parts authors

[Steffen]

I just noticed that in the forums some roles are displayed for some users, for example:

Orion Pobursky
Website Administrator
LDraw.org Steering Committee Member
James Jessiman Memorial Award Recipient

That's nice, as it gives the readers and posters more context information of the poster.

However, I am missing that all part authors do not get such an attribute:
There should be an attribute "Part Author".

While adding this, I'd like to request a little cleanup. The attributes are not coherent currently:
some have a leading "LDraw.org", some don't. So for example one attribute reads
"Website Administrator", and not "Ldraw.org Website Administrator",
and the other reads
"LDraw.org Steering Committee Member" and not "Steering Committee Member".

As everything which happens on this site automatically and impliticly is ldraw.org stuff,
it is not necessary to precede each Attribute with "Ldraw.org ...".

So I suggest removing that prefix from all attributes.

[Tim Gould]

How about 'Uber parts author'

That way those of us who dabble aren't put in the same section is those who seem to make most of the library (like you!)

Tim

[Steffen]

I'm sorry if the previous post created the impression that I'd want to have just my "reputation" raised.
I thought about all authors alltogether.
Everybody whose name appears in the official parts should carry that Attribute here in the forum IMHO,
just like the LSC members etc. do.
Actually, to be honest, I felt a little "under-reputated", seeing the pile of titles of Orion (Orion, no pun intended!)

[Tim Gould]

I didn't take it that way.

I more meant that those who do HEAPS of part authoring should get a title but those (like me) who don't do that much probably shouldn't.

ie. only people like you, Philo, Mike, Magnus etc. should get a title. (and anyone else you would suggest)

Tim

[Orion Pobursky]

Lol. Truth told I'd like to add bunch more titles but that'll be a much larger undertaking than the 3 titles I added. The committee members were easy since there are already Forum groups for the committees. The JJMA title was an experiment to see if I could do it and there are 3 JJMA recipients that don't have a forum account...

[Steffen]

I think that we should treat all part authors equally.
Even the smallest contribution, e.g. of just a single part, is appreciated, and helps us.
And also old contributions need credit, not just the recent PT actions.

[Tim Gould]

The problem with that is, I suspect, that building such a library of people would be very time consuming and non-automated. Singling out those who make a big contribution is much easier (although not without problems).

Perhaps Orion will correct me though.

Tim

[Chris Dee]

I'm not sure how you intend to re-implement the existing PostNuke groups PTsubmit (= Parts author) and PTreview (= Parts Reviewer) in the new website CMS, but if those user properties can be surfaced to the Parts Tracker (as they need to be), could they also be surfaced to the forum software?

[Steffen]

maybe the names of the parts authors in the table of the recent PT activity
http://www.ldraw.org/cgi-bin/tracker/activity.cgi
can be made clickable to point to the ldraw.org "homepage" of a certain user.

currently, sadly, users seem to have 2 such:
- one on ldraw PT
- one in this forum

I think the 2 should be merged, and the PT should link to the merged one

This way, PT contributions and forum contributions can be seen

[Chris Dee]

- one on ldraw PT

The Parts Tracker, per se, does not have its own user list. It interfaces to those registered on LDraw.org website (which currently uses the PostNuke CMS). Since that is scheduled for replacement, there seems little value in hyperlinking the occurences of UserIDs in the Parts Tracker pages to some soon-to-become-obsolete user home page.

[Orion Pobursky]

That's easier siad than done. The PT, the main site CMS, and the forums all use different software suites. Tying all them together would be difficult at best. If I didn't have a day job, I could sit at home and construct a custom software solution that performed all these tasks. Even that is a bad way to go since I would be the single maintainer instead of the groups that author and audit (especially for security) the software packages we do use.

[Steffen]

Would it be very complicated to add the "Parts Author" attribute in this forum?

I really would appreciate that, because currently the forum seems - besides normal mortals -
to be only inhabitated by Administrators, Steerers, Standardizers, ... etc. ;-p -
I really miss the Parts Authors fraction here.

[Chris Dee]

I think this will have to happen as part of the website migration. The existing PostNuke groups PTSubmit (i.e. Part Author), PTReview and PTAdmin, that are used for Parts Tracker authentication need to be implemented someplace else when PostNuke goes away. From conversation with Orion, the Phorum framework seems more ameanable to this than the proposed new CMS.

[Orion Pobursky]

As Chirs wrote, the PT will be switching over to use the forum database at some point. Once that happens I can add new title based on PT roles.

[Steffen]

Could this be done in the meantime?
To me, currently still the forum only seems to be inhabitated by
Administrators, Steerers, Standardizers, ... etc. ;-p

[Chris Dee]

I don't understand what you are asking here.

The Parts Tracker authentication was switched to use User attributes at this forum over a year ago - see here. PT authors, reviewers and administrators are controlled by this forum's groups PTSubmit, PTReview and PTAdmin.

[Steffen]

Hi Chris, yes, I know.
I'm talking about the strings which this forum software shows for each user.
For example, for you it shows

• Website Administrator
  
• Steering Committee Member
  
• Standards Committee Member
  

The thing I'm asking for is simply to see

• Parts Author
  

for everybody who has submitted at least 1 file to the parts tracker.

It's a simple, psychological issue. Please, no pun intended:
Everytime I visit this forum, I feel it only
inhabitated by Steerers, Committee Members, JJ Memorial Award Recipients, etc.
but not Parts Authors. I simply am missing this attribute.

[Chris Dee]

[/list]
The thing I'm asking for is simply to see

• Parts Author
  

for everybody who has submitted at least 1 file to the parts tracker.

I'll let Orion comment on the feasibility of showing "Part Author" for users with PTSubmit membership, but the Forum won't be able to distinguish between people have submit permission and those that have actually submitted a file - it only knows about permissions.

[Steffen]

That would be fine already.
My question is just about putting a little more emphasis on the authorship.

[Tim Gould]

It looks to me like the forum does know who is allowed to submit parts (or at least it knew you could). So hopefully this can be arranged. I don't know how to do it and am away at a conference so can't dig into it. But hopefully this will be a simple enough change for Orion to make when he reads this.

Tim

[Orion Pobursky]

This easy to do with a simple template change. I simply forgot about it.

[Orion Pobursky]

This has now been implemented

[Santeri Piippo]

Yay, bold text! Is it edible?

[Orion Pobursky]

User editable? Unfortunately not. I am open to alternate suggestions since I chose these titles on the fly.

[Santeri Piippo]

Ergh, never mind that, I said "edible".

[Tim Gould]

Hi Orion,

I'm on vacation and don't have time to look into it myself, but could you double check my tags. I'm pretty certain I'm not in the SteerCo this year and I'm absolutely certain I'm not a Library Admin Guessing the former is legacy but the latter seems like a mistake.

Tim

[Orion Pobursky]

No. It's a consequence of being an admin. Sometimes you get added to groups automatically. It's a bug in the software of the site.

[Tim Gould]

Got it. No worries then.

Tim

[Chris Dee]

Is that better?

[Tim Gould]

Yes. Better. I'm still not in the SteerCo, but I suspect I've got the tag via my admin privileges. I'm yet to be asked a SteerCo question because of the tag, but guess I should be careful to add a note if there's a chance of ambiguity.

Tim

[Steffen]

A good step forward! Thank you!
May I ask some more annoying questions? Please excuse!

(a)
Why is it that "reviewer" and "author" are the same?
I remember that those are 2 different rights. You first need to have reviewed X parts on the PT
before you may become an author. Doesn't the PT distinguish between these 2?
If not, should it? I think, yes. So I'm asking for separate attributes "Parts Author", "Parts Reviewer"

(b)
Being an Admin of the forum software shouldn't automatically add you to group "SteerCo".
That setup probably needs correction. There should be a separate group "forum admins" from "SteerCo members".

©
there's a typo in "LDraw Library Adminstrator"

[Chris Dee]

Orion can probably explain the implementation, but

A good step forward! Thank you!
May I ask some more annoying questions? Please excuse!

(a)
Why is it that "reviewer" and "author" are the same?
I remember that those are 2 different rights. You first need to have reviewed X parts on the PT
before you may become an author. Doesn't the PT distinguish between these 2?
If not, should it? I think, yes. So I'm asking for separate attributes "Parts Author", "Parts Reviewer"

Yes, these are separate groups in the forum, because that's how the PT differentiates. If they are an author and reviewer it shows "LDraw Part Author/Reviewer", if they are only an author it shows "LDraw Part Author"

(b)
Being an Admin of the forum software shouldn't automatically add you to group "SteerCo".
That setup probably needs correction. There should be a separate group "forum admins" from "SteerCo members".

These are definitely separate groups. I cannot explain the observed behaviour.

©
there's a typo in "LDraw Library Adminstrator"

I corrected Orion's typo.

[Orion Pobursky]

[quote=Steffen]
(b)
Being an Admin of the forum software shouldn't automatically add you to group "SteerCo".
That setup probably needs correction. There should be a separate group "forum admins" from "SteerCo members".

These are definitely separate groups. I cannot explain the observed behaviour.

If an admin adjusts the permissions for a group (which is how the forum software differentiates between users types), said admin is added to all groups unless they specifically disallow this (i.e. set "no" in the group membership for their account). This is a "feature" of the forum software that I plan to root out at some point.

[Max Martin Richter]

You first need to have reviewed X parts on the PT
before you may become an author. Doesn't the PT distinguish between these 2?

IMHO it's the other way around, you first have to write some parts to get reviewer rights.

/Max

PS.: Sorry for being off-topic here

[Travis Cobbs]

I don't think there are any actual requirements either way. I think that if Chris thinks you can review, and you ask, he'll let you. Similarly, if you create a part and submit it to Chris, he'll likely make you an author. (I could be wrong about this, though, and it could be that things have changed over time.)

To the best of my knowledge, the only reason I am an author is because I submitted the high-res (48) version of the eighth-sphere primitive, which I generated using the calculated coordinates from LDView's primitive substitution. (I later submitted a replacement for the standard-res eighth sphere primitive generated in the same way.) But I was reviewing parts before that, IIRC.

[Chris Dee]

You just need to affirm the Contributor Agreement to become an author. Then you can submit on the Parts Tracker or send me a fixed part to proxy submit.

I like to see that someone understands the LDraw "language", parts development process and quality expectations before becoming a Reviewer. Otherwise I end up adjudicating too many disputes and misunderstandings. A good way (but not the only way) of acquiring that knowledge is by authoring a few parts, but I appreciate that is harder than it once was, because most of the "easy" parts have already been modeled.