Mod forum

Members can make suggestions for improving the site and improving the forum as well as submit bug reports to be reviewed by our support team here.
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kestasjk
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Mod forum

#1 Post by kestasjk » Sun Oct 16, 2022 6:30 am

Hi all,

As part of the project to improve out mod systems here we've ported a change over from vDiplomacy.com , very grateful to Sleepcap for this feature.

It's just a simplified forum dedicated to interacting with the mod team. You can access it via https://webdiplomacy.net/modforum.php, or else Help > Mod Forum (not currently available in the forum menu, which isn't synced with the main site menu right now).

It's just a mod of the old forum code we used to be on with some extras. Features:
- Create new threads that only you and the mod team can see
- Associate a thread with a game
- A request type option for categorization
- Mods can reply to threads, and can require a reply so that the user will be shown the message entry screen no matter which page they are on, and will need to respond to continue using the site. This is to prevent delays or chasing people for responses.
- Threads can be set to Closed once done, and threads can be assigned to a particular moderator to take care of.

Any issues / thought let us know. Note that this part of a test to see if we can do without an e-mail account, so we are probably going to be using [email protected] steadily less. Doing it in site lets us manage permissions, keep things private, less following up, easy to add improvements.

But I know it's a nuisance but can I ask if you have a ticket in the [email protected] queue that you submit it to the new mod forum? I've looked but bulk e-mail exports with our tags isn't straightforward.

It has been used for a long time on vdiplomacy.com, but it's a fairly large modification so let me know if there are issues.

Thanks again to vdiplomacy.com for a well designed, easy to understand, integrate and change feature. Hope we can share some of the new background improvements we've been working on over the last week. I might send a push request to the webDip repo.
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Re: Mod forum

#2 Post by Peregrine Falcon » Sun Oct 16, 2022 1:54 pm

This is an awesome change! Should make modding much easier and more straightforward!
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Re: Mod forum

#3 Post by jmo1121109 » Mon Oct 17, 2022 2:41 pm

kestasjk wrote:
Sun Oct 16, 2022 6:30 am
Hi all,

As part of the project to improve out mod systems here we've ported a change over from vDiplomacy.com , very grateful to Sleepcap for this feature.

It's just a simplified forum dedicated to interacting with the mod team. You can access it via https://webdiplomacy.net/modforum.php, or else Help > Mod Forum (not currently available in the forum menu, which isn't synced with the main site menu right now).

It's just a mod of the old forum code we used to be on with some extras. Features:
- Create new threads that only you and the mod team can see
- Associate a thread with a game
- A request type option for categorization
- Mods can reply to threads, and can require a reply so that the user will be shown the message entry screen no matter which page they are on, and will need to respond to continue using the site. This is to prevent delays or chasing people for responses.
- Threads can be set to Closed once done, and threads can be assigned to a particular moderator to take care of.

Any issues / thought let us know. Note that this part of a test to see if we can do without an e-mail account, so we are probably going to be using [email protected] steadily less. Doing it in site lets us manage permissions, keep things private, less following up, easy to add improvements.

But I know it's a nuisance but can I ask if you have a ticket in the [email protected] queue that you submit it to the new mod forum? I've looked but bulk e-mail exports with our tags isn't straightforward.

It has been used for a long time on vdiplomacy.com, but it's a fairly large modification so let me know if there are issues.

Thanks again to vdiplomacy.com for a well designed, easy to understand, integrate and change feature. Hope we can share some of the new background improvements we've been working on over the last week. I might send a push request to the webDip repo.
Kestas, having worked as a mod on vDip for years as well I can say with 100% certainty that the tool is not scalable, not searchable, and 100% not feasible for webdip. This would destroy years of needed context and downgrade to a much more problematic tool. The vDip team also has to keep an email for a significant number of people who contact them that way anyways and are unable to get into the site. Having run the mod team for years before having to pull back I can't indicate how detrimental moving away from the email would be.
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Re: Mod forum

#4 Post by Jamiet99uk » Mon Oct 17, 2022 2:45 pm

But other than that, you love it, right Jmo?
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Re: Mod forum

#5 Post by Jamiet99uk » Mon Oct 17, 2022 2:51 pm

(Why wouldn't it be searchable, btw, if it's based on the forum? The forum is searchable, after all).
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Re: Mod forum

#6 Post by JECE » Mon Oct 17, 2022 2:59 pm

Jamiet99uk wrote:
Mon Oct 17, 2022 2:51 pm
(Why wouldn't it be searchable, btw, if it's based on the forum? The forum is searchable, after all).
It's based on the old Forum.
See my full Profile:
http://www.webdiplomacy.net/profile.php?userID=17421

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Re: Mod forum

#7 Post by Jamiet99uk » Mon Oct 17, 2022 3:59 pm

JECE wrote:
Mon Oct 17, 2022 2:59 pm
Jamiet99uk wrote:
Mon Oct 17, 2022 2:51 pm
(Why wouldn't it be searchable, btw, if it's based on the forum? The forum is searchable, after all).
It's based on the old Forum.
Oh shiiiit, so it is.
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Re: Mod forum

#8 Post by kestasjk » Tue Oct 18, 2022 9:24 am

jmo1121109 wrote:
Mon Oct 17, 2022 2:41 pm
Kestas, having worked as a mod on vDip for years as well I can say with 100% certainty that the tool is not scalable, not searchable, and 100% not feasible for webdip. This would destroy years of needed context and downgrade to a much more problematic tool. The vDip team also has to keep an email for a significant number of people who contact them that way anyways and are unable to get into the site. Having run the mod team for years before having to pull back I can't indicate how detrimental moving away from the email would be.
Yep we’ll definitely need a mod e-mail for people unable to access the site. I figure we’ll have the Group panel / relationship system for managing cheater accusations / meta-games / multi-accounters, the mod forum for pause/unpause requests, tournament issues, things like that, and an e-mail backup for people having trouble registering / logging in etc.

Things like requiring users to respond before they do anything else on the site was very useful when I recently went through a huge backlog of cheating accusations very quickly and efficiently, and I think the mod forum’s ability to require responses will be useful. If it doesn’t work we can just disable it, but I think it will be useful.

Good to see you around again btw! Definitely if you’re returning to being an active mod I’m sure that will make the e-mail based system work well just like it used to, but it hasn’t been working so well while you’ve been away so we’ve been trying a few things so the site needs less mod time.
Starting with cheater accusations and multi-accounters, which we’ve made decent progress with, then pause/unpause which we’re thinking about a few ideas like replacing pauses with process delays so that no game can be stuck in pause indefinitely.
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Re: Mod forum

#9 Post by kestasjk » Sat Oct 22, 2022 4:57 am

You know I’m using the mod forum and it’s not bad .. I like that it’s built right in, the reply requirement is handy, and I think it’s good use of the old forum code. Say I want to add a reminder feature so that I’ll be reminded to look at a post after a week I can just add it, but if it’s in a gmail account I need to log into I can’t add features in. I think the mod forum is promising so far.
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Re: Mod forum

#10 Post by jmo1121109 » Mon Oct 24, 2022 7:01 am

kestasjk wrote:
Sat Oct 22, 2022 4:57 am
You know I’m using the mod forum and it’s not bad .. I like that it’s built right in, the reply requirement is handy, and I think it’s good use of the old forum code. Say I want to add a reminder feature so that I’ll be reminded to look at a post after a week I can just add it, but if it’s in a gmail account I need to log into I can’t add features in. I think the mod forum is promising so far.
I mean, the old forum code was so bad it broke the entire site and we had to archive off entire sections. It's fine for the moment, but as it grows in usage to the ten thousand + cases we've handled over email, you're going to be missing context on players that is critical for modding properly. I'm not entirely opposed to an in site solution, but I am for any based on the old forum code.
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Re: Mod forum

#11 Post by JECE » Mon Oct 24, 2022 12:17 pm

Maybe there is a way to tag or otherwise filter results as an alternative to a true search?
See my full Profile:
http://www.webdiplomacy.net/profile.php?userID=17421

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Re: Mod forum

#12 Post by kestasjk » Tue Nov 08, 2022 1:32 pm

jmo1121109 wrote:
Mon Oct 24, 2022 7:01 am
kestasjk wrote:
Sat Oct 22, 2022 4:57 am
You know I’m using the mod forum and it’s not bad .. I like that it’s built right in, the reply requirement is handy, and I think it’s good use of the old forum code. Say I want to add a reminder feature so that I’ll be reminded to look at a post after a week I can just add it, but if it’s in a gmail account I need to log into I can’t add features in. I think the mod forum is promising so far.
I mean, the old forum code was so bad it broke the entire site and we had to archive off entire sections. It's fine for the moment, but as it grows in usage to the ten thousand + cases we've handled over email, you're going to be missing context on players that is critical for modding properly. I'm not entirely opposed to an in site solution, but I am for any based on the old forum code.
Well I think that's a bit unfair.. we did have to trim old forum posts for a while as an emergency measure I believe back when we were on shared hosting to alleviate load, but right now the old forum has everything going back to 2006 and runs fine:
https://webdiplomacy.net/forum.php?page-forum=1#

I'm sure the mod forum will never get that huge, and we can add search etc as needed. For me the ability to add features like that and have everything built in really helps. e.g. there are a lot of pause requests, so if I want to make that easier I can add menus to the mod forum requests to show info like whether the game has already been unpaused / drawn etc, or link straight to mod commands to add time etc.

Also bear in mind the cause of the locking etc that caused a lot of trouble on the server was mainly down to bots spamming requests with bad locking on wD_Games/wD_Members, and reliability rating calculations using wD_TurnDates. (Also the way this forum implements +1s is actually way, way less efficient than how the old forum did it.)


It's working well for vDip, and it seems to work well when I use it. I'm sure there's an element of what people are used to, and I'm sure there are advantages to using the gmail based approach, but think it's worth giving this approach a try and seeing how it goes for the time being.
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Re: Mod forum

#13 Post by Jamiet99uk » Sat Nov 19, 2022 12:58 pm

Another small issue with this feature is that it demands you enter a "Game Reference" even when you are trying to report, for example, an issue with the Forum that is not related to a particular game.

"Game Ref" should be made a non-mandatory field. Easily tweaked, I'm sure.
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Re: Mod forum

#14 Post by JECE » Sat Nov 19, 2022 1:09 pm

Jamiet99uk wrote:
Sat Nov 19, 2022 12:58 pm
Easily tweaked, I'm sure.
Definitely, it's a tweak that Kestas added in the first place. That's not on of the vDip ModForum.
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