Cubed 3 Problems

I take it you're planning an E32011 section for the site soon?

Tis ready, but will be up and replacing the homepage from Tuesday (or today if there's anything decent to beef up the section)

Awesome. Looking forward to it.

Thanks for bearing with me and sorting out these things. Only because I want C3 to be better than what it is now!

This is just a suggestion from me, and maybe not necessary at all, but do you reckon you should clear out any old user accounts that haven't been used in years, or those that are blatantly advertising accounts? Whether you can distinguish between advert accounts or not is a different matter. But I noticed a few accounts display the page "Selected user doesn't exist", and returns you to the homepage when you click on them, this one being an example.

( Edited 06.06.2011 01:34 by Azuardo )

Since people are posting issues at the moment, thought I'd post up another one I noticed.

The post counts on different news, reviews and forum topics often goes over the actual amount of posts that are effectively posted. I guess this is a consequence of spam posts being deleted. So say you have 73 posts in a topic, sorted in 25 posts per page, the pagination system should normally only display three pages for that topic, but it might be displaying a fourth one, devoid of any posts. The latest purchases topic has that problem that it seems to be counting two posts more than the amount of posts effectively present, so sometimes it shows one page more than it should.

I don't know how you make it work, if you use a counter which is incremented every time someone posts (that's my guess) or something else. if that's the case, would be nice that in the deletion query, you decrement that counter (if it exists ).

( Edited 06.06.2011 09:33 by Kafei2006 )

I know exactly what you mean, Kafei. It's noticeable in some threads, when you click to view the last posted message, and it takes you to the last page, but there is no actual post there. You have to manually go back a page to see that post.

Hard to explain, but I get you.

I've noticed this also happens in topics where jb has moved posts himself from one thread to another - it messes up the number of posts, and then the pages. But that was only really one news thread ages ago which doesn't matter so much now.

One other post problem is displayed on the left side of the site. E.g. My Star Fox 3DS preview just went up, and it has 7 comments. In the feed on the left, if you see the previews section, it is right and says 7 comments have been posted. However, the news feed section says only 2 replies have been posted. Hovering over the number 2 says Mason was the last one to reply, yet he hasn't actually posted at all - he only posted the article up on the site. So something is messing up there.

Another one: If I go to Azuardo -> Blog, to view my latest blog entry, and go to the bottom, it says "Read Entry and View Comments (0)". It says zero replies, but going on the actual entry shows I have 10 replies.

I'll post any more I find.

Edit: I'm guessing this is due to you trying to fix the games linking to all those random screens, but games like Star Fox Assault now have a bunch of dead screenshot links.



( Edited 06.06.2011 20:14 by Azuardo )

Been browsing cubed3 on my 3DS and noticed some weird things. Like for example, I displayed my Kore Gang reviewed, and it showed the person that posted it through the admin (our dear Mike Mason ) as the author of the review.

Also the comments counters seemed to be completely off on the Cubed3 Mobile version.

Ugh, with all the fucking spam users that come to the site and bumping decade-old threads, I was wondering if we could implement some sort of 'report post' button that immediately sends it straight to the mods.

To save abusing the button, we could have a message of some sort show up when you click it that says abusing of the feature will be taken seriously - just so that people don't spam the button and 'report' people multiple times for no reason. So it's not for reporting people you don't like, but for genuine spam posts, or actual user insults.

With that, then maybe the mod could delete the post, and either warn, or ban/delete the user.

Also, any way to add a slight uniqueness to staff members on the forum? Just to show who's a mod, who's an admin, or just a writer? Where we have our user level & title, we could have either above or below it also another moniker - Site Owner, Admin, Moderator, etc? Even if the user only writes reviews/previews, maybe to have Reviewer included or something too? This would help people wanting to know more about certain users, and just generally know who is who, who does what, and who to ask in regards to certain things. (i.e. a noob will know who to pm for a site problem).

Time to change the Wii forum to include Wii U now! You gonna have a separate forum for the system nearer the time, or leave it as a Wii AND Wii U forum?

( Edited 08.06.2011 10:12 by Azuardo )

Azuardo said:
Ugh, with all the fucking spam users that come to the site and bumping decade-old threads, I was wondering if we could implement some sort of 'report post' button that immediately sends it straight to the mods.

There's an alert mod button above - it's not very clear though and is better highlighted in the new C3. We get the alerts and deal with issues as quickly as possible. I recently implemented a "delete all posts + user" function for mods to clean up any spam quickly.

Also, any way to add a slight uniqueness to staff members on the forum? Just to show who's a mod, who's an admin, or just a writer? Where we have our user level & title, we could have either above or below it also another moniker - Site Owner, Admin, Moderator, etc?

Admins and mods do have ranks under their title, always have. Just mine doesn't - need to fix this as I'd left it after C3 issues a couple of years back.

Wii U forum changed, plus Wii U hub will be updated soon.

As for the comments syncing, will investigate - I know that the "restore thread reply count" works for the delete function, but it must be missing in another instance of it.

There's an alert mod button above - it's not very clear though and is better highlighted in the new C3. We get the alerts and deal with issues as quickly as possible.

Admins and mods do have ranks under their title, always have. Just mine doesn't - need to fix this as I'd left it after C3 issues a couple of years back.

Ah I see - yep, we do need ranks for staff too, definitely.

Can have alert mods for individual posts again, not sure why it was removed in the latest C3.

Hmm, one other thing you've probably noticed yourself.

In the feed on the left where it says which thread a user has just replied in, sometimes it doesn't say the thread name at all.

One example right now:

Minor other thing I noticed. In feed on left, it says 398 posts have been made in the Final Fantasy thread. But last post is no. 396.

Azuardo said:

Minor other thing I noticed. In feed on left, it says 398 posts have been made in the Final Fantasy thread. But last post is no. 396.

Should be easy to fix right?

Oh, here's a suggestion!

Is there a way to make it so that you can view who you have given stars to each week? Even if it's only just for the current week.

Simply because I was awarding stars, but I couldn't remember if I had already given a star for a certain post. So maybe when the stars pop-up comes up when you click it, it could also display the users and links to posts which you have already awarded stars to for that week.

Sorry to double post, but just incase you've already read the above one and might not get around to seeing this one.

Another thing about searching for forum threads. Can you make it so that the site will display forum thread titles based on what you search, as well as forum posts? I was looking to see if a Skyward Sword discussion thread had been made, but it only shows a list of posts containing 'Skyward Sword'... which is a lot!

I know other forums have the ability to display the posts containing the words, and the topic titles containing the words.

Be great if something like that could be added.

Cheers for sticking with it and attempting to sort things. Massive props to you for doing what you can, and during E3 week too! Well deserved star, jb.

EDIT: I managed to find a page I can use to search for just thread titles: here. But it's quite hidden away on the site. You have to search for something from the homepage first, then click another link in the results to find this page. I might be picky, but the search thing could do with a little bit of a sort out. But at least I know how it's working now. It's only a problem I guess if lots of other people don't like it/know how to use it well.

EDIT: Problem with the above link to search for threads is that it displays all threads titles with any of the words you searched. E.g. if I search for "Half Life", it displays all thread titles with "half" in the title, and all threads with "life" in the title. This produces too many results when you only want threads talking about Half Life. So there needs to be an option to search for thread titles containing ALL keywords, or ANY keyword.

EDIT: It's not picking up that we have a Sonic 4 official thread on the site when I search for it: click. But we do have one in the general gaming forum :/ Ugh, so many things.

EDIT 2 Christ. Also, I'm not getting any notifications for new PMs either. My emails are telling me I'm getting new ones, but it remains on zero on the site. Don't know if it has to do with constant replying and sending to the same person, but that really shouldn't affect anything. Don't know if it's at fault for anyone else. (EDIT: Fixed.)

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More crap I've edited in.

Don't know if this has happened when you've messed round jb? But no games appear when you search for certain words now. Searching for 'zelda', 'oracle', 'mario' grants you no games results. See image.

You can see it says "no games found".
Also, you can see in the reviews section there, Majora's Mask is still called 'Majora', despite the title being full when you click on it.

Adventure of Link appears twice when you search for it:

Furthermore, its full title is simply 'Zelda II: The Adventure of Link'.

Looks like this one is the real one, seeing as it links to a review page.

News thread titles not appearing in the forum. Image below.

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Mostly petty crap. I'm sure this site is full of tons of niggles concerning a lot of games. Understandable if you can't fix everything.

( Edited 13.06.2011 02:47 by Azuardo )

Just a few more things I think I should point out.

1. First of all, I've noticed that a user can infinitely rate a game on a game's page, affecting the reader score. I tried it with Super Metroid, gave it a 10, refreshed the page and gave it another 10, and it counted. I think you should make it so that users can only vote on a game once (or maybe be able to re-rate it at a later time if they have a new opinion), and also make it so that guests cannot vote. Otherwise you're either gonna get people rating a game 1/10 on purpose over and over (which I think has happened on some games already), or the opposite. Edit: Maybe also make it so that you cannot rate a game until it actually comes out. Or do an 'anticipation rating' for before it comes out too.

Likewise, maybe reader reviews shouldn't automatically go up before release. Or maybe just have any review submitted go into a queue to be quickly proof-read by staff to make sure there's no obvious bias or trolling (i.e. "this game sucks").

2. The 'read reader reviews' link a little scroll down on a game's page opens in a new window/tab every time. The reader review button at the top however, does not. Either remove the second link further down, or make it so it stays in the same tab.

3. As far as I can see, game pages don't have any release date info. Surely this is especially important for upcoming games. Definitely needs at least the UK and US release dates for every game.

4. I've noticed there are quite a lot of games not even in the database at all, namely older ones. Only a few examples I've searched for so far:

Metroid (NES)
Metroid II: Return of Samus (GB)
Donkey Kong Land 1, 2 and 3 (GB)
Zombies (SNES) / Zombies Ate My Neighbors in US
Super Mario Land 3: Wario Land (GB)
Mario & Yoshi (GB and NES)
Tetris Attack (GB)
Game & Watch Gallery (all of them) (GB, GBA)
Tiny Toon Adventures: Buster Busts Loose! (SNES)

Deffo going to be more as well.

5. A quick search for 'Yoshi' shows multiple naming errors.

First of all, you've got SMW2: Yoshi's Island listed as just 'SMW2: Yoshi'. Then you've got complete inconsistency with Yoshi's Island DS. The game name is titled correctly, the review is titled 'Yoshi', and the preview is titled 'Yoshi's Island 2'. This is the case for many different games on the site. I don't understand why the full name of a game is not being entered, like it's cut off (happened with Majora's Mask where it is just listed as 'TLOZ: Majora').

See pic:

6. On a game's page, is it necessary to have the name of the game displayed twice? To use the incorrectly named Yoshi's Island page as an example:

It looks like there needs to be a revision in the display and format of the site and the way things are being entered. It shouldn't really be happening that a game page, game review and game preview of the same game are all displayed with 3 different names.

7. Again, I need to bring up the way we search for keywords in threads and posts. I guess it's another thing that will only make its way into the new Cubed3, but we definitely need a way (like other forums) to, when searching through the forums, choose to either display the thread titles matching the keyword, or all posts matching the keyword. Additionally, I've noticed that when you do search for more than one keyword, say 'Super Mario', it will only display all thread titles containing ALL keywords, so you get all threads with 'super' in the title, and all threads with 'mario' in the title. Not good when you have a ton of games with 'super' in the title already. So the user should be able to choose whether the results display threads with all keywords in the title, or any keyword in the title.

Hope that's clear.

8. Searching for 'pokemon' without the accented é only brings up a certain amount of Pokemon games. Searching for 'pokémon' brings up others. Seeing as most people would only be searching without the accented é, surely you need to make it so that all Pokemon games come up when searching for 'pokemon'.

9. This one is slightly strange. I've noticed that in some reviews for older games, like Super Mario World and Unirally, there are the same two comments at the end of the review. See pic. Don't know if it's just coincidence or not, but the dates between posts seem strange; first post is 2003, second one is 2006.

Show Spoiler

10. Super Mario World's SNES review has a pic of Link to the Past:

11. And I think my last one for now is that quite a few older reviews have completely blank screenshots attached in them. And again on the screenshots, so many games with dead links or no shots.

I do hope you allow for user submission in the future of C3; I would love to help complete C3's games database by submitting relevant data and images for each game.

Edit: Not sure if this is just me, but the top stars members for the month's avatars don't show up, but they do for top of all time:

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sometimes I abit of trouble loging on but other than that this site is awsome i really enjoy it. the folk of cubed are very nice and down to earth

Uhh, I just noticed this, and it might get fixed as soon as I post this, but next to the thread on the left side saying Wii U controller analogue sticks and buttons, there's a bubble that has 21 right next to it. Like in the same text space. Then right next to that is a bubble with 5 next to it. It's sort of annoying haha.

Edit: ok, now the space that's supposed to say how many comments is gone...

( Edited 14.06.2011 01:33 by bornforthis43 )

Yeah, mate posted a newby thread with a title. The title then randomly dissapeared for no reason. The number is still there, its just lower down. No title + Post count = mucked up thread list.

This is also something that bothers me when I go on the 'members' page. The recently joined members jumps down into 4 rows occasionally, just making things look untidy. Know idea why it does it. It doesn't look like long usernames is the cause either.

Show Spoiler

And yeah, as mentioned above, the thread titles/post thing in the feeds needs sorting out. As does the number of posts counter in a lot of older threads. It's annoying clicking to go to the last page of a thread when there is nothing there. If the feed on the left says a thread has 400 posts, it should have 400 posts; not 398 when you actually go into the thread.

Equally annoying is the feed not saying the title of the thread people have been replying to.

When we get the new C3 is it merely just going to change the way it looks, or is it going to be done up from scratch and the threads imported over? Just don't want all these annoying problems still coming out in the new C3 :/

( Edited 14.06.2011 07:53 by Azuardo )

1) Recently joined members issue I know about, but have no idea why it does that from time to time - It should also show a placeholder avatar, but that too goes missing.

2) Title/posts thing is next on the list, but I need to find what's causing it first.

3) Title thread seems random too - will investigate that one.

4) Agree that members should be logged in in order to vote for a game, can show a "must be logged in" prompt instead.

5) Agree to scrap the game name from being displayed twice on a game page - it's goen in the new version.

6) Naming issues due to a database error a few years back, where when data was imported everything after the ' was lost. Has affected past reviews/articles as well unfortunately.

7) All keywords/some keywords I agree is a good idea to keep things easier to search.

8) Will check older reviews/previews for the random 2 comment issue.

The new C3 will be a port of this version, but working on the fixes per section

ooo in the new c3 can there be a section where we have c3 and its members recommended top 5 games to be playing for the week and have it change depending on what games are trending, kinda like trending topics on twitter

( Edited 15.06.2011 00:23 by MiiWiiKing )

^ Interesting idea, that. Something in that vein would be pretty cool. Should post it in the suggestions thread!

Likewise, perhaps have a section which shows Cubed3's members' highest rated games: a list of the top 50, or 100, games rated on C3 through the voting system.

Again, it just encourages user participation and gets people involved, having an effect on the website.

Anyway, hope you get most of the fixes sorted. Any rough guesses as to when we might expect the new C3? This year, next year?



( Edited 15.06.2011 00:33 by Azuardo )

I've seen the new C3, it looks hawt.

When is this supposed C3 launching JB?
Also, might be a long shot, but for staff members can we have a section on our profile where we can see our submitted news and, in particular, reviews, because its nice to keep track of them

New C3 is, unfortunately, a long way away because I spend most of my time on C3 bug fixing and news reporting atm, and there's not even much time for that really! I'm *hoping* this year or the start of 2012 at least!

- Good idea on the staff content profiles Will also implement staff rank/badge too

Like the top rated games ideas MiiWiiKing/Az, definitely something to add

Again, don't know if this is for everyone or just me.

1. When posting a poll thread, the 'preview post' button doesn't work. And also the same when sending a PM to someone through the link on someone's post in a thread.

2. The font size code that is produced after clicking the font size button when making a post is incorrect. It produces the following code (minus the spaces):

[ size=12pt ]your text here[ /size ]

But really, this is the code that works (with a space between 'font' and 'size'):

< font size=12 >your text here< /font >

3. Ugh, now clicking on the 'view reader reviews' button on a game page opens in a new window. Can you make it so that it opens in the same page/tab please? Very annoying :/

4. In the site feed, if you click say "Azuardo replied to...", you will be taken straight to that post in the thread. But if the post is made in a news article, it won't automatically bring you down to the post - it just stays at the top of the page and you have to scroll down yourself. Nothing big, but still something I noticed, and thought why is it doing that. Edit: Just noticed that it seems to be specific news articles that this happens with. Metroid Wii U news thread it doesn't work; No DVD playback on U news thread it does.

Double Edit! - Damn this is confusing, but I think I've figured it out. If say, jb is the most recent poster in the news thread, and you click this in the feeds, it won't take you to his post because it was the most recent. It just puts you at the top of the page. But if say, Echoes posted before jb and you clicked Echoes' reply in the feed, it will actually take you to jb's post! So, whoever you click to see their post, it puts you at the post which was posted after that. So of course, it results in going to the top of the article when you want to actually see the most recent post. Hope I explained that well enough. No idea why it's doing it :/ Again, not a major issue, but noticeable all the same.

5. Hmm, not getting new PM notifications sometimes. My hotmail tells me I've received a new pm, but the site says zero. It's as if the site thinks I've already opened it, because it's there in my list - but I haven't read it. So something still messing up there.

( Edited 15.06.2011 22:47 by Azuardo )