Charas 3.0 Dev Journal

[GaryCXJk]

Originally posted by Dragonium
- Mods should approve awards that are submitted to them. Otherwise we get people giving each other awards like "omg u r teh gayz" award. Or "FAGGIT" award. Or something.

Hmmm... faggit award...

[Dragonium]

You know, keeping track of the Awards System and what everybody's doing may be a bit of a hassle for our existing mods if they're having to keep control of the forums as well. We may need to hire new moderators.

*Not hinting at anything*

[Cosmos]

*will take full advantage of the quick reply* Yay!!!!!

[Moosetroop11]

Quick reply will = awesome.

Also, awards will have no power if there's five million different ones. I suggest that people submit award ideas and they get made and put on the official list if they get approved, and then members can select an award to give someone. So awards will work like smileys.

[Osmose]

Well me and Razor were talking about it this morning, and roughly,

All awards have a level.

Level 0 - Award created by a member. Nothing too special, but nice anyway.

Level 1 - A Mod has "endorsed" the award. Mod's should only endorse awards that they think deserve it, like a mini-contest or something given only to very skilled artists or something. A bit more prestigious.

Level 2 - A Mod and a Global Mod have endorsed the award. This award will require some work to receive - a contest is a prime candidate for level 2. Level 2 Awards are a a little rare, as they are a sign of great achievement.

Level 3 - Level 3 Awards have the endorsement of a Mod, Global Mod, and Admin. These are the cream of the crop - you get a Level 3 award, you are a master at whatever you did to get it.

Level 4 - Level 4 Awards are reserved exclusively for official Charas Awards. Having one equipped gives a +50 bonus to your awesome stat.

Each member can only create one award, not counting level 2 and 3 awards. So, if Daetyrnis creates an award that gets to level 2, he may create another award. If that award gets to level 2 or 3, he may create yet another one.

When someone chooses to give an award, it sends that member a notice asking if they accept the award. Members can choose to accept or deny awards. Level 3 and 4 awards have a 16x16 icon that will display on the profile to the left of posts of people who have received them.

There's a little more, but I gotta go now.

[Moosetroop11]

Sounds spiffeh.

[Dragonium]

Originally posted by Moosetroop11
Sounds spiffeh.

Seconded.

[Daetyrnis]

That's awesome Moose, that seems to work very well.  However, what would the difference be between a "mini-contest" and an actual contest?  Is a mini-contest any random made contest made by a member (ex. Meiscool's various mapping contests) and a real contest is a more Charas-endorsed thing?

[Osmose]

A mini-contest is something along the lines of, say, "Hey guys, let's see who can make the funniest photoshopped picture". Basically something that is a contest but not really demanding a lot of skill to win.  Meiscool's map contest would probably be a 2, maybe even a 3 depending on if they were really big. An official Charas contest would probably go to level 3 or 4, depending on the difficulty of the challenge and the amount of awards being given out.

Phew. Spent pretty much all of today working on the award creation system (Actually making them, uploading pictures, and sticking them in the database). I tested it and it did indeed upload a new award, but permissions on the image were off (Not that big of a deal but it would be a good idea to fix that), and the date was screwed up, but those are just little fixes. However, I still need to add in an interface to view your created awards and edit them (Well, the "interface" for editing awards is there, but the part that makes it function has yet to be made). But those are small tasks compared to getting it all started like I did today.

This is really good training for me, because I'll be doing what amounts to the same as what I'm doing now only on a larger scale for most of the new features, like having entries for games and news updates for them and such. But I've got a whole summer to get to that, so I should focus on finishing what's in front of me.

Also, how about a special type of award, a "Champion" award? It would be an award that can only be held by one person at a time - the creator of the award can take the award away and give it to someone else, and cannot give it to anyone else unless it is taken from the first person? This could be used for things like "Winner of the longest topic kick game" or other stuff like that.

[Dragonium]

Originally posted by Osmose
Also, how about a special type of award, a "Champion" award? It would be an award that can only be held by one person at a time - the creator of the award can take the award away and give it to someone else, and cannot give it to anyone else unless it is taken from the first person? This could be used for things like "Winner of the longest topic kick game" or other stuff like that.

That sounds to me like a good idea for the big annual Charas contests, like the Smiley Contest. The winner of the contest holds it for one year, until the next time the contest runs, and then it goes to the winner of that, who holds it for one year, etc.

It'd sure raise turnout to big contests; more people would enter to win the award, and the 'Champion' would have to make a special effort to make their entries high-quality to defend their title.

[GaryCXJk]

So, CRC (Charas Resource Contest) would be level...?

And I think CRC previous winners should have their awards.

[Osmose]

Dunno. That's something I'd probably ask the staff about what level they think they should be.

[Osmose]

Ugh. A combonation of some badly-timed plans, a trip to a waterpark, me finally going back to work after having a nice couple weeks off, etc. have stalled work. I finally got the award system more or less finished, though. There's still some things missing, and a few kinks to work out, but it's complete enough that I am going to move on to something else.

Oh, and I'm slowly starting to realize that saying I'd be done by the end of the summer was a bad idea. I'm still trying to work whenever I can, but I also don't want to do things wrong and end up with a security vulnerability, or a crappy job done in general. Hell, even if I'm done with everything else I'll still need to look through the entire website and fix up all the messy spots of HTML, because there is so much that could be fixed to have smaller pages, faster load times, etc.

*looks at list of stuff to do to see what's next*

I guess I should move on to User Groups, next. I'm probably not going to be able to start work on it until tomorrow, but it is moot because I'd like to ask a few things:

1.Should User Groups be approved? If so, by who?
2.Should there be a limit on how many user groups a single person can create? Or a limit on how many they can join?
3.What kinds of things do you want to see from user groups? Group-wide messages, group awards, etc?

[Fortet]

1) Yes. Moderators (Not global, just reg)
2) 1. 5.
3) Group Awards, Group v. Group contests

[Ben]

man, this just sounds sweeter everytime...I...uh

You get the picture.