Where EC went wrong

[wordman]

Vent here about what was wrong with the EC and suggest corrections. This does not mean problems with the community or the content, but rather the site itself. To me, what prevented it from being great was this:

1. Nearly all of the design was geared towards the input and editing of data, but almost no thought, design or effort was put into how the data would be used. This was backwards. The design should start with how users can get the most of out of the data and everything else building on that. A site geared towards data use would do things similar to the following:
   • Construction of personal lists of data using complex queries on things like author, rating, type, etc.
     
   • Being able to add records at random into something similar to "playlists", both from the queries above or ad hoc.
     
   • Ability to render these "playlists" into PDF, XML or ASCII. In other words, make your own books containing just the stuff you like.
     
   • Ability to completely prevent things from being shown to you based on some criterion. For example, maybe you ignore all charms with a rating less than a certain value or all forum entries written by a particular author. Basically, some way that you can keep what you consider noise out of your way.
     
   • There should be a number of "popular" playlists that have pre-generated PDFs. For example, "all solar charms", "highest rated lunar charms", etc.

[*]Comments on content items were rendered infuriating by virtue of them being shown only one at a time. It's no wonder the site had bandwidth problems, given that this practice forced the user to refresh a page numerous times for only a slight difference in output. Just show all the comments at once.


[*]The rating system was tantalizingly close to being useful, but wasn't. I've expanded upon this idea in another thread.


[*]The code was closed. Had it been opened, the resurrection of the site we are planning here would be much nearer to completion. The code for this site (or, at least the parts that aren't phpbb) should be published in some format, preferably as a Source Forge project.


[*]The data was closed. Had it been opened, the resurrection of the site we are planning here would be almost done. The data should be periodically archived in some public place, even if it is just an ASCII file.


[*]The HTML of the site was pretty bad. In particular, it's evident allergy to using height and width tags on images made the rendering jump all over the place as the page downloaded.


[*]The "only see the charms of the skin you are using" was just stupid and lazy. The data and functionality should be the same (allowing browsing of all charm schools) regardless of the skin. That's why its called a "skin".


[*]The bandwidth limitations the site suffered were beyond stupid. At least three hosting companies offered a minimum of ten times the bandwidth of EC's host, for less money.


[*]Goes without saying, but a number of the sections (like link submission) simply didn't work.


[*]In the charm section, Martial Arts was treated like the other abilities and it bogged down the interface. Martial Arts should probably be treated specially. In particular, they should not be lumped in with particular types of exalts, but listed as Terrestrial, Celestial and Sidereal (more similar to how sorcery would be organized).

 

[Joseph]

All pretty good suggestions, really, with the possible exception of the rating's related suggestions.


Admittedly, that is coming from the position of one who believes ratings on these sites that are done by anyone and everyone both will never be and cannot be useful or relied upon. I've seen too many good things rated poorly or too many bad things rated well to ever truly rely upon the ratings of faceless others on these sites.


Of course, I could also ignore the rating system if it DID exist, so it is not a particularly big deal to me either way. I just happen to think it is not truly worthy of being coded in. The rest of the suggestions seem great though, if they are accomplishable (I have no idea how easily most of this can be done).

 

[Persell]

Is this because of an overabundace of perfect scores? I've found most ratings systems online quickly become worthless when everybody votes 10.


There are initially four ways I can think of to counter this: Fistly, we can assign voting rights only to members who prove their capacity to understand a rating system. There could be a little disclaimer you have to click through to gain permission to vote, which would then give us the right to tell fooliosh children to be quiet. the only problem is, the people who vote ten out of ten on anything they don't immediately hate tend to just click through these things.


We could assign a special "Reviewer" status to those of us who work on the project, or have proven our competence. This could either be a seperate "real" ladder, or the only ladder. The problem Ic an see with this is that it encourages badge collecting; every idiot AIM teenager will want to be a Reviewer.


We could play around with mathematics and code until we find a system whereby someone who consistantly votes either zero, nine or ten out of ten has their votes devalued overall. This would probably be the most subtle, but it devalues the system overall - it would smell to much like ballot fixing.


We could happily place special "Shame" banners on those who consistantly vote stupidly. In fact, I reccommend we have an entire selection of botch banners for forum idiots. Those who botch their social rolls can be given an icon of pantless glory; those who fail at the english language or stutter in AIM lingo have their posts edited to "I like to molest small boys", et al. Just make sure we mention that one on the signup page.

 

[wordman]

I have no idea how easily most of this can be done

None of these suggestions are particularly difficult to build, though a few (the playlist feature and rendering to PDF) would be time-consuming.

 

[Flagg]

None of these suggestions are particularly difficult to build, though a few (the playlist feature and rendering to PDF) would be time-consuming.

Did you just volunteer?


-S

 

[wordman]

Is this because of an overabundace of perfect scores? I've found most ratings systems online quickly become worthless when everybody votes 10.

I've responded to this in the thread specifically about rating systems.

 

[Joseph]

Is this because of an overabundace of perfect scores? I've found most ratings systems online quickly become worthless when everybody votes 10.

The old Compendium actually didn't have all that many 10s. The few people who regularly rated had pretty consistent systems by which they judged, which led to fairly even breakdowns on many things, since many things were only ever rated by a few people.


Then you'd get random bullshit where less reasonable people would rate, and end up with some really erratic results on certain submissions.

There are initially four ways I can think of to counter this: Fistly' date=' we can assign voting rights only to members who prove their capacity to understand a rating system. There could be a little disclaimer you have to click through to gain permission to vote, which would then give us the right to tell fooliosh children to be quiet. the only problem is, the people who vote ten out of ten on anything they don't immediately hate tend to just click through these things. [/quote']
If anyone could ever be judged to "understand the standards" well enough, no more than one rater would actually be required. To that extent this system seems flawed; if people can actually adhere to a consistent system and agree based on it, then only one is needed. If they can't, why are we letting them vote and not others? As such, I do not think this unegalitarian style of voting would work well.

We could assign a special "Reviewer" status to those of us who work on the project' date=' or have proven our competence. This could either be a seperate "real" ladder, or the only ladder. The problem Ic an see with this is that it encourages badge collecting; every idiot AIM teenager will want to be a Reviewer. [/quote']
Sounds like a more restrictive version of the above.

We could play around with mathematics and code until we find a system whereby someone who consistantly votes either zero' date=' nine or ten out of ten has their votes devalued overall. This would probably be the most subtle, but it devalues the system overall - it would smell to much like ballot fixing.[/quote']
This sounds both almost impossible to reasonably enact, and unfair. If someone votes highly often, maybe they're just voting on quality things.

We could happily place special "Shame" banners on those who consistantly vote stupidly. In fact' date=' I reccommend we have an entire selection of botch banners for forum idiots. Those who botch their social rolls can be given an icon of pantless glory; those who fail at the english language or stutter in AIM lingo have their posts edited to "I like to molest small boys", et al. Just make sure we mention that one on the signup page.[/quote']
I'm all for criticism and ridicule of the stupid, but I do not think people should have their accounts "branded" due to their stupidity, it just seems harsh and unreasonable.


Taking away voting priveledges from someone like "That Guy" who constantly rates 0 with no actual commentary on the submissions is one thing. Posting "Dummy Head" next to his name so it shows up everytime he posts or votes is silly.


If we DO keep a voting system (and I still don't see much of a reason for one to exist, personally), it should probably be much like the Compendiums, but with more than one word summing up what each rank of vote means.

 

[psychoph]

I was thinking a really cool programic thing that might help storytellers out woudl be taking the charm card idea produced by I think Whitewolf and expanding it into a program where you can select what charms you want to print out then it gnerates a pdf file you cna print out and cut out for your game.  


I haven't run a game as of yet so i am not sure if Charm cards are all that helpful but a database or xml file that lists a bunch fo the charms and allows people to pick and choose could be helpful.

 

[psychoph]

The problem with group rating systems imo is that they are subjective at best and undefined at worst.  In order to have a true trating system you need some way to quantify information across the board.  Which seems to mean for a lot of place that you have categories that you use to rate a subject and then a way to weight each of the categoies as it applies to the item.


I would say when it comes to submissions you would have to split submissions into categories, such as stories, charms, weapons, artifacts, and so on.


For like an artifact you could split the categories along the lines of the Sorcer and Savant creation rules for an artifact.  Then a authorized person could list the artifact out in those areas and come up with a artifact score similar to the vcalue in a game.  From a review stand point I am not sure and artifact needs many other categories other then things like viability within a game, story potential and maybe a few others.


I woudl say that you probably want to do a two part system of a closed review for the site and maybe a forum review or coments.  That way you have an officail reeiview of a submission and an area for peopel to post their own reviews.

 

[ashenphoenix]

Project management ahoy!


Just thought I'd post through a standard framework for Project management, so we can clearly define areas we need to look at. I've gakked this from another post I did for a net project, so sorry if some of it seems out of context.


===============================================


Quality - What standards are we aiming for?


Does the disclaimer on swearing apply to articles?


What about the forums?


How will we rate stuff?


etc..


Scope - What is inside the bounds of the project?


What is outside the bounds of the EC²?


What are we not going to do? Why?


What will we do? Why?


Time - What important things do we need to know for timing?


How long do we plan on EC² lasting?


How long will this startup phase of decision making last?


Should we define formal phases for other things (site graphics competition, etc)?


Cost - How much will EC² cost to run, and who's paying?


Why are they paying?


What other options are there, and why aren't we taking them?


Human Resources - Who's doing the work? Why?


Who's telling them what to do? Why?


Can this be better managed? Why/why not?


What are the boundaries of their authority?


Communications - What and How do people find relevant and clear information.


What can be done to improve this?


How do people find this site?


Risk - Working out whether potential gain is worth the potential loss.


I was always terrible at this?


What happens if we do it wrong?


How can it go wrong?


What can we do better?


What was wrong with the EC¹? Why?


What wasn't? Why?


Procurement - Getting stuff.


How do we get members/sumbission/etc?


Integration - Fitting all the PM aspects together.


What made EC¹ tick?


How can we recreate this?


etc


I tend to be bad on Project Management, because I'm great


at starting stuff and terrible about finishing. I can probably do some theoretical advisory if people want it, but actual practical management I'm terrible at.

 

[ashenphoenix]

Dammit.


phpBB doesn't support the superscript tag.

 

[Flagg]

Dammit.
phpBB doesn't support the superscript tag.

It ^{does now}


-S

 

[ashenphoenix]

None of these suggestions are particularly difficult to build, though a few (the playlist feature and rendering to PDF) would be time-consuming.

Many of the CMSs have these built in, or availiable as plugins.


The PDF renderer for Mambo wasn't brilliant, but that was a version and a half ago, and a lots changed since then.

 

[ashenphoenix]

It ^{does now}


-S

Sorted.


Now I can perpetuate the horrible Something² movie tagline.

 

[Flagg]

Sorted.
Now I can perpetuate the horrible Something² movie tagline.

While we're on the subject: Are there any other special requests for allowed HTML tags?


The following are currently enabled

• bi,u,pre,img,a,sup

-S

 

[Flagg]

Re: Project management ahoy!

Cost - How much will EC² cost to run, and who's paying?
Why are they paying?


What other options are there, and why aren't we taking them?

For the time being, I'm paying.


That means $35 a month for the broadband connection, $40 a year for domian registration and DNS service, and a few dollars monthly for the electricity.


A lot of those expenses would be paid by me wether this site existed or not, as I use the server for other purposes as well, but it's still over $500/year out-of-pocket.


I wouldn't mind taking donations, like the old EC did, to let you guys share some of the expense. The only problem is that the WW legal terms for running a fan site insist that the site not generate any revenue. I'm not sure what the legal limits of that rule are. The EC got away with it. Maybe I should email WW legal about it.


Luckily, the server, all the hardware in it, and all the software it runs were aquired by me for zero cost


-S

 

[ashenphoenix]

Please


sub, h1..4 (maybe even 6, but I've never gotten to that level), both types of lists (numbered/ordered and bulletted/unordered - not sure which we have in play), I was thinking of using <hr>, and you spoke of using forms (which I've never played with, ever).


Dear Celestial Incarna no!


tables would create havok (please don't), frames can die (if they're allowed by phpBB).

 

[ashenphoenix]

Headings would be the main ones.


They can be simulated, but in terms of grouping info for later use...


Maybe also the addition of strikethrough if we can.


May be useful for tracking tasks, etc.

 

[Flagg]

Headings would be the main ones.
They can be simulated, but in terms of grouping info for later

I added sub, strike, and div. I also removed img, because I relaized that BBCode already handles that.


I don't see what the header tags can accoplish that BBCode doesn't allow already?


-S

 

[ashenphoenix]

I don't see what the header tags can accoplish that BBCode doesn't allow already?

Was more thinking ahead to possibly being able to pull them into some form of indexed pdf or database.


If there's heading, it gives us sections while, while we could do it manually, will take far longer if we have to retrofit font tags twice (on the posibility that they may have applied bold, then size, size then bold, italics, etc) depending the number of levels people have included in the post.


If you have to hand-code it, it may not be worth it, but if it's just a plugin, then why not?