Social site suggestions

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

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.

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 .. ??

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.