HTs on Global/Stage
| From: | HT-Johan | (11718558.24) as reply to (11718558.20) | |
| To: HT-Tjecken | 12.08.2008 10:36 | ||
| The new design will include a changelog-site besides that MyHT-space, for smaller things? A Bugtracking-site?
I'm not sure that will make it to the first version, but it's in the loop. We have a quite nice overall plan for informational issues, but as it includes a lot of new functionality it will probably not make it to the first version. Let me add to that we nowadays have a stage server, where all new code is tested live with users before coming to the main site, and in that environment we do have a public bugtracking tool. The stage server is currently invitation-only, but we aim to make it possible for everyone to get a place there (but not everyone at once) ;) | |||
| From: | HT-Johan | (11771552.120) as reply to (11771552.119) | |
| To: Everyone | 26.08.2008 at 17:21 | ||
| Just a little info that I think will cover most of the questions in this thread - if not, feel free to ask again.
Stage is available on a first come, first serve basis. We want every user to have a chance to get in. But since we have only 5000 places in total, we will be strict in removing users that are not active on Stage, or that report in the wrong language, or leak info, and so on. Stage exists to provide us better bug reports and we may add or remove requirements as we see fit, so that we get the best use out of Stage. The signup may have been chaotic for some of you, much because there simply are very few slots! Slots are also distributed per league, and between Supporters and non-Supporters. This way, we can test different kinds of features well. The waiting list only accepts another 5000 users, so even the waiting list can get full. If you can´t get on it now, you may be able to later. | |||
| From: | HT-Johan | (11771552.124) as reply to (11771552.123) | |
| To: xjuice | 26.08.2008 at 17:30 | ||
| In addition to actually informing this on the Stage Signup page some statistics would be nice, e.g. league specific statistics of number of users in the waiting list.
EDIT: BTW, is the waiting list league specific? Yes, it is league specified. | |||
| From: | HT-Johan | (11771552.130) as reply to (11771552.126) | |
| To: murven | 26.08.2008 at 17:36 | ||
| No, there is a quota for every league that is proportionate to the number of users. | |||
| From: | HT-Johan | (11771552.132) as reply to (11771552.128) | |
| To: xjuice | 26.08.2008 at 17:39 | ||
| Another question: Why is the waiting list restricted to 5000 users? Is it technical reason or did you just happen to make it that way or what?
We decided it was going to be 5000. We dont know how quick users will rotate so having one in reserve for every Stage user seemed about right. | |||
| From: | HT-Johan | (11771552.134) as reply to (11771552.125) | |
| To: sabbajud | 26.08.2008 at 17:40 | ||
| Frustration, anger and righteous wrath. Controversy, bad planning, malpractice and abuse.
Wow, isn´t it just great then that we can limit all this terribleness to a smaller, willing number of users? | |||
| From: | HT-Johan | (11771552.223) as reply to (11771552.168) | |
| To: roofman | 27.08.2008 at 01:05 | ||
| will it be possible to log in to hattrick and stage attrick at the same time? Is it possible that the reason i always get timed out at stag-hattrick is because i am busy being logged in here and writing forum posts?
You can do everything from Stage, no need to be logged into two places at the same time. | |||
| From: | HT-Johan | (11771552.262) as reply to (11771552.224) | |
| To: Julen | 27.08.2008 at 13:54 | ||
| The whole thing has filled up very quickly :-(
Do you plan to open more places in the future for other managers to join in? You might be missing out on good testers that are really willing to give it a good go and dig the bugs out... The main problem now is too many reports... and the level of quality of those reports. It will take a few days to see where Stage stabilizes, and if we need more testers or perhaps less. The only goal we have with Stage is to get bug reports of an appropriate volume and quality, not to provide maximum satisfaction of curiosity. :) | |||
| From: | HT-Johan | (11771552.264) as reply to (11771552.263) | |
| To: zincfingers | 27.08.2008 at 14:06 | ||
| I am afraid to say that you were kind of asking for it. Opening Stage to 5000 random hattrick users is very far from ideal if you want high quality spot on bug reports.
We knew this would happen, and it will sort itself out. But we preferred this over trying to manually select 5000 users. | |||
| From: | HT-Aartspam | (11771552.285) as reply to (11771552.284) | |
| To: Julen | 27.08.2008 at 19:17 | ||
| It's basically my point of view...if i was a brand new user, i would be more worried about navigation and finding my way around than the actual functionality. While now, once that i know the site by heart, i would employ most of the time testing in actually finding the bug rather than in exploring the site...but again, it's my personal view and how i would do it...
New users also try out things which many user would never consider doing and this ways discover bugs which else wouldn't have been found. | |||
| From: | HT-Aartspam | (11771552.288) as reply to (11771552.287) | |
| To: Julen | 27.08.2008 at 20:04 | ||
| I guess that's down to the person. If you ask me, now that i know how the site works and what i can expect from it each day, i would employ the time when nothing happens in HT in actually trying to find a bug by trying all the possible combinations with all the different functions. i would actively try to make the system crack, more than anything because i would find it exciting to find one bug (i already found one without being a tester!) and it would add something new and exciting to my HT week. But a new manager might only stumble upon a bug by pure coincidence and luck while discovering the site, which is also a valid method, but maybe less efficient.
Users who aren't active as a tester most likely won't be around on Stage for a long time. Keep in mind that we also have the possibility to remove access for those users who don't meet our expectations. | |||
| From: | HT-Aartspam | (11771552.290) as reply to (11771552.289) | |
| To: Wupper18 | 27.08.2008 at 20:10 | ||
| Do you expect that the waiting list will be opened during this season again?
It's open as soon as there are available places on the waiting list or on Stage. So when you check out regularly, you might have a chance to add yourself. | |||
| From: | HT-Thomas | (13465232.152) as reply to (13465232.135) | |
| To: EchoMan | 13.12.2009 at 21:39 | ||
| EchoMan wrote:
I just found out that 2 people that haven't logged in to stage since the redesign was released still have access to stage. So don't hold your breath. It seems the "kick-inactive-stage-users" is utterly broken too. Who would have guessed...? *rolls eyes* Having access to stage forum doesn't by definition mean that you have access to stage. I agree they shouldn't have access to the forum though, it was something we missed the first time we made a cleanup. That is fixed now. Thanks for the note. If you havn't logged in to stage for 2 weeks you will be kicked out, and it works as intended. | |||
| From: | HT-Tjecken | (13662583.156) as reply to (13662583.1) | |
| To: Everyone | 11.01.2010 at 17:33 | ||
| Some 1,5 year ago we made the biggest testning facilities improvement ever; we opened Stage for some 5k normal users. The thought behind this was simply to test things (new features, bug fixes etc) in a live environment to make sure they're fully functional before releasing them, and to let normal users do the testing - as we can't think of any better testers than those who actually play Hattrick day in and day out.
And to be honest, Stage has had a revolutionary positive effect on Hattrick as a whole. Our releases are of much better quality these days, and Stage is also of great help in our daily bug-fixing world. Every single Hattrick user is simply benefitted by Stage and by the work of the Stage users. We (the developers) also try our outmost to keep things as fair as possible, it shouldn't be beneficial to be on Stage and it isn't either. As mentioned earlier in this thread we shut down Stage whenever Hattrick happens to be down just to keep things fair and we don't test match engine changes, for example, on Stage either. That said, merely the fact of granting some users access to Stage may feel a bit unfair in other peoples eyes. Unfortunately, that's quite hard to do something about really. I don't, however, find it strange that we want to keep the things we're testing on Stage for ourselves. We want to be able to choose not to release a test feature (or postpone it), and naturally we want to make proper releases without having to deal with a bunch of rumours and half-trues. Sure, everything tested on Stage isn't of such nature (far from) - but it's much easier to have one rule and an easy rule that everyone understands instead of trying to teach all 5000 stage users what's ok to mention and what's not. It may look (and be) a bit over-secretive (and by the look on the forums also easy to mock :)), but it also serves its purpose. Now as mentioned Alltid is on Stage for testing, or rather some parts of it. It's really nothing strange with that, naturally we need to test the new statscenter and perhaps more importantly how it should be integrated on the site. This shouldn't really be a problem if it wasn't for the fact that the Alltid site is having some problems, but now one can claim that there is some small sets of stats on Stage which right now can't find elsewhere. I can't deny that, but on the other hand I think the effect or benefit from it is largely exaggerated. I know you want things to be absolutely fair, and as I said (which I hope you already know) so do we. I hope you understand that the stats central needs to be tested to avoid bugs and errors (and for other reasons as well), and despite the problems on the Alltid site we still need to test things. Even though it means (at least right now) that these experience stats are only found on Stage at the moment. It's not the desired situation, I definitely agree on that. But on the other hand, we shouldn't make mountains out of molehills either. (I haven't been able to talk to weird ed about the Alltid site, so I don't know if anything can be done about the problems or if that time is deemed to be better spent on the integrations process instead in order not to further delay the release.) | |||
| From: | HT-Tjecken | (13662583.187) as reply to (13662583.158) | |
| To: AlephNL | 12.01.2010 at 14:36 | ||
| I am worried about that in the "what happened to Alltid" thread on this forum, one of your HT colleagues gave away Stage access to some people asking for it and not to others. This was done in an arbitrary way and there has never been any reaction to questions about his criteria for granting some people access and other not.
I think one can sort that one into the "Just trying to be nice, but didn't think about all the consequences in advance" section actually. Because his original intention was just to be nice against these people, a quite human reaction if you ask me. But he didn't think of what reactions it (also) could cause, and when getting bashed for it he just got tired of the whole situation. In fact so tired that he chose not to further comment the whole thing at all. Perhaps not what a PR consultant would recommend you to do, but that was his reaction. Quite "human", but not that "professional". In a way I think it's a bit boring that we can't be that personal like this; I mean just do something nice for someone at a given point. In many ways I think it's harming us from being personal (even if this example may not the best one), which is something we would like to be more often. On the other hand, it's not like I don't understand your reaction either. Of course handing out access to some and not to others wanting it may cause irritation. And needless to say, we will not hand out stage access like this again. Anyway, the reason for us sometimes acting like this is not because we want to behave like old Greek gods, we sometimes just forget about who we are and act like humans. | |||
| From: | HT-Tjecken | (13712571.76) as reply to (13712571.73) | |
| To: zubizaretta | 25.01.2010 at 17:04 | ||
| If you have a motivation in sending those warnings in such situations, I just can't see why it doesn't apply in a situation like this, I fail to see the difference that makes you lose your motivation in this particular case.
There's a difference. Hattrick and Hattrick Supporter are services we offer. Stage is not. Stage is a testing platform. While there naturally are other aspects of this and other reasons for remind you of the services we offer, we still believe the most efficient way of testing things is when truly dedicated and motivated people do it. In other words, if we have to remind people to test things - then they're not the best tester available (in general, I'm sure there are exceptions). But we test things because we want the end-result to be as good as possible - to make the Hattrick experience better for everyone. We didn't open up Stage for PR reasons after all. Now, this doesn't mean we should be rude in our communication. We're friendly people, which should also be shown in our communication. But at the same time it doesn't mean we should risk losing efficiency in our testing; that wouldn't be serving the Hattrick users well. | |||
