Clan msg board improvement suggestions

[pegasus_]

Hello GT people, name's Pegasus and I am part of a community of players created around the UT2004 TechCom ONS 32p server. Even though UT2004 may be showing its age now visually speaking, its faster and brighter gameplay, the love it's received from the mod community over the years, not to mention the dubious appeal of its space-marine-styled sequel, UT3, have all helped maintain its online crowd to healthy numbers even today. And just as times are still good for UT2k4 and ONS, they've been good for us too! As one of the youngest servers around (~18 months old now), TechCom quickly rose from obscurity to the top of the popularity list and remains there since, all thanks to the great community of players that frequent it, our good friends from other communities like the Titans and the Omnip)o(tents, as well as the appeal of several helpful mods and mutators plus literally hundreds of maps in our roster, tested, played and tweaked to great length and featuring elements that can't be found on most other demo servers looping Torlan and Primeval. So, if lately you're burned out on COD4, TF2 or whatever and looking for something different, give UT2k4 a try and see how today's ONS feels for you. And if you're already there, we'll be happy to see you online!

With the intro out of the way, let's get to the point. Many of our regulars found GT's stats tracking very appealing and since last year they started creating their own profiles one after another, so a couple of months ago we figured we might as well try and make a kind of home for our community here too. Since GT has clan support that can offer ppl a common place to gather, we found that to be the most practical option and started our own, the Freelancer non-clan clan . But while most of the connectivity and communications features are nice and helpful, using the embedded mini message board over the past summer has brought in more than just a few winces of confusion and sighs of frustration due to its occasional quirks or limitations compared to most other msg board software (vB, phpbb, SMF, etc.). With the collective experiences and feedback from our community over this time now discussed and summed up, this seems like the right time to post them on the proper GT message board and offer a few suggestions for improvement. If any of the ideas below are already under development, kindly let us know about them so all clan-registered GT members interested in this can anticipate them too. Okay, here goes:

- A search function first and foremost. This would help reduce duplication of topics as well as facilitate people finding some useful information stashed away in some old thread. Selecting specific sub-forums to search in or particular members' posts when looking for something would make this even more efficient.
- Admin ability to move posts and threads, as well as splitting threads. I noticed another reference to this browsing the forums here, but I thought it bears repeating merely for emphasis.
- Support for polls: editable, multivote, deadline-defined, any of those that may be possible to add on top of a simple poll feature would be great.
- Extending the maximum character limit for posts, or if that's not desired, then a simple javascript indication of how many more the poster has left. As it is now, the limit is about 3900chars which doesn't go beyond a 4-5 paragraph post and if members try to post something longer without saving the text somewhere else, they'll just be met with a short message of denial and lose all that effort. Factoring quoting in as well, this seems a bit too restrictive when trying to get a "more serious" convo going. Another practical reason for increasing the character limit is the need for ppl to copy&paste text content from log or ini files sometimes which can allow others to help them troubleshoot a problem - right now also impossible with such a strict limitation.
- Some method to inform members of new/unread posts as well as recently received PMs. Right now, there is no way to get updates on either event and, especially for PMs, that can lead to awkward situations with ppl not reacting in a timely fashion and giving the wrong impression to PM senders.
- Links to a multi-page thread's individual pages on top as well as at the bottom (currently only at the bottom). This one's probably a minor thing to mention, but the usability benefit of adding it can be quite practical at times.
- Quoting more than one ppl in the quick reply box. Hitting the "Quote" button at the bottom of any post currently will simply overwrite the Reply box's content with that post's text making it impossible to address more than one person in a thread without some copy/paste maneuvering and it's something that can build up with the risk of losing all the carried clipboard content if you accidentally hit the wrong key combo. Simple fix would be to make the Quote button add text at the end of the box without deleting anything already there before that.
- At the clan homepage, the "Recent Forum Posts" list shows the 3 most newly updated threads, but clicking on those threads sends you to their first page and navigation beyond that is left to the user. This could be improved by making the links just on that list point to the last page of those threads or, even better, by using html anchors and sending users to the last post, which is the truly new content after all.
- The visual quality of the mini msg board smilies seems a bit low compared to what can be found on most msg boards. Any aesthetic improvements on that would be greatly appreciated by our weary eyes.
- Throwing in a few more BB codes would be welcome too: different fonts, or perhaps a [member] tag linking to users' profiles.
- Support for (small) file attachments would improve usability as well, even if just for picture and text filetypes since the latter can double as an alternative to copy&pasting those ini files mentioned before.
- Signatures for users! This is perhaps more an issue of extending the members' profiles code than a mini msg board feature (one more text string in the Account Home page but for mini msg board use only?), but it would certainly help personalize more the environment and community that each clan builds for itself on GT.

Finally, a sort of a bug report that involves nested quotes. It seems that quoting within a quote can cause readability problems to the rest of the page beyond the problem-post. What exactly causes this is anyone's guess (improper use of bb tags maybe?), but after having it happen a few times on us, it's a bug we have to keep in mind when posting and would happily see the GT coding team squash!

Alright, that's all. Hopefully these suggestions didn't come across as demanding or disrespectful; far from it, we recognize and appreciate very much GT staff's efforts to keep this site organized, fresh-looking and up-to-date with all servers' stats out there (why else be here otherwise?) and look forward to any and all improvements that might come in the future. Thanks for your time reading this too!

Regards,
Pegasus

[mike]

Thanks for the great feedback. We will look to implement at least a few of these suggestions. I will leave this thread open here for now. If you have any other suggestions, feel free to add them.

[crusha_k_rool]

Could you also give the login-cookies a longer validity? Currently you have to log in again after a few days.

I don't remember correctly if that was possible or not, but when changing the name of a topic, then this should also change the name in the forum-view.

Linked images are limited to a specific size, otherwise only a part of the image is shown. Maybe it would be better to let the board scale down the original image in order to display it completely. An optional thing to add then would be to show the image in original size in a separate tab/page or in a fancy javascript-thingy when you click on it.
This way we wouldn't need the thumbnail-function of certain image-hosters and some of our guys would have less problems with that.


As for the smileys: Maybe you can take a look at this smiley-collection that I threw through the google-translater (for some oddly reason he translated the German word for 'sweat' into 'auschwitz', don't get irritated by that )
I never encountered a situation where I couldn't express a thought or feeling with one or a combination of these smileys, so maybe this can give you some hints. The thing that I am missing most is that -smiley here. It is the most unmistakable way to show someone irony or to round off a joke, so please include that one.

Thanks for your effort, even a few of the things mentioned by Pegasus would help us a lot. Keep up the great work on this site.

[pegasus_]

Thanks for the response, mike; it means a lot knowing you have someone's ear when offering feedback on the net. As far as more suggestions go, I'm nearly tapped out, but here's a few more I could've included before that would also help with day-to-day use:

- The ability to delete PMs from users' outboxes. Currently, users have that option only for their inbox messages and it seems a bit of an odd inconsistency to allow cleanups in one folder, but not the other.
- Thread titles in web browser title too (like it works here). No matter what section of the clan's msg board users may navigate to, the clan's name is the only thing displayed on the browser title. Changing that to reflect the title of the visited thread would help most people who tend to multitask during their surfing and might happen to have multiple tabs in their broswer or if they'd have several single-tab sessions minimized in their OS.
- Users' comments in clan news threads seem to ignore BB codes completely. Is this a deliberate lockdown so that only the admin can have that privilege or an accidental omission? Either way, the option for all users to at least use smilies or links in replies would be nice.
- The dates on clan msg board posts seem to remain perpetually on a relative-to-today form. Especially for months-old posts, that can be a bit confusing when trying to determine whether something was said before or after the date of some known event that ppl may remember or any such case. IMO, it's worth keeping the relative form for up to two days (today, yesterday), but beyond that it might be preferable to have the dates switch to an absolute dating system. Edit: funnily enough, the date stamps on PMs seem to work in a more usual way - odd disparity there .

Well, that's all I could think of. Again, thank you for hearing us out, Mike, and I hope some part of this suggestions flood might help improve the daily experience for all GT clan members soon.

Cheers,
Pegasus

[topicster]

Hi all,

First off, greetings from Ecuador to you. you are doing a great job tracking the servers, clans and players. I want to suggest you a new option in the Clan's Forum. It is simple:

Allow the capacity to move a thread from one category to another. The problem starts when an user post a thread or reply in a place which is wrong to their real location and clan's leader/admin would like to put order and move to the right section.

Similar to that, allow the possibility to redirect from different categories to the same thread. For example, a posted thread in Clan Rules could be acceded by a category named topics, Contact us.

Thanks, I hope to help you to improve this great enterprise.

Bye,
topicster aka Boris.

[crusha_k_rool]

Originally Posted by topicster

Allow the capacity to move a thread from one category to another. The problem starts when an user post a thread or reply in a place which is wrong to their real location and clan's leader/admin would like to put order and move to the right section.

Yeah, Peg mentioned that already and it would be nice. Our solution so far was, to just delete all posts and open a new thread, but you don't want to do that all the time.

Similar to that, allow the possibility to redirect from different categories to the same thread. For example, a posted thread in Clan Rules could be acceded by a category named topics, Contact us.

What you are talking about is an "Announcement"-system like in vBulletins, am I understanding you right?
The moderators should have the option to post "announcements". That is one special thread that is shown above each sub-forum. It's always the same thread, but accessible from everywhere, so it's not the same like sticky threads.

See this example from a German vBulletin:

Here are the forum-rules an announcement.



Another thing I want to add as a request is to prevent the text to scroll back to the beginning after you used one of the buttons for BB-code on marked text.

In other words, when I want to make a written text bold and click the button for that, then the cursor jumps back to the beginning of the text. That is annoying when you need to change much BB-code at the bottom of the text.

[foibos]

I can't ban this idot from news comments.

GTs, could you fix it asap please? Thank you.

[n3r0ongt]

Hey guys,

I would like to block a clan from entering my forums. They do nothing but spam and bicker in the forums, and I can't figure out how to stop them from doing so. I need to block certain users from our profile, and also the forums. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

N3r0

[foibos]

Serious troubles with commenting the news: Please, could you add an option to restrict the news comments for members only? The guy is spamming our news again. Banning him is a temporary solution.

[mike]

Some of these features have been added. Please keep us posted on more requests or on what you think about the additions.

[mike]

Adding a message from a different thread:

Originally Posted by red_carpet

hi

well that's just the issue. not all links work on the clan's forums. it seems that it can only contain normal letters and numbers but not special chars like # among others. so, I would like that you fix this.

ex. that doesn't work on the clan's forum (it reject the link)
http://www.gametracker.com/clan/hiszy/forum.php?thread=18905#post74427

also I would like to request that you'd add more bbcode to the clan's forums, like the email or

• list

tags.

thanks in advance

[jancsi33]

Hello, I and Foibos (maybe also other people) have the following problem with the forum:

When clicking on a topic, the page goes to the last page of the topic, and when clicking on an other page of the topic, then instead of going to there, the page just refreshes

It's a very bad bug because if someone misses a post and wants to look it he can't...

EDIT: It's only for recent forum posts

Quote from Pegasus:

About this specific problem, it only happens if you're trying to jump to a recently updated thread's last post directly from the "Recent Forum Posts" section at the clan's GT homepage - the requested url references the most recent post.id instead of the thread.id # and the new php code seems to build the thread html (and the previous pages links in it at the bottom) differently in each case, so the same page data keep getting retrieving in one case and, instead, are handled properly in the other. If you navigate there step by step, however (access the msg board index first, then the specific forum, thread and page), everything works as it should, so Jancsi's description of the bug seems a bit off the way it's currently phrased.

[crusha_k_rool]

The smileys should be disabled in links.

When you have a cryptic link like the one to a YouTube-video, then the smileys that are parsed in it prevents the link from working, or also when posting a log from UT. For example from a log of Jancsi:

Critical Error:

Verts SkyBase.Verts75: Serial size mismatch: Got 847589, Expected 856705

History: LoadObject <- (Verts SkyBase.Verts 3932671==3932671/5280310 3085082 856705) <- ULinkerLoad:reload <-
UModel::Serialize <- LoadObject <- (Model SkyBase.Model904 3932671==3932671/5280310 621430 132295 <-
ULinker:reload <-ULevel::Serialize <- LoadObject < (Level SkyBase.MyLevel 3932671==3932671/5280310 159758 19570) <-
ULinker:reload <- PreLoadObjects <- UObject::EndLoad <UObject::StaticLoadObject <- (Engine.Level None.MyLevel
SkyBase) <- LoadLevel <-UGameEngine::LoadMap <- LocalMapURL <- UGameEngine::Browse <- ClientTravel <- UGameEngine:: Tick
<- UpdateWorld <- MainLoop

And to more specify Peg's request on more BB-codes: Maybe you could add some of these that are available in vBulletin-Board:

-[lt]This text is crossed out[/lt]

-[SPOILER]The text in this box is only visible if you select it with your cursor.[/SPOILER] It could contain things that would blame the surprise for you, read at own risk.

-[HIDE=Name]Same as spoiler, but this box expands when you click the button next to the Name.[/HIDE] It can also be used to hide a number of large images to prevent people who don't want to see the pics from scroll-work.

-[CLAN]The thing written here is only visible to registered members of the corresponding clan, not to visitors[/CLAN]
You could use that for private server-IPs.

-

For our coders

I don't know if a signature would be hard to make and it would be pure luxury for sure, but it would allow to better distinguish the posts and to have a place where you can add some information about that you think it's useful.