Various minor forum changes

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So, some users may have noticed a few minor changes to the forums in the past week or so, particularly over the past couple of days. Basically I’ve been busy at work trying to make the forum a little better in my spare time. Rather than note these individually with their own thread, I’ve decided to collected them all into one thread for the moment:

New Theme - Nightmode for the forums :night_with_stars:

If you haven’t checked it out already, nightmode has come to the forums. You can change over to it by using the hamburger menu (the three lines next to your icon in the top right), or by going to your preferences, selecting interface, and picking Dark Theme from the drop down menu. If you have thoughts about, either good or bad, I’d like to hear them. If anything is difficult to see, please @me so I can fix it. (I’ve checked for problems with color blindness with my usual tool, but that doesn’t mean I’ve caught everything.) Additionally, If there’s enough clamor for a certain other color schemes, I can add more too.

PM vs DM - Fixing some confusion

I’ve gone in and renamed references to Private Messages (and personal messages) to Direct Messages, to help with some confusion about how messaging on the forums work. Note that is not a policy change, but is instead just a minor text change to help avoid confusion about who can see messages. (If you notice references to private or personal message in the UI, please take a screenshot and tell me, and I’ll fix it.)

Trust Levels - Making the forums a little safer :name_badge:

A couple of minor changes have been made to trust levels. Most notably the Regular badge has become slightly easier to earn (so, if you’ve randomly earned the Regular badge in the last couple of days, it was probably my doing).

This is also going to be paired with a revamp of trust levels in the next week or two. Most notably, Trust Level 2 (Member) is going become a fair bit easier to earn, but will also become the minimum level for Direct Messages. This means that if you currently do not have it, you should make sure to meet it’s requirements if you can if you want to keep using messages.

Additonally, I’m looking for new names for the New > Basic > Member > Regular > Leader tiles. If you have any ideas, please feel free to note them.

New Emojie - :rainbow_flag: New Pride flags and emojis with more coming soon :infinity_heart:

Finally, I’ve recently found I can add emojis, and with that in mind, I’ve decided I’m going to start adding some pride flags to the emoji set for Pride. Currently my planned list is: Trans Flag :trans_flag:, Infinity Heart (Polyamory) :infinity_heart:, Nonbinary Flag :nonbinary_flag:, Asexual (Ace) Flag :ace_flag:, Pansexual (Pan) Flag :pan_flag:, Intersex Flag :intersex_flag:, Bisexual Flag :bi_flag:, Aromantic Flag :aromantic_flag:, Lesbian Flag :lesbian_flag:, Gay Flag :gay_flag:, Demiguy Flag :demiguy_flag:, Demigirl Flag :demigirl_flag:, Agender Flag :agender_flag:, and possibly others (if you want me to include one, tell me). Note that I’m planning on making these myself (so that they remain in the same style as the EmojiOne set).

Notably, all of these are changes that I’ve personally been implementing, so if you notice problems with any of them, please @me, send me a DM, or send me an email (Rachel at ChoiceOfGames), and I’ll look into it as soon as I have a second to do so.

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Does this mean that users of Trust Level 2 and higher can still message users with a lower trust level? This might become a problem for private WIP beta testing, at least in my experience of it, which admittedly isn’t very comphrehensive.

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Good question, and as I see you can see, (I know you know I know) (since you asked first got to be my test subject) it totally works, so long as the Member messages the new user first.

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Is there any particular theme you would find more acceptable for renaming trust levels?

I’ve recently been rewatching Star Trek so my brain is filled with captains and yeoman and commanders and ensigns, but I’m certain such names would lool out of place.

What I’m asking then is, would you prefer the suggestions to be gaming-related, or just universally-applicable titles, or something else I haven’t even considered?

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I mean, gaming related, literary related, & CoG releated jump to mind as things to pull from. Let me put this in perspective: I wracked my brain as hard as I could and the best I could come up with was “One of them, probably Regular, should be called ‘something Enthusiast’, but I don’t particularly want it to be ‘CoG Enthusiast’”. Full stop, I just couldn’t think of anything else. I racked my brain and nothing else came out. I tossed it out there because I don’t think the current titles are particularly good, but I couldn’t think of anything myself to replace them with. If someone comes up with a great idea, great, if not, well, c’est la vie.

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Maybe something from rpgs/fantasy, like “adventurer” and the like.

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Dark theme and light theme are opposite extremes; would it be possible to have a sepia background for the light theme (like how we can change the games we purchase) for those in-between times where neither extreme feels good?

Just a theme of lesser intensity as a medium between the two would be greatly appreciated, I’d think.

Here are a few to consider:
New > Probationary Member
Basic > Vetted Member
Regular > Trusted Member
Leader > Demi-Moderator

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Seeing this, my mind immediately jumped to ‘Gearling’, ‘Nuts and Bolts’, ‘CoG Enthusiast’, ‘Bells and Whistles’.

I suppose that would make those who have opted in to the adult section of the forums also qualify as ‘Steamy’?

Or, oh, just to throw some ideas out there…

  • Flash Fiction / Short Story / Novelette / Novel / Epic
  • Quill / Fountain Pen / Press / Typewriter / Laptop
  • Tablet / Papyrus / Vellum / Paper / Screen
  • Curious / Reader / Explorer / Enthusiast / [something? or one of these could be ‘Builder’ perhaps? Or ‘Curious’ could also be ‘Initiate’.]

Thanks for the new flags! I’m excited about the nonbinary one, yay. I do have a request, please—I would love to see the aro flag.

The polyamory heart is difficult for me to make out on the black background, especially on a small screen:
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Sound like some good additions :slight_smile: . Sadly I can only type emogies due to my visual imparement, and night mode would only be useful on my phone due to how my laptop is set up, but the mobile and web site are linked. I don’t have much of an imagination when it comes to things like this :stuck_out_tongue: umm… newby for new user? COG junkie for regular? …Also just checked on my phone and the composer panel buttons on my mobile version are unlabelled too(part of the reason I can’t use emogies, the other reason is my screen reader doesn’t tell me what the emogies are), as in it just says button, not what the button is/does. Just thought I’d point that out, as it’s interesting as only the buttons in the composer panel when replying are unlabelled on the COG website.

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I don’t have a regular badge :cry:. Ok in all seriousness:

We could change New to Debutants, Basic as Cadets and Leaders as Deputies ?

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Seconding this, I like darker colour schemes but the black is too much. It also heavily clashes with the orange banner at the top of the page, which doesn’t look great. I’m a big fan of Twitter’s dark blue night theme, I’d very much appreciate something with a similar colour palette.

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In relation to New > Basic > Member > Regular > Leader

  1. Outsider > Newcomer > Folk(s) > Senior > Elder
  2. Wanderer > Traveller > Adventurer > Mentor > Elder
  3. Visitor > Newcomer > Resident > Councillor > Leader
  4. Cadet > Novice > Lieutenant > Captain > General

And if you guys ok with longer titles.

  1. Curious > Tale Seeker > Tale Singer > Talesmith > Fatewriter
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Never heard of those flags, to be honest, so I looked into it, and if I may suggest, how about the Straight Ally Flag? Me, I probably never would use any of these, but I figured fair is fair, no? :relaxed: Again, just a suggestion, is all, I don’t really care one way or the other.

Ha, love this! :grin: Hamburger indeed. :joy:

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I vote for that button to be changed into this :hamburger:

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Like, the same color sepia as games? #F7F4F1

Added to the list.

Changed it out for one with a white interior. Note that I can’t do this after it’s been in use for a bit, because it will break all prior uses.

There’s a tick box to turn off “Make this my default theme on all my devices” under the Theme selector in the interface, but I don’t know much about how it works. Other than that though, I don’t know what to do without something really actionable.

I’m not exactly sure what I can do about this? Do other sites insert alt text for emojis? If so I can file a feature request with Discourse. That said, I still don’t know how that would works with the composer. Do you have a good idea of what could help?

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What screenreader app did you use? And are you on Android/Apple/some other things?
If I’m allowed to chirp in.

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Pride flags for some, cookies for everyone! :rainbow_flag:

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Thanks for the replies :slight_smile: cheers, I will try that tick box, sounds like it should work :slight_smile: . I use JAWS 14 on my laptop with windows 8.1 and android 8 and the latest version of talkback. I’m not sure about emogies tbh as I only use these forums and no other sites with emogies. But I found the buttons in the composer panel more interesting, especially as the reply button in the box to post my reply says " reply button" but the buttons above the edit box where you type all say button except the last one which says button menu. I’m not very techy I’m afraid, so have no idea who lables buttons, how they are labelled and why these are the only ones on the site not labelled. So with that in mind I wasn’t really complaining or anything, just pointing it out as I found it curious :stuck_out_tongue: .

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Okay, so this seems like something to bring up in the Discourse forums (since they’re the ones that actually make the interface), I can make an initial post, but that said, I imagine they will have questions that I don’t have the answers to, so if you want to, you should first make a profile there so that there is some way to follow up. https://meta.discourse.org/ As soon as you do that I’ll make a post and @you so that you can describe how the interface works (or doesn’t work) for you.

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I love this night mode.
Thanks so much.

I’m going to use emoji’s too now, :prince:t5:

And have you considered the classic:

Noob, Adventurer, Veteran, Guild Master, Lich God

*or if we wanna be good:

Newbie, Recruit, Town Guard (like weaker, mini mods), Captain, Commander

Or the evil [Thief]

Sheep Thief, Apprentice, Thief, Journeyman, Guildmaster[s]

Or the other classic

Newbie (I use this too much!) Script Kiddie, Coder, Root, Sudo

Wait a second @RETowers did you just add a dark mode because it makes your icon look super cool? (is the left part transparent or something?)

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