Retiring, something we all look forward to

This has been an anxiously awaited feature: retiring a game. I've been thinking about how to handle deleting games, and its been a hard decision to reach. I've finally decided: you can't do it. No deleting games. Instead, the primary GM for a game will now be able to retire a game. If you retire a game, the following will happen:

- All characters are removed from the game
- Remove all permissions
- Revoke further access to the game

It will still leave the game and its forums there though, and any GP site admin will be able to make the game public, at their discretion. I've also changed it so you can't delete characters, you just retire them instead. Of course, this is more silent, and the terms will still be delete.

A lot of this is to be able to maintain game history. Hard drive space is cheap.

I've done a fair bit of testing on this, but I'm still worried about this release. I have a feeling its going to introduce bugs I missed, or just show data it shouldn't. I'm gonna keep testing this, but I have a bad feeling, and I look forward to bug reports. If you retire a game and can still edit it/modify it, if you can still post to its forums, or anything else that seems out of place (consider it as if you no longer run the game), let me know. Likewise, if you delete a character and it still shows up somewhere for you, let me know. You shouldn't be able to do that.

I also threw in a second update, but didn't think we needed a second accoutrement. Now, in what I think are appropriate parts of the site, you will see if someone hasn't been active in the last two weeks with a few 'z's coming off their username (because obviously if they're not active here, they're sleeping.

So let me know if you see a location you think the 'z's should be but aren't, or if they're somewhere it doesn't help (I put them in threads, but I'm not sure about those, so feedback there will help). The other problem area is the Gamers List. Obviously, not everyone who joins up is going to stick with Gamers' Plane long term. I've realized I should only show users active within a certain amount of time, or maybe sort by last active? If I filter by last active, how long do you guys think we should filter at? Active in the last 6 months? Or show all, leave alphabetic, and add an option to hide anyone inactive in a period of time?

I just looked at the user list, and on the first page, 20 out of 25 users have the 'z's by their names. Just an idea, but may opt to not show those on the gamer list. If I were new to the site and saw that, it would make me think that most people just drop off after joining.

Well, that was the question: not show them at all? Filter by activity in a certain range, show all but have an option to hide before an age (with or without a default value)?

Make the Active users display first, then the inactive users. So that, at first glance, the site doesn't look sleeping :)

I retired Legends of Ilvaria, so if you want to see if it all worked as intended then check that one out.

I'll check it out from my end, but the question is: do you still have the ability to do things like
- Make posts
- Edit the game
- Do GM-y things?

Retired both of my games, looks to work as intended. I will let you know if I notice anything strange

I see that Golden Sea Chronicles has been retired, and it no longer shows up in my Games list. However, I do seem to remain subscribed to the forums so it shows up in my short list of Game Forums even if "Show public games" is toggled off.

Well, not subscribed, but you still seem to have access. Try it again?

The whole game disappeared from my docket (it's not even visible to me, I think I have my settings to not display public games). That's what I wanted, it to go away.

My retired game is also not in my Games list either. Seems to have worked as intended for me.

Yup, it's gone now.

Other than asking a site admin for assistance, is there a way to un-retire a game?

Not right now. There are no immediate plans to add functionality like that.

As a note, if a thread is more than a few months old, please just create a new thread rather than bringing up an old one.

lol. I saw June postings and it didn't register that it was 2015 and not 2016 (found this thread by Googling it). Thanks!

Edit: June/July....they're the same thing, right? ;)

All twelve of those things are the same, it happens. Also... we're on the Googles?

Well, when you run a specific search, things show up. But I can't use Google to search within GamersPlane.

https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=gamersplane.com%20retiring

But after your comment about starting up a new thread on the topic, it kind of defeated the purpose of why I was searching. I've been in other forums where the 'rules' were the opposite. In those, it's better to re-use an older thread than clutter things up with multiple threads on the same topic. In the future, I'll just start anew! :D

I'll think about it and codify rules. For now, lets use new threads for something over a few months.