Difference between revisions of "Social site suggestions"

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== Projects ==
 
== Projects ==
  
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=== Project "progress" status ===
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See [[Project management suggestions]].
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It is too hard to tell if a project is done or in progress or abandoned.
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There is no filter option or way to mark your project as completed and ready for use. It would be nice if projects could be given a completion attribute (i.e. planning, building, alpha testing, beta testing, released, etc).
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Abandoned projects clutter up the list enormously. Projects should be automatically disabled or flagged if there is no activity in them for some threshold criteria length of time and they remain incomplete/never started.
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=== Other project filter options ===
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Advanced Filter Options button. Currently the drop-down boxes for filtering are all independent of one another. If you want to browse in the groups there are 4 lists. Would be nice to have an advanced filtering options button that will pop up a little dialog box where you can make all your selections at once and then say GO!
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* Would be nice to be able to filter out completely all those projects with fewer than X members.
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* Would be nice to be able to filter out completely all those projects that haven't had any activity at all for X days.
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* I would also like to see the author of the project without opening it up.
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When you click on projects the list can only be viewed 10 items at a time, which is way to few.
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Redundant filters: Some of the drop down options are not something anybody would be interested in listing them by or are duplicated by others (e.g. popularity? most views? what is the difference between those two?). Ordering by most views is unlikely to generate a significantly different ordering than sorting by last updated or popularity. All the older projects are likely to have more views than the any of the newer ones, so ordering by create date isn't going to be significantly different than ordering by most views. This isn't a major problem, frankly more options are better than fewer, but the ones you really need (which projects are "the best" and which are "not worth the effort", which are done which are still in progress) aren't there.
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=== Rating projects ===
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==== Problems with the current rating system ====
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* The modules that have been around the longest will have the most "+" while a brand new awesome module may never get noticed. This encourages builders to do a rush job just so they can be one of the first ones out there. Perhaps a weighted rating system, so that a very large/old mod can sit up their with a brand new smaller mod of equal caliber that just hasn't garnered the high amount of ratings yet.
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* Provide a checkbox on a project that a host can check when he/she considers the content "done" and ready to be ranked with the others. This would allow you to post work-in-progress downloads to gather feedback, without the concern of getting low ranks because it is not done yet.
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* Once you have given a project a "+", there is no way to remove that again, even if you discover later that the project didn't deserve it at all.
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==== Variation and changes to the current rating system ====
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* Have two ways to rate projects -- one similar to the NWVault's rating system (is it a good idea, do people like it, etc), and another where people could rate the "buggyness" or "stability" or "ease of setup" type things about the project.?
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* Or perhaps just a screen with two or three categories to rate that get computed into some overall rating (e.g. Design/Idea 1-10, Stability/Ease of Use 1-10, Something Else 1-10). For me it would be far more useful to be able to filter and sort on these kinds of peer judged criteria than by "most views" or a generic "popularity" with unclear basis.
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* Maybe projects need a sex rating system similar to what hollywood does (e.g. G, PG, PG13...XXX).
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* NWVault has a rating system where you give a 0-10 score, but the rating is hidden until a specific minimum number of people have rated the project.  The average number may be meaningless - in NWNvault, an absurdly high percentage of modules have a rating above 9.0, but still the relative ranking is pretty good - a module with a high score and a high download count is probably worth looking at..
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==== Download counting ====
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You cannot update a file without losing the download count - it gets reset back to zero.  This would need to be fixed - the ideal solution would be to count the number of people downloading files from the project, but at the very least allow people to update files without losing the download count.  As it is, the download count is pointless and actually discourages builders from updating their files.
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=== Project classification ===
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* If a project got incorrectly classified originally, or if a more appropriate category is added later, there is no way to re-classify the project. Allow module owners to change the category of their projects.
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* The list of classifications is a mess, with builder-to-builder and builder-to-player categories mixed up.  Also, the categories are not well chosen -  the NWN modules category is just a pointless waste of space and several categories seem to be missing.
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** Add more project categories (areas, scripts, machinima, tutorials, music, and so on)
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** Separate builder-to-player content from builder-to-builder content. The biggest hurdle to mod creation is creating levels, so a level category would be particularly useful.
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Categories to potentially remove or change:
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* NWN module
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* It is a bit confusing to have "Dragon Age Addons" as well as "DA Gameplay mods", as to most people those categories overlap.
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* Replace the one-big-list project page with a splash page with links to separate categories. Include an "all mods" button so we can still get to the huge list if we want to. And allow mods to be in more than one category.
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The list of project categories, in order, at the time of writing is
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* Dragon Age addons
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* NWN Modules
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* Builder - DA Mods
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* Builder - DA Textures
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* DA Playable Modules
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* Builder - DA Utilities
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* Builder - DA VO files
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* DA Gameplay Mods
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* DA Item/Armor/Weapon Mods
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* DA Character Mods
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Whether or not these names are final, and even though it may not be all that relevant at the moment, I think the list should be sorted either by category or game, in alphabetical order, and that games only be represented in their short form. E.g.
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* ...
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* Modules - DA(:O)
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* Modules - NWN
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* ...
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* Textures - DA(:O)
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* ...
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or
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* ...
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* DA(:O) - Modules
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* DA(:O) - Textures
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* DA(:O) - Utilities (what are those anyway?)
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* DA(:O) - VO Files
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* ...
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* NWN - Modules
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* ...
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==== Alternative approach to classification: tags instead of categories ====
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Too many/too unspecific categories can cause similar projects to be categorized differently because they fit under too many categories. I would suggest only a very general level of categorization and leave the specifics to tags. For instance, allow only a single category for game modules but let the author assign Gameplay, Item, and Character (and any other) tags as applicable.
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Two things that would definitely have to be considered for such a solution are:
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* if the tags are gathered in one global list, some tags will not make any sense whatsoever for certain projects. On the other hand, category exclusive lists seems like a lot of database bloat, and what do you do when the tag(s) you're looking for are not (yet) in the category your project is in?
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* if only the author can assign tags, risk of vandalism is greatly reduced, not to say eliminated. Meanwhile, allowing all users to add/remove tags to/from projects greatly increases the likelihood of the average project being more appropriately categorized (tagged).
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=== Subscribed projects view ===
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Under ''View'', add "Subscribed projects" - once I have found projects that are sufficiently interesting to want to follow them, I want to be able to find them again easily.  Not everyone knows of http://social.bioware.com/user_bw_projects_subscriptions.php
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=== Project Comments ===
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The comments on Projects is horrible. If they can be made so you can have more than 10 per page and be able to jump to any page in the comments they'd be much better.
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Please show the latest comments first. Currently when you go to view comments under a project, it shows the very first comments.  It is supposed to show the newest comments first.  In the case of a project that has 190 comments, for example, that means one has to click Next Page 19 times!
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=== Captchas in project forums ===
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Could we drop having to solve a captcha to post in a project forum? It ties into the problem above about the comment system, which is all the captcha system probably reinforces, and seems kind of pointless given how somebody could just spam up the comments anyway.
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=== Extend valid file types for projects ===
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I created (what is now) a DA Playable Modules project.  In addition to uploading the module (DAZIP) file I want to upload the builder-to-builder (DADBDATA) file and the art resources (in this case just LVL files) so that the community could see how we made the module. However the valid types for a DA Playable Modules project do not allow these file types.  I am loathe to made another project simply to accommodate these additional file types so I am requesting the project's file types be extended to allow all extensions associated with Dragon Age and ZIP/RAR in addition to the ones already allowed.
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See: [http://social.bioware.com/project/334/discussion/586/|Little Red Riding Hood Redux] for the example
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== Forums ==
 
== Forums ==
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It would be nice to be able to jump directly to the post that was made by the person in my Network (friends, etc.) off the Feed Page.  Currently, you can jump to the thread, but when threads are lots of pages long, you often have to go hunting to see what your buddy wrote in that topic.  Having a way to jump directly to their specific post in the Topic would be very helpful.
 
It would be nice to be able to jump directly to the post that was made by the person in my Network (friends, etc.) off the Feed Page.  Currently, you can jump to the thread, but when threads are lots of pages long, you often have to go hunting to see what your buddy wrote in that topic.  Having a way to jump directly to their specific post in the Topic would be very helpful.
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'''Edit''' as at Feb 2-2010, this seems to be a feature that is working as requested
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'''Edit''' as at Feb 5-2010, this seems not to be working as requested
  
 
=== Contract/expand social site forums ===
 
=== Contract/expand social site forums ===
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Display the forum navigation tree (e.g. ''Forum Home » BioWare General » Social.bioware.com Site Help'') at the bottom of the forum as well. Currently it exists only at the top, and having to scroll all the way up after reaching the end of a page gets annoying.
 
Display the forum navigation tree (e.g. ''Forum Home » BioWare General » Social.bioware.com Site Help'') at the bottom of the forum as well. Currently it exists only at the top, and having to scroll all the way up after reaching the end of a page gets annoying.
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===Better search function===
 
===Better search function===
 
When search for a specific topic the search function only displays posts with the topic in the title but unfortunately most users use "have a problem", "toolset issue" or "need help" as title for their post. The search function should look for the specified word inside the posts to give more results to have a look at.
 
When search for a specific topic the search function only displays posts with the topic in the title but unfortunately most users use "have a problem", "toolset issue" or "need help" as title for their post. The search function should look for the specified word inside the posts to give more results to have a look at.
 
Because of that limitation there are about 10 or even more topics about changing a head morph which essentially have the same questions with the same answers in them...
 
Because of that limitation there are about 10 or even more topics about changing a head morph which essentially have the same questions with the same answers in them...
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===More ME Forum Subdivisions===
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I would like to see seperate forums, like for ME1, for PC and console gameplay. The issues that each demographic face and are concerend are different. The old division of : General Discussion, Spoiler Discussion, X-Box Game Play, PC Game play, X Box Tech, PC Tech worked great I thought.
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In addition, it would cut down of the pictures of face palms and such I have to deal with.
  
 
== Other ==
 
== Other ==
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The source doesn't stand apart from the quote and a timestamp would be greatly appreciated. Dotted and dashed borders also cause some wonkiness, as illustrated by [http://i36.tinypic.com/jgh2s9.jpg this picture].
 
The source doesn't stand apart from the quote and a timestamp would be greatly appreciated. Dotted and dashed borders also cause some wonkiness, as illustrated by [http://i36.tinypic.com/jgh2s9.jpg this picture].
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=== Group discussion notifications ===
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It would be helpful to have e-mail notification of all posts in certain groups, to cover the case where posting is infrequent but important.
  
 
=== Navigating group discussion threads ===
 
=== Navigating group discussion threads ===
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Additionally, when going back and forth (previous/next page), contents of the reply form should be retained. This will make it easier to reply to multiple posts across several pages.
 
Additionally, when going back and forth (previous/next page), contents of the reply form should be retained. This will make it easier to reply to multiple posts across several pages.
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=== Group/Project Discussion Tab ===
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When you initially click on the discussion tab, the list of topics should default in ascending order based on the thread with the most recent response.  Currently, in a busy discussion forum, it is very easy to miss discussions with replies due to the fact that they are buried inside other topics with older dated replies.
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=== Group discussion thread moderation ===
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The ability to delete posts is of little value. When the only message is ''this post has been deleted'', with no cause, it can lead to confusion and headaches when trying to resolve issues. Allowing officers to edit posts (also leaving a note, ala BioBoards) would be much more useful.
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=== Group member titles ===
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Considering they are only shown on the member and officer lists, these seem pointless. If they are not displayed when posting they may as well be removed.
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=== Shared group ownership ===
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Current implementation is such that if a group leader becomes inactive and hasn't passed on leadership, the group is paralyzed. It would be better either with support for shared ownership or an automatic system that moves leadership to the senior active member after some defined period of user inactivity (say, a month). Shared ownership would be preferable for groups that prefer self-organisation to autocracy.
  
 
=== Report XX to moderators ===
 
=== Report XX to moderators ===
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Per djes: That sidebar menu should really be labelled "My Game Profiles" - since ME2 doesn't upload much at all, it's not really expected to show up there.
 
Per djes: That sidebar menu should really be labelled "My Game Profiles" - since ME2 doesn't upload much at all, it's not really expected to show up there.
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=== Registered game promotions ordering ===
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Sort by (platform, game, title) or (game, title, platform). Right now there appears to be no system to the order of entitlements.
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=== Set default persona ===
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Allow users to set the default persona in their profile options. Some are in the unfortunate position of having multiple personas for no apparent reason, and to view their profiles you must browse through all persona pages until you locate the right one (and in some cases that isn't obvious at all). This would make it less of a hassle to view those users' profiles.
  
 
= Social Site Bug Reporting Area =
 
= Social Site Bug Reporting Area =
  
 
Initially, let's use this little area on the suggestions page for bug reporting.  Ultimately, it would be good to have a separate page like the one that exists for the Toolset.
 
Initially, let's use this little area on the suggestions page for bug reporting.  Ultimately, it would be good to have a separate page like the one that exists for the Toolset.
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== Custom portraits with DA:O ==
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People are figuring out how to override the DA:O character portraits locally and indirectly upload custom portraits that way. It has yet to become a problem (the ones I have seen so far have been in good taste) but if the practice spreads it will only be a matter of time.
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Filed as a bug because it's clearly not the intended use, but technically it isn't one and it might belong with the suggestions. I also doubt there's anything to do about this save for patching the game to encrypt the image and then have the site decrypt it (fat chance of that happening). But whatever.
  
 
== Project Discussions, Next Page >> Button leads to 404 Error ==
 
== Project Discussions, Next Page >> Button leads to 404 Error ==
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{{EV|214174|[[User:BryanDerksen|BryanDerksen]]}}
 
{{EV|214174|[[User:BryanDerksen|BryanDerksen]]}}
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== Project - update info ==
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uploading new file (even if you place it as featured file) don't change project "Updated Date" info.
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Result : project search with update date filter don't give usefull result.
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E.g : project created on december 2009 with first file released placed on jan2010....-> update date is december 2009 .. ??
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{{EV|215184|[[User:BryanDerksen|BryanDerksen]]}}
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== Friends search on Proficiencies ==
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Appears to be completely broken. For example, searching for my own community name works, but not if I check Scripting. In general, checking any proficiency box appears to produce zero results.
  
 
[[Category:Feature requests]]
 
[[Category:Feature requests]]

Latest revision as of 09:54, 31 May 2010

This page is intended as a collaborative repository for suggestions on how to improve the social site. Create a new section for each specific suggestion or related group of suggestions. Feel free to discuss them to some extent on this page, but bear in mind that discussions should be refactored every once in a while into a summary of the idea - the purpose of this page is to consolidate discussion into a more easily-referenced form.


Projects

See Project management suggestions.

Forums

Jumping to specific posts off the Feed Page

It would be nice to be able to jump directly to the post that was made by the person in my Network (friends, etc.) off the Feed Page. Currently, you can jump to the thread, but when threads are lots of pages long, you often have to go hunting to see what your buddy wrote in that topic. Having a way to jump directly to their specific post in the Topic would be very helpful.

Edit as at Feb 2-2010, this seems to be a feature that is working as requested

Edit as at Feb 5-2010, this seems not to be working as requested

Contract/expand social site forums

Can you guys add the contract/expand forum section like old BioBoard has? (with the keep settings for next time I open the browser too) I don't want ME forum taking over the whole top of my monitor when I click Forums. Thank you! (not for now, at least... after I get it, perhaps! =)

Forum filtering

Please can we have a way of filtering the Recent Forum Posts section on the home page. People still insist on putting spoilers in titles and being the "most recent" means they appear before a moderator has had chance to edit them.

Related: can we have the ability to filter our recent activity by forum so that we can hide spoiler forums for the same reason (and to hide forums we aren't interested in).

Jump directly to Your Post from the Your Posts list

Heya, I love the Your posts thing, but is there a way to directly jump to my particular post in the listed topics? Instead of picking a page or going to last post, that is.

Edit post => redirect

Editing a post takes you to the start of the thread. It should take you to the page in the thread your post is on, ideally the post itself.

Recent post entry should go to first unread

When there is support for it, assuming there will be, clicking an entry in the Recent Forum Posts list should take you to the first unread post in the thread. Without proper context the last post is useless anyway.

Duplicate forum navigation tree

Display the forum navigation tree (e.g. Forum Home » BioWare General » Social.bioware.com Site Help) at the bottom of the forum as well. Currently it exists only at the top, and having to scroll all the way up after reaching the end of a page gets annoying.

Better search function

When search for a specific topic the search function only displays posts with the topic in the title but unfortunately most users use "have a problem", "toolset issue" or "need help" as title for their post. The search function should look for the specified word inside the posts to give more results to have a look at. Because of that limitation there are about 10 or even more topics about changing a head morph which essentially have the same questions with the same answers in them...

More ME Forum Subdivisions

I would like to see seperate forums, like for ME1, for PC and console gameplay. The issues that each demographic face and are concerend are different. The old division of : General Discussion, Spoiler Discussion, X-Box Game Play, PC Game play, X Box Tech, PC Tech worked great I thought.

In addition, it would cut down of the pictures of face palms and such I have to deal with.

Other

Make use of title attributes

For anchor and image tags especially, using the title tags would greatly increase the site's usability. Icons should have their meaning added, entries in the Recent Forum Posts list should have the full topic.

Remove HTML support

Comment boxes make mention of very limited HTML tag support. It should be removed in favour of BBCode. There's no point in having both and 1) BBCode is safer/smoother, and 2) likely much better known.

Quote box layout

The source doesn't stand apart from the quote and a timestamp would be greatly appreciated. Dotted and dashed borders also cause some wonkiness, as illustrated by this picture.

Group discussion notifications

It would be helpful to have e-mail notification of all posts in certain groups, to cover the case where posting is infrequent but important.

Navigating group discussion threads

Clicking Quote currently jumps you directly to the reply form at the bottom of the page. This is extremely annoying if you haven't already read the entire page (in which case you would be at the reply form anyway) or need to quote multiple people. Although it serves as feedback to inform the user that the action was registered, and removing it could imply that it's broken, the break in flow there exists now is undesirable.

Additionally, when going back and forth (previous/next page), contents of the reply form should be retained. This will make it easier to reply to multiple posts across several pages.

Group/Project Discussion Tab

When you initially click on the discussion tab, the list of topics should default in ascending order based on the thread with the most recent response. Currently, in a busy discussion forum, it is very easy to miss discussions with replies due to the fact that they are buried inside other topics with older dated replies.

Group discussion thread moderation

The ability to delete posts is of little value. When the only message is this post has been deleted, with no cause, it can lead to confusion and headaches when trying to resolve issues. Allowing officers to edit posts (also leaving a note, ala BioBoards) would be much more useful.

Group member titles

Considering they are only shown on the member and officer lists, these seem pointless. If they are not displayed when posting they may as well be removed.

Shared group ownership

Current implementation is such that if a group leader becomes inactive and hasn't passed on leadership, the group is paralyzed. It would be better either with support for shared ownership or an automatic system that moves leadership to the senior active member after some defined period of user inactivity (say, a month). Shared ownership would be preferable for groups that prefer self-organisation to autocracy.

Report XX to moderators

Due primarily to timezone obstacles, reporting posts, users, etc. straight to moderators can be very inefficient, which in turn means it is not done as often as it perhaps should be. The ability to make a single report accessible by all moderators, such that it can be dealt with by anyone present, would be a huge boon.

Relabel My Games to My Game Profiles

Per djes: That sidebar menu should really be labelled "My Game Profiles" - since ME2 doesn't upload much at all, it's not really expected to show up there.

Registered game promotions ordering

Sort by (platform, game, title) or (game, title, platform). Right now there appears to be no system to the order of entitlements.

Set default persona

Allow users to set the default persona in their profile options. Some are in the unfortunate position of having multiple personas for no apparent reason, and to view their profiles you must browse through all persona pages until you locate the right one (and in some cases that isn't obvious at all). This would make it less of a hassle to view those users' profiles.

Social Site Bug Reporting Area

Initially, let's use this little area on the suggestions page for bug reporting. Ultimately, it would be good to have a separate page like the one that exists for the Toolset.

Custom portraits with DA:O

People are figuring out how to override the DA:O character portraits locally and indirectly upload custom portraits that way. It has yet to become a problem (the ones I have seen so far have been in good taste) but if the practice spreads it will only be a matter of time.

Filed as a bug because it's clearly not the intended use, but technically it isn't one and it might belong with the suggestions. I also doubt there's anything to do about this save for patching the game to encrypt the image and then have the site decrypt it (fat chance of that happening). But whatever.

Project Discussions, Next Page >> Button leads to 404 Error

There are two places to click "Next Page" in the project discussions area. One at the top, and one at the bottom. The one at the top works fine, but the one at the bottom leads to a 404 error page


BioWare BWIcon rgb.png
 This issue has been recorded in BioWare's internal tracking system.

Reference number: 214171 -BryanDerksen

Private Group Posts showing to non-Group members in Personal Feed

OK. Here is a summary of the BUG, in case it hasn't been reported (but I think it has). To reproduce the BUG, do the following:

  • In Profile, Privacy Options, enable (check on) "Starting a Project Discussion Topic" and "Posting in a Project Discussion Topic".
  • Go to one of your private projects.
  • Post a New Discussion Topic
  • Ask one of your friends that is not part of the Private Project to review your feed ... they will tell you that they can see both the New Topic and the Reply in your feed.

If you un-flag the two items you had flagged, your friend won't see the topics anymore (new ones)

This tells me that the Privacy Options are working as intended, but they are not being over-ridden by the privacy options on the project profile. In my opinion, you should be able to show project discussions through your feed, however, the privacy of the project should over-ride that setting.


BioWare BWIcon rgb.png
 This issue has been recorded in BioWare's internal tracking system.

Reference number: 214174 -BryanDerksen

Project - update info

uploading new file (even if you place it as featured file) don't change project "Updated Date" info. Result : project search with update date filter don't give usefull result. E.g : project created on december 2009 with first file released placed on jan2010....-> update date is december 2009 .. ??


BioWare BWIcon rgb.png
 This issue has been recorded in BioWare's internal tracking system.

Reference number: 215184 -BryanDerksen

Friends search on Proficiencies

Appears to be completely broken. For example, searching for my own community name works, but not if I check Scripting. In general, checking any proficiency box appears to produce zero results.

Retrieved from "http://datoolset.net/mw/index.php?title=Social_site_suggestions&oldid=12979"