HMD Preparedness...and YOU!

[robot-mod.livejournal.com]

RUN FOR THE HILLS, IT'S COMING, IT'S COMING, IT'S A BIG TRUCK, IT'S GODZI-

HOW'S MY DRIVING~?
The Information Post

As you may know by glancing at the calendar, polychromatic's seasonal "How's My Driving" post is coming this weekend. I know you're all excited.

Some of you know HMD well, some of you are seeing it for the first time, so here's a general run-down on it:

As in most LJRPs, HMD is the game-wide chance for feedback on playing here in polychromatic. Praise--it's all well and good, but we all should know, constructive crit is best. What we encourage most of all here are questions, if you can't quite find the right words for constructive criticism. It gives you the chance to maybe understand something, (and maybe you think it makes sense after all now), and the player a chance to explain.

For example, "Why is Sue so fascinated with bananas?" (Well...)

Or, "How did Gary get from Point A in canon to Point B in Poly? It doesn't quite make sense to me." (There was this lizard, see, during a curse...)

polychromatic, by community vote, has an anon-off/ip logging-on HMD post. And the HMD post itself will really be two posts. One will be for players whose nicknames on the spreadsheet begin with A - K, and the other for players with nicknames beginning with L - Z. Remember, that's players' nicknames, your nickname, not characters' names.

The format we'll be giving you to fill out will look like this, and we'll provide it for you again come HMD time:

<b>Player name:</b> <b>Characters played:</b> Character :: Fandom :: Character LJ <b>Personal concrit link:</b> <b>Anonymous allowed/encouraged? Y/N:</b> <b>Other comments?</b>


However, for those who still wish to either receive or give anonymous commentary, we remind you of ye olde personal concrit posts. We're encouraging people to link to their concrit posts during HMD, so that those who feel the urge for anonymous commentary can still have their two cents, too. But remember that personal anon-enabled concrit posts are your lookout. We, as mods, can't oversee them, so be prepared for Anonymous and the comments you might receive.

But here's something a little different this time
(so pay attention, please):

In the most recent HMDs, there has been a lot of flashy HTML, blinking text, glitter, and pictures. It's enough to make your head spin! It's enough to put Las Vegas to shame! Gimme a show girl! What happens in HMD stays in HMD!

But it comes at a price: ...slow...loading...pages...

A little HTML is fine. It makes your comment eye-catching, and it can be entertaining. → By "a little" HTML we mean changing the color of the text; changing the font style; adding underlining, italics, or bold; or adding character entities (such as ℘, ✌, ✗ or →). These generally don't bog down the page when it loads, and not everyone can even see those characters.

The problems we were running into during the last few HMDs were comments with massive images in them, large animated .gifs, sample icons from each character played beside that character's journal name, embedded external links to music or videos (like last.fm and YouTube), and very large html-coded tables laying out characters played.

We've already split HMD into two posts to try and keep the pages loading relatively well. Having so much more data to load in .gif and video format slows down what's already a massive page even more. It's not at all helpful to players with slower internet connections.

If you want to post gifs and multimedia in a thread after that thread has collapsed, that's fine. Images and embedded links posted in collapsed threads don't slow the load-times as much as they do when posted in the parent comments of each threads.

But please consider your fellow players and their internet connections this HMD. It may look snappy to fill up your HMD comment with code, but it slows things down for everyone. Please keep the images and coding to the barest of bare minimums. It makes HMD run smoother, load more quickly, and especially makes scanning the post in order to give that concrit far easier.

Any more questions, comments, concerns, cake, please just leave a comment here or send us an email. We'll be glad to help.

Comments

[thenormalsquint]

I have no questions, comments, or concerns, but I do have cake.

[robot-mod.livejournal.com]

And that is some awesome cake too ♥!

[precto.livejournal.com]

Off topic query. If, by chance, I was looking for that spreadsheet on random, where would I find the link to it?

[robot-mod.livejournal.com]

Good off-topic query.

It's, unfortunately, not in the most obvious of places, and we need to update it badly. But! In the meantime, it can be found on the POLYchromatic infosite (http://www.polychromatic-rp.info/home.html) under the "roster" tab at the top of the homepage. That should take you right to it.

[dreadnot.livejournal.com]

It's also listed in the links section of berryfloss right up at the top.

[as_damaged]

sobbb but. i have deep and passionate feelings that can only be expressed through sparkles ;_____________;

[robot-mod.livejournal.com]

Sparkles are a right and a good and joyful thing, always and everywhere...except in main comments on HMD.

Sparkles can still go in collapsed threads, remember. It's just in the parent threads that will stay visible that we'd like to avoid the sparkles.

[as_damaged]

BUT MOOOOMMMMM

kfgjsdfg. ::goes off to. recode grandiose tables into small and non-obtrusive things.::

[absolutefaith.livejournal.com]

I've checked the spreadsheet a few times, and it doesn't seem to be up-to-date.

[robot-mod.livejournal.com]

Yes, we know it's not up-to-date, and we're really sorry about that. We're working on updating it as quickly as we can. We've had some hang-ups due to hiatuses and finals recently, but we'll be doing some housekeeping over the summer, and the spreadsheet is definitely on that list.

[absolutefaith.livejournal.com]

Okay! No rush. Since it was linked in this post, I just thought maybe it might be but the wrong file was linked or something.

[phasedcat.livejournal.com]

In case you need it done anytime I'd be willing to do it. My OCD makes me love lists and organization probably more then the average person should and I don't want the list to be sad either.

[politehulk.livejournal.com]

Since I seem to have a serious lack of meaning in my life lately, I wouldn't mind volunteering to go through the Taken list and update the spreadsheet for this weekend. Of course, people can always go back to check their own Taken comments to see what name they signed up under and don't necessarily need the spreadsheet for this weekend.

[robot-mod.livejournal.com]

Thanks for offering! We will keep that in mind and drop you a line if we think we need to take you up on it. In the meantime, yes, people can go back to their own Taken comments and see what nickname is their "official" nickname in Poly.

[politehulk.livejournal.com]

I say that because I've forgotten numerous times. I just offer because I know most everyone is more busy than I am at this point and I think it's a good resource so. *flaps hand*

[theotokos.livejournal.com]

): LOL. I don't know if I'm going to be here, but I had no idea that it got to be that bad, loading-wise.

[robot-mod.livejournal.com]

It was getting a little hairy. It wasn't as troublesome as it was when HMD was ONE GIANT MASSIVE POST (with a couple thousand comments), but it was starting to drag. So we're hoping this helps players with slower internet connections.

[dr_conscience]

I also got you mods some cake, just because you're all amazing.

[robot-mod.livejournal.com]

...

I see what you did there.

[doujin-dork.livejournal.com]

"Why is Sue so fascinated with bananas?"

Because this shit is them.

ALSO, HEY, CARU, CARU

Is there any specific reason why HMD is all weekend on the calender as opposed to just the one day?

[robot-mod.livejournal.com]

B-A-N-A-N-A-S-! A few times Sue's been around that track, so it's not just going to happen like that, because Sue ain't no holler-back girl. She ain't no holler-back girl.

Mostly because it actually goes on for several days. It doesn't just, *pow*, end like a curse, but carries on over the whole weekend, with people popping in and out as their schedules allow, or setting up placeholder comments to later discussions. It's not a one-day limited-engagement affair.

[basstardchuck.livejournal.com]

I think me and my characters are getting performance anxiety....

Bribes the mods (http://www.ilovefundraising.com/catalog/images/classic-cheesecakes-lg.jpg)

[robot-mod.livejournal.com]

That swirly one in front. That one. That's the one I want. I claim it in the name of Robotania. I even have a flag. Mine. *_*

[lovingmybamfgun.livejournal.com]

These generally don't bog down the page when it loads, and not everyone can even see those characters.

I just love seeing really big question marks, really. What kind of font do I actually have to install to see those characters?

And now I'm just curious what the second and third character you used as examples are.

[robot-mod.livejournal.com]

To be honest, I'm not sure what font you need. I'm running Firefox on a Windows XP machine and I've only rarely had trouble seeing the characters. I'm sure there's someone in the game with vastly far more knowledge of computers and character displays than I have who can help. Much as I hate to say, "You know, I don't know"...I'm afraid I don't know ._. Robot fail.

As for the characters, the first one is a scripted "p" shape (technically a Weierstrauss p (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weierstrass%27s_elliptic_functions) because it looks cool), the second is a "V for Victory" hand character, the third is a modified X shape (resembling a handwritten checklist-type X), and the fourth is a right arrow.

All of them came from here: http://www.bigbaer.com/reference/character_entity_reference.htm