The State of the CBG: An open invitation to your comments

[SDragon]

It shouldn't be too hard to distinguish between guests and unregistered members, right? Why not have a specialsupport area (board, IRC channel, whatever) accessible to unregistered members and admins, but not to guests? That way, we can keep the security, but have a place where actual people can get help becoming members. We could maybe even have it inaccessible for normal members, to keep it as seamless as possible.

[Lmns Crn]

We're pretty damned good about reverting wiki vandalism, and the current captcha has pretty much headed it off at the pass.  I don't have a problem with unregistered members seeing the Wiki link (and all my Good Stuff(tm) is pretty much wiki-exclusive these days).

[Nomadic]

Very good points all. A few clarifications here.

Firstly the IRC is open to members only as it is in the testing phase. When we get it set up like we want then I will almost certainly be opening it up to anyone who wants to use it. As for the donate and wiki links the donate one I could probably open up just because there's no reason to lock it, the wiki I'll have to look into (probably talk with ishmayl about it at our meeting later today).

Secondly plug-n-play modules. I do not intend to make this our focus as our focus always has been for more filled out homebrew settings. However, plug-n-play is a great way to get creativity flowing as it takes much less commitment to make a single town or quest than an entire campaign setting. For this reason it makes good contest material. And if we're doing contests for the stuff there's no reason not to offer the finished entries to the general public as free drop in modules.

As for sign ups I will tell you all that there is no longer a manual admin acceptance issue. It hasn't been that way for some time. New members are auto-accepted and then I or one of the other people with access can look at the list and ban any accepted spambots we see. We actually haven't gotten many of those lately.

A couple things I really like that have been said:
- Integration between wiki and forums
- Default search to forums, not news
- Settings pages
- Post Reply visible to non-members linking to register page


One thing to point out is quite a few of these ideas are already being realized to one degree or another with The CBG 2.0. This is fine, I want to see what you guys still have interest in and what you don't so much care about. I am talking with ishy about getting the drupal code so that we can start working with it again and all of your suggestions will help me direct its continued development.

[Kaptn'Lath]

can we link a persons setting to their profile. like current projects tab under a persons profile? each project could link to the wiki page or a thread

[Nomadic]

can we link a persons setting to their profile. like current projects tab under a persons profile? each project could link to the wiki page or a thread

Already done on cbg 2.0 I believe :)

[limetom]

Moar contests.

Lots more contests.

(they don't even need prizes. Just, y'know, more contests)

Man, and here I was having fun procrastinating.  Now I'm going to have to do, like, work or something.  :p

[Nomadic]

Moar contests.

Lots more contests.

(they don't even need prizes. Just, y'know, more contests)

*chains limetom to the contest desk*

[Kindling]

I'll admit that, shamefully, I only skimmed this thread, but I'm just gonna say I'm with CC on the Wiki thing and on thinking that plug-n-play is just not what most of us do, so why try to?

Going back to the first point, I check the forums most days (except when I'm on a trip/very busy) whereas I look at things on the Wiki like once a month at the most. True, I prefer the format of the forum, so that's partly a matter of personal taste, but also it isn't exactly as clear as it could be what's new and happening on the Wiki...

[SA]

The wiki seems so far away, like a totally different website. The only thing I ever check on it is Jade Stage, because I GM it.

[Kaptn'Lath]

ok the pug and play thing seems to of taken a life of its own. I dont think the idea is to make little towns, moduals, npcs made for drop and play. But rather making the individual pieces of a persons setting more seachable, readable, and usable. We already make NPCs and build a world piece by piece. Being able to read (and then comment on) a setting piece by piece is good. It also allows a sence of acompishemnt for new people, so they dont think they have to post a full 30+ page thread of a complete world before they start to see comments. Lets not change what we do, but break what we do into smaller easier to search pieces. Also Contests for small content items can be fun and requested, no point in not putting the cotest winner/material in a section for easy take down and use.

I havent done HTML since highschool and so I dont post my stuff on the wiki, havent learned how to do layout in a thread, but I do lay my information out in text docs for print outs to my players (PDF) I already have this done, so i dont want to redo it all to post it here... what do i do?  2mb file upload limit? can we bump up to 5mb (that bumps up the pages i can upload per file from 4 to 15 pages with pictures)

[Lmns Crn]

The wiki seems so far away, like a totally different website.

I actually have to CBG buttons on my quickdraw fastaccess bookmarks toolbar: the front page of the main site (just like the rest of you guys, I expect), and the Recent Changes page of the wiki, with the number of changes and the timeframe both set to the maximums.

[Stargate525]

I actually have to CBG buttons on my quickdraw fastaccess bookmarks toolbar: the front page of the main site (just like the rest of you guys, I expect), and the Recent Changes page of the wiki, with the number of changes and the timeframe both set to the maximums.

I don't have it on my bookmarks...

It's my homepage.

[SDragon]

The wiki seems so far away, like a totally different website. The only thing I ever check on it is Jade Stage, because I GM it.

I'll second this. I don't even check up on JS anymore because of it.

One idea to fix this would be to have more links on the wiki that return to the main site. It also might help if the wiki had a theme that looked more like here.

[Llum]

Just a heads up, when I use the IRC Mibbit it messes over my MSN. Makes it literally unoperable. Just so you guys know.

[Mason]

One idea to fix this would be to have more links on the wiki that return to the main site. It also might help if the wiki had a theme that looked more like here.

 

  I like this.