Release Nov 29th 2021

He is. But it was me who 'fessed up to the changes that you have a problem with. If there was a "lack of caution" then it's me.
You could do that. I'd have pointed you at this:


But you do whatever you find intuitive.

Thanks buddy. That's a good ol' fashioned bug. It's telling you that you're a new user. Neat huh?

todo

So where that leaves your average user is that if they want to stay up to date on proposed changes to the site they either have to:

1) Watch "Latest in Public Games" like a hawk for "Council of Elrond" posts, or
2) Specifically check that game forum regularly.

And then if they want to comment on proposed changes (and they're not part of your council), they have to go somewhere else. Whether that's intuitive or not, it could be easier, is what I'm saying.

I have repeatedly apologized to you specifically recently when you disagreed with a decision or with the way I handled a situation. We don't just get defensive and dismiss out of hand your complaints. But it does happen that we disagree with your suggestions and then we state our disagreement. Not out of defensiveness but because we have decided that we disagree. Which, of course, sucks. I know. But there is no way to run a site that every user will agree with, unfortunately.

Yes, a lot of feature discussion happens on the discord, as did recruiting for the "Council". Would I have organized it differently? Yes. But also keep in mind that those features are primarily being developed by Adam who has no affiliation with the admins or Keleth beyond being a member of the site. He can develop any feature he wants and submit it for approval, just like any other member. The fact that he puts in this much effort to meet the wants of the community when he could just exclusively focus on what would be ideal for himself is a great credit to him.

If you are so concerned about the development of the site, then why are you not involving yourself in it? As mentioned, just the other day, there was a big call for additional eyes on potential development. Something which has been pointed out and ignored by you in this very thread at least twice so far.

I personally, and, unlike what I stated before, that does not necessarily reflect the position of the other admins, do not believe your criticisms and accusations are made in good faith.

I've been asked to delete posts from public forums for far less than this. To see this kind of thing from a moderator is disappointing to say the least.

Let's be honest: Adam has the keys to the code. (EDIT: Effectively, that makes him much more than just a member.) Many of his features have made GP far more useable and are long overdue upgrades. But I don't see where pointing out that upcoming changes and discussions of those changes could happen in a much more easily accessible (especially to new members), much more public forum, especially when they involve user privacy is arguing in bad faith.

Cheers buddy.
Do you have any suggestions on how we can improve this process?

Originally new features were decided by "whoever spoke last on discord" and that sucked.

We don't want a cacophony of voices, nor do we want me just coding whatever-I-feel-like. That's why we've tried to create a group that's representative of the userbase (i.e. not just admins, but OSR people, 5e people, new users, power users, etc.) This process was discussed on the site development forum. I don't know how we could make it more open, but I'm open to ideas.

Usually the release notes are published a little ahead of time. But we wanted to plug a security hole.

The "privacy issue" here was that some users who opted into displaying the 'games they were into' on the homepage couldn't opt-out again for a couple of hours. This information was already publicly visible on their profiles. Bear in mind that this release was rushed out to plug a hole that could potentially leak everyone's email addresses and DoBs.

The process at the moment isn't perfect either. That's why Len's trying to make the process better.

I think the new features have added a lot of new useful tools to this already great site. It is a lot of volunteer hours spent making those.
The process of deciding on changes have been very open and easy to follow both on GP and discord. Following the process (and reading every release note), I think Adam have been very open and listening to ideas and feedback.
I don't think I know any other site that includes it's users to such a degree in the development process. That is wonderful.

Cheers buddy. Appreciated.