State of the Site Report (2013 Q1)

[Mr. Flay]

State of the Site report, First Quarter 2013

We're going to try something different (suggested by several users) to summarize changes, projects, and other goings-on on MafiaScum. The goal right now is to publish these quarterly, though that may change in the future. Suggestions for other types of information to report on are welcome via the usual methods; this thread will be locked so it can serve as a permanent archive of all entries.

• Mafia-Related News
  
  
• The Whitelists and Blacklists for Normal Games have been updated; Mafia Framers are no longer allowed, while several Modifiers have been added to the whitelist. Check the wiki link for more details. Note that games which have already been approved by the Normal Review Group
  (or are already running)
  are grandfathered under these new rules.
  
• zoraster's Game Census continues to show recovery since the Great Rollback; most everything is back to where it was before that incident, if not higher. See the thread for more specifics.
  
• Much progress has been made on deciding on a New Newbie Setup; concerns about the balance of the current Newbie Game setup 2of4 have been noted and are being incorporated, but a final decision is not yet made.
  
• The Micro Game forum was changed from its temporary name of Northern Forest Archipelago to Mayfair Club.
  
• The Micro Queue also gained a permanent List Moderator, quadz08, while zoraster took over Large Theme games. Hoopla retired from List Moderation, and LlamaFluff took over the Open Queue.
  
• Micros now count for 1/3 of a game of moderation experience; note that you must have run at least one other game before moderating in those queues, so you can't just run six 5p Vengefuls back-to-back to get access to the Large Theme Queue!
  
• Moderators wanting to run their first Large Game (Theme or Normal) with more than 21 players should speak to their List Mod first for approval.
  
• Concerns about List Mod responsiveness in our faster queues (Newbie, Mini, Micro) have been addressed and are being monitored for any future problems.
  
• There has been no particular progress on the Automated Signups project this quarter (see Coding section below), but there is work ongoing and it remains on "the list" of big projects.

• Moderation Report
  
  
• The quarter saw the introduction of The Speakeasy, meant for mature discussion, and the closing of the unmoderated Forum 62. Many of the most popular threads were moved from F62 to the Speakeasy.
  
• Untrod Tripod and JDodge were added to the roster of Discussion Moderators, although JDodge later resigned. Korts also resigned due to a lack of time/availability, and SpyreX and hitorogoshi were also removed from the roster, as they had been long-dormant. The admin team is looking into whether more moderators are needed at this time.
  
• Moderator actions:
  • January:
  • Over 160 reports in that month, not including reports of illegal abc alts. Only two were for Mafia-related forums, neither of which resulted in official action.
    
  • 90 or so resulted in no action at all.
    
  • 19 reports resulted in Official Warnings or other non-ban actions, such as thread moves or closes.
    
  • 18 reports resulted in bans.
    
  • There were 56 users reported (not including illegal alts)
    
  • Five spammers were banned based on reports.
  • February:
  • Reports: 13 in Mafia forums, 1 Mish-Mash, 8 Mafia Discussion, 31 General Discussion, 3 Speakeasy, and 2 in Site Ideas. 31 users in total were reported.
    
  • 31 reports resulted in no action.
    
  • 5 reports resulted in an Official Warning or other moderator action, such as a thread move.
    
  • 4 reports resulted in a ban of some length.
    
  • 3 reports were for botspam.
    
  • 1 report was for a doublepost.
  • March:
  • Reports: 7 in Mafia forums, 1 Mish-Mash, 2 Mafia Discussion, 18 General Discussion, 6 Speakeasy, and 12 in Site Ideas.
    18 other reports were spurious or abuses of the system and are not counted in the above.
    
  • 25 reports resulted in no action.
    
  • 6 Official Warnings were issued.
    
  • 3 reports resulted in a ban of some length.
    
  • 1 report was for botspam.
    
  • 1 report was related to cleaning up a doublepost.
    If multiple reports resulted in disciplinary action, they were not counted as multiple warns/bans.
• mith has made a firmer stance on avatars and signatures following the site rules; since they show up on every post you make, they will be held to a high standard of compliance. Note that this is not a change in the rules, just an announcement of more stringent enforcement.
  
• The Ban Threads have been combined, and shortcuts have been added to both GD and SE to make it easier to find.
  
• New drafts of the Site Rules have been written up (edited for clarity and a few missing features) and should be released in their final form soon, pending final approval.

• Other Administrative Topics
  
  
• The t-shirt project has been stalled by some lack of communication, but mith getting the order form set up is the last remaining blocker.
  
• The Cards project has taken on a shot of new life, with some breakneck marathon work by DGB, diginova, UN, and others in the Art workgroup. Playtesting will probably commence shortly with some FTF groups, so that the rules and setups can be finalized, and production can begin!
  
• After 10 years, our F.A.Q. has
  finally
  begun to be edited to actually reflect the site's content! That will be an ongoing project for the Documentation group, though it will also partner with some pages that are currently hosted on the wiki under 'official' headers. More on that in the future, but if you're interested in helping please apply to the Documentation group.
  
• The 2012 Scummies have finally been announced. There's no good reason for the delay, just writer's block and some confusion on who was doing what. Old Scummies have been removed and the new winners should all have their award images.

• Coding Team Report
  
  
• Difficulties in administrator access to the server were resolved this quarter, which should lead to an overall speed-up of code implementations. The versioning system that we use (SVN) is also in the process of being resynchronized, which will also speed up progress considerably.
  
• The old 1994-style splash page has finally been updated, with new artwork and layout by UberNinja and others. Notably a "How to Join Games" page has been added as well, to avoid some of the inevitable questions.
  
• several new smilies have been added: is now , and the old image is now at . And for THOSE kinds of posts, has now been added.
  
• Several bugs have been fixed: the lack of multi-ISO in scuMobile, column headers not lining up in Sepia/Silver, DST jacking the posting times briefly, a brief problem with wiki logins and avatar uploads. I believe the problem with signatures not autohiding/respecting the UCP option has been fixed as well.
  
• The 'stalker' column of Who's Online has been removed completely; showing the location of a player on the site has unfortunate implications for metagaming, and would have held back the Private Topics project (see below).
  
• Known Problems without solutions yet:
  • hydra activation emails have not been showing up for all users lately
  • there has been a recurrence of the 'too many connections' problem that is being investigated
  • Global Announcements still do not reliably mark as read
  • hydra activation still requires some administrator input to encode both/all players as part of the hydra; fixing that will simplify several other projects like quick-switching accounts or avoiding posts from the wrong alt
• Carryover projects not yet finished, but accepted:
  • hohum and chamber have been working on Site Chat again
  • Flay is considering adding a Quicklink to act as an onsite bookmark
  • There was a suggestion for a [Reply All] button on PMs
    (rather than the current textual link, which is easy to miss)
  • Work has started on an Introduction to MafiaScum video project; see quadz08 or Untrod Tripod if you're interested in helping out.
    
  • Kison and chamber have been working on an on-site version of Private Topics, which has entered Beta testing in the last few weeks. No timeline yet on release, as there are a lot of bugs and security holes to plug!
    
  • Work continues on several versions of 'dark' skins for the forum, and finishing touches on the scuMobile and mafMobile2 skins for phones and tablets. Also, the new version of mafTiger is mostly finished.