2020 Anniversary | August 5, 2020

We’re just a smidgen over our 3-year anniversary!

  • Added the “On-topic Discourse” policy.
  • Added the “Knowledge Explorer” as an experiment.
  • Updated Discourse.
  • Updated the Docker Manager.
  • Updated the following plugins: bbcode, cakeday, canned-replies, characters-required, checklist, data-explorer, push-notifications. solved, spoiler-alert, user-notes, styleguide, tooltips, yearly-review, and tooltips.
  • Updated the “Steam”, “Twitter”, and “SDG Wiki” user fields for clarity.

Categories

Although we are not currently using the c-mod system, their featureset has been expanded with the latest Discourse update. In addition to previous powers they had, they can also close/archive topics, mark topics as solved, move posts from a topic, edit category descriptions, and add in-topic staff notices. Of course, all of these powers only function within the categories they’re given moderation over.

Badges

  • Added the Smartly Dressed Topic badge, which is granted when a topic is liked by an SDG employee, and can be awarded multiple times.
  • Updated the Hot Link (300 → 250 clicks) and Famous Link (1000 → 500 clicks) badges to be more obtainable.
  • Cleaned up some badges that weren’t granting as intended.
  • Fixed an error in the Constructive Discussion badge description.

We’ve just changed two particularly difficult-to-obtain badges. Some badges tend to encourage bad behaviors (e.g., badge farming), or are nearly impossible. We plan on analyzing some of the worst offenders, and adjusting the badges accordingly.

Knowledge Explorer

The knowledge explorer has been set up as an experiment. Currently, it serves as a knowledgebase of sorts for support-style topics, and can be filtered through.

As it is just an experiment, it is likely to be removed in the future, have its purpose radically changed, etc.

New policy: “On-topic Discourse”

The “On-topic Discourse” policy covers how we moderate low-quality or low-relevancy posts. While we already moderated posts that weren’t particularly relevant, the introduction of an official public policy will enable us to do so more aggressively.

The objective of this policy is to crackdown on a lot of low-quality (as defined by the policy) posts in the main discussion categories, crackdown on some of the issues with the Community Lounge often being treated as exempt from policies, and work with the Code of Conduct to reduce the number of controversial topics facilitated on the site.

Off-site

  • Updated the “About” cards on Trello to provide additional clarity, and more up-to-date information and wording.
  • Steam Discussions’ “Curated Map Feedback” subcategory has been renamed to “Curated Map Discussions”.
    • Added a pinned FAQ with links.
11 Likes

Ngl kinda epic

Stonks