Forum Tools - Continued

[Odessa]

I can totally target it at a specific forum, I chose General for now.

For content searches, I could also potentially ignore General and use the Missions and Contracts forum. That place is where I used to hang out while General was super busy when the game launched. This place has quietened down since then, so there is room to breathe

I'm hesitant to start another thread just yet for collecting the useful threads, hopefully I won't remember it. Feel free to poke me in a few days or to start on a list yourself and PM it

Of course! I'll try to post some now while I can have a moment. That way it's in my profile for comments and easily retrieved if you need it.

Warmaster Guide

Clan XP (confirm it is useful)

Arena Tips and Tricks

Sharpshooting Savior Suggestions

Moonshine Shack Pursuit Suggestions

Nim Shondu Tips

Please let me know if these are helpful. Not sure if you only want dedicated TIP threads or threads with great tips in them.

[Etaew]

Thanks for the kind words folks.

Please let me know if these are helpful. Not sure if you only want dedicated TIP threads or threads with great tips in them.

Dedicated threads are nice, but sometimes people make really good comments that deserve a thread of their own. I'm not in the habit of copying other peoples work without permission so direct links of a thread or to a post suit that best.

[Odessa]

I agree. For instance, one thread I just found had a post which gave a great breakdown of the XP needed to get to 5000. It's perfect for those who are hitting the dreaded 45xx wall. If you don't mind I'll post these threads and hopefully you can either select the single post to link on the site or find that the thread itself has enough on topic tips to be linked in it's entirety.

Reaching Level Cap Post 8

Level 20 Sawed off has several great tips

EDIT: Found a post listing Forum guides

These are just the ones I've come across, so I'm sure there's a gold mine that people will hopefully add to.

[Etaew]

I have a proof of concept design up for the first day, will want to be testing this tomorrow so I can get thread trending patterns. The way this will work is that it will track the performance of a thread on a day by day basis.

What is more useful, the thread titles on a line each, with a preview of the post. Or just a table with thread titles, with replies and view counts next to it?

So far:

[Odessa]

I think what will be the key is taking a sampling to see if the thread title is enough to give you an idea of the thread content. If someone says This isn't working!!! and then posts in the thread vaguely what they mean it might be helpful to have a sampling of the thread. But if you find most threads are clear in what the original poster was wanting to discuss/ask then I'd stick with that. Looks good!

[Etaew]

Hm well since this is automated, I can't really perform intelligent analysis of the contents of the title of a thread. However, since we (used) to enforce policies which encouraged descriptive thread titles, maybe we don't need the previews. Or the preview can be shown on mouse over.

I am up for condensing the list to give you more of an overview feel.

Edit: Next version of the design is up, features 3 tables sorting by replies, views and the ratio between replies and views.
There will be 3 page views, all time, today and this week.

Maybe I should have yesterday as an option as well...

Oh yeah, and trending...

[Etaew]

And a URL for you guys to check out and give me feedback: http://www.defiancedata.com/forumtracker.php

It will permit updating every 30 minutes, this will make the person viewing the page take about 5s longer than normal but will then be quick for everyone after that.

[Etaew]

Just fixed an issue where it was only reading from the 2nd page of this forum, let's check the data it now collects as it should be more relevant

Also, should I have sub-pages for this tool to list the popular / recent threads from major subforums? PvP, any other?

[Odessa]

It looks great! You may want to keep an eye on if the different options offer anything new VS the current view. It's the same posts for all three view types. I definitely think the Missions and Contracts, PvP would be beneficial if they are updated regularly. Not sure how active they are over all.

[Etaew]

It looks great! You may want to keep an eye on if the different options offer anything new VS the current view. It's the same posts for all three view types. I definitely think the Missions and Contracts, PvP would be beneficial if they are updated regularly. Not sure how active they are over all.

Thanks for the feedback, it's important. I can code up features, but sometimes I can't predict how people will use them.

I agree that most views and most replies are quite similar, the replies to views is something nicely different. However I know things like the warmaster guide get bumped off that list because it has huge views, and not enough replies to contend.

I do really like the idea of adding the subforums, but I don't think it has the activity to justify the daily,2 days, weekly and all time views, it would only suit an all time top threads list I reckon, maybe weekly too.

What this would also do is add a few more seconds to the page update time, I don't know if you have experienced it yet, it's when your page takes slightly longer to upload because I use your request to trigger the request to repopulate the databases. This currently happens every 30m, I could even increase that. Also I could potentially tie that to an automated process, but that is a bit of a hassle.

I'm not available to work on this until Monday, but then I'll add the two subforums to that page, and then we can get started on the important posts list.