NEW: Fight Review-o-matic!

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NEW: Fight Review-o-matic!

Post by jb »

Ok, it doesn't actually review the fight for you, but I've scripted a few little shortcuts that should make it a lot easier and more enticing to review the latest song fight.

Up at the top of the page, notice the "Review This Week's Fight" link. Click it and you will see:

1. Your browser will open the "Post Reply" page for this week's fight
2. In the message box, all of the songs will be listed, with their links and bolded and whatnot. Just type your review below each line.
3. In the lower-left, the new Yahoo Media Player will be auto-populated with a playlist containing this week's fight. Just expand that sucker and start listening, reviewing as you go!

Notes:
  • The system automatically updates to the current fight and playlist, using the same information that populates the front page of songfight.org, so it will always take you to the current fight.
  • Currently this works for the "prosilver" theme only, which is what almost everyone uses anyway. Lemme know if you are important enough for me to add it to some other theme.
  • Post suggestions for improvements to this system in this thread.
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Re: NEW: Fight Review-o-matic!

Post by Lunkhead »

Cool! I was going to add something like that to the jukebox but you beat me to it. Nice work.
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Re: NEW: Fight Review-o-matic!

Post by Caravan Ray »

I don't use "prosilver".

Please don't punch me in the throat. I'll learn to live with it. Especially if it is what all the cool kids are using. I haven't liked anything since the green one I used to use disappeared.
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Re: NEW: Fight Review-o-matic!

Post by Caravan Ray »

[quote="Caravan Ray"]I don't use "prosilver".

Please don't punch me in the throat. I'll learn to live with it. Especially if it is what all the cool kids are using. I haven't liked anything since the green one I used to use disappeared.[/quote]
Hey - this is weird. I just changed to prosilver - and I noticed I should have actually written "Please don't punch me in the neck".

But there is no edit button?
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Re: NEW: Fight Review-o-matic!

Post by Caravan Ray »

[quote="Caravan Ray"][quote="Caravan Ray"]I don't use "prosilver".

Please don't punch me in the throat. I'll learn to live with it. Especially if it is what all the cool kids are using. I haven't liked anything since the green one I used to use disappeared.[/quote]
Hey - this is weird. I just changed to prosilver - and I noticed I should have actually written "Please don't punch me in the neck".

But there is no edit button?[/quote]


Huh?!?!

Am I doing something wrong here? Things aren't working?!?!?!
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Re: NEW: Fight Review-o-matic!

Post by Caravan Ray »

How do I delete posts?
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Re: NEW: Fight Review-o-matic!

Post by king_arthur »

Some whining about stuff:

I use "Milky Way Red" and I'm not really willing to switch over to prosilver since prosilver does not seem to have a "View active topics" link and I use that a lot. I'm guessing, though, that I could just save a link to the URL for review-o-matic and access it from any theme - it's just that the link to it has only been put in under prosilver. I could be wrong about that...

{ vaguely related to that, neither MWR nor Prosliver seems to have ever been updated to include a link back to the main fight page under the "say something about your mom" text. I really liked having a link from the forum pages back to the main SF page, although I know I can do that with a firefox bookmark }

When I bring up RoM, the links to all the songs exist as long HTML strings that will be links once I post the message, but just for making sure that I put reviews under the right person's name, I would prefer that the artists names appear as plain text in the edit screen, since I usually write reviews in word or wordpad and paste them in when I'm done, and it's important to match up the reviews with the artists' names correctly. There are plenty of links to the songs, we don't need them linked in every review. So unless you can force the link stuff to show up as clickable links in the edit screen, having them there is a minus for me...

Related, it might actually be cool to list the songs in random order on the RoM screen - that way, even if I don't get all the way through my reviews in one session, I'd be doing them in a randomized order... that way, if Billy and the Psychotics had submitted a really good song this time, reviews of Caravan Ray's song wouldn't all start out with "compared with the BatP song I just listened to, your lyrics are crap..." or something. Each reviewer would be encouraged to review the songs in a different order, like on the current front page, but their personal randomized song list would be preserved from session to session.

I had done reviews of about four songs, so I pasted those into the RoM screen and then clicked "Save As Draft". I cannot find where it saved my draft or how I would go back and work on it some more, although I often have trouble finding things that are right in front of my nose. This is under Milky Way Red. But, anyway, I would like this thing to be implemented in a way that you could do reviews for a few songs, save it as a work in progress and then get back to it later. From what CR said, it sounds like maybe these wind up posted as un-editable posts?

...and maybe even set it up so that when the end of the fight arrives and voting closes, the FMs could cause any in-progress RoMs to be posted, so that the artists at least get to see any reviews of their songs that DID get written up. Ability for reviewer to opt in or out of this...

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Re: NEW: Fight Review-o-matic!

Post by king_arthur »

Hmm, noticing that there does not seem to be a way to edit or delete posts under MWR theme, either, so maybe something bigger got broken along the way?

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Re: NEW: Fight Review-o-matic!

Post by jb »

odd, as i didn't touch any other themes.
i did have to make a config change in the admin of the phpbb, in order to make it allow me to insert PHP code into a template. but I didn't insert anything into any other theme. maybe when fluffy wakes up he'll have an idea.
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Re: NEW: Fight Review-o-matic!

Post by jb »

Caravan Ray wrote:How do I delete posts?
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Re: NEW: Fight Review-o-matic!

Post by jb »

king_arthur wrote:Some whining about stuff:

I use "Milky Way Red" and I'm not really willing to switch over to prosilver since prosilver does not seem to have a "View active topics" link and I use that a lot.
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Re: NEW: Fight Review-o-matic!

Post by jb »

Caravan Ray wrote:
Caravan Ray wrote:
Caravan Ray wrote:I don't use "prosilver".

Please don't punch me in the throat. I'll learn to live with it. Especially if it is what all the cool kids are using. I haven't liked anything since the green one I used to use disappeared.
Hey - this is weird. I just changed to prosilver - and I noticed I should have actually written "Please don't punch me in the neck".

But there is no edit button?

Huh?!?!

Am I doing something wrong here? Things aren't working?!?!?!
I don't know why, but you have "Disable BBCode" checked on your post.

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Re: NEW: Fight Review-o-matic!

Post by jb »

king_arthur wrote:Some whining about stuff:

I use "Milky Way Red" and I'm not really willing to switch over to prosilver since prosilver does not seem to have a "View active topics" link and I use that a lot. I'm guessing, though, that I could just save a link to the URL for review-o-matic and access it from any theme - it's just that the link to it has only been put in under prosilver. I could be wrong about that...
Yeah that won't work.
{ vaguely related to that, neither MWR nor Prosliver seems to have ever been updated to include a link back to the main fight page under the "say something about your mom" text. I really liked having a link from the forum pages back to the main SF page, although I know I can do that with a firefox bookmark }
Post this in the quality control forum, please?
When I bring up RoM, the links to all the songs exist as long HTML strings that will be links once I post the message, but just for making sure that I put reviews under the right person's name, I would prefer that the artists names appear as plain text in the edit screen, since I usually write reviews in word or wordpad and paste them in when I'm done, and it's important to match up the reviews with the artists' names correctly. There are plenty of links to the songs, we don't need them linked in every review. So unless you can force the link stuff to show up as clickable links in the edit screen, having them there is a minus for me...
Easily changed. I can include other stuff if you like, such as sections for each review. Anything you'd find useful?
Related, it might actually be cool to list the songs in random order on the RoM screen - that way, even if I don't get all the way through my reviews in one session, I'd be doing them in a randomized order... that way, if Billy and the Psychotics had submitted a really good song this time, reviews of Caravan Ray's song wouldn't all start out with "compared with the BatP song I just listened to, your lyrics are crap..." or something. Each reviewer would be encouraged to review the songs in a different order, like on the current front page, but their personal randomized song list would be preserved from session to session.
I'll think about this, though the problem is that I'm not saving anything for a session. Perhaps I can put it in a cookie, I'll dig a little bit to see if I can make that happen.
I had done reviews of about four songs, so I pasted those into the RoM screen and then clicked "Save As Draft". I cannot find where it saved my draft or how I would go back and work on it some more, although I often have trouble finding things that are right in front of my nose. This is under Milky Way Red. But, anyway, I would like this thing to be implemented in a way that you could do reviews for a few songs, save it as a work in progress and then get back to it later. From what CR said, it sounds like maybe these wind up posted as un-editable posts?
They do not get posted as un-editable posts, Tex just can't find the little buttons above the post box at the right. They're just normal posts- the changes aren't that fancy, they just go get some text and paste it into the textarea for you.
...and maybe even set it up so that when the end of the fight arrives and voting closes, the FMs could cause any in-progress RoMs to be posted, so that the artists at least get to see any reviews of their songs that DID get written up. Ability for reviewer to opt in or out of this...
Don't get too enamored of the idea that it's a "Review-O-Matic", as there isn't too terribly much automatic going on. I'm not saving who has done one or anything like that. It just goes out and gets the fight for you and puts it in the box, and fills the YMP playlist. The "random order" stuff may be possible, but I don't think I'll have the time (or honestly skill) to wreak havoc on the BB to save who's posted what and automatically push them.

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Re: NEW: Fight Review-o-matic!

Post by jb »

king_arthur wrote:Hmm, noticing that there does not seem to be a way to edit or delete posts under MWR theme, either, so maybe something bigger got broken along the way?

Charles (KA)
I'm making this post via Milky Way Red theme, and there are the edit/delete/etc buttons at the bottom.

Image


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Re: NEW: Fight Review-o-matic!

Post by jb »

Also, MWR is hideous and I don't know why I installed it. Maybe I'll look for a brand new theme to play with, but knowing human inertia most people won't switch anyway. Most every PHPBB theme is hideous, for that matter.

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Re: NEW: Fight Review-o-matic!

Post by king_arthur »

Thanks for the replies.

Sorry, but I NOT seeing edit and delete icons in MWR, looking in the places where you indicated in your Nevada-style image.

is it possible that you're seeing something different because you're an admin? Or maybe there are setup things I needed to do when we changed to the new set of themes that I haven't done, but my recollection is that I've been able to edit posts up until the last few days.

When I create a new post in MWR (and presumably elsewhere), the buttons I see are "preview," "Submit", "Save Draft" and "Cancel." I was hoping that the "Save draft" function would work so that I could start doing reviews, save what I've done 'til I can get back and do more, and then finally "Submit" when I finish. So maybe the "Save Draft" function in phpBB is just broken? Or the button to "continue editing draft post" button has disappeared to wherever the Edit and Delete buttons have gone to?

I looked at my profile and it seems to indicate that new messages are supposed to default to BBCode ON, but I see as I am writing this message that it says BBCode is OFF, and I don't see a button to change that. Could still be pilot error, though, that's been known to happen to me. Don't have time to dig into this right now, but I'll look at prosilver again.

I guess I should have said that the MWR theme has the "new posts" links at the TOP and BOTTOM of the page, and I like that. I have a firefox link to "new posts" that gets me there, so I can work around that if I have to. Visually, I just happen to prefer the layout and colors of the MWR theme (user info on the left, etc.)

Honestly, I will probably just continue doing my reviews (when I do them) in wordpad or word, and then copy and paste them into the boards when I'm done. So if other people find this tool useful as it is, leave it as it is.

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Re: NEW: Fight Review-o-matic!

Post by jb »

Sorry Charles, didn't mean to imply anything with the size of those images, was just trying to be clear.

It's entirely possible that I broke something, but I didn't touch MWR or any other theme with this hack. The only system-wide change I made was to turn on a feature of PHPBB that makes it recognize PHP within a template file. This hack simply added a reference to a PHP file to the header, footer, and post-edit page of the prosilver theme.

I did notice, when playing with the draft functionality, that the system will not display "Load Draft" if you are not looking at a thread you've saved a draft in. So for example if I create some reviews and save the post as a draft, then come to this thread and hit "Post a Reply", the "Load Draft" button is not visible. To load my draft I have to go back to the review thread. Kind of odd.

I'll keep looking at it-- everything has bugs. I've already discovered one bug that's preventing me from getting to the Admin Control Panel, so I do have more work to do.

If you're happy with your method of reviewing, by all means stick to it. This is meant to encourage people who don't normally review to do so, not make people do something they don't want to or don't like.

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Re: NEW: Fight Review-o-matic!

Post by jb »

I have added a link to songfight.org to the header of the Prosilver theme. (And I also fixed the other bug I mentioned.)
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Re: NEW: Fight Review-o-matic!

Post by ken »

First, I think this is awesome. Thanks JB!

Second, I don't think it totally worked correctly. I clicked the "Review This Week's Fight" link and not all the links were correct. It seems like it links the name to the song, but it was inconsistent and often mixed up. Not sure how much detail you would want on this. Check it out, and if you want more details I'll get them for you.

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Re: NEW: Fight Review-o-matic!

Post by jb »

ken wrote:First, I think this is awesome. Thanks JB!

Second, I don't think it totally worked correctly. I clicked the "Review This Week's Fight" link and not all the links were correct. It seems like it links the name to the song, but it was inconsistent and often mixed up. Not sure how much detail you would want on this. Check it out, and if you want more details I'll get them for you.

Ken
Sorry Ken, I was being a terrible hacker and working on the script in place. So it's been broken for the last few minutes. It's fixed now.

(I've made changes that should let me get to the randomization that KA wants, which I think is probably a good idea, but haven't finished them).

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Re: NEW: Fight Review-o-matic!

Post by Caravan Ray »

[quote="jb"][quote="Caravan Ray"]How do I delete posts?[/quote]

[img]https://img.skitch.com/20120105-mhktd44 ... 2y5ap3.jpg[/img][/quote]


No - that doesn't exist anymore

And I don't have any "quotes" checkbox


something weird is happening
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Re: NEW: Fight Review-o-matic!

Post by jb »

Caravan Ray wrote:
jb wrote:
Caravan Ray wrote:How do I delete posts?
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No - that doesn't exist anymore
And I don't have any "quotes" checkbox
something weird is happening
Can you give me a screenshot?
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