This thread is designed for members (and moderators) to request topics to be addressed in a book (the explanations and guidelines of this site), since as it currently stands only members who are Admin level 3 or higher can post new books. If there is a request made that you filled please post here that you filled it so everyone knows.

I guess I will "prime the pump" with a request that I am sure that new members are wondering about:

What are the Admin ranks? How do they differ from Guild ranks? How do you get an Admin rank/higher Admin rank? And what is the difference between each Admin rank?

(On the topic of books you need to update the Ban Log with Comfort, Rei.)

[ Edited Sep 2, 2011 ]

Thanks for starting this thread CaptainBrain.

I'm thinking the First Book we should focus on would be the Examples Index book.

It could be a little while yet before this feature takes off though. I still have the Books link restricted to admins. There's a good number of features I want to add in before I open it to everyone. Right now it just does enough to allow creating and editing books in addition to browsing them.

Some of those extra features to-do include...

Making use of the Topic label... putting rank restrictions on books, cover images, sorting... browsing by topic...

Defiantly this winter though, I'll get it into full swing. Every feature on the site will have an About Link pointing to a Guide Book - that's the goal at least.

私は日本語を少し読むと書くをできます。あなたも？

Hmm... Reading through the "Deleting Characters" book (work in progress version anyway), I was wondering if there's something that "collects/stores" the info that we can look at to clear some of the attributes out.

In other words, when someone clicks "love/hate/favorites" where does that info store to and what does it look like?

I'm thinking if it stores it in an way that's easily search-able, we could have a page that has a entry field and a button. On this page, we would enter the character ID# in the entry field, and pressing the button searches for the character ID# and clears any attribute attached to it (at least the love/hate/favorites).

Series assignment will probably have to be done manually, as well as the additional images, and probably the comments also.

13x31 Hmm... Reading through the "Deleting Characters" book (work in progress version anyway), I was wondering if there's something that "collects/stores" the info that we can look at to clear some of the attributes out. In other words, when someone clicks "love/hate/favorites" where does that info store to and what does it look like? I'm thinking if it stores it in an way that's easily search-able, we could have a page that has a entry field and a button. On this page, we would enter the character ID# in the entry field, and pressing the button searches for the character ID# and clears any attribute attached to it (at least the love/hate/favorites). Series assignment will probably have to be done manually, as well as the additional images, and probably the comments also.

So, in a way, sure, that would be a best practice when managing a complex database. Kyareshi made a strong effort to urge me to use Foreign Key restraints in order to make sure no character could be deleted without first deleting all references to it.

Since I rejected that sound advice, we're free to delete any character, and leave an unknown number of broken references. There are currently 171 tables in the ACDB database... I don't even know how many of them contain character ID references. As an example, here's what we get if we look at a snapshot of tables containing references to User ID: myuid.php I don't personally have the strict discipline to maintain something like this. So it's not happening.

My evaluation is: the potential database inconsistency is within tolerable limits.

Now, the above only touches on issues occurring when deleting a character ID.

If we reuse a character, the database consistency falls on the members affected to correct. Any "problems" this may lead to are easily fixed....



....I'll do what any evil BOFH would. Or worse. Worse would be fun.

[ Edited Sep 18, 2011 ]

私は日本語を少し読むと書くをできます。あなたも？

So much for an easier way out. Lol

As I've posted in the Duplicate Characters thread (here ), the only other thing I can think of is to make a "title" for characters to be deleted. Mods/admins will have to manually change/delete whatever possible, and users will have to fix their love/hate/favorite attribute. Luckily, it will all be in one consolidated place and easy to find. I am also assuming we don't have a "delete characters" title already.