How can we make the 405th great?

Art Andrews · Jul 11, 2014

As mentioned elsewhere, we are very excited to be managing this community! We think it has a tremendous amount of potential and want to see it grow and flourish, but we need YOUR help to do that! This thread is for posting your thoughts and ideas about 1) existing changes as they are made and 2) changes you would like to see made.

Please bear in mind that there is only a handful of us and 10s of thousands of you, so we may not respond to every post or comment on every idea but we WILL read and consider every idea, comment and even criticism. Some things we should be able to implement quickly and easily while others may take time or not be feasible at all. Be patient with us as we already have a tremendous backlog of things that need to be done, but one-by-one, we will get to them.

NoMaybeYes · Aug 21, 2014

I know its a bit off topic to reconstructing the how to section (Which im all for) but I was wondering about the tiny banners underneath a username. such as Staff, Librarian, and Regiments. Would it be trouble to add more banners of that type and to have more than one? I was thinking of something along the lines of some that meets certain requirements. Like a Elite banner for having a thread in that section, a modeler banner for having say 10 files modeled from either scratch or refined game rips, and an unfolding tab for having 10 unfolds completed. Right now there really isn't any way to tell if someone does that unless you happen to find their thread.

Art Andrews · Aug 22, 2014

NoMaybeYes said:
I know its a bit off topic to reconstructing the how to section (Which im all for) but I was wondering about the tiny banners underneath a username. such as Staff, Librarian, and Regiments. Would it be trouble to add more banners of that type and to have more than one? I was thinking of something along the lines of some that meets certain requirements. Like a Elite banner for having a thread in that section, a modeler banner for having say 10 files modeled from either scratch or refined game rips, and an unfolding tab for having 10 unfolds completed. Right now there really isn't any way to tell if someone does that unless you happen to find their thread.

I suspect, especially as we continue to grow and as the club aspect comes more into play you will indeed see more of those. Right now, the banners are primarily a tool to 1) let people know who the staff are so they know who they can go to if they need help, 2) let people know who the primarily contributers are to the file archive, again, so they can reach out to those people if they need help with the file archive, and 3) to promote the regiments and club. These are more purpose driven banners. For achievements, we are likely to install some type of awards/achievement system that adds small medals as opposed to additional banners.

WandererTJ · Aug 22, 2014

Personally, I would limit the upper banner to 1 with the exception of the Staff.
As things are already, I feel as though that those that have 2 (staff and regiment) seems like a bit much, but for the staff I'm okay with it.
It would kind've be nice to have a hybrid one that fits in one line for the staff/regiment combo, but I feel like that might be hard to pull off successfully.

I would still like to see us eventually earn our Spartan Numbers underneath our Avatar and maybe a banner/bar for our top 5 noteworthy achievements or something.
Art Andrews, we can continue discussing that topic if you'd like. I'm not sure if I've ever heard back what your thoughts were on the topic.

Art Andrews · Aug 22, 2014

WandererTJ said:
It would kind've be nice to have a hybrid one that fits in one line for the staff/regiment combo, but I feel like that might be hard to pull off successfully.

VERY hard to pull off with the limited space. We basically have 130 px by 24 px to work with. Trying to get text into that space is tough.

WandererTJ said:
I would still like to see us eventually earn our Spartan Numbers underneath our Avatar and maybe a banner/bar for our top 5 noteworthy achievements or something.
@Art Andrews, we can continue discussing that topic if you'd like. I'm not sure if I've ever heard back what your thoughts were on the topic.

LOL. And here I was thinking I was waiting on you regarding that!

You will surely see some types of awards/achievements at some point in the future, but honestly it is going to be a very low priority until all the club stuff is complete.

You will also see numbers, but... well... yeah. That is probably going to cause a good deal of controversy and I am just not looking forward to it.

RobotChicken · Aug 25, 2014

Would it be possible to add a button to the basic reply toolbar for Mention tags? It's easier to use the toolbar tags than typing them out, and the Mention tags should be more accessible than having to go into More Reply Options.

Art Andrews · Aug 25, 2014

RobotChicken said:
Would it be possible to add a button to the basic reply toolbar for Mention tags? It's easier to use the toolbar tags than typing them out, and the Mention tags should be more accessible than having to go into More Reply Options.

Let me ask our coder.

WandererTJ · Aug 27, 2014

Art Andrews said:
Let me ask our coder.

Could Increase Indent also be added to the quick reply bar?

Master Builder · Aug 27, 2014

It would be nice to have the outline around the page indicating squares to be a little darker.

I keep thinking there is nothing there at all, just floating text.

Also possible adding a squares around the "post reply", "more reply options" and "cancel" buttons.

Art Andrews · Aug 27, 2014

Master Builder said:
It would be nice to have the outline around the page indicating squares to be a little darker.

I keep thinking there is nothing there at all, just floating text.

Not sure I follow. Can you post a pic of what you are referring to?

Master Builder said:
Also possible adding a squares around the "post reply", "more reply options" and "cancel" buttons.

To a large degree, you don't see actual buttons anymore... just text as it is more simple and clean. That is what you are seeing here as well.

Zaff · Aug 27, 2014

Art Andrews said:
Not sure I follow. Can you post a pic of what you are referring to?

I think perhaps MB is referring to how there isn't much contrast between the "backdrop" grey and the "post box" lighter grey on their screen. Depending on an individual's brightness, contrast, and color settings, these two shades, already only subtly different from each other, become indistinguishable from each other, so everything seems to blend together. If I understand correctly, I think the suggestion is for either a less subtle difference in shades between the two, or for a different color altogether for the background to give it more of a defined contrast. Obviously nobody wants anything too drastic because we don't want it to be an eyesore, just something with a little more contrast. Right now we basically just have four shades of grey. Dark grey backdrop, slightly lighter grey toolbar (like, report, comment, etc), slightly lighter still "member ID card," and the even lighter grey for where the text of the post sits. On some monitors any combination of those shades may become indistinguishable from each other, making it appear, as MB said, like "just floating text." As cool as it would be to give individuals the option to customize the color scheme, either as preset themes or give them a set number of colors they can choose between for each element, I'd imagine a feature like that would be very low on the priority list, if it would even register at all. "It's not even on our radar at this time" I think is your usual response to the less urgent and cosmetic suggestions, being that there are still bigger fish to fry, such as the "club" and keeping watch on the rapid growth of regiments.

WandererTJ · Aug 27, 2014

Zaff said:
I think perhaps MB is referring to how there isn't much contrast between the "backdrop" grey and the "post box" lighter grey on their screen.
-snip-

This.
Darker Background please.
I've been thinking the same thing, I just try not to make too many demands on Art each day

Also, the border around the "Online Now" bubble is now slightly cutting off the bubble on particular zoom levels.
(Right edge of the outer border)

AI Blue Fox · Aug 27, 2014

I have a suggestion. What about weekly announcements on the front page? instead of making new threads that usually consist of one post by Art, why don't we just have a little message box syaing "Hey! Heres a new feature! check it out!" or "Have fun at dragon con! represent!"

Art Andrews · Aug 27, 2014

We might be able to go just a hair darker with the body background (the mid background that is between the blue grid and the content). Will take a look later this evening.

Art Andrews · Aug 27, 2014

AI Blue Fox said:
I have a suggestion. What about weekly announcements on the front page? instead of making new threads that usually consist of one post by Art, why don't we just have a little message box syaing "Hey! Heres a new feature! check it out!" or "Have fun at dragon con! represent!"

We have tried this approach before and for reasons that are never clear to me, it is generally viewed as "spammy" so we just do it like this.

Art Andrews · Aug 27, 2014

Background darkened to create greater contrast.

RobotChicken · Aug 27, 2014

Art Andrews said:
Background darkened to create greater contrast.

Looks great on my screen!

Master Builder · Aug 27, 2014

Not sure I follow. Can you post a pic of what you are referring to?

Sorry about that. I didn't realize how unclear I was until I read it now.
This isn't even a good example, sorry if you don't follow, it's not that big a deal.

mainly I think that there should be some sort of line or box (like you have) to be on all the buttons to show that there is something separating them. And I find that the outlining boxes around the page number strip is hard to see when not hovering over it.

Art Andrews · Aug 27, 2014

We should be able to darken the pagination boxes pretty easily. Let me see about adding seperators for the buttons.

Art Andrews · Aug 27, 2014

Pagination border darkened. It was actually not bad, but when we darkened the body background that made it all but disappear.

WandererTJ · Aug 28, 2014

Art Andrews said:
We have tried this approach before and for reasons that are never clear to me, it is generally viewed as "spammy" so we just do it like this.

To be honest, Trueachievements.com has that feature, and a few of us have already mentioned it as something we would like to see here, but I agree that it can seem spammy.

On Trueachievements.com, there is a notification that stays up until you click on Site News and go to the page, then it goes away.
I would absolutely love it if the majority of the notifications weren't just Podcasts at least 50% of the time rather than actually being relevant to site changes and such.
If I could disable the notification for certain types of Site News it would be great.

Having something like this in our Settings for Site News would be outstanding:

☑ Upcoming Server Maintenance / Site Down Warnings
☑ Site Change
☑ Site Poll
☐ Podcasts
☑ Upcoming Event Information

That is assuming we eventually do something like that.

How can we make the 405th great?

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