Hypothetical NG Service

[Zerok]

For a while now I've wished for a search feature that says Search for: "Topics by Author:"
I'm not a crazy bookmarker, and many a time I can remember WHO made the topic, but never what it was called. Now, I dunno if this suggestion has made its way to the suggestion thread (I'm fairly sure I posted it there before)... but that's not the point. I don't see the feature being implemented anytime soon.

So I was wondering what the demand for such an ability would be.

See, as a mod it's marginally easier for me to scan through a user's posts and nab all the un-deleted topics they've made. What if I was to do that for you, compile them all nice into links with dates and the like, and publish them online? Or give them to you to edit and display on your userpage?

Would you be willing to pay me? If so, how much? # of posts divided by 1000 in USD?

I'm sure I could make a topic that offered to do it for free and recieve 10 million "do me!" posts, and I've considered it... but it takes a damn long time. I'd like some tangible incentive to go through literally hundreds of thousands of posts. Also, if the demand is more to have them publically published... I'd need to host the database as well. There's the consideration of keeping such a public database updated as well.

So, give me your opinion on the whole deal.

[McPaper]

At 11/7/07 12:00 PM, Zerok wrote: So, give me your opinion on the whole deal.

I'd pay you nothing.

[Shaun]

some forums have that option, i don't really see the point.
most of what people post here is crap.
if I post something memorable, i remember it.
i certainly wouldn't expect that would be something you would get paid for?
its something that could be implemented as an automatic feature.
but i don't see why it would be.

[Doberman]

At 11/7/07 12:02 PM, McPaper wrote:

At 11/7/07 12:00 PM, Zerok wrote: So, give me your opinion on the whole deal.

I'd pay you nothing.

I take my vote with that too.

[RedCoin]

I could play you in hugs and kisses?

[iateamexican]

That does sound like a good idea, for just general convenience for mods and normal users alike.
Sounds cool.

[HandsomePete]

The forum search in general could use an overhaul. When I found out that Dumbledore was gay, I posted a topic, and I did two searches, and nothing came up either time, and then someone posts links. That was gay.

[Gagsy]

It doesn't really mater to me really, I make barely 1 topic every 3/4 weeks and I can basically remember every topic I have been that is worth remembering to me.

I can see why people who do make their 4 topics a day might like it, but if they like a topic they made so much, they can easily bookmark it or as a lot do, put a sig to certain topics in their sigs for easy access.

[Shaun]

one question, have you done this for yourself?
i imagine it would be really annoying to do manually..
you would have to go through almost every post you have ever made..

[Zerok]

At 11/7/07 12:03 PM, madknt wrote: i certainly wouldn't expect that would be something you would get paid for?

I honestly didn't think so either, since most of the people probably couldn'y pay me even they wanted to. But you never know until you ask!

its something that could be implemented as an automatic feature.
but i don't see why it would be.

Yeah, I feel the same. All I know is that I would use it a LOT, and I was wondering if other people would too. The issue, of course, with doing it independent of the site's help is the simple motivation.

[Truth]

Isn't this against the administrators wishes?

[BlueFlameSkulls]

I have to bookmark all my topics or other people's I liked after the redesign because I cannot find any topic after with the search.

It's been quite a few months so all those topic mount up and I have four bookmark folders to keep them in.

Search by author would be fantastic.

[Incognitus]

Some sort of link/statistic to indicate created topics on our profile would be fine.

[RedCoin]

At 11/7/07 12:07 PM, Truth wrote: Isn't this against the administrators wishes?

I guess, but it's only hypothetical.

[Zerok]

At 11/7/07 12:07 PM, madknt wrote: one question, have you done this for yourself?
i imagine it would be really annoying to do manually..
you would have to go through almost every post you have ever made..

Actually, the inspiration for this came from doing it for myself. I was looking for my "No Console Threads Please" topic, which was unsearchable due to the redesign search crap.

For users, it would be a bit of a nightmare to go through all the posts and determine which ones were made by you, but as a mod there's a handy feature that highlights a post in post history when it's a Topic-Made-By-X.

So to find my topic all I had to do was keep hitting next and scrolling and keeping an eye out for the highlighted posts.

[Zerok]

At 11/7/07 12:07 PM, Truth wrote: Isn't this against the administrators wishes?

I dunno, is it? I'm not sure why it would be... potential for abuse? Bumping all topics ever made by X? Right now the option exists to bump every topic with the word ____ in it... so I don't see the issue.

If there's another valid reason then of course I wont do it. Another good reason to propose the idea first, mmm?

[DannyIsOnFire]

I'd like to see the featured implented into the search function (which i think could do with an overhaul anyway), but not enough to pay someone to do it manually and off site.
It's a nice idea, and kind of you to offer, but i don't think the majority of users care enough to pay you to do it.

[EvilJesus]

At 11/7/07 12:03 PM, RedCoin wrote: I could play you in hugs and kisses?

Can't we all, but seriously, i wouldn't pay for that!

[Alfie]

At 11/7/07 12:12 PM, Zerok wrote:

At 11/7/07 12:07 PM, Truth wrote: Isn't this against the administrators wishes?

I dunno, is it? I'm not sure why it would be... potential for abuse? Bumping all topics ever made by X? Right now the option exists to bump every topic with the word ____ in it... so I don't see the issue.

This would be a good idea, however even if the admins did decide to make it, it would require a couple of minutes of downtime in the BBS.

[DannyIsOnFire]

At 11/7/07 12:16 PM, Alfie wrote: it would require a couple of minutes of downtime in the BBS.

I don't think it's going to cause mass riots.
Although...

[BlueHippo]

Interesting Zerok... I don't think I need this service, but uhhh....

yeah, well the search bar sucks shit, don't you use google to pull up old threads to link to? I know I do.

Just type in: topic title site:newgrounds.com/bbs and that will search the bbs for topics with that title. sometimes i'll mix up my search and toss in a users name or something, or you know, add quotes or whatnot. I know this still won't point out every topic made by the author. I've often wanted a list of the thread's I've made when trying to link to them, but alas, I'm piss poor ;P For the most part I can find most of the threads I'm searching for. A list of threads would be cool, but the bumping might be a little lame... who knows.

I dunno what else to say, so I'll just add an: also, cocks.

[TropicalParadise]

Are you speaking about all topics made by ME to put in my userpage?

I don't think there is that much of a demand for it, most people can remember the names of the topics they want to find and once the search bar is fixed (if ever......) then it wouldn't be necessary. Plus there are some topics that I've made that I would like to let die.

Also it might not make admins too happy, one thing is making money off of posting flash here, gaining popularity and selling merch or something and making money by using their hard-work is another. Remember how Wade went apeshit on.... d0gma I think it was... for simply running scripts for a non-profit search/stat things because of NG's resources that it used without permission.

[Zerok]

At 11/7/07 12:20 PM, BlueHippo wrote: yeah, well the search bar sucks shit, don't you use google to pull up old threads to link to?

I never really tried it. Only works if you can remember the title though. =)
It does work charmingly well though.

At 11/7/07 12:21 PM, TropicalParadise wrote: Are you speaking about all topics made by ME to put in my userpage?

I don't think there is that much of a demand for it, most people can remember the names of the topics they want to find and once the search bar is fixed (if ever......) then it wouldn't be necessary. Plus there are some topics that I've made that I would like to let die.

Only if you wanted it. You could edit out certain ones if you liked.

Also it might not make admins too happy, one thing is making money off of posting flash here, gaining popularity and selling merch or something and making money by using their hard-work is another. Remember how Wade went apeshit on.... d0gma I think it was... for simply running scripts for a non-profit search/stat things because of NG's resources that it used without permission.

Well I haven't the faintest clue on how to desgin a code/website to pull stats off the site automatically. I'd be manually compiling all the data myself then making it available. Wouldn't strain any site resources, nor is it information that couldn't necessarily be obtained by anyone at any time.

[Shikamarana]

This would be nice and VERY convenient, but I don't think you will ever receive payment for such a thing, And it wouldn't be necessary IF THE SEARCH JUST SHOWED POST RE-DESIGN, TOO!!!
I mean, why did they even "break" the search in the first place? Fucking Christ.

[gumOnShoe]

I wouldn't pay you, but I've been considering learning how to script this. The problem is that it would take a while to compile all of the data and well... there are thousands of topics.

If such a script were going to be created it would work something like this:

integer i = 1

Check thread i. Check first author on page. Add thread number to a database with a primary key based on author ID number.

increment i by one.

Problem is that I don't know the best way to grab the data from the site. Additionally, I'm not sure what the best language to do this in is. I assume you could even make a flash if you had the newer versions of flash to do this and grab the most recent topics.

This would run in much the same way as those stat whoring websites, but maybe be useful for something. I wouldn't want to drain NG's resources though, nor do I ever seem to have the time to get further than "I'd love to implement this."

:(

But yes I would want it, but I probably wouldn't pay for it.

[Cheekyvincent]

unfortunately, the suggestion topic was locked by liljim- ive always thought of that... and that would be easier then looking through text

i really wanna find a topic too

[Casualty]

That's not a bad idea and I don't want to disappoint you or something, but... It would be really easy to write a PHP script that does that, after which it would nicely display all the data including a ranking of the top topic makers and similar shit.

There are (only) three problems I can think of and these are:
-The load it puts on the NG server (which won't make ANYONE happy, especially the admins).
-The huge database that would be required to store the data. Newgrounds has over 800,000 topics now, and more data like the topic starters would need to be saved, which requires some space, I suppose.
-Deleted topics wouldn't be counted. This isn't really a problem though, as it would kind of 'fair' not to count them.

One advantage is that every topic only needs to be scanned once (except if you want to re-count for deleted topics >_>), and this means a daily scan would suffice to keep the list up to date.

Oh, something else... This probably won't be happening =]

[Britkid]

Yep, instead of you toiling away to do it for every user on the face of the planet who desired it, the admins could probably script it in a day for free.

It would be a good idea though. It could be a Profile option: 'Topics by this user'.

[gumOnShoe]

At 11/7/07 12:32 PM, Casualty wrote: That's not a bad idea and I don't want to disappoint you or something, but... It would be really easy to write a PHP script that does that, after which it would nicely display all the data including a ranking of the top topic makers and similar shit.

There are (only) three problems I can think of and these are:
-The load it puts on the NG server (which won't make ANYONE happy, especially the admins).

I think if you ran the script that way it updated a SQL database every night getting about 10000 from the most recent to latest, going deeper each night, it might work out well. It would be a matter of running late at night when stress on the site is lower.

-The huge database that would be required to store the data. Newgrounds has over 800,000 topics now, and more data like the topic starters would need to be saved, which requires some space, I suppose.

Yeah, it's a space commitment. I think you'd have need tables:

User Table:
UserID, User Name

Topic Table
TopicID, UserID (inherited from user table)

Then your queries just look for topics where userID = currentUser.

It's just that's a lot of space. I could java this part up easy enough.

-Deleted topics wouldn't be counted. This isn't really a problem though, as it would kind of 'fair' not to count them.

I'd just ignore that. Once the topics are in, they are in. Don't worry about it.

Oh, something else... This probably won't be happening =]

Probably not, unless I win the Lottery. If I win the lottery I promise to program this for you all (and I mean a big lottery, not some measely 5 bucks).

[Tommy]

HAHAH PAY HAHAHHA