(Continuing the thread about a notification thread from the last split...)
Daze wrote:
...this thread is for everyone to participate in not just for those who don't wont to watch for the Alert button to go off.
When'd I ever say that I wanted to hijack
this thread?
Gondra wrote:
I think it would be a waste of time someone creating a new board everytime tarla was "in the building"...
Sorry for taking some luster away from the gold star, Gondra, but I wasn't talking creating a "new board" for each alert (which would probably indeed take too much time). I was talking about one single thread (board) in which there is exactly one post for each time someone sees the alert go off. Heck, you could post something just containing "asdfasdfasdf", and then edit the post to something that makes sense after the e-mail is triggered.
The nature of the "game" is that when you're browsing, you notice the Alert button going off and then click it to get an item. I understand that it's really rather serendipitous, so it's not like I'm expecting anyone else to do more work "for me". (I'm definitely not asking for anyone to stand guard watching the Alert button or anything more than what's going on already...)
Or, to put it another way: after someone notices the alert and gets the prize, they could choose to alert others or not. It appears some people would choose to not alert others, but that's, of course, okay. I would assume that people who post "Tarla is up!" in this thread are indeed trying to alert people.
As for comparisons to the MP, the MP is much more of a competition than Tarla, and if you help people win the MP, you lose money. By contrast, if more people win a Tarla prize, you lose nothing and gain that warm feeling you get after you've helped people. Again, if people don't wish to participate, they don't have to.
Let me make the chain of events clear, so people don't keep thinking I'm asking for something out-of-this-world:
- Someone creates the new notification thread
- Persons A. B, C, etc. subscribe to the thread (via the "watch this topic for replies" link)
Tarla is set off...
- While browsing, Person A notices the Alert button, grabs the prize, and wants to tell others to grab it too
- Person A posts to the notification thread as soon as he can
- The phpBB software sends "someone has replied to this thread" e-mails to everyone other than Person A
- Everyone's systray e-mail notifiers pop up, and Person A has done what he wanted to
- Persons B, C, etc. may (or may not...) get the item
After Tarla is over...
- Persons B, C, etc. go back to the notification thread in order to tell the phpBB software "Yes, I've seen the new replies, give me another email on the next reply."
- Person C (or whoever) catches the alert.... (repeat)
I continue to believe the chain of events will happen quickly enough for it to be useful - I mean, the only places where delay would occur is at step 4, unless you have a pretty bad systray notifier... experiment, anyone?
Also, hopefully, you can see why a different thread would be necessary due to step 8, because without a different thread, one would need to reset way too many times due to getting notified of discussion posts too. I'd rather check PPT once per day (I'd work much more efficiently) instead of every time this thread is posted to.
[edit] mark the rapid-fire events
[edit2] note the current problem with subscribing to this thread
[edit3] spelling "definately"