I have cash to donate.  Will that help?  (c;
This message was last edited by the user at 00:58, Tue 26 Feb 2013.

I don't think we can figure it out, because we can't see the existing PHP. Even then, I'm not sure you'd want us fiddling.

You could hire someone with donations to do it for you? ;) Then again, that would probably cost a fortune.
This message was last edited by the user at 01:39, Tue 26 Feb 2013.

The only solution I can see would be a bear to program; a switch that only shows threads with new content.

That was the order of things would stay as desired, but you could call all the new threads to the fore with a click of a button, by making all of the rest of the threads temporarily 'invisible', so to speak.

In the end, I'm not sure that wouldn't be more work then it is worth.

In reply to adrasteia1 (msg # 28):

I'm not asking you to code the solution, but come up with one!

Like Pie's... maybe.

Hey, I almost got a +1 from Jase, made my day!

Sometimes thinking of how is just as important as thinking up what  you want.

For me, the current situation isn't enough of a hassle to ask a lot of effort from jase.

Thanks for the consideration, jase, and the information.

In reply to jase (msg # 30):

I really don't know. I assumed it was one of those things, where knowing how things worked specifically would increase the odds of a solution. Honestly, I've got nothing.

There are some good tech forums out there that might give you some ideas.

In reply to adrasteia1 (msg # 33):

Maybe I'm not being clear enough.  It's not a technical issue, it's a issue of how to present it to the end user.  In this case; if threads are hidden from the user (i.e. on a different thread page), how do we go about ensuring it doesn't cause confusion?

It's not just the case were users going into a game, see all the threads are already read and wonder why they got a new message indicator.  It's also those that go into the game, read the new threads on the first page, and then upon going back to the main menu discover the indicator is still lit because there's a thread on page 3 that hasn't been read!

There's also a similar scenario where users won't even get a new message indicator about the updated thread on page 3 (because they read a more recent thread or make a new post themselves).  What happens then?  There's not even visual clue that there's an unread thread hiding somewhere.

I haven't said no, I think the idea has merit, but it does have usability issues that need to be figured out.  I wasn't, however, expecting that when I said it was up to the community to propose ways to solve this particular problem, that the proposed solution would to make me figure it out!  )c;

My suggestion would be to suppress the notification flag (or thread edit date) for threads moved to bottom of list. Certainly for new notifications, maybe for existing ones as well. Though I'd imagine one could debate both sides of that. A user select-able option would be ideal but I'm guessing that would be a lot of (maybe too much) work for minimal benefit.

Sorry Jase. I wasn't trying to be difficult, I just misunderstood. What if a method is put in place to pin a thread to the back/bottom of the list of the other threads. Then if/when there's a new post in threads, it shows on the top of the first page below the game notices. Then once read, it returns to its original location? It would be at the back/bottom most of the time but only overruled in the instance of a new post.

The other other possibilities I can see are leaving it where it is and letting players figure it out (it would be up to the GM to make the thread more obvious IF they posted something new) or a different highlight colour for posts not on the first thread if any come in. However, I think that might overly complicate things.

I'm with having it bounce up below the notices when there's a new post. Or perhaps if a new post is made in it, automatically disabling the feature that pins it to the back/bottom of the other threads.

Or maybe an 'archive' folder/directory. That would be massively useful for moving old threads and cleaning up the main page but still keeping all the game data.

I thought I recalled it being a difficult programming issue the last time this feature was requested.

I think my notice thread is a good alternative option.

You just have a Notice thread at the top.  In the notice you have links to all the threads you want them to be able to access so they don't have to go sifting through the many pages of posts (and neither does the GM if he wants to change or add to them).

That makes them bump to the top unless you edit, but that's not a huge deal.

One thing I did in one of my games was just use a free site host and they could just link to the game website for all the details.

I haven't read this whole thread but I recall people wanting to be able to tag each thread to be able to order the threads in an order that makes sence to them, wether it be alpha numeric, big to small, new to old, content vs referance, and such. Could a tag not be added to each thread by the GM and THAT tag be numeric. Then the threads would always fall in THAT order top to bottom based on that number that the GM tagged the thread with.

It would solve everyones problem ... except the guy who has to program it.

I can envisage this kinda working with tabs (or links) for each message type

Notices | Game | OOC | Info | Private Messages

Click on each to display the relevant messages under that heading; heading goes to alternative colour when there are new messages present in that category.

Within each category messages are sorted by date (ie latest post) as now.

We could even add Game Maps to that list and display links to all maps visible to the player.

Just a slight overhaul of the user interface ... ;>

Hmmm...I'm not completely sure I want Game and OOC split like that, but I'd probably like it once I got used to it.  I'm not sure how tricky that would be in terms of interactions with the [last] and [new] options that we have now for coming into a game, though - Jase would have to give those a whole cascading priority system, like, if you click [new] and there's a new message in Game, OOC, and Private, then it takes you to  your Private Message first.

I know he kind of already has the language for that, since it does exactly that now with a purple indicator, so probably not a huge problem, but would need to be done.

...If we're doing this idea, I'd suggest perhaps a "GM Only" tab also, akin to Group Z now, where the GM could go to organize their own thoughts away from all the noisy children.

  -- Of course, people are going to want to use that for composing messages, so we'll need to make sure that wherever you decide what tab a message goes into is editable, so that they can be moved later. ahem

I'm also not sure how this interacts with the even newer Filter option.  I was going to make a suggestion based on that, but Skald's is better... but I don't know if it makes the Filters obsolete, or just more complicated.  It seems like those bigger games are still going to want it, but probably only in the Game area... but with the coding in place, is there a reason to exclude it from the others?  It could really change a lot of the perception/functioning of Private Messages, actually, in some interesting ways.  If they were brought in as a Tab like that, and a Filter were available to sort by character name... that would be super awesome.  It's frustrating sometimes, as a GM, going into the Private Messages and looking for that one post to that one PC from two years ago where he said where he put that thing that time^*.

Incidentally, I was thinking of putting in with the mods for a name change to Utsukushii, Archangel of Feature Creep.


^{*- Yep, it's a Hackers reference. That movie still makes me giggle for all the wrong reasons.}

+1 for Skald's idea (tabs or separate areas in a game).

If that would be programmable, it would be an awesome addition, particularly for long-running games.

+1 Skald. It would certainly be a step in the right direction though I wouldn't mind seeing additional folder/directory and searching capabilities. I think there are other threads discussing that already though.

+1 to Skald's idea.  I would use the heck out of that setup.

I like the idea, but I think it would make for a lot of text beside each game on the front page. A while back I suggested using icons and this was declined as the site's largely text-based, but if this is used, then I think icons would be a good alternative to having the full text beside each game. The way the table is laid out on the front page, you'd likely have to bring down the font size to list this for each (possibly too small). Even if you don't, it would make for a busier main screen. It could work underneath the game title, but some people have a lot of games.

Would it mean that each game is split into distinct sections, or would these work like named anchors where you're skipping to a certain spot on the game page? What if there's more than one OOC thread? Would these go in an OOC section? Like a group of their own underneath notices?
This message was last edited by the user at 18:41, Wed 27 Feb 2013.

I figured OOC needed to be in a cateogory of its own to keep the most current discussion thread at the top.


Or Notes tab/link so both GM and players can use it ? Allow multiple Threads in there only visible to the poster ?  Replace Scratchpad and proposed Drafts ???


I think in effect you'd gain more real estate - you'd lose a line for the tabs/links (I doubt there's space anywhere else), but then you'd actually be displaying less messages under each tab/link as your Game page would be uncluttered with Notices, OOC, etc.


Exactly - each tab/link only displays messages of that type beneath it, so you'd have all related threads, such as all OOC threads under the OOC tab/link.


Messages would just sit together in the database as they do now, but be categorised when the game page loaded.  That would mean each message would have to be identified - currently Notices and Private Messages are, so I'm hoping the structure is flexible enough to allow a few more classifications instead of those two (ie single text field rather than two booleans if that's the right terminology), or that it wouldn't be too hard to make the change.  I'm hoping it's a display problem rather than involving massive structural changes.  I can hope ...

I'm reluctant to admit I like Skalds idea, and it's a different (and better?) way of displaying the thread prioritisation that's been requested before (and really, that's what this thread was about too, it was just asking for three levels of prioritisation (notice, normal, sink) rather than many).

While going on about visual issues before, I've thought of a technical one.

The information is currently in a horrible Berkeley database, but it was soon going to be migrated to mySQL; so I'll talk about that.  With notices selecting the top 25 threads was going to be easy -- select the top 25 threads, sort by "is notice" and then by date.  That'll get your xx notices and your 25-xx non-notices.  mySQL, like any proper database, will only grab those 25 threads (even if the game has hundreds); this is very efficient and reduces server overhead/stress.

Now the way I'd see these tabs working would be that clicking on a tab reveals a different selection of threads (duh, of course).. but without reloading the page.  Visit dice.rpol.net and click on the tabs -- no page reload needed.  Clicking on each tab displays a different section of the page that's already been loaded, and hides the rest.

Now the problem with this is that I'd need to load the top 25 threads for every tab.  Suddenly our efficiency becomes less.

I'm not really a database guru, so I'm not sure if this would be a problem.. but I don't want to forge ahead with a redesign without understanding the performance implications.

Moreso, I'd have to change the way private threads work... and probably change the way they're displayed.  Actually, private threads are structured very differently to game threads, they would probably have to be a separately loaded page anyway.

Now I could solve this by reloading the entire page every time a tab is clicked on, but then we've got that problem of new thread in a tab you're not viewing.. so I'd probably need to grab some information on the other tabs anyway so I could have a visual clue on each tab if there's a new message in them.


P.S.  Tabs (except for Drafs/ScratchPad and Private) would be named by the GM, so what they're called and what's in them would be up to the GM.

In reply to Skald (msg # 46):

Not sold on tabs, seem like a much quicker fix is possile.

1) A button that changes your view to active threads only

And 2) An option on the edit thread page that deactivates the bump
Feature.

Gah.  I'm just an end-user grateful that people understand all the techno wizardry that goes into giving me the results I want.

Any way that you guys work out to allow me to have a set of threads with high priority up front, normal priority threads in the middle, and low-priority-but-must-keep-track-of threads off to the side/end/whatever will be absolutely amazing and worth whatever learning curve there'll be to using it.

Ok, this likely wouldn't work but.. would it be possible to:

1. Create a file for a new game page
2. Put some spry tabbed panels (or equivalent) on it
3. Develop the rest of the layout as necessary
4. Set up different categories for notices and OOC on the database (however this is done)
5. Re-route/put the links for the PHP into those panels, so the information is displayed in them.
6. Update the PHP and database where necessary.

I know that may be overly simplistic, but is a simpler option that doesn't require you to change the database much possible? It would display the same information differently.

No, no, you're right - it would just be a thing I'd need to get used to before I really loved it.


Aie!  Would that still be visible only to the person-logged-in?  I ask as someone with Moderators in my game, who naturally trusts them implicitly, but who might, nevertheless, keep certain notes in the Scratchpad on the understanding that they can't see that even if they forget to Mod-Down before checking in.

...Admittedly, in this case, they'd still have to actually click on the tab even then, so that's akin to Group Z, and that's probably alright anyway.  But I would miss Scratchpad if it went away completely.  Besides, players still need it.


jumps  What?  Oh, you're here, too?


That would be lovely, but I'm not sure it's necessary.  This is definitely a Bigger Thing than what's happening on dice.rpol.net - I picture it working very much like the Character Details / Scratchpad / Dice Roller / Etc. `tabs' do now, which is to say, requiring a new page load when you go into a new section.  (And out of curiosity, why are the tabs on dice.rpol.net linked like that?  It seems like anybody going in there would only be using one or the other, just by their nature?)

I can't imagine that going from loading 25 threads in a game to loading, say, 25X6 per game, for everybody, all the time, wouldn't have some performance issues, but it would be pretty cool if it somehow wouldn't.


Ooh, that's a very good point.  Would the coding you've done for detecting new-messages-while-someone's-posting help with this?


Ooooooh.