That's all I can think of off the top of my head, but I'm sure there are more. These are not things that will just clutter up MOTL, such as avatars, user ability to post pictures, etc. I am against those, and against making MOTL more like other sites such as MTGSalvation, but I would love to get MOTL overhauled, not that I expect it will ever happen.

I've never seen the code myself, so I don't know how many of the issues that need to be addressed can be easily fixed or not, but I would certainly be willing to take a look and help out if possible, but that's not my call. My gut feeling is that just tweaking what already exists would be preferable to trying to port to a new system, but I can't be sure.

__________________
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All your Gruul Nodorogs are belong to me. Trade them to me, please!

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Originally posted by AlmostGrown:
As for the trade matcher and ref checker, from my limited knowledge I would say...keep the site (or at least those pieces of the sit) around for that. That really isn't ideal, but it works.

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What do you mean? Are you trying to suggest that MOTL would have a "trading" site and a "discussion" site that are completely separate?

__________________
There's no need to fear, UNDERDOG is here!

All your Gruul Nodorogs are belong to me. Trade them to me, please!

Report rules violations.

quote:

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Originally posted by nderdog:
What do you mean? Are you trying to suggest that MOTL would have a "trading" site and a "discussion" site that are completely separate?

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For the trade matcher, I'm not sure what would be possible. From what I remember, vBulletin had a Trade Matcher that was working the last time I traded on MTGS (Jan 2010). As for the Ref Checker, vBulletin has a similar one, except can also include trades with the same person twice - it only shows each unique trade under the person's name, but if you click on it to read the comments/details about the trade it shows the true amount of refs (amount of completed trades) the user had done. Of course, it does not say the value of the trade and the only options for rating the trade is Negative, Positive, and Neutral, which IMO, is significantly worse when compared to the one on MOTL.

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Originally posted by AlmostGrown:
Of course, it does not say the value of the trade and the only options for rating the trade is Negative, Positive, and Neutral, which IMO, is significantly worse when compared to the one on MOTL.

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well since we're creating a wish list...

the 1-5 system failed from the start. The intentions were to have a smooth trade be a 4 and you'd have to do something over the top to get a 5. Currently a 5 is simply a positive ref and if you expect a negative ref you wouldn't even send them a ref check.

How to resolve? Would take a bunch of effort. I'd say best solution would be to have some sort of trade confirmation page as part of the ref checker where you both drop in the trade info or such to make it a confirmed trade. If something goes wrong it would allow for negative feedback. It would also allow for an easy view of what trades were going on, a history of trades, and a way for mods to confirm details of a trade. If it were implemented would it be used? Who knows..

this site isnt a very active MTG site

not many ppl come here for deck advice or other talk of mtg

as far as whole sites dedicated to magic
motl is probly one of the worst

as far as trading/selling goes id say its one of the best

Too many outdated items from links,auction boards,memberlist, rules.

It's to easy for new users to necro old threads.

I dont really see the point of deck help if you can't even link the cards so they pop up when you mouse over them.

The trade matcher is not that great. Just too much flawed matching.

Maybe a seperate forum for sales and buys.

The price guide is not great. To confusing to use.

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Originally posted by AGO:
It's to easy for new users to necro old threads.

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This is the same everywhere.

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I dont really see the point of deck help if you can't even link the cards so they pop up when you mouse over them.

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Are people really that lazy?

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All in all the site just looks cheesy but I'll never stop using it.

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I think it looks simple and uncluttered.

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Originally posted by Loathing:
The code for both the ref checker and trade matcher would be extremely simple to recode if needed, implementing it might be harder depending on what forum software is chosen. The have/want matcher is basically just an SQL query and the ref checker just has to generate a token and use mail.

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You are simplifying the trade matcher quite a bit. The code has to search each trader's entire list, matching all known cards and using an algorithm to try and identify any sets that may have been listed in any number of potential formats and storing that information for later use in a way that doesn't hamper server load while it scans every single list every single hour.

It can surely be done, but it is likely not a quick, easy fix, depending on the coding language used for the new system.

__________________
There's no need to fear, UNDERDOG is here!

All your Gruul Nodorogs are belong to me. Trade them to me, please!

Report rules violations.

quote:

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Originally posted by caquaa:
How to resolve? Would take a bunch of effort. I'd say best solution would be to have some sort of trade confirmation page as part of the ref checker where you both drop in the trade info or such to make it a confirmed trade. If something goes wrong it would allow for negative feedback. It would also allow for an easy view of what trades were going on, a history of trades, and a way for mods to confirm details of a trade. If it were implemented would it be used? Who knows..

Either way, back to reality.

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I'm not sure if I mentioned it here once before or if I thought it in my head but I was thinking something like this would be great. I have no idea on how difficult it would be to code and implement but it would allow a feedback system a little closer to eBay in that each trade would be considered a transaction and the feedback option would be eligible for both parties. I haven't run into it yet but I'm sure that if someone who deserved or knew he was going to get less than a 5 traded with me they wouldn't send me a ref check.

Some kind of form with three entry boxes and a few check marks. A box for each trader, a third for any special notes (third party, half payment now, half later, etc.) and the Check marks for common issues like who's sending first, who's paying shipping, maybe even a "Seller is not responsible for lost/damaged mail" check box for cases where a buyer only wants .99 cent shipping.

Another benefit is that (again, without any knowledge on how to or how difficult it would be to code) it would provide some sort of evidence for BTA cases as to the trade dates, the agreed upon parts from each side, the trade order, etc.

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Originally posted by AGO:
The trade matcher is not that great. Just too much flawed matching.

The price guide is not great. To confusing to use.

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I'm not sure how your list is set up but the trade matcher is actually the main reason I keep coming back. If everyone formatted their lists properly then the trade matcher would be all you need. As it is you get too many people listing items as Day of Judgement - FOIL instead of actually using the [foil][/foil] tags or listing things under a general heading of Beta instead of listing the individual cards as Serra Angel (B), Winter Orb (B), etc.

How is the price guide confusing? There a list for foil and non foil, then there's a column for price, and then there's an N column for the number of items used to get the price. How much is card X? CTRL-F for the name, match the set, see the price, check the N. Done.

"The reference lists should be set up so that emails cannot be mined by spambots"

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Originally posted by slurpee:
Ben is right as usual, but this one is the most important in my mind..

"The reference lists should be set up so that emails cannot be mined by spambots"

For those that don't know a lot of the spam you get is because of MOTL. Set up a new email account, change your email on MOTL and you will see spam start in a day or two. At least that is what I discovered and found that this was the source.

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Luckily for me, Yahoo's spam filters are quite good, actually.

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Originally posted by Volcanon:
I'd say:

Remove the 1-5 rating and make refs mandatory.
Auto-prune anything in the Sale forum that has gone for 2 weeks without an update or posting.
Allow a higher max threads per page.
Reference lists can't be spambot-mined.
An explanation in all caps at the top of the price guide on how stats works.
Stickies/bolding.
Better trade matcher.
Reopen the Tome.
Delete the auction board. Nothing sells on there, and nobody bids when I post stuff. Or it ends really low. The Sale Forum has superceded it since people can submit lower offers than the posted price.
Mouse-over popups should never be implemented without being turned on manually by the user. If they want that, then sure.
Logout button.

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Originally posted by joz:
Login button too; if there is one, I havn't been able to find it. I have to login by clicking the 'Check your PM by loging in' link.

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Do you have cookies enabled? YOu shouldn't have to log onto MOTL every time you visit it if you do. I lurk until there's something I want to say, then sign in at that page if need be.

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Originally posted by Pod5f:
I would really like it so when i click the 'show trade matches' button on top of a H/W list, it would show me what exactly they have off my H/W or I have off of theirs, regardless of whether i have it or not... Currently it only shows up if they have something I want AND i have something they want, and i think that this exclusion is kind of annoying and i may have stuff not listed or would be willing to trade for something not on my list and would just like to know what i have they want.

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The problem with this is that you'll match every single person looking for Xx Underground Sea or Xx Jace, the Mind Sculptor when they're really just looking for trade bait.

Often time I'll go into a thread, click the "Show trade matchs" and it will show up with nothing, but then browse the lists and see that there are multiple have/wants on both sides.