This is a summary of recent additions and changes to the site. The list isn't comprehensive - we report only the more visible and significant changes, so you might notice some minor changes from time to time that aren't reported here.
Friends and enemies: "Nixonian" might have been recently retired
from the dictionary, but the spirit of the infamous Enemies
List lives on in IFDB's new User Filters feature. You can now
identify people whose reviews you especially appreciate or dislike by
"promoting" or "demoting" them. When you promote someone, IFDB will
show you (and only you) that person's review first when you view a
game listing; when you demote someone, IFDB will push their review
down to the end of the list. Promotions and demotions are sort of
super-Helpfulness votes, but they only affect what you see (and only
when you're logged in). You should still use Helpfulness votes as
well, to help guide other users to the best reviews. The controls for
promoting and demoting are part of the new More Options drop-down menu
shown below each review.
Plonking: If you really don't like someone's
reviewing style, you can go one step further than demoting them: you
can "plonk" them. Plonking someone hides the victim's reviews from
your sight - IFDB will simply omit their reviews when you look at game
listings. Flagging only affects what you see (and only when you're
logged in); it doesn't actually delete the user's reviews or hide them
from other users, so you don't have to wrestle with any moral qualms
about engaging in censorship. The plonking button is part of the same
More Options menu that has the flagging, promotion, and demotion
buttons.
External reviews redux: Last year, IFDB added the ability to
link to game reviews on other IF-related sites, such as SPAG. Users requested this
feature because it makes IFDB game listings more complete and
generally makes for a more connected and integrated community of IF
sites. However, it's come to our attention that some users come to
IFDB primarily for its member reviews, and find the off-site links
distracting. IFDB now offers a customization option to control if,
when, and how you see the off-site reviews. On your Edit Profile
page, in the Display Preferences section, you'll find a new Off-Site
Reviews option. You can move the external reviews below the Member
Reviews section, you can collapse them to mere links, and you can hide
them entirely. Or you can keep the default, which leaves everything
as it was, with the off-siters listed among the other Editorial
Reviews. (Baf's Guide and From The Author reviews are still special,
though: they'll still appear in the Editorial Reviews section at the
top, regardless of your off-site review setting.)
10 October 2008
Polls: One of the original IFDB features was the Recommended
List, which lets you publish lists of your favorite games, to help
other people with similar interests find games they'd enjoy. IFDB
has a new feature that lets you turn the tables. The new Poll feature
lets you ask everyone else to offer suggestions for games you'd enjoy.
You just describe what you're looking for, and then other members can
vote for games that they think match your criteria.
22 June 2008
Style sheet graphics: The style sheet system now lets you
customize most of the graphics on the site, including things like
the "star" icons and the various form buttons. You can upload
these sorts of graphics to IFDB and then refer to them from your
style sheets.
10 June 2008
Style sheets: You can now create and share style sheets
to customize the way IFDB looks. You can select a style sheet in
your profile so that IFDB has your custom look every time you
log in.
Rating-less reviews: You can now write a review without
providing a "star" rating. This lets you share your thoughts on
a game even if you don't want to affect its overall rating score
(for example, because you haven't played enough of the game to
feel you can assign a fair rating, or because you're reviewing
an out-of-date version).
13 April 2008
Random lists: It's sometimes fun to browse through the
database randomly, on the off chance of stumbling upon a really
interesting game that you'd never have thought to look for. There are
a couple of new tools for doing this. First, the regular Search page
now has a "Random Order" option in the sorting controls - this lets
you get a random sampling of games matching any search criteria.
Second, for a really quick and effortless peek at some random lists,
there's a new button on the IFDB home page for "10 Random Games",
which gives you just that. And when you get to the 10 Random Games
page, you'll see more links for more random lists - 10 random
high-rated games, 10 random unrated games, and several others.
New rating analysis tools: The Search page now lets you
search and order results by the Standard Deviation of the member
ratings for games. (Standard Deviation is a statistical measure that
basically tells you how closely grouped the ratings are. A low
deviation means that all the ratings for a game are tightly clustered
near its average rating, which implies that people largely agree. A
high deviation means that the ratings are all over the place, implying
that opinions on the game are more polarized.) The Search Help
explains how to use this feature. The search results also now show
the number of ratings for each game whenever the search terms include
the "#ratings" (number of ratings) or "ratingdev" (rating standard
deviation) criteria.
27 November 2007
Spoiler markups: In reviews, the new <SPOILER> tag
lets you mark portions of the text as spoilers. When the text is
displayed, the spoilers will be hidden and replaced with a button
saying "Spoilers - click to view." Readers can reveal the hidden text
clicking the button.
RSS Feeds: The "New on IFDB" list of recent updates is now
available as an RSS feed. Just click the "RSS" link in the New
section of the IFDB home page.
There's also a separate feed available for each game's reviews -
this is linked on the game's home page. Authors might be interested
in subscribing to these feeds for their own games, so that they'll
be notified whenever a new review appears.
25 October 2007
External reviews: You can now add links to off-site reviews
for games listed in IFDB. The link can include a star-rating and
a summary, for display on the game's IFDB page.
Author profile links: Games can now be linked to their
authors' IFDB profiles. Linking a game to an author profile
automatically includes the game in a new list of authorship credits
in the author's profile.
Full new-item history: If you want to see more than just
latest few additions to IFDB, you can now go back as far as you want.
Just follow the "see the full list" link in the "New on IFDB" section
of the home page. (Also, Recommended Lists are now included in the
news feed.)
Image copyright labeling: You can now enter copyright
information when uploading an image. This is optional, and we've
tried to make it as effortless as possible by providing pre-set
options for the typical cases. The reason you might want to include
the information is that some viewers might want to know how they can
re-use an image.
