Strolen's Citadel

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Admin Chatter

Started by manfred Mar 4, 2006 1,314 posts Locked

  1. Re: Admin Chatter

    #1041
    Hired a designer and need your opinions as we start the process. Please let it all hang out. PM me if you must, but want to hear what you think. What comes out of this will be "us" for a very long time.

    http://strolen.com/guild/index.php/topic,5791.new.html#new

  2. Re: Admin Chatter

    #1042
    Off to Germany tomorrow for a few days. Schedule is packed otherwise I would have given manfred a better travel advisory. ;)

  3. Re: Admin Chatter

    #1043
    Still around but in over my head with a bunch of side projects and headaches. (Getting Rosie an insulin pump to mange her diabetes, trying to help a friend who's about to become a homeless veteran relocate from California to Vermont, and getting my first novel published.)

    Hope to be able to post and comment on all the great subs I've missed these past few months.  8)

    See you all soon!  :up:

  4. Re: Admin Chatter

    #1044
    Diabetes  :down:


    Helping a Vet  :up:  (all the best luck to him/her!!)


    Novel  :shock:  :what:  :)  :D  :lol:  :up:  Awesome!!! I want to ask about a thousand questions about it and the process. Agent? Accepted proposal? Requested manuscript? Accepted manuscript? more more more

  5. Re: Admin Chatter

    #1045
    Moon is alive and stirring into a somewhat active state.  Just waving to people

    Sil, have you contemplate e-Booking some of your other work?  The novel can't be, it still has commerical possibilities, but other things might make a body of work that will make your novel seem more attractive to an agent.

  6. Re: Admin Chatter

    #1046

    Moon is alive and stirring into a somewhat active state.  Just waving to people

    Sil, have you contemplate e-Booking some of your other work?  The novel can't be, it still has commerical possibilities, but other things might make a body of work that will make your novel seem more attractive to an agent.


    Thanks for the idea Moon, not sure what other things I have to offer though, aside from some rpg book review and my blogs on roleplayingtips.com the majority of the rest of my creature energies is posted here.

  7. Re: Admin Chatter

    #1047
    I've been looking around but haven;t noticed any talk of a spring quest, does anyone have any ideas in the works? (Just curious before I make a thread in the public areas asking the same)

  8. Re: Admin Chatter

    #1048
    not sure, but there has been some talk of a netbooks Quest i think. There is also a thread somewhere with other recent Quest ideas. I've come across it recently. Something about Smerps. Hope that helped :p

  9. Re: Admin Chatter

    #1049
    Netbook quest will probably hold for another couple months. Need to get the book to a rough state and we are still moving stuff over. Once we have it setup the idea was to figure out what was missing out of each one (mainly hooks but some need some other things too) as well as possibly all new submissions to fill out what we are short from.

    Carry on with a new quest for this next round!

  10. Re: Admin Chatter

    #1050
    manfred, I summon you from the depths. Arise! Arise, I say!

  11. Re: Admin Chatter

    #1051
    He is currently in Munich.  He is currently hunting for both a new place to live and a new job. Beyond that, I am awaiting an email back.

  12. Re: Admin Chatter

    #1052
    ever the hunter, that manfred.

  13. Re: Admin Chatter

    #1053
    My spring quest thread poll has run its course http://strolen.com/guild/index.php/topic,5836.0.html and the winner is 20,000 feet under the sea!

    Now my next question is how/where do I go to make it "official?" (I.e splashed on the front page as a quest, people able to select their sub as a quest sub etc.."

  14. Re: Admin Chatter

    #1054
    Strolen can make a front page Quest post...write up a catchy intro in the meantime :)

  15. Re: Admin Chatter

    #1055
    Yes!

    Give me a summary and a quest description and I will throw it up there!!

  16. Re: Admin Chatter

    #1056
    Summary is new by the way, I don't have room for the full quest description on the homepage anymore.

  17. Re: Admin Chatter

    #1057
    Summary:

    20,000 feet under the Sea! Aquatic sports, sunken ruins,  alien oceans, and high tech submersibles, time to get wet from oceanic adventure!

    Full Quest Description:

    Underwater adventure is the focus of our spring quest, from alien submersibles, to hidden seas and lost aquatic cultures, anything dealing with what lies beneath the waves is suitable for this challenge! The quest will being on: _____ and continue until: ______ at which point voting on the ___ most popular subs will take place.

  18. Re: Admin Chatter

    #1058
    Power outage last night 3 hours prior to my scheduled shutdown time. Pitch black house was annoying.

    Putting up quest nowish as I BBQ some tasty chicken.

    Here is my trip for our spring break. Leaving in about 18 days:

    Austria  -  Drive By
    Germany - Neuschwanstein Castle and staying nearby
    Czech Republic - Praque
    Austria - Vienna
    Slovakia - Bratislava
    Hungary - Budapest
    Croatia - Trakoscan Castle, Veliki Tabor Castle
    Slovenia - Predjama Castle and nearby caves
    Italy

    Anybody nearby to meet?

  19. Re: Admin Chatter

    #1059
    That is going to be one fine trip!

    I have driven a lot in the region. Of course you have already visited the Italian and Croatian towns, which I regard to be of the finest sort.
    How is Tuscany working out for you?

    Have you been here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinque_Terre ?

    I'd add Bled to your Slovenia menu! Go see the Blejski Hrad! (Bled Castle)

    A bit (too far) to the west is Luxembourg and Strasbourg, which are excellent places to visit.

  20. Re: Admin Chatter

    #1060
    Also, haven't seen you in the north yet!

  21. Re: Admin Chatter

    #1061
    Bled was on my list!! But too much driving through the whole trip and I was overridden. I pushed and shoved for that one. I desperately want to go to Romania and see those castles so that might be another trip in that direction and it might make the cut.

    Cinque Terra got hit by a flood this last fall and one of the towns was a mudslide. We have been there four times so far I think...once pushing a wheel chair which was a chore! Place is awesome and the hike is out of this world fun!

    I hope to come to the north in the next couple years, even if it is a weekend solo mission by me! The tarot says it is in my future.

    Tuscany is frick'n awesome. Place is absolutely amazing and there is tons to see in just a 4 hour radius of me.

  22. Re: Admin Chatter

    #1062
    Sounds like life is good, Strolen.

  23. Re: Admin Chatter

    #1063
    I didn't catch the month you were coming down here...

  24. Re: Admin Chatter

    #1064
    When in Budapest, the House of Terror Museum, may give you some Terror ebook inspiration  :up:

  25. Re: Admin Chatter

    #1065
    Just curious when the voting on  the latest bunch of quest subs is going to be taking place? Whiel it started off slow we got quite a few great subs there at the end!  :up:

  26. Re: Admin Chatter

    #1066
    You are empowered!

    Else I can try to get to it. I will be concentrating on getting the cronjob fixed though for the immediate future so people can get their votes back.

  27. Re: Admin Chatter

    #1067
    Why cant we tally votes/etc used within a given time range and deduct from their default vote count?

  28. Re: Admin Chatter

    #1068

    Why cant we tally votes/etc used within a given time range and deduct from their default vote count?


    Likely the tallying of such would have to be done manually, which would be a tedious task an admin would have to do on a daily basis unless a special script was written for it?

    As for the voting thing, I've never set one up before so am admittedly clueless on the technical bits involved in links to subs inside a poll etc.. But if people want I'll give it a shot later this week when I get the time, to sort it out?  :up:

  29. Re: Admin Chatter

    #1069
    No,tallying is pretty straightforward sql. Whenever you need to display the vote, you just query what they did that day and deduct at from what you are sposed to have at this level.

    I dont think with the right table structure nighly update jobs are needed, nor any manual effort once setup and debugged.

    Basically you have an audit table that contains any transactions and a date and a userid.  Update on every change/vote submission.  Create a view on top for today.  Count transactions for user for today and subtract.

  30. Re: Admin Chatter

    #1070
    I am not really understanding what you are trying to do. It tickles the edge of making sense but I can't quite figure out what the intention is.

  31. Re: Admin Chatter

    #1071
    I don't know your table structure, but here is  my stab at an example (bastardized oracle)

    create table Member_Action_fact as
    (
    Member_ID numeric(20,0),  -- unenforced foreign key to MEMBER table
    Action_ID numeric (20,0), -- unenforced foreign key to ACTION table
    Point_Cost, -- number of votes used, not normalized to allow for changes over time
    date_time date
    )

    Create view Used_Votes_View as
    select sum(point_Cost) as Used_votes,Member_ID from Member_Action_fact where to_char(date_type,'YYYYMMDD') = to_char('YYYYMMDD',sysdate) group by Member_id;

    create current_vote_view as
    select LL.Granted_votes - UVV.Used_Votes as Current Votes,Member_ID
    from
    Level_Lookup LL,
    Used_Votes_View UVV
    where LL.Member_ID = UVV.Member_ID;


    I think with more thought, I could get this down to a single view, but this should do the job. I know there are also better ways to do the date comparison in oracle (i.e. Round function).
    I like using views to make individual queries smaller and cleaner.

    The only sketchy part for me is how mysql does data comparisons.






  32. Re: Admin Chatter

    #1072


    Why cant we tally votes/etc used within a given time range and deduct from their default vote count?


    Oh, took me a minute for it to click. So what you are saying is to count up the amount of votes used in a date range, compare that with how many the author is allowed and use that?

    Now I see.

    The main issue I see with that is that it is a query every time you want that information. Right now, it is provided with all the other default user information so there is no overhead with it. The only hit it takes is when you actually use it and at that time there is other information be updated in the same view as well so, again, there is no extra work to decrement it. Same with the cron, we are already going into the user table to update XP for logging in for the day so resetting the votes piggybacks on that. So, right now, there are no extra queries to show or update the vote count.

    If the number was dynamically generated, it would have to be done on every single page load for those logged in. While not a big hit on the resources, it is still an extra query every hit. Not horrible, but I think it is fine the way it is. The Scrasamax Effect is a rare event and probably won't be duplicated again.

  33. Re: Admin Chatter

    #1073
    The Scrasamax Effect...


    I have my own effect now. Excellent

  34. Re: Admin Chatter

    #1074
    Just figured I'd post a link up here of my summer promotional thread, and open the door for us admins to discuss any concerns/concepts we may have for it we don't want to involve the rest of the citadel in for whatever reason.  :up:

    http://strolen.com/guild/index.php/topic,5886.msg72366/topicseen.html#new

  35. Re: Admin Chatter

    #1075
    Is RGTraynor back and up to his old stuff? A few comments and posts on Kasseys subs make me question why all of a sudden he is back and apparently low voting again.

  36. Re: Admin Chatter

    #1076
    Sucky but not much I would really feel comfortable doing with it unfortunately. His one comment has merit and we can't really call him out on only voting, even low, unless we call out everybody.

  37. Re: Admin Chatter

    #1077
    Agreed.
    On a related note, can we reverse the last challenge? I strongly think that was inappropriate.
    The one on kevlar thread. I think that sub is perfectly legit.


  38. Re: Admin Chatter

    #1078
    Agreed. And agreed on Kevlar sub too. Why the challenge? Perfectly useful and interesting idea thread.

  39. Re: Admin Chatter

    #1079
    Rage Guy is essentially a cyber-bully. He likes to show up every once in a while and low vote a few subs with snarky comments to try and stir up some drama and make someone feel their work is insignificant, then leave for a while and show back up when a comment or vote on one of his subs catches his attention.

    I'm not sure why he singled out Kassy though, she hasn't made any outstanding subs lately, or done anything to draw attention to herself, making me think he's just picking her as an easy mark to bully and get away with given her few subs are by her own admission, in need of work and she's still making an effort to improve.

    I sent Kassy a short pm earlier around 3am when I noticed RG returned and started singling out her subs, letting her know he does this childish game every so often and not to take it personally and to just ignore him and he'll go away.

    Unfortunately she ignored my advice, responding that it's "a game for two" and seems to have taken the tit for tat approach and low voted on a few of his subs in return.

    From what I know of RG, and the issues people have had with him in the past, this will likely spark more resentment from him, I expect his return to low ball more of Kassy's stuff, or take his frustration out on someone else; and generally just upset people and hide behind the law of the hammer while doing so.

    Perhaps if Strolen or another high ranking admin  should contact RG and politely let him know that if he's not going to participate as a citadel member, showing up every few months  just to low vote and give out harsh commentary isn't keeping with our community spirit, serves to only create problems for us, and to please refrain from doing so any more it would solve the problem?

    Until someone speaks to him and makes it clear showing up just to bully members and tick off the community for his own pleasure isn't wanted here, he's likely to just keep doing it.

    Now if he was a regular participating member and just a harsh critic then meh, that would be a different matter. Showing up a few times a year just to toss his weight around though; it's rude and just creates unwanted drama within the community.  :down:

  40. Re: Admin Chatter

    #1080
    On the topic of the Kevlar, who challenged it anyway? RG? (If so I'd say it's more of him throwing his weight around and being an ass/bully for the sake of making trouble.)

    The kevlar thread does strike me as a little rushed, but Agar more likely cranked that out in a hurry because of a favorable comment and mentioning of one of his older works by Forganthus in a recent sub of his inspired his return to the citadel. ( http://strolen.com/viewing/How_I_Vote )

    Going by Agar's comment
    I do enjoy seeing someone's logic on how they make decisions and it certainly caught my eye when one of my own posts is a suggestion. I will resolve to put more up. And thank you.


    He likely either banged out a quick sub, or tossed one of his "in work hidden" ones into the finished pile without fully fleshing it out.

    I do hope the challenge and resulting stub outcome doesn't discourage Agar from making more subs, I rather enjoyed his older stuff.

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