New TG system: Q&A Thread

[Esternial]

Hmmmm...yes, and it could also be a virus. But don't we have this problem in the forums?
Also, perhaps you could impliment a system that only allows safe well-known websites such as youtube, NationStates, google etc.

Allowing only 'safe' websites might work, but would probably lead to all sorts of complaints as people demand that their favourite websites be put up. The big ones would probably be YouTube, and various forum hosts, but this wouldn't work for TNP, which have their own site, or people who use particularly small forum hosting sites. At the very least, it would come down to a form of endorsement for certain sites and not for others, which may not be something that NS wishes to promote. Unless InvisionFree or ZetaBoards wanted to chip in and pay the rent...

I prefer Milo's method. If a nation has been around for, say, a month, it's probably not here for spam.

A population-bound set of restrictions does seem like a good option. Considering the population of a nation is more or less indicative of how long it's active, we could use that to 'unlock' certain privileges.

[People United Together]

@violet,

Thanks for assuaging my fears, I'm glad you won't leave us college students out to dry.

[[violet]]

I prefer Milo's method. If a nation has been around for, say, a month, it's probably not here for spam.

A population-bound set of restrictions does seem like a good option. Considering the population of a nation is more or less indicative of how long it's active, we could use that to 'unlock' certain privileges.

It's probably the way to go, although it will require a little work to prevent player confusion about why url tags in TGs only work sometimes.

[Esternial]

A population-bound set of restrictions does seem like a good option. Considering the population of a nation is more or less indicative of how long it's active, we could use that to 'unlock' certain privileges.

It's probably the way to go, although it will require a little work to prevent player confusion about why url tags in TGs only work sometimes.

Perchance you could include that information in the "welcome to NS" TG every new player receives?

[Woonsocket]

I'm a manual recruiter, and I have a couple of issues/questions for the programmers. OK, so when one wants to send a recruiting telegram, they have to:

1. Click on "Write Telegram". This opens up the telegram box and the nation's name.
2. Click on the "+" sign next to the nation's name.
3. Click on the "This is a recruitment telegram" box.
4. Post the telegram itself.
5. Click "Send".

My question - why add the extra step of the + sign? It's not needed, and it adds an extra step to the process. An extra unneeded step. Why not just have this:

Add: Nation • Region • Special [?]

This is a recruitment telegram.

appear automatically when one clicks the "Write Telegram" box. There is no functionality to the "This is a recruitment telegram" box unless one clicks in it, so why not just eliminate the redundant step and have the options show up when the telegram box opens up? It would save an unneeded step -

Second question - why make the box that one has to check to activate the "This is a recruitment telegram" message so tiny? For people that are handicapped, or blind (we have several blind NSers), that is a real burden to hit. Can the box be made a button or a larger box?

Thank you for considering these issues, Violet and any other programmers. Much appreciated.

Woonsocket

[[violet]]

I'm a manual recruiter, and I have a couple of issues/questions for the programmers.

There is a new procedure coming for manual recruiters that will alleviate most of the problems you describe. However, to answer the question, "Why aren't all the options displayed by default?", the answer is just to keep the interface simple, since the vast majority of people will never use those advanced options.

Designing a good interface is often a battle between simplicity and functionality. It's tempting to throw in buttons and settings for everything, but that creates a daunting UI for people who are new to it.

[Esternial]

I'm a manual recruiter, and I have a couple of issues/questions for the programmers.

There is a new procedure coming for manual recruiters that will alleviate most of the problems you describe. However, to answer the question, "Why aren't all the options displayed by default?", the answer is just to keep the interface simple, since the vast majority of people will never use those advanced options.

Designing a good interface is often a battle between simplicity and functionality. It's tempting to throw in buttons and settings for everything, but that creates a daunting UI for people who are new to it.

You may be able to include a button in the settings menu similar to the one that allows you to change the theme, allowing you to display 'advanced TG settings' for the recruiters. Since recruiters don't tend to start off when they're just new to NS, they'll have time to familiarize themselves with it and get pointed to it by others while also keeping non-recruiters free from the burdens of all those shiny and distracting buttons.

[[violet]]

Postmaster and Postmaster-General accounts are now available!

Please let me know of any problems.

[Unibot III]

Postmaster and Postmaster-General accounts are now available!

Please let me know of any problems.

Hmm, Paypal launcher seems to be stalling. Probably something on Paypal's end, or mine though. >_>

EDIT: That was weird, I closed the stalled tab and it said "You've already completed your purchase. Please click Close to continue to the merchant." It's described in this problem: https://www.x.com/developers/paypal/for ... s-checkout

Well, glad to sponsor the site anyways!

[Solm]

I'm a manual recruiter, and I have a couple of issues/questions for the programmers. OK, so when one wants to send a recruiting telegram, they have to:

-snip-

I had created a tiny tool that was aiding some manual recruiters before the new TG system was activated, I just recently patched it to work with the new TG html. Several people are currently using it and I see no reason to not release it to the public if they want to use it. Although, I strongly urge to use any in-game options that become available. My little, 'Asta Interface' (named after Asta who requested the creation of it), is just a simple little user script that automatically does what you asked, it marks the TG as recruitment, cleans up unnecessary clutter on the page, automatically fills in a TG (with optional @@NATIONNAME@@), and provides a list of new nations in clickable format.

To install it, please install Tampermonkey (for Chrome) or Greasemonkey (for FireFox) and then navigate to: http://solm.me/cde/asta_interface.user.js . Please tell me if you have any questions about it or if something isn't working properly.

I hope this gives any manual recruiters a little bit of relief as I know it was helping people who were using it who asked me on IRC a lot, and since I saw your post, I was happy to provide it to the public.

To use it: Just go to: http://www.nationstates.net/asta , you'll see the newly nations (autorefreshing) on the left, a textbox on the right for you to save your TG (which will be saved there once you write something in it even if you close the page, which gets autofilled in on the TG box), and then a checkbox to enable the interface. Just, click the checkbox when you want to start recruiting, and make sure you uncheck it when you want to stop recruiting. This is just a simple userscript that the lovely Asta asked for, so I hope it helps some others out there are as well!

[[violet]]

Hmm, Paypal launcher seems to be stalling. Probably something on Paypal's end, or mine though. >_>

EDIT: That was weird, I closed the stalled tab and it said "You've already completed your purchase. Please click Close to continue to the merchant." It's described in this problem: https://www.x.com/developers/paypal/for ... s-checkout

I've seen that happen before. The transaction completes but the PayPal box never closes. Once you close or F5 it, you see that it worked.

It can't cause the transaction to fail or go through twice or anything, but it is an annoyance. I think it's on PayPal's end, since it's fairly widely reported.

[Feux]

After we have purchased or upgraded our supporter accounts to postmaster general do we receive a new badge or maintain the supporter one?

[[violet]]

After we have purchased or upgraded our supporter accounts to postmaster general do we receive a new badge or maintain the supporter one?

There aren't specific badges for Postmaster and Postmaster-General: you will display the Supporter one.

[[violet]]

I'm a manual recruiter, and I have a couple of issues/questions for the programmers.

There is a new procedure coming for manual recruiters that will alleviate most of the problems you describe.

I've just added a small piece of this: You can now check "Always show compose box" in your Telegram Preferences, which will save yourself from having to click it open all the time.

[Feux]

After we have purchased or upgraded our supporter accounts to postmaster general do we receive a new badge or maintain the supporter one?

There aren't specific badges for Postmaster and Postmaster-General: you will display the Supporter one.

Thank you for clearing that up. For some reason I was under the impression the images displayed in the NS store for them where the badges. I must have assumed.

[Sichuan Pepper]

Hmm, Paypal launcher seems to be stalling. Probably something on Paypal's end, or mine though. >_>

EDIT: That was weird, I closed the stalled tab and it said "You've already completed your purchase. Please click Close to continue to the merchant." It's described in this problem: https://www.x.com/developers/paypal/for ... s-checkout

I've seen that happen before. The transaction completes but the PayPal box never closes. Once you close or F5 it, you see that it worked.

It can't cause the transaction to fail or go through twice or anything, but it is an annoyance. I think it's on PayPal's end, since it's fairly widely reported.

I have tried to complete a transaction but it continues to hang in both chrome and FF. I realize it is at PayPal's end but the transaction is not completing. Tried a couple of times now. Just to let you know people may be trying to upgrade accounts and it is failing.

[Cromarty]

I think it's come through to me, and one thing I would like to see which it doesn't have, is automatically linking hyperlinks so we don't have to copy/paste URLs

Yes, we may well do this. It's something I want to consider carefully, though, as it will make us a more attractive target for people who spam links to sites selling fake Rolex watches.

Couldn't we just add captcha to nation creation then? Or have it as a confirmation before sending tgs. So you have to fill in a captcha before you send, or you can go to a separate page (linked from the settings page?) to fill in a captcha that disables it entirely?

[Johz]

Yes, we may well do this. It's something I want to consider carefully, though, as it will make us a more attractive target for people who spam links to sites selling fake Rolex watches.

Couldn't we just add captcha to nation creation then? Or have it as a confirmation before sending tgs. So you have to fill in a captcha before you send, or you can go to a separate page (linked from the settings page?) to fill in a captcha that disables it entirely?

According to Fris, a lot of the recruitment spam we're getting on the forums is manually created, so captchas are inneffective, and just waste time for everyone else. I assume this argument can be applied to gameside telegrams as well.

[[violet]]

I've seen that happen before. The transaction completes but the PayPal box never closes. Once you close or F5 it, you see that it worked.

It can't cause the transaction to fail or go through twice or anything, but it is an annoyance. I think it's on PayPal's end, since it's fairly widely reported.

I have tried to complete a transaction but it continues to hang in both chrome and FF. I realize it is at PayPal's end but the transaction is not completing. Tried a couple of times now. Just to let you know people may be trying to upgrade accounts and it is failing.

Re: "the transaction is not completing" -- That's not quite the same as the original issue, which is that the transaction does complete but the PayPal window hangs around, never closing. I do indeed see that you did an incomplete transaction through PayPal before later successfully completing it with Google. The PayPal one looks a little messy because it was started, then canceled, then started again 15 minutes later. In both cases, though, we never received any signal from PayPal that the transaction was completed. So it looks like it was a genuine hang on a PayPal server or it was canceled for some reason.

It seems odd that hangs suddenly started happening once there were 3 items on the Store page and not the day before when there was only 1, so I am investigating what changed.

[Jamie Anumia]

Does it work with google? Because it doesn't even allow me to start the transaction with the google option. And paypal brings the issue mentioned earlier (transaction never being completed).

[Esternial]

I bought the Postmaster upgrade and I got another warm, fuzzy feeling of supporting NationStates.

Is this a mistake?

[San Leggera]

Does it work with google? Because it doesn't even allow me to start the transaction with the google option. And paypal brings the issue mentioned earlier (transaction never being completed).

Getting the same paypal issue.

[[violet]]

I bought the Postmaster upgrade and I got another warm, fuzzy feeling of supporting NationStates.

Is this a mistake?

You are indeed a Postmaster. Do you mean you found the confirmation telegram ambiguous? Because receiving a warm, fuzzy feeling when purchasing anything from the NS store is to be expected.

[[violet]]

Does it work with google? Because it doesn't even allow me to start the transaction with the google option.

I'm not aware of any problems with Google. Which browser & OS do you use?

[Esternial]

I bought the Postmaster upgrade and I got another warm, fuzzy feeling of supporting NationStates.

Is this a mistake?

You are indeed a Postmaster. Do you mean you found the confirmation telegram ambiguous? Because receiving a warm, fuzzy feeling when purchasing anything from the NS store is to be expected.

Oh, my mistake. I thought only the Support upgrade would give me that feeling. This is definitely an unforseen bonus