Feedback & Feature Requests

[Narv]

Can I request, while we're talking about articles and such, to be known as "The" Balrog, when I arrive there?

granted

[Dungeon Delver]

You magnificent troll! Thank you!

[Eldy Dunami]

Classic Narv.

(I tried googling, got as far as 'Colp meaning' and realized this was probably taking me in the wrong direction.)

Just Googled this myself—I'm not sure what I was expecting, but it wasn't the top result.

[Dungeon Delver]

I had an idea recently, coming to me from my infrequent trips through the Wayback Machine for purposes of masochism and torture. One of the few threads in which I appeared in Mordor was an old trib thread, where it was announced who got what trib, bog standard stuff for participation in debate, poetry, racing, etc. but there were also some requests from game runners and TRs from places I didn’t expect to see, like pubs and free RPs (or whatever we might have called them back in the day) with varying numbers attached to them. I saw some trib requests as high as 17 points and some for just 1. That, naturally, got me thinking. Why not bring something like this to NuPlaza?

While there is nothing at all wrong with the system we have (admins going through and reading and tribbing where they see fit and individual requests from members), I think it would be an interesting way of rewarding the every day posts, the posts that might not be three thousand words long and might not get as much attention, the back-t-back-to-back posting between two people that fills up a thread, and things like that. It would put more of an onus on the TR to pay attention to what’s being written in their threads (not that they wouldn’t be already) and intercede for a few extra bits to be thrown peoples’ way. Threads like pubs, or spas, or army training would get the attention they deserve and the people that post in them would be rewarded for spreading activity about. The TRs and game runners would decide how much and who based on their own metric (a cap at say 15 points) and deliver the request to the admins. This wouldn’t eliminate the system we have now, the admins can still go through and read RP and lore and decide who gets what and individuals can still come in and ask for certain posts or interactions to get tribbed.

I know this could end up being a lot of extra work for the admins and if, in the end, it’s too much extra, then don’t worry about it. I like the idea in a vacuum, but if it’s not practical I won’t try and debate its merits and such.

[Winddancer]

Interesting idea, how would we work around threads that have no active thread runners? Just leave those? And you say that there should be a cap for points, would there be a cap for how many got it per thread? And cap for how many got it in all? Someone like Romeran would be getting hundreds!

[Dungeon Delver]

I suppose we could leave the threads without an active TR or some foolish brave soul could take up the responsibility. As far as a potential cap goes, honestly it would be up to whoever was running a thread to decide who got what and how much, I think a cumulative cap would be silly though, if we're hoping to trib for activity it seems foolish to cap how much a person can get in total. And of course Rome is just gonna end up super shiny so that solves that dilemma

Again though, I'm not super invested in the idea, it was just something I had a while back whilst running around in the archives. If it doesn't work or people think it's dumb I have no problem dropping the whole idea and bouncing on to something else.

[Winddancer]

Definitely worth a ponder! Oh and Rome can only get his hat polished, no admin can get tribute :P

[Dungeon Delver]

And of course Rome is just gonna end up super shiny so that solves that dilemma

oh honey, I know

[Winddancer]

I know you know, but others might not know :P

[Romeran]

Oh and Rome can only get his hat polished, no admin can get tribute :P

Point spam: hard mode engaged.

Interesting idea. Would you require that all TRs participate or would it be optional?

[Fuin Elda]

Yeah I remember the 'trib threads of old' It was a lot of work and very subjective as per the thread runners who got what for tribute. Generally though it was a case of the people that were the most active got the most the people that weren't as active or not active at all got non... It wasn't hard to do and I remember seeing something on here that we weren't doing that just tributing winners or people that made excellent posts in a thread etc. And it was done on a monthly basis way back then so it could be a pretty massive task.

I don't think that this will honestly change much for a few reasons - you've got I don't know? 10-12 active non admins tops on here? So it might even out trib a bit more but over all I feel like it's still going to stay incredibly similar. Might increase the tribute to one or two of those based on activity =, but otherwise I'm not sure how much that will change Unless we are going to start actively Tributing the Thread runners a set amount every single time regardless of how much activity the threads they run have. And several threads are now being run by admins and are right out of the question lol.

[Ercassie]

I am not a fan of having any visible request list with actual amounts of points suggested (be it 1 or 17) out in the forums for any and everyone to see. The fact of the sporadic and joyful feeling of having your contributions acknowledged could very well be negatively affected if we all start seeing who gets how much in comparison to everyone else. At present, we are aware that/how much we have personally been awarded, via the notifications system. Some people make their recommendations for reward in public, others publicly give thanks for receiving that reward. But not all do, and/or not all do all of the time. That is their right. And because of this, more people may in fact be receiving points as a gift from admins than we are generally aware anyway.

But if the issue is that some threads and some posters are being potentially overlooked, then isn’t it better to simply make a recommendation for the admins to look at those, in the system we already have, in order to points reward those persons/threads ? Rather than making an enforced expectation of points reward for absolutely all ? The surprise that someone has read and enjoyed your post is a reward because it is an unexpected bonus to the points you already get (in most forums) for having posted at all. I don’t feel that making a further and (it rather sounds) more mandatory scheme or ‘to do list’ for admins is going to do anything more than make people expect or miss more than ever that they as opposed to someone else is getting points as a gift. And that sounds like the opposite of what the motive was here. Just an opinion.

[Dungeon Delver]

Not to be overly snarky, but as this request/idea has already come and been shown to be quite flawed (as pointed out by several current and previous admins) I'm not sure it warrants a sudden pile on of "oh I disagree with this and we shouldn't do it, we should continue on exactly as we have been". The horse is already dead, indeed the horse is already buried so perhaps we stop beating it, yeah? I'm not going to get into responding to pedantic points refuting anything because as I've already noted, I don't really have anything invested, I didn't nearly two weeks ago and I still don't today. Let's let some things die without commentary from everyone, eh? Just my opinion here.

[Ercassie]

as this request/idea has already come and been shown to be quite flawed (as pointed out by several current and previous admins)

I do apologise if I have made you upset @Frost as that was certainly not my intention in posting here. I simply did not see your initial idea until I just saw @Fuin Elda react to it just before me and so I was pointing out some issues which had not apparently been mentioned/maybe not considered yet. To be entirely fair, the only impressions that seem to have been expressed here by admins are that the idea you proposed is 'interesting'. Which does not exactly suggest that it was considered 'flawed' or had been thrown out of possibility.

At any rate, I am sorry to have said anything at all and shall of course say no more, because well, my point was already made but also, now I have (hopefully) assured you that I did not post here in order to provoke a refuting reaction from yourself.

[Aikári Salmarinian]

Having read everything I'll beat the dead horse...

And this comes still out of it:

1. We do need a set of agreements on how we tribute quality and how much we give, and how frequent.
2. Search among us for a few enthousiasts who love to comb through the active topics over an agreed period of time. (Availability is needed for this)
3. And a willing person with admin access for the tributing process.

Is this a solution perhaps?

[Winddancer]

@Aiks, well that pretty much sums up what admins are already doing :P

We love new ideas and hope all continue to share them with us and while not all may bear fruit, it can still make us think of other things that can be done, so please always feel free to speak up (here or via email) if there is something you would like to see improved or added.

As for the tributes, I think we are all coming to the agreement that what we have works atm. I would however LOVE to see more people requesting trib for the posts they themselves enjoy as I think the mention at times mean more than the points themselves. So please feel free to point out all the posts you are enjoying, I am positive the authors will enjoy that acknowledgement too <3

[Pele Alarion]

*peeks in* Definitely guilty of rejoicing quietly about many posts and not saying anything about it out loud... should change this, I guess. ;)

[Silky Gooseness]

Only if you want to, Pele! The NPF will always leave some sort of marker in posts that have been quietly awarded, so it’s always acknowledged in some way apart from the point count ticking up.

[Eruedraith]

@Dimcairien Luiniel and anyone else who was hoping to be able to resize images - I've added some custom code to allow this. It's the new "img-resize" bbcode option in the post box and should be used thusly:

Code: Select all

[img-resize=WIDTH]URL[/img-resize]

WIDTH is a number in pixels, URL is an image URL same as always

Note though that images cannot be stretched wider than the post content box at a given screen width

I've tested it a bit locally but please let me know if it doesn't work at any point

Editing to add a couple examples:

Code: Select all

[img-resize=20]https://www.lotrfanaticsplaza.com/forum/images/ranks/000.gif[/img-resize]

gives us this:

Code: Select all

[img-resize=120]https://www.lotrfanaticsplaza.com/forum/images/ranks/000.gif[/img-resize]

gives us this (aka no guarantees that images stretched beyond their original size will not look like poo)

TY so so much for this.

[Winddancer]

@Eruedraith have that bookmarked!! :P

[Kilvakar]

Hello! I don't know if anyone remembers me, but I see a few familiar names here. I just found out that this site existed after all these years! (I was very active back in the 2005-7ish time period).

Forgive me if this has already been asked, but are there any old Wizards still on here? And is there a chance that Isengard might make a return?

[Winddancer]

Welcome back! There are a few wizzies floating around somewhere, though maybe not as active now. Join us on Discord, that would be the best place to find them :) https://discord.gg/x4vmaKXY
As for another kingdom, sorry that would be a no :) We do have tons of free RP threads, so plenty of opportunity to write about Isengard though!

[Silky Gooseness]

@Romeran @Elenhir @KingODuckingham council of wizards

[Aikári Salmarinian]

Kilvakar: Your name does ring a bell with me. I was never a wizard though, but I can conjure a NPC wizzy if you want a fellow RP'er?

[Lail]

Can I get this dusty old thread locked please? https://www.lotrfanaticsplaza.com/forum ... .php?t=485 thanks!

[Winddancer]

It is now locketh!

[Rivvy Elf]

Somehow I managed to exceed the character limit in one post lol (60,000 characters). Will it destroy the site if we increase this limit?

[Winddancer]

Please dont destroy the site! :O

@Narv one for you!

[KingODuckingham]

@Romeran @Elenhir @KingODuckingham council of wizards

There are (not) dozens of us! (not) dozens!

[Narv]

Somehow I managed to exceed the character limit in one post lol (60,000 characters). Will it destroy the site if we increase this limit?

I recommend splitting your 60000+ character posts up and double posting, it's good fun and it gives you twice the points

[Dungeon Delver]

Would an admin please do me the favor of moving some posts for me?

This 1
This 2
This 3
This 4

to Two Lengths of Hair Rope and Other Vile Measurements

Thanks

[Moriel]

@Silky Gooseness @Pele Alarion @Winddancer

Would I kind admin please move these posts

1
2
3
4


to this thread? Thank you!

[Winddancer]

We can do, but won't it disrupt the flow of the RPG? Or are they a seperate story?
Also if moved they will become the first post in the new thread due to the age of them. You could also copy paste them to the new thread?

[Dungeon Delver]

For my part, no, they will not disrupt story flow as they are separate from anything anyone else is writing. I am aware, too, that they will become the first posts in the thread and there is nothing wrong with that, as there is no flow to interrupt and I put very little thought into the introduction on purpose for that reason.

[Winddancer]

Cool, will move yours now then :D Will wait to hear from Moriel.

WD edit: Frost's are done.

[Moriel]

Please go ahead with mine too, thanks Windy!

[Winddancer]

Sorry that took so long, apparently you cant click posts on different pages, dang phpbb, but think I got them all and in the right places, please check!

[Moriel]

All but one- this post should have been moved, but this one got moved instead. If you can un-move the one that was a mistake, that would be great, but if not- no big deal it can stay where it is. Thanks!

[Winddancer]

Oook after a quick drop in at the HoH ( O.o) it should now be back home..

[Moriel]

Perfect! Thankee!

[Hanasian]

I finally got around to bringing my characters over to the Plaza as I intend to become much more active here.
I have a question, which I think I have answered, so I suppose it becomes a request for a feature.

In preparing my character sheet for this forum, I attempted to use the BB Code for image alignment. It doesn't work here. is there any chance that it could be added as a BBC feature?

The code is this:
[ img align=left] image url here [/img]
[ img align=right] Image url here [/img]

This allows the image to be shifted either to the left or right, and the text to appear to the side of the image. I think it would be a good feature to have and will help compact character posts (at least mine anyway).

[Silky Gooseness]

Hi @Hanasian! Thanks for your suggestion!

I think in the past we’ve attempted to mess around with this, chiefly in an attempt to get tables to work, but we’ve really struggled with it messing up a code due to the way plaza is set up to look like the good old plaza we know and love

I’ll suggest it to Narv who is the only person with that kind of skill and behind the scenes access but it may well not be a thing we have the resource to do right now

Thank you though!

[Hanasian]

I appreciate it being looked into. It would really give better aesthetics to character pages as it would do away with big gaps when images are posted.

I'm not sure why it would interfere with code as the board software is phpBB which is I believe custom BBC friendly. Anyway, I'll search for workarounds.

[Arnyn]

@Hanasian : Yay, characters! Yay, activity! (Is what I'm also taking away from this request )

[Hanasian]

@Hanasian : Yay, characters! Yay, activity! (Is what I'm also taking away from this request )

Well, yes. I'm bringing my characters onboard, and due to how they are formatted on my forum, it would make things WAY easier if the alignment BB code worked. I'm still bringing them in, but I have to reformat them to work here. Also, I'm only bringing my Dúnedain/Gondorian characters to the Gondor kingdom as it appears that is where the northern kingdom also resides. I have a lot of Rohirrim characters and a few mixed, so will have to figure out where exactly they will go. I looked at the Rohan kingdom and it seemed it was set in a particular year from what I read. I could be wrong. Anyway, once I get some characters settled, I will start getting active in some RP if there is interest. :)

[Arnyn]

Very cool. Also as you probably noticed already, in most free RP threads you can set your own timeline for the rp you have in mind. :) For example Gondor is also generally set "a few years after the war" but in the free rp threads anything goes really. Not sure if that principle applies to free rp threads across all kingdoms but when the opening post does not specifically state it you can def ask in the kingdom ooc thread.

As for the northern kingdom there are also some threads for it in Imladris. Explore away

[Aikári Salmarinian]

I am just back on the running of roleplaying after a long time. So if there is interest for an RP I am a willing candidate.

[Hanasian]

Very cool. Also as you probably noticed already, in most free RP threads you can set your own timeline for the rp you have in mind. :) For example Gondor is also generally set "a few years after the war" but in the free rp threads anything goes really. Not sure if that principle applies to free rp threads across all kingdoms but when the opening post does not specifically state it you can def ask in the kingdom ooc thread.

As for the northern kingdom there are also some threads for it in Imladris. Explore away

Thanks @Arnyn. Yeah, I have always been a bit confused over whether to be in Gondor and Imladris. I decided to anchor myself in Gondor and use that as a base for Arnor/Arthedain/Cardolan/Rhudaur. Most of my stories reside in these areas, though I do have some family connections in Rohan. Still trying to decide what to do with those characters. Anyway, I'll leave this Request thread alone now that I made the request. Thanks again.

[Dungeon Delver]

If I might make a request of the admins, would it be possible to move this thread into Media Adaptations? The more I ponder it, the more I believe a thread that analyzes music inspired by Tolkien should go in the media thread rather than creative works.
Much obliged.

[Silky Gooseness]

No problem @King Otis, we shall see it done