And so much more in this mini-update!
The 1.10.6 update is all about process improvement, from native Patreon integration, to giving more control over your reviews, revamping how notifications work and then topping it off with a highly requested feature. To break it all down, let’s take a look at each feature in its own section.
Patreon Integration
Calling all Backers and Supporters! You can now integrate your Patreon account directly into the site. Just head over to the new ‘Backer’ settings page to get started.
Doing so allows your in-site status to automatically sync when signing up, renewing a payment, or cancelling. This page will also give you a list of the current perks you have access to. Account integration will be required in the near future so get a head start by linking your Patreon today.
Notifications
While we had a form of notifications with inbound activities already, they weren’t very flexible in allowing anything to be notifiable. So now there’s a new system built just for keeping you informed!
Okay it’s mostly the same, you’ll still be notified for all the same things as before: comments on review, likes on lists, someone followed you, etc… But you’ll also now have more transparent messages into things like moderation such as when a review gets removed or even reinstated.
This also opens the doors for future ideas like being notified when a new comment gets posted under followed thread, when a new game on your wishlist releases, or when someone you follow posts a new review. The possibilities are endless with how it can be customized. With these ideas I hope to bring other forms of delivery such as email (all optional of course). In the meantime there is one more new notification type I’d like to introduce.
Mentions
The long awaited communication feature is here! Exclusive to comments for now, you can append @ before a username to notify that person of your comment.
By default you’re able to receive notifications from anyone but there is a new settings page just for notifications that lets you customize if you want to restrict mentions to just friends or no-one at all. I hope to continue iterating on this feature in the future but I think it’s a great start in keeping the community better connected.
You can finally let that person who commented on your review know how much you appreciated their comment.. AND now they’ll know about it!!
Review Policy Changes
Being a social site, our goal is to keep the community a safe place to review games while also keeping content focused on being about the game. It becomes a challenge for our moderation team as the lines begin to blur in scenarios where topics about a game are discussed but aren’t necessarily first-hand experience reviews. With that better in mind, we worked on a revised review policy that both expands and rewrites what we expect for content on the site.
Reviews are meant to express your opinions of a game and its topics, we expect other members to be courteous and respectful of others’ opinions and refrain from posting unwelcome, aggressive, suggestive, or otherwise inappropriate remarks directed at another member.
In general we want to keep reviews focused to the game and its topics. Topics can be anything from creators of the game to its development to themes and social issues represented within the game. While we strongly encourage first-hand opinions, we realize it’s not the only piece to the discussion and are relaxing removals around it. We are still reserving the right to remove just the rating if we find reviewers have clearly not played the game but this is more of a precaution to prevent review bombing. In the end this is a living document that we will continue to evolve the same way our community does.
Read the full policy here: https://www.backloggd.com/about/review-policy/
Review Appeals
Since nobody is perfect and we all make mistakes, I think it’s important to have a way to avenge reviews who may have been prematurely removed or only require a small tweak to be brought back. That’s why I’m happy to introduce the review appeal system.
If one of your reviews was removed and you believe it was a mistake or think it can be fixed then go to the review and select the ‘Appeal Removal’ button. You can find your removed reviews from your settings page.
From here you can chat directly to the mod team to get more of an explanation on what went wrong and possibly how to fix it. Although keep in mind, abusing this chat in anyway will only make things worse and result in your account being further restricted. We get it can be frustrating to get your content taken down but please work with us in getting it back if it just requires a few edits.
This will be a new system for everyone so I’m sure there’ll be kinks to work out but I think it’s a big step in providing a more fair system in terms of moderation.
1.10.6 doesn’t stop there! Be sure to check out the full list of changes over on the site to see if your requested bugfixes or tweaks made its way in. Also keep an eye out for the new log editor as I’ve opened it up to more users. This should only increase until we reach 100% of users by the next couple of weeks. As a reminder be sure to provide feedback via the site’s feedback form when you’ve had a chance to use it.
If all goes well my plan is to make this the final mini-update before 1.11 so I hope to share more on that in due time. Thank you all for continuing to support the site, I know I usually only do these “wall of names” during the major updates but I wanted to reflect just how large it’s gotten.
Without all of you, I haven’t given up on the day of taking Backloggd on full-time. One day we’ll check everything off the roadmap, one day…
That’s it for me though, I can’t wait to see how the new features are used and how they evolve. As always keep up-to-date with Backloggd on all the socials below:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/BackloggdApp
Discord: discord.gg/Ac6XNNN
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/backloggd
Until next time, be sure to @ me on your favorite reviews! See you then.
MrProg
