NARC

[Fraxtil]

What language are you writing this in? And please tell me you're using SQL for storage instead of XML. XML was easily the biggest mistake I made with AltArc.

EDIT: Ruby and SQL, okay. Sadly I don't know Ruby.

[Spawn of Yanni]

Thanks, Donfuy! Just a reminder to everybody else - the more in-depth comments like Donfuy's that you make, the better the end result will be. Also, I'm not sure if it's been mentioned already, but this is the plan: NARC is not going to be your primary mapping archive for a while. Clearly there are issues to be fixed, so consider this a beta period of sorts. For now, test out whatever you can see on the site and report whatever inevitable problems you come across. NUMA is still your primary archive where you submit your maps until further notice.

@Fraxtil, other coders: It would be immensely, immensely great if you could familiarize yourself with Ruby on Rails (especially you, Frax, since you do have that experience with coding an alternative archive). incluye is one dude with his own school shit to attend to, and keeping this whole thing running with one active coder on board (+ scythe, but he's always stoned) will be difficult, if not straight up unfeasible (especially during this period of heavy maintenance/improvement). The most important thing about this NARC project is not the fixes it brings to NUMA's problems, nor the extra features it offers, but simply the fact that it'll be a website with an owner who's actually here. arachnid's brought it up several times, and we've never been able to come through with an alternative - until, hopefully, now. After this beta period, if the community is happy with what NARC looks and feels like, arachnid will transfer over all the map data properly (it's been rather crudely moved over as is, and isn't updated relative to NUMA) and we can have a fully working archive again.


Edit: Further clarification for the curious - my "new NUMA" post on April 1st was supposed to be a double-bluff, finishing with the announcement of NARC by the end of the weekend. Some minor issues plus the very major issue of Amazon completely annihilating itself (the redditors among us will remember reddit's own problems with Amazon last month caused by the same issue) meant that everything had to be delayed for a while. And yes, the whole 23 deal was originally a lead-up to this. Various other puzzles had been set up but we came across a certain... unexpected difficulty out of nowhere, and that coupled with the fact that Metanetters can't commit to running anything meant that the forum puzzle was put on the backburner indefinitely. The main focus is, and always has been, on NARC so we're really hoping this works out - and that can only happen with your help.


Double-edit: @Pheidi's question from a while back - NARC is simply N Archive. It also means we can refer to the users as Narcotics, or Narcoleptics, or Narcoholics, or what have you. Which is pretty great.

[Donfuy]

NARC's down page should feature unicorns and ponies.

(point is, it would be cool for NARC to have a "oh shit narc is down" page, just like tumblrrrrr)

[scythe]

So when we made NARC, I came up with this rating system that was meant to be adaptive, to try to turn "Top Rated" into more of a "best of" rather than a "what's currently popular". The new ranking for "top rated" sorts by "scythe_rating" rather than "rating" in the table, where scythe_rating is defined to grow with respect to the number of people who have voted on a map, as well as how much they liked it. In math, it's

scythe rating = average rating - 1 / sqrt(number of votes)

This has the net effect of ranking not-voted-on much maps lower, which counteracts the fact that a new map that got five 5's would jump to the top of Top Rated -- that is, it's less volatile.

Since it's obviously useful to have a listing of "what's currently popular", we've changed Top Rated to by default only list maps from the last two weeks, and you can set the time period longer to get the best of (whereas on the original NUMA you would usually sort by votes, and on the current NUMA you're shit-out-of-luck). The two-week thing is mostly an attempt to make Top Rated into something where you can just get a bunch of maps to play, kind of like Hot Maps was intended to be, and adding an "all time" listing, though we prefer to keep it somewhat hidden to prevent sniping and malicious behavior.

Now, one thing we didn't do is add any sort of personalization to the sorting. At first I thought it would be way too computationally expensive (like storing everyone's personal preferences), but I've come up with a few ways to make it perfectly workable -- would anyone like to see a system like that?

[Destiny]

Now, one thing we didn't do is add any sort of personalization to the sorting. At first I thought it would be way too computationally expensive (like storing everyone's personal preferences), but I've come up with a few ways to make it perfectly workable -- would anyone like to see a system like that?

Oh most definately, that would be awesome.

[aids]

I would like to see some comments for my previous post. But we should be focusing on the structure of NARC before the looks. I'd (probably) be willing to learn Ruby if I find a job in the next month or so. Anything to help my community out.

[Spawn of Yanni]

But we should be focusing on the structure of NARC before the looks.

Haha. I don't know if anyone finds it apparent at the moment, but this has always been the focus with NARC (and admittedly not so much with Mostly_Harmless's NUMA). Take nothing away from Cooby's work, which was so good that we halted development on our version of NARC to implement his design (as well as incluye's custom/personalized colour-scheme changer), but for now this is all about features, so try to focus your feedback on that aspect. Re: your post, though -

Map counts on profiles should include delisted maps, and the author should have the option to make his favorites private.

I don't think the counts should include delisted maps - "delisted" implies that for some reason you don't want the map to officially exist. Adding those to bump up a map count seems to make it a dick-swinging contest. Private favourites, hm. Don't quite see the necessity for it at all but it sounds easy to do if there is some demand for it.

Commenting on profiles is a must. Possibly even having a mini-mibbit chatbox on the profile.

Profile comments exist. I don't know if they're up and running at the moment, but they are definitely a part of NARC.

Adding your own tags to maps which aren't yours. The ability to have private tags (only works if you're the first person to use the tag).

On private tags: Why? As in, you submit a map, and add tags to your map that are only visible to you? The only reason I can think of for that functionality existing would be if you wanted to make some sort of permanent personal marker for a map that you made, and a working title search should really cover that base. On adding tags to others' maps: I think the title search again comes in play here, possibly coupled with favourites. That said, it does make some sense to have that as a feature - say if someone releases a series of maps that they don't specifically link together themselves, but you see some theme to. Then you could tag them yourself and search for the maps later on. It could get pretty messy, though, with these public and personal tags flying around though, and I'm not sure if it's worth it.

Would it be possible to have sub-pages for authors, e.g. users/Aidiera/favorites or users/Aidiera/maps

Pretty much just a url issue, right? I guess if you wanted to jump quickly straight to those pages it could be helpful. I'm sure there's some sort of redirection thing that can be done to lead those urls back to the relevant tag searches. Again, worth it? If you're the sort of user who wants that functionality you could prolly familiarize yourself with the tag-search urls. But it could be useful.

An auto-copy option for map data is a must.

I think incluye tried to do this but there was some issue with coding it up.

Clicking an eye icon would signify that you were 'watching' a map (instead of faving it and coming back to it later). Or being able to 'watch' a tag

RSS feeds? Hm.

Deleting your own comments and comments on your maps. Possibly even wiping the ratings.

Nahhhhhhh. Too much room for abuse.

Ability to favorite an author from a map page.

Haha, sort of suggests an irrational decision, but maybe a good idea. Wait, isn't it already like that? The heart next to the user name?

A list of an author's most common tags, tag-cloud style.

Sounds fun, maybe more like a third-party tool that someone could code up.

Being able to choose the maps which show up on your profile. Listing mappacks on your profile. Being able to download the mappack.

First bit: decent idea, last.fm style. I don't think any mappack functionality is fully coded up yet, so hold off on mappack judgment for now.

While submitting maps, you should be able to add an author similarly to how you add a tag.

That should be how it is already.

A better way to keep track of new ratings you get.

Like?

[aids]

Map counts on profiles should include delisted maps, and the author should have the option to make his favorites private.

I don't think the counts should include delisted maps - "delisted" implies that for some reason you don't want the map to officially exist. Adding those to bump up a map count seems to make it a dick-swinging contest. Private favourites, hm. Don't quite see the necessity for it at all but it sounds easy to do if there is some demand for it.

Oh, hahah, apologies. I mean "ratings disabled" maps. I know the rated map count on my profile is wack. The count should include both public maps and delisted, but shouldn't show the delisted. Also, what if you could browse "ratings disabled" maps separately. Private favorites was just a suggestion. You can "Ask the Audience" later.

Adding your own tags to maps which aren't yours. The ability to have private tags (only works if you're the first person to use the tag).

On private tags: Why? As in, you submit a map, and add tags to your map that are only visible to you? The only reason I can think of for that functionality existing would be if you wanted to make some sort of permanent personal marker for a map that you made, and a working title search should really cover that base. On adding tags to others' maps: I think the title search again comes in play here, possibly coupled with favourites. That said, it does make some sense to have that as a feature - say if someone releases a series of maps that they don't specifically link together themselves, but you see some theme to. Then you could tag them yourself and search for the maps later on. It could get pretty messy, though, with these public and personal tags flying around though, and I'm not sure if it's worth it.

Let's say that when I release this retile mappack I've put together, I want to tag all the original maps included so that somebody could browse them easily. If that sounds like too much trouble, maybe just being able to make "playlists" of maps. And for private tags, that just means I'd be the only one who would be able to use the tag "imposters" on NUMA, not private in any way. (Or possibly one which automatically adds "author:Life247+" to the front of it.)

An auto-copy option for map data is a must.

I think incluye tried to do this but there was some issue with coding it up.
Also being able to choose whether to show plain map data or complete information.

Deleting your own comments and comments on your maps. Possibly even wiping the ratings.

Nahhhhhhh. Too much room for abuse.
Alright, but at least your own comments.

While submitting maps, you should be able to add an author similarly to how you add a tag.

That should be how it is already.
Okay, it didn't work for me.

A better way to keep track of new ratings you get.

Like?
I'll see my total rate count increase on my profile and not be able to find which maps were rated. Maybe just a "<map name> received <number> more rating(s)" type thing, which would be put on another "Updates" page.

//=//=//=//

Also, a properly working Featured Queue would be bomb-diggity. I have a Google Calendar for the Featured Maps Queue which we could possibly integrate with NARC. I'd like that a lot.

Also also, being able to search a user's comments.

Also^3, if we're going to keep the "5 ratings for a public rating" thing, how about searching by ratings with 4 ratings, or 3 or 2 or 1? But mostly 4.

Also^4, What if there was a way to keep track of the last map you looked at? Right now I'm a fanatic, and I have to look at /every/ map which gets submitted to NUMA. So putting a "bookmark" on the New Maps page and being able to start browsing from there would be nice.

[otters~1]

Yeah, a working queue would be great. Something along the lines of: you could submit your review for two weeks from now, and forget about it, and the site would automatically spit one out every 24 hours or something. Assuming we could get enough people writing reviews. I don't see any need whatsoever to "integrate a Google calendar."

I had a bit of trouble bug-finding because a) my profile doesn't seem to exist and b) the site is misaligned and awkward right now.

Yanni said to beta for <god I am having trouble finding words today so hungover> features, stuff, not the graphics yet, so:

-active authors simply doesn't work (and it's always been NUMA's most pointless feature anyway)
-honestly I like the way NUMA's Hot Maps page looks better; colored background, single column, clearly-boxed maps
-bitesized :D
-just for clarification, the layout is definitely going to change, right?

[lukesv]

So just out of curiosity how are we suppose to pronounce NARC? Should I say "N" then "ark", or maybe all together like "nark", or perhaps we say each letter separately like N-A-R-K.

[Donfuy]

Deleting your own comments and comments on your maps. Possibly even wiping the ratings.

Nahhhhhhh. Too much room for abuse.

I don't see what's the problem with deleting comments on your maps. Many websites go that way (Youtube, Facebook), and it makes total sense to me - it's your map and it's your comments.

[Spawn of Yanni]

Deleting comments is only really justified when the comments are abusive. Youtube and Facebook are too large to have a moderating team, we are not - moderators can handle abusive comments themselves. Deleting comments on the "it's my map so I should have the rights to what's on it" ticket kinda makes it easier for people to close themselves off to any sort of constructive criticism.

[smartalco]

Let's say that when I release this retile mappack I've put together, I want to tag all the original maps included so that somebody could browse them easily. If that sounds like too much trouble, maybe just being able to make "playlists" of maps. And for private tags, that just means I'd be the only one who would be able to use the tag "imposters" on NUMA, not private in any way. (Or possibly one which automatically adds "author:Life247+" to the front of it.)

The playlist idea would be cool and fairly easy to implement. (I say this with general SQL knowledge, I have no idea how the system incluye whipped up works, so I could be totally wrong) If playlists were public, that could lead to peer-collected map pack type things, where someone could grab 10 random maps that seem to go together and bundle them. (Note: I haven't made a map in 3 years, I may or may not be a horrible judge of features)

I have finals this week, then I could help with the coding. The caveat being I've never used Rails, but I can generally pick up a language pretty fast as long as it isn't Lisp based. I've been trying to frequent IRC, so if you need the help hit me up there (preferably after next Sunday)

[nevershine]

this sounds promising :) the site is down for me right now, but I strongly encourage any map pack or playlist support!
also, last.fm style-"other maps by this author" and the queue flag suggested would be the bomb.

[Chase]

~snip

1 - the box should be aligned with the rest, width wise. the design looks very fragmented as it is now.
2 - more alignment problems
3 - I'm not sure about these icons. They seem to crash with the whole theme, color-wise, since they're pretty much the only red element in the whole site. Also, although I don't have a proper solution for this for now, the tags organization is horrible - looks like they are just thrown there, with no proper square around them - also the distinction between the tags and the author's name (which I think should be more evident) is almost non existing.
4 - augh it looks so awful. I'm not comfortable with the fact it'll grow with the number and size of the tags.

~snip
about the whole theme, I've noticed that resizing the window to a thinner aspect ratio breaks everything. this would be fixed by setting a minimum width to the elements wrapping (holy shit screwed up phrase tell me if you don't understand it)

1 - it kind of looks like an afterthought, and since the login has it's own page, it would make sense for it to be in the big grey bar - unless you have plans to make the login a dropdown menu (which would be cool)
2 - i know what you're trying to do here, but somehow it isn't working, at least for me. and i've seen many websites where it works.
3 - maybe im being too picky, but i think it would look better if it was...black
4 - when you hover your mouse over this the black text glows - yeah it looks cool...but doesn't fit on the overall theme.


Okay this is all I've got till now. If you don't understand something, tell me. Also, this is just my opinion. You can and will disagree in some bits.

I agree with the majority of Donfuy's posts, and feel I need to contribute a little myself.

Image 1
1 - Yeah, make this content box the same width as the items above, so the left side is aligned with the edge of the map thumbnail, and the right side is aligned with the far right of the text.
2 - Not much to say here, but yeah, alignment.
3 - This is also relevant to point 4, and a way to rectify the issue. If instead of showing every tag, have a link that has 'Tags »' with one of those icons beside it, clicking either will result in a overlay appearing, with a list of all tags applied to that map.

Image 2
1 - Either have it in the main navigation as a link, or have it so when you click it, an overlay appears where you can input your username and password and log in without being directed to a dedicated login page.
2 - This works, but at the moment needs a little tweaking, firstly reduce the size of the font by a few points, and secondly make those rounded corners smooth if you can, use images if you have to!
3 - Agreed here, because the numbers can be links to the maps with those numbers, otherwise the text here should be black.
4 - Since the page isn't live for me to see this working, I can't really comment, but scrap the glow and have it just lighten or gain contract, so it's obvious that there's a hover, but not 'in your face.'

Also I have an idea for error pages. Someone with mad skills at drawing, try and sketch out something that suits the nature of the error, related to the ninja's character.

For instance, a 404 error could be the ninja looking confused when holding a map upside down.

[otters]

I switched back from using sphinx's bipolar user searcher to ActiveRecord's robust one. ALL user profiles should now be accessible. If yours says you don't exist, PM or IRC me, because it's probably a broken reference problem that can be fixed with a single UPDATE statement to a single row in the database.

[aids]

Bitesized map count on profiles.

[origami_alligator]

Am I Lazy? Yes.
Why Featured Map Queues Are a Bad Idea

About 3 years ago, when NUMA was being developed into its current state and the promise of brand new features was on the horizon, a group of individuals were given a task by Arachnid himself to promote maps of all kinds on a daily basis. He called it "Featured Maps," and we were told to write 50- to 100-word reviews on any map that we found to be exceptional in some way. We original six put our minds together and created enough reviews to last us what we thought could be forever. If only we kept at that same pace it may have well been so.
Things were pretty good until ATOB broke the queue. But now that the queue has been broken for so long, I feel that bringing it back won't change how it originally worked. People will begin to forget they have to Review maps. Their jobs will become "occasional" instead of "mandatory." By selecting a day to write a Review, the Reviewer is claiming that spot and promising to show up and be responsible. By implementing a queue you're taking away the feeling of being necessary. "Someone else will write a Review for the next 14 days," they'll say. Eventually, when everyone starts saying it, our Featured Maps will become stale and old and useless.

Our current system works great. The website already has enough bug fixes for features that are already implemented that we do not need to add another project for something we have a simpler and more effective fix for. If anything we'll try and integrate the current system for the Featured Maps Queue into the website as a "pick a date and promise to do it" system.

[Seneschal]

Am I Lazy? Yes.
Why Featured Map Queues Are a Bad Idea

About 3 years ago, when NUMA was being developed into its current state and the promise of brand new features was on the horizon, a group of individuals were given a task by Arachnid himself to promote maps of all kinds on a daily basis. He called it "Featured Maps," and we were told to write 50- to 100-word reviews on any map that we found to be exceptional in some way. We original six put our minds together and created enough reviews to last us what we thought could be forever. If only we kept at that same pace it may have well been so.
Things were pretty good until ATOB broke the queue. But now that the queue has been broken for so long, I feel that bringing it back won't change how it originally worked. People will begin to forget they have to Review maps. Their jobs will become "occasional" instead of "mandatory." By selecting a day to write a Review, the Reviewer is claiming that spot and promising to show up and be responsible. By implementing a queue you're taking away the feeling of being necessary. "Someone else will write a Review for the next 14 days," they'll say. Eventually, when everyone starts saying it, our Featured Maps will become stale and old and useless.

Our current system works great. The website already has enough bug fixes for features that are already implemented that we do not need to add another project for something we have a simpler and more effective fix for. If anything we'll try and integrate the current system for the Featured Maps Queue into the website as a "pick a date and promise to do it" system.

I have to disagree with this. I'm not sure if you've had a look at NUMA recently, given that your account's disabled, but a lot of reviewers have missed their dates in the last few weeks, and/or have taken ones reserved by other people. If anything, it seems that some reviewers, like life247 and squibbles for example, are too eager to feature, seeming to take on more dates than anyone else (not that that's a bad thing at all, although apologies if this is just how it seems to me and isn't actually grounded in reality).

Moreover, your claim that people will get lazy is a generalisation that I don't think can be reasonably applied. With a rota of around 10-20 reviewers, it seems implausible that all of them will suddenly become lazy to the point of inactivity, and even if they do, then they can simply be replaced/fired what have you; there always seems to be plenty of people willing to take over the job. When I was a reviewer I was annoyed that I was only able to feature two maps a month, and I'm sure many people felt the same way. Another idea would be to have "casual reviewers", who could drop in a review whenever they feel like it but weren't under pressure to commit to a certain number per month, on top of having a regular rota.

In any case, your scenario just seems unlikely to me.

[Pheidippides]

Another idea would be to have "casual reviewers", who could drop in a review whenever they feel like it but weren't under pressure to commit to a certain number per month...

[origami_alligator]

So just out of curiosity how are we suppose to pronounce NARC? Should I say "N" then "ark", or maybe all together like "nark", or perhaps we say each letter separately like N-A-R-K.

This is like the Noah's Ark of archives so pronounce it as such.

@Seneschal:
Oh, I must have deleted the part that sort of already was an answer to your post, Seneschal.

In an earlier draft of that post I had said that when you have a Featured Maps queue, it is much harder to see who is not doing their job as a Reviewer. If people have been missing dates, jumping the gun or taking other people's spots, those people need to be spoken to and either have things change or be removed. I don't know if rocket_thumped is in contact with you guys or if any of you happen to let him know what is going on with the Featured Maps queue. There is a reason I was the one who delegated the queue while I was Admin and it was so that I could see who was and who was not the ideal Reviewer.

I guess my experience with the queue when I was running it was much different from how the queue is ran now, so that is probably why our ideas of a good model are different.

Although my previous post had mentioned an on-site calendar of sorts, what might be more helpful is for the Reviewers to write their reviews and submit them to be posted on a certain date. In this way we don't have to wait on the promise of a Reviewer to Feature a map nor do we have to create a complex Queue system for the website. Thoughts?

[aids]

Yep, with three times as many Featurers now as there were three years ago, the 'lazy reviewer' amount is greater than ever. I have a new idea: what about a something that's not a queue, but a set of reviews, from which one review is selected at random to be posted ever 24 hours? (Although some people might want to post on a certain day.) So Reviewers don't have to be timely anymore, just eloquent and tasteful. And actually, you wouldn't even need more than a couple Reviewers. All users can submit reviews, so no favoritism will occur. Or maybe this sucks.

And why not just have a limited queue? Only goes two weeks into the future. As long as there's a backup cache of reviews to submit if a guy misses his day. Oh, and I only like the Calendar because it has a simple interface and is a tad bit more accessible than the thread.

[trance]

There should be a "feature this" button on top of a map. The maps with the most recommendations would appear to reviewers to review.

koipen said this on one of his rant maps. I think it is a good idea, but what do you think?

[aids]

There should be a "feature this" button on top of a map. The maps with the most recommendations would appear to reviewers to review.

koipen said this on one of his rant maps. I think it is a good idea, but what do you think?

I could see that being abused to all hell. Perhaps they would only show up on a "Recommended Features" page after five or more people approving it.

[origami_alligator]

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I like this idea. I think we should implement it.

Yep, with three times as many Featurers now as there were three years ago, the 'lazy reviewer' amount is greater than ever. I have a new idea: what about a something that's not a queue, but a set of reviews, from which one review is selected at random to be posted ever 24 hours? (Although some people might want to post on a certain day.) So Reviewers don't have to be timely anymore, just eloquent and tasteful. And actually, you wouldn't even need more than a couple Reviewers. All users can submit reviews, so no favoritism will occur. Or maybe this sucks.

And why not just have a limited queue? Only goes two weeks into the future. As long as there's a backup cache of reviews to submit if a guy misses his day. Oh, and I only like the Calendar because it has a simple interface and is a tad bit more accessible than the thread.

Aidiera, what you have just described is what you call a "queue". This is exactly how the previous queue worked. We all wrote and submitted Reviews to the queue and it randomly organized them to be submitted on certain dates. Unfortunately there were some bugs and one map I had Reviewed was not being featured, which is when ATOB decided to "fix" the queue and force all maps remaining in the queue to be featured and thus broke the system, resulting in us having to resort to the calendar thread we've been using for the last 2 or so years.
I prefer my Reviewers to be elitist and secluded from the rest of the community. There are plenty of people who know of good maps but there are plenty of people who do not know the difference between "then" and "than"; "there" and "their"; "you're" and "your"; as well as "weather" and whether". There is a reason we hold applications for Reviewers.

Please keep testing the site and letting us know of any bugs/errors you come across!