Post by Webmonkey on Nov 7, 2009 16:03:47 GMT -8
Hi folks, below are direct comments and responses from the website/message boards portion of the Vampire sphere's annual Staff evaluation form. These responses (block quoted) were passed along to me by the vampire staff anonymously and I've responded below.
Feel free to use this thread to suggest other changes/improvements or provide comment on and add them to this post.
Search-engine placement can be a toughie, but I did an experiment with this commenter's search and found that while 'Vampire the masquerade at the red square' did not return our website, however adding 'Seattle' to the end of that search phrase returned the ECC homepage is #2 on Google and the EC Wikipedia entry is #4 on Google, which I think is pretty good! Just remember when searching the world wide web that it can in fact be world wide, and a little location info can go a long way toward narrowing things down. There are a few other red squares out there.
As for finding the message boards from the main site www.emeraldcitychronicles.com I will be adding two new sections to the very first set of links on the site: Why, which has a link to the Message boards and How, that links to the Storytellers page to make it easier to contact them for questions. There already were links to both on that page, but hopefully this will call them out more and make it easier for new folks to find their way. Thanks for the awesome feedback!
It's been a couple of months since the Reputation system went live on the boards and here is my experience with it from a Webmonkey perspective:
Firstly, the boards track all activity, so it's pretty easy to see who is doing what for me as the Admin of the message boards (if I don't mid slogging through the logs). Since the system was new and I wasn't sure how it was going to go/work, I made a point to pay attention to board usage details surrounding the Reputation system for a bit. Here is my informal report: 99% of folks have used it to give their peers props for good stories, helpful or funny posts, etc. as the system was intended. A couple of folks used it to relentlessly down vote people they just didn't like. On the Werewolf boards, a single person was confused about what it was for and down voted characters their character didn't like. After a reasonably amicable PM or two to those few folks, the down voting abuse stopped. Notably, I've seen improvement in the message board manners of those I PM'd, but admittedly I have no empirical evidence that calling out those abusers (in discreet PMs) was the direct cause of that, it's just anecdotal. What I do like about it is that it is a reasonably pure' expression of how the community (that reads the boards anyway) feels about the message board content. That's it, I have nothing else really to report.
Anyway, that said, now that this system has had a chance to be trotted around a bit, I can suppress the ProBoards Reputation System code if players wish, and will be putting up an All Sphere Poll to that effect. Look for that soon on this board.
I am not sure what this means, so if you are the person who suggested this and would like to clarify this, please feel free to PM me, or if you would prefer to remain anonymous, let a PA or ST know and they can speak on your behalf. Your feedback is important to me, so please don't hesitate. Thanks!
As I mentioned, the Reputation system seems to have allowed peers to do that somewhat, and seems to have allowed me to at least ask some of the worst offenders to lay off - which they have in all cases so far. I won't censor bad manners though, I'm not the friggin' thought police, but generally I don't need to anyway, the person's peers usually work to moderate that all on their own pretty well.
I have some follow up questions/clarifications to this request:
1. What issue do you see that this would address?
2. Approved by whom?
If you are the person who suggested this and would like to clarify this, please feel free to PM me, or if you would prefer to remain anonymous, let a PA or ST know and they can speak on your behalf. Your feedback is important to me, so please don't hesitate. Thanks!
I have recently re-organized the House Rules to be Alphabetical by Trait with the exception of 'side systems' like Investigation and Crafts, and Discipline errata maintains it's own section. Hopefully this will make things easier to find. If you have other suggestions I'd be happy to hear them though, as I admit site organization could be better. As always, feel free to PM me. I am eager to make the site as user friendly as possible.
I have created a Site Map which lists each page along with short descriptions of what is on each page, but it could use some updating.
Both of these features exist. Here's how to use them:
See Posts by Author: Go to the profile of the person you want to search for posts by. You can get to the person's profile by looking at the
portion and looking them up by letter or just clicking on their name from a post they've made.
Once you are looking at their profile, there's a section called Recent Posts where you can view the last X number of posts from the person. This will list any and all posts the person has made within that number.
See Posts by Title: A search by Title is easy. Either go to the board you want to search directly and click the
button. There you can specify what you want to search for, by title or even keywords within posts.
I'll take that as a 'works ok so far'.
I can create password protected or even hidden boards for any clan that wishes it, just ask your ST to pass it along and I'll create it to specifications.
This is more something for the STs, but they have read this and are aware of the opinion.
Thanks!
I update all house rules I am given by the staff, usually within a day or so of being asked. If there is a rules call that Storytellers are making consistently over and over that isn't by the book, please let them know so they can draft the errata with the CA's and submit it to me for upload and I'll get it up there. If you've already done so and the STs forgot or you don't feel they are taking it seriously, remind a PA and they will be your advocate.
Hopefully the above search function descriptions helped out. If you need more help, please don't hesitate to ask!
Thanks!
This feature has been suggested to ProBoards (by others already) and may be available in future versions. Currently with the amount of Spam out there though they aren't sure how to assure that it doesn't cause major issues.
Cross site scripting is *very* exploitable to malicious code. I will suggest that Copy and Paste are your friend for now.
Ok, let me know if you think of anything!
As I am not a Storyteller, I can't really respond to this directly, and since this seems directed more at the staff than myself, I'll just say that they have read this. If there is more I as the Webmonkey can do to help with this concern, please feel free to PM or email me.
It seems like people have their pet chat programs and like keeping to those. For those with a MUSH or MUD background that can be a little frustrating, but feel free to PM or email those that you might like to do some mid-week RP with and get together for chatting. Seems to me that most folks are amenable given a little time to plan. Otherwise, play by email for mid-week interactions or PMs seem to work well too.
This is great feedback.
Rulings: What rulings were you looking for that are not on the site? If you have time to clarify it could help. Keep in mind this has been read by the STs and they are in charge of letting me know what to put on the site, but build me a list and I'll bug them about it for you. ;D
Search function: An integrated search function for the Vampire main site isn't in the cards for now as it would require a major overhaul, IE, different hosting and a total revamp (heh) of the site however, Google does this really cool thing where you can put in any search term you want followed by a space and site:emeraldcitychronicles.com and it will Only search that site and index the whole thing for you easy as you please.
Character Bios: You're totally right. No one uses it anymore and it's just a glorified guest book anyway. I'll nuke it.
The clearest/easiest text to read for the largest subset of people is always going to be the highest contrast letter to text ratio, which is either black text on a white background or White text on a black background. There are folks that are always going to have differing visual acuities however, and let's face it, reading back lit text on a computer will always produce some eyestrain. That said, for now, the high contrast option is the best I can do for the greatest amount of people. If you do find that your own personal visual acuity is such that the high contrast makes it difficult for your eyes and would like help setting up your personalized message board colors in a fashion that works best for you, I would be glad to help anyone who wants it poke around until they find the right fit for them.
The best/easiest option for reducing contrast would be to lower the contrast of the text from white to a tan or slight yellow color configuration in your personal settings and see how that works for you. Please don't hesitate to ask for help with this.
Thanks for all the great feedback!
- Chris Da Webmonkey
Feel free to use this thread to suggest other changes/improvements or provide comment on and add them to this post.
I think the boards are fine, communication is well. Now when looking for the site on the Internet, I sometimes forget the name or the site when looking on another computer, so for instance, find ways to make it easier to find, like "Vampire the masquerade at the red square" or at UW college and from there, have a way to shoe others where it is located. When I first joined, I didn't know where to start, the site confused me and I couldn't find the boards until I asked a friend. That I came with, instead of telling me, he just (sent) me the site to the boards
Search-engine placement can be a toughie, but I did an experiment with this commenter's search and found that while 'Vampire the masquerade at the red square' did not return our website, however adding 'Seattle' to the end of that search phrase returned the ECC homepage is #2 on Google and the EC Wikipedia entry is #4 on Google, which I think is pretty good! Just remember when searching the world wide web that it can in fact be world wide, and a little location info can go a long way toward narrowing things down. There are a few other red squares out there.
As for finding the message boards from the main site www.emeraldcitychronicles.com I will be adding two new sections to the very first set of links on the site: Why, which has a link to the Message boards and How, that links to the Storytellers page to make it easier to contact them for questions. There already were links to both on that page, but hopefully this will call them out more and make it easier for new folks to find their way. Thanks for the awesome feedback!
Remove reputation meter (X2)
It's been a couple of months since the Reputation system went live on the boards and here is my experience with it from a Webmonkey perspective:
Firstly, the boards track all activity, so it's pretty easy to see who is doing what for me as the Admin of the message boards (if I don't mid slogging through the logs). Since the system was new and I wasn't sure how it was going to go/work, I made a point to pay attention to board usage details surrounding the Reputation system for a bit. Here is my informal report: 99% of folks have used it to give their peers props for good stories, helpful or funny posts, etc. as the system was intended. A couple of folks used it to relentlessly down vote people they just didn't like. On the Werewolf boards, a single person was confused about what it was for and down voted characters their character didn't like. After a reasonably amicable PM or two to those few folks, the down voting abuse stopped. Notably, I've seen improvement in the message board manners of those I PM'd, but admittedly I have no empirical evidence that calling out those abusers (in discreet PMs) was the direct cause of that, it's just anecdotal. What I do like about it is that it is a reasonably pure' expression of how the community (that reads the boards anyway) feels about the message board content. That's it, I have nothing else really to report.
Anyway, that said, now that this system has had a chance to be trotted around a bit, I can suppress the ProBoards Reputation System code if players wish, and will be putting up an All Sphere Poll to that effect. Look for that soon on this board.
Clean boards
I am not sure what this means, so if you are the person who suggested this and would like to clarify this, please feel free to PM me, or if you would prefer to remain anonymous, let a PA or ST know and they can speak on your behalf. Your feedback is important to me, so please don't hesitate. Thanks!
Better adherence to common courtesy
As I mentioned, the Reputation system seems to have allowed peers to do that somewhat, and seems to have allowed me to at least ask some of the worst offenders to lay off - which they have in all cases so far. I won't censor bad manners though, I'm not the friggin' thought police, but generally I don't need to anyway, the person's peers usually work to moderate that all on their own pretty well.
All IC posts sit in a queue and have to be approved
I have some follow up questions/clarifications to this request:
1. What issue do you see that this would address?
2. Approved by whom?
If you are the person who suggested this and would like to clarify this, please feel free to PM me, or if you would prefer to remain anonymous, let a PA or ST know and they can speak on your behalf. Your feedback is important to me, so please don't hesitate. Thanks!
The site (www.emeraldcitychronicles.com) needs a better index system, finding house rules is often difficult.
I have recently re-organized the House Rules to be Alphabetical by Trait with the exception of 'side systems' like Investigation and Crafts, and Discipline errata maintains it's own section. Hopefully this will make things easier to find. If you have other suggestions I'd be happy to hear them though, as I admit site organization could be better. As always, feel free to PM me. I am eager to make the site as user friendly as possible.
I have created a Site Map which lists each page along with short descriptions of what is on each page, but it could use some updating.
Allow for search of previous posts by author / title
Both of these features exist. Here's how to use them:
See Posts by Author: Go to the profile of the person you want to search for posts by. You can get to the person's profile by looking at the
portion and looking them up by letter or just clicking on their name from a post they've made.Once you are looking at their profile, there's a section called Recent Posts where you can view the last X number of posts from the person. This will list any and all posts the person has made within that number.
See Posts by Title: A search by Title is easy. Either go to the board you want to search directly and click the
button. There you can specify what you want to search for, by title or even keywords within posts.No thoughts
I'll take that as a 'works ok so far'.
possibly could add clan specific section of the boards
I can create password protected or even hidden boards for any clan that wishes it, just ask your ST to pass it along and I'll create it to specifications.
Too much rule discussion is confined to PA boards
This is more something for the STs, but they have read this and are aware of the opinion.
It's pretty good as is.
Thanks!
Update house rules more often to make them complete.
I update all house rules I am given by the staff, usually within a day or so of being asked. If there is a rules call that Storytellers are making consistently over and over that isn't by the book, please let them know so they can draft the errata with the CA's and submit it to me for upload and I'll get it up there. If you've already done so and the STs forgot or you don't feel they are taking it seriously, remind a PA and they will be your advocate.
search function
Hopefully the above search function descriptions helped out. If you need more help, please don't hesitate to ask!
I think the site is wonderful
Thanks!
Added feature of post/reply by RSS / E-mail
This feature has been suggested to ProBoards (by others already) and may be available in future versions. Currently with the amount of Spam out there though they aren't sure how to assure that it doesn't cause major issues.
An option to file posts in the wiki.
Cross site scripting is *very* exploitable to malicious code. I will suggest that Copy and Paste are your friend for now.
I don't know yet
Ok, let me know if you think of anything!
The players were not asked if they wished to allow STs the right and authority to censor the players, this is unacceptable.
As I am not a Storyteller, I can't really respond to this directly, and since this seems directed more at the staff than myself, I'll just say that they have read this. If there is more I as the Webmonkey can do to help with this concern, please feel free to PM or email me.
I wish people used the chat room feature more. I like them lots.
It seems like people have their pet chat programs and like keeping to those. For those with a MUSH or MUD background that can be a little frustrating, but feel free to PM or email those that you might like to do some mid-week RP with and get together for chatting. Seems to me that most folks are amenable given a little time to plan. Otherwise, play by email for mid-week interactions or PMs seem to work well too.
The website should have more rulings listed on it and a search function would be nice. Also, I don't think we need the character bios section anymore.
This is great feedback.
Rulings: What rulings were you looking for that are not on the site? If you have time to clarify it could help. Keep in mind this has been read by the STs and they are in charge of letting me know what to put on the site, but build me a list and I'll bug them about it for you. ;D
Search function: An integrated search function for the Vampire main site isn't in the cards for now as it would require a major overhaul, IE, different hosting and a total revamp (heh) of the site however, Google does this really cool thing where you can put in any search term you want followed by a space and site:emeraldcitychronicles.com and it will Only search that site and index the whole thing for you easy as you please.
Character Bios: You're totally right. No one uses it anymore and it's just a glorified guest book anyway. I'll nuke it.
Black text on white background! I know it's gothic horror, but white on black (makes it) tough to read long posts. (Yes, I know user settings can fix this )
The clearest/easiest text to read for the largest subset of people is always going to be the highest contrast letter to text ratio, which is either black text on a white background or White text on a black background. There are folks that are always going to have differing visual acuities however, and let's face it, reading back lit text on a computer will always produce some eyestrain. That said, for now, the high contrast option is the best I can do for the greatest amount of people. If you do find that your own personal visual acuity is such that the high contrast makes it difficult for your eyes and would like help setting up your personalized message board colors in a fashion that works best for you, I would be glad to help anyone who wants it poke around until they find the right fit for them.
The best/easiest option for reducing contrast would be to lower the contrast of the text from white to a tan or slight yellow color configuration in your personal settings and see how that works for you. Please don't hesitate to ask for help with this.
Thanks for all the great feedback!
- Chris Da Webmonkey