Bugs and Suggestions

Chris Maunder25-Jan-10 18:02

25-Jan-10 18:02

How do you feel it's best worked out?

More importantly: what is a member level useful for?

I, personally, feel that the concept of a "platinum" member is misleading because a member can be platinum in articles, but not in answers. Or a member may be an absolute fixture here, may spend all his or her days helping others find their way around, giving feedback on new articles, and generally keeping us all amused, but may never have answered a technical question or posted a single article. This person, though, is worth their weight in gold (or platinum, depending how funny their jokes are).

Member levels are used to provide members with access, features and the ability to help out with administration tasks. For this, member level only makes sense in the context of the action. If a member has marked his article as editable by Gold members then you have to be a Gold author / editor to get this access.

However, the bit here that I think is the crux of your question is if you want say "I am a X member", where X in {Bronze,..., Platinum} then what do you say?

My feeling is you should be considered the level that is highest out of all the categories of levels available.

Workable?

cheers,
Chris Maunder

The Code Project Co-founder
Microsoft C++ MVP

#realJSOP26-Jan-10 0:08

26-Jan-10 0:08

Granted, there is no tangible benefit to attaining a certain level - "I'm a Codeproject platinum member and all I got was this lousy t-shirt (that I had to pay for)". Smile | :)

One of the categories I have a problem with is that of "Enquirer". Many of us find the answers to our questions before posting a question on CP. I've been here for nine years, and my Enquirer score is just 492 - not even silver yet. Christian Graus is only at 106 - just barely silver. I don't think either of us will attain Enquirer "Platinum" in our lifetimes. Smile | :)

Chris Maunder wrote:
However, the bit here that I think is the crux of your question is if you want say "I am a X member", where X in {Bronze,..., Platinum} then what do you say?

My feeling is you should be considered the level that is highest out of all the categories of levels available.

Yeah, that's what I'm after - how do I describe my membership status? I think that platinum status should be something you have to work hard for. Instead of using the highest single category level, use the average of the highest three levels as the members overall status. I think that would keep platinum "up there" at the level of importance that we all place on it.

Does all this mean that mere duration of membership will no longer be considered for membership level?

.45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly
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Chris Maunder26-Jan-10 0:23

26-Jan-10 0:23

No one - apart from possibly the serial non-googler - is going to achieve platinum enquirer. That status type is only meant to give others a guide as to whether the person asking the question has asked lots (and so knows the deal), a few (they are getting the hang of it) or none (be gentle).

Picking the top 3 and averaging could be a little unrealistic. My original thought was that members would have something like

John Simmons - Platinum Level Author, Gold Level Expert

and leave it at that. Your profile would have the levels of everything else. Or we could possibly have:

John Simmons - Platinum Level Author, Gold Level Expert
(Site Participation: Platinum)

If we want to guilt people into coming and visiting us more often because we may be feeling unloved.

John Simmons / outlaw programmer wrote:
Does all this mean that mere duration of membership will no longer be considered for membership level?

Signing in give you participation points, but other than that, time does not contribute to status. We could certainly have a "active in a given year" event where, if you post 100 messages (or whatever) then you get a chunk of participation points for that year.

cheers,
Chris Maunder

The Code Project Co-founder
Microsoft C++ MVP

#realJSOP26-Jan-10 1:21

26-Jan-10 1:21

Chris Maunder wrote:
If we want to guilt people into coming and visiting us more often because we may be feeling unloved.

I have a thought - maybe we should have a New Member of the Year award for the user that gains the most points (that exceed a specified minimum) over the year. This user would get additional points (like MVPs do, but maybe not as many - say 500 points), as well as his/her choice from a selected group software and/or hardware (like monthly contest winners get, only maybe a little more substantial).

Chris Maunder wrote:
if you post 100 messages (or whatever) then you get a chunk of participation points for that year.

How about just giving a 50-point bonus for every 1000 points of overall reputation gained for that year.

#realJSOP25-Jan-10 3:26

25-Jan-10 3:26

So how is a members overall status going to be determined?

Rajesh R Subramanian25-Jan-10 3:56

Rajesh R Subramanian

25-Jan-10 3:56

I think overall status level would be just the average of all things (participant, author, authority, editor, etc.,). Just like the graph shows overall reputation.

“Follow your bliss.” – Joseph Campbell

#realJSOP25-Jan-10 13:07

25-Jan-10 13:07

If that were to happen, I'd be demoted to Silver. I have (way beyond) platinum status in three of the categories, and bronze in the others. That doesn't seem fair...

Rajesh R Subramanian25-Jan-10 16:44

Rajesh R Subramanian

25-Jan-10 16:44

I don't think the overall reputation should be calculated only by the article count. There are many ways to contribute to the site, and I'm glad they're recognising it now. I'm not sure if you'll be demoted (that may depend on how much you've scored with your contributions, whatever they may be). Perhaps, someone from CP could answer this.

“Follow your bliss.” – Joseph Campbell

Nagy Vilmos26-Jan-10 2:34

Nagy Vilmos

26-Jan-10 2:34

For the MVP insidivists like yourself, the category of #Kryptonite# should be added.

Panic, Chaos, Destruction.
My work here is done.

Tips/Tricks Formatting

#realJSOP24-Jan-10 3:28

Re: Tips/Tricks Formatting

24-Jan-10 3:28

It seems to me that the style sheets need some work. It seems that it's inserting excessive vertical whitespace before and after major elements (like headers and pre blocks) and it's almost impossible to format your content when the preview shows as it does.

Luc Pattyn24-Jan-10 12:53

Luc Pattyn

24-Jan-10 12:53

I second that. Forums and (old) articles have a good spatial density, they don't waste screen real estate. The new stuff (QA and TT) is wasting a lot of space. Using them requires a lot of clicking, scrolling and page loading.

Smile | :)

Luc Pattyn [Forum Guidelines] [Why QA sucks] [My Articles]

I only read code that is properly formatted, adding PRE tags is the easiest way to obtain that.
[The QA section does it automatically now, I hope we soon get it on regular forums as well]

Re: Tips/Tricks Formatting

Chris Maunder25-Jan-10 1:48

25-Jan-10 1:48

Inserting space before and after PRE tags has been an issue since the year dot. It's not a stylesheet issue (actually, it is easily solvable using CSS, if only everyone would stop using IE6/7), it's a post-processing issue that we know about and are working to fix.

The Preview thing is an odd, odd case. We're on that too.

cheers,
Chris Maunder

The Code Project Co-founder
Microsoft C++ MVP

Phantom Article Locking

AspDotNetDev24-Jan-10 1:43

AspDotNetDev

24-Jan-10 1:43

Looks like my article is still experiencing phantom locks:

Article is locked for editing by Smitha Vijayan. Lock expires in 3 minutes.

*a couple minutes go by and I refresh the page*

Article is locked for editing by Smitha Vijayan. Lock expires in 1 minutes.

[Forum Guidelines]

Smitha Nishant24-Jan-10 3:36

Smitha Nishant

24-Jan-10 3:36

Hi aspdotnetdev,

It seems to be an error. I have not worked on your article recently. I will email the webmaster about it.

Cheers
Smitha

Are you an aspiring author? Read how to submit articles to CodeProject: Article Submission Guidelines[^]

More questions? Ask an editor here...

Nicholas Butler24-Jan-10 5:13

Nicholas Butler

24-Jan-10 5:13

Hi Smitha,

Just to let you know this has also been happening with my latest article[^] since you edited it.

Nick

----------------------------------
Be excellent to each other Smile | :)

Smitha Nishant24-Jan-10 6:56

Smitha Nishant

24-Jan-10 6:56

Hi Nick,

Thanks for notifying me. I've notified the admins about the problem.

Cheers
Smitha

Are you an aspiring author? Read how to submit articles to CodeProject: Article Submission Guidelines[^]

More questions? Ask an editor here...

Chris Maunder25-Jan-10 23:23

Launching 'Latest Articles' loads tips / tricks instead

25-Jan-10 23:23

The issue has been found and fixed.

cheers,
Chris Maunder

The Code Project Co-founder
Microsoft C++ MVP

Abhinav S23-Jan-10 5:58

Abhinav S

23-Jan-10 5:58

Choosing 'Latest Articles' from the 'Articles' menu loads Tips/Tricks with the Tip Tricks check box selected (as default). This should be 'Article' instead.

Re: Launching 'Latest Articles' loads tips / tricks instead

Chris Maunder23-Jan-10 9:32