Althanas 3.0 Completion Report

[Max Dirks]

We're releasing Althanas 3.0 a bit early so that everyone can resume play. There are a number of incomplete things that are still being fleshed out. I've listed as many as I can think of, but if you see something else that needs to be completed (and/or updated) please post it here. Thanks in advance for your help.

To be completed

-Change links on top of forum to include the chat room and the wiki (0%)
-Add profile and PG link to the postbit (0%)
-Complete the Bazaar by adding all items to the updated system (20%)
-Complete the FAQ will updated information (80%)
-Complete the bounty system (50%)
-Update rules threads across Althanas (80%)
-Wiki canon transfer (10%).

Completed

-Profile Link Hack (100%)

[Arai]

Posting as requested.

* Profile quick switch hack *

[Elrundir]

Dunno if this really counts as a To Be Completed, but in the other thread you said to post such things here, so here it is: we seem to be missing the link in our sidebars that takes us to the character profile that we set in our User CP. That was a pretty nifty feature.

[Max Dirks]

Got it.

Thanks!

[Duffy]

Will we all get that XP bar you have Max, and if it's possible, can such a hack be added to the list?

[Silence Sei]

Hitting Reply to Thread just sends me to quick reply, while hitting Reply under somebodys post sends me to QR, while a second click sends me to the reply page, but with the said post posted. Can we get a fix on that?

[Max Dirks]

Will we all get that XP bar you have Max, and if it's possible, can such a hack be added to the list?Everyone will get the bar, Duffy. Like I said in the FAQ, rather than manually port EXP, we're simply adding it upon your first completed thread in Althanas 3.0.

Sei, your "error" is simply how vB4 works.

[Duffy]

Excellent, it's just so cool :).

[Les Misérables]

I just noticed the description of Underwood says everyone can play there. Figured it must be an error considering that would make the forum redundant.

[Silence Sei]

Sei, your "error" is simply how vB4 works.

Then that is absolutely retarded. Just saying. :P

[Max Dirks]

Everyone can play in Underwood now. What distinguishes it from other places is two fold: one, you cannot request a shortened rubric there and two, moderators will periodically interject into live threads to provide tips. This will happen whenever they see something worth commenting on, whether it was made by a brand new member or a five year veteran. If you post there, you're giving them implied permission to actively critique.

[Lord Anglekos]

I don't know, really, if this has been implemented yet, but you were telling me about how we can simply "give" items to other characters OOC'ly now? Anyways, I haven't seen this placed anywhere yet and I don't know what it would be a part of, so if you could get back to me on this that would be great appreciated. There's a whole bunch of people wantin' my stuff.

[Max Dirks]

The "donate" option, as described in the Bazaar FAQ, is a part of the automated system.

Since the automated system is currently down, you'll have to wait to use that feature.

[Rayse Valentino]

I can't live without the light brown theme.

[Silence Sei]

We currently can't find bronzecastle, Rayse.

Also, Max, I want a 'view posts in the last 24 hours' option again. I keep missing new posts because they aren't showing up in 'new posts'.

[Lord Anglekos]

Also. That drop-down option that allows us to quickly switch accounts with one we're connected with? Yeah, that needs to come back.

[Arai]

Also. That drop-down option that allows us to quickly switch accounts with one we're connected with? Yeah, that needs to come back.

I've already brought that up in my first post actually.

[Taskmienster]

We currently can't find bronzecastle, Rayse.

Also, Max, I want a 'view posts in the last 24 hours' option again. I keep missing new posts because they aren't showing up in 'new posts'.

I saw that when I log on and click new posts it normally says that there are none, but lets me click the link to view in the past 24 hours. Of course, when I just tried to do this, it didn't work, it actually gave me the new posts. However, the less convenient method than the link (for now at least) is if you want to view past 24 hours instead of since last log you can just mark all forums read and then refresh. It'll give you the option to view last 24 hours.

Also, I tried to find an equivalent to bronzecastle as that was the one I used predominantly as well. There was a really interesting skin I found, but it wasn't compatible with vB4, despite being in that section on the site. I'm still trying to find a replacement for the brown. If you find any, feel free to post them in the "style challenge" thread that is up.

[Rayse Valentino]

Okay, I'm glad there's an effort to bring it back. It just isn't a fantasy site without bronzecastle.

[Lord Anglekos]

I've already brought that up in my first post actually.
Oh. Well then, crud; obviously I'm going blind in my old age.

[Jack Frost]

I've noticed that the side profile information tends to get shoved into the post if you have an avatar. Its a little annoying when trying to read a post and part is obscured by a glitch.

[Max Dirks]

The Quick User Switch (profile link hack) is back online!

[Revenant]

The Quick User Switch (profile link hack) is back online!

Thanks Max, that's awesome.

[Rayse Valentino]

I have a suggestion. Due to low activity, the JC forum gets updated very rarely. With more activity, more outstanding threads emerge, but what about the vast majority that are great but not the best?

So, People's Choice. Now, I'm about to use some ambiguous numbers, and the reason for them is due to activity. Every 1-3 months, choose the top 5-10 threads for that time period, and people vote/select the one they like best. That then is placed into a new Crystal Ball forum called People's Choice. So, roughly 4 threads per year, that isn't too much to ask right? Also, threads that are chosen to be JC during this time period are excluded from voting; It's primarily for those stories that didn't quite make the grade. This encourages activity, people to read people's works, and comment on them.

That's all I got, thanks for reading!

[Silence Sei]

Actually, I really like that idea, and will be bugging Max until he caves in and does it :P

[orphans]

This sounds like a wonderful idea.

[The International]

It sounds great.

I have an idea as to how to organize that, but it will depend on the answer to the following. Which mods have been judging on a regular basis?

[Rayse Valentino]

I don't know how the interface for judges/admins are now set up for Althanas 3.0, but way back in the day when I was a mod there wasn't any way to keep track of anything.

If there isn't any system that keeps track of these things: You could create a new thread in the mod forum, and when someone judges something they post in there something like.

url=link to thread]title of thread[/url, Date Judged: mm/dd/yy, Score Received: xx or xx/xx or xx/xx/xx etc if it was a battle or something.

Would be easy to assemble candidates from these handy links. The thread doesn't have to be in the mod forum but I guess then there isn't much surprise, and it would have to be perma-closed to allow only mods/admins to post in there. If you don't want clutter you can have each judge post their own thread in the mod forum and they would edit in their judging updates. That's how certain forums used to keep track of bans and reasons for those bans. Nowadays, for example, SA uses this: http://forums.somethingawful.com/banlist.php

Imagine if type was Battle/Quest/Solo or whatnot, Date was Date Judged, Horrible Jerk was Judge, Punishment Reason would be Title of Thread, which would be a hyperlink to the thread. The last two fields replaced with one that gave the score. No more scouring the forums for judged threads to read. Since that example is on vB, I'm sure it's an available hack somewhere.

So yeah, there are lots of easy ways to keep track of all this. I'm glad that everyone is all over this idea.

[orphans]

I was thinking and hoping for a "random thread" button too. Just to... see something unexpected I suppose. I dunno. I usually find myself looking at what the bots are looking sometimes, and just click on those, since they seem to be utterly random, most of the time.

[The International]

Well Rayse I was thinking each quarter a judging mod would pick one thread they've judged to nominate, and tell us why they've nominated the thread. That way we don't need someone to go out and find them. The mods will already have done the work. Then all people have to do is enjoy and vote.

[Rayse Valentino]

Well, the thing is that certain more active judges will have judged more threads in a time period, and you ARE giving them extra work with this nomination business. A single line in some thread that explains everything, and then someone else can pick all the threads of that time period (maybe above a certain score cut-off if there's too many threads, but I doubt it). It's a simple copy+paste job for the one assembling threads for the poll. I don't think there are enough threads being judged per month to limit it based on one nomination, either. You could accumulate all the judged threads of 3 months and end up with like what, 10 threads? 5 that have good but not great scores? Why make that pool even smaller?

Plus, the whole point is that 'judges' aren't picking the threads for you. Their only job is confirming the thread's completion with a judging. The people are the ones who will select their favorite story from that time period.

[Max Dirks]

I'm not even sure you need a time period, Rayse.

Just do it like we do. If you come across an amazing thread, post a link to the thread and throw in a poll. The poll should say something akin to "Should this thread become a Player's Choice thread?" We also automatically put threads with scores of 80+ up to a vote without it being nominated. Perhaps you should do something similar to avoid favoritism.

However you do it, I'll make a "PC" subforum right next to the "JC" one for all to read.

[Rayse Valentino]

The idea is to get people to read threads they would otherwise normally not read. The nomination systems works great for JCs since you're trying to draw a consensus, but this way you're sort of relying on volunteers to do these things. I just don't think anybody will take the time to nominate a thread unless they're avid readers of threads that don't have anything to do with them. Like, I don't read any threads really, but if there was a vote from a list of choices I could maybe glance at a few and see which one is the best. By comparing the threads we could all learn a thing or two, too. What worked for this thread? What didn't work for this thread? It's basically just a huge multi-thread writing workshop where we judge threads based on how they perform compared to others.

tl;dr I don't think anybody would use a nomination system, at least not often enough and we wouldn't have many stories being looked at simultaneously. Feel free to prove me wrong, though. Something is better than nothing.

[Breaker]

I haven't really been following all the discussion about this.. but I could easily integrate it as part of the new writers workshop. In order to "nominate" a thread anyone (writer, reader, judge, buddy, grandma) just makes a new thread in WW with a link to what they're nominating. People provide commentary and/or 2nd-3rd the nomination. In this way writing in the training forum or requesting the writer's workshop method would automatically nominate a thread. Then I suppose I could add a yes/no poll, wait for the votes to come in, and archive it either in the crystal ball or the PC forum dirks will create.

Lemme know what ya think. I'm all about getting everyone to read each others stuff more.

[Rayse Valentino]

Without a decently-sized list of possible choices, it seems to me that every thread that's nominated with receive a majority 'yes' vote. Maybe I'm underestimating how critical people are on this site, but the judging thread makes me think they're generally very accepting. I can't guarantee anything though, but that's the feeling I get. It also eliminates the aspect that it's a contest at all.

[Breaker]

I don't understand how one method of accumulating nominations will result in more threads than any other. The reason I suggested this is it's probably the only way to make sure there are lots of nominations, and that lots of those get read. What I suggested means many threads would automatically be nominated, and every single thread could potentially be nominated by someone. Basically I'm saying lets do exactly what you want, but pair it with the WW so it's a learning opportunity as well as a contest. But if you want to nitpick and make ridiculous assumptions about how this will "work" some ways and "not work" others, find a different staffer to help you. If you're looking for Player's Choice to be up and active any time, your best option is to work with me and the resources I have access to, and that means the WW.

If you want it to be more competitive, I suppose we could just wait till we have 5-6 nominations and then throw them into a stickied poll. I don't really care exactly how it would operate, in fact I encourage you to look at everything everyone has said here and come up with a working design. I'm willing to get this going because I think it's a great idea, but I'm not going to waste my time debating semantics. Show me what you think it should be, and if I believe it needs tweaking I will do so, but ideally I'll just be the one keeping it rolling.

[Rayse Valentino]

Don't get defensive when you come in here saying "I haven't read the discussion (the last 5 posts)" and then accuse me of not having a method, at least a couple of which I outlined in the 5 posts you're way too busy to read.


If you want it to be more competitive, I suppose we could just wait till we have 5-6 nominations and then throw them into a stickied poll.

This is pretty much what I was saying.

[Breaker]

Yes yes, defensiveness and accusations. All these things happened, and are in the past. Post your system design in the WW, I'll make any necessary changes and sticky it. I've got several threads in my back pocket (Findelfin's solo, Yari and Relt's sojourn) which I can't wait to nominate.

Since I must have misspoken before, allow me to rephrase. This is a good idea. It will become a part of the Writers Workshop. If you'd like to have a say in the process and get this started immediately, I invite you to make a guidelines thread in the WW. If not, I will get around to making it eventually, but I won't be worrying about designing it to your parameters. If you want this detailed to your own liking, you'll have to do a part of the work.

[Rayse Valentino]

I'm not part of the staff. I can make suggestions, but the implementation is up to you guys. I won't consider your implementation inferior, just different. I wasn't married to my specifications, and I trust you to do this in a way that pleases everybody, including myself.

[Breaker]

Very well, but the offer still stands. It's going to be awhile before I get around to drafting this.

[Letho]

Could we maybe get a "posts in the last 24 hours" somewhere visible, maybe up on top next to new posts? The problem that I keep running into is, when I log in, click the new posts, open a certain thread, close it, and then click on the new posts again, the thread is no longer there because it's automatically marked read. So I have to either look for it (and it's a hassle when there's more of them) or mark the entire forum read, click new post, get the message that there are no new posts and then click on the "posts in the last 24 hours" link.

I hope that makes any sense.

[Breaker]

You can get that by signing out, or by switching to a different account :P

but i'd like a button too if it's easy.

Also the present "unread posts" system has kept me updated just fine...

For organising your threads try clicking on "forum actions" in the top middle bar, selecting edit profile. then click the "Subscribed threads" or whatever sidebar and you'll see just the threads you hold dearest.. hopefully. But you can edit them as you please, it's like your own little forum where you have mod powers. Sort of.

[Letho]

I know. But it was easier before. Before, when you clicked "new posts" it displayed all new posts since your last log in, not just the ones you haven't read. So yeah, if it's an easy fix, I'd like to see it done. If not, hey, it's just a could of clicks more.

[Yari Rafanas]

Could we maybe get a "posts in the last 24 hours" somewhere visible, maybe up on top next to new posts? The problem that I keep running into is, when I log in, click the new posts, open a certain thread, close it, and then click on the new posts again, the thread is no longer there because it's automatically marked read. So I have to either look for it (and it's a hassle when there's more of them) or mark the entire forum read, click new post, get the message that there are no new posts and then click on the "posts in the last 24 hours" link.

I hope that makes any sense.

Needs to happen.