IG Notifications if Skills are Altered

Jamethiel

Disclaimer: this is not meant to be a discussion about the pros and cons of what skills were altered, how and whether the changes benefitted you, me or anyone else.

Because I tend to be super busy sometimes, I managed to miss the fact that prisms to ship were allowed (but I didn't miss the fact that the change was reverted - the first I realised something had happened was when I saw the message it was reverted and then had to back track in the IG announces to figure out what was going on).

I wonder how easy it would be for the Garden to include some sort of code that notified (by message maybe? even e-mail if the config option is set?) people with that skill that something has changed. I guess it need not say what but it'd be more of a "Heads up! Elementalism has changed! See ANNOUNCE 123456!".

It could be easy to code, it might be dastardly difficult.

I wonder if there could an ab elementalism whatchangedlast which responded with "See ANNOUNCE 123456!" or the like?

Kiet

Maybe some sort of tagging system for news posts would help with that? We already have search, but search doesn't help when you're looking for something like 'execute', since it has like 50 different ways it could be used.

Antonius

This is exactly what Announce posts are for. If you're so busy that you're not reading those, why expect that you'd read something else? This would be an ongoing, unnecessary overhead to every single change to an ability from now on. Just not worth it.

Jamethiel

@Antonius- I did read the announce post but entirely missed the change to prism; not sure if my idea would fix that but a quick scan didn't actually pick it up.

@Kiet - I could warm to the idea of tagging.

Also, there's many ways to implement this that don't necessarily involve delving into the code itself if one has access to the actual database in whatever format it is. One could, for example, write a hook in git that looked for something like:

"CHANGED:SEAFARING"
"CHANGED:ELEMENTALISM"

...and then something else automated could just simply message the relevant people.

Or the code to find all people with certain abilities might already exist *cough* classwho *cough*. I'm fairly certain the code to send messages does as well.

Would it be difficult? Perhaps. Speaking only for myself, I can't actually tell without seeing the codebase.

Grandue

You should just thoroughly read the announce posts, that will solve 100% of this issue you're frustrated with. 

Trevize

I don't see the value in this. That's precisely what announce news is for.

Getting a message (a tattoos ability has changed! check your announce news) is -less- indicative to me than current state (new news - title seafaring stuff) regarding prism to ship changes.

edit: I'll add that I don't see any harm, I just don't see much value.

Tahquil

Aetolia has CHANGELOG which lists changes admin make to code/skills.

Changelog by itself shows 

1068 2015/10/23    !! Dristin changed: The couple of hunting-specific zones f..
1067 2015/10/22    !! Dristin changed: Several Vortex changes. Slaying the NP..
1066 2015/10/21    !! Keroc added: I've added in better aeon handling for Fir..
1065 2015/10/20    !! Keroc changed: You now learn Charging in Bladefire at t..
1064 2015/10/19    !! Keroc changed: You can now learn the stiletto proficien..
etc

Taking CHANGELOG 1066 reveals

+--------------------------- CHANGELOG ENTRY #1066 ----------------------------+
|  Entered by: Keroc                               Date: 2015/10/21 01:14:24  |
+-------------------------------- ADDITION -----------------------------------+
I've added in better aeon handling for Firstaid. It should no longer spam commands that are already in waiting due to 
the delay.
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+

Would this be something, especially those who upkeep scripts be interested in?

Trevize

Correct me if I'm wrong, but those look like briefer announce posts specific to game-changes?

If so, that actually looks cool, except the possibility of being spammed - do they ever combine multiples into one?

Tahquil

Yes. When  new one goes up it's the exact same that happens when new posts go up in Achaea.

A new changelog has been added.

Rom

I find the current Announce system to work fine, but some better changelog/keyword system would also be nice. I'm more
interested in additional clarity to implemented changes, especially in regards to classlead implementations. It is always odd when something is added or reworked and that is all you know. Perhaps this was best back when some skillsets were secretive, but in the modern age of wikis and clarity it just serves as an unnecessary hurdle for anyone who truly cares, and an unnecessary blindfold for those not quite interested enough. 

Dochitha

I think skills based search will be pretty good. Currently searching using skill name as keyword may not return every single changes to the skill tree. At times skill name just get missed from the announce.  

Sanek

When returning after a while, it would be quite handy. I had to read a few 100 announce posts, the majority of which was completely irrelevant and I missed quite a few changes. A suggestion like this would've been helpful.

That said, even nicer would've been if all the short term things would be on a seperate board. The amount of credit promotions/seasonal holiday/contest x or contest y posts are quite high and of very little interest post date.

Qwyn

It looks like CHANGELOG exists here, but isn't populated with any data. CHANGELOG HELP brings up syntax, but there don't appear to be any changelogs logged.

Kayeil

The best you can do is something like... SEARCHNEWS ANNOUNCE <keyword>.

Skye

I just want to point out that sometimes changes have gone live without an announce, or a delayed announce. The most troubling one for me being the change to the health/mana sip balance line. This was a few months back. It was such a minor change, to accommodate the removal of tonics/balms (since Remedies now standardised the names of liquid curatives).

Sip balance is a thing we take for granted with our sippers etc, and not everyone was on serverside. For the better part of the day or two, people weren't sipping properly and taking a lot of damage without realising wtf was happening. I can't remember if they eventually notified on an announce or if people eventually figured it out and helped each other.

Kayeil

Yeah the unannounced ones kind of suck sometimes.