Talk:Second Switch plans

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Account creation

How are we handling account creation? (And this as is much a question for everyone as 75th.)

Can we easily pre-populate Wordpress with a bunch of accounts which have the same usernames and emails as all past BlogNomic players (those listed and commented-out in the sidebar, rather than every spammer that's every passed through), and then ask everyone to reset their password when they want to join?

Or will we let users register in Wordpress under any name they like, and sort it out with CfJ renames if we get the feeling that someone is using a legacy username misleadingly? I guess someone should at least keep a record of old usernames and emails before the EE blog disappears, so that we can contact old players if someone claims to be a returning veteran and we're not sure we believe them. --Kevan (talk) 09:18, 27 May 2020 (UTC)

In my opinion, we should set up the Wordpress sign-up site such that it is password protected in advance of the go-live. Then, during the kick-the-wheels phase, send a message to all currently registered users (maybe in waves - so those active in the last two years first, then five, then forever) with the link to the signup page and its password. Then open it up when the full switch has taken place.
If we can easily pre-populate with existing accounts and email addresses then we should, but with my limited knowledge on the subject I find it hard to imagine that that would be easy.
I doubt that there will be much fuckery but if there is then we can fix it with CfJs after the fact. It may be worth enacting a rule that explicitly says "No amnesiac, idle or unidle, may register an account via {link} that has a name other than that that they have used in BlogNomic previously" - we can repeal it post-switch but it might inhibit someone and would certainly mean that we could then change names without having to go through any BlogNomic formal process. Josh (talk) 10:55, 29 May 2020 (UTC)

Historical URLs

How are we handling historical links to the original blog? Are they all (apart from the https://blognomic.com root itself) sufficiently distinct from any possible Wordpress URL that we can safely craft a few regular expressions to redirect them to https://ee.blognomic.com or wherever we're putting the old site? --Kevan (talk) 12:33, 27 May 2020 (UTC)

All blog posts begin with /archive/ in our EE and with /2020/ or such in WordPress. I think this should be pretty easy, but I could be forgetting complications. 75th Trombone (talk) 01:56, 23 June 2020 (UTC)
Note that EE monthly archives begin with years (eg. https://blognomic.com/2021/06), if that overlaps with anything WordPress might use. I assume we don't link to monthly archives much, but no sense in breaking the links if we don't need to. --Kevan (talk) 12:03, 25 June 2021 (UTC)

Lack of a messaging system

Tantusar talks here as if there are no private-message plugins available for WordPress. Does WordPress have the "click to email this user" button that EE also has?

BlogNomic really needs a verifiable messaging system where a player can confirm that a message really came from a particular player - although we can use Slack, it does allow scope for confusion or deliberate misinformation. (If we're playing a secret information dynasty and the Emperor gets a Slack message from a user called "Spartacus" who says "hello I'm the player who joined the blog as Spartacus the other day and has taken no game actions, this is a private message saying that I want to give all my money to Caesar", is it okay if they take that at face value?) --Kevan (talk) 10:05, 29 May 2020 (UTC)

Click to email would be a poor replacement at best, IMO. I've been researching replacements for Slack that don't have the same limitations and a hosted instance of RocketChat with WordPress sign-on integration looks reasonably promising, although a second or several further opinions would be good. Tantusar (talk) 10:27, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
BuddyPress has private messages, they should be working now. They're ugly as sin, but that might be somewhat fixable. 75th Trombone (talk) 02:00, 23 June 2020 (UTC)

Admins and user roles

75th talks here about the differences in user permissions and terminology between EE and Wordpress. It's not clear if these analogies are exact (can a Wordpress Editor do everything that we need a BN Admin to do?) but it does also raise the question of whether we should formalise the role of BN Super-Admin; I think the only active super-admins right now are 75th and Kevan? Josh (talk) 10:58, 29 May 2020 (UTC)

"Formalize" generally means "Make part of Gamestate" and we don't want to make server-level permissions gameable. Always open to suggestions on avoiding that problem, but we want to be conservative here. 75th Trombone (talk) 01:58, 23 June 2020 (UTC)