Discussion Forum by K!
August 16th, 2007 1:51 PM1. The Frequently Asked Questions subsection only has one question. One option would be to change the title to "Frequently Asked Question", but I think it would be better to simply add a couple more FAQs, like "What does the big red X mean?" etc.
2. The Scoring subsection contains information that is false, and it confused the hell out of me for MONTHS:
"Each Level you will earn votes that you can use to award bonus points to other players' completed tasks. The number of votes you get per Level is as follows:
Level Votes
1 1
2 3
3 5
4 7
5 9
6 11
7 13
8 15"
This is not true. You can vote an unlimited number of times no matter what your level is.
The "about" section is the very first impression for most potential new players other than the homepage, so I think it is important to fix it up as nicely as possible.
UPDATE: Darkaardvark does not think this change is major enough, but this is not the only idea I had. I was one of the first people to complete this task and I thought I could only address one issue, so I picked the one that was most important to me. HOWEVER, as other completions have addressed multiple issues, I have something else to bring up:
I believe that points should be awarded for creating new tasks. It doesn't have to be as many as completing a task, but I think a little boost would be nice. Any thoughts on this?
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Yes! For the longest time I had no clue what "flag" meant. Good suggestion!
Vote because it is a very simple change that would decrease new player misunderstandings dramatically.
EDIT: oops
perhaps i need to read through people's comments more carefully
This is getting muddled, the above comment is about at least three different people's suggestions.
How about replacing the new player docs with something players can edit? Keeping documentation up to date is boring, so one might as well distribute the boredom.
Incidentally, I had no idea we had unlimited votes until reading a comment in this task's praxis. I was wondering when I'd run out.
The level/votes section confused me for months too.
I think there may have been discussion of a wiki, but since the ads have been removed and sf0 went back to complete donation support I think our leaders dont have the time to pursue such things.
I also encourage the reading of the now deciesed dev blog for those that are curious. It gives insight into the discussions that seemed to be going on before the big change into Glastnost. Many questions/issues still seem relevant
When I first signed up I didn't read anything in the 'about', I didn't care about points or getting votes - I just wanted to do the tasks. It wasn't until I read Darkaardvark's instructional manual that I even really understood how the voting thing worked. When I finally did read it, I didn't take the 'about' seriously because it doesn't make much sense and ends in a secret code, I thought it was a joke I just didn't get.
I was planning on doing the gift task and I'm still planning on doing it. I have the gift but it's still evolving. I think it's hard to give a gift quickly. Or at least I have a habit of planning on giving a gift but then waiting for gift ideas to pop up in my head after having cooked in there for a few days.
I collect little gifts for the person and then wrap it with great thought and care. hence I'm still not done with the gift making part of the task.
Secondly, the gift challenged ended on a weekday which made it harder to finish the task on time since I have no Internet at home so could only submit proof on the weekends at a coffee shop.
I don't mean to hate, in fact this is a really good idea, and I don't want to advertise for votes either, but this feels like a really minor thing- something that should be changed no matter what- in fact something that probably a group of players could write up on their own.
It seems to me that if the admins are really interested in implementing a change that we want, it should be something major- let's take advantage of the opportunity!
I totally support this idea, but I also kind of agree with Darkaardvark - it should be done anyway.
So hopefully I won't cause offense by not voting - I want to use my votes to bring some of the other good ideas up the list (at the moment this is at the top of the list!).
If you want points for creating tasks, you only need to ask the developers to ressurrect this task.
I think people should be able to be *awarded* points for creating tasks. The easiest way to do this now is to put a vote on the player's 'player photograph' task and let them know why, but it'd be nice to cast a vote for some really cool task creations.
Ink Tea, the only problem with that task is it can only be completed once. Also, I think 30 points is a little much for creating ONE task, but since you could only get it once, I can see why it was that high. I was thinking maybe 5 points per task added or something.
Darkaardvark also has a good point. Maybe people should be able to vote for tasks THEMSELVES and not just completions. In that case, I'd say no automatic points should be awarded for creating a task, because if a task was truly creative it would get votes.
Why play up points by giving them another place to be awarded? How bout votes for task creation? and (as has been mentioned before) possibly the ability to vote on comments
Yes... I think votes for task creation would be superior to automatic pointage. I may have to update this completion again...
As a webmaster myself I know how burdening writting a FAQ page can be.
One way we could all chip in and take some of the burdin off the MODS is to all write additions to the FAQ that we find helpfull…
For example there are a lot of interesting features that SFØ had that it took me a while to figure out.
Like what the v was for that pops up next to the player icons on the player page.
How to use the media folder…
could be a subsection under
"submitting proof"
IE
To submit proof sign up for a task.
In the text field blah blah blah…
To upload pictures from your hard drive simply… … …
Pictures are automatically resized to 640 X580 @ 72DPI (or whatever)
so you may want to resize your image to decrease uploading time…
To submit files to your media folder simply email them to yourplayername@sf0.org, the maximum email size is "?"
Once you have emailed the files click the submit proof button next to your player icon… scroll down to the
Add Files From your SFZero Media Folder section and click the show button.
Anything to make SFØ more user friendly and hence more accessible to anyone… like anna 1's grandmother.
It took me forever to figure out how to embed video. once you upload it to youtube just use [youtube:http:// youtube link ] in your write up. This and many other gems can be read if you click the ? button on the upper right of the text field
*Edit* Also instead of uploading tons of photos one at a time attach and email them to yourname@sfo.org and they will all show up in your media folder. I think this means that you can also send pictures into other peoples media folder (if you are sneaky). Oh that reminds me...spar, I think there is some midget porn in your media folder (*snicker* j/k)
I'd been wondering about embedding youtube videos myself. ? button... I'll have to remember that.
I think the FAQ section even just saying things like "use the ? button" would improve new players' proofs. I never even noticed that button's existence... but then I'm also not the most observant person in the world. :P
I think the thing that I would most like to improve about SF0 is making it easier for new people to get involved, both in terms of leading them to complete tasks and also in leading them to make friendships with other SF0 members. I'm certainly not complaining about my own experience here; I think this is a wonderful site, and I've really enjoyed having access to the challenges and the stories that I've seen. Thank you all for creating such a wonderful place.
I do think, though, that it could be easier for new users to get involved with the community; while I've completed a number of tasks, most of the people I've known personally and convinced to sign up for the site have yet to complete even one without me. I'm not quite sure why that is, why it seems so difficult to start doing tasks, or become part of the tasking community. The wrong and confusing information probably doesn't help (though I must confess that I love the flavor of it, and of finding the mysteries through reading task completions and random task commentaries...I'll be sad to lose that, even though I may think it's for the best.)
I think that having a community-edited wiki to update and improve the FAQ and about pages is a great way to fix this, and I think will be a great way to make it easier for new people to understand the community...and once they understand, hopefully take part and make great things happen. I do think that it's really important to make things as easy as possible for new people; the easier it is to be great, the more people will be great.
Along these lines, I really like the SF0 Mentor task. I still feel like I could use some SF0 mentoring, even though I'm now level 4.
Also...while I've enjoyed the tasks and stories tremendously, and I've been very grateful to see people voting for my completions...I also don't really feel like part of the community yet. Part of that may be that I'm new, part that I haven't reached out to try and find other nearby players to complete tasks with, part that there are existing social groups I'm not sure how to break into, part the difficulty in finding other locals. I feel a bit like I've missed a good opportunity to do that, as I'm leaving SF in just a few more days; but I'm also not sure how easy it was to take advantage of that opportunity in the first place. It took me a while to figure out how to find other players "within x miles". In any case, I can see that there is a community of wonderful people here at SF0, one I want to be more a part of...but am not quite sure how to do so. But I'll say more about community on InkTea's suggestion.
here, here.
There should be a 'How to use' as well explaining what all the buttons do, I was initially a bit flustered about how to use the site until I had a guided tour from Mouse.