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v20170002 Update

Hi all,

90% less down time and 100% more numerous and more annoying SQL scripts… here’s update number two:

1. Admins now have the ability to unban users.

2. Havacoman and Sethaniel now have community contributor trophies. (This might take up to 24 hours to take effect)

3. Clicking on a user’s infinite points will no longer show you an outdated point value.

4. Admins can now reject and delete articles.

5. Articles can now be tagged with a concept difficulty tag. They are all currently set to beginner but we will start fixing these up soon.

6. Will11 now has his own personal trophy! Congratulations, Will!

7. Will11 is now an articles moderator and has the ability to review, approve, and reject articles. He will begin rewriting and consolidating articles so please have some patience! Thanks for helping out, Will!

8. Articles moderators no longer appear on the help & info and don’t see moderator central. This was preventing us from adding strictly articles moderators in the past.

9. A set of broken links in the moderation center have been fixed.

10. Users with 0 points now have browsable point histories.

11. The daily free point has been removed.

12. A new featured called ‘SANCTIONS’ has been built. The essence of this feature is that forum posts, storygames, comments, and articles can be sanctioned by administrators. A sanctioned piece of writing is a piece of writing that an administrator has deemed to be an excellent contribution to the website. All featured comments and accepted articles from here on out are sanctioned by default. Storygames and forum posts are sanctioned manually by administrators. Only excellent contributions to the website will earn sanctions. Anything posted before 2017 is not eligible for sanctioning but admins may go and sanction some content from earlier this month. Please do not pester them with suggestions.

13. A sanctioned article (any accepted article) is worth 10 sanctions, a sanctioned comment (any featured comment) is worth 3 sanctions, a sanctioned post is worth 1 sanction, and the number of sanctions given out for a story is usually much larger. The total number of sanctions that you have earned is displayed on your profile. Note: Only the primary author of a sanctioned story receives any sanctions for it.

14. Users who accrue the most sanctions will earn special order-specific profile prefixes. These are updated nightly at the same time as the trophies.

15. Users who accrue the most sanctions on any given day will earn a special order-specific profile suffix and their username will display differently in the forums. Additionally, they will receive 20 EXP points. These are updated nightly at the same time as the trophies.

16. The order that has accrued the most sanctions will have bolded usernames in the forum. These are updated nightly at the same time as the trophies.

17. Each day, the first time you get a sanction, you will get 3 EXP points.

18. The current order standings in terms of most sanctions accrued is listed in the About Us page on the Help & Info. It might look a little weird until each order gets at least one sanction.

I’d like to take this moment to ask people to really be clear in the Bugs & Problems section. Please give me as much information as possible, so that I have a chance to fix your problem. I’m sure I will have created some bugs in the course of building these changes!

Cheers,
3J

*reads number 11, cries softly* Just being me isn't worthy of points anymore... other than that, thanks for the update, it seems like the order standings will be really cool. Thank you for all your hard work!

No problem, and congratulations on being the first ever sanctioned member of chooseyourstory.com! You've gone down in history. Also please refer to point #17 for an explanation on why the daily point was removed.

I-I-I'm the first one?! I feel so special. I don't really know why I was sanctioned, but thank you.

There's a sanction history like a point history, accessible from your account. It links directly to the content you were sanctioned for.

I just want to reiterate to people that a lot of the new features (like prefixes/suffixes, etc.) won't initialize until early monday morning, probably! I think that's the next time that the jobs script runs, though it might still run tonight.

Edit: Not settled on Sanctions as a permanent name btw. It has two meanings which can be confusing. Might go with endorsements or similar, but I figure we'll give it a test run with this name :)

So orders do have a use after all. And quite a use indeed.

I can definitely see a lot more order-distinction tension coming out of this, but at least it'll be productive tension! Sanctions / endorsements sound cool, though. They surely give a lot more meaning to points. Will the next update get rid of dueling or something so that points would purely reflect a user's productivity? (Not that I'm against duels.)

Dueling is something that I'm on the fence about. It could actually be a bit of a project to remove, but it's really not in line with my vision for the site.

Currently points are a great representation of your activity and participation on the websites, and Sanctions are a great representation of your dedication as a writer.

First the free points, then the duels? You want to remove my 2 major sorces of points? You monster!
Just joking of corse, though removing duels will leave quite a fiew people unhappy. It will be nice to see the points finally get more meaning however, even if it won't be as accurate for the older accounts.

Trust me, removing duels isn't high priority. I don't see it happening soon. But, duels are a zero sum game so in general, no one gains points from them in the long term!

Rating stories is the way to get points, for sure.

This is untrue! By challenging newbies to RPS duels if you have one of the RPS options that beats two of the newbie's options you will consistently win 66.6% of your duels, resulting in a net 16.6% growth in points invested. If I was bored enough to do so I could have thousands of points right now from simply spamming duel requests! Many of my duel victories are, in fact, from when I wanted to prove a point about how RPS tended to be an easy win and demonstrated it.

Also, if someone sends you a duel request you can look through their past duels to see if they have any tendencies to use any particular thing.

The only real zero-sum duel is toggle. 

Zero sum means no points are created, regardless of fairness. Person X earns three points and person Y loses three points. If you were playing poker with the best poker player in the world, it would still be a zero sum game because you lose as many chips as they earn, bringing the sum of chips to zero.

You're right, some people will gain points (see: Briar) but points aren't created or injected into the economy from dueling, so removing it doesn't actually affect the average person's point getting ability. That's all I was trying to say.

Ah, alright, my bad haha

R.I.P. cysid hahalol

Damn so many changes! What are orders though? Are they like secret clubs for cool kids only or something?

Right now, they're teams. The order with the most sanctions will get bolded usernames on the forum. This occurs when trophies are given out at like 2 AM. The first time it happens will probably be Sunday night (monday morning). Additionally, being high up in your own order will earn you profile rewards. You can bet that I'll continue to develop the order ecosystem over time so get comfortable.

So do we get to choose the teams?

Your Order is on your profile.

Will there be an option to choose which team you'd like to be in somewhere in the future (perhaps only when you reach a high number of points)? Or will this allways stay random.

No, that's not likely. When people get to choose, you inevitably end up in a one or two party system. This is far more interesting and far more likely to spur good creative collaboration.

Hah, reminds me of that scene from Reservoir Dogs when the crime boss is assigning color names and Mr. Pink wants to choose his own color.

“No, no, no, tried that once and it doesn’t work. You get five guys all wanting to be Mr. Black.”

Hahahaha exactly.

Daily free points, you'll be missed. Thank you for all this new changes 3J, this place just keeps getting better! And congrets, Will11, Havacoman and Sethaniel!

You're welcome! You guys keep participating and using the website, and I'll keep working on the code.

Wow, what is Kumquat going to do without his daily point?!

Glad to see that the update went through.

lol!

Last Activity

1/15/2017 12:04 AM

1/15/2017	1	Daily Point

Milked it.

Maybe he'll be desperate enough for points that he actually does something.

Interesting updates! So I'm guessing these sanctions are supposed to make the orders also feel competitive in a way as well?

Oh, and congrats to Will! I knew it would be a smiley face.

Thanks! Sort of true. Sanctions are here to further incentivize good content.

Bow to the Architect Order! *Evil Laugh* How many orders are there in total? Maybe we can have top 10 members of each order (ranked acc. to no of sanctions)?

4 orders. And yes, you have chosen the best one/

Endmaster and T-Count in the same order? My whole life has been a lie! *cry cry*

I'm kinda sad to see the daily points go, cause, you know, mah free points. Though I can see where you're coming from with the sanction system, and the supposed incentives for community participation. However, isn't the noun 'sanction' most commonly used to mean penalties/fines and such?

 

Yes. The name isn't set in stone and we can change it. Endorsement and its ilk sounds too much like LinkedIn so if we come up with something that still sounds cool but is unambiguous, we'll make the shift.

Maybe not necessarily cool, but how about something like 'kudos'? Or 'pat on the head'?

Kudos isn't pluralized easily enough, so it will end up kind of awkward at several places including on the profile.

How 'bout accolade?

Past tense problems. Sanctions / Sanction / Sanctioned. Accoladed sounds awkward as an adjective property for an object like a post: "this post was accoladed by" sounds bad., although it still works. Sanctioned is verb or adjective smoothly.

What about compliment? We could get compliments, or maybe compliment points. Who doesn't like compliments?

Not grandiose enough IMO. We need the word to be weightier. Condoned would be good, but it doesn't pluralize.

I'm thinking ... acknowledged. For pluralizations, we can call them acknowledgements? Single: acknowledgement?/ Past: acknowledged by? Or no good?

Not weighty enough. It doesn't carry the kind of personal respect that Sanction (or endorse) does. These are good ideas though, keep them coming.

*snaps fingers* Acclamation? Works differently though. (acclaimed/acclamation/acclamations)

Hmmmmmmmmmmm. This is interesting. I'd like some more opinions.

Thanks. I'm also thinking credits. (credit/ credits/ accredited(?) ) Probably not as good as acclamations.

How about simply, 'recognized'?

Also, the message that appears on a sanctioned post right now might be a little large and distracting.

That's an interesting one too. Doesn't quite hold as much weight as I want but it's very close to perfect. I agree, I'll tone down the size of that.

@mizal

Can you post this in B&P?

Commends/commendations?

Whoa that's also good.

Remunerations?

I think commendation is what we're going with. Actually, I know it because I just changed the codebase haha.

Oh, didn't notice the B&P thread until now. My apologies.

I love the idea of sanctions but I'm not so keen on the name, usally when someone is sanctioned it means they are being punished.

It means something is approved just as often though. It's a weird word.

If people get mixed up they can read sanctioned stories while thinking they're being rebels or something I guess.

I would like 1 sanction please. thanks.

The times they are a changin'. The removal of daily points was unexpected, but it really did add up to a huge advantage to people who had been members a long time, and not done much else. (The Kumquat guy has already been mentioned, lol.)

The sanctioning system is an interesting one, we'll see how it goes. Do you get a notification about posts, etc being sanctioned?

It's nice the Orders have a site-sanctioned reason to do battle now (there's an example usage of the word as 'approved', for any confused children reading. Look, I thought of you!) though it was funnier when everyone was fighting for no reason. :D

Anyway, wasn't expecting another major update so soon, this is kind of surreal. Articles being fixed is huge!

And of course, congrats to Will on his trophy and new position, though, I don't envy the slog through old articles at all. More than a few are in need of Old Yellaring

Yeah, and with 3 possible daily points available now (point #17) your point getting abilities are actually strengthened.

Going to admit, I'm sad about the daily point thing since, but great changes :D 

I wonder who's going to be the top team. Marauders seem to have a great start.

Will and I will just have to carry the architects to glory...our jesus is March. Nate is an architect, but that's just to meet the company quota of 1 crippled person for diversity.

oh and beta is also an architect...so is killa...

Eventually people will just band together against the sage plague. There's so fucking many xD

Can't fight the sages, might as well give up.

I can write a useful post about anything.

if you write one about how strawberry pudding is better than sporks I'll believe you.

@Ford

I'm afraid I can't do that. You need a spork to eat strawberry pudding. You don't need strawberry pudding to use a spork. Not to say strawberry pudding isn't important, but it's in more of a supportive role, just one of many options to add detail and flavor to the spork experience. (If you were to use the strawberry pudding to moisten a strawberry cake then that's another situation entirely, of course, but that subject almost needs its own thread.)

Not to be some kind of cheerleader for sporks entirely, though. Spoons and forks are classics for a reason, and IMO in most ways a spork is a cheap and less satisfying imitation, convenient though it may be.

These conversations always overlook the importance of the bowl, as well. A bowl or even a saucer is the foundation of any dessert, pudding-based or otherwise.

I hope this was sufficiently informative.

I tHink that this whole update is amazing. I had suspicions that the orders were going to be used for this knowledge nd of thing, but I wasn't sure in what way. I'm looking  to the next updates. Don't overwork yourself, 3J!

Everyone who has ever participated in any project I've ever done on here knows that I go really hard for a short period and then don't work on it for awhile and so on and so forth. Don't worry about me! There will definitely be some down months.

Thanks, 3J.  My daily point addiction was nearly as bad as the one I had for dueling.  Hopefully this'll help me to become more productive and focused on writing which is my primary reason for being here.

And lots of great updates.  Keep up the good work!

A creative and well-written forum post a day keeps the point doctor away (for three days)!

jet autism can't melt dank memes

where are my sanctions?

I'm in favour of imposing sanctions on Ford, just deduct 10 exp or something.

Well, that's another zero to add on to my profile...

Very nice surprise update haha! I will miss daily points, but it looks like the potential to maintain a decent contribution count remains. :)

I also agree with considering other naming convention options for it, from a purely aesthetical point.

And congrats Will and thank you for your willingness to dive into the Articled with both feet!

Definitely! I expect this to drive points up, not down, only this time, it will be for making meaningful and awesome contributions.

Can't say that I Iike that there's cosmetic changes to usernames. One thing I found refreshing about CYS is that everyone appeared to be completely equal in the forums, with no cosmetic changes to signify their status, seniority and/or achievements. All of that is delegated to profile pages, with no impact on how a user looks, unlike sanctions. I hope you don't take this concept further.

Other than that, I'm glad that articles are being fixed and that Orders have been given an interesting purpose.

Interesting perspective! I, too, like that we don't have tags for seniority or status. There are two cosmetic changes: One for roughly 1/4 of the site at any given time, and the other for a single person that will change daily. I don't see that as a major issue, but depending on how people react to the way they look, they'll probably change a little.

I suppose that something minor and not permanent isn't a big issue, and it could spark some interesting competition that results in productivity. I've been to too many forums that have been bogged down by cosmetics that could easily be put in profile pages, and I'm glad that the CYS forums will continue to not be like that.

This is great 3J! I think the entire update will improve CYS in a pretty major way. Thanks for the hard work ^^

And congratulations to Will as well :)

Thank you!

Kind of funny how the year coincides with the  update number. Ty 3J. Glad you're working on the site and making changes for the better. 

E: Malk is a fucking retard. 

LOL! I love how you left this up.

I wheezed lol

Daily points gone? Oh, okay. I’ll admit, that point did help drive me to the site every day – I was sure to check in and check on comments, stories, messages, etc. each day with that point helping remind me to check in. I imagine I’ll still check in every day, but the point helped.

@Will11: Congrats! Indeed it’s been a long time coming, glad to see the trophy. And yes, the image is quite appropriate.

Orders/Competitions: Are the admins/mods/those who can give out sanctions spread evenly among the orders? If not, can there be equal competition? Random thought: should those who can give sanctions be removed from the orders to ensure fairness?

Sanctions: Yeah, it can have different meanings, and when I first read about them, and looked at them on the profile page, they seemed “bad” to me. You know, like “3 sanctions and you’re out” or some other sports metaphor. I do like “commendations”, personally.

3J, thanks again for the hard work, I know what it is like to drudge through code that you didn’t write and try to figure out what it does. That’s one of the reasons I normally put TONS of comments in my code – just in case someone else reads it one day! Good luck continuing on with the changes.

Orders/Competitions: Are the admins/mods/those who can give out sanctions spread evenly among the orders? If not, can there be equal competition? Random thought: should those who can give sanctions be removed from the orders to ensure fairness? 

I'm not worried about this at all. Let me know if you think anything suspicious is happening and I'll look into it, but I really trust my admins to be impartial.

3J, thanks again for the hard work, I know what it is like to drudge through code that you didn’t write and try to figure out what it does. That’s one of the reasons I normally put TONS of comments in my code – just in case someone else reads it one day! Good luck continuing on with the changes. 

Thanks!

The admins are all grown men who have far more important things to do with their time and more worthy site acclaim already through their written works, than to be able to be bothered with rigging commendations for their order.

Yep, exactly.

Wooo, updates! I'm a bit suprised Briar Rose hasn't gotten a contributor trophy yet.

But these new updates sound awesome! *Sobs over the daily point*

Woohoo! A new update. This site has improved a lot ever since you started your coding hobby 3J! Also, It didn't break down yet. Have you ever considered backing up the code put into this site in case you somehow broke it?

Good job Willy for finally getting his happy trophy! It was a smiley after all :)

Anyways, I usually have questions so... You mentioned that featured stories can get sanctioned. Is it possible for a top 1 contest entry/story to get sanctioned?

lol yes the site is backed up.

Thank goodness. We wouldn't want all of our wonderful writing to be erased.

Phew. At least this site won't break.

Pffft, with 3Js awesome skills that'll never happen.

Totally not sucking up

Yeah! 3J is a hero! He's the best, most amazing, most awesome, beautiful person and we don't deserve to be in the presence of his grace! Please give me sanctions

3J is more awesome then me!

I just gave him the best compliment known to mankind.

That's enough, please.

Going to deploy a hotfix tonight to fix this: http://chooseyourstory.com/forums/bugs-and-problems/message/21223

Has a couple added features too.

Yay! :D