Site Feedback/Suggestions

[Shin Masta Lv1]

Personally I don't care at all about the appearance of the site or the front page, the chipp icons or whatever, makes no difference really. Modding is so much easier here then it was at gcc so I have no problems with anything here really. There are a few minor inconveniences but nothing I have a problem with.

Imo the site is fine as it is no real work needs to be done at all. It's very simple and easy to use..a new skin would be nice but again it really makes no difference.

We have active mods on the forum, several. There's no need for a match maker mod either.

Why don't tell us what these problems are instead of being so vague? Right now the sites being kept better than it ever has been in the past. So please inform us at what these problems your referring to are.

Quoted for truth

[TITANIUM BEAST!!!]

Yeah, one thing that has never really bothered me was the appearance of the site. As previously noted, it is extremely easy to read, to the point where you don't even really care about how it looks. This is a site for straight-up info and discussion, which is why it is just a forum and not a full-fledged site. To someone who doesn't come often, it may look pretty bare bones, but I like it.

[Most Unknown]

We have active mods on the forum, several. There's no need for a match maker mod either.

Why don't you tell us what these problems are instead of being so vague? Right now the sites being kept better than it has ever been. So please inform us at what these problems your referring to are.

I point out just one...The mod for Zepp hasn't been here since the beginning of the year and Zepp is all spammed up...I don't understand how you don't see nothing wrong with Match Finder...Event Annoucements, and Hokuto No Ken don't have mods...neither does the Faust thread...All I'm saying is...better to have a mod and not need one...then to need a mod (Zepp and Match Finder) and not have one...the 2 threads I pointed out can sure use a clean up...However...I don't know how important I have to be so my view can get looked at...

[Koozebanian Fazoob]

There's nothing really wrong with the forum but there are minor things that have been brought up and ignored before...

A) There is still an annoying gap between posts that is just kind of a waste of space. Look at forums like SA and you will notice they have removed the gap and the thread is more compact and just as readable.

B) Nothing wrong with Chipp, but supposedly they were all supposed to get replaced into something else, and it never happened. Same goes for the front page. I don't really care but I was under the impression something was planned and just never happened.

C) People have requested toggles/options so auto-parsing URLs is disabled by default in at least the video posting forum. Personally, I think it is annoying that auto-parse is on by default while editing a previous post, as it means if I'm editing a post with URLs I didn't wanted parsed before, I still have to remember to turn it off. It's a minor hassle but probably really easy to fix.

D) Similar note as C, the script for adding tags in the text editor has this awful habit of moving your text cursor to the top of your message every time you try to add a tag. I see this a lot in forum software and it's just lazy and annoying. Probably a minor javascript issue you could fix in a line or two of code.

E) There is no 'alternate' text or default image size for the Reply/Quote buttons, meaning if you navigate the site without images on (which I do, at work), you can't reply/quote people.

F) The page chooser (the one that says 'Page 15 of 15') could easily be a lot bigger and not be obtrusive. Navigating large threads can be a bit of work if you want to get to a specfic page. Again, very minor, but also very easily fixed.

G) The moderator tool for mass deleting posts is really poor right now because it only allows you to see a very small part of the posts, so it can be difficult to trim threads because you basically have to guess which posts you wanted to delete or not. Increasing the amount of the post you can see would help fix this (giving an option value to see 'brief' or 'full' would be nice too). Toggle to ignore

tags would help as well, since some times the only thing we can see in the preview is just what the person quoted, which isn't helpful at all.

H) Manually deleting posts is also more trouble than neccicary because you have to Edit > Delete This Message > Delete, and then the page redirects you to the FIRST post of the thread, not the previous page/post you were looking at. A mod-only drop down to 'delete this post' on each post would be easy and helpful, if nothing else (you could attach the dropdown to the old/new icon or the computer icon, whatever works).

Again it's all small stuff, but that means it's easy to fix, and improves the usability of the forum for users and mods.

[rtl42]

Dont look at someone's posting history as a choice for mod, look at what what type of character they are and judge from that.

A person's character determines their posting history.

[trag]

A) There is still an annoying gap between posts that is just kind of a waste of space. Look at forums like SA and you will notice they have removed the gap and the thread is more compact and just as readable.

It's there on purpose. It didn't look/feel right to me when we didn't have it, and it helps to separate the posts. I may try changing it back but it's not really important compared to some of the other suggestions. We will see.

B) Nothing wrong with Chipp, but supposedly they were all supposed to get replaced into something else, and it never happened. Same goes for the front page. I don't really care but I was under the impression something was planned and just never happened.

A full set of chibi's wasn't available, and some of them were far too large to be used in the small box provided. It's not a hard change, but editing chibis to be even smaller ends up making them look like crap. They actually have to be created for a specific size.

The reason there isn't a front page is because every time I set up a site and put a lot of work into the extra features (front page, different sections, video hosting) I get the help of maybe 1 or 2 people and then the bitching of 500 or so. I'd rather just have the bitching than waste my time (and the time of the 1 or 2 helpers) and still get the bitching. Everyone says they are willing to help until the time comes to actually help. On each new site, everyone says it will be different this time... but it never is. Until I see people really put forth the effort, I don't feel like I should either (or ask one or two people to take that burden as well).

C) People have requested toggles/options so auto-parsing URLs is disabled by default in at least the video posting forum. Personally, I think it is annoying that auto-parse is on by default while editing a previous post, as it means if I'm editing a post with URLs I didn't wanted parsed before, I still have to remember to turn it off. It's a minor hassle but probably really easy to fix.

I can turn them off by default across the whole site easily. Otherwise it will take a bit of coding for just the Video Forum.

D) Similar note as C, the script for adding tags in the text editor has this awful habit of moving your text cursor to the top of your message every time you try to add a tag. I see this a lot in forum software and it's just lazy and annoying. Probably a minor javascript issue you could fix in a line or two of code.

I'll ask around for someone with JavaScript experience.

E) There is no 'alternate' text or default image size for the Reply/Quote buttons, meaning if you navigate the site without images on (which I do, at work), you can't reply/quote people.

This can be fixed relatively easily, though I'll need to know all of the images that need alt tags in order of importance.

F) The page chooser (the one that says 'Page 15 of 15') could easily be a lot bigger and not be obtrusive. Navigating large threads can be a bit of work if you want to get to a specfic page. Again, very minor, but also very easily fixed.

True. I'll look into that soon.

For the majority of the stuff (and the rest I didn't address)... I'm going to upgrade VB to the newest version first to see if it fixes some of the stuff. Then we can go from there. As soon as I have time I'll get on it.

[Koozebanian Fazoob]

It's there on purpose. It didn't look/feel right to me when we didn't have it, and it helps to separate the posts. I may try changing it back but it's not really important compared to some of the other suggestions. We will see.

I think the main issue is that there is both the header AND footer AND gap between each post, so there is a lot more space inbetween posts than is neccicary. If you dinked around with it for a while, you could probably get rid of a lot of wasted space and make it a lot cleaner. But you'd probably need to put a lot of effort in to get it to look nice. See the forums at Somethingawful for an example of what I mean about being much more space efficient.

A full set of chibi's wasn't available, and some of them were far too large to be used in the small box provided. It's not a hard change, but editing chibis to be even smaller ends up making them look like crap. They actually have to be created for a specific size.

Understandable on all the content parts. It's way easier to get people to say they'll do something than to actually get something out of them, and this is double true for small forums such as this with smaller and less dedicated user bases.

I can turn them off by default across the whole site easily. Otherwise it will take a bit of coding for just the Video Forum.

I figured this one would be a pain. I don't know what the code is like for the post/edit page, but can you have it check to see which forum a post is going into when you are making it (even just a hard numeric check, if(forumId = 12) or whatever)? If so, you could probably just have the page check and have URL parsing off by default in the Video Forum. Again, I don't know what the vB code looks like there, so I have no idea.

This can be fixed relatively easily, though I'll need to know all of the images that need alt tags in order of importance.

The only ones that are an issue are the QUOTE, EDIT, QR, and the Report Bad Post and the little computer one that shows IPs. This is what the html should come out looking like:

<a href="editpost.php?s=blahblah"><img src="http://fi.somethingawful.com/images/sa-edit.gif" alt="Edit" height="20" width="61" title="" /></a>

... and this is more like what it is now:

<a href="newreply.php?do=newreply&p=60124"><img src="images/buttons/quote.gif" alt="Reply With Quote" border="0" /></a>

Also I just looked at the average source output of a page from vBulletin and good lord, now I know why people say this forum software is an abomination. vBulletin must be designed to maximize bandwidth usage and un-readability, eeahg. Well that's kind of beside the point so I won't get into that anyway.

Well thanks for doing what you can anyway.

[rtl42]

I just wanted to add a small point to having unparsed URLs as default:

I think it would be a bit more friendly for all those Japanese sites if you could do it throughout the forum, because direct-links to videos (or internal pages even) aren't only posted in the Video board.

[Harem]

Please for the love of God promote Klaige to Anji mod. The Anji forum is like turning into a cesspool and needs an active mod that can restore it. >[

[Shin Masta Lv1]

^ i agree with this man

[rtl42]

Would it be possible to have frame data and general information hosted on the DustLoop domain the way GGXX info was hosted on the GameCombos domain? Even if you just re-upload the old stuff that's found here, it would be very handy to have around, especially once RC.com goes offline in the fall =[

[j1n[kr]]

just make me webmaster here

[4r5]

Happy birthday, trag! Thanks for dustloop.com!

[rtl42]

']just make me webmaster here

lol

[mahaboy]

Any chance of activating the rss feeds for dustloop?

[TittyFOFO]

Make GW.Orgy Blood a supermod already. We need someone else to kill all the damn spambots.

[koogy]

no more mods? ;_;

[Master Chibi]

Is there anyway we could make a forum for Melty Blood?

The Mighty Melty Blood Mega thread on its own has the same number of posts as the entire HnK forum ;p.

It's a viable arcade game now and stuff.

No ;p?

[Koozebanian Fazoob]

A ton of threads and posts have been pruned from the HnK forum before, whereas maybe 4-5 posts have been deleted from the Melty Blood thread ever.

[Master Chibi]

Well it would help to establish that one place on the 'interaweb' to go to for Melty Blood, and considering many GG players also play MB, I thought it was a good idea.

;p

[Incendia]

I see some random spamming threads recently in the General Forum. Maybe the powers that be could clear them off?

[Alcyon One]

those are bots

[Incendia]

Oh ok. I thought some people just had too much time on their hands writing that nonsense, and it's irritating when i'm trying to see what's the latest legitimate post. Anyways, thanks for clearing that up.

[Tritone]

What are the chances the size limit for avatars could be raised? I mean it's not like many people are still on dialup, and even if they are, it's a simple matter to turn off avatars!

[Koozebanian Fazoob]

The size limit is more to prevent people from having huuuge ones that make the left column really long. I could maybe make them longer if I cut out some of the other extra stuff in the left column (like post count, join date, AIM icons, etc).

Edit: Or if you meant file size, uhm... I'm not sure there is a limit right now anyway.