Since I sort of kind of made my own bug thread, I'll sort of kind of make my own suggestion thread. And since there may or may not be discussion generated about them, I'll put each idea in its own post and then this first post will be an index of sorts. Also this way, whenever I have silly-or-useful ideas, I'm not cluttering up the forum with a ton of separate threads to annoy people. Just one thread to annoy people!
-- Two rows for races
-- Datestamp the expected update time on individual census.php
-- Red everywhere doesn't tell you anything useful enough
Things that would be cool (Sanna's suggestion thread)
Things that would be cool (Sanna's suggestion thread)
Last edited by SannaSK on Wed Jun 19, 2013 9:18 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Censusing: Mostly Bronzebeard, Aggramar, Elune; sometimes Alleria, Icecrown, Scilla, Kel'Thuzad, Mal'Ganis, Draka, Staghelm, Nathrezim, Stonemaul.
Problem: The current layout of the races in census.php is not working out; not all the races are displayed due to insufficient width.
Suggested Solution: Have two rows of races, one for Alliance and one for Horde.
(I mentioned this briefly in my bug thread, but since the display problem is really less of a bug (something breaking) and more of a... ok I dunno, it just feels more suggestion-y to me.)
Suggested Solution: Have two rows of races, one for Alliance and one for Horde.
(I mentioned this briefly in my bug thread, but since the display problem is really less of a bug (something breaking) and more of a... ok I dunno, it just feels more suggestion-y to me.)
Censusing: Mostly Bronzebeard, Aggramar, Elune; sometimes Alleria, Icecrown, Scilla, Kel'Thuzad, Mal'Ganis, Draka, Staghelm, Nathrezim, Stonemaul.
Problem: I refresh a server's census.php page, but no data updates because it's not dynamic - I think the system 'creates a static page' once (twice?) a day in order to reduce server load.
Suggested Solution: Put a line of text on the page that says "This page last created on DATE TIME. Next expected update: DATE TIME." That way I can stop hitting refresh on pages when I'll know I won't get any new data, and only refresh when the text tells me I should be expecting a change.
(What's that you say? I'm the only person who sits with tabs open for all the servers she censuses and refreshes to watch the censii-count numbers go up? Well ok, I can accept that my habits are weird. I still think it's a useful suggestion, though.)
Suggested Solution: Put a line of text on the page that says "This page last created on DATE TIME. Next expected update: DATE TIME." That way I can stop hitting refresh on pages when I'll know I won't get any new data, and only refresh when the text tells me I should be expecting a change.
(What's that you say? I'm the only person who sits with tabs open for all the servers she censuses and refreshes to watch the censii-count numbers go up? Well ok, I can accept that my habits are weird. I still think it's a useful suggestion, though.)
Censusing: Mostly Bronzebeard, Aggramar, Elune; sometimes Alleria, Icecrown, Scilla, Kel'Thuzad, Mal'Ganis, Draka, Staghelm, Nathrezim, Stonemaul.
Problem: The color Red being used on the realmstats.php page to denote 'this realm has 49 or fewer censii taken in the last 30 days' with no corresponding censii counter is insufficient information.
Suggested Solution: These are kind of a pick-one set of suggestions... implementing any one would sort of render the others unnecessary enough that it probably wouldn't be worth bothering with. These are listed in decending order of my personal preference.
-- A ) (realmstats.php only) Remove the 'Language' column and shift 'Alliance', 'Horde', and 'A/H Activity Ratio' to the left (and possibly remove the coloring from the Ratio column). In the space between Ratio and 'Overall', add a column titled something like 'Census Count', that would display the "30:44" or the "22:212" (with appropriate colors), or even the "0:0".
-- B ) (whole site) Add a 4th 'census count color', let's say orange, to go in between red and yellow. Red would denote 1-19 censii in last 30 days, Orange would be 20-49, and Yellow and Green would be the same as they are now (50-100 and 101+).
-- C ) (whole site) Shift the Red>Yellow/Yellow>Green threshholds to be 20/60 or 25/75 censii-last-30-days instead of 50/100.
-- D ) (whole site; this suggestion is about 50% only here to be funny) Red till 15/Orange till 29/Yellow till 49/Green till 99/Blue at 100+.
Reasoning: "Realmstats says this server has a total of 68 players... is that because the realm really is dead or because nobody's censused? The numbers are red, but does that mean there's been 4 censii or 49? Do I want to open all these pages to see what realm I feel like making a lvl1 on to census?" When looking at realmstats.php, the huge swaths of Red don't really do you much good except to say 'there's just too much information that isn't known' (with the strong followup connotation of 'this site isn't useful, so why should I [a theoretical site visitor who is pondering whether or not to begin to take censii] spend my time, trying to fill an ocean with an eyedropper?'). Obviously more censii are better, but I would say that even after 50-60 censii in a month, ie, assume 2 censii/day, the 'quality' of the information you get after 60 isn't going to go up drastically (compared to the 'quality' of the info gained by the first ~15).
Taking Suggested Solution A is, I'm not positive but guessing, the most code/database intensive solution, but also the most clarity-of-data solution. The others offer some increased clarity of data (mostly in regards to users viewing realmstats.php), enough to be worth the effort of implementation.
More is always better, but the biggest differences in overall quality of body-of-data are going to come in the first 30 censii per month. Having Red denote everything 49 and down is not helpful enough.
Suggested Solution: These are kind of a pick-one set of suggestions... implementing any one would sort of render the others unnecessary enough that it probably wouldn't be worth bothering with. These are listed in decending order of my personal preference.
-- A ) (realmstats.php only) Remove the 'Language' column and shift 'Alliance', 'Horde', and 'A/H Activity Ratio' to the left (and possibly remove the coloring from the Ratio column). In the space between Ratio and 'Overall', add a column titled something like 'Census Count', that would display the "30:44" or the "22:212" (with appropriate colors), or even the "0:0".
-- B ) (whole site) Add a 4th 'census count color', let's say orange, to go in between red and yellow. Red would denote 1-19 censii in last 30 days, Orange would be 20-49, and Yellow and Green would be the same as they are now (50-100 and 101+).
-- C ) (whole site) Shift the Red>Yellow/Yellow>Green threshholds to be 20/60 or 25/75 censii-last-30-days instead of 50/100.
-- D ) (whole site; this suggestion is about 50% only here to be funny) Red till 15/Orange till 29/Yellow till 49/Green till 99/Blue at 100+.
Reasoning: "Realmstats says this server has a total of 68 players... is that because the realm really is dead or because nobody's censused? The numbers are red, but does that mean there's been 4 censii or 49? Do I want to open all these pages to see what realm I feel like making a lvl1 on to census?" When looking at realmstats.php, the huge swaths of Red don't really do you much good except to say 'there's just too much information that isn't known' (with the strong followup connotation of 'this site isn't useful, so why should I [a theoretical site visitor who is pondering whether or not to begin to take censii] spend my time, trying to fill an ocean with an eyedropper?'). Obviously more censii are better, but I would say that even after 50-60 censii in a month, ie, assume 2 censii/day, the 'quality' of the information you get after 60 isn't going to go up drastically (compared to the 'quality' of the info gained by the first ~15).
Taking Suggested Solution A is, I'm not positive but guessing, the most code/database intensive solution, but also the most clarity-of-data solution. The others offer some increased clarity of data (mostly in regards to users viewing realmstats.php), enough to be worth the effort of implementation.
More is always better, but the biggest differences in overall quality of body-of-data are going to come in the first 30 censii per month. Having Red denote everything 49 and down is not helpful enough.
Censusing: Mostly Bronzebeard, Aggramar, Elune; sometimes Alleria, Icecrown, Scilla, Kel'Thuzad, Mal'Ganis, Draka, Staghelm, Nathrezim, Stonemaul.
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bringoutyourdead
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The whole color coding of census counts is an arbitrary and somewhat meaningless factoid. For example you can have two realms..
realm A has 10:10 census runs in a month
realm B has 100:100 census runs in a month
Which is better covered by CensusPlus and gives the best indication of population and activity? The normal thought would be obviously B
But this could be wrong...
Realm A might be a high pop realm (long census run) and have all of its census runs at different times of the day and therefore have a good overall view of how the realm is going.
Realm B might be a small pop realm and have all those runs as quick spurts of short runs (back to back quick census runs)... where ten back to back census runs takes as much time as a single Realm a run.. and each batch of census runs happen at the exact same time of day. This would be a very poor view of realm activity and population.
What I see as needed update for the census.php generated page is widening of the page box... with the desire to keep the data on the same visible screen.. we can expand side to side easier then top to bottom.
Allow the ability to add another couple of races beyond the current 14 race/faction spots (I have no guess as what Blizzard will add... but I expect they will add another neutral -> faction race within the next two expansion packs.
making room for more classes
Add a Time bar... 1,2,3....24 with bars like the level bars where the count is the number of submissions that happen within that hour over the month. This with the count would give a much better idea of how well a realm is covered.. and the time frame that needs better coverage.
realm A has 10:10 census runs in a month
realm B has 100:100 census runs in a month
Which is better covered by CensusPlus and gives the best indication of population and activity? The normal thought would be obviously B
But this could be wrong...
Realm A might be a high pop realm (long census run) and have all of its census runs at different times of the day and therefore have a good overall view of how the realm is going.
Realm B might be a small pop realm and have all those runs as quick spurts of short runs (back to back quick census runs)... where ten back to back census runs takes as much time as a single Realm a run.. and each batch of census runs happen at the exact same time of day. This would be a very poor view of realm activity and population.
What I see as needed update for the census.php generated page is widening of the page box... with the desire to keep the data on the same visible screen.. we can expand side to side easier then top to bottom.
Allow the ability to add another couple of races beyond the current 14 race/faction spots (I have no guess as what Blizzard will add... but I expect they will add another neutral -> faction race within the next two expansion packs.
making room for more classes
Add a Time bar... 1,2,3....24 with bars like the level bars where the count is the number of submissions that happen within that hour over the month. This with the count would give a much better idea of how well a realm is covered.. and the time frame that needs better coverage.