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Chrome Shack Community Guidelines Chatty Search
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Subscribe to Shacknews Mercury starting at $1/month!
Chrome Shack Community Guidelines Chatty Search
Scroll down to join the conversation.
Rumor of the Shackpocalypse has reached ECO’s ears. Well, actually, somebody left the barn door open and a few cows wandered out. These things happen. So here is the news.
Sometime next week, we will re-launch Shacknews with a complete redesign, a new backend code framework, and new hosting. In terms of our beloved Shack, it’s a massive overhaul.
In the new version of Shacknews, Latest Chatty stays pretty much as it is. We’ve cleaned up the db structure; rewrote some janky code, and did a minimal amount of styling. Haiku has grabbed the reins; solicited input from the Shack (apparently some folks don't like blue); and is providing some styling changes that we hope to implement by launch. These changes should make for a ‘new and improved’ Chatty with plans of more to come. The rules of conduct, though, remain the same. The Mods still prevail. We even built them a new mod tool to which they have had advance access, and they are providing additional input. Dognose will remain master of his domain.
There are some changes to Chatty. First, Chatty no longer will be tied to a specific MD or ER ‘story’, but will live on a 24-hour cycle. We will still post Morning Briefing and Evening Reading, but they are independent of the chat threads. The benefit is that posts under Morning Discussion won’t disappear when Evening Reading is published. Instead, threads will live for 24 hours after the post date of the root comment, and then will be available via comment search.
Second, news headlines and story comments will integrate into Chatty with the headline and link as the root post and comments as the thread. Now you can stay on Chatty and see news headlines, but our primary purpose was to aggregate all discussion on Shack within the Chatty application.
As for community-developed apps, we have worked with SqueegyTBS, stonedonkey, and electroly to write an API on which the community can develop and revise Shack applications. This will provide a stable and enhanced platform for community-developed apps like Latest Chatty on iOS and ShackDroid.
As for Shacknews, those of you who actually use the rest of the site will see something much different. We are moving away from the traditional blog model with its long river of posts to a format that is more visual and surfaces a wider variety of content. The home page look and feel will be vastly different. We still have a news hub, and we will continue to cover news as we have in the past.
The new Shack gives much greater prominence to the games themselves. The game pages are highly visual spaces for aggregating content from game-specific news to media to files to comments. Video and screenshots get much better treatment.
Fileshack and Shackvideo will no longer live as separate sites. Video rolls up closer to the associated game, but still has a hub page to aggregate featured and recent video.
Mercury will live on and evolve in the coming months. Storage, free email and “high speed downloads†don’t hold the same value as they once did, so Mercury will focus on services, products and discounts to provide value for Shackers. That means we are going to shut down Shackspace and Shackmail (believe me, no one uses it), and instead will provide access to another free storage service with a larger limit. We will continue to support Shackspace in the near term to allow folks to move files stored there. Mercury members can still turn off ads.
The new site will launch without the Shackmeet scheduler, but we are working on an improved Shack scheduling tool to be added after relaunch. If anything, we want to provide more support for Shackmeets and Shackbattles. Also there will be no user profile pages at launch. The existing user pages get little use, and we had to make some calls on what to include in the initial release. However, if there is sufficient community demand, we certainly will reconsider rebuilding them.
One casualty that will sadden some of you is Shackpics. With the plethora of photo-sharing sites out there, I’m sure you will find places to put those NWS pics. Life won’t be quite the same for the mods. We’ll give people some time to grab any pics they want to keep.
I know that change brings uncertainty, but I hope our track record over the last couple years speaks for itself. Steve, Maarten, and Faylor have moved on to new adventures. (Well, really, they’ve all moved to Gearbox.), but the Shack stands. We’ve invested a lot in rebuilding. Some of you will like the changes; some of you won’t. And some of you – as Garth says - “fear changeâ€, so it won’t matter what we do. Our hope is that you like the renovation, but more importantly we hope you understand that our goal is to make the Shack better – both as a site and for the community of Shackers that continues to make it thrive.
Last, I want to thank all Shackers who have provided feedback, suggestions, and help in the rebuilding process. I specifically want to thank themelon; squeegyTBS, Stondedonkey, ThomW, Haiku, and all the mods. Any bugs will be ours alone.
And now for a taste. A game page - http://www.shackpics.com/files/gamepage_kz7uoimpyull52wpgiig.jpg
and the screenshot viewer - http://www.shackpics.com/files/screenshotviewer_kdvlhym5y721om0h0fx4.jpg
Fire away.
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