:damon:

Re: future lists and extending some of the current list's new styling and functionality to future lists. That is, indeed, the plan. I'll have to whip up some tools to make it easier for others, but something like that will almost definitely happen. Specifically:

Your speculation about me considering this is spot on: this is something I wanted to do this time, and I floated the idea early on but was told the spreadsheet everyone was using made things pretty easy. In a relative sense it does, but yeah, having seen a bit more of the process, I think automating more of it is worth the effort. If I could do this over again with an automated balloting system I probably would. We should have it for next time.

Jury's out on exactly how pretty or polished it might be, but I'm pretty confident we'll have something reasonably intuitive and functional.

Yes, my goal is to give future Curators the ability to flag posts as countdown posts and style them differently. How this works in practice remains to be seen, since they're not familiar with the templating system and most (all?) aren't really front-end developers or comfortable with the code, but at minimum I could simply let people know that if they have a vision for the presentation that would be constrained by being "inside" the normal post area, they can let me know and we can try to work something out.

Open question, if only because I still need to redesign the Lists area around the new Custom Lists. But I think it's safe to say our community lists will get some kind of special/prominent placement there.

Re: Suggestions for future countdowns
 

A list for the 2010-2019 movies would be good also, since we don't have a list like that yet. I would rather do this then the comedy one that I suggested

All sounds good. With many of the new developments you've brought into the site the last few years, I thought that these would be things you'd consider. I don't want it to sound like I'm demanding it because it's a lot of technical work, but I know you'll be thinking similarly and probably enjoy bringing in this stuff too :D As someone who's now worked as a web developer in front and back-end projects for 4 years now my brain is always looking for long-term systems that cut out a lot of the arduous tasks.

I think a lot of these suggestions are a testament to the constant improvements and new features on this site, I love how the Countdown lists seems to keep outdoing themselves where you think there's nowhere left to improve, and I love that you're not only the site Admin/Mod but also responsible for all the back-end and front-end code (I think, right?) so can pretty much create whatever you want within reason.

What you mention though is definitely one of the issues, how practical some of this stuff would be once you get other people involved because people obviously have varying knowledge of how certain systems and technologies work.

I think the spreadsheet being used is the one I first made back for Harry Lime with the 90s list, so I'm happy to hear that it's still going strong :p

That thing was a godsend mate

Oh, neat, what're you doing, mostly?

Yeah, it's all me. I'm a full stack developer so I can do whatever. Not a total whiz with the hardcore programming stuff, but I can do enough to accomplish most of the things I'd feasibly want to, at this point.

Yeah, thanks so much for doing that. These countdowns probably wouldn't exist without it, the automated stuff we're talking about wasn't even possible until like 5-6 years ago. But I actually think it'll be a very modest amount of work, it'll be really similar to the Favorite Movies feature, probably.

Re: Suggestions for future countdowns
 

As someone who supports end users...whenever I hear the word Excel I shudder.

Ya'll are braver than I will ever be.

@Yoda @Daniel M

I'd class myself as the same now. Full stack but more comfortable with front-end, can do back-end stuff to a competent level (especially nowadays with a lot of the frameworks that exist) but not as good.

Normally work on front-end web projects, web-builds for businesses. Standard is we use Umbraco CMS which uses C# (which I prefer to PHP nowadays) and it's good because there's a lot of flexibility and you can easily kind of connect the CMS side to your front-end templates. HTML and CSS I'm pretty much fully competent in. C# then use a lot and also use that in a lot of .NET projects using the MVC framework. Fairly competent in JavaScript and normally just use JQuery with that as I'm lazy, one of the things I want to improve on is JS frameworks like Angular and React which I haven't really used. Do a bit of MySQL but that very rarely gets very advanced and if it does I hand it over to someone else. A few bits and bobs with APIs but that depends how they're structured as sometimes I find them tricky.

What I would say is knowing what I do now, I definitely appreciate more the work other people do. Really like the integrated approach you've taken across the Movies with lists, favourites, clubs and so on... linking up to the MovieDB API, then all the CSS you've done for the List posts. Whenever you introduce something new it always piques my curiosity as to how you've done it.

Funny because four years ago I didn't really specialise in anything web wise but always had a lot of interest in websites because I went on a lot of forums and spent a lot of time on the web. Got a job at a local radio station for two years then moved to a decent web design company where I started to learn how to do things the right way, not just the quickest :p

I still used your Excel spreadsheet for the Westerns list last year! Still works. :)

Ah, cool. In that case, if you were to Curate a list, you'd pretty much have the option of mocking up whatever within that general space and sending it to me for integration.

I'm gonna stay vague on exactly what future Curators will get to do, since it's so open-ended, but for people handy with this stuff they can sorta create whatever and I should be able to do that integration without a lot of trouble, and for everyone else they can just dream a little bigger. I can't preemptively commit to just co-designing this stuff each time, of course, but in practice I expect I'll be able to do a fair bit of taking people's general ideas and mocking something up for them, since this just happens every few months at most.

But yeah, short version is: the next Curator will probably have an easier time than any have so far.

Same thing happens to me as I get into more serious programming. I've got some friends who're so much better at it than I am, and the gulf actually seems wider the more I learn.

Well, I'm always happy to elaborate. Ask whenever.

Re: the API. Yeah, that was a seminal moment for the site. I've had these kinds of ambitions for the site's entire history, but the options just weren't there. So for years our favorite movies were just text, and I had a long list of common titles used for a hard-slog version of autofill/autocorrect, and it was just messy, but there were no other options. So many things I'd wanted to do for a decade or more became possible with TheMovieDB. Now it's just about finding the time and energy for them, which is a problem, but a good problem.

Re: Suggestions for future countdowns
 

Too bad there isn't a way to incorporate this list

https://letterboxd.com/films/decade/2000s/

Finally a list I can get behind. ;)

Shows you can find common ground even with a lover of Charlie's Angels.:up:

And more evidence of how many fights there are going to be about what does and doesn't count as a "comedy". I am so glad I am not running that list.

Same. Genre is problematic at the best of times, at least with your Westerns list it was fairly clear cut but comedy is a huge minefield.

Yeah, it's a bit of a mess. What about a MoFo funniest 100? Much more straightforward (and subjective, obvs)

That makes it more complicated, not less.

How so? There are a lot of borderline dramedies that would pretty much rule out, I should think.

Re: The Movie Forums Top 100 of All-Time Refresh: Countdown
 

It would have to be a cross reference of genre tagging with IMDB and something like Rottentomatoes I think. Must be tagged on both sites? The movie's main goal is to make you laugh possibly? BTTF I don't think has the main goal of making people laugh, despite there being a lot of humour in it.


Anyways, The Martian would probably win it all. :p

Re: Suggestions for future countdowns
 

I think "funniest" might help a bit, simply because if you say "comedy" some people will take it to mean "best overall film that still qualifies as a comedy." Obviously "funniest" is still remarkably subjective and plenty of fights will still happen, but I do think it at least rules out those films with significant elements of humor, but who aren't explicitly adored for that humor because they're also great dramas/sci-fi/whatever.

I think it's a very marginal improvement, though. It'll just be fraught no matter what. :laugh: