📢 Linking game details and the tavern

I do like having the default be that GMs must Invite players. That forces some form of interaction to happen at the start.
Chatting about it and then not Inviting a player feels, somehow, less rude than rejecting a player's RtJ (Request to Join). Especially since there is no way attach an explanatory note to the rejection. The conversation is important.
I recall a bug where they players names did not auto-fill in the dropdown list. But that just meant the GM had to copy/paste them, which is what I do anyway. Too many times there is a player with a similar-starting name and it autofills that one by mistake without the user noticing.

The 'Closed by Default' policy also means the GM needs to handle the Invite. They can Open it if they have to accept RtJs. This is a culture shift, though, and if GMs assume they have to Open a game as part of the recruitment, then players will assume they can not talk about being Invited to Closed game, and we will need a new mechanism aside from Closed by Default.

The previous bug meant you couldn’t invite anyone called "Adam" even if you copy/paste it. Although some might have said it wasn’t a bug, but a feature.

Who would want to invite someone called Adam? ;-/

That is a strange one. Was it rejecting real names? Surely it was not a length issue?

Maybe calling it "Request Forum Access" would make it seem less like "This is how I apply" and more like "Okay, now I got accepted, I have to get access to the forum"

I'm sure there's better phrasings but this is the first that came to mind

You had to select a name from the dropdown and for some shorter names, the name wouldn't appear on the dropdown if there were too many names that included the full name, was the problem I think

Yes. That's it and it didn't prioritize exact matches, so if your name wasn't on the list then you couldn't be invited.

There were a few of us who couldn't be invited to games.

Urgh.
Having an active community that reports and fixes such bug is such an important part of making this work.

Thank you so much, Adam.
(I merely dabble, leave me out of it.)

The Bowl of Greens Quoth:
I mentioned in Discord today that I'd voice some related concerns / issues once things had died down. One of them relates to what a game -is- on GP... and to Bowl's comment above. Virtually anyone coming from elsewhere has no idea of the difference between a game and a game forum. I know it took me a minute to grok. So talking about applying and getting access to the game, and then the game forum, is I believe a recipe for further confusion from new users.

This is not to say I think it should stay the way it is, just that if I were King I'd have the Game be be the object / thing we all reference and talk about and apply to, and the forums just happen to be the play area -- which I would have visible on the game's home page. But now I'm getting far enough afield that all of what I'm talking about is probably better addressed in V2.

Last unhelpful note: there's far too much going on in the Games Tavern, which is one of the things Aironfabio was trying to say on Discord today. Rather than Games on Offer | Looking for GM | Interest Check type division of threads, all of that and more is in the one spot. The fact that's it's all one stew complicates, I think, the topic this thread is actually about -- finding games to play in.

I think a conversation that we've tried to have is what should the game system look like. We can manage the current process with small tweaks, but the big one mile high stuff is hard to grok.

I think Adam and I have a sort of shared vision (this thread is a part of that), but without building the whole thing to demonstrate it, and the huge data clean up that goes along with it, and then see what isn't working and adjust, it is going to be difficult to convince anyone.

Agreed. Can the page be built alongside the current one(s) without that 'data cleanup'? That way we can test it while not breaking anything.

The data cleanup should be done anyway. Mostly it's poking the GMs of all "Open" games to verify that they're open, or to use some Admin db-level magic to close all of them (that are older than say, a month), then prompt the GMs and have them choose to open them if they truly want them open.

Ah. That sort of 'data cleanup', not in the database. User facing stuff should not disrupt anything.
Then running the new page alongside the old page sounds like the way to go.

Not to mention that as a developer it’s terrifying working without a safety net. I’ve asked @Keleth how difficult it will be to run the new code on a different url (but with the same db) before release - like a preview. VagueGM discussed this before, but it was thought to be too difficult for v2- but for v1 and v1.01…? Dunno. It might be possible. Cross your fingers and make righteous offerings to our lord and most beneficent saviour, Keleth.

I don't even know what difference you're talking about. Applying and getting access to the game is the same as getting access to the game forums, isn't it?
Subdividing the Tavern further would only make it more annoying to navigate, for me personally at least. Maybe GP could profit from having "post flairs" like on some subreddits. In the Tavern, you could flair your thread with one of these [Games on Offer | Looking for GM | Interest Check], in game forums, you could flair threads as [IC | OOC | Reference] or something.

I dunno, they were your words I was quoting! ;)

Maybe there's something around being granted access to the game, but the forum threads themselves can have additional security, yeah? Regardless, ignore it.

I really think the dog's breakfast in the Games Tavern is an impediment to new users finding games to join, or finding where to post their own games. Especially since lately I seem to be unable to find that "Find a Game" link as well. It's personal preference to a degree... but don't power users like you, bowl (and me) just use 'All Latest Posts' anyway -- which surfaces stuff from every corner of the site? (Meaning it wouldn't be more annoying to navigate, as you aren't really navigating it, are you?)

Yea, I'm not navigating it often, only if I'm looking for a specific link. Maybe it wouldn't be more difficult but the whole forums are organized so confusingly, I can never find a specific thread I'm looking for in the subforums 😅 So I'm just worried that making even more subforums would be complicated. And to be honest, I like the games tavern as it is. Formalizing everything too much might make the site feel cold. If it is confusing to new users, then it does warrant change, though.
I see. I thought you were talking about some difference that the site has. Maybe just Request Access then. To me, it's pretty clear but I'm not a new user. And a lot of things that I've seen other people say they were confused by when they joined the site were immediately clear to me.
Maybe the fact that I never used another pbp site helped as I didn't come in with any other notions 😄 Anyway, it was just my first suggestion to make a clear distinction that this is not a "With this I apply to the game" button but just an "Okay, I'm in. Let's get access to the actual game" button. I'm sure we can come up with something better

Maybe it could have a little popup, like the Retiring a Game button does. When you click it, it asks you if you have contacted the GM through PM or forum and tells you to do that and then you have to confirm the application.

We do that manually already. Having a defined feature for how to do it might help, even if only with standardisation and searching.

So long as they are not a fixed set of 'flair' tags that the user can not change.

Me too.

But this is a standard forum problem everywhere. The way they are formed is organic and, while it might make sense when a subforum is being formed, does not follow a logical pattern.

That does sound like a different issue. One that we can maybe look at. We can reorder the structure of these forums and subforums, but that can be very disruptive. Maybe save it for v2?

I don't think the question of access permissions has come up as a problem.

The fact that people are left on the Game Details page instead of the Forum page might be. The fact that they can not find the Forum page (at all before the are Accepted, and they not with ease) contributes to this confusion.