[Site] Suggestions, requests, etc.

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  • @Elyaradine yeah me too :D But I am super lazy! It seems to have grown a lot over the last few days. This is good! I'm also pretty knew so I don't know how things were on the old site. Has it gotten any better?
  • I just noticed, after editing my discussion, that there was html and stuff exposed. I believe this is a bug and can be an opening for cross-site scripting attacks? (I have only dabbled in web development so I'm pretty noob). Just wanted to point this out!
  • No, it is filtered well, it was left over from the previous editor (old posts are still html).
  • It'd be cool if there was a section in our profiles that listed our names, current employers/freelance/available for hire/hobbyist, links current projects. :)

    Sometimes I find myself checking the Welcome thread to remind myself who people are.
  • Yeah, I am looking at that still, hopefully that can be done soon :)
  • On the note of adding info to profiles. I think putting twitter handle there would also be a good thing.
  • Inserting images into posts seems to be borked
  • edited
    On the main page it seems to be yes, where else do you see it broken?

    EDIT: found it, it is because the "inserting" is using HTML instead of the BBCode like it is meant to.
  • Spoiler tags don't seem to hide the text...

    This is a spoiler
  • In signup the option is limited to male, and female.

    Can we drop the gender requirement on the signup and just switch the activity to their?
    Thanked by 1hanli
  • edited
    It isnt a simple fix, damn, was hoping I could do it quickly. There are a few files that need to be modified and having issues with connectivity to the server from Wits. Can do it the next update.

    Also, this was spawned here. The discussion can be continued there if people have things to add.

    Edit: Oh, and there are a bunch of things I will do the updates for (smileys, problems, etc) but that will have to happen this coming weekend rather than during the week due to tests.

    So far:
    Genders [Add "Other", "Unspecified", set default to "Unspecified"] OR [Remove altogether]
    Spoiler Tags [Fix]
    Image Insertion [Fix, HTML->BBCode]
    Mobile Theme Sizing [Fix, previous fix didnt work]
    [Miscellaneous plugin updates and fixes]
    "AboutMe" plugin [Modify existing plugin to suit our needs, activate]
    "Mark all as read"

    Hope I havent forgotten anything.
    Thanked by 1hanli
  • edited
    Hi,

    Just a question: would their be any possibility or interest in an RSS/Atom feed for new discussions? The notification system is great for when you've already started contributing to a discussion, but without hitting the site daily (or even more frequently) its difficult to see what's new.

    Other suggestions could be digest email notifications of new discussions, or a 'new posts since last visit' page.

    (Apologies in advance if any of this already exists in some form or another.)

    Cheers,
    Mike.

    Update:
    Sorry, there appears to be a 'new' label on the activity tab, but everything is marked as 'new'. Is there any way to dismiss them all without clicking through everything? (I know I should read them all, but I'm just asking.. :) )
  • Sorry, there appears to be a 'new' label on the activity tab, but everything is marked as 'new'. Is there any way to dismiss them all without clicking through everything? (I know I should read them all, but I'm just asking.. )
    ^ This. So much of this! :)
  • edited
    Oh, there should be a "mark all as read" that I forgot to add (I believe it was Luke who brought it up?) Added it to the list for this weekend.

    Update 19/8/2012: This should happen some time today/this evening.
  • On the mobile theme the forums show the OP of a thread, and the normal theme shows the last poster. Any chance we can have some consistency to this?
  • That has to do with the Vanilla Core and isn't a simple fix, so will have to look into it some more first.
  • I feel that we need a bit of a list/presence/something that brings together anything game related in SA on the site - whether it's a list or a slider or something on the home page or whatever - it's important for people to know that this group is more than just a bunch of hoobiests.

    So - something like local developers, game courses, that game dev mag, etc. Any and everything.

    It's important for MGSA to tie all these together - if only to just present them to the world.
  • @Tuism I create a thread for each new Dev.Mag post.

    The problem is how do you create such a portal, what should be on the page, and so on? Would we want to advertise a courses just because it is local, as opposed to because it is good. These are all things that need to be considered ;)
  • Well I'm not talking about an advertisement about specific things, but a group of bodies connected (or should be connected) by makegamesSA. Not every post that goes into a particular site (what happens in the forums isn't what I'm talking about either), but more like "The game dev scene in SA:"...

    It's more to give people an idea that there ARE players in the SA game dev scene, not a bunch of twitter accounts, or forum posts, but actual entities, whatever they are.

    Something like the attached image? It's not intended as a final design but a spark to start the ideas going. Maybe we can incorporate all the actual entities on the page. Depending on the amount of content there are. Right now, I simply don't know.

    In fact, other than the people who're already part of the scene, for a long time, nobody knows. And it's favourable for people who aren't familiar with the scene to see that there are actually X amount of entities involved with game making in SA, it creates the sense of weight and authority and community. As opposed to just being a forum for hobbiests.

    As for who gets included - we as an association can surely come up with a few. And if anyone wants to be listed, let them approach the association, I'm sure we're more than capable of telling if people are bullshit game makers or real ones. I'm not worried about that in the long run. We can see BS, if not at first then eventually.

    I think having this works more for us than the issues we could potentially avoid if we did not.

    My 2c :)
    mgsa_associations.png
    1485 x 965 - 160K
  • I like the page idea, and the idea in general. I am really glad thought of such a good response :)

    The reason I worry about false information is that if a youth were to look at the page, and make a poor decision because it came from a body of professionals then I would feel sad since the information presented by the community, which I am a part of, was not correct.

    tl;dr I like the idea, I'm just worried about the implementation.
  • The implementation shouldn't be too bad, it is mostly modifying the user pages to add "bio" information or tags that is frustrating.

    I like @tuism's layout
  • The point is actually to get that info first then we can see how to implement, I've tried like twice to get some kind of game dev related list of entities with little feedback...
  • Well, how exactly do you define "more powerful"?
    Thanked by 1mikegeyser
  • Vanilla is great. And it seems super flexible, as evidenced by the hoard of stuff @edg3 has already actioned in this post.. (and its pedigree of users)

    I think if it seems lightweight, that it's an intentional choice, but I may well stand under correction.
  • With the BBCode use of url, could we add that the linked text be auto-underlined as to make the link more visible.
  • Er... seems that spam bots have raided the wiki. >_<
  • I cleaned it up and blocked the bots. I need to add a recaptcha, but the download servers for recaptcha for mediawiki are down.
  • Why is it that half the people's link posted end up being broken from having "makegames.com/discussions/blahblah" url prefixed? Not sure where people are going wrong but if more than a handful of people are having this happen it's something worth looking at.
  • Because people don't post correct links (i.e. they post links without http:// in front, which causes browsers to append the link to the site URL rather than see it as a link), I suppose it could be made to work either way but that would require some code changes.
  • I discovered today that, while you can't seem to mark individual topics as read, it does seem that you can mark entire categories so. Y'know, in case the giant page of yellow intimidates anyone and they want a fresh start. :P

    http://www.makegamessa.com/categories/all
    (Hover over topic > Options > Mark read.)
  • @blackshipfillthesky would like to raise the issue of removing/changing the blue smileys :P <-- like this one : P
  • edited
    I've been having trouble getting people to post Jobs here (of the people who contact me offering jobs). It seems I have about a 50% success rate (I've told about 4 to 6 people to post their jobs here and I think 1 or 2 actually did it... it may have even been zero).

    Now some of this may be attributed to the quality of my "Just poist it on a makegames.com" sales pitch, but I'm wondering if we could improve the system to make it seem less prickly/obtuse and more welcoming to job-offerers.

    I know we've raised the idea of setting up an guide to posting a job well, and that'd be great to point job-offerers to who need some help. But it doesn't exactly address the problem of the higher than desirable barrier for entry for job-offerers (which I'm assuming exists based on the results I've seen).

    Problems that may exist:

    1) This site doesn't look like a job posting site. Honestly there's not much we can do about this, it's a forum.

    That's all I've got.

    But I though there may be some things we could do to make job-posting seem less alien to MakeGamesSA.com:

    1) Make a way for potential job-posters to see posts by previous job-posts. Whenever I've posted a job anywhere I've looked into the standard for job-posts in that system. Because right now that is difficult on MakeGamesSA that may be a barrier for entry.

    Adding a category, or even adding a category and a button or list on the front page to see "Recent Job Offers in the Games Industry" would make this easier and ALSO make MakeGamesSA seem less alien to discussions about employment.

    2) Create a "Start a new Job Offer" button. Much like "Start a new discussion" button but that it automatically assigns the category to "Jobs" (which relies on point 1). This may make using this forum for potential Job-Offerers who aren't familiar with the forum easier, and so remove a barrier for entry for a Job-Offerer on the fence, and again, make MakeGamesSA seem less alien to discussions about employment..

    3) Create a wizard/form for creating a job offerer. This is more work and a bit of a dream item. And is also a bit against what this forum is about. The thing is we want job-offerers to start a discussion and discuss and be part of these forums, but all they want is to post some information that funnels interested candidates to their email address. Having a wizard/form where you fill out boxes for information or from drop down menus is common for job posting sites and standardizes everyone's job posts as well as auto-guides posters into best practices. Which is nice for job-posters though probably ambitious/weird for MakeGamesSA.com right now.

    4) Maybe just if you are posting a job it has a big bold link to the job-posting guide (this relies on point 2 probably and also on creating that guide).

    Personally I feel that there is a bit of a feedback loop between job-offers and visible job posting potential, in that people who want to be professional game developers might be more likely to post here regularly if they see cool job-gaining potential. And those same people may end up in a position to offer jobs here. And the cycle strengthens and benefits anyone who wants to make games for a living.

    (This is all assuming there is a problem right now)

    Anyway. I'm not certain if anyone else sees this as a bit of a problem for MakeGamesSA. I'm not certain if other people here feel that MakeGamesSA being seen as more of a profession resource fits into the goals of this community.




    @Tuism I have indeed been witnessed bemoaning the current state of emoticons on this site, though I feel like my current solution to avoiding them is acceptable. (winky face)
  • edited
    It's ok, we all sometimes feel like we need a little elcor in us :)

    And guy, this is part of what I've been saying all along, this site, as it is now, only serves regulars really well. Anyone who isn't a regular already are not made to feel welcome when they first land here. Why is that?
    This site doesn't look like a job posting site. Honestly there's not much we can do about this, it's a forum.
    That's basically it. It's a forum. Does it have to be just a forum?

    I definitely see makegamessa as needing to be more of a professional resource than a chatroom. The former is an association and wants to welcome more people into the fold, the latter doesn't give a damn about the rest of the world. The former is a social game with marketing. The latter is a social game a few people made and play among themselves. (and no I don't think the forum could "break out" like a cool prototype)

    Job postings are just one of the things that I see makegamessa needing to to do and isn't able to do (effectively) because of the presentation layer. Your points specifically on jobs are excellent, and I feel that they encompass other parts too:

    1) Guiding people into information about making games
    2) Letting people see the scale and magnitude of the game dev industry in SA. Impressing upon people that it's not a hobby.
    3) Highlighting important information/news to the industry/country intersection
    4) Bringing awareness to our activities, encourage participation

    (for example it's difficult to uses the categories correctly, I can't count how many times I've had to go back and change it cos I noticed it's wrong, and a glance at the site sees that "3D modeler needed" is falling under projects and portfolios. Not that anyone actually uses those buttons to the right, really. The new competitions cat is about the only time someone would)

    I agree that we don't all have tons of time to do everything ever, but at the same time it seems like whenever the topic is brought up, I feel as if people are inclined to not care about people other than the regulars or think it's not important to attract more stakeholders and potential stakeholders into our community.

    Either way, I'm pretty confuzzled by the attitude. We haven't even got our logo up, the conversation about making any changes here always just trail/die off, etc, and as much as our activities are great here (pixel art comp has been great), I feel that our presentation as a group needs to be stronger...

    And with that stronger presentation we'll be more credible...
    which means people will take jobs in games seriously...
    job postings here seriously (or at all)...
    get more people to take game dev more seriously...

    Is it simply a bottleneck problem? Are we too many responsibilities on too few people? Are we lazy? Do we not care? I'm not saying any of those are true, but I think we really should solve it.
  • @Tuism

    I agree.

    Well there certainly is bottlenecking. The community is run by volunteers and we're lucky and I think/hope we're grateful for what we've gotten.

    I'm not certain how to solve the bottleneck (because frankly I can't afford to help with .php work myself), and as such I'm hesitant to pile more work on when it's not crucial (smiley face).

    But from my perspective I do think getting the professional (as in the state of employment) aspect of game development visible and get the professional uses of a community portal integrated (like streamlined Job Postings).

    And a bunch of other stuff to. This was the thing I was concerned about today because I got another job offer and although I told the person to post here I don't expect them to.

  • Perhaps I am over-simplifying this. But given this is a forum why not just make a sticky of how to post a job request?
  • @Karuji, that would be an okish start. But I agree with what @Tuism and @BlackShipsFillTheSky is saying.

    It would be great if we could expand this site to include tools like that. But I want to mention that although there has been great enthusiasm the past few months with getting this site running and becoming an association and all that, we shouldn't get impatient. I agree that we need to work on this, but we have to prioritize because we have limited people and time to work on this.

    From the last meetings minutes I would think that once all the actionable things have been done the commitee will tackle new problems. Not saying that they should do all the work, but they should at least "assign" the task.

    I feel that we can start with this community and build a long term platform for game dev in SA. So even though there are downsides and stumble blocks now we can work on them and keep improving.

  • edited
    @Karuji That's some we definitely need (and what I meant by job-posting guide). And it's certainly easier to do right away.

    But it primarily useful at explaining to job-posters why their job posts suck without getting into an argument. There's no guarantee that anyone will read that before they post even if they are aware of it. And asking them to read guidelines on how to post a job could even be another barrier to entry (because it implies posting a job here requires special behaviour and/or requires reading through a page of text).
  • @BlackShipsFilltheSky no contention there. But I have this thing of trying to apply the prototype/rapid evolution philosophy to everything in life. So start of with a post and work it from there.

    So who else thinks that BlackShipsFillT should draw up the first draft of a guide to posting a job :3
  • @Karuji pffft! I'll draw up a draft based on what myself and Dislekcia (and others, I can't recall) were saying in that other thread that we hijacked to be about job-posing guidelines. And then everyone can add things and we can cut away the fat until we're all somewhat satisfied or too disappointed to summon the energy to type. But it'll have to wait until after Wednesday.
  • I'll add it to the list of stuff I need to do for the site.

    @tuism:
    Either way, I'm pretty confuzzled by the attitude. We haven't even got our logo up, the conversation about making any changes here always just trail/die off, etc, and as much as our activities are great here (pixel art comp has been great), I feel that our presentation as a group needs to be stronger...
    There is currently one person doing the dev/website work. If you can do PHP/HTML/CSS/SQL dev (or want to learn as you go, or anyone else if they have time) you are welcome to pitch in, I can have you set up in no time. Everyone is busy, and although all the suggestions make sense and would be good to have you cannot expect them to happen overnight at the moment, Oct/Nov/Dec are usually very busy times work wise due to people often taking end year holidays.

    This site SHOULD look professional, and it should also cater for everyone's needs. I don't think it is a question of whether it should or should be done, but from what I gather @BlackShipsFillTheSky is pointing out an issue and suggesting ways to solve the problem. (Rather than trying to point out that things are slow).

    Several people were given access to do things already, and so far from what I've seen it has fallen to committee members to do things that members offered to do, so I too find the "attitude" confusing. Like I mentioned in the meeting I can begin committing proper time again to the site each week (which I couldnt do due to problems in my private life), so if you could wait a week longer that would be fantastic.
  • edited
    I do apologise if I'm coming across as being all pointing fingers and not finding solutions, the purpose of the point I was raising was the last few words - let's solve it which can only be done if we all just said "here is the problem, it is x y and z". Can't really move forward without that. It's not a personal thing, it's an organisational thing.

    While I do appreciate that everyone is busy, I feel that a basic rule of thumb is to do stuff, or if not, say when it will get done, and if that gets delayed, tell someone that it will be, that's all I really ask (besides getting it done sometime).

    I would volunteer myself to code except I really don't know how, and being a presentation-level problem I think it could be solved with easier-than-code approaches... I've done other design tweaks previously which was obviously getting bottlenecked (again, not finger-pointing)

    But ok, I will do a design that can be implemented without (that much) code. How? Let's see. Cool :)

    (ps er, why doesn't <b> and </b> work?) (edit: When I click the "B" button or use ctrl+b, it gives me round brackets... Which is html and not forum code and doesn't work... It's only happening on this comment... weird)
  • Can we change the order of the drop-down items when making new posts to have "general" first? People often would forget to change it. Myself included.
  • Can we get the limited column widths back... The super wide reading is hurting my eyes... @_@
  • Some people want it larger (there not being enough space), some want it smaller?
  • Oh? I didn't realise anyone asked for it wider?

    From my experience and personal preference, columns are better for reading, that's also why newspapers/magazines come in columns rather than span the whole width of the page. Reading superwide means when you change lines you are much likelier to lose your place.
  • And what happened to highlighting discussions you've made in a different colour? That was useful.
  • I must admit, I also liked my discussions in a different colour. Especially for the competitions, it allows me to quickly find my entry for new comments
  • Hi, I talked to some people at the meet last night, apparently they're having trouble registering on the makegamessa site. Is there perhaps a problem with the account registration on the site?
  • It looks like our confirmation emails aren't going out but I've checked our mail service is up and running. If you can shoot me their usernames I can manually approve them.
  • Suggestion: can we redirect all www.makegamessa.com traffic to makegamessa.com (or the opposite, but I prefer non-www as default)?

    I think it's a bit more professional to choose one and stick with it. My other reason is: the forum only allows you to login from a single IP, so I often get sent a link that forces me to either login again or change the URL.

    It is as simple as adding something like the following to the .htaccess file:
    RewriteEngine On
    RewriteBase /
    RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.(.*)$ [NC]
    RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://%1/$1 [R=301,L]
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