Big changes to 5MD and 5MSV
 

This is a rather lengthy post, but if you are interested in fiving for 5MD or 5MSV, and especially if you have already called stuff for either one, please read the following post.

As a section head, I run into two main problems. Namely,

1. People try to call episodes that have already been called, and
2. People call episodes and do not five them (contributing to problem 1).

Now perhaps a good section head would try to be diligent about policing called episodes and checking up on guest fivists, but since everyone fives at a different pace, it's easy enough just to not follow up on it.

Recognizing these problems, I say to myself, "Self, wouldn't it be cool if I just had a system that took care of both problems automagically?" To which I respond, "Automagically? I can't believe you just said that."

However I wrote such a system anyway. Here's how it works.

To solve the first problem, I created a list of uncalled fivers. Now a guest fivist can simply view the list of episodes and know which ones are available.

Not bad, eh? But wait! There's even more. You can sign up for an account at the website and add fivers to your own queue of fivers automatically! No waiting for me to respond to your request or anything. Also, you can remove fivers from your queue if you don't want to five it any more. You can even draft the fiver online and submit it to me over the website, if you're so inclined.

To solve the second problem, I created an email notification system. When you first call a fiver, you get three months to five it. One month before it's due, I'll send out an email to you that you only have one month to go. At that point, you will be able to login to the website and renew that fiver for another month (and you can keep renewing indefinitely). One week before it's due, I send another email. On the day it's due, the fiver returns to the uncalled list and you and I are both emailed about it.

Pretty cool, huh? It isn't? Yeah, well, same to you, buddy!

Anyway, I have a little more information that I'm going to put into a FAQ format, since I find that style to be pretty readable.

Q: So basically you're just using me?

No, no. It's nothing like that. I need you.

Q: Oh. Okay then. Um, do I have to use your system?

Nope. It's my hope that people will come to use my system since it seems like it'd be pretty convenient all around, but you can still email me the old way too. You'll still get the email notifications either way though.

Q: What if I don't want to be emailed?

Tough.

Q: No really. I get spammed enough as it is. I'm not really keen on more email.

Sorry. If there really are enough people complaining about being emailed, I might add a feature that disables mailings. But in an ideal situation, you'll only be emailed twice: Once when you submit the fiver to me, and once when I pass the fiver on to Zeke. As for being reminded at 1 month and 1 week before the fiver's due, I think that's reasonable. And sending you an email when your fiver's removed is also a good idea. So I'm standing by what I've done.

Q: I think I found a bug in your code. What should I do?

Email me. Tell me what you were doing (what you clicked in what order), so I can reproduce the error. I'll try to fix things as quickly as possible.

Q: I also thought of a really cool new feature you can add. What should I do?

Email me. If it's a good idea, I might add it in. No guarantees on how quickly it'll happen, or if it'll happen at all. But I would like to make the system friendly for everyone if possible.

Q: How many fivers can I check out at a time?

Three per section.

Q: Only three?

Yeah, if you want to do more, write one of the ones you've already called.

Q: I'm a section head, or at least I play one on TV. Can I use your system to catalog all my fivers for my section also?

Sure. Send me an email or IM or something and we'll discuss what needs to be done.

Q: Why isn't this code on 5M.net?

Because I wrote it on my own computer using Java and 5M.net uses PHP. If this system becomes popular enough, I may check with Zeke and see if we can't move the code over to PHP.

Q: How --

And one other thing. Since this is running off my own computer, it may not be subject to the 24/7 uptimes of other sites. If my ISP decides to flake out, or if the power goes out after a hurricane, or whatever, then the site may not be up. I want the site to be available 24/7, but I don't have the disposable income to just plop down to insure that fact.

Sorry, you had a question?

Q: I forgot it.

Well, I'm sure it wasn't important.

And now, if any real person has questions about the new system, please post them here and I'll answer them as best I can.

No question, just wanted to say that I think it's an awesome idea.

Three cheers!

Gatac

I'm currently playing reseller for a hosting company over here - since this doesn't sound like the highest performance system of all time, maybe you'd like me to set aside some space for your system on their servers? It'd guarantee the uptime, at least...?

(unlimited bandwidth and webspace for unlimited users...*grins*...gotta love it...)

Due to its low performance needs and the fact that I'm not sure how well this is going to catch on (not to mention not wanting to put up the cash for a real hosting company), I'm fine using my own computer for now. If things become problematic (which I kinda doubt will happen even if my system were to cover every series at 5M.net), then I may want to look to some external hosting.

Thanks for offering and I'll be sure to remember that if things change.

Just to clarify, I wasn't offering to charge for it.

I'm paying the full bill myself (its only £30 a month, okay? And I get free net access for the year, so...) so if you do take me up on the offer, then 'tis free.

Hmmm...free is always good. I'm thinking about doing this for B5. I was initially going to whine and pout and beg Derek into hosting it along with his, but free is good.

Or, you know, I could just make a subdirectory of fiveminute.net for this system....

*You* could, but then, *I* can only really offer what's mine, can't I?

How about we keep this on my computer for now. If downtime is a problem (which it really isn't normally), or if the system becomes overly popular, then I'll take the next steps.

Thanks all for your kindly offers though.

Having spent the past couple of hours playing around with the system, I can safely say it's a groovy little site Derek's got there. It certainly streamlines, simplifies and idiot-proofs the calling process.

Edit: Oh, and you can now call B5 episodes there.

^ Is the same procedure with DS9/SV in effect with B5 also?

(Neat idea, Derek.)

Cool! 8)


Nice system you have there! :D

The very same. I created a half-ass account for you, the net effect probably being that you'll have all sorts of problems logging in. Let me know if you do.

In which case some sort of password kinda deely would probably be of some use to me. ;)

Turns out that I can't edit profiles once I've created them. I honestly don't know what will happen. The system uses email addresses as identifiers, but I didn't enter one for you. Try logging in as Pointy Haired Jedi. At best, it'll ask you "Is this you?", at worst Derek will have to fix it.

Yeah, maybe I should allow people other than me, Zeke, and IJD to modify user information after intitial creation.... I'll think about that.

I did make a change though that forces you to put in an email address when creating an author. Maybe that'll do something.

Oh, and I filled in all the author's emails that I could find. So PHJ has his gmail set for his account now. It should automatically match him.

It reckons it's sent me an email, but nothing as of yet. I'll check again later.

I tried to enter a password and got this:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...edi/5mpg01.png

Did I kill it?

Actually, it wasn't the password that was the problem. Somehow you had a fiver assigned without a due_date. Don't know how that happened, but it messed things up.

I've fixed it, so it should work now.

Hmm. It's listing one that I've finished and hashed out with Sa'ar already as being unsubmitted. Perhaps that's why the date thing was as it was.

Yeah, I must have missed that setting. The system is sound; it's the users who are trouble.

This is a very interesting idea. I may do something similar for 5MDW. Many more episodes to call...

Hopefully everyone who has had a long-standing claim on a DS9 episode has been emailed regarding its due date. As the email says, this is not a hard and fast rule, you can easily renew your called fiver, it's just a reminder that you have it out.

I'm just curious as to what we do once we submit a fiver through the system. Are there e-mails to confirm submission? Is there a standard lag time we should expect before a response? I'm just asking because I submitted a draft of a DS9 fiver weeks ago and I've heard nothing. I don't know if it ever got anywhere, if you took one look and said "this is garbage," or what.

If you draft it online, save it, and submit it, you'll get an email confirmation saying that you did so. Then I review it (or Sa'ar will if B5), and email you back some correspondence on the fiver including a list of possible changes. Changes are made, fiver is accepted and passed on to Zeke for publication. When the section head decides to pass it on to Zeke, you will similarly get an email notification.

In your case, it appears that you have only called a fiver. You have not drafted it or submitted it to me, hence my lack of response. If something's gone wrong, email me and let me know.

Oh, save THEN submit. That explains why the field is still blank when I come back to it. I just cut and pasted into the box and clicked submit.

It turns out that I ahve no idea what my password for the page is. After I went there last I found I was logged in (as I presume a result of Derek's tinkering to make it work properly for me), but now that my cookies have been cleaned out I can't access it again. Could I possibly get the password PMed or e-mailed to me?

Your password is "0b1wanb3rt." Don't tell nobody. Spread the word.

That took about three seconds longer than it should have to get.

PHJ: 1, Zeke: 6774823.9

I'll catch you up one of these days.

I've made a few changes to the system. Most are minor or transparent to the end user, but I figured I'd document a few of the exciting ones:

1. Now when you sort your personal page by column, it's remembered. So if you prefer it sorted by series instead of the default (date called), then once you click it, it will remember it.

2. On the Settings page, you can now choose one of two stylesheets for the site. The first is the Default that the site is already colored. The second is called "5M.net" and it's my best attempt at trying to color everything the way the site colors stuff (red, black and gray).

3. I've made the 5m.net-style stats page publicly available, with the exception that any fiver that doesn't have a published date assigned to it won't be seen publicly. So now if people want to see my stats according to my own site (only covering 5MD, 5MSV, and 5MB5), they can click: http://dadean.org/Fivers/stats.jsp?author=Derek. Anyone else who'd like to publicize his or her stats just needs to replace Derek with his or her own alias according to the site (alias being your login name).

Oho! Interesting timing -- for some time now I've had the idea of semi-automating the stats pages in the back of my mind. (This of course is fully automatic, which would be even better except that not every subsite is covered.) I'll take this as a nudge in that direction, along with your recent 94th-fiver comment.

I've made a few more revisions to the site.

1. I've loaded other subsites into my system in a private capacity. You can't call fivers from these subsites, but your stats on the stats page will now show them. Check out http://dadean.org/Fivers/stats.jsp?author=Derek for an example. You'll notice that 5MNG, 5MST, etc are listed in my stats. Not every subsite is loaded, but many are.

One benefit of this is that even if you've never used my site or written for 5MD, 5MDW, 5MB5, or 5MSV, you could have a stats page there. Just replace the name "Derek" above with your 5M.net name and you should see some or all of your stats.

A few examples:
FatMat: http://dadean.org/Fivers/stats.jsp?author=FatMatDuhRat
catalina marina: http://dadean.org/Fivers/stats.jsp?a...alina%20marina
Sa'ar: http://dadean.org/Fivers/stats.jsp?a...a%27ar%20Chasm

2. Also related to the stats page, you'll notice that the fiver names are now links to the fiver. I'm not sure if putting them in was a good idea since the site uses a "best guess" strategy on trying to figure out 5M.net's links, and if it guesses wrong, then you get that wonderful 5M.net error page that never ends. (For example, Generations from my stats page above will cause such an error.) For the most part though the site guesses right, so I've left it in. If people think this is a bad addition, let me know.

(For the curious, I construct the link by taking the episode name, converting it to lowercase, and then applying s/\W//g.)

3. I've made a few enhancements to the 5M.net skin, but it looks like no one really uses it, so maybe no one will care much about that.

What's the menu name of said skin? I currently show only two options -- should there be more?

The 5M.net skin is called "5M.net". If you're logged into the site, click "Settings" and at the bottom, you'll see a drop down list called "Stylesheet" with two options: Defaut and 5M.net. Default is the light colors on a white background. 5M.net is the red, white, and gray scheme on a black background that's at least a little reminiscent of 5M.net.

Also, anyone who wants to preview the other skin can see it in Firefox by choosing View > Use Style > 5M.net. But that change doesn't persist, whereas the first way will.

If I were a better CSS artist, I'd have more skins for the site, and the ones I have would look cooler.

I was gonna say "We're geeks, we don't get to say 'cool'", but then I noticed that you used a somewhat nerdly term earlier in the sentence which makes the whole thing okay.

Yes, sometimes I read sentences back to front. Wanna make something of it?

(Don't blame me, blame the translated Nausciaa manga - I now want to read everything from right to left, for some reason.)

Speak for yourself :P

Hmmmmmmmm...

No, I don't think I will. Sure, you cause less wars that way, but where's the fun in that?

Always with the smart answers :P

What other kind of answers would a smart person give, though?

ZIING!

(The extra "I" means it has extra zing.)

The type which doesn't get them hurt, naturally ;)

ZOONG!

(The extra 'O' means it has an "ooh" sound.)