With the new publication system, I think the site as a whole needs to be restructured as well. Here is my suggestion.
The front page should remain mostly as is, except there should be a large New to Tasvideos? Click here at the top, which will lead to the newcomer's greeting area.
Here's how I see the text for the Movies page. I went out of my way to make the blurbs facetious rather than formal. I'd prefer them to be more formal on the actual page.
*Recommended list of movies for newcomers: Here's a short list of easily digestible runs for you to see what the site is about. Why should you have to read a twenty page essay to start watching a guy play video games?
Runs Sorted by Game
* List of games with runs (the number of different games on the site with a run)
** Arcade (number of arcade games)
** Atari (number of Atari games)
** Gameboy (number of Gameboy games)
** etc.
Runs Sorted by Category
* Pure Speedruns: I'm kind of short on time, let's just get this over with as quickly as possible.
** 100% Speedruns: But I want you to get all collectibles too.
* Playarounds: Who cares about speed? Entertain me.
* Superplays: Combine both speed and entertainment into an overall package (Note, this will overlap almost completely with the pure speedrun category, but it will be a smaller list)
* Demos: Odd ideas and game specific categories. Can you go through Mario 64 while avoiding the letter C?
* Stars: The best of the best. Handpicked by our mysterious Starmen for your amusement.
* Other Categories: We like making lists. Some of these lists are less than helpful (This will open on a separate page. These will be the flags: Console verified, Commentary, TAS Milestones, AVGN, Eat at Joes, etc. Put the more informative (e.g. Console Verified, Commentary) closer to the top, and the just for fun (e.g. Eat at Joes) ones near the bottom.)
The front page should remain mostly as is, except there should be a large New to Tasvideos? Click here at the top, which will lead to the newcomer's greeting area.
AzumaK wrote: I swear my 1 year old daughter's favorite TASVideo is your R4MI run :3
xxNKxx wrote: ok thanks handsome feos :D
Help improving TASVideos!
There should be an area where you could see informations like:
The most voted movie
The longest movie
The shortest movie
The most awarded movie
The movie with the highest number of re-records
The movie with the highest number categories
(Just some examples, there is probably more "record" stuffs that could be interesting)
There also could be (maybe in the same area) informations like:
The most awarded TASer
The TASer with the highest number of accepted movies (even movies that were accepted but obsoleted later would count and this information could be)
(Again these are just examples)
Or something like a Top 10 of the most voted movies and a Top 10 of the TASers with the highest numbers of accepted movies.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Sadly, with the advent of scripts and bots, the "most rerecords" statistic has become practically obsolete because it doesn't tell much. As much as I would hate to see it go, perhaps it should be dropped from that page. (The list could still be available, just not listed there, because it says little about anything.) The "fewest rerecords" could still be informative, but would feel odd without its counterpart...
(I know I could remove it myself because I have editor rights, but this was kind of a semi-poll to see people's opinions. Possibly wrong thread for that, so I apologize if it's disruptive.)
Sadly, with the advent of scripts and bots, the "most rerecords" statistic has become practically obsolete because it doesn't tell much. As much as I would hate to see it go, perhaps it should be dropped from that page. (The list could still be available, just not listed there, because it says little about anything.) The "fewest rerecords" could still be informative, but would feel odd without its counterpart...
(I know I could remove it myself because I have editor rights, but this was kind of a semi-poll to see people's opinions. Possibly wrong thread for that, so I apologize if it's disruptive.)
Re-record count is not really precise. You can always hex the number of re-records and change it. Both the "fewest" and "most" re-records page aren't useful in any way, to be honest.
But I'd still prefer to leave it up since it can bring attention to certain bot-assisted movies that are worth reading about.
It would be cool if there were some way of distinguishing between manual rerecording and scripted rerecording. Both numbers would be informative. Unfortunately neither record files nor emulators support this.
Random idea: there used to be a part of the main page that had randomly-selected featured movies, but that was removed with the redesign even though it was a cool feature. There's not much room on the main page anymore though, so it would probably be a separate page. A completely-randomly-selected list of movies (regardless of tier) would be cool too, for finding movies of lesser-known games you forgot about.
Designer of Copy Kitty, a game about giant robots and explosions
Random idea: there used to be a part of the main page that had randomly-selected featured movies, but that was removed with the redesign even though it was a cool feature.
Huh? Featured movie box (displaying a random movie out of subset of movies) is still there (just checked).
AzureLazuline wrote:
A completely-randomly-selected list of movies (regardless of tier) would be cool too, for finding movies of lesser-known games you forgot about.
Random idea: there used to be a part of the main page that had randomly-selected featured movies, but that was removed with the redesign even though it was a cool feature.
Huh? Featured movie box (displaying a random movie out of subset of movies) is still there (just checked).
I think he is talking about 'Popular Movies', whose space is now replaced with the 'Vault'.
I think it would be helpful if the consoles games wish list were a sticky post?
Seconding that.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Ok, we got our first case (that I can remember at least) of mass spamming. Any suggestions how to prevent that from happening in the future?
This was far from the first. Those chinese spams have been popping now and then (lately seemingly coming in 2-at-once).
And what makes blocking extra nasty: These aren't posted by bots.
Joined: 8/14/2009
Posts: 4083
Location: The Netherlands
Warp wrote:
Ok, we got our first case (that I can remember at least) of mass spamming. Any suggestions how to prevent that from happening in the future?
It's been happening on-and-off for the last couple of months. It's not really a major issue, and I'm not sure it's even something preventable at all without causing major inconveniences to regular users trying to register. (It seems that this spam comes from Chinese humanly-registered spam accounts, so anti-bot protection won't do much here)
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa
<dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects.
<Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits
<adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.
Block a post if a newbie/lurker says "jersey" in it :D
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
I see. I suppose that the mods are removing the spam posts pretty quickly, and I just happened to stumble across a couple of them before they were removed. Well, I suppose everything is fine in that case.
Joined: 3/9/2004
Posts: 4588
Location: In his lab studying psychology to find new ways to torture TASers and forumers
We're currently looking into more powerful spam blocking options. Main issue is ensuring our new code won't block real posts. Will inform when implemented.
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
Joined: 3/9/2004
Posts: 4588
Location: In his lab studying psychology to find new ways to torture TASers and forumers
Okay, new measures are complete. We will do some more testing, and hopefully put it live on the site soon.
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
If someone's legitimate post gets erroneously filtered as spam, does he/she get some kind of notification, and what are the procedures to report the false positive?
Joined: 3/9/2004
Posts: 4588
Location: In his lab studying psychology to find new ways to torture TASers and forumers
Warp wrote:
If someone's legitimate post gets erroneously filtered as spam, does he/she get some kind of notification
No.
Warp wrote:
and what are the procedures to report the false positive?
There aren't any.
The spam filter is only applied to new lurkers, so regular members have nothing to worry about.
The spam filter rates post content and gives it a spam rating. I scanned every single post on the site, all our legitimate posts have a rating of 0 and under. Whereas the spam posts we were getting are receiving ratings 25-60, with a few outliers in the low teens.
I set the threshold for spam to a rating of >10, based on that, the odds of any legitimate new user posting getting erroneously labeled as spam is rather tiny.
If you wish to test things for yourself, I can give you private access to the spam filter.
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
Joined: 3/9/2004
Posts: 4588
Location: In his lab studying psychology to find new ways to torture TASers and forumers
jlun2 wrote:
So, no protection from people who got hacked/decided to troll?
Regular users who misbehave will be handled by the moderator squad like usual.
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
Finding the Movie Class Guidelines page is quite difficult. There's no obvious way of finding it from anywhere easily. (The only chain of links I could find was from the main page > articles > editing > editor guidelines > movie editing > movie class guidelines.)
The box describing a movie has its classes listed on the right. One would assume that clicking them would give a description of what they mean. Instead, they just jump to a list of all movies having that class (which can oftentimes be pretty large.)
I think the link should point to the relevant section of the movie class guidelines page (or, perhaps, a page that describes what they mean.) Said page could contain links along the lines of "list all movies with this class."
