Stats 4 July 2007

Rank       : Rowdy Roddy Piper
Level      : 75
Percentage : 76.41% (-)       Forum Posts : 2,162 (-)



Submissions                   Reviews
Accepted   : 42275  (-)       Shows       :     1
Pending    :     6  (-)       Episodes    :     2
Denied     :   134            People      :     0
Total      : 42415            Total       :     3


Edited Guides                 Trusted User
204 Shows (+1)                0 shows

I've been holding back from this blog, which was originally scheduled to commemorate my reaching Level 76 and acquiring the editorship of Softly Softly, the classic police procedural I needed to complete my collection. I was then going to follow up with a critique of the new submission system. As everyone is now aware, the new system has not been without teething problems. One can hardly be surprised at the lack of a level update: my Stats box hasn't even been updated (for the second time in a week).

The system came on line at 1800 PST on 1 July 2007, ahead of schedule. Staff had cleared all outstanding submissions, and updated all CPs.

Editors got a new form for the bulk renumbering of episodes, a very useful tool that largely does what it says on the tin, although we cannot access season 0 episodes, nor reassign episodes to season 0.

The main redesign element relates to the form used for cast and crew submissions. We can now edit show stars at episode level, a handy function if you are dealing with shows where an actor's character name changes during a show's run, and an opportunity for us to excise all those ridiculous season/year tags attached to character names at episode level after the data migration of 2005. Show stars not already attached to an episode do not appear, although we can get the system to populate the form with the names of all stars and system-defined recurring actors, to ease on searching. Unfortunately, the retrieved names do not have character names attached, so these have to be added manually. The form allows the editing of existing star credits, the recategorisation of co-star credits, and the addition of new credits, but not the editing or deletion of co-stars, guests, creators or crew. Regardless of the number of entries made on a submission form, the system will accept no more than 8 new entries or 7 edits and deletions. Since the first night, the system has been reluctant to accept either additions or deletions. That much is bugginess. The design fault, and it's a doozy, is that we have lost the hyperlinks attached to existing stars, we have lost the actor profile preview pop-up, and we cannot identify the ID numbers of search results from page source. Instead, all names have frames for pictures attached. Staff have added pictures to only a tiny fraction of people IDs, so this feature serves no useful purpose. When the search results are returned, we have to carry out a separate search to confirm which, if any, relates to our person.This does not help differentiate between original and duplicate IDs with identical names.

If we manually add new people, the names are corrupted. If we edit people profiles, they are given a death date of 1 January 2008. These death dates cannot be removed.

Show summary edits impose an end date of 1 January 2008 on new and returning shows.

The other forms are ostensibly unchanged, although they have new CP values. Nevertheless, the limited amount of reengineering has broken them. If we add new episodes to a new season, they go to season 0, and cannot be moved. Summaries routinely fail some HTML test despite not using HTML coding. If the episode is accepted, the summary is liable not to take. Edits to existing summaries and recaps do not take.

There are formatting issues around Notes, Quotes and Trivia, with the loss of line breaks. At approval stage, editors see raw xHTML code. Initially, Trivia and Quotes submissions to people guides were going to Quotes and Trivia respectively.

A significant percentage of submissions do not go anywhere. If they do, and the submission is (auto-)approved, the edits are liable to be lost. When renumbering a season using the new episode renumbering tool, some edits are liable to fail. These pass to the editor's own queue, and cannot be accessed by the editor. I had jaxiecracks attempt to remove these using the notorious Push button, but one submission cannot be shifted and is apparently there for good. My submissions history shows a blank entry where the name of an actor should be. Staff cannot see that submission, so it will remain pending. I submitted a new episode, and tried to edit it. Those submissions are also lost in pending hell.

All of this madness was introduced at a time that the system was already broken. CPs had not been correctly tallied across the board since April, and had to be recalculated every week or so. That problem seems to have been addressed by the new system, which updates CPs in real time. A more serious issue is that of user levels, as the system has been broken for over a year, requiring a forced catch-up every four or five days. The problem is compounded by an unaddressed bug, which has reduced the level of many individuals.

Note also that the new system was introduced at the beginning of July. In 2005, when we had far fewer problems, the levelling system broke down completely in June and was not fixed until 13 July. In 2006, when we had a number of serious issues, the levelling system broke down completely on 29 June and was not fixed until 14 July. It seems that everyone in the company downs tools and takes a long week off to celebrate some local holiday at this time of year. This time, we are not simply dealing with a few bugs here and there, but major design flaws in a form and a process that has been in development for months. Part of the problem relates to the loss of data in approved submissions, a problem that has existed in a less severe form for well over a year, without any prospect of resolution. It beggars belief that such wide-ranging changes should be introduced, without the benefit of intensive user testing, to a complex system that is already falling over.

In the meantime, one had best avoid submitting episodes, notes, quotes, allusions, trivia, bios, cast,crew, or indeed edits of any of these. I am happy to accept any other submissions!

Elvis has left the building, and when he gets back he has a lot of work to do.