A change in Permission Masks.

[Tony Alraur]

# Suggestions that were recently discussed and decided not to be implemented.

I do not remember if I, nor another, surfaced this idea previously; but, if true, then I am doing so again. And, if not, then here it is; all new.

What I am proposing, is we change the way the holiday permissions work. As they stand at the moment, students are not permitted to view the sections whilst the character is at school. Which makes sense. However, this places a time-limit on any role-plays taking place during the holiday period. (And I really really hate time-limits on something that is supposed to be fun).

I would like to suggest a change, which removes the Start mask; but allows for the Reply mask to remain. This would allow those of us with un-finished role-plays to complete them in a relaxed; non-rushed manor. This also prevents any student account creating a topic whilst they are at school.

Now, this does not avoid an adult account creating the topic, and the student replying; which can be seen as an issue. But I would like to suggest a trust based system to at least give this a go. Then anyone posting with a student, running around at home whilst they are supposed to be at school, is placed back on the current system. (That may seem 'harsh', but if you try to avoid the holiday restriction; it's more or less deserved (It would also be awkward to implement, with the addition of extra groups / masks, as the over-write 'feature' really really sucks; and Brandon won't change it for me).). This trust can be easily checked by topic start dates. (Before school starts, student post is okay. After school starts, student post isn't okay). There 'may' be 'complaints' from 'moderators' about 'extra work'; but they 'should' be looking over topics 'anyway', so not really a valid 'argument' from 'them'.

Woo for over-emphasising!

 

[Nicolas King]

Sorry for the longer-than-usual delay, but this is a larger-than-usual suggestion, and I've been weighing it about in my mind for the past nine days so that when I finally did answer it, I'd genuinely thought about it enough to try to be fair about things, and not just throw down my gut reaction and let you deal with that.

First, I do not think this has been suggested by a member yet - so you're in the clear there.

I understand your suggestion, and we actually had something like this implemented when HNZ first converted to ZetaBoards and I was unsure of what method for holiday forum opening/closing would be best. I made it so that, during holidays, forums simply ceased to be viewable, but kept all other permissions.
This system, needless to say, was abused by those who found their way in to the forums via links (which isn't that hard to do). Removing start permissions during non-holidays might help with this, but I do not think it will stop anything from being abused. I could still see the situation you pointed out, as well as situations where an RP is just dragged out over months, or the same thread is used over and over again by people.

I think I also recall some stupid ZB bug quirking out when we did that, and I don't want to give it another go. So at least for that reason I won't consider this until the next ZB upgrade is out, and hopefully all the stupid subforum bugs are kinked out.

As to your over emphasis, not sure what you're getting at... If there's problems with GMs... PM me?

 

[Rukevra Vanderzuk]

Meh. Okay.

The extra 'n' needs removing from the title.

And the italicised text seemed funny at the time. It was in relation to watching topics for when student accounts should not be posting. Extra work and all that.