I should note for that all my name is mentioned here,
whatever we do here is not for me. Whether you want to fix up and improve v5.1 or make a v6 is not my decision. I'm not really into SC2 and I've pretty much given up on SC:BW as well as much of the community here, so the best that I actually want to do is to provide advice and share my experience or wisdom on assorted issues. I apologize for the venting and frustration if it gets excessive at certain points. With that in mind, SEN itself will be turning ten years old soon, so it would be nice to do some overhauling and put in some good work for the double digit birthday.
1. Despite the occasional MySQL error and obvious missing features, are you satisfied with SEN's current state (specifically regarding functionality)?
Community / Overall Site1. Streamlined, coordinated, and consistently enforced moderation policies are a must. Non-trivial, non-petty. Not that I've been above falling into these traps, but it's time to take responsibility here.
2. Clear indication of who is staff and moderators. If you have to sacrifice name colors for this, by all means. Another option is just putting an asterisk or [M] or something in front of a moderator's name in the particular forums they lead. Throw in display indicators for someone who's currently online and maybe a [C] for contact options next to a name on the forums and you've saved yourself a line and a bunch of 20px images on every post.
3. I would honestly like to see things become more content-oriented and content-focused. (ie. "professional" as far as StarCraft creativity is concerned) Keep in mind, of course, that is not my place to tell anyone what SEN is for.
4. Seperate login and display names, unlimited name changes and laying down the law on those who abuse them for confusion or to be jerks or to be immature. Increased security from having login names known only to the person, plus if someone ends up getting their name changed by the staff, they still know their login name. (Alternatively, ability to log in via email address.) Either finish clan support (it's in "alpha") or just tell people to put their clan tags in their display names.
5. Notices were meant to disappear after awhile, much like how Facebook works notifications.
6. Make the SC1/SC2 choice an option instead of a division. Enable users to have BOTH enabled instead of just one.
7. Make most of the profile editing take place in simple Javascript/AJAX forms directly on a user's profile instead of in Settings.
8. I still favor having one skin that looks very nice, perhaps with some colorblind options and extremely basic width options for users with particularly wide/narrow resolutions. For a site that enables custom colors in many places, it also ensures less clashing with particular skins.
Forums1. I would be okay with some minimalization in the name of optimization and efficency. I don't see the need to have 125x125 avatars and user titles and name colors (so many custom colors but so many different skins, things get tough to mix.) and signatures and a bunch of other stuff on every post anymore. Reddit you get your name, flair applicable to the subreddit (forum or subforum around here), and the time of post, and post options; that's it. Gamefaqs you get a two line signature, no avatar, no fancy name stuff, etc. Leaving a comment on someone's profile on Steam or something gives you a 32px scaled down version of your avatar, your name, the date/time, and post options. I don't know how well the community will respond to such ideas, but while the personalization and customization and everything is great, but not necessary. I would like to see a focus on content and creation versus tooting our own horns, socialization, and distractions. Disclaimer from above still applies, I cannot dictate what SEN is for.
2. I am unsure if everyone is happy with the way large images are processed and viewed and otherwise handled.
3. A search function, seriously. Also, why does searching the site via Google return no results? Whoever disallowed Google bots from coming needs to undo that. site:
http://www.staredit.net test returns NOTHING whereas site:
http://v4.staredit.net test works perfectly. We used to be the #1 result for "staredit" on Google, now we're not even listed. (well, maybe v4 is but fix that shit.)
DLDB1. The DLDB needs a proper search and I have no idea why it's taken this long to get a solid and easy to use DLDB working properly. Currently I go to a seperate page and fill in: "Search file name file title for {map name}" = works correctly, "Submitted by: Moose" = SQL error, "Authored by: Moose" = no maps. This is a problem. Have a search bar at the top (not a seperate page) basic search that looks at titles, author name, and tags if we decide to use them. Then have a more advanced search in the search page with more powerful options.
At the start, what I told IP was to use tags for files much like Youtube did at the time. We got some frustrating bullshit search that didn't work and made things difficult to find. On top of that, the poor implementation of tags led to ambiguity about whether or not things like the map title and author's name should be tags when the search may or may not ONLY search tags for some reason. Then we did away with the tag system completely and moved to categories (I'm sorry, now it's category, sub-category, and sub-sub-category, WAT?) because nobody listened to me speaking about how it should've been done at the beginning. If you want an example similar to what I intended, I recently registered on
Nibbits to put copies of my maps up there. I was surprised that it works just about how I originally intended; on top of that, they have a huge DLDB for SC:BW, SC2, WC3, and D3 and it's easy to search and use. This is something that's long been frustrating and is not very complicated.
2. Why is registration required to download files? To prevent someone from sucking up all the bandwidth through file transfers? Okay, they can just do it via page loads or DDoS us instead so it's not exactly adding a layer of security. Log IPs if we must to track people for security but let anyone download things without superfluous accounts.
ShoutboxAs pointed out in other threads, if it makes every page take 15 seconds longer to load when enabled, something is terribly inefficient here. Automatic refreshes also miss things sometimes.
2. If you had to choose between a new CMS being used (i.e. vBulletin, Invision Board, phpBB, etc.) and the current SEN code, which would you prefer?
Running our own code is fantastic and of course preferred, but unfortunately it is not always very practical. I am not particular to either option due to the practicality issue. So we have some questions to deal with:
1. Is v5's code so bad that we cannot fix it or rewrite the most critical components? I can say I haven't put an extreme effort into doing so due to not having a very high level of motivation. It's an option worth considering because we can make an identical copy of v5 as a test server and then take the live site offline for a couple of minutes to port over large changes to the code here.
2. If we code v6 from scratch, do we have good people to code it?
3. If we get a CMS, do we have people who can customize it to our needs? Of course we're getting increased support paying for a license, but we can also pay a dedicated coder for supporting our own code.
3. If we migrated to a new CMS, how important would porting all old threads to the new forums be (as opposed to just keeping them archived like SEN v4)?
It is important to make sure nothing is lost. If we do clear everything out, we must ensure that SEN has a bright enough future to fill up a new everything.
Discussion of features is above.
5. Would SEN on a CMS feel like it isn't SEN even if it looked the exact same way it does now (skin-wise)?
It might with proper skinning, but in my opinion fuctionality trumps feel.
Post has been edited 6 time(s), last time on Jan 4 2013, 11:38 pm by Mini Moose 2707.