Message boards

[Void]

I think it would be nice to do two things:

1. Increase number of messages per board (say, to 50 from current 20)
2. (optionally) Make messageboards print OOC how much RL time ago a message was posted. Or at least how long ago in arelith time.

[Drogo Gyslain]

I think it would be nice to do two things:

1. Increase number of messages per board (say, to 50 from current 20)
2. (optionally) Make messageboards print OOC how much RL time ago a message was posted. Or at least how long ago in arelith time.

Currently, the limit is 35, which for most boards is more than plenty as it is as they should be being managed properly and not left up indefinately anyway in my opinion. (I hate a dirty message board)

And Message boards already do that in the form of the stamp at the bottom. You don't get to know how long its been up, but certainly when the note itself was written, which in and of itself is much more important a piece of information.

All boards are already last in, first out, so the messages are applied to the board with the newest messages on top. It wouldn't actually be that useful to know how "long" something has been up and it would be very anachronistic to have a feature like this.

[Void]

And Message boards already do that in the form of the stamp at the bottom. You don't get to know how long its been up, but certainly when the note itself was written, which in and of itself is much more important a piece of information.

The timestamp text is likely generated by a script, and that script could also calculate time difference. I mean, what's the harm in seeing "(X days ago)" added to the timestamp?

Currently you need to pull up -date, then calculate difference, then convert to real world time to realize that this tailor advertisement you saw probably no longer valid. Not all message boards are active, you know.

If the timestamp IS the part of the text and not stored in database, then having some date calculation tool would be nice. Like "-date YYYY/MM/DD" wwould tell you "this is X days ago Y irl hours"

[thimblegiant]

The timestamp text is likely generated by a script, and that script could also calculate time difference. I mean, what's the harm in seeing "(X days ago)" added to the timestamp?

[...]

If the timestamp IS the part of the text and not stored in database, then having some date calculation tool would be nice. Like "-date YYYY/MM/DD" wwould tell you "this is X days ago Y irl hours"

One thing I very much appreciate, nay, cherish, about Arelith is the fact it has very little OOC content. I've played on other servers and found this type of notation so jarring it really spoiled the experience. Sure, they were trying to be helpful, but in the end I found it was more damaging to gameplay than useful.

I use the -date command often anyway, and prefer that for doing a quick calculation. For events set for a future date, yeah, that one is probably best as OOC.

For anyone who doesn't know, the wiki covers time conversion: http://wiki.nwnarelith.com/Time#Time_in_game

[Void]

One thing I very much appreciate, nay, cherish, about Arelith is the fact it has very little OOC content.

The time difference could be presented in arelith time.

Also, how are you going to schedule anything without OOC content?

[JustMonika]

You don't need to shedule anything in the past though only the future.


People are pretty happy with, 'Our next meeting will be in three tendays [Thursday, 26th March 2:49GMT]' for future sheduling. It's ugly, but it's a nessicary evil to ensure everyone across different timezones has access to an easy baseline.

I'm not sure we need that kind of record out of character in addition.
If you're looking for an easy way to figure out the revence of existing postings and their age, the year alone is pretty sufficent,and everyone should be able to keep track of the current in game year.
If a posting isn't in the current year or previous year, it's at least a month old and probably irrelevent.

[Void]

I'm not sure we need that kind of record out of character

Please reread the rest of the thread. Doesn't need to be out of character either.

[JustMonika]

I'm not sure we need that kind of record out of character

Please reread the rest of the thread. Doesn't need to be out of character either.

Having a message board magically attach to each notice how long ago it would be written would make every message a bit longer, which I guess is no big deal, but also require everyone to write everything on magical paper that auto remembers the date, which is a bit high magic for the setting.

Also remember the server occasionally runs out of memory to process dates, and frequently amends old notes. This would give thosethe impression of being a lot more current than they really are.

It's not a hill I'd die on, but I feel it's uneeded,and we have so many other approved suggestions that have been untouched for months that this isn't important enough to enough people to merit concern.

Anyway, the main point was just to suggest an alternate way of remembering how current stuff is, was all.

[The GrumpyCat]

If you want a rough guestimate of when something was done IRL time
1 rl day = ten ig day
one irl week = three months
one irl month = one IG year

I'm not sure why you need to be much more precise than that. As said - We tend to not mind people using brackets to give IRL times for event settings and such.

[Void]

I'm not sure why you need to be much more precise than that.

Because there are a lot of timestamps, and it would help to have a tool to calculate time differences between them.

[msheeler]

Depending on what you want to do with your message board, another option is to use Notebooks and book shelves. They are a fantastic replacement for using message boards as report files.