CompuFur: a furry hackathon at Midwest FurFest 2014 by Inkbunny < Journal

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Tycloud

9 years, 11 months ago

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If only i knew how to code :(

GreenReaper

9 years, 11 months ago

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Edited 9 years, 11 months ago by Owner

@ Tycloud

Can't code; can't art; can butt a little? You could be the sexy silent partner! Every project needs one.

Tycloud

9 years, 11 months ago

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@ GreenReaper

I can do that! :3

kst3xh

9 years, 11 months ago

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@ GreenReaper

huh...I had no idea there was actually a term for that. I suppose i do that job pretty well then with the furry conventions and such haha XD

Kupok

9 years, 11 months ago

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Exciting Coding Session? :x
I have been excited ABOUT code. I have even been excited to execute code, but I have never been excited about the process of coding.

What does an exciting code session look like? :x

GreenReaper

9 years, 11 months ago

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@ Kupok

I imagine it'll be much like that, but with more complimentary Mountain Dew and fursuit heads.

tecywiz121

9 years, 11 months ago

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@ GreenReaper

Hey! Don't make promises I can't deliver! There will be no complimentary fursuit heads or mountain dew. Maybe next year :3

GreenReaper

9 years, 11 months ago

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Edited 9 years, 11 months ago by Owner

@ tecywiz121

I guess you can always load up on drinks at MFF's con suite anyway. :-)
And I figure people would bring their own heads! How else are they going to write the code? *dips to type with antler-horns*

keastes

9 years, 11 months ago

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@ Kupok

ah good old hacker typer.

trashbunny

9 years, 11 months ago

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@ Kupok

Oh my god. This is brilliant.

Yusufa

9 years, 11 months ago

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man if only i hadnt had to drop out of college >.<

GreenReaper

9 years, 11 months ago

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@ Yusufa

Hey, it worked for Facebook's Mark Zuckerberger! (Though he didn't do it to become a furry . . .)

Yusufa

9 years, 11 months ago

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@ GreenReaper

haha true, but id have to relearn a lot, and deal with my own issues (cant keep thoughts straight in my head sometimes)

Geemo

9 years, 11 months ago

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Cool stuff. Best of luck with this!

Ameno

9 years, 11 months ago

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You should at least call out the languages that will be used ^^ and the platform. That said i personally would rather not code during a con soo...

GreenReaper

9 years, 11 months ago

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Edited 9 years, 11 months ago by Owner

@ Ameno

That's a matter of discussion for the people involved in a particular project! There have been projects in many languages using the Inkbunny API.

Ranek

9 years, 11 months ago

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Can do Java but its too far away ^^
European software meerkat ;)

GreenReaper

9 years, 11 months ago

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Edited 9 years, 11 months ago by Owner

@ Ranek

You can still participate via the website, I believe!

They might have some kind of conference call available, too . . .

Ranek

9 years, 11 months ago

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@ GreenReaper

Have to take a look into it then ^^

CannedLewds

9 years, 11 months ago

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Why isn't Furaffinity in the list? Oh, right. :3

caracat

9 years, 11 months ago

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@ CannedLewds

lol I add a small feeling this was being pointed at Furaffinity! ;P

GreenReaper

9 years, 11 months ago

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@ CannedLewds

Fur Affinity did not have an API to point to.

CannedLewds

9 years, 11 months ago

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@ GreenReaper

I know; for some "reasons", they have a phobia of APIs and softwares/plugins related to them. :P

GreenReaper

9 years, 11 months ago

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@ CannedLewds

Well, in fairness it's easy to write a bad script that sucks up lots of server time - they've had bad incidents in the past. But I the main reason is they just didn't have someone to code it.

LeonHunter

9 years, 11 months ago

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Edited 9 years, 11 months ago by Owner

Why are Site Status notices being abused to convey convention specific information? Keeping in mind that the portion of the user base going to MFF would be insignificant when compared to the size of Inkbunny's user-base.

I know you're eager to get people involved Green, but if that's going to be the new standard of behavior, please implement a user option to disable all site status notices.

GreenReaper

9 years, 11 months ago

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Edited 9 years, 11 months ago by Owner

@ LeonHunter

If you don't want to see a particular notice, it is not a huge inconvenience to hit the dismiss link. :-)

Midwest FurFest is the second largest furry convention in the world, and a significant proportion of our members attend regularly (including myself, although not this year). Moreover, the announcement may encourage others to plan similar events, or to create programs using our API, even if they don't attend. This appears to be the first such event that has been held anywhere, so we felt it was worth noting.

The potential benefit to all our members of getting people involved with Inkbunny development is huge. To take just one example, Inkbunny would be significantly smaller without FA2IB - and the developer concerned is now on staff, and was responsible for several items in our last release.

LeonHunter

9 years, 11 months ago

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Edited 9 years, 11 months ago by Owner

@ GreenReaper

The site status notice holds special meaning to users. It conveys to readers that, “You must read this because it affects you!” in no uncertain terms. This is the reason that it shows up on every page until dismissed and uses an exclamation icon to denote immediate attention being required. Historically, said notice has only been used for site availability and performance related reasons. Now, I recognise that there has been a change of ownership around Inkbunny, however this does not detract from the fact that there are users which have this reasonable expectation, myself included.

In saying that it is not a “huge” inconvenience, I feel you have unwittingly confirmed my concerns. That being – The notice in question was not relevant to the vast majority of users on this website and that the act of having to read and dismiss an irrelevant notice is an inconvenience on some level. As a site owner, I would have hoped you would know full well that inconveniences, no matter how small, should be eliminated wherever possible. It’s not acceptable to leave inconveniences lying around just because they’re small ones.

To highlight this point, I will simply point out that users are not forced to watch the Inkbunny account, despite it mostly being used for site related information. Why is this? Because clearly there will be users who do not wish to receive such Journals in their notices feed, and the notion of having those users deal with unwanted clutter in their notices feed is not good enough. The abuse of the site notice in this case is no different to the above in that it is a small inconvenience that might happen from time to time, yet for some reason you feel it should be exempt from the standard set in the last sentence.

So how many people was the notice relevant to: Well let’s define the audience shall we? You had to be attending MFF and have some level of coding knowledge to make a useful contribution to the specific event advertised. You have stated that “a significant proportion” of Inkbunny users are attending MFF. I would assert that is a dubious claim at best, if not outright dishonestly. At the time of writing, 79,369 Inkbunny users have been active within the last 30 days. In 2013, there were 3,904 attendees to the Midwest Furfest. This means that if every single attendee of that convention were also an active Inkbunny user, MFF attendees would make up a mere 4.9% of the active Inkbunny user base. Obviously, such an optimistic figure is unlikely to be the case. Given the lack of data in this area, one is forced to guesstimatewhat the actual figure would be. I personally feel that a reasonable expectation is that 1 in 5 MFF users are active Inkbunny users – though even that could be optimistic. However, if that were the case then a mere 1% of Inkbunny users are MFF attendees.

Now, of the hypothetical 1% who are attending, how many do you think have the knowledge required to make a meaningful contribution to CompuFur? 10%? 20%? – I ask this because, while I'm sure Tycloud’s butt will be a welcome distraction, I am somewhat sceptical that any API programming genius is going to magically appear out of any of his orifices. Hence you can’t say that the site notice is truly relevant to him (and other non-coding types) now can you?

GreenReaper

9 years, 11 months ago

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Edited 9 years, 11 months ago by Owner

@ LeonHunter

I disagree that it is an "abuse" of a notice. I judged the worth and the inconvenience and decided that in this particular case, it was worth bringing this to the attention of our members, based on the potential return to the site and its users.

You're focussing on the fact that this is an event being held at MFF (which was encouraged by the notice). But even those who are not going may be interested in knowing what is happening, or getting involved in projects via the CompuFur website, or inspired to start a hackathon at their own conventions - and as these people are Inkbunny members, they're likely to use and promote our APIs. Compatibility with our site will benefit other members.

Artists and design specialists are an essential part of many development teams. Inkbunny itself would look far more drab if artists had not been directly involved in its creation - and if you are not one yourself, it can be intimidating to find those interested in getting involved with such projects.

LeonHunter

9 years, 11 months ago

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Edited 9 years, 11 months ago by Owner

@ GreenReaper

I would assert that technically minded people are probably watching the Inkbunny account already as this is where change logs are posted. I would also assert that those who are passionate about Inkbunny and helping it thereof already watch said account also.

Further, I make a third assertion that ordinary users (with no coding experience) are unlikely to be phased by this event. What they may be interested in is what comes as a result of this event (Rather than the event itself), but given that the event hasn’t happened one cannot talk about the results just yet, making the site notice superfluous for those people.

If this is going to become a common use of the site notice, might I suggest implementing an interchangeable theme for that function which does not use the Nuvola apps attention icon -> But instead something which uses the Nuvola apps edu languages or even a generic information icon? This would make these sorts of announcements visually distinct from site availability or downtime notices, thus saving users reading time should they not be interested in notices such as these.

If this is not going to be a common thing, then that raises whether or not it should be a thing at all.

GreenReaper

9 years, 11 months ago

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@ LeonHunter

It would be reasonable to use a different icon for such announcements, or no icon at all, and we will consider that for a future revision of Inkbunny's software.

LeonHunter

9 years, 11 months ago

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Edited 9 years, 11 months ago by Owner

@ GreenReaper

I would also note that forcing users to read a site status announcement for something which is (funnily enough) unrelated to the site status, is the submission equivalent of deliberately mistagging a submission just so you get more views.

Except in this case, we don't have the tools to filter such abuse out, something that flies in the face of the general "Moderate your own experience" stance that site staff seem to take on most issues.

LeonHunter

9 years, 11 months ago

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Edited 9 years, 11 months ago by Owner

@ GreenReaper

In addition to the above points, I feel a dangerous precedent is being set. The precedent, which has been set, is that anyone conducting any kind of coding session at a convention will be deserving of a site notice advertising his or her event on Inkbunny. So what if Zidonuke or Zuash or even Sibe went to a convention and organised a coding session which may yield some benefit to Inkbunny? Would one provide them a stage in front of all the Inkbunny users as well? No? Then you cannot claim to be impartially promoting an event that may yield some benefit to the site. What about if the event was a local gathering conducting a CompuFur? Would you advertise that in a site notice? Probably not. What does this prove? That after a certain point, the potential benefits out way the human cost of making users read a site notice which is likely irrelevant. Where do we draw that line? Well…..at an estimated 0.1% – 0.2% hit rate for the MFF site notice, I cannot construct any argument that any convention, now matter how big, is deserving of such a site notice.

“Are we there yet?” – Alright. The point is this: Using a site notice for this type of announcement degrades the importance of reading site notices due to the fact that it has an extremely low relevance percentile. It is also a partisan announcement (that would not be applied equally to all similar events) which inconveniences users on some level (as inadvertently admitted by GreenReaper). This should have been announced on the official Inkbunny account OR GreenReaper’s personal account. Doing such would have ensured that the only users who would have seen said announcement, were the ones who wanted to see announcements from those accounts - as opposed to being forced onto all users involuntarily.

Finally, I concede that all of the above is merely my personal perspective and the included arguments are merely an attempt to substantiate the logic behind my views and opinions on this matter. It should not be construed as an attempt to dictate to GreenReaper what he can and can't do on his own website, rather, this is merely an offering of opinion... albeit a strident one. Ode to being an INTJ. :3

GreenReaper

9 years, 11 months ago

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Edited 9 years, 11 months ago by Owner

@ LeonHunter

I'm not sure why you mention my name so much. :-) This message was posted on behalf of Inkbunny, for the benefit of Inkbunny members and the site, and at the request of someone who contacted Inkbunny through its administrative email. It was discussed with other staff beforehand, one of whom should be at the event as a result.

As I mentioned before, this is the first such event in the world. We believe it will be of interest to a significant number of our members - including those who have not signed up for "news about Inkbunny" (hence just posting on the Inkbunny account was insufficient). We are not going to be running announcements about every such event that subsequently occurs.

The range of the announcement was considered; that is why you don't have email about it. But it is in the nature of announcements that they do not always apply to all who read them. Notices have a lower impact than email, and will continue to be used for matters which are not guaranteed to be of interest to every member.

LeonHunter

9 years, 11 months ago

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Edited 9 years, 11 months ago by Owner

@ GreenReaper

"	GreenReaper wrote:
	I'm not sure why you mention my name so much. :-)

Isn't it obvious? It's because I love you and I thoroughly enjoy our jousting sessions. My poor pathetic existence on this planet would be far less without true intellectuals such as yourself to have smashing debates with. *Muwah* <3

However, unfortunately this is where our jousting session ends. Not only have you accepted that a different icon may be in order, which is an acceptable solution to the problem, but I too have come to realise the folly of debating with someone who claims that a “significant” number of Inkbunny users attend Midwest Furfest, as if it’s going to be some mass exodus of Inkbunny users similar to that of the Red Sea…that will leave Inkbunny as little more than a barren wasteland of tumble weed blowing across user profiles for the duration of the weekend. So significant is this exodus expected to be, that a whopping one percent of active users are guesstimated to participate in it.

Heh. Heh. I'm sorry but I can't keep a straight face after saying that. Y'all have a nice day now!

Arikado

9 years, 11 months ago

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Edited 9 years, 11 months ago by Owner

Hmmm... a tool for artists to upload their stuff+keywords+other details to a Server that distributes it to the selected art websites.
Too bad I'm no programmer :(

"	please implement a user option to disable all site status notices

You are right, Leon, it's not the right use of the site updates, but here is a better idea:

"	please implement a user option to choose to disable site status notices and/or News

(yay!! I'm a smartass :D )

LeonHunter

9 years, 11 months ago

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@ Arikado

I see what you did there!

EndermanGray

9 years, 11 months ago

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Hello, how are all ?, I love them informatics issues, I have spent much of the programming scripts, batch codes, and many utilities in the Windows operating system. I have also created websites, not just a basic website, I mean I've created an own Social Network based codes typed by me, I did not use templates, made up a social network in which a person can create your profile, biography , photos, private messaging, cover photos, music profile, etc. A sample of what I am capable, is shown in my social network, http://rolbook.wapka.mobi I invite you all to take a walk there. The only downside of all this is that I am from Mexico, it is far me all this, but at least I tried everything.

MaDrow

9 years, 11 months ago

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Please don't forget to lecture about security. Having a secure system and API is nice, but when mobile apps save passwords plain-text, use http instead of https, use Google Analytics, etc. etc, it's fucked up.

GreenReaper

9 years, 11 months ago

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@ MaDrow

This is a good point. While Inkbunny is HTTPS-only (and has opted-in to require HTTPS from supporting user-agents), requests with important data might still be initiated over HTTP. FA is only very optionally HTTPS. Then there's local-device security, etc.

MaDrow

9 years, 11 months ago

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Well a few days passed, where are the results of the hackathon? |=(:3

GreenReaper

9 years, 11 months ago

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Edited 9 years, 11 months ago by Owner

@ MaDrow

An excellent question! I'll ask the organizer . . . note that due to issues the night before, it may not have been super-well attended.

Edit: Here's what they said:

"	We had a great turnout, about 20 people, which is, I think, pretty good. We ended up having three teams who are going to be making some pretty interesting stuff: a tool for organizing convention art auctions; a grand strategy AI game, and an art aggregator.

One recently-created project is Auction RunneR, though it may not be directly related.

MaDrow

9 years, 9 months ago

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Edited 9 years, 9 months ago by Owner

@ GreenReaper

Well, too bad that the result of the other two teams can't be showcased. But the auction thing looks interesting |=(:3

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CompuFur: a furry hackathon at Midwest FurFest 2014

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