roleplay world Request: A way to have Activity point out the mobile site?

[Lektra Bolt 2,336]

Would this ever be possible? Mostly an RP question, but also not.

I'm very very often mobile, but I'm in RPs and also have PM going on sometimes that I check, but can't RP on mobile. I don't want people to think I'm posting in OOC or on the forum but ignoring them IC. Or in general ignoring them in threads having nothing to do with RP.

Would it ever be possible for activity to show "Mobile: activity here"  as opposed to just the normal way? This would easily tell people that this person is online but unable to make any major posts

Edited November 7, 2017 by Lektra Bolt

[Jeric 46,834]

2 hours ago, Lektra Bolt said:

This would easily tell people that this person is online but unable to make any major posts

I have over 10,000 posts on this site, and if you check out my content I average well over the minimum character limit in even Advanced RP. I say this because almost all my activity since 2014 has been on mobile, save for specific reasons when I had to do staff functions in 2014-2016. Basically, being on mobile isn't that much of a limiting factor for a lot of people these days. At least it isn't for me. 

I may be missing something. How is being on mobile limiting you functionally. I say functionally because ... 

2 hours ago, Lektra Bolt said:

I don't want people to think I'm posting in OOC or on the forum but ignoring them IC. Or in general ignoring them in threads having nothing to do with RP.

Usually when a request is framed this way, it isn't speculative, but something that has happened to the person. Either that or it's something the requester thinks other people believe. 

I almost think that this is something that is best solved by interpersonal communication, because if people in any thread saw be browsing it and got upset because I didn't reply ... that's on them not me. That's not something that would be solved by a tech solution because even if it said "mobile" the person that feels as if you should reply is still going to feel that way. It only serves to give one person a false sense of security that isn't going to work much anyway. Maybe just tell people to chill about that? 

Anyway, the 'mobile' display is usually rendered based on viewport size, but one of the @media queries for CSS could help to detect the user agent, as could several server-side approaches. So yes it's possible to add that. I'm just not sure that is worth the effort, or if implementation would even have the result you are looking for. 

[Lektra Bolt 2,336]

I'm momentarily on PC to answer this

1 hour ago, Jeric said:

How is being on mobile limiting you functionally

Here's what Ive noticed:

1. That mini post quote that I did. It can only be done on the full site. When highlighting text I can copy it but I'm not offered to make a linked quote with just a highlighted block of text. I guess I can just do an old fashioned copy and paste and then wrap it in quotes, but it won't send a notification to people that they've been quoted. Or quote the whole thing and erase everything I don't wanna quote, but making mini quotes just isn't a function I get offered when using the mobile site. Which leads me to #2.

2. I'm unable to cross-post quotes from one thread into another on the mobile site. For RP this limits my ability to point out discrepancies in the RP thread to the OOC while on mobile since I can't copy and paste as effectively on mobile. Using Quote then copying and pasting the whole thing into another thread with the link back working only grabs the quoted text correctly on the full site. I tried this on mobile and the quoted part doesn't get grabbed when migrating to a text box in another thread. Is this just my device?

3. I'm unable to directly drag images and text into posts on the mobile site. Yes you can paste it as a link and have it become an image if it's an image, but the direct drag functionality is absent in mobile devices in general. This also means you can't pull things from other places and expect the formatting to be brought along for the ride.

Cross-thread or cross tab/window posting is limited on the mobile site in these ways.

1 hour ago, Jeric said:

thinks other people believe. 

Probably. I'm mostly just worried about people getting upset at me and thinking I'm ignoring them. That's just my worry I guess, and I probably shouldn't worry.

---------------------------------------------

Some of this sounds like limitations of the mobile site or my device, but I just had to be sure and bring it to staff attention for possibly having it rectified. Or at least known about for possible fix later, like how it's known that character profiles don't format properly but has been backburnered and queued for later when appropriate staff can get to it

Edited November 7, 2017 by Lektra Bolt

[Jeric 46,834]

1 hour ago, Lektra Bolt said:

That mini post quote that I did. It can only be done on the full site. When highlighting text I can copy it but I'm not offered to make

Mini post quoted. Finger to highlight and you should see a small pop up dialogue. 

1 hour ago, Lektra Bolt said:

. I'm unable to cross-post quotes from one thread into another on the mobile site.

You can quote multiple posts from multiple threads in one go. BRB

[Jeric 46,834]

On 11/1/2017 at 11:28 PM, Jeric said:

So I see that MLPF has the an Awards system now. I'm not sure if this is iAwards from InvisionHQ, so I don't want to assume the features at the staff's disposal, but I'm personally curious if this is something staff will be rolling out anytime in the near future.

For those that don't know, the Awards add-on offers way of offering either basic or custom achievements/trophy's for specific actions as set by administration. Imagine the gamification of MLPF's social elements for the benefit of the community. Actions like putting on a profile photo, posting in specific areas, posting deer jokes on @PathfinderCS profile, commenting on blogs, creating blogs, etc ... could be awarded with ... well ... icons that are awards which are displayable on a users profile and/or posts.

If they also have the Automation Rules extension they would be able to create conditions to automate the unlocking of various awards/achievements/trophies. 

I think this might be a decent idea worth developing further, especially if all the pieces are already installed. 

 

On 11/3/2017 at 2:55 PM, Jeric said:

Curiously, I built something very similar to this extension for my phpBB Star Wars RP Forum. Instead of 'awards' it was actually loot and gear that would modify a characters stats (I had basic PvP and PvE random battle elements and mechanics in the RP parts of the forum). 

This was back in 2004 too. @_@

Anyway, one can get fairly creative with how they could apply this feature. 

 

On 10/10/2017 at 9:51 PM, Fhaolan said:

Unfortunately, we *had* a friends system that was integral to the forum software we were using (Invision Power Board) and separate from the following of topics, blogs, etc. But for reasons known only to them they decided to remove the friends system in the 4.0 upgrade, moving into having it use the following mechanics instead. As far as I'm aware, nobody has built a add-on for IP.B 4.x that puts the friends system back the way it was in 3.x.  

 

On 10/10/2017 at 5:17 PM, Yellow Diamond said:

No worries! As for MCM, I don't know what plans the staff has for this year. I definitely hope they run it, though.

Yep. Sorry guys, ignore the notification.

2 hours ago, Lektra Bolt said:

I'm unable to cross-post quotes from one thread into another on the mobile site. For RP this limits my ability to point out discrepancies in the RP thread to the OOC while on mobile since I can't copy and paste as effectively on mobile. Using Quote then copying and pasting the whole thing into another thread with the link back working only grabs the quoted text correctly on the full site. I tried this on mobile and the quoted part doesn't get grabbed when migrating to a text box in another thread. Is this just my device?

There is a plus icon next to the quote link. You press that and it copies and stores the post, and the icon becomes a check mark. I did this to four posts in two different threads and came back here. 

Here are some quick screenshots

You press the multiple quote icon and you will see the "Quote x posts" button appear. Pressing that posts any saved quotes into the thread you are currently viewing. 

2 hours ago, Lektra Bolt said:

3. I'm unable to directly drag images and text into posts on the mobile site. Yes you can paste it as a link and have it become an image if it's an image, but the direct drag functionality is absent in mobile devices in general. This also means you can't pull things from other places and expect the formatting to be brought along for the ride.

Using attachments may be easier than linking, but yes this is generally a limitation of most mobile sites and mobile devices. 

2 hours ago, Lektra Bolt said:

Some of this sounds like limitations of the mobile site or my device, but I just had to be sure and bring it to staff attention for possibly having it rectified. Or at least known about for possible fix later, like how it's known that character profiles don't format properly but has been backburnered and queued for later when appropriate staff can get to it

That's the thing. It's not a bug. The site is operating how it is designed to operate, and within the solutions provided are pretty much standard in any platform on mobile. As you mentioned, there are several broken elements that haven't been fixed. There are better value added features to enhance the site. This sounds like a huge opportunity cost to fix something that isn't broken when simply bringing up your anxiety about judgement with the other RP'ers would solve the issue easily, unless the other people are jerks ... technology can't fix jerks.

 

 

[Lektra Bolt 2,336]

WOW! THANKS! Really much thanks and respect Jeric!

Can I brohoof each of your posts like 10 times?! I knew we could multi quote but It had completely slipped my mind to try to collect then drop into other threads.

The only thing is I don't seem to get that 'Quote This' option on my Note 8 using Dolphin Browser, just full site. I get the copy/share/select all, but not the 'Quote This'. I think since you do it seems safe to say that that's something having to do with my device or the browser I use. Maybe both, but glad to know this at least works for some.

Lastly yea it's just anxiety. I haven't encountered anyone complaining about that yet. MLPF is by far the least toxic forum with quick action by staff for toxicity or trolls/etc (Except when everyone's asleep, but really people need sleep) I've ever been to, bar none. I'd just been worried is all. Guess I'll deal until showing someone's activity as using the mobile version of the site will ever be shown.

Two things:

@WiiGuy2014 might be interested in everything discussed here. The procedure I'd been using on the full PC site is discussed here as well as how to do the same on the mobile site, which I just learned and he would be interested in since he asked me this before.

@staff when you see this to approve it: Jeric has addressed or explained all my concerns! Hooray! Requesting a close

Edited November 7, 2017 by Lektra Bolt

[Rikifive 23,486]

Now I believe it's pretty much irrelevant, but I know what OP had in mind.

Not that I want such a feature or something, but I just wanted to say, that being on mobile devices is -- maybe not limiting as proven by Jeric, but slower and harder, but it all strongly depends on a particular device and size&complexity of posts.

In my case imagine a singular private message, that has more than 20000 characters; 25+ quotes and some images, emoticons (up to 75 that limit though) and other thingies. It's so easy to get lost in this on desktop (not even Spike would help me keep things organized when typing), it probably would be a pain on smartphone/tablet.  It's not a random example, but a legit thing.  These messages take around 4 hours to build on PC and I just can't imagine myself writing such a message even on my laptop, that works kinda ultra slow after these years (I extremely rarely use mobile devices, so I don't really need to buy new, fancy ones). I'm not saying it would be impossible, but having to operate with smaller resolution, touch pad etc. makes it simply less convenient. I'm not even going to mention how difficult it would be to make it all on even smaller mobile devices, such as smartphones, as typing on virtual keyboards can be a real challenge on devices with a small screen. Currently I'm using my laptop due to PC failure and I can already tell, that it really takes more time to navigate forums. Most of the time I don't even have time to do everything I'd like to do.  As for my mobile device... heh, I didn't want a brick, so it's relatively small- and after giving it a try at browsing internets... I abandoned ship really fast.  

Nevertheless, don't get me wrong. Jeric is right and to not search far, he's a perfect evidence, that things are possible on mobile devices. ~And of course, he's right saying, that adding such a feature wouldn't really be a solution for that problem. I'm less active at the moment due to difficulties, but I don't need any features to express that.