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Message Board > Site bugs/ideas > Article system overhaul

February 26, 2006, 03:26
Fiona
games are terrible
-9616558 posts

Okay it's obvious that articles should be the next main module in.
Now how it worked before was you started a article, then added pages to it, and was able to arrange the pages into an order. The system had it's own page forward/page back on the articles and also had a dropdown to jump to a page.

Any critisism with how that works?

Currently it has a list of categories, but it's obvious that a tree of nested categories is better. Do we want people to choose "Other" and be able to input thier own category suggestion? Moderators approving it would be responsible for adding said category.

I think you should be able to upload files and images. But this is where it gets tricky for me.

1) Where do we upload? On a per-user basis, or a per-article basis?
2) What type of limits do you think we should impose? The possibilities for abuse are obvious.
3) How would you be able to stick images in? What would the code be? How would images be referenced? etc.
4) What files shall we allow to upload? .rar, .zip, .txt? Shall we allow any file except say .exe and let the moderator look it over?

Some things to ponder. I'm not sure of the best ways to go about most of them. Also anyone else have any ideas for it?
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laffo
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February 26, 2006, 13:02
Frimkron
Frustrated Megalomaniac
703 posts

Regarding file uploads other than images, I was planning for there to be like a code resources gallery thing where people could upload code examples and stuff, so that could be used for any files accompanying a tutorial, for example, then the article could link to the gallery entry (and the gallery link the the tutorial) with just a simple url tag.

For images, I think it would be a nice idea if every registered user had a certain quota of space for uploading temporary images - but obviously this wouldn't be suitable for articles because they'd be using up their space to have images in their articles - so I think article images should be separate much like game screenshots.

I think if we just have a section of the article submission form for uploading accompanying images with room for like 10 different files, that would do. Then the articles could refer to the images by filename using a special article image tag. Actually that would be pretty cool because we could have that tag create proper floating images with captions and everything. So anyway the limits imposed would be a max number of images per article each with a max filesize of 1meg or 500k or whatever. And images would only be accepted with jpg, jpeg, gif or png extension.
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February 26, 2006, 13:19
Rincewind
programmer
1545 posts

Quote:
Any critisism with how that works?


Just an idea, but instead of a page dropdown box you could also do it like it's done on the forum. Write "1, 2, 3, 4".

Concerning the file types I would say allow all file types (we're approving the articles anyway!) except php/asp files which can be dangerous without us having approved anything (let's say some article guy wishes to run bad stuff from our server).
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Personal website: http://www.loijson.com
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February 26, 2006, 13:27
PB
Defender of the faith
630 posts

I supose it's savest to only alow BB-code in articles (where BB-code of course as Frimkron sais could be extended with tags specific for articles). But perhaps then html files could be uploaded too, if someone posts an article that originally was written in html...

Maybe people will write articles that asume the reader has read other articles. Perhaps it's an idea to alow the poster to show which existing articles he knows are related to his article, so that people can easilly learn in context once the content starts to grow?

Perhaps it's also an idea that if a user posts an article that isn't his own that he's able to give the name of the original author who gave permission to post it? Or wouldn't it be an option to post stuff that is not your own?

EDIT: I don't know how large articles will tend to be, but if it's big, maybe it should be possible to give pages a chapter name, which is easyer to navigate. (I know that this is about the oposit of what Rincewind just said, but anyway...)

[Edited on February 26, 2006 by PB]
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February 26, 2006, 13:49
Fiona
games are terrible
-9616558 posts

Pages could always be named anyway.
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laffo
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February 26, 2006, 14:19
PB
Defender of the faith
630 posts

Well that's basically what I ment, so good job there :D
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February 26, 2006, 15:44
Frimkron
Frustrated Megalomaniac
703 posts

I'm not sure about letting people post other people's articles - even if they are credditted. It wouldn't be very nice to steal all gamedev's articles without permission, would it?
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February 26, 2006, 15:48
Fiona
games are terrible
-9616558 posts

I agree.
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laffo
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February 26, 2006, 15:59
Rincewind
programmer
1545 posts

On the other hand I need the option to credit the writers of the pc-creation tutorials, which I am going to submit to Booleansoup. Almost all of those tutorials are unique and were written for my site, they deserve it to be on here.
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Personal website: http://www.loijson.com
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February 26, 2006, 16:59
Fiona
games are terrible
-9616558 posts

Can't you just get them to submit it?
I think allowing people to submit other people's articles under the pretense of "I have credit seriously" is asking for trouble.
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laffo
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Message Board > Site bugs/ideas > Article system overhaul

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