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Approved Plugins Forum Management


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CrimsonGT
Veteran Member
Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: Gainesville, FL
Old 11-23-2008 , 22:11   Approved Plugins Forum Management
Reply With Quote #1

Bailo, you probably remember me talking to you a little bit about this in IRC a few months back, and it popped into my head again today. I tend to see a lot of people requesting plugins that already exist, or using the site search tool and not being able to find it because an author named it something completely unrelated. Anyways, I thought some more about it and came up with a few ideas as far as possible ways to make the approved plugins forum a bit more organized, or even maybe an addition to the site plugin search tool.

Tags:
I have a vbulletin forum, but I dont use it much, but if I remember correctly it does have some method of a tags system built into it. I was thinking possibly something similar to the way you tag a youtube video, a valve server with sv_tags, and so on. Basically different search terms related to the plugin making it easier to find. For an example, hlstatsx (yes we all know what it is, but its an example) might have tags such as rank, stats, and so on.

Categories:
This was one of my favorite ideas, but I think bailo told me with the way the approval system was coded, it would make it semi difficult to implement. Basically just sub dividing the approved plugins section into categories making it easier to browse plugins you were interested in. Maybe options like browse all, or a list of categories like Administration, Server Tools, Fun Stuff, Gameplay Modifications, Miscellaneous and so on.

Gametype Column:
Was thinking possibly adding a column to the Approved Plugin forum where the games it supported were shown by icon type. Such as a plugin for only CSS would only have the CSS icon, and a game that supported both TF2/CSS/DoDS would have all three. Valve game logos are very distinctive so I think this would only be beneficial to the user browsing. Would also cut out the need to put TF2: or CSS: in the title of the thread.

Templated Plugin Post:
This is a so so idea, however it would make for some much more readable plugin threads. Basically add some input fields to the page to create a new plugin thread, such as Title, Game Type, Cvars, Description, Change Log, etc. Some people like the freedom of making it anyway they choose, but sometimes its absolutely terrible to look through for what you are trying to find. A templated design would greatly help with this.

Anyways, just ideas. If they are implementable, would be something nice for a rainy day. I know the SM Dev team is hard at work as usual, so things like this obviously are not necessary, but always prove to be useful.
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Fredd
Veteran Member
Join Date: Jul 2007
Old 11-26-2008 , 03:20   Re: Approved Plugins Forum Management
Reply With Quote #2

i believe only the newer versions of vbulletin supports tags by default...remember this is 3.6.7, they already have betas for 3.8.0...
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DontWannaName
Veteran Member
Join Date: Jun 2007
Location: VALVe Land, WA
Old 11-26-2008 , 04:23   Re: Approved Plugins Forum Management
Reply With Quote #3

3.6.7 is the old version now... 3.6.10 is the new stable version. Bail probably doesnt want to update because a lot of stuff is connected to this forum like logins and it might break when it is upgraded creating a lot of work.
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BAILOPAN
Join Date: Jan 2004
Old 11-26-2008 , 09:32   Re: Approved Plugins Forum Management
Reply With Quote #4

These sound like good ideas but I don't know if anyone is willing to do them.

Yes, a vBulletin 3.7 upgrade is pending but is at least a few days of work. I haven't had the time yet.
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pRED*
Join Date: Dec 2006
Old 11-26-2008 , 15:42   Re: Approved Plugins Forum Management
Reply With Quote #5

A way to grep attached sourcecode would be nice too.
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TitularSaint
Junior Member
Join Date: Nov 2008
Old 11-27-2008 , 03:34   Re: Approved Plugins Forum Management
Reply With Quote #6

When I was reading though all of the plugins it bugged me that the plugins page has no option to list just general plugins (those not for any specific mod). The only option that will show mod-neutral plugins is Mod: "Any" and that lists all of the mods.

An option that will list only those mod-neutral plugins would be nice.
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BAILOPAN
Join Date: Jan 2004
Old 11-27-2008 , 03:42   Re: Approved Plugins Forum Management
Reply With Quote #7

File a bug ;)
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DontWannaName
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Join Date: Jun 2007
Location: VALVe Land, WA
Old 11-27-2008 , 03:47   Re: Approved Plugins Forum Management
Reply With Quote #8

/request
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Nomarky
SourceMod Donor
Join Date: Sep 2007
Old 12-02-2008 , 06:58   Re: Approved Plugins Forum Management
Reply With Quote #9

An alternative to having plugin threads, which become too long and unwieldy over time (especially for new users), might be to have a sub forum for each plugin in the approved forum. Have a locked sticky at the top of the plugs sub forum which the plugin writer updates with changes only, making the updates easy to find. Then, if someone takes over a plugins developement, a new sticky could be created with the updated changes, rather than being lost many pages into an existing thread.

Of course this might mean granting forum permissions to SM Approvers that the dev team would rather they didn't have, and would create a lot of extra work that could be used better elsewhere. I would be happy to help set this up if it was felt to be beneficial though.
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Fredd
Veteran Member
Join Date: Jul 2007
Old 12-02-2008 , 18:35   Re: Approved Plugins Forum Management
Reply With Quote #10

that would be way too much forums...what i suggest is that plugins shouldn't be handled in the forums anymore it wouldn't be that hard to create a simple plugins database for all of the plugins...so simple that people won't be able to post comments or ask questions you guys could handle all of the requests in bugzilla and yeah its true that it might too much but its better than having almost everything on the forums...or even maybe launchpad
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