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"Understand the Past, Gain the Future": Dustloop Revamp General

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My take.  This is going to feel like a rant, perhaps.

 

I feel that it is necessary for there to be a place to get to know each other. Having good, reasonable discussion becomes much more possible when the parties involved know each other and respect each other. The standard thing for most people to do on the internet, when someone disagrees with someone else, is to shit on them. I've seen it many times before, and most people, including myself, are guilty of it. The old character general threads fostered a sense of community that brought what the people of this site desire along with it. The gameplay portions of the Tsubaki character forum were very active as well. Was the content there the best. No. Was it better than it is now. Yes. 

 

Groups were terrible.  The issue wasn't that people couldn't find them. The issue was that the synergy was lost.  If you went to the group to talk with some people, you didn't go to the forum with the gameplay threads at the same time, and you didn't contribute to gameplay threads at the same. You were just in this place for offtalk conversation. Useless, same as the chat feature.  When groups were lost completely with a forum upgrade, noone really cared. Groups were really dead at that point. The other thing that came along with that was the changes to the user/profile 'walls' which made them useless as well. You get a notification when someone posts on your wall.  You don't get a notification if someone replies to your post, or vice versa. Gotta start a new conversation for the other person to get a notification. RIP social interaction.

 

I started my twitter to interact with the japanese scene, and get information from them. As more changes were made to the site to make this place less and less usable to stay in touch with friends, as the site changed to make it impossible to make friends, I switched to using Twitter more. Twitter was probably headed this way anyway. But I actively sought to get people on here to use twitter, in direct reaction to policy changes, crackdowns, etc.

 

I also felt that soft aspects like social interaction were what kept some of our top players here and contributing. From a gameplay aspect, this site really has close to nothing to offer to people at a high level. With only gameplay left on the site there's little reasons for top players to come here, because it is beneath their level. Which lowers it further, and we've got a nasty cycle in place.

 

The BB news/gameplay thread has been historically the worst thread on the site.  It's visited by the most people, and most of those people don't know or respect each other. There's also, in some ways, an abnormal sense of privilege from a lot of people to never be questioned on virtue of their having played the game at a major. What happens when SKD and LK disagree with each other? I'm sure it happens.  I don't SKD says I'm the best izayoi in america to which LK says well I'm the best person that used to play Litchi. then maybe SG chimes in to say no I'm the best person that used to play Litchi.  Yeah, probably won't happen because these people respect each other. 

 

Sometimes people complaining about the general thread are correct.  Sometimes they are just complaining. The reality is that even among top players people sometimes have some crazy ideas. Top players get salty and think/say some crazy things.  People can be wrong, it doesn't mean that people should be shit all over.  If you're going to do that, wait until they've repeatedly said stuff that is wrong and really aren't contributing much.

 

We want to talk about TD, and the 'problems' he caused. TD is, fundamentally, a very strong player. If you can't respect him, YOU are part of the problem. There's no excuse for dogpiling on him for having a different opinion. SKD strongly believed in the opposite opinion, that Relius has some of the best mixup in the game. That's fine. The dogpiling from everyone else was frankly disgusting. Takes real courage to do that after SKD's post......  Not long after this event, I saw almost the same thing implied by N-O, that relius' mixup is 'decent at best'. I'm sorry, but dogpiling on someone after SKD has opened them up doesn't make you a better player than them, and it certainly doesn't make you a better player than N-O. N-O is easily, hands down, the most prolific person on twitter for actual BB gameplay that I've seen. A literal fountain of knowledge. People can say things that are wrong. HAVE SOME RESPECT.

 

PART TWO

 

What do we do now? I don't know... Twitter has taken over a lot of the social aspects.  People treat each other so much better on twitter.  I guess in part because twitter is self-selecting. If someone doesn't want to deal with you, they generally won't. There's, to my eye, a lot less discussion between people who hate each other because the medium doesn't force you on each other like the forum does.

So, I don't think that trying to have offtopic threads and that kind of stuff is likely to do very much at this point.  The exodus from dustloop has already taken place.  I agree with the idea of trying to integrate better with stuff like twitter... That said, I haven't spent much time on reddit, so I don't know what to say about that particular suggestion. I associate 2 things with reddit though - Lots of people use it, and lots of people think it is terrible.  That might be ok. The most important thing might be to get as many people on here as possible - Perhaps to grow the scene as much as possible.

To me, the fundamental flaw with the wiki and wiki-based approaches is that I value the wiki for the factual content it has.  Lot of that is frame data and other information ripped from the mook. Much of the things that are really important depend too much on source, to me. Discussion is also important. I've heard it said that people have gone here only to find out later that they had to unlearn things or whatever.  I don't see the wiki being any different. You're not going to magically get brkrdv to start editing the Rachel wiki.

I *strongly* agree that the forum is too large for reasonable discussion to take place. There are, I think, 406 different matchups. and I think in the current format we would have 784 threads for matchups.  It is difficult though, because there really are many different matchups, and they are often unique.  I like the idea of having 'vs threads', because you can have a simple 28 threads (or 28 sections on a wiki), that can be filled with information about messing up that character's gameplan.  There are still going to be intricacies you can't cover in that though. Some characters don't really vary that much when playing against other characters. Other characters, like Rachel, have rather unique matchups.

 

.....

 

Mods. The more we can get rid of busywork, the better. I don't think having a large number of mods is fundamentally a problem. I am tossing around the idea of having some system to recognize 'top players' though.  We have a strange system where some people are mods because they're strong players, and some people are just mods because they're part of the community and are willing to help out.  I don't think this makes sense, and it seems to me like it should be split up somehow.   I don't think the 'BB' award is sufficient.

Moderators should be moderators, and do moderaty things. I feel like there should be something separate to recognize character experts. I think it needs to be more exclusive than the BB award is.  It should be given to people that the site owners and top players trust to represent the site/community.  If there is no bullet expert (which there isn't afaik), then there just isn't one for bullet.

 

.........

 

That's all for now.

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Things to look into with the new layout:

Priority
1.  Website is much slower.  I have to wait like 30 seconds before a post goes through.  Any idea why?

 

Less important
2.  Administrators have blocked the ability to disable Notifications for when you get a message.  So now when I get a message I get the icon for it, and then another icon for the notification telling me to check the message icon next to it.

3.  Bring back the old colors or make new ones.

4.  Any way to change the picture bubbles back to rectangles?  Bonus points if you can opt to use either cropping.

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I feel like there should be something separate to recognize character experts. I think it needs to be more exclusive than the BB award is.  It should be given to people that the site owners and top players trust to represent the site/community.  If there is no bullet expert (which there isn't afaik), then there just isn't one for bullet.

I like this idea, though trying to visualize selection process for 'expert players' beyond a fair few obvious choices is a bit concerning. 

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I like this idea, though trying to visualize selection process for 'expert players' beyond a fair few obvious choices is a bit concerning. 

Yeah, I thought about that a bit too. I totally agree. I want to say it would just start with the very obvious choices, and from there those people would pick more. that's where it might get messy. Person playing random char that has placed top 8 at his local major many times might feel slighted and not want to ever post here.  From my point of view it would be very important that someone who the current experts don't respect doesn't get selected.

On the other hand, maybe it gets some people the respect they feel they deserve so they'll actually contribute here again.

Thank you for your response.

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Things to look into with the new layout:

Priority
1.  Website is much slower.  I have to wait like 30 seconds before a post goes through.  Any idea why?

 

Less important
2.  Administrators have blocked the ability to disable Notifications for when you get a message.  So now when I get a message I get the icon for it, and then another icon for the notification telling me to check the message icon next to it.

3.  Bring back the old colors or make new ones.

4.  Any way to change the picture bubbles back to rectangles?  Bonus points if you can opt to use either cropping.

1. The site is still doing some background tasks, like indexing posts and such. if this persists after a few days, then i'll look into it

2. you should be able to edit notifications. or at least i didn't change any settings in that area. also i don't understand what you mean by having two icons

3. there are no themes yet, but we will definitely make new ones later. i doubt we'll be trying to recreate the old themes, but we'll see

4. i doubt it, but i'll look around

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The link in the "Dustloop" logo at the top-left of every page doesn't work anymore. It probably needs to be updated

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2. you should be able to edit notifications. or at least i didn't change any settings in that area. also i don't understand what you mean by having two icons

Basically, I get the icon over the envelope when I get a message, which is fine (I want this).  But then I get an icon over the bell that tells me I got a message, which is redundant.

I double checked my settings since I had everything disabled (E-mails for most things were turned back on and I had to turn them off).  I've turned off everything I could but this still occurs.  The setting to disable notifications for messages is enabled, and when I try to turn it off I get a "the administrator has disabled this option from being toggled" message.  It's the second option from the bottom in the Notifications tab.

 

Thanks shtkn!

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Mods. The more we can get rid of busywork, the better. I don't think having a large number of mods is fundamentally a problem. I am tossing around the idea of having some system to recognize 'top players' though.  We have a strange system where some people are mods because they're strong players, and some people are just mods because they're part of the community and are willing to help out.  I don't think this makes sense, and it seems to me like it should be split up somehow.   I don't think the 'BB' award is sufficient.

Moderators should be moderators, and do moderaty things. I feel like there should be something separate to recognize character experts. I think it needs to be more exclusive than the BB award is.  It should be given to people that the site owners and top players trust to represent the site/community.  If there is no bullet expert (which there isn't afaik), then there just isn't one for bullet.

It's probably not what you meant, but since we're on the subject I believe the Mod system should be reworked as well. 2 Mods are barely enough to take care of a single character forum because of the amount of information needed to keep them up to date, and that's considering both Mods have enough time to do the daily chores. But that's not the reality and people can be, well, pretty busy because the real fights are at their daily lives and that's fine. Some Mods however can keep up with the tasks and do a formidable job in keeping their characters forums up to date and alive, but that doesnt mean the system is ok.

 

As Errol said, "there should be something separate to recognize character experts". Right now there's a huge gap between Mods and Members, it's really really hard to tell which Members are newbies or experts. So I believe there should be another group between Mods and Members, Collaborators so to speak. They could help to ease the load off the Mods' shoulders for example. I know many people who really want to contribute but can't commit to being a Mod because of the many responsibilities and time needed.

 

However that will only work if both groups are commited to their responsibilities and that's another thing that should considered. Why are there so many Mods still active even though they haven't done anything in a long time? The Administrators and Super Mods should pay attention to that and give space to more members who want to actively contribute to the community.

 

 

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I actually LOVE that new layout for the wiki that Yohosie made. Linking the forums on there too is such a good idea. I don't agree with having discussion on the wiki though. I think it should all happen in one place. But I do think there should be someone making sure there's a sort of "Information sync" between the boards and the wiki. Could be the mods or just rely on the community. So if the combo thread gets updated, we should make sure it is replicated to the wiki. 

 

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In regards to posting video links, there should be a button that allows for embedding instead of automatically embedding them as soon as the URL it put into the post.

Also, the embedded video size should be smaller if possible. I just posted a vid link in another thread and the embed practically covered the entire screen.

Edited by Vulcan422

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I'm going to start applying the new wiki layout to the live site. While I do this and I actually get a good look at everything, I'm building out a google doc spreadsheet that shows whats missing and what's filled out. Might be publicly available or it might not... but it'll give people a better idea of what content needs to be added.

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Wow, that wiki layout is kind of difficult to get used to but it's much better overall.  If it's viable to apply that to everything, I think I'd be onboard with that.

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-

The second biggest problem I could see would be finding a completely objective standard for something as nebulous as "A good/great/fantastic player of X character." What would happen in the even of a player being very good in one aspect of a character, but completely off-base about other aspects of said character? Would they have to prove how good they are with the character edition to edition?

The absolute biggest problem and the one that makes me hesitant to advocate such a system, is that the posters without said title might get discriminated against in some capacities. If there would be a way to make such a system without risk of that I'd be perfectly fine with it. '3'

It sounds like a interesting way to establish ethos for certain voices in a community, but I can see it getting out of hand if it isn't more well thought out before implemented.

3. there are no themes yet, but we will definitely make new ones later. i doubt we'll be trying to recreate the old themes, but we'll see

Ah, I myself was about to ask about this! I 100% love the changes to DL so far, but not having the white letters on black pages hurts my eyes a lot when I'm reading walls of text. I'd be infinitely grateful if just one of those kinds of themes makes it!

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The main problem with that kind of system, is that we're already kind of using it.

Who decides what makes someone good with a character? Is it tourney results? If that's the case, then we wouldn't have had a Makoto mod for the last three years. Does the community get to decide? If so, who does? Would mods have to vouch for them? If that's the case, then that's already how we decide who gets a mod position. Someone who's active, and is also knowledgeable with the character. In the case of mods stepping down, usually the mod who's stepping down will request a specific user, and most of the time, they pick the standout from the community, someone willing to help, is active, and actually knows what he's talking about.

Just as an example, the entire time I've been a mod, I've always had a replacement in mind should I step down. It's been three different people over the years, but I always make sure to take note of who I think would be good in the position in my absence. All three of them knew who they were too, they were like my appointed Right-Hand Man.

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I can't access the website from firefox but I can from chrome and my phone.

When I go to: http://www.dustloop.com/

I get this:

Not Acceptable

An appropriate representation of the requested resource / could not be found on this server.

Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

My firefox is fine, I can access any other site and I did not change anything since yesterday.

Edited by kosmos badgirl

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The main problem with that kind of system, is that we're already kind of using it.

Who decides what makes someone good with a character? Is it tourney results? If that's the case, then we wouldn't have had a Makoto mod for the last three years. Does the community get to decide? If so, who does? Would mods have to vouch for them? If that's the case, then that's already how we decide who gets a mod position. Someone who's active, and is also knowledgeable with the character. In the case of mods stepping down, usually the mod who's stepping down will request a specific user, and most of the time, they pick the standout from the community, someone willing to help, is active, and actually knows what he's talking about.

Just as an example, the entire time I've been a mod, I've always had a replacement in mind should I step down. It's been three different people over the years, but I always make sure to take note of who I think would be good in the position in my absence. All three of them knew who they were too, they were like my appointed Right-Hand Man.

The Bedman board still doesn't have a mod despite GCYoshi and Tiamat both being good choices.  IDK.

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I can't access the website from firefox but I can from chrome and my phone.

When I go to: http://www.dustloop.com/

I get this:

My firefox is fine, I can access any other site and I did not change anything since yesterday.

I've been having the same problem but with chrome. I can access the site just fine with everything else.

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I've been having the same problem but with chrome. I can access the site just fine with everything else.

Good, so is not a problem on my end?. I try Fire Fox safe mode and also I disable my firewall and antivirus and not luck, funny is the other way around for you.

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Would mods have to vouch for them? If that's the case, then that's already how we decide who gets a mod position. Someone who's active, and is also knowledgeable with the character. In the case of mods stepping down, usually the mod who's stepping down will request a specific user, and most of the time, they pick the standout from the community, someone willing to help, is active, and actually knows what he's talking about.

Just as an example, the entire time I've been a mod, I've always had a replacement in mind should I step down. It's been three different people over the years, but I always make sure to take note of who I think would be good in the position in my absence. All three of them knew who they were too, they were like my appointed Right-Hand Man.

This makes more sense since each character Mod is more familiar with their members. But the issue with personally apointing members is that not every Mod knows their members, and I've seen so many good, knowledgable and intelligent players who are rarely seen here, but would surely be willing to help.

In my opinion, we should be more open about this and welcome new potential talents by offering new spots in the staff for them through a selective process of sorts.

Edited by Tong

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Good, so is not a problem on my end?. I try Fire Fox safe mode and also I disable my firewall and antivirus and not luck, funny is the other way around for you.

Doesn't seem like it. Sad thing is I have no idea what's causing it, I was able to access the site on chrome just fine at first but when I tried to going into the Elphelt sub-forum I got the same error you're getting and I haven't been able to access the site on chrome ever since.

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strange, i've never seen issues accessing the site from either chrome or opera...

 

can you provide any further details?

Edited by shtkn

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The main problem with that kind of system, is that we're already kind of using it.

Who decides what makes someone good with a character? Is it tourney results? If that's the case, then we wouldn't have had a Makoto mod for the last three years. Does the community get to decide? If so, who does? Would mods have to vouch for them? If that's the case, then that's already how we decide who gets a mod position. Someone who's active, and is also knowledgeable with the character. In the case of mods stepping down, usually the mod who's stepping down will request a specific user, and most of the time, they pick the standout from the community, someone willing to help, is active, and actually knows what he's talking about.

Just as an example, the entire time I've been a mod, I've always had a replacement in mind should I step down. It's been three different people over the years, but I always make sure to take note of who I think would be good in the position in my absence. All three of them knew who they were too, they were like my appointed Right-Hand Man.

What I'm thinking is not at all similar to the mod system.

The idea is to recognize people without them having to be a mod.

It doesn't need to be objective. It needs to be exclusive, it needs to be elite. Those people need to be respected as top players by each other and the general populace of the site. Which moderators decidedly are not.

The whole point being to foster discussion among high level players, here on this site. Not just among themselves, although that benefits everyone a lot, but also say that when some random person in the general thread sees this person post they know it means something.  If some random argues with a to player somewhere, the top player is highly likely to go to Twitter and be like 'lol bb general'.

 

Will it work. I don't know. Very good chance it won't... But to me, I think it is important to try to get more discussion on the site from high level players. Honestly, the best times to be on dustloop are when someone triggers SKD and we get to read a wall of knowledge. I'm interested in that, and I would figure other people are too. Just like how matches between inexperienced players aren't that useful, discussion/analysis by low/mid level players can be not that useful too.  It's better than the nothing we have right now.. but it would be much better to get the top players who stay the hell away from dustloop when they become top players to want to post.  If anyone has any other ideas on how that might actually happen, I'm all ears.

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I find that to be an extremely bad idea. It will just contribute to the toxic "elitism" that people dislike about this place in general. It's basically saying "If you haven't gotten top 8 at NEC, your opinion is worthless" which is not the case. It's also going to make it so that very few people are taken seriously in general, not to mention the fact that not every character has a "top player" associated with them. Meaning a bunch of people who play those characters will be left out, or they will think that they shouldn't trust ANYTHING said by anyone in their board.

You don't have to be a top player to know what you're talking about, you just have to know what you're talking about.

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