New site features and fixes

[Delphy]

Hi All,

It's been a while since I did any major code changes here on MTS2. With the downtime today, however, come the following changes:


Keywords on download posts that are in space-seperated lists, as opposed to comma seperated, now get split into individual keywords
Non entered challenges now show up on the scorecard
Added option on the Mass Forum Subscriptions page to unsubscribe from a specified sub-forum. This is useful if you want to show all threads from a particular forum and it's children *except* for particular subforums. This is the second tickbox.
Fixed bug with New Posts giving a database error for unlogged in members
Renamed Featured Downloads to MTS2 Top Picks, which now incorporates the Top Picks
Added little stars next to some downloads. Hover over the star, you'll see.
A ton of behind the scenes stuff. :)


If you have any questions, feel free to ask.

Regards
Delphy

[Inge Jones]

I am seeing a mix of featured downloads and top picks in Downloads. Is there any difference at all between them, or just really a name change?

[Fresh-Prince]

Awesome new features!

What's the MOCCA award winner? Is that for people whom's download have the MTS2 Pick?

Anyway, thanks for the updates! All your hard work is greatly appreciated. :)

[Phaenoh]

I went to fanseelamb's page, and the Untuckables set is a 'Top Pick' under the 'Most Downloaded' section, but it is a 'Featured Creation' under the download section. I'm confused why they are different and why the change. Also, what is the MOCCA Award?

[Inge Jones]

It might be for people who stay up all night :D

[jenfold]

Thirding the what is the MOCCA Award? I'm suddenly paranoid you know about my caffeine habbit. :lol:

[migamoo]

I was wondering about the award myself. :lol:

And I love the idea of Top Picks because it still gives awesome downloads the recognition they deserve even if not "Featured." Will there still be Featured items, or it is all going to be Top Picks from now on?

[Phaenoh]

It might be for people who stay up all night :D That can't be it. Otherwise I'd have one next to my name too. ;-)

[Sulphur]

Delphy is just being evil. Sets up a thing and refuses to say what is it! http://www.cosgan.de/images/smilie/frech/a075.gif

[Fresh-Prince]

lol, never mind about the MOCCA :P

[Delphy]

I don't know what you are talking about with this Mocha thing. But I do like coffee, so if anybody has any going, I'll take a cup.

Also, thanks Phaenoh, I fixed that bug with the trophy/star.

To answer migamoos question: Yes, of course there will still be Featured items. The Top Picks do not appear on top of the download browser, for example.

[Phaenoh]

I'm still confused. In the featured/top picks section about half are featured and half are top picks. You just said they wouldn't appear on top of the downloads, I assume that means the 4 spots above the main downloads? so confused.

also, are the stars going to show up next to our avatars? i like that best, lets people know immediately that you have something really worth looking at if they missed it.

[Fresh-Prince]

He means that there is still basically featured downloads. The newest featured items will be on the top of the downloads page as always, but the top picks wont be. So im guessing you can have 3 types of downloads now:
- Featured
- Top Pick
- Normal (not featured or top picked)

Correct me if im wrong :D

[Inge Jones]

But my question remains unanswered - what does it mean to be featured or a top pick - how do they differ in significance?

[migamoo]

From what I've seen, I think Top Picks seem to be downloads that are worth noting for their quality and such, but maybe not quite up to Featured status.

[Fresh-Prince]

I believe featured is ... featured, lol, and top pick is a download with high download stats or a download that is of high quality, but just quite didn't make it to that featured spot with higher quality.

I should stop now because i dont know if what im saying is true,lol.

[tiggerypum]

The 'features' of features remain the same. Features are awarded trophies, the user gets a trophy next to their name, and they appear on the top of download pages and the front page of the site.

The 'picks' honor other items that are top on site, as there are certainly other most excellent downloads that were not featured. They are awarded by a magic algorithm that I cannot disclose. The little star will show up on all the index listings, but not next to the user's name.

This enables downloaders to see more of what's great on the site, and if they're smart, they will go and look at your profile to see other goodies you've made.

[Phaenoh]

If thats the case, are previously uploaded things going to be added to top picks? I can't imagine that they would, that's a huge task, though it doesn't really seem fair not to.

[Fresh-Prince]

^^ Many of my previous things are already starred :)

[Phaenoh]

Were they previously featured or not?

[Fresh-Prince]

No, they weren't previously featured.

[Phaenoh]

Coolies, congrats then!

[Inge Jones]

So, if a person uploads something, and that something gets featured, then the person is referred to as a featured artist? Or is that something different still?

[Fresh-Prince]

Thank you! Appreciate it :D

[migamoo]

Thanks for the clarification Tig. :)

[plasticbox]

Complainin' as usual :D :

* Too late now, probably, but fwiw: something about this change was messing with the Personal Picks -- my recent ones are gone, only one age-old one shows up .. is this just me or does it happen to others too?

* For me no Featured items appear on top of the subsections -- only atop the main download page.

* When in the Featured/Top picks section (which is still referred to as "Featured" on the main d/l page, which may be a little bit confusing?), only actual Features (not Top Picks) appear in the subsections. For example, I go to Featured Items, Featured + Top Picks appear; then I go to Body Shop: now I only see Featured items anymore. Is this supposed to be so?

* Splitting up the keywords was a very good move. Thank you.

Also, are the Top picks man-made or machine-made? If it's the former: can we veto against one of our own top picks? (I have one for a lot that imho has a relatively rubbish backside .. I appreciate the appreciation, and it's an OK house, but it doesn't deserve the extra attention in my eyes) Just seen Tig's post. Probably not. Ah well.

(And what is this Mocca thing? I mean, where do you all see it? If it's for staying up all night, I should have a triple =).

[Phaenoh]

Sneaky Delphy was messing with us, he took away the little coffee cup next to some peoples avatars that said MOCCA Award Winner when you moused over it. Its gone now.

[tiggerypum]

Inge, we do have 'featured creators' here - in that if a person has a featured item on site, the little trophy thing appears below their name on site when they post. Like your Moocow does. That's been on site for... I don't know how long. Very long now.

EDIT: Oh Inge, I see now, in the indexes. That's because when we award features sometimes we had set it up to be 'creator' meaning we were picking that item to feature but were meaning the feature to be more general - as features are tied to particular downloads. At the time features didn't *have* a download browseable section. We might need to relook at that, because it does look odd.

We'll need D to look at some of those other issues Plasticbox. You're right, the picks filtering doesn't seem to be working on the sub-categories at the moment. We'll get that ironed out.

[pfish]

I love top picks with stars. :gjob:

[Delphy]

Picks filtering wont work at all on the sub-category filtering within the Featured/Picks download browser - this is becuase of the way that featured items have traditionally been added. Thus, when you select a sub-category you see only Featured items, not Picks.

Personal picks should not be affected - at least it wasn't on any of the ones I checked during testing.

[Annelae]

These changes are really good because there are some downloads which weren't featured but were hi-quality, take Numenor's recolorable Ford Mustang GT!

[Christine11778]

I think this is a wonderful idea!

[Delphy]

Okay, my last post in this thread can be ignored. I just changed the way that the Top Picks are displayed. Now they are more closely integrated into the download browser just like displaying all downloads by a particular member.

[plasticbox]

Delphy, the picks display works much better now -- like you'd expect it to.

But has something changed about how the are calculated/distributed? Now half of my uploads seem to be picked .. this wasn't the case yesterday, I had perhaps 5-10 picks all in all. This is supposed to be so, yes?

No biggie about the Personal picks, if it's only me I can fix them myself. (Mine are still in the muddled-up state they were yesterday, in case you want to check -- I haven't touched them in the meantime)

[Delphy]

Actually, yes there was a bug in what was picked so it didn't pick everything it should have. The way it works now is not a bug. :)

[plasticbox]

That is nice to hear. Thanks =)

[`kiki]

ooooh I've got something with a star on it :D

[Delphy]

plasticbox, Okay personal picks should now be working correctly. :)

[Nouk]

So now you can filter both starred and featured downloads. Nice :)

[La_exotique]

Some of the repeated questions gave me a severe case of gas.
I love the top pick section, i think it's quite a great idea. It makes it easier to browser through high quality items without trying to do a search on items from most replies or most downloads.

[Petchy]

Can I have a Diagram on where the stars are located?
Do you have to go INTO the download to see them, Or do they appear next to the name?
Annyway, Thanks for the imrovements!!

Edit: Got it now! Ok, Next to the name, And its a Very nice star!
Sorry!

[Nymphy]

Mmm...I hope with these new star symbols, that "normal" creators will feel more encouraged. Although looking through, most of the downloads which have stars are by featured creators

Thanks for the changes :)

[Phaenoh]

Hurray! Two of my things got starred. I feel better now. Thanks for recognizing my hard work! I was hoping for more, but those definitely were my best ones, so now I know the level I need to achieve if I want to collect more stars. Hurray for this new system and hurray for Delphy!

[Inge Jones]

Although looking through, most of the downloads which have stars are by featured creators

That's not really surprising, as featured creators tend to make the best stuff. You could only really break out of that by having a sort of "booby prize" star for the rough stuff. Actually the thought of that is making me smile - a sort of "top ten atrocities of the week" pick from the downloads appearing on the front page.

[plasticbox]

personal picks should now be working correctly. :)

Yup, mine are back -- thank you!

[G.O.C.]

Yeah but, No but, yeah but! That wouldn't work "Inge." You know very well that MTS2 only allows the VERY BEST creations!!!!

[plasticbox]

Found something new to complain about: the features/picks interfere with the filters ..

1. Go to Downloads main page, filter for All Downloads
2a. Select a regular subsection (say Lots) -- filter is still at All DLs (like it should be)
2b. Select Featured items (via the title bar link) -- filtering goes back to Compatible =(

The other way around:
1. Go to Downloads main page, go to Featured Items
2a. Filter for whatever and get kicked back to main DL page =(

(In the regular subsections, the filtering works fine -- it's only the Featured stuff that acts up)

In other words, it's not possible to see only those picks/features that are compatible with a particular game configuration.


We had this before with the regular subsections .. I hope I recall correctly that it was a real problem, with a real fix, and not a user cookie issue or something =)

[Delphy]

Yes, features are currently incompatible with both filters and search. I plan on making the filter/search work much better over the weekend, so I'll add it in then.

[$RaMRoM$]

thanks for your hard works delphy!

[tish85]

cool =)

[Cee]

I SWEAR that English is my first language but

"Keywords on download posts that are in space-seperated lists, as opposed to comma seperated, now get split into individual keywords"

No comprende! Can anyone explain?

[Delphy]

Cee,

Previously, if you put in keywords like so "medieval ancient stonework" then the download screen would show it as one big long url. Now it shows it as three individually tagged keywords.

[Zoidbergen]

Thankies Delphy for making these changes. But 1 question... with the stars are they given to the downloads that are good to high quality but didnt have quite the right status to get featured?

Im just a little confuzzled about it. Anyways thanks for the new changes :).

[Sophie-David]

I think that the stars are a good idea, and it is good to see that three of the top Ancients contest entries now have stars.

But it would be nice to be able to separate the Features so that one could just browse those. Perhaps a Features button when displaying the Top Picks page would do the trick (similar to the Contests button on that page).

[summersong86]

Interesting changes. A wee bit confusing, but interesting and a very nice idea! I do need to point out one issue and I'm not sure how many profiles it affects, but is there any way to REMOVE a Featured Creator's trophy?

The last time I looked, which was like, about 10 minutes ago, I still had a Featured Creator's trophy under my screen name. But I don't have ANY content whatsoever posted anymore. I was basically a "One hit Wonder" and my featured skin set was so past its prime that the distinction is completely outdated and no longer merited.

I don't want anyone misled by the trophy to bother looking at my forum profile. Also, I think I may still have a journal feature available to me, but without content to my name, that should be deleted, too, so the resources can go to an active featured artist.

Anyway, I don't know if the system is meant to be automated to recognize when an artist no longer meets the MTS2 criteria or definition of a Featured Artist. In case it is supposed to, I mention this in case there is a glitch somewhere since I still have all the goodies of a Featured Creator but I'm not anymore. I don't want to hog resources that I no longer have a right to.

[lamammaforever]

Well, I'm one of those who can't show any stars so I'm more happy if Delphy won't correct the bug (hehehe). Nope, stars are not suddenly appearing even as a wrong function! :rofl:
Thank you for these new changes, boss. Ciao!

[Delphy]

summersong, the system is not automated, no - if you remove all your downloads then you retain the featured trophy becuase thats assigned to your user not to specific downloads. You have to either get noticed by a staff member or contact them.

Sophie: That will be part of my Search and Filter improvements coming in the next couple of days.

[summersong86]

Thanks Delphy. I assume people with Moderator under their title are the ones with the ability to edit out the icons??? Do not have to answer that--it is just a question I had which is why I didn't approach a staff member. I will try to find the answer myself. Sorry for my ignorance I am just unsure as on some forums I am on moderators only watch for bad language and it is the forum owner who is the only one who can make data changes. I do not mean to trouble you under this news topic. Sorry also for poor grammar. Bad migraine coming up on me suddenly, everything is going a bit blurry.

[tiggerypum]

Summersong the site moderators (or admins) have colored names on site and also usually their title (even if a bit silly) does indicated that they're a moderator. You can send a message to any of them if you have a question or problem. If they cannot help you, they'll pass it on to someone who can. :)

[plasticbox]

tig, this reminds me of something: apparently there's no easy-to-find place on this site where people can see who the moderators are and (roughly) what they do -- I know I have seen some kind of list somewhere (with "groups" in the URL I believe, not sure if you know what I'm talking about): wouldn't it be possible to link that from the "About" page? That would make it a lot easier for less frequent visitors to figure out who to ask in cases like this one.

[summersong86]

That is a good idea Plasticbox. This site is already one of the best organized Sims sites and that would certainly help even more. And Tiggerypum thank you and thanks to whomever fixed my status to remove the appreciated but now un-merited Featured Artist icon. I will miss it but maybe someday can earn another one. Or not...I think I may be more comfortable being a "Regular Joe".

I am not ungrateful for all the wonderful things being Featured brought my way, it is just my personality--I am more comfortable cooperating just to make pretty things. Being given distinctions makes me feel I am competing for attention against other artists or being compared and that makes me a little shy and nervous to contribute. I rather just look at the stats of downloads and how many people added me to Favorites to judge how my work is being received and to measure my progress. Stars and Features denotes I was judged good by a few people behind the scenes and I don't even know what their criteria was so it causes some confusion and discomfort to me.

I am sorry to have been a bother about my icon but I sometimes get confused by the titles under our names. Like mine says "Instructor". I guess it is because I posted too much? I am guessing it can't be something meant to be taken seriously. I am not qualified to instruct anybody about anything. I can't even make a default file. I can do a limited number of things fairly well. That's about it. Even things I know how to do well, I can not always convey. Sometimes my writing is very clear, other times it looks like English is not even my native language! It depends on my health at the time I make my post, unfortunately. Or how much sleeptime I am cutting into. I have to wait for my family to be asleep to do my own thing here at the pc. Sometimes I have fallen asleep in the middle of making a Sim. That would explain why most of them are not fit to be uploaded! And why my posts just drag on and on. ;)

Thanks again.

[Delphy]

Plasticbox, If somebody has a problem with the site, or about something they don't understand, then that is entirely what the Site Issues forum is for. Which is linked - it's even in the dropdown navbar.

I'd rather have people posting in that forum than PMing a staff member all the time, becuase often what they want to know can easily be answered by another member.

The list of moderators is available, yes, but not what they do - that list is held internally and will not be released for public viewing.

[`kiki]

delphy, is there any way that you could make it so that we can view our submissions threads when they're in the moderator queue? it's a lil bit of a niggle that you can't actually view your own thread unless a mod tells you to edit it or it gets approved...

[Jasana_BugBreeder]

Great changes, especially 'unsubscribe from forums' option :) But - is it just me, or tooltips with post summary are gone from New Posts? They were useful :-<

[Inge Jones]

Great changes, especially 'unsubscribe from forums' option :) But - is it just me, or tooltips with post summary are gone from New Posts? They were useful :-<

Ah yes I noticed that too and forgot to say anything. I always used to use those to save me opening threads I knew I couldn't add anything useful to.

[Delphy]

Tooltips with post summary in new posts? That hasn't been there for a very long time.

[Inge Jones]

Was too! It was there immediately before this weekend's downtime. Or it *could* have been the one during the week, but I am pretty sure it was this weekend.

[Delphy]

Hrm, well, nothing I did should have affected that... and I haven't had them in my new posts for well over a year, so... I dunno. :)

[Jasana_BugBreeder]

I always used to use those to save me opening threads I knew I couldn't add anything useful to.Same for me :)
It certainly was here less then year ago - most likely until the most recent downtime.
Though, before it allowed more than it should - I think I said it earlier - since I was subscribed to Creator Feedback, I saw new threads from Creator Issues in New Posts, and their first posts were shown in tooltip - though I hadn't enough rights to view the thread. Delphy, could it be that you fixed this glitch and, how to say it, overfixed it? :o

[wolfmage64]

Complainin' as usual :D :

* For me no Featured items appear on top of the subsections -- only atop the main download page.



I really like that option for users like me to browse through the featured items in each subsection, it's more efficient in searching. Now that only 4 featured items are display in the main downloads page, it doesn't give much publicity for the rest of the featured items in each subsection. So if I wanted to download a featured house I would have to view pages of the non-related featured items such as the clothes and makeup before going the featured house I want.

Just some qualitative feedback on the new layout....