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Young Writers Society


YWS: Cassini Updates Thread



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Wed Jul 22, 2015 4:30 pm
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Nate says...



A few updates to the Clubs tab:

- Inactive clubs removed from index: If a club has not had any activity in over six months, it will not show up in the main index. That does not mean it's removed though! For a club to show up again in the main index, all someone needs to do is make either a forum post or a wall post in it.

- Club search: Very much long overdue, the club search is now available at the top of the clubs tab. It's an instant type search, so as soon as you start typing, it'll start searching. It also contains an easter egg: try searching for shake.

- Club walls: The club walls are now identical to the people tab. Because of the different way clubs work though, any comments in a club can either be edited or deleted by the club's moderating staff.

Anyways, more stuff on the way!


Edit

Added on an admin tab for clubs, which is basically a shortcut to the edit club area. The easier access should make it simpler for club admins and creators to administrate their clubs.
  





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Wed Aug 19, 2015 3:36 am
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Nate says...



http://www.yewis.com is now a working way to reach YWS... for better or for worse.

As this is a newly registered domain, it may take up to 48 hours to work in your area. For most though, it should be working now.
  





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Mon Aug 31, 2015 5:34 pm
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Nate says...



Added a special tab for NaRevWriMo. It's in between the gear tab and the All Literary tab.

The RevMo tab lists two leaderboards: one for everyone who does even just one review in September, and another for those who do one review every day. On the first leaderboard, those who reach 50 will be highlighted.

But due to the fact that the Earth spins and days begin and end at different times, I had to build some leeway into it. So for the NaRevWriMo leaderboard, it'll count reviews made from between Aug 31 at noon GMT and Oct 1 at noon GMT. That's essentially adding an extra day for everyone, which I don't think will be a big deal.

The Team Tortoise leaderboard was a lot more difficult as there's no simple way for separating out days for each reviewer. Some people have explicitly set their timezone in their user settings, but most people have not done this (YWS automatically detects your timezone using javascript, but this is not recorded in the database). It's also not possible to separate things into discrete 24 hour chunks.

So I ended up settling for a somewhat lazy algorithm that I think will work in nearly all cases. It does basically two things. First, it checks to make sure there's no more than 48 hours between each review. That way, someone who does a review at 1am one day and 11pm the next day is still counted. Second, it checks to make sure you've done at least (day - 1) reviews. So if it's September 6, and you've done 5 reviews with no more than 48 hours between any two reviews, you're good!

But, it may not work all the time. If you've done a review every day and you're not recorded under Team Tortoise, let me know! If you haven't done a review every day and you are still recorded under Team Tortoise, then as my 7th grade teacher (Sister Mary Anne) would say, Happy Groundhog Day!
  





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Tue Sep 01, 2015 4:20 pm
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Nate says...



Another update for #RevMo: you can now display your progress in your forum signature. Just go to Settings ->> Board preferences ->> Edit Global Settings. Or just click here.

Image
  





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Wed Sep 30, 2015 8:10 pm
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Nate says...



Just a small update, but thanks to help from @carbonCore, a cross site scripting (XSS) vulnerability was discovered and has now been fixed.
  





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Sun Nov 29, 2015 8:09 pm
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Nate says...



Didya know? The 2015 YWLJ is out! http://bit.ly/amznywlj

Anyhow, I'm hoping to be able to sell 100 copies this time around. In the past, it's only ever been able to sell around 30, so 100 is ambitious, but I think it's doable. Heck, if every author could convince just one relative to purchase a copy, we'd be a third of the way there.

To help with the goal, there'll be a mass PM going out on Tuesday, and a mass email on Dec. 8 (spreading it out to ensure maximum coverage). Then probably another mass email about it in early January.
  





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Tue Dec 15, 2015 4:03 pm
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Nate says...



Just a couple of very small updates, but there's some larger ones on the way...

New Star Wars Smilies
:stormtrooper
:luke
:leia
:r2d2
:boba
:darth
:daddarth

Code: Select all
:stormtrooper
:luke
:leia
:r2d2
:boba
:darth
:daddarth



Unique Views Stat Counter

When viewing the stats for a literary work, you'll now see 'Total Views' and 'Unique Views.' Total views is the total number of times everyone has viewed the work. Unique views is the total number of people who have viewed the work. Both include the author.
  





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Tue Dec 15, 2015 6:34 pm
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Holysocks says...



Wait, we get to keep the Star Wars ones? 8D When I read that this morning I thought it was just temporary!
100% autistic
  





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Tue Dec 15, 2015 6:49 pm
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Iggy says...



:daddarth

OH MY GOD.
“I can't go back to yesterday because I was a different person then."
- Lewis Carroll
  





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Tue Dec 15, 2015 7:41 pm
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Nate says...



Holysocks wrote:Wait, we get to keep the Star Wars ones? 8D When I read that this morning I thought it was just temporary!


No reason not to keep them permanent, I suppose! Something like 150 smilies already if you click on 'View More Smilies' when writing a post.
  





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Tue Dec 15, 2015 9:22 pm
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SkyeWalker says...



THIS IS THE BEST THING

I WILL KNOW THESE CODES BY HEART OMG

:daddarth

thankyouthankyouthankyou Nate *ultimate hug*
My pronouns are they/them.

Formerly Zhia and Reneia
  





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Fri Dec 18, 2015 6:14 pm
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Nate says...



The Leaderboards are now included as their own page on YWS, accessible via the star tab. Also added in leaderboards for forum posts, although the emphasis is given to reviews of course.
  





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Mon Feb 01, 2016 6:52 pm
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Nate says...



A couple small changes:

- The Writing Gooder block has now been replaced with the Top Reviewers Weekly block. Writing Gooder has not been updated in some time, and replacing it with Top Reviewers is a step toward more encouragement of reviewing in general.

- Added a Team Tortoise leaderboard to the leaderboards tab (trophy icon). This just keeps track of those who do at least one review every day for the current month. It automatically keeps track, so no need to sign up for anything. Once we get to March, there'll be two Tortoise leaderboards: one for the previous month, and one for the current month. This is in part necessary because of the revolution of the Earth, and rather than having two leaderboards only at certain times, I rather just make it two all of the time.
  





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Wed Feb 03, 2016 4:28 pm
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Nate says...



Another small change: replaced the very broken "Featured Works" block on the Literary pages with "Recommended For You." *

"Recommended For You" lists 10 works that you may be interested in (and I stress may). What it does is it looks at all works posted in the last 30 days. A work by someone you follow is scored 10 points if it has less than 2 reviews, and 3 points otherwise. A work by someone you don't follow is scored 5 points if it has less than 2 reviews, and 0 points otherwise. It then sorts it out such that works by friends with less than 2 reviews should appear at top.

Ideally, it'd be a lot more intelligent than that. It should rank recommendations based on a network factor (how many times you've interacted with the author, such as liking a post they wrote), and based on what you've reviewed in the past (e.g., if you tend to review more sci-fi short stories than the average YWSer, a sci-fi short story would be recommended highly for you).

It's not really all that difficult to do that; it's just a matter of time to implement. The current way took about an hour to put together. The ideal way would take days to put together. Plus, given YWS' small size, it's not like it takes a lot of digging to find a work you're interested in, so a better recommendation algorithm would be of limited value.

In any case, enjoy it!


* The Featured Works block in the Literary pages is not the same thing as the Literary Spotlight. The one in the Literary section was using a different algorithm that was very, very broken. Half the time, it didn't even work.
  





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Wed Feb 10, 2016 5:44 pm
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Nate says...



Two more updates:
View your login history
Leaderboards Re-Design

Leaderboards redesign
Complete overhaul of the underlying code, which had not been updated since 2008. Also an overhaul of the basic design to make it more attractive. Switched the ranking too from number of reviews to points earned.

I'm hoping that the redesign will encourage more reviewing.


Login history
Personally, I've long wanted a way to view my own past logins on YWS just as a basic security measure for my own account. That wasn't possible though until recently when I added the necessary code to save very basic login information. The information is only saved for 60 days, and you can view from the Settings dashboard (gear tab) ->> Overview ->> Login history.

In the future, I'll be adding failed login attempts as well.


Upcoming
More stuff is coming up! The Publishing Center renovation is still underway, and a Knights of the Green Room update will be arriving within the next week. As with the leaderboards, both of these should further encourage more reviewing.
  








Only the suppressed word is dangerous.
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