and not dick size. The post count can be a fairly good indicator of who knows this forum well. I suggested that we allow users to customise what details they want to see from everyone each time they post. If people want to know the post count and date registered, they can turn that on. If they don't care what groups people are in - that can be turned off, etc. If people find avatars or signatures a distraction, they can go too. Would that be hard to implement? ____________ |
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| October 27, 2005, 20:04 | |
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Fiona
games are terrible -9616558 posts
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No that is a great idea, just that the profile would start to get a bit weh, big. Maybe I should split it into profile and settings?
____________ laffo |
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| October 27, 2005, 20:40 | |
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PB
Defender of the faith 630 posts 
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I think it's a good idea indeed, although maybe it's about time to watch out not to want to go to fast. I don't know if the idea that the site isn't finished just yet, motivates you to do a lot more (in that case it might be a good idea to keep it that way), but otherwise I think it's best to have the site finished as it is and then expand it with features like this... But other than that, I do think it's a great idea... ____________ |
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| October 27, 2005, 21:56 | |
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Fiona
games are terrible -9616558 posts
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The only thing it's missing is the gallery, that's Frim's area. Everything on my list is small bugs or distant ideas. And this groups thing would be mine.
____________ laffo |
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| October 27, 2005, 22:03 | |
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Sandman
F3n!x0r 1194 posts 
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I love the groups idea. Totally. The icons idea even more! An icon for your skills is a good idea. And the customizable layout is ok too, but might I suggest the little icons can't be removed? I mean, they are there for a purpose, to show 'who' the user is, etc.
____________ BennuWiki Yes, my avatar has grey borders in IE (so get a decent browser) ROOFLEZ ROOFLEZ |
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| October 27, 2005, 22:15 | |
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PB
Defender of the faith 630 posts
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Quoting Ferret: The only thing it's missing is the gallery, that's Frim's area. Everything on my list is small bugs or distant ideas. And this groups thing would be mine. In that case, i'm sorry, I should have checked the checklist better. Anyway, what are you waiting for? 
____________ |
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| October 27, 2005, 22:19 | |
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Fiona
games are terrible -9616558 posts
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Everyone to give thier approval? Okay I'll keep post count. What about ranks though? I don't mean user ranks, I meant the ranks that appear when you don't have one that change with post count. What should we do with them? We could just replace them all with one generic title and then stop "Administrator" and "Moderator" showing up. ____________ laffo |
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| October 27, 2005, 23:26 | |
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Rincewind
programmer 1546 posts 
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And then there was me taking a short break from learning exams - and colliding with this huge thread.  Here's my reaction on it all... About the croutons system: I never liked the initial idea of users regularly receiving points and being able to give those to others freely. It's not going to work for various reasons which we all have been through a long time ago. I would support a system based on WIP-ratings and article contributions. These are things that can be measured properly, and actually give an indication of how skilled a game programmer is, and how much he loves to contribute to our dear Booleansoup. I don't think this would spark elitism. No system at all is fine with me too. Though I do agree with Woody that something should indicate how long somebody has been around. How about shōwing the actual amount of months somebody has been around? Instead of post count? About usertitles: How about having an empty title as default, and just let everyone be able to set his own custom title? Then there's no system, but everyone will be able to have a bit of fun. About groups: Nice idea Ferret! But please make sure that people who are working on a project all alone mustn't first create a group (with a forum - that would be a bit useless for one man) before they can make a worklog. I also agree with Frimkron that people should be able to choose if others can view or post in their forum. About user/game/article of the month: Game and article of the month YES, user of the month NO. User of the month is too cheesy, and again it's based on a similair system like the free-point-give-away system which I don't like. Offtopic: I would appreciate a 'newest member' thing though. Icons next to a username: I agree with icons for projects (so others can join/view the projects easily), but please don't have 'skills', that will boost the ego of some people. It might not give a realistic view either. ____________ Personal website: http://www.loijson.com |
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| October 28, 2005, 00:57 | |
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Fiona
games are terrible -9616558 posts
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Quote: How about having an empty title as default, and just let everyone be able to set his own custom title? Then there's no system, but everyone will be able to have a bit of fun. That is what I was suggesting, sorry if I didn't make it obvious.Quote: Nice idea Ferret! But please make sure that people who are working on a project all alone mustn't first create a group (with a forum - that would be a bit useless for one man) before they can make a worklog. Groups will be requested and an admin will review it and make a group for it. We will probably lay down rules about only requesting a group if there are at least two people on it. Groups which obviously do not have a more than one person actively participating in it will be removed. [Edited on October 28, 2005 by Fiona] ____________ laffo |
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| October 28, 2005, 01:22 | |
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PEader
お前はもう死んでいる 1486 posts 
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The points for members works fine on [ gamedev.net ]. It stopped people posting crap questions and other people flaming when people posted stupid crap, it did take a while for it to all settle down and there is occasionally the odd mishap when someone rates another user down just for spite, but that is life.
____________ I see 57,005 people. |
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| October 28, 2005, 01:49 | |
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Frimkron
Frustrated Megalomaniac 703 posts
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Quoting PB: I think it's a good idea indeed, although maybe it's about time to watch out not to want to go to fast. I don't know if the idea that the site isn't finished just yet, motivates you to do a lot more (in that case it might be a good idea to keep it that way), but otherwise I think it's best to have the site finished as it is and then expand it with features like this... Sorry, yes - this is my fault, really. Even though stuff like this might not be implemented for a while yet, I like to have everything planned out in advance before I come to code it. And yes I suppose it does motivate me. It certainly doesn't demotivate me anyway Quoting Rincewind: I agree with icons for projects (so others can join/view the projects easily), but please don't have 'skills', that will boost the ego of some people. It might not give a realistic view either. I thought about this too.... it seemed to work on the AGS forums. I think the reason is, that even if a person isn't very skilled at something, the idea is that they believe they are - meaning that they'd be willing to give something involving that skill a shot regardless - in other words they're enthusiastic. I think the skill icons would be good for knowing who to approach when looking for talent, as an aid to this process at least. Obviously an icon is not going to tell you whether someone actually is good at something, but it will tell you if someone is worth asking - as in whether or not they'd be willing to help. Quoting Ferret: What about ranks though? I don't mean user ranks, I meant the ranks that appear when you don't have one that change with post count. What should we do with them? We could just replace them all with one generic title and then stop "Administrator" and "Moderator" showing up. I think we should just have a user title. They're fun. But this should be one of the attributes that you can opt to not see. And maybe it should be off by default. Quoting Sandman: And the customizable layout is ok too, but might I suggest the little icons can't be removed? I mean, they are there for a purpose, to show 'who' the user is, etc. But you can't force someone to care about 'who' the user is, if they don't If they don't want a load of icons cluttering up the forum then they should be able to disable them.Quoting Rincewind again: Nice idea Ferret! But please make sure that people who are working on a project all alone mustn't first create a group (with a forum - that would be a bit useless for one man) before they can make a worklog. Individual worklogs will be available without having to create a group
____________ |
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| October 28, 2005, 02:57 | |
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Sandman
F3n!x0r 1194 posts
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Quoting Frimkron: Obviously an icon is not going to tell you whether someone actually is good at something, but it will tell you if someone is worth asking - as in whether or not they'd be willing to help. I agree, it should be there to say "I might know something about it, I can help, or at least I'm willing to try, or something". Quoting Frimkron: But you can't force someone to care about 'who' the user is, if they don't If they don't want a load of icons cluttering up the forum then they should be able to disable them.True, true...:P ____________ BennuWiki Yes, my avatar has grey borders in IE (so get a decent browser) ROOFLEZ ROOFLEZ |
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| October 28, 2005, 11:34 | |
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Ariel Yust
Bloodcoughted Yozik 291 posts 
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Ill draw the 20x20 avatars  I think its great but there is no need to creat such "secret" groups lol make it like rooms...you create a room with ur password lol and people with that password can enter its fun but it can take much place....about points and ranks...I dislike it but I think that we need a special rank all those who are the oldest who have been togever from the start so all the noobs wont get such a rank like we in every forum there are the older users...this will show the new ones who is the older thats all... and they will respect us more you allways respect whos older then you and you will respect him more if he was one of the creators Ferret I support you
____________ Get bitten by a vampire or at least at my own character muhahahaha! http://s7.bitefight.org/c.php?uid=159944 |
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| October 28, 2005, 13:34 | |
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Fiona
games are terrible -9616558 posts
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Frimkron is on icon duty, and he's done quite a few already.
____________ laffo |
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| October 28, 2005, 13:58 | |
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TheMI3
Starving Artist 520 posts 
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/me wants to see
____________ This is my Blog. There are many like it, but this one is mine! (Now actual posts on it) http://www.chiefillustrator.com |
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| October 28, 2005, 16:22 | |
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Frimkron
Frustrated Megalomaniac 703 posts
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Actually Ariel if you could draw some icons that would be great - as well as the skills icons and everything, I was thinking we could have a big truckload of random icons for people to use for their groups if they don't provide their own. No animations though! :o ____________ |
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Message Board > Site bugs/ideas > Points, Groups and worklogs