Mafiascum.net

It will occasionally be slow if you have bad timing and do something while the conversion script is especially busy. It shouldn't be running all that much longer (a few hours, maybe?).

(On a related note, I'm very happy I decided to split the database. We would've had a lot more downtime if we had converted the whole thing!)

Awesome work, Flay!

How about a wiki link in the profile? Also, all the wiki links on the actual wiki are broken.

Flay, since it's really easy to add a new forum for Open games (trust me, I've done this before on another site. I know how easy this is), you could do it right now, in the span of a minute or less.

animorpherv1 wrote:Flay, since it's really easy to add a new forum for Open games (trust me, I've done this before on another site. I know how easy this is), you could do it right now, in the span of a minute or less.

It's not my call; mith is contemplating a few layout changes to the forums that he wants to do all at once. Yes, once we decide it will be easy to create.

Ani, stop being so rude, [removed - mith]

Actually I came in for something else as well, in the old forum all the iso's were displayed on the same page, now it works like its meant to. Is it possible to break it again to get all the posts on a single page?

Heh. I doubt it, actually, Poro. I am eventually going to look into making printer-friendly view more usable again, though... combining that with a View All Pages might get you what you're after.

Woah. The [size] tag is here. Did that affect all the old posts? Maybe you should switch it back to its old scale.

Also, there used to be a feature where you could hover your mouse over the latest poster in a thread and see a preview of the post without entering the thread itself. Could you bring that back as well?

Ether wrote:Woah. The [size] tag is

different

here. Did that affect all the old posts? Maybe you should switch it back to its old scale.

All old posts were converted, though of course if you copy something from the archive it won't automagically convert. Just remember that the new system is , not pts.

Also, there used to be a feature where you could hover your mouse over the latest poster in a thread and see a preview of the post without entering the thread itself. Could you bring that back as well?

Yeah, that's on my radar, but I forgot to add it to the first post. Thanks for the reminder!

Porochaz wrote:Actually I came in for something else as well, in the old forum all the iso's were displayed on the same page, now it works like its meant to. Is it possible to break it again to get all the posts on a single page?

YEAH! this was (unintentionally?) awesome!

Mr. Flay wrote:Heh. I doubt it, actually, Poro. I am eventually going to look into making printer-friendly view more usable again, though... combining that with a View All Pages might get you what you're after.

awwww

Poro:

It was just a simple question, bon't et your underwear in a loop.

When choosing the full editor option from Quick Reply, could you automatically add a preview at the top of the next page?

Yeah, that would seem to be the best option - turn the Full Editor button into a Preview button.

animorpherv1 wrote:Poro:

It was just a simple question, bon't et your underwear in a loop.

Im going to reply to you, as you can see I already got a warning from mith about what I said earlier which whilst is ironic showing a lack of respect to you showing a lack of respect in general and is going to make this post slightly ironic. (not that I am disputing the warning, what I said wasn't the best way of expressing myself) So I will apologise if you saw it and it offended you, I have a reputation for being quite blunt IRL and will try and hold myself back (like I usually try and do) in future.

However the way you are asking questions recently has shown quite a lack of respect towards Flay and mith who are quite busy atm. As an outsider it looks like your placing your problems above others and treating them like you automatically deserve what you are asking for rather than asking them politely, as they are busy trying to get the site working properly. It might not be what you are aiming for but to me, you need to ask questions/post suggestions more nicely, politeness costs nothing.

Imo... if you guys are considering any major changes, here are a few suggestions which would probably shorten the learning curve considerably for those trying to jump into the action.

The order of the categories could be rearranged as shown below, and under the forum category, have six forums: Large Games, Mini Games, Newbie Games, Sign-Up Queue, Marathon Days, and ScumChat. Inside Large Games, have New York and Theme Park, and inside Mini Games, have Little Italy and Coney Island.




|
|
L


|
| - Games without flavor
| - Games with flavor
|
| - Games without flavor
| - Games with flavor
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
L


|
|
L


|
|
|
|
L

I think reorganizing like this would help in a ton of ways. I don't know how feasible it is in terms of linking and such, but it wouldn't be that much different for current users, PLUS the benefits for newbies would be undeniable.

I don't see the problem with the current setup beyond maybe having the newbie queue more prominent, or even having that external link on the main page. For instance I'd definetly keep the Admin at the bottom, as that has virtually nothing to do with newbies and I wouldnt hide the forums behind Large and Normal brands.

I know there is a way to put a message at the top of the main forum board for players with less than a certain number of posts, which could have useful links. I don't know if thats easy to impliment, but it might be good for newbie newbies. The external link on the main board linking to the newbie queue might be an idea if that can't be done.

We've considered a number of alternatives for making sure the Newbies know where to go and how to join a game and all that - a message at the top, an automated welcome PM, etc. Some of what we need to look into is catering to different "styles" of taking in information - some newbies are directed by other users and don't really need further help; some are cool with a big guide to the site which reads a bit like a technical manual; and some don't have the attention span for that and need more of a go here, do this, get your feet wet, learn as you go approach. I'd like to do a better job of catering to the latter group than we are currently doing (without overwhelming anyone with annoying stuff).

I am also looking at the arrangement of the forums. I have a pretty good idea of how I'm going to do it, but to explain *why* certain things are how they are:

a. The Mafia forums are at the top, because this is a Mafia site.
b. Within that category, the Queue is at the top of that, because it's where you start. The Newbie games are next, because it's where you start playing. Marathon is at the bottom, because it's only rarely open.
c. The Admin forums are at the bottom, because it's rare that you actually need them (if we're doing our job right), and it's the... meta part of the site, for lack of a better term. (Also no one reads News unless I go out of my way to draw attention to it, but the information is there to point to as needed.)
d. We're going to add subforums, but probably *not* to organize the Mafia forums in the way you suggest (for one thing, we're going to split off Completed Games into appropriate subforums). In fact, I'm hoping in the future that we can make the top part of that page more like a "Mafia portal" - with links like "Current Signups", "My Games", and "All Games" (with filter options). (Not something that's in the immediate future... it'll require additions to the database structure, and some non-trivial coding.)

A couple minor issues I've noticed.

1. My default time was set to Mountain/not Daylight Savings time rather than the correct Pacific/Daylight Savings time. I assume other people have a similar issue, which isn't a problem now but will be in a few months.

2. Is there an obvious way to do "Display first post of thread on each page"? I couldn't find a setting for this in my user control panel.

(On a side note I just looked at all of Awesome Pants posts in Chess Mafia without blowing up the site. Thumbs up!)

Thok wrote:2. Is there an obvious way to do "Display first post of thread on each page"? I couldn't find a setting for this in my user control panel.

The old way it was done was a JEEP mod, so it may take a while to get ported over.

In other news, I seem to have found a viable option here, but it won't work exactly like JEEP's did. I don't see why it shouldn't be good enough for the functionality of us here at mafiascum.

Still would like to know why the wiki links are broken for old games.

Troll wonders why we no be displaying in the forums how many times each thread has been viewed at this point? Troll makes use of that from time to time to get an idea about how much a given thread is being watched when no one be posting. It no be precise but at least it gave some information. Troll would love to have that back if possible.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

Idk I just thought News and Help! might be some good things to have on the top of the forum list

mith it's obvious you've thought this through quite a bit, so ignore me, it's just an idea. I'm not offended.

Zorblag wrote:Troll wonders why we no be displaying in the forums how many times each thread has been viewed at this point? Troll makes use of that from time to time to get an idea about how much a given thread is being watched when no one be posting. It no be precise but at least it gave some information. Troll would love to have that back if possible.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

Interesting, I wouldn't have thought anybody was using that. I commented out the Views Count code to lower our DB hits and because it seemed useless for our forum (most places that love that are SEO-optimization/commercial sites, popularity contests, etc. I think I'd like to use that space for thread starter, eventually, but if lots of people miss it I don't mind restoring it.

Ether wrote:When choosing the full editor option from Quick Reply, could you automatically add a preview at the top of the next page?

Good idea! That's how it used to work, didn't it? Would you name the button 'Preview' or 'Full Editor', though?

I also need to add 'hide QR when the thread is locked, but I think I see how to do that.

Thok wrote:1. My default time was set to Mountain/not Daylight Savings time rather than the correct Pacific/Daylight Savings time. I assume other people have a similar issue, which isn't a problem now but will be in a few months.

Odd, as far as I know DST is set correctly in the base forum. Mine is working right, but I have changed since then so I don't know what the default was.

Thok wrote:2. Is there an obvious way to do "Display first post of thread on each page"? I couldn't find a setting for this in my user control panel.

Yeah, as UROE mentioned, this isn't back yet.

(On a side note I just looked at all of Awesome Pants posts in Chess Mafia without blowing up the site.

*\o/*

I miss the post count at the top of each post.

Johoohno wrote:I miss the post count at the top of each post.

That is currently on the to do list afaik. I miss it too.