Welcome, ladies and gents of PMC! It's been two and a half weeks already since Paril and Cyprezz's new creation known as "tickets" first hit PMC and Cyprezz himself was seen in chat (seriously). And since I literally have nothing else to blog about (except for the billion people I still need to interview, but we won't mention that), I thought it would be a good idea to write up a review and discuss what I like about tickets, what I don't like, and what could change. So...let's get started!

What are tickets?

Even though probably just about everybody reading this already knows what tickets are, tickets are part of a relatively small update preceding an even larger update involving the site, forums, and chat. But that's for another day; the current update is the one I am reviewing.

Perhaps you have already seen this:



That, my dear friends, is what brings you to the ticket menu. Once there (recovering from the surprise of being in such an unfamiliar place of course), you may either browse through existing tickets or make your own. But what are they, exactly?

Easy! Tickets are the newest way of submitting a bug report, feature request, or even a business offer. No more moderating messy forum posts and whatnot! Got an idea? Post it here! Have a problem with another user? Post it here (but don't you dare make it public!) too!

Do you agree with another user's idea? Well, our two overlords have already taken care of that for you! Just press the upvote button; it's just like diamonding, without the experience! (How exciting!)



(That's my ticket, by the way. But we'll get to that later.)

You can even write how much you like or dislike their idea in the comments below! Isn't that great?


#RIPmyideas;-;





I thought so. But are tickets all they really seem to be? Well...........

The Pros

Am I excited for tickets? Yes, I love tickets so far...mostly of course. But why, o fair reader, are tickets such a grand idea for this glorious site? Well, let me tell you!

Remember oh so long ago, when the forums were the only place you could submit a feature request? Entire threads were made with such ideas and cluttered up the top posts when most people were looking for something different. Arguments broke out, threads were being locked, it wasn't exactly pretty (says the person who barely ever looks at the forums). I mean, okay, so it admittedly was not overly a massive issue. It was still common though, and the developers of the site realized that having a separate area of the site to post ideas and/or bug reports was much more convenient and would save a lot of hassle.

Another issue about using the forums is that they couldn't be private, and a lot of unknowing users posted complaints/blacklists about other users expecting the moderators to deal with it for them. Since blacklisting is strictly against the rules (and for good reason too), all these did was waste the moderators' time locking posts and censoring names.

One of the biggest issues, though, was what to do if your account was inaccessible. Previously, lots of users would either give up and make a new account (against the rules) or contact the PMC email account. The second one was fine, but being able to contact PMC on the actual website without needing an account is way easier for the developers and you'll likely get a response sooner.

Some of the minor features, such as the upvote button or ticket status, also work way better than any forum post would. Upvotes let you keep an instant tally of how many people like your idea or agree with your solution. Statuses also let you know exactly what will happen to what you proposed, whether that be open, accepted, delayed, or denied.

The Cons

Yes, there indeed some cons to the tickets.

Let me explain by how painfully easy it is currently to abuse this system. In the tickets area of the site, it operates fairly similar to how the forums do. A new comment bumps the ticket back up to the top of the list. That doesn't sound so bad at first, until you realize that - just like in the forums - you can easily spam words on your ticket to bring it back up to the top for more people to see. And since the tickets area isn't heavily moderated, it's much easier to get away with this, and is there really a set punishment for this yet?

It's true that this hasn't been an issue yet, but remember that the ticket section is new. It's going to take a while before it attracts any naughty members. And even so, it's not that big of a deal; tickets don't earn you experience, after all, but it could get very annoying quite quickly if it were to so happen. Now, I'm not saying that we need to promote some people to ticket mods (that would be an atrocious idea), but perhaps in the coming weeks some moderation should be in order if anything like this starts popping up.

Another thing that I don't like that I tried to explain through one of my tickets is that ticket notifications are lumped into the rest of your notifications too. Frankly, I don't care about my tickets as much as I do with other things (and yes, I DO know that unsubscribing is an option!), so seeing the yellow star notify me of a ticket update when I thought it was something more important can be quite a let-down. Even worse, sometimes when you comment on one of your subscribed tickets, it'll...notify you?

The tickets section is also very...messy. I don't know who exactly came up with the design, but I'm not quite sure that I like it. Just like the forums, things are all over the place. The actual tickets are placed to the left, "recently updated" tickets to the right, and sorting through tickets at the top. I'd think it would look better if the tickets and filtering options were more centered and the "recently updated" tickets were sorted around them on both sides instead of in one giant row.

The last minor thing I don't quite understand is the difference between "Closed: Won't Fix" and "Closed: Invalid". I have seen both on separate occasions where the mods disagreed with the feature request in question. Both are literally the same, it seems, so I don't quite get the point of having two. But perhaps there is a difference, so please correct me if I'm wrong.

Final Note

Adding in tickets as part of a smaller update was a good move by Paril and Cyprezz to do. They have a tiny bit of work to go before they're "perfect", per se, but these flaws can be overlooked to see the greater good. I can envision tickets benefitting PMC as a whole in the near future. In fact, some features have already been implemented and some bugs have already been fixed. So, make sure to congratulate our two overlords for doing such a great job on updating the site, again.

What do you like about tickets? How have tickets been working for you? Do you wish you could change anything about tickets? Add your voice in the comments and maybe I'll even update this blog to include them, and you can see whether I agree or disagree with your suggestions. Thank you very much for reading this blog. Until my next couple of interviews come out (FINALLY), see you guys later! G'bye!