Some gripes & suggestions in regards to ModDB website Thread

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Some gripes & suggestions in regards to ModDB website (Forums : Suggestions : Some gripes & suggestions in regards to ModDB website)	Locked
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Starkku	Dec 3 2012 Anchor
Been hanging around this place for a few years now. While I have to say that I find the entire concept of this network and everything that DesuraNET does for mod & game development community nothing short of amazing, I do think there is room for some improvements. Following is a list of things that I could write off top of my head. Replying to comments by guests: Something we cannot do at the moment as far as I know. Not a huge issue, considering you can still sort of reply by just posting your own comment after the said guest ones. Obviously this isn't as clear as the way replies in comment sections are currently arranged nor very consistent with it, which could even cause some confusion in certain situations. No 'Delete' functionality on Features: This is probably my biggest gripe with the current ModDB website. I guess the reason for this is that things like being featured in MOTY and what not add articles to the features list of your project, for an example, and letting the project admins delete those could cause issues. My solution for this sounds rather simple: You only let the person who posted the article in first place delete it. Could save you from some headache, if you have used the functionality to post articles on the features of your project for an example, and in future the said features have become obsolete to the point of rendering the article void and null. No hashtag filtering in Twitter feeds: Admittedly this isn't a very common feature with things like this, to the point that the website widget offered by Twitter itself does not have the aforementioned functionality, nor there is any straightforward and reliable way to do it with their API. One would need to go through the effort of fetching some/all of users tweets and manually filter them according to the hashtag choices, a solution not without it's own problems. That said, this would certainly be very useful for people who use same Twitter account to tweet about their projects and other things, and wouldn't want to display the miscellanneous & unrelated tweets on their feed that appears on the project page. Not expecting any immediate changes (especially in regards to point #3) or anything. Just writing my thoughts on things. Maybe some of these have been brought up before, I wouldn't know. Crawling through the forums & search results to see if that is the case does not sound very appealing to me right now.
Henley the sun never sets on the eternally cool	Dec 3 2012 Anchor
Hey allow me to clarify a few things. You cannot reply to a guest comment unless it has been approved by our community or staff. When it is red (greeen on indiedb and yellow on slidedb) that means it has yet to be approved. Once it reaches enough positive votes or "hams" then it will act like a regular comment and you can reply easily enough. Depending on how long you have been a member and how active you have been your votes on how legitimate the comment is will be more. For example when I see a good comment my singular upvote is worth the maximum 10 points (I am the most active on the site afterall) and the comment will be live after my one point. Other members will be between 1-10 points. I do not really follow your wish to delete features what exactly are you trying to delete? The twitter functionality is interesting as we implemented it in such a way that is not really standard. To be honest every hour we call hundreds of thousands of twitter feeds to get updates, I am not sure how we would build hashtags into that or how duplicated twitter posts would work. There is a lot more going into something so simple then you could think about on the first pass. Most of these updates just come around because I get fed up working with the site, but we always happy to listen to any ideas the community has. --
Starkku	Dec 4 2012 Anchor
Ah, so that's what the vote system on comments made by guests is for. I just don't remember seeing any approved guest comments, so that's probably why I wasn't really aware of such system. What am I trying to delete? Any article that appears on the 'Features' tab of my project. I just find it little bizarre that those lack the 'Delete' button, while news stories, images etc. have that. I suppose there has to be some reason for it being the way it is. Well I was aware that implementing hashtag filtering to the Twitter feeds could be easier said than done. I don't think it's absolutely necessary though, just something that could be useful in certain cases, like the one I outlined in my above post. That said, if the payoff is not proportional to the work & cost of implementing it, then obviously it shouldn't be done.
Henley the sun never sets on the eternally cool	Dec 5 2012 Anchor
Starkku wrote: Ah, so that's what the vote system on comments made by guests is for. I just don't remember seeing any approved guest comments, so that's probably why I wasn't really aware of such system. What am I trying to delete? Any article that appears on the 'Features' tab of my project. I just find it little bizarre that those lack the 'Delete' button, while news stories, images etc. have that. I suppose there has to be some reason for it being the way it is. Well I was aware that implementing hashtag filtering to the Twitter feeds could be easier said than done. I don't think it's absolutely necessary though, just something that could be useful in certain cases, like the one I outlined in my above post. That said, if the payoff is not proportional to the work & cost of implementing it, then obviously it shouldn't be done. Well our twitter integration is hardly traditional given the absurd amount of API calls we do in a single hour. I deleted the two archived articles but the others were already deleted so I have no idea what you are talking about. --

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Starkku

Dec 3 2012 Anchor

Been hanging around this place for a few years now. While I have to say that I find the entire concept of this network and everything that DesuraNET does for mod & game development community nothing short of amazing, I do think there is room for some improvements. Following is a list of things that I could write off top of my head.

Replying to comments by guests: Something we cannot do at the moment as far as I know. Not a huge issue, considering you can still sort of reply by just posting your own comment after the said guest ones. Obviously this isn't as clear as the way replies in comment sections are currently arranged nor very consistent with it, which could even cause some confusion in certain situations.
No 'Delete' functionality on Features: This is probably my biggest gripe with the current ModDB website. I guess the reason for this is that things like being featured in MOTY and what not add articles to the features list of your project, for an example, and letting the project admins delete those could cause issues. My solution for this sounds rather simple: You only let the person who posted the article in first place delete it. Could save you from some headache, if you have used the functionality to post articles on the features of your project for an example, and in future the said features have become obsolete to the point of rendering the article void and null.
No hashtag filtering in Twitter feeds: Admittedly this isn't a very common feature with things like this, to the point that the website widget offered by Twitter itself does not have the aforementioned functionality, nor there is any straightforward and reliable way to do it with their API. One would need to go through the effort of fetching some/all of users tweets and manually filter them according to the hashtag choices, a solution not without it's own problems. That said, this would certainly be very useful for people who use same Twitter account to tweet about their projects and other things, and wouldn't want to display the miscellanneous & unrelated tweets on their feed that appears on the project page.

Not expecting any immediate changes (especially in regards to point #3) or anything. Just writing my thoughts on things. Maybe some of these have been brought up before, I wouldn't know. Crawling through the forums & search results to see if that is the case does not sound very appealing to me right now.

Henley the sun never sets on the eternally cool

Dec 3 2012 Anchor

Hey allow me to clarify a few things.

You cannot reply to a guest comment unless it has been approved by our community or staff. When it is red (greeen on indiedb and yellow on slidedb) that means it has yet to be approved. Once it reaches enough positive votes or "hams" then it will act like a regular comment and you can reply easily enough. Depending on how long you have been a member and how active you have been your votes on how legitimate the comment is will be more. For example when I see a good comment my singular upvote is worth the maximum 10 points (I am the most active on the site afterall) and the comment will be live after my one point. Other members will be between 1-10 points.

I do not really follow your wish to delete features what exactly are you trying to delete?

The twitter functionality is interesting as we implemented it in such a way that is not really standard. To be honest every hour we call hundreds of thousands of twitter feeds to get updates, I am not sure how we would build hashtags into that or how duplicated twitter posts would work. There is a lot more going into something so simple then you could think about on the first pass.

Most of these updates just come around because I get fed up working with the site, but we always happy to listen to any ideas the community has.

--

Starkku

Dec 4 2012 Anchor

Ah, so that's what the vote system on comments made by guests is for. I just don't remember seeing any approved guest comments, so that's probably why I wasn't really aware of such system.

What am I trying to delete? Any article that appears on the 'Features' tab of my project. I just find it little bizarre that those lack the 'Delete' button, while news stories, images etc. have that. I suppose there has to be some reason for it being the way it is.

Well I was aware that implementing hashtag filtering to the Twitter feeds could be easier said than done. I don't think it's absolutely necessary though, just something that could be useful in certain cases, like the one I outlined in my above post. That said, if the payoff is not proportional to the work & cost of implementing it, then obviously it shouldn't be done.

Henley the sun never sets on the eternally cool

Dec 5 2012 Anchor

Starkku wrote: Ah, so that's what the vote system on comments made by guests is for. I just don't remember seeing any approved guest comments, so that's probably why I wasn't really aware of such system.

What am I trying to delete? Any article that appears on the 'Features' tab of my project. I just find it little bizarre that those lack the 'Delete' button, while news stories, images etc. have that. I suppose there has to be some reason for it being the way it is.

Well I was aware that implementing hashtag filtering to the Twitter feeds could be easier said than done. I don't think it's absolutely necessary though, just something that could be useful in certain cases, like the one I outlined in my above post. That said, if the payoff is not proportional to the work & cost of implementing it, then obviously it shouldn't be done.

Well our twitter integration is hardly traditional given the absurd amount of API calls we do in a single hour. I deleted the two archived articles but the others were already deleted so I have no idea what you are talking about.

--