YWS: Apollo Updates Thread

Regarding the review notification issue, if this may help: the last time I had people reply to a comment that I wrote, I did get the notification for the first review reply, but not any of the consequent ones.

carbonCore wrote:Regarding the review notification issue, if this may help: the last time I had people reply to a comment that I wrote, I did get the notification for the first review reply, but not any of the consequent ones.

This actually helps quite a bit. I think I may know what the problem is now.

Thanks to some help from @carbonCore and @niteowl, I finally managed to track down the problem with notifications on replies to comments on literary works.

So now when you comment on a literary work and then someone replies to your comment, you should always receive a notification alerting you to that reply instead of just some of the time. The author of the literary work will also receive a notification letting them know a new comment has been posted, even though that comment is a comment to a comment.

In any case, the reason it was not working before was because of a conflict with another notification. That conflict was preventing any notification being sent when it was the author of the literary work who replied to the comment (when it was someone other than the author, the notification was sent properly). Removing the conflict required an almost total rewrite of the notifications for literary works, but everything should be working fine now.

So much happiness. I can't wait for my first reply notification!

Hannah wrote:So much happiness. I can't wait for my first reply notification!

I was just thinking this..

I use to go through all my reviews every week to see if there where questions. Thanks Nate! I love you!

I squeed when I was notified of a like/reply from my review.

Thanks, Nate!

Of course, now Google Bot has decided to necro like all my reviews from years ago.

Not that I'm complaining, it's actually fun to be reminded of reviews I did in 2011!

Just a general heads up, but a radical overhaul of everything dealing with Literary Works is coming. Some areas, such as when reading a literary work, will be left relatively untouched, but the code is nonetheless being completely rewritten.

Some of the changes are:
- Cover art for folders and literary works
- Combining "Edit portfolio" from the settings dashboard and the "Publishing Center"
- Publishing Center will change to look more like the Settings Dashboard. May or may not be included within the settings dashboard.
- Subscriptions for portfolio folders
- Stand-alone portfolio pages
- A new text editor that I'm building from scratch
- In profiles, the portfolio tab will change to "works." A new link to the stand-alone portfolio page will be added
- Portfolio page will also be linked to under a user's avatar

In one way, this is a massive update -- so much so that it's essentially YWS Apollo v. 2.0. However, the average user won't notice much of a change at all since there'll be no user interface changes except for the Publishing Center.

Anyways, my aim is to have it done before the August Review Day on the 25th.

Just finished doing some general maintenance at the server. Ended up also doing a full server backup since I had the website down.

The maintenance just involved some security updates and a free storage upgrade from Linode that doubled the storage space. Nothing that anyone would notice.

The update I mentioned two posts above is being pushed back to beyond Review Day. I wanted to get it done beforehand, but I decided to go ahead and add a few more features (mostly new moderating tools) that are going to take some time to put in. Plus, probably not a good idea to release a big update right before the busiest weekend of the month anyways.

Depending on how much spare time I get on Saturday (no time on Sunday), the new update could be completed by Monday or Tuesday. But, it's also supposed to be great outside on Saturday, so it'll most likely not be completed until next Friday.

Anyhow, this is a big update (it's a total rewrite of the literary section), so a mass PM will be sent out when it's completed.

Hey Nate. Just want to make a small suggestion here. Some sites I've been to have a link at the bottom of each topic pointing to the next topic with unread posts. Maybe that could be added to YWS?

@Stori ->> I don't really see the need for something like that, but if you can get ten likes for your post, I'll add it.

So I'm looking at the possibility of making two small, but hopefully meaningful, changes. These are:

1. Monthly Free Work Day (right before Review Day)
2. Earn up to 50 extra points for reviewing novels / chapters


Monthly Free Work Day

Self-explanatory. This worked out really well in May and June, and it would've been great to have one in August as well.


50 extra points for reviewing novels / chapters

At one point yesterday, I counted that of the 52 works that were in the Green Room at that time, 36 were in the novel / chapter category. Increasing the incentive to review these works could help clear out the Green Room faster.

Right now, the maximum points for a Green Room work is 150 points. Otherwise, it's 100 points. For novels / chapters, I'd like to increase both by 50 points: 200 and 150 respectively. Also add some kind of badge next to titles when browsing the literary area so that this is displayed fairly prominently.



Thoughts? Comments?

I like both of these ideas very much!

Regarding bonus points for chapters: it may be enough, or it may not be. I generally don't review chapters because there are all the chapters before the one I am to review, and I don't feel right reviewing a chapter all by itself. These days I don't really have the time to go back and read all the backstory. Either way, an extra incentive to review chapters is very welcome. I like the idea of marking the bonus point works -- the "shiny" factor could be just enough to push people to review.

One feature I would like to see making a return is a page showing all the users who are following you, and whom you are following. If not an actual page listing all the users, then maybe just a little number somewhere, like "Total number of followers" or something. It is not a necessary functionality, but it would be nice to have.