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| Livio's Summer To-Do List Monday, May 17, 2010 1:12 am — Posted by Livio |
ShareThisI've made forum topics similar to this in the past, but I think they were mostly in the staff forum. For a while now, the staff has been trying to make more public our discussions on how things should be run around here, and this is a great exercise in that.
Also note that this list is organized in by content, not by priority. In fact, I wouldn't even know how to prioritize this. There's also a mix between my own stuff, stuff that mainly concerns the staff (as in not me), and some personal goals of mine.
Aeon
- Long Term
- add more tiles
- add music
- add some real artwork?
- make a replay feature??
- learn more ActionScript 3.0
- Short Term
fix crawling-under-terrain glitchfix some mysterious glitches that let you go through tiles.finish upgrading Aeon's general organization (been working on this for the past few days)attemptfigure out how to get this to work: a new idea on how to cut back on load times and may also help in creating checkpoints.fix glitch where object images don't seem to line up with their collision areas- Design a decent pause screen
- Design a decent "win" screen for when you beat the level
- finish level editor
- add HB's spike graphic to the demo.
The Games System
We've been discussing this for a while in the staff forum. We plan to completely get rid of the current games system and replace it with something much more organic.
The Problem: Right now, you have to "submit a game" and wait for the staff to approve it before you can start uploading levels or writing guides or making other content about the game. Not only does this tend to be a super slow process (because the staff is lazy) but we have a lot of "empty games" here, where there is absolutely no content about them on the Interguild.
Solution to be Implemented: Whenever you want to add a level to the database (or add any other kind of content to the other sections of the site) you will have a choice of selecting the game it's for from a list, and if the required game is not among the list, then you should be able to select an "other" option. This option would make you fill out fields for the game's name and a link to the game. This is great because nothing gets in the way of you uploading a level for the game you like, and it means that we actually have to have content for a specific game before it becomes part of the site, so we don't have people suggesting games that "might" get popular.
Even with the revamp, we also have to:
- make new game pages and make sure they are awesome
- make the the GAMES tab on the topbar link to those awesome new game pages instead of the level database
- prune out the "empty" games
Level Database
The level database needs a revamp to go along with the new layout. I actually started working on this as I made the layout, but I decided to give up on the idea so that the layout could be released faster. Some issues that have to be fixed are:
- navigation and search options are not placed well
- favorites system has many glitches, is coded horribly, and is super inefficient.
- downloadable files should be made more secure by making the staff approve them, or something
- Adding some kind of Screenshot feature would be cool
- Finally adding that directory idea
- let people find levels based on awards
- mods should be able to add levels to all series, and also create non-public series for any member
- let people delete levels while still preserving topics
The current guide system stinks. I started working on a revamp around last December, but that was quickly replaced by the construction of the new layout. Since then, I've come up with a much more crazy and much more awesome idea on how to fix the Guides system. I first explored the idea here. I plan to get rid of the guides system entirely, and in its place, I'll give every member their own blog on the Interguild. Then everyone can use their blogs however they want: to write guides on how to use a certain glitch, give advice on good caving design, highlight what you think are this year's best levels so far, etc. It will then be up to the staff to make and maintain "lists" of worthy blog posts and group them into categories, such as "HATPC Tricks and Glitches Guides", or "N Level Design", or whatever. I'm hoping that this results in more information being written down in general and by more people.
Video Archive
Is this thing ever going to get revamped? We all know how horrible and broken this section is, but I seem to be seriously deprioritizing this. Perhaps it's because I haven't been inspired on how to make the video archive better, or maybe it just hasn't annoyed me enough? Anyway, here's what has to be done with regard to the Video Archive:
- show awards that are related to videos
- find motivation to improve video archive
- use motivation to improve video archive
Everything Else in no real order:
improve GAMES tabusing some kind of javascript to delay the Mouse-Out effect- learn javascript to accomplish the above item along with several other ideas mentioned later
- fix all the bugs on bug reports
- create a super cool, super new PM system that accomplishes the following:
- is coded much better than the current one
- be structured similar to a forum topic, where you can see all the past posts related to the conversation, instead of just the most immediately previous post.
- maybe also allow for private conversations among more than two people
- make more things around the site track IPs (useful for us staff)
- get more members by:
- creating link-back buttons and forum sig banners for members to use
further publicizing our facebook and twitter pages- doing stuff with other related sites, maybe some partnerships with other databases
Finish working with staff on how to reorganize our forum boards, and finally implement these plans- write more guides (or hopefully blogs) on more HATPC glitches that have yet to be written on
Make competition pages look better? At least have the new-comp and comp-results posts automatically link to each other.- get the staff to give out awards for those old "Best of 2007" awards, also known as the Caving Elections from the old site.
delete all the forum topics moved over from the old site, which are just sitting in a secret board, and have been plagued by name-changing glitches.decide whether we want to move over all those topics again. We may decide that it's not worth it, no one cares, and that it's embarrassing to see how bad our posts used to be.did I ever finish making all the forms around the site more secure? did I ever start?- Reported-PM page is a big mess, but no one cares about that.
- Comp-Judging page is just horrible.
- automatically refreshing chatbox? Maybe make it cool like dekudude's site where the refreshing is done subtly using javascript, unlike IceCaves' uncool every-five-seconds page reload. In fact, this shouldn't just be for the chatbox but also for all that other stuff in that area, which means it's finally a way to refresh the online members box without reloading the page
- Make a preview generator for Free Rider 2
- Make a preview generator for N
finally reachhold onto 100 karma.Or just getting past 90 would be good...- Let staff split topics
- Allow forum boards to be locked
- Allow forum boards to be semi-locked, where you may post, but not create new topics
- Make better, on-time weekly updates
Create a page that will let the staff edit the Featured Content- On the top bar where it says "Search Levels", make it so that when you roll over it, options will come up for searching through videos, guides, or whatever. Probably with javascript.
- FORUM SEARCH!
link-to-any-post page (give the id of any post and it'll redirect you straight to it)Make a page that will let users find out which of their posts is affecting their karma- Member Rankings page needs some more stuff, better organization, and add this secret thing that the staff has planned for since like December or something.
Get our Overlord D52 to return to us?- Play more levels
- Make more levels
- Fix all the glitches that are still around from the new layout. I just spotted some in the video archive today.
make an about-us page- organize to-do list with jell's advice
Add email confirmation to the register system.Add a karma-lock feature that stops people from rating certain users' karma.- Make the number of posts per page customizable.
- Ambitious idea: rebuild the structure of the site with more efficient database tables.
- Allow you to preview posts before you make them.
Allow for multiple authors of blog posts- Allow you to save a draft of a blog post so that you can save it on the site as you work on it.
- Add something that points out upcoming and current birthdays
- Add daily post limits on neezles's account.
- Make a map generator for Super Mario Flash
- Make something that will automatically remove the extra spaces at the end of HATPC level codes
- Karma-graph to let us see how users' karma has changed over time.
- Add a queue feature to the level database
- Add a feature that lets us mark posts/topics as unread.
- Let users order levels in their series
- Maybe let users feature their own levels in their profiles.
- Make a mobile version of the site.
User Comments (65)
| canadianstickdeath | ||
Age: 35 Karma: 350 Posts: 2990 Gender: Male pm | email |
They're just topics? I thought for sure they'd have their own page like levels and videos do, or that recent ones show up on the look-ups. | |
| Livio | ||
Age: 31 Karma: 470 Posts: 9620 Gender: Male Location: Arizona, USA pm | email |
they will. | |
| Sefro | ||
Karma: 313 Posts: 1136 Gender: Male Location: Canada pm | email |
I don't think we need to worry about mod approval for that, honestly. If we had a massive community where somebody could upload porn without anybody immediately noticing, then maybe, but for our little community (especially with all the staff) we'd be quick to react and take action. It makes sense for videos to have mod approval because we need to make sure they're categorized properly (in addition to some other things), but for blogs and images I think we can be a bit more trusting and deal with violations as they occur. That'd make blogging a bit more free, and save the mods some trouble as well. If we ever become more popular or populated, we can adjust the site then. After all, it's not like it's going to happen over night. Also, I never understood why HTML was never allowed, maybe because I'm not a programmer. Security reasons? Anyway, I think you should just allow it anyway and see what happens, at least with the blogs. | |
| canadianstickdeath | ||
Age: 35 Karma: 350 Posts: 2990 Gender: Male pm | email |
"we'd be quick to react and take action" Indeed we would, however, we're not ALWAYS online. And we've got 10-year-olds here who should NEVER be a risk of EVER coming into contact with ANYTHING like that on our site. I used WAY too many capitals in that post. I should invest in italics. "Security reasons" is just one thing that would take a little more than the average know-how to exploit. Anybody can make a redirect to send you to anywhere on the internet. | |
| Sefro | ||
Karma: 313 Posts: 1136 Gender: Male Location: Canada pm | email |
Hmm, that's a point. I thought you could limit HTML somehow to make it safer for forum posting, but maybe not. And in spite of the ten-year-olds we have, I still think we can afford to be less aggressive with our safety measures, especially with such a minuscule chance of them being necessary. I appreciate your concern for the young'uns, but there has been very, very little to suggest that we'll get attacked by some pornography-spammer anytime soon. You can say, "Well just in case," sure, but for practicality's sake, I think we should try blogs without mod approval first. Besides, if someone were to spam our site, they'd do it with posts, not blogs. People can already link to unsuitable material with posts (via bbcode). Unless you'd advocate having a mod approve every single post, it doesn't really make any sense to police blogs in any stricter way. | |
| Livio | ||
Age: 31 Karma: 470 Posts: 9620 Gender: Male Location: Arizona, USA pm | email |
There is a way to only allow for certain types of html elements, but that would involve use of regular expressions, which I don't understand very well (I still don't know how I got the HATPC glitch scanner to work...) and I'm not very motivated to put the effort into making it work. However, if you guys really want it, you could nag me into doing it eventually. | |
| canadianstickdeath | ||
Age: 35 Karma: 350 Posts: 2990 Gender: Male pm | email |
"Hmm, that's a point. I thought you could limit HTML somehow to make it safer for forum posting, but maybe not." Neopets has gone through a great deal of trouble to prevent people from posting potentially dangerous HTML, and it's taken them many, many attempts to get it right (and they still haven't, if pirate_level_load.php is any indication). I would think we'd have little-to-no chance of actually being able to allow HTML in a secure manner. We would need mod-approval for blogs if we were to allow HTML. Perhaps, they have a "use HTML" checkbox, and if it's checked, then they have to get mod-approval for *sigh* every edit. I was thinking, though, at present, we allow anybody to post images using bbcode, so with images, the floodgates are really, already open. Mod approval for everything is obviously infeasible. Whenever somebody posts something off, we just edit it. I don't like it, but there's not really a choice at this point, unless we take away the image tags and URL parsing, but I don't think anybody wants this place to turn into the neoBoards. There's a difference, I think, if we allow people to upload images directly to the site. I don't think we'd actually want to host the inappropriate images ourselves, at the very least (we could end up in serious trouble, if certain types of images end up being uploaded). So, again, mod approval for use of our image uploader. We're still waiting on a mod-approval checkbox on the edit game page, for uploaded levels, which would mainly be used for ROM hacks, since there are potential legality issues involved with that. "I still don't know how I got the HATPC glitch scanner to work..." Does it still tell you that your level is affected by the uploader glitch if you put the braces in your title? | |
| Isa | ||
| No. I'm an octopus. Age: 31 Karma: 686 Posts: 7833 Gender: Male Location: Uppsala, Sweden - GMT +1 pm | email |
Why don't we extend the mod approval to normal posts as well? After all, people can add pornographic pictures in their posts as well. Mod approval for blog posts would be really unnecessary. If someone wants to post porn, they surely won't be stopped because we block blog posts. Allow BBCode, but no HTML. That would be risky, redirects could cause problems. | |
| canadianstickdeath | ||
Age: 35 Karma: 350 Posts: 2990 Gender: Male pm | email |
"Why don't we extend the mod approval to normal posts as well? After all, people can add pornographic pictures in their posts as well." This absurd counter-example has already been mentioned, and as such, I've changed my stance slightly. Only the uploading of images directly to the site should require mod-approval, should we ever allow normal users the use of the image uploader, to prevent against hosting the inappropriate material ourselves. "Allow BBCode, but no HTML. That would be risky, redirects could cause problems." Again, HTML was the only reason I was so adamant we include mod-approval for blog posts. Without it, there's nothing you can do in a blog that you can't do in a normal post. As it stands right now, the only thing that should require mod approval, but doesn't, is some file-uploading games, particularly SMW Roms. I felt like I addressed most everything in my last post, but it's almost like you skipped it... "...but there has been very, very little to suggest that we'll get attacked by some pornography-spammer anytime soon." There has not only been evidence to suggest it, but it has actually happened. It was on the old interguild, and provoked censor reform, if you remember. It was both disgusting and everywhere. It took me two hours to delete it all on dial-up, but I managed to get it cleaned up before anybody else could see it. Next time, we might not be so lucky. It is unclear whether it was a real person or a spambot. Perhaps only a real person would have gotten past the sign up page (potentially not?), but maybe then, after they were in, they sicked the spam posting machine after us. Either way, we have been been the target of attacks in the past, and, since this is the Internet we're talking about, there's very, very little to suggest that we won't continue to be so in the future. | |
| FlashMarsh | ||
Age: 25 Karma: 99 Posts: 2727 Gender: Male Location: UK pm | email |
I don't like this new idea. I don't like it when moderators over moderate. Yes, there is a risk, but we're not exactly a huge site. Maybe you should make it more secure and safe with email confirmation. Thus would stop side accounts and hinder spam-bots. It would also mean peoe would have to put a little more effort n when they create an account. Admittedly, some younger members may not have emails, but it's just a suggestion. | |
| Livio | ||
Age: 31 Karma: 470 Posts: 9620 Gender: Male Location: Arizona, USA pm | email |
Oh, I should add that to my to-do list: email confirmation EDIT: this is my 5900th post! | |
| Livio | ||
Age: 31 Karma: 470 Posts: 9620 Gender: Male Location: Arizona, USA pm | email |
I'm gonna add HTML in blog posts, but only if you're in the staff. However, staff members can go into other people's posts and make HTML allowed, for that post only. Or if you don't trust that member, you could just make a few censors? | |
| imtimi | ||
| 5 x 6 = ? Karma: 57 Posts: 167 Gender: Male pm | email |
BBCode isn't that bad, Livio, and is used in the majority of forums; average forum members can familiarize with the coding here if it's BBCode, and HTML is just a hassle as it is. If the staff here is going to be cautious about HTML, then why give the child the knife? Go ahead and make it easier on everyone: use BBCode. Blogs don't require much coding beyond imaging and changing the text in various ways, so the complications of HTML are rather unnecessary. As for the staff security, I can see why things such as video submissions need approval, but approval for blogs would be both bothersome and tiresome. If the worry is pornographic pictures, then you should be worried about this entire website, as, you know, this is a forum and all. canadianstickdeath, if people were going to link inappropriate pictures here, why would they bother uploading it to this website instead of hosting it and hotlinking it from elsewhere? You guys shouldn't need to be so worried. This is a small community, and even if the occasional jackass were to come along, simply drop the IP ban and move on. | |
| Livio | ||
Age: 31 Karma: 470 Posts: 9620 Gender: Male Location: Arizona, USA pm | email |
blogs will parse bbcode, just like the rest of the posts here, but it's just that sometimes if you're writing a guide, you might want to embed a Youtube video or something. And I guess we could add more bbcode, but I'd rather not touch that because, again, I don't understand regular expressions very well. (adding the spoiler tag was torture) So lately we've been relying on the censors, if you know what that is: http://www.interguild.org/members/forums/topic.php?id=3562 and thankfully, we're not gonna make blogs approval-required. | |
| Sefro | ||
Karma: 313 Posts: 1136 Gender: Male Location: Canada pm | email |
'canadianstickdeath' said: "...but there has been very, very little to suggest that we'll get attacked by some pornography-spammer anytime soon." There has not only been evidence to suggest it, but it has actually happened. It was on the old interguild, and provoked censor reform, if you remember. It was both disgusting and everywhere. It took me two hours to delete it all on dial-up, but I managed to get it cleaned up before anybody else could see it. Next time, we might not be so lucky. It is unclear whether it was a real person or a spambot. Perhaps only a real person would have gotten past the sign up page (potentially not?), but maybe then, after they were in, they sicked the spam posting machine after us. Either way, we have been been the target of attacks in the past, and, since this is the Internet we're talking about, there's very, very little to suggest that we won't continue to be so in the future. Yeah, I know we've been attacked before. I'm not suggesting it's impossible, or even completely improbable, but we've been around for several years now (four? five?) and we've been spammed with porn once, so the chances of it happening again any time soon aren't remarkably high. Furthermore, my main point (or "absurd* counter-example"): if someone were to spam the site, they'd do so with posts. We already allow any images to be put in posts, and that isn't changing, so I don't see what point you're trying to make. You seem to have accepted that requiring approval for blogs wouldn't make sense, so I'm not really sure why you responded to that quote to begin with... And I agree that uploaded images should have to be approved. *completely legitimate given your argument | |
| canadianstickdeath | ||
Age: 35 Karma: 350 Posts: 2990 Gender: Male pm | email |
So we agree on what does and doesn't need mod approval, then why are we still arguing? I only initially brought up mod approval because of the prospect of HTML being in the blogs or images being uploaded using our image uploader. I'm not sure how I got myself twisted around into arguing for mod approval for all blogs and images, or if I was ever even doing that? Apparently, blogs will only allow HTML to be turned on by the staff, but then, that member will be allowed to use HTML in that blog? I'm not sure if I'm really OK with that. It means we can't HTML-up any article written by anybody we don't fully trust. Can we disallow edits by non-mods after HTML has been enabled? And be sure that, if I'm not a mod, I can't hack up the page and somehow mess with whether or not HTML is enabled. An absurd counterexample doesn't mean that your counterexample is absurd. It's when you take somebody elses argument and use the same type of reasoning to lead to an absurd conclusion. I didn't quite use the term right, in this case, I don't think. | |
| Livio | ||
Age: 31 Karma: 470 Posts: 9620 Gender: Male Location: Arizona, USA pm | email |
oh wait, if you're a regular user and a mod comes in and puts html in your post, if you try to edit your post, the page will automatically set your html off because you're not a mod. So I guess that user won't be able to edit his own post without screwing it up. But I guess it's okay, if you don't really trust him with html? | |
| FlashMarsh | ||
Age: 25 Karma: 99 Posts: 2727 Gender: Male Location: UK pm | email |
I think HTML and images should be allowed once you are trusted by the moderators. | |
| snowman | ||
| I am a person. Age: 25 Karma: 38 Posts: 1209 Gender: Male Location: Singapore The Lil' Red Dot pm | email |
Images not allowed? Then how are we going to post screenshots of what to do, to help the readers understand better? Because personally I understand better with images, sometimes, words are just too confusing!      | |
| Isa | ||
| No. I'm an octopus. Age: 31 Karma: 686 Posts: 7833 Gender: Male Location: Uppsala, Sweden - GMT +1 pm | email |
IMG tags with standard BBCode. What would the use for HTML be anyway? I think you can combine our standard BBCode IMG tag, and our url censor. Let's see...  Edit: Yep. When you click that image you'll get directed to Google. I honestly don't see where using HTML would be useful. | |
| canadianstickdeath | ||
Age: 35 Karma: 350 Posts: 2990 Gender: Male pm | email |
I could think of a few things that I regularly use HTML from in my articles. Mainly, tables (used for arranging the text and images on the screen) and embedding videos (which is something blogs might find quite useful, but unless you like Rick Rolls, should probably not be made into an official censor). | |
| snowman | ||
| I am a person. Age: 25 Karma: 38 Posts: 1209 Gender: Male Location: Singapore The Lil' Red Dot pm | email |
Yep, but we could just hotlink to the video For tables, we can use -----, ______, and | | |
| jellsprout | ||
| Lord of Sprout Tower Karma: -2147482799 Posts: 6445 Gender: Male pm | email |
It is now possible to imbed videos that area already on the Interguild through censors: To do this, you need to post the ID of the video you wish to use inside : vid : and : /vid : tags, as so: Code: :vid:541:/vid: To find the ID of the video, it is the number at the end of the URL in the video: http://www.interguild.org/videos/viewvid.php?vid=541 <-- Spoiler: | |
| Livio | ||
Age: 31 Karma: 470 Posts: 9620 Gender: Male Location: Arizona, USA pm | email |
great job jell. It's a good thing I made that page a while back that would let us embed archive videos via iframes. I just added this to the official censors too. | |
| canadianstickdeath | ||
Age: 35 Karma: 350 Posts: 2990 Gender: Male pm | email |
Your punishment (but seriously, it's time we took this out of the archive): | |
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