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I have been on this website every other day for the past several months and I can definitely tell you that @Sly Ripper has barely come on here, if at all.

 

Whether I just get on at inconvenient times or whatever, you can be the judge of that. No offense, but he hasn't done much of anything these last few months.

 

I think the December 2016 overhaul of this website was a much needed change, but since then we have seen very little that has been implemented to make this place more user friendly.

 

Personally I don't mind automatic updates, while that can bother some people I never saw them as a problem.

 

I plan to take a break when I hit around 10,000 trophies, as I've grown tired of the drama and the "atmosphere" of this website. It's not near as bad as PST.org, which is full of arrogant elitists and stuck up morons set in their ways, but we can be doing a hell of a lot better than we're doing right now.

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3 hours ago, eigen-space said:

Does anyone complaining actually have an understanding about how programming and statistics work in the real world? Because I do. I'm a data scientist that relies heavily on programming and pulling info from databases. 

 

As far as statistics go, you're only going to get numbers as good as the underlying "source of truth". The "source of truth" in this instance is whatever is in Sony's database (and even that's inaccurate if people aren't syncing or if they simply don't have a profile). Want a different source of truth? Well, I can think of at least ten different ways to slice and dice the data for what people on this site might want to see... and you're always going to have someone unhappy that it's not "their way". The best way to handle this is usually to just show the definitions of who's in the numerators and denominators while making sure they're applied uniformly (that's the biggest problem I see here).

 

 Also, coding -any- suggestion is a HUGE undertaking regardless of how "easy" it seems. It's really easy to write efficient code if you have all the pieces up front. But when you keep adding things on through updates, things get messy. And doing things quickly to appease someone will have the code looking like Frankenstein's Monster, and will eventually behave in the same broken manner because it's not done efficiently (and efficiency is key for how many people utilize this website on a daily basis).

And those of you who say that he just needs to hire someone... how much did you hate group projects in school? Now imagine that you're in a school project where you have to turn in one essay for the group and all people have to write it, yet still make it cohesive; now imagine that you're working with people who might all speak English, but you've got one from the UK, another from Australia, another from the US, someone who's ESL, and another that insists on writing only in haiku. That's kind of what it's like working on code with someone else, and I can fully understand why no one would want to do that.

 

And as far as user updates go...

I'm guessing the database infrastructure isn't optimal, and it probably isn't Sly's fault as he's only responsible for one of three parts. As an example, I have a Tableau Dashboard for my current event utilizing Google Sheets as a data source. Neither of those services are "small potatoes" services... yet it still takes 10-15 seconds to do a data refresh for the dashboard after I click a button... and Tableau itself only allows for auto-updates to run once a day. Now imagine having three different interfaces trying to work together-- Sony's database infrastructure, the entity that hosts the PSNP domain, and the interface that Sly built... any one of which could have traffic problems or been built less than optimumly. I'm not even going to begin to guess at what limitations Sly has when doing queries against Sony, or what sort of limitations the PSNP servers have (I'm not knowledgeable on the website side of things), but these profile queries, even though they look simple, are probably burdensome on that system... and if you're updating things millions of people several times daily... well...

 

In the end, if you don't know how to program (or, better yet, program websites utilizing someone else's databases), don't say how "easy" something should be. I guarantee you, it's not.

And if you do know how to program websites utilizing Sony's database... well... go create your own website if you think it's easy enough to do.

What exactly are you referring to?

 

I know the trophy log sorting I want fixed is easy to fix lulz. Like everything is there, he just need to make sure the urls on the pagination buttons are correct.

 

The site caches dates, and so some of the processing of what should be local data is not done properly. Things like actually flagged lists appearing from time to time on the leaderboard for the given game. Or removed users or flagged lists counting in on a game's and trophies' stats months afterwards.

 

I work with similar too, but even if people aren't working with the exact same as sly does, it doesn't mean they can't have an opinion on it.

 

 

 

15 minutes ago, Spaz said:

I have been on this website every other day for the past several months and I can definitely tell you that @Sly Ripper has barely come on here, if at all.

 

This is just false I think. When he isn't on vacation or something he's on every day for about a full work day. Pretty sure he reads the forum, and he is definitely in chat every day answering most questions within minutes in my experience.

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3 hours ago, eigen-space said:

And those of you who say that he just needs to hire someone... how much did you hate group projects in school? Now imagine that you're in a school project where you have to turn in one essay for the group and all people have to write it, yet still make it cohesive; now imagine that you're working with people who might all speak English, but you've got one from the UK, another from Australia, another from the US, someone who's ESL, and another that insists on writing only in haiku. That's kind of what it's like working on code with someone else, and I can fully understand why no one would want to do that.

I think the rest of your post is fair, but I do take issue with this part. I work in software development in a team of 13 people, in an organisation with around 200 developers, and I believe the exact opposite of what you've said is true. Working with others on a shared codebase is easy if all parties are experienced, and tends to produce higher quality code if code is peer-reviewed. I'm sure it's fair to say that getting people up to speed with the PSNP codebase would be a fairly large task at this point, but that's not a compelling technical reason to not bring someone else onto the project.

 

That's not to say that there aren't other business / financial reasons to keep it as a solo enterprise, nor that Sly's wrong to keep this private and not overshare with the site's userbase, and you're very right that feature work always takes more time than your customers think it will, but I don't think there's a purely technical reason to keep any project as a one-person show.

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3 hours ago, Shadiochao said:

Everything I suggested is either something that was previously a feature on the site (automatic updates for non-members), or doesn't actually pull information from anywhere.

 

You're right that we don't know what could be preventing Sly from reactivating automatic updates. But that's part of the problem. It's been down 7 months, people keep asking about it, and yet we haven't been told a thing. Maybe an explanation would have alleviated a lot of the frustration.

 

I agree with you on the non pull stuff, but he's been too busy with the pull stuff. He has actually contacted me a couple of times to get help with finding stuff with the local stuff lately though.

 

Anyway, as sly said earlier, and is definitely true if you ask the admins on the other big trophy sites, it's become way more problematic to pull data. In fact, some of the other sites are a bit confused/jealous of how psnp has been able to pull as well as it has recently, wondering if he got some special source they don't have, struggling to keep going. The name change stuff just makes it all that much more complicated. Imagine if this stuff stopped working entirely... I think it's been the most important thing to focus on.

 

As far as I know he has kept you all up to date with that.

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4 minutes ago, MMDE said:

Anyway, as sly said earlier, and is definitely true if you ask the admins on the other big trophy sites, it's become way more problematic to pull data. In fact, some of the other sites are a bit confused/jealous of how psnp has been able to pull as well as it has recently, wondering if he got some special source they don't have, struggling to keep going. The name change stuff just makes it all that much more complicated. Imagine if this stuff stopped working entirely... I think it's been the most important thing to focus on.

This really baffles me, given that there's now obviously a lot of money in it for Sony by encouraging sites like this - it's basically the only reason why games like Little Adventures on the Prairie exist and sell nearly as well as they do. Given the obvious revenue stream marketing quick-platinum games like this to trophy hunters, which would likely go away if sites like this were unable to pull data, I'd have thought they'd come out with an official API and work with the owners of sites like PSNP. Seems a bit like cutting off their nose to spite their face to me, given that in the past ten years they've given no indication that they want to launch their own competitor site.

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4 minutes ago, Elliot - Pie said:

This really baffles me, given that there's now obviously a lot of money in it for Sony by encouraging sites like this - it's basically the only reason why games like Little Adventures on the Prairie exist and sell nearly as well as they do. Given the obvious revenue stream marketing quick-platinum games like this to trophy hunters, which would likely go away if sites like this were unable to pull data, I'd have thought they'd come out with an official API and work with the owners of sites like PSNP. Seems a bit like cutting off their nose to spite their face to me, given that in the past ten years they've given no indication that they want to launch their own competitor site.

 

https://my.playstation.com/

 

I can see why they wouldn't just give free access to an open api for this. It costs Sony money too. But I do think they should try to give special access to some few bigger and more serious sites, with clear restrictions etc, and better and more efficient apis.

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2 minutes ago, MMDE said:

I wouldn't call that a competitor at all, personally - it's focused on a much smaller community of people that you're already friends with, hence the lack of guides, forums, leaderboards and other features needed to build a larger community of trophy hunters as a whole. Obviously I can only speak for myself but I don't get the feeling from everything I've seen that the trophy community would be nearly as big if it didn't have access to these features - sure, on some level I care about competing with my friends but that's only within the much larger context of competing with the rest of the world. If this was the only option because they managed to kill other sites, I imagine trophy hunting would die out very quickly - I'd certainly lose interest the second that happened. There's also no monetisation stream there - it's not a product in of itself, so what's the point of trying to kill sites that do run themselves as a business offering much different functionality, unless you somehow morally object to other people making money from PlayStation?

 

Also, the user experience on that is hot garbage, but that's neither here nor there.

9 minutes ago, MMDE said:

I can see why they wouldn't just give free access to an open api for this. It costs Sony money too. But I do think they should try to give special access to some few bigger and more serious sites, with clear restrictions etc, and better and more efficient apis.

Yeah, totally agree, I don't think it should be open because that's a clear money-sink, but you're right on that collaborating with the big players in this space would make a lot of sense.

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2 minutes ago, Elliot - Pie said:

Also, the user experience on that is hot garbage, but that's neither here nor there.

 

Did you notice one of the js libraries it loads is like 5MB or something? xD

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Just now, MMDE said:

Did you notice one of the js libraries it loads is like 5MB or something?

I browse with UBO but not uMatrix because I'm lazy, so I didn't notice, but I can totally believe it, the whole JS ecosystem makes me hyperventilate to be honest. I'm very glad I have to touch it so rarely at work. :)

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45 minutes ago, MMDE said:

This is just false I think. When he isn't on vacation or something he's on every day for about a full work day. Pretty sure he reads the forum, and he is definitely in chat every day answering most questions within minutes in my experience.

 

I actually mean interacting with the community. Seems to me there's been very little of that and instead most of the work done is behind closed doors.

 

I'm sorry if I sound brash but I can't help but think that we're sort of being left in the air here. Would getting a few more people to work on this website help? I'm happy that we got two Moderators fairly recently and that certainly helps in monitoring the forums.

 

We could be doing a bit more, that's what I'm simply saying.

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8 minutes ago, TheYuriG said:

 

It's irrelevant how many hours per day he is online if he doesn't reply to the vast majority (95%+) of the people looking out for him. There is no guidance anywhere whatsoever indicating people to look for him in the chat room and even if there was, I'm pretty sure he would just stop going there or also ignore people there the same way. There were at least 3 scenarios where I DM'd him there, he didn't reply nor he sent me a PM later getting back to me about the subject. It all just makes people think that he simply doesn't care, regardless if he does or not.

When you Dm'd him, was it really something only he could fix or do something about? And I don't think you specifically is the best experiment for this, due to personal backstory etc.

 

But sure, he could probably answer you and direct you in the correct direction.

 

He even reads the emails...

 

I know long before I really started to use this Web site, not a single post on the forum etc, he replied to me multiple times in various relevant emails I sent him.

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Just now, MMDE said:

When you Dm'd him, was it really something only he could fix or do something about? And I don't think you specifically is the best experiment for this, due to personal backstory etc.

Yeah, I was asking him if he was ok if I started making an android app and allow it to pull and link to the leaderboards here. The other time, i asked him about my vanquish flag, which he ignored. I put up a mockery thread a few days later, only then he deleted the thread and removed my flag. I don't remember the third case.

 

I'm not sure if you are implying that he treats me differently because of whatever happened in 2012, but I'm sure i'm not the only in this scenario. @Walt the Dog tried DMing him about the rarities on the hacked games, @El Duderino just posted a status update about being ignored in DMs and there are several old flag disputers trying to DM him and being ignored, Blaze Naruto Shippuden being the most recent one I remember about with his COD W@W flag. I'm pretty sure we are the norm and you are the exception, not otherwise.

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Just now, MMDE said:

 

Supporting name change: nearly done (mostly need to iron out any potential bugs and process all users)

Still not finished and not a new feature, it's nothing but a bug fix since that doesn't add anything important (a previous ID button is important?), only fixes what would be broken otherwise. I also think 1 per year is really low. One year is a very long time.

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2 minutes ago, TheYuriG said:

Yeah, I was asking him if he was ok if I started making an android app and allow it to pull and link to the leaderboards here. The other time, i asked him about my vanquish flag, which he ignored. I put up a mockery thread a few days later, only then he deleted the thread and removed my flag. I don't remember the third case.

 

I'm not sure if you are implying that he treats me differently because of whatever happened in 2012, but I'm sure i'm not the only in this scenario. @Walt the Dog tried DMing him about the rarities on the hacked games, @El Duderino just posted a status update about being ignored in DMs and there are several old flag disputers trying to DM him and being ignored, Blaze Naruto Shippuden being the most recent one I remember about with his COD W@W flag. I'm pretty sure we are the norm and you are the exception, not otherwise.

 

Sending him messages about flags is no good I think. Sly has not been much involved with that. Always been other members who did that stuff.

 

If Blaze is that dude who PM'd sly and grimy years ago and got incorrectly lifted, then that stuff won't be lifted. Had it been a public dispute now, nobody would have supported lifting it.

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Just now, MMDE said:

 

Sending him messages about flags is no good I think. Sly has not been much involved with that. Always been other members who did that stuff.

 

If Blaze is that dude who PM'd sly and grimy years ago and got incorrectly lifted, then that stuff won't be lifted. Had it been a public dispute now, nobody would have supported lifting it.

Well, I messaged him about my premium status, but Mr. Reed didn't read it.

 

screencapture-forum-pl0kp0.png

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