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bob
this used to be my playground...

Age 46, Male

Web Developer

Drexel University

Wyndmoor, PA

Joined on 8/29/03

Level:
17
Exp Points:
3,200 / 3,210
Exp Rank:
17,010
Vote Power:
5.94 votes
Audio Scouts
1
Rank:
Police Officer
Global Rank:
18,239
Blams:
262
Saves:
284
B/P Bonus:
10%
Whistle:
Normal
Trophies:
2
Medals:
454
Gear:
8

My morning.

Posted by bob - April 2nd, 2008


Instead of working on fun stuff like 2007 awards nominees layout or our internal admin page overhaul, I got to spend the morning fixing the Awards section in the Portal front page. Specifically the Turd of the Week award.

The CSS isn't that complicated. But it's definitely made more challenging when you consider it's a heavily viewed portion of the site, located in an area on the page where it affects the position of the pods around it, and that it needs to be tested in Firefox, Safari, Opera, IE7, and IE6 (where the bug was more than just a visual thing, it actually pushed boxes around making the page harder to navigate). So not a hard thing to implement, but something I had to recheck a dozen times before making the decision to push a new stylesheet live. The good news is that my fix didn't require anyone else, I didn't have to bother any of the programmers to change any of their code; something I could just tell Tom about after I fixed it.

Then there are the larger questions. Do we delete the user who so delighted in making the site look ugly for a time? ("Nah, not *that* big of a deal"); Do we ditch Turd of the Week altogether since it's just a headache anyway ("No Tom, let's not be hasty"); Do I quietly delete the review of the user who claims the ugliness brings a tear of joy to his eye? (Nope, that would be an abuse of power).

I could have simply deleted the entry, which would only be a short-term fix. Instead, it wasted around an hour of my time, something I hate to admit to the little bastards that revel in that sort of thing -- little attention whores love to know when they get a reaction.

But I share all of this for two reasons:

First, to say that these stupid little exploits are only temporary. Our fixes are permanent. In their own way they would even be a fun challenge if it didn't mean diverting our attention from launching new features.

Second, a warning to people who defend these lame movies by marking scathing reviews as "abusive". If I see a review calling these submissions out for what they are I tend to clear them of any wrongdoing. So anyone jumping on the bandwagon and flagging comments that are accurate in pointing the finger at spam groups, they're going to get a surprise in the form of a garbage whistle.

So keep playing your little pranks. The rest of us will just keep besting you.

My morning.


Comments

to delete turd of the week is the best idea I've heard so far this goddamn year, and I'm not even kidding.

:///

And bob reigns supreme, once again.

I say we resort to getting rid of a user once they reach like 10-15 spam flashes.
Some fort of rule to that extent.
Seriously, I hate filing through 100 gay spam movie to find one thats decent.

The theory here is that the good stuff rises to the top on its own while the crap sinks to the bottom. So far we're still able to achieve that, and there are a lot of people who like to mess around today but will likely become the great artists and programmers of tomorrow. Let's hope our theory holds true.

Yeah, the Turd of the week award is really stupid. It just encourages people to do bad flashes (most of the time anyway).

Why don't you delete anyone who spams the Portal?

Everyone would love it (except for the spamers), and I bet you would too.

Because on an average day their lameness doesn't spill out past their own pathetic circle.

You're right, it only makes us mad when it comes out. They only get their attention when it's into the new submissions part.

But still, it occupies space. If you deleted everything useless by them, you'd save a lot of space. No one watches them, anyway.

However, I think if you deleted all of them, they would submit even more crap... Tough situation, isn't it?

Also, how are the Tank Trophies going?

Beat them mofos to da ground.

Word.

I love you, bob. Nice work :3

I like the Turd of the Week. It's always good for a laugh, whether it was won on purpose or not.

Heh, about time that was fixed. Does this mean it won't fuck up the names of submissions containing characters outside the range of English letters, numbers, and punctuation? And why did that happen in the first place?

Don't give me that shit. Copying/pasting the copyright symbol into the title in the first place was something you shouldn't be doing anyway.

Looks like they're doing it again. Look:

<a href="http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/433237">http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view /433237</a>

In the audio.

Yeah, something else I'll have to get too, tho it's a section that's getting overhauled anyway soon.

Turd of the week being the same spam all the time... I can understand. But Underdog of The Week has been taken over by the same people. I used to love watching the Underdog movies, but now it's always Kitty Krew or whatever the fuck crew is popular right now.

Not sure if that's anything you can fix, but it would be nice to have the old Underdog's back.

hey bob, hows the new guy working out? Cuz ross was cool. Anyways what system do you guys use? Phbb, Smf, Invison?
I always wanted to know because you said stylesheet. Well.

Not sure I follow. All of our stuff is hand-coded. Everything.

My school is teaching us HTML and CSS codes in Dreamweaver next week. I WANT TO BE A GREAT PROGRAMMER LIKE YOU ONE DAY, BOBBBBBY.

<3
:l

Well, first step is to ditch Dreamweaver as soon as you can. It's a good starter tool, but don't be afraid to get in there with a text editor to learn the code.

bob... just delete users that exploit temporarily. or wipe their record (start them off at lvl 1).

better yet, remove their privelage to submit flash (if this is possible).

its not even true exploiting; if they somehow hacked the NG server and put a giant penis for the icon of pico, that i would at least admire. this is just jamming unicode characters into random places. a monkey could figure out how to do it.

no one would miss them bob...

Yeah, you are filling in for Ross's New Postings!!! Anyways, just take off the Turd of the Week they abused it and now they taken it away from everyone else.

Heh, I could never take his place. He's a much better writer and more level-headed.

I'm not so sure that clearing the flags on a review that is legitimately abusive is the right thing to do. There are ways to let an author know that a flash is useless spammy shit without abusing that author. For example, one could say, "There was little point to this flash. There's only one frame and a big, uncompressed song, and no preloader. Ways to improve: add a plot, animation, pictures, etc." That's not an abusive review. "Get a life, you pathetic spamming fucker, and stop submitting flash here or I kill you!!11!111one" *is* abusive, regardless of who the author is or whether or not that statement might be true.

The system works because users moderate themselves on the reviews, flagging reviews that are abusive to flash authors. If I choose to flag a review that is legitimately abusive, that does not mean I am defending a shitty flash; I am just preventing the review TOS from being violated. Why should I be punished with a garbage whistle for following the rules?

I don't think review flaggers should be punished in this case. If spam flash is a problem, simply delete it, or up the threshold for a submission to pass judgement, or do away with the incentives to manipulate the system -- like Turd and Underdog. Personally, I enjoy seeing those movies, but if it's that much of a headache for both admins and users, perhaps those awards should be done away with.

Can't delete turd, it's your only award!!

Silly exploiting things though but it gets fixed in the end, which is good to see. So uh, I dunno what to say, sorry you wasted time, but it fixed something.

No fun stuff you say? CSS is one of the most marvelous forms of entertainment availible. :P

I would Make Getting Turd of the Week a BAD thing. Getting punishments for earning it. (Maybe a LONG submission Suspension along with a List of Things they should do on their next flash by the time the suspension is over.. Like spend a lot of time on it and pre-plan it out)

Also Review Crew Pick should be Picked by Proper Reviewers Only, who get some recognition on their page for being in the Review Crew. (Maybe a Badge on their Page) Also the Crew Should consist of a large number of active people that give Great, indepth reviews (at least most of the time)

LOL not a bad idea. Like revoke submitting power for a week (you know, to give them time to work on something better, right?). Same should go for obituaries. I'll see what Tom thinks about the idea.

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