The Glowfic Constellation

[Kappa]

Yes, there's ways of doing this using the existing framework, but I'd rather have it be supported explicitly; I find the workarounds unaesthetic in a way that would make them hard for me to use.

[pedromvilar]

It doesn't make it hard for me to use but I definitely prefer this idea to the current workaround, I'd rather not have multiple entries in my character page refer to the same character.

[Moriwen]

It would also be nice to have an option when posting to show the character nickname in addition to (or, I guess, instead of) the actual name. Right now we've got people including it in the name field as a workaround, which is deeply Unaesthetic. (For instance, the Maitimos in most Silmaril threads; most Bells; and many Forest Arda characters.)

(If this option turns out to already exist, I am going to facepalm very, very hard. :P)

[Kappa]

As far as I know, the time-travelling tech support hasn't gotten there yet, Mori! XD

Hmm, I have like half a thought about this, I'm going to try to net it and drag it out into the light...

[Kappa]

The thought

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(1:27:05 PM) kappabeta: hmm who wants to help me have a thought
(1:27:15 PM) ilzolende: i can try
(1:27:42 PM) kappabeta: http://alicorn.elcenia.com/board/viewto ... 542#p28542 so we're talking about character aliasing in the constellation thread
(1:28:03 PM) kappabeta: and it seems like there's a bunch of related things people want to do
(1:29:27 PM) kappabeta: conceal a character's name on some but not all of their replies; have a character's template nickname habitually appear alongside or instead of their name-name; replace a character's name with an alias e.g. superhero codename on some but not all of their replies
(1:29:45 PM) kappabeta: I feel like it's probably possible to combine all these things into some kind of reasonably unified Name-Related Feature
(1:29:50 PM) Teceler: yeah
(1:29:55 PM) Teceler: the tricky bit I think is the UI for it
(1:30:31 PM) ***Teceler catches up
(1:30:57 PM) kappabeta: I'm thinking like, on the reply or edit form where the character's name is, a little button that opens up an Aliasing Menu sort of vaguely like the Icon Selection Menu?
(1:31:12 PM) Teceler: hm
(1:31:23 PM) Teceler: yeah that might work and doesn't hit option overload like having another field might
(1:32:08 PM) RoboticLIN: I like the alias-allowance idea
(1:32:11 PM) kappabeta: and have a character's aliasing be sticky in a particular thread, so like, if I'm playing the same cape in two different threads and one of them is currently masked and the other one isn't, they both behave sanely
(1:32:37 PM) RoboticLIN: Otherwise you have to set up like a duplicate ??? with the same gallery
(1:32:41 PM) Teceler: yeah
(1:32:43 PM) kappabeta: yeah
(1:33:00 PM) Teceler: which is what I did for my relevant characters, but, like
(1:33:06 PM) RoboticLIN: Maybe just a like, editable display-name that defaults to character name?
(1:33:27 PM) RoboticLIN: So like, post as 'Person' but it will have a field saying 'Person' you could change to 'Cape'? As the most basic
(1:33:29 PM) Teceler: (well, I haven't actually got any of them which have multiple aliases yet unless you count Seiche and Chalybeate but)
(1:33:34 PM) kappabeta: that's a possibility, lin
(1:33:40 PM) Teceler: I think you'd want to keep set options though?
(1:33:42 PM) kappabeta: yeah
(1:33:45 PM) RoboticLIN: Yeah.
(1:33:51 PM) RoboticLIN: Just ideas into the pot.
(1:34:01 PM) kappabeta: hence an Aliasing Menu
(1:34:04 PM) RoboticLIN: (Dropdown menus! :P)
(1:34:08 PM) Teceler: and having an enabled/disabled nickname field on replies would be helpful I think
(1:34:13 PM) kappabeta: yeah
(1:34:40 PM) Teceler: you probably want to be able to set account-wide or per-character defaults
(1:34:52 PM) Teceler: and per-thread stickiness seems like a good idea
(1:35:03 PM) kappabeta: yeah, definitely account-wide and per-character defaults
(1:36:05 PM) Teceler: hm. you might want to have it automatically not include the nickname if you /are using/ the nickname as the display name, too
(1:36:13 PM) kappabeta: yeah XD
(1:36:44 PM) Teceler: I think we have two name-related-features here but
(1:36:52 PM) Teceler: that's fairly unified I think?
(1:36:57 PM) kappabeta: yeah
(1:37:14 PM) kappabeta: and it would make sense to integrate them as much as possible, like, show both in the Aliasing Menu or whatever
(1:37:23 PM) Teceler: mm, good idea
(1:37:49 PM) Teceler: there is a risk of falling into 'too many options' territory that makes UI design Hard and makes people run away but I think having an Aliasing Menu helps with that
(1:37:54 PM) kappabeta: yeah
(1:38:29 PM) kappabeta: easy to ignore, but there if you need it
(1:38:41 PM) Teceler: mhm
(1:39:09 PM) Teceler: you want to also make it sticky at least per thread so you don't have to set it for every reply
(1:39:14 PM) kappabeta: Yes
(1:39:19 PM) kappabeta: Definitely sticky per thread

[Unbitwise]

Myself, I think that overall having character names (and author names) up front by default is a negative compared to the DW glowfic format. It's too much metadata, distracting from reading the actual fiction, whereas just the username is the right amount of hinting. And it fits poorly with characters that haven't introduced themselves yet.

But I imagine others disagree.

(I have felt this way since the beginning but I didn't post my opinion because I wasn't using the site as an author. Which in hindsight is a little silly.)

[Kappa]

I prefer having the name visible because I use the same screenname for multiple characters a lot and I am a big fan of disambiguation.

[pedromvilar]

The solution to this is making which metadata is visible something in the settings page.

[Marri]

@Throne, do you want a new ticket for the mobile icon view layout, or is leaving it as part of the great FIx Mobile Layout ticket #169 okay?

@Moriwen I can add the view button to Templates, sure, made #173

The Post / Post without Tag buttons should probably be part of a larger "you have been tagged" refactoring; the Tags Owed page is pretty naive and I expect it to interact oddly in particular with email notifications (which will probably get a refactor of their own when we get a worker dyno, Patreon's already pretty close). I don't think this is quite right for #46 so I made #172.

URL is in fact because I had not yet bought a domain; it's auto generated by Heroku. It's currently listed as a Patreon goal :) I'm likely to pick glowfic.com from Google Domains ($12/yr) once it happens.

While generally I like to optimize the site for readers, I do feel reasonably strongly that things like the way a character displays in a thread should be controllable by the author, not by account settings; if an author sets post data such that they assume you see the character's nickname, and you don't, that is likely to be a mess. This has also come up when someone proposed turning off usernames as an account option. I am currently leaning towards basically what Kappa suggested - things default as they are now, but the Character Name box will have a Swap icon and you could pick "Display Name", "Display Nickname", "Display Alias ____" etc. Might include username, might not, might also include the option to hide all information outright.

Related concern I've had - it's come up before to have a way to post as a Setting, rather than as a Character. I am worried about how this will interact with NPCs, e.g. you're posting in a thread as the Worm setting and you also use that setting to post as a Worm NPC, then want to make the NPC a character account... then even "replace all instances within this thread" won't help you and you'll have to edit posts by hand. Might be overthinking it, though, I'm sure that issue exists with posting as your base account as well. Might just need a mass "editor for character/icon for all of your replies in this thread" page to solve all of this.

Patreon priority list in no particular order, if you don't see yours please ping me:
- Change the default layout to be Starry Light
- Have the option for only-opened-threads to be your default Unread page
- More sort/filter options for the Unread page
- Favoriting threads/continuities/authors

EDIT: another thing occurred. Tags! And content warnings and settings while I'm at it, same underlying system. If there are duplicates, do I make a Canonical feature like AO3 (obeys authors' aesthetics, less consistent for users) or a Merge feature (the opposite)? I lean towards tags obeying authors and warnings being consistent, and am less clear on setting.

[Kappa]

Yeah, I think the problem you describe for Settings is sort of inherent to using any kind of generic-settingy-thing and will happen whether people use their base accounts or Settings or Characters-From-Setting catchall character accounts or what. So we might as well have Settings. XD

EDIT: another thing occurred. Tags! And content warnings and settings while I'm at it, same underlying system. If there are duplicates, do I make a Canonical feature like AO3 (obeys authors' aesthetics, less consistent for users) or a Merge feature (the opposite)? I lean towards tags obeying authors and warnings being consistent, and am less clear on setting.

I'm not sure what you mean? What would Canonical do? What would Merge do?