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Private message system
Created 4th December 2009 @ 21:35
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Maybe? Or is there already a way of doing it that I don’t know :/
There is, it’s called steam friends.
On a more serious note. When i think about a new feature, be it thought of by myself or asked by someone else, i ask myself two questions.
1: Do i want to do this? (which is pretty dependant on my mood and irrelevant here)
2: What’s the use, what does it add? (This is the important one)
My answer to question 1 is: I’m really tired atm and can’t think straight, so: No, and make a one-liner about steam friends.
My answer to question 2 is a bit longer: Take the nature of this community: Gamers, everyone plays TF2, everyone has steam, alot probably have it starting up with their PC. Relatively young and hot-headed.
With that information i can see the following problems: People will have a new system to get used to. It’ll be open to abuse. (Spam, insulting others) It is not to be moderated (It are private messages, so we can’t invade your privacy, etc.) So we’d have to implement an ignore feature for certain users. People less savvy won’t be able to find the ignore button. And so on.
Add to that that our league has no need for this function to exist. There are plentiful ways to reach your opponents, and i can’t see much occcasions on which you will want to contact 1 individual, while he is not online.
Having said that, at the other side of the tunnel, there is steam, which everyone already uses, and is familiar with. It also has all privacy-features built in, and a lot more fancy things to boot. So, we provide you with an easy link to the user’s profile so you can chat with him. Way easier, and gives less load on our system to boot. (That’s also a consideration, don’t waste CPU time on things you don’t want, a nice example for that is the post count for each user)
So i’ll now go and make a linkback to steam for each user. Oh, i’ll be damned. We already have that! [img key=imgposter]http://www.teamfortress.be/forum/images/smilies/got_coool.gif[/img]
Most of the people here are vaguely savvy, so finding ignore button etc wont be too hard for the vast majority. If they can find the send button then the ignore button should be just as clear. If you dont want abuse, remove the forums too. Sure there are moderators here, but surely you can have a “report” button, which in effect gives you (admins) the right to go into their “privacy”.
I think a private message function could be very useful, personally I don’t mind adding randoms to my friends list as I’ll just delete them later if they are annoying but I know a lot of people that won’t. Could be useful if you want to contact a person for a one time thing.
Having said that, at the other side of the tunnel, there is steam, which everyone already uses, and is familiar with. It also has all privacy-features built in, and a lot more fancy things to boot.
The main difference between Steam Friends & IRC compared to a Private Message System is that to get in contact with people through Steam or IRC they have to be online at the same time as you.
Especially in the lower divisions I know it can be difficult to get in contact with your opponents – when you join their IRC channel it is completely empty and if you try to add a couple of them on Steam Friends they’re never online.
You have already recognized this issue by adding the challenge system on matches which sends a mail to the opponent – that is, sending them a message while they might not be online so they can read it when they come online.
The question is: What should a private message system be used for?
Scheduling matches? No, we got the challenge system for that.
Having a nice chat? Nah, both IRC & Steam are better for that.
What about telling your opponent the ip/pass for the server you need to play on. That could be handy keep private. That could be solved other ways, like implementing private comments on match threads (where private = only admins and team members in the clans playing can see them).
I don’t think a private message system is needed at all if a few other features were implemented. The private comments on match threads could be useful, as mentioned above.
Also, in a match thread, if someone from either team makes a comment, then when you go to etf2l.org it should show a link saying “1 new match comment” (like this). That way it would effectively be like a private message system, just team-to-team based, and only on unplayed matches.
I think a private message function could be very useful, personally I don’t mind adding randoms to my friends list as I’ll just delete them later if they are annoying but I know a lot of people that won’t. Could be useful if you want to contact a person for a one time thing.
It’s not that hard
1) Add person to friendlist
2) Schedule & play match
3) Remove person from friendslist
4)…
5) Profit
It’s not like it’s a pain in the ass to remove someone from your steamfriendslist.
IRC is bawss. much better than a pm system
etf2l should do more competitions where the prize is a BNC or a shell account with irssi or something. it’s not like that’d cost much cpu/ram on a box. Just a thought.
IRC is bawss. much better than a pm system
etf2l should do more competitions where the prize is a BNC or a shell account with irssi or something. it’s not like that’d cost much cpu/ram on a box. Just a thought.
I honestly have no idea what you are talking about ;) I’ll head off to google to find out what these things are.
Is bawws balls or boss?
As for a pm function, I don’t really see the need for it. Any match comments can be set as a challenge and that’ll reach your oppos email box – a location that they are more likely to check.
I wholeheartedly approve of IRC, and I think that it would be extremely cheap and useful for etf2l to offer as prizes facilities for staying constantly signed in to IRC, which would serve the function of a PM system more than adequately.
+1 private comments on match threads, nice idea F2!
I got served.
Anyway, i have a few features lined up that i need to finish in the next few weeks:
– New fixtures page, showing all your upcoming matches with easy to use interface to schedule matches and submit results. This to replace the calendar and submit results page, which is very un-inituitive at the moment.
– Implementation of pmod stats on our website. like: http://pmod.etboosts.com/_test/testrepo.php?idx=92 (yes, this is cool)
– Making an admin interface to control our n1ping gameservers, so we can just assign people limited admin rights from there and not have to worry about anything else.
Besides that, i’m doing a bit of programming on the ESH irc-bot, and am responsible for running ESH (along with my 2 companion-cubes).
Oh, and i study full-time and am active as volunteer at the local scouting group, which costs me 2 evenings a week on average.
So yea, i only do things i like, or think are cool, and some bugfixing if it’s needed.
So that brings me back to the PM system. I’m not overly enthousiastic, so it won’t get on the list. (You should see our trac-site, 30 open tickets :S. Mostly cool ideas for which there is simply no time). If you’re willing to help and know PHP ánd are not afraid of our semi-organized codebase (which is in the progress of being improved btw), feel free to apply to help out :)
Seriously, if i had no job/study, or even better, if this was my job, ETF2L would have the most awesome website ever.
tl;dr: no time.
The new implementations sound pretty awesome!
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