Peace offering

[Kalamere]

The discussion thread on the reinstatement policy got more heated than it should have. As is plainly apparent, I feel strongly about making it as easy as possible for retired duelists to come back and duel at rank. Tass and Lem did a much better job than I as to explaining why, but in a nutshell I think it occasionally leads to those duelists sticking around for a while and that such a result would be very good for us.

That said, I ran astray on a couple grounds. Obviously there's no vindictiveness on Apple or Norah's part towards inactive folks, moreover they are trying to do their best for the sport. I think we have mildly different visions there (though only mildly), but I never meant to imply either of them would purposefully harm things around here. On the contrary, I think the recent events being sponsored have drummed up interest and participation and they deserve a lot of credit for that.

The second area was a bit of ignorance on my part. I honestly had no idea standings keepers were limited to paging back and forth on the standings archive to find when someone might have last dueled. If I was forced to interact with things using only that tool set I imagine I'd find the process to be a bloody pain in the ass as well. For me it takes literally seconds and so I just didn't comprehend why a reinstatement was a hassle.

So... as a bit of a peace offering, I wrote a search tool that will assist this process at least a little bit. I can't give you your own server with shell access and command line tools that I would use, but this web interface will take a duelists name and search all the recorded standings for them, giving you back the line of text that matched and a link to the file they were found in. The text output isn't always pretty; it's a lot of html or xml code, but the search term will be highlighted so you can pick it out more easily and the link is right there so you can jump into the file and see the rendered version. This combined with the retired list I supplied the other day should help at least a little.

DoS Standings Search Tool

There are DoF and DoM versions as well, since the code is reusable. Jake also has inserted links to these tools on the DZ standings interface:
DoF Standings Search Tool
DoM Standings Search Tool

As always, let me know if there are changes I can make that will make these more useful. As to the other thing, I hope our future interactions will be more conversational.

~Kal

[Goldglo]

Thanks, Kal!

Things can get heated sometimes - moreso because we're all passionate about these games than anything else (or so I like to think in most cases).

Thank you for taking the time to create these tools; it's very much appreciated on my end.

--Matt

[Jake]

Likewise, Kal!

Thanks for posting this, and for whipping up the search tool. Hopefully people will find it useful.

[DUEL Norah]

Thank you Kal, this gesture is much appreciated. ^^

[Andrea Anderson]

Thank you. This will make things much easier.

[G]

I'll add my thanks and apologies. I didn't think they got too heated, but did agree they were fairly passionate. We all think of things in different ways, and I know I tend to be the emotional angry one. Especially when frustrations set in. That's when I gotta back away.

One thing is certain, though. There can be no doubt that everyone who gets involved in these sorts of conversations do so because they care deeply about the game, and want what they feel is best for it, even if we don't agree on the same points. We all do care.

And that's a good thing.

[Jake]

One thing is certain, though. There can be no doubt that everyone who gets involved in these sorts of conversations do so because they care deeply about the game, and want what they feel is best for it, even if we don't agree on the same points. We all do care.

And that's a good thing.

Agreed!

[Lem DeAngelo]

Awesome! I tried a few random searches and found the duelists very easily. Thanks Kal!

[Rakeesh]

Great tool. Feelings posted in other-thread.

[Rena A Cronin]

Any way we can make this a sticky so a person doesn't have to go flipping through the whole string to locate this?

[Kalamere]

If you use the standings mirror on DZ (eg: DoM mirror: http://duelingzone.org/roh/dom/standings.php) there is a link in there to the search functionality. The mirrors are all linked of the base page at duelingzone.org.

[Kalamere]

I don't know if anyone has been relying on the links I posted at the start of this topic, but if you are you should stop =)

Several months ago the DZ site lost the ability to be a standings mirror site. As such, the search tools I wrote haven't been getting updates.

On the bright side, DoF and DoM both have a historical records page linked off of their standings, so you can find the information there. DoS has a thread here someplace that is tracking this stuff as well, so best to just use those.

~Kal

[Claire Gallows]

Here's the DoS thread if anyone wants it:
http://www.ringsofhonor.org/forums/view ... hp?t=26314
Stickied here in the DoS OOC folder for anyone that needs it

Thanks for having that tool available as long as it was! I haven't used it in awhile, myself, but the times that I did were incredibly useful.

[Spell]

It was a pretty useful tool. I know a few duelists I used the tool to search up from waaaaay in the past that weren't on the retired duelist list.

The retired list Claire linked has all of the newer Warlords and a good spread of those from the past, but should a person not be on that list and be from the earlier years, the tool may still be a valuable option for them to try and point out who they are to the SK.

[Kalamere]

It was a pretty useful tool. I know a few duelists I used the tool to search up from waaaaay in the past that weren't on the retired duelist list.

The retired list Claire linked has all of the newer Warlords and a good spread of those from the past, but should a person not be on that list and be from the earlier years, the tool may still be a valuable option for them to try and point out who they are to the SK.

For old stuff it'll still work. It just hasn't been synced since September of 2014, so anyone who has dueled since then won't find results.