PSA: Technology

Erin al'Denael

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Technology had a very active 2012, and at Ubah's suggestion I am doing a PSA on Technology for the community this month. Apologies in advance if I bore you to tears; history has never been my thing. :P I will be actively checking the thread for the next little while, and answering any questions that pop up as well. So without any further ado...

:look:

Departmental History/Structure

The Department of Technology has been around for years now. It was originally formed in 2006 as the Department of Information Technology; it was renamed to the current incarnation in 2007. More information on the history of the department can be found in the library.

Our department is somewhat light on positions; of all the departments, we have the best titles though. :giggle Aside from the Director (me), we have 2 Masters of the Watch (Defen and Azi), 2 Tower Gatekeepers (Lireina and Melelele), and awesome staff (Barm, Caly, Chiyuki, Enya, Z). We also have Valo in the role of Web Applications Developer; we need a better name for that one. Just sayin'. :look: For past incarnations of roles within the department, as well as links to the Who's Who pages of everyone listed, once again let me direct you to the library. It really is an awesome resource!

The Busy Year of 2012


Last year, the Department of Technology was ridiculously busy. I came in as Director last March, taking over from the illustrious Z. As soon as I did, vBulletin was on my radar. Valorian submitted a proposal for it at the 2012 spring administrative meeting, and it was approved. From that point on, vBulletin was our responsibility. Over the summer, we spent countless hours working with it to get it liveable. Valorian created our theme, Azi burrowed into our databases and did the lion's share of backend work, staff ran around like ants doing what they could, and I think I lost a week of sleep minimum trying to keep it all going smoothly. And it did! The transition happened, we barely had a hiccup, and it was fairly satisfying to do. After all the man-hours put in on the transition, post-transition I focused on meeting the individual needs of the community. Support@ was initially flooded with people wanting help; I had this link permanently copied to refer people to because it has instructions on how to reset your own password. Throughout the months after initial transition, we collected feedback on what people thought of our new online home.

Recent Feedback + Our Plans

January brought about our yearly membership survey, and we in Technology have received even more valuable feedback from everyone about what they still are missing from the old site, and what they like/dislike about vBulletin, etc. I have a list of people who have requested further contact from the survey results; if I have not contacted you yet, I will in the near future. :) It was a semi-long list, and if I did everyone at once I'd A) go batty, B) not give everyone my full attention, C) possibly miss some detail that I don't intend to miss, or D) go batty. Leaning toward A or D. :D

From the survey, there are two areas that the community was more vocally concerned about. The first is our theme. Some outstanding issues about the theme (like the User Profile pages, for example) definitely need work. But after the enormous amount of work put in last summer, my staff needed a break. Then there's the whole real life thing that gets in the way. Additionally, there's the consideration that we're all volunteers here; some things that we want changed can be done by a very limited pool of people, so we have to wait for them to be available. :) At this specific point in time, the Tech staff (specifically Caly, show her some love!) is compiling feedback both from the transition and from the recent membership survey to hand off to Valo for tweaking/fixing/modification. He has indicated that he will be available to do these tweaks/fixes/modifications, and we look forward to seeing the results. :D

The second area of concern was with our mobile site, both the theme and the functionality. Once again, there's a lot that we want to do and a dearth of available hands to do them. It is something we definitely want to get accomplished though, and we will be endeavoring to work with the mobile theme in the future.

In the meantime, Technology is a department that constantly, continuously works behind the scenes doing things to make our community better. For example, a request was recently made for a way to see more easily what affiliation people have. After checking in with Viv, I added a field to the user profile pages for this purpose. It is self-done; Sa' won't be going behind you and fixing it unless she (or someone) notices an error (not naming names :look:). But if you'd like to show your site affiliation on your vBulletin profile, you can totally do that now. Another recent thing was when people wanted a more prominent link to the library; we added it to the main bar. Technology will continue to address these small, but important, needs of the community.

On the Agenda for 2013

We will be specifically focusing time and attention on the theme and mobile site, but at the same time...why stop there? I'm not going to go into too much detail (because it might still be nixed, despite being on the horizon), but how would you guys feel if when you came to our site, instead of scrolling through a list of forums to find your Ajah/Company home, it was on the main bar? Not only on the main bar, but once you went to it, you found yourself in your group's own little private section of the site? Is that something you'd be interested in? I'm curious. :look:
 
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Lenore Carvoe

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Thanks for the update, Erin! :clap

Concerning your agenda: I'm not interested at all and see the risk that people will stay even more in their private sections than now.
 
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We also have Valo in the role of Web Applications Developer

So... Valo is a WAD :look:

Something I would like to see back from the old forums is a member/group list... made it so much easier looking up who all was in what ajah, what rank people were, etc.
 

Erin al'Denael

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So... Valo is a WAD :look:

Something I would like to see back from the old forums is a member/group list... made it so much easier looking up who all was in what ajah, what rank people were, etc.

WAD. :giggle Maybe that will suit in and of itself. :P

You won't be seeing a member list again, aside from the major roles that can be viewed here. That is limited strictly to the backend stuff, and it would be incredibly irresponsible and insecure to give everyone access to our backend. :D The Historians do an excellent job of keeping our Who's Who up to date; check that instead!

...I hadn't checked the visible usergroups in a while. I see Serenla was playing around again. :P
 
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*must resist dirty comments about "backends"*

Could we get user groups visible again perhaps? Instead of the whole memberlist
 

Erin al'Denael

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That's the same question. :look: My answer is the same, but I'll re-word it: usergroups are admin-access only. If you perhaps mean make all of those visible like those on the show groups option? It's already super long. The visible usergroups are moderators, super moderators, administrators, moderators, and the Department of Membership because those are the ones people might need to look for with a specific need/purpose rather than simply viewing for voyeuristic pleasure. If you want that, the Who's Who is way more ideal; it breaks groups down by affiliation quite well.

Edit for a tangential thought: I can't see why anyone would particularly want to see usergroups for administrative purposes; staff and positions are all listed in the Who's Who. Ajahs and Companies, anyone Citizen through Accepted/Soldier is also listed in the Who's Who. The only usergroups that people would want to see that they might not see reflected in the Who's Who are the Sitting Room lists with unofficial/official guests. Wanting to know that is just plain nosey. :P Unofficial guests are determined by specific membership groups, and if they decide to publish a list of who they have in their private forums, that's their own business. Anything official (barring official guesting) is viewable via the Who's Who.

Be happy with the Who's Who. ;)
 
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Ajailyn Morrivinna

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So it would be tailored for the specific user group aka say Gray Ajah, and it would be listed right up next to the LIbrary link?! I think I would love that, but honestly the one feature I really miss was having a block on the left hand side to put favorites..
 

Erin al'Denael

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I might have known about it, but I did I remember when I wrote this earlier tonight? Er, today? Whenever it was I wrote it. :indifferent:
 

Ubahsur Kindellaer

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Thank you, Erin! :hug

I second giving much love to Caly, but that is due to my own nefarious reasons. :look:

Or course all Tech staff are amazing, we would still be on ezboards or something not nearly as awesome as we have now without you. :hug
 

Kassina Tendar

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Thank you for the PSA, as well all the work you put in last year and continue to do! :D

I love the library button at the top now and use it all the time!
 

Lyara Tieran

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Awesome work everyone!. :D


I, also, miss the ability to add a "favorite" to my list. But I think I like the idea of having my user group and then me just "right up there" on my bar. Doesn't mean I'd HAVE to go straight there, but it would make it nicer than having to scroll down then click and click to get me where I wanna be. After all, if people only stick to their areas and don't come out, then they'll do that whether or not they have an "easy button".
 

Calypsa al'Nicolai

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Muchly appreciating the love, nefarious or otherwise! :laugh:

Re: the agenda: I think it's an interesting idea and it's something that I would use. I usually am just on for short spurts here and there (thanks, children!) and having a quick link to my group's forums would be nice. That said, I think I actually check the Admin areas more, so I'd like THAT option better... :look: Perhaps the option to put up quick links to whatever the heck forum we want would be nice! :p C'mon, that's easy, right? /sarcasm
 

Azi al'Thone

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I too really used the Shortcuts feature from Drupal... but a pretty simple workaround is to just bookmark your forums in your browser. Not quite as accessible, but still pretty useful.
 
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