SubmitYourDraft.com is LIVE. Please check it out!

[Ben Titmarsh]

Hey guys,

www.SubmitYourDraft.com is finally available!  I'd really appreciate it if you guys could check it out, have a play around and let me know what you think.  You can use the site in one of two ways:

1. Submit your own MODO drafts, instructions are here: http://www.submityourdraft.com/faq

If you choose to do this, your draft will be available for rating by the rest of the community.

2. Critique other peoples drafts.  On a pick-by-pick basis you can decide if you agree or disgaree.  This will cause the pick to get a rating, modify the overall draft rating and modify the members overall rating.

If you don't want to do either of these, then feel free to just check it out and read the draft recaps.  However, signing up will literally take 30 seconds of your time, no email confirmations or anything painful like that, just the basic details.  Register here: http://www.submityourdraft.com/register

While using the site, if you get an error page, then the problem will be automatically flagged with me.  For all other issues, cosmetic, usability, suggestions etc then please leave me a message here or send me an email: [e-mail]

I'm hoping to build up a bit of a community of contributors and critics.  So to kick it all off, I've submitted a couple of my own drafts.  Please head over to submityourdraft.com and let me know what you think.  I look forward to your comments!

[Mark Walker]

Gary Lynch said:

Don't know what happened but I signed up last night and went through the whole process of submiting my draft. Left comments on the games as they happened then went to submit and it said error. Tried going back an doing it again but it didn't work. Tried removing some of the comments as I thought perhaps they were too long but still didn't work.

Gave up and was pretty pissed off that I had wasted so much time. Have no idea what caused this and really don't want to try going through it all again.

Ben Titmarsh said:

You spoke, I listened. CLASSIC VIEW IS BACK BABY. No one seemed to like the page-based shenanigans so I decided to cull it completely rather than letting people choose which view they wanted. Dan - Clicking on a card rather than choosing from a drop down is on my todo list fo' sho'.

This has happened to me a couple of times and suppose should have mentioned it. Glad that this is resolved going forwaqrd.

[Dan Barrett]

little addition - usernames should always be clickable through to that members profile/list of drafts submitted/stats/whatever

(e.g. in the title of a draft xxx by USERNAME)

[Ben Titmarsh]

Cool, Ross made the same suggestion on tuesday so that ones definitely going in.

Dan Barrett said:

little addition - usernames should always be clickable through to that members profile/list of drafts submitted/stats/whatever

(e.g. in the title of a draft xxx by USERNAME)

[Dan Barrett]

Another quick thing: Your about/faq page needs some more high-level meat on what the site aims to do, as to first-time visitors this may not be immediately obvious. Maybe even some kinda 3/4 step diagram illustrating this?

1 - draft on modo w/ recorder on, make notes about your picks, deck and matches
2 - upload your draft file to syd, add comments and descriptions of how it fared
3 - other users vote on whether they agreed with your picks, and leave comments on these and your end-result deck
4 - you get an agreement percentage and points into the overall draft rankings!

In a way, this is awfully similar to the process users on bragster go through...


Another thing - perhaps more stats (eg: rank by average draft score) such that it's not jsut the person who does the most drafts on top? And WAY later down the line, add achievements/medals as incentives?

[Ben Titmarsh]

In the original version I had rating by average draft % and rating by contribution seperately (although strangely I didnt consider having a leaderboard that you could sort in different ways). I wanted contribution to count towards the rating to encourage people to keep posting, rather than just posting that insane Mono Red draft they did, getting 95% then remaining at the top forever more. Currently it's weighted at 50/50. I might change this to be more like 70/30 in favour of average rating, but the idea of having a sortable board is interesting too. Added a task to look at this a bit more.

Medals and achievements is an awesome idea! I love it. Definitely going on the backlog.

I'll hopefully be writing an article, like the one you suggest for Magic Madhouse soon, so incorporating it into the FAQ page is a decent idea too.

Dan has done a sterling job putting me in touch with a couple of magic bloggers today. If anyone else has any connections/ideas for publicity then I'm all ears. Lets get SubmitYourDraft out there!

Thanks again to all of your for your continuted encouragement and support, it really makes working on this project worthwhile.

Dan Barrett said:

Another quick thing: Your about/faq page needs some more high-level meat on what the site aims to do, as to first-time visitors this may not be immediately obvious. Maybe even some kinda 3/4 step diagram illustrating this?
1 - draft on modo w/ recorder on, make notes about your picks, deck and matches 2 - upload your draft file to syd, add comments and descriptions of how it fared
3 - other users vote on whether they agreed with your picks, and leave comments on these and your end-result deck
4 - you get an agreement percentage and points into the overall draft rankings!

In a way, this is awfully similar to the process users on bragster go through...


Another thing - perhaps more stats (eg: rank by average draft score) such that it's not jsut the person who does the most drafts on top? And WAY later down the line, add achievements/medals as incentives?

[Dan Barrett]

Still got a couple more bloggers to email soonish.

Ben, i got infi more ideas i cba to type up, bring a pad and pen tonight/tomorrow and we'll chat, much quicker ;)

Ben Titmarsh said:

In the original version I had rating by average draft % and rating by contribution seperately (although strangely I didnt consider having a leaderboard that you could sort in different ways). I wanted contribution to count towards the rating to encourage people to keep posting, rather than just posting that insane Mono Red draft they did, getting 95% then remaining at the top forever more. Currently it's weighted at 50/50. I might change this to be more like 70/30 in favour of average rating, but the idea of having a sortable board is interesting too. Added a task to look at this a bit more.

Medals and achievements is an awesome idea! I love it. Definitely going on the backlog.

I'll hopefully be writing an article, like the one you suggest for Magic Madhouse soon, so incorporating it into the FAQ page is a decent idea too.

Dan has done a sterling job putting me in touch with a couple of magic bloggers today. If anyone else has any connections/ideas for publicity then I'm all ears. Lets get SubmitYourDraft out there!

Thanks again to all of your for your continuted encouragement and support, it really makes working on this project worthwhile.

Dan Barrett said:

Another quick thing: Your about/faq page needs some more high-level meat on what the site aims to do, as to first-time visitors this may not be immediately obvious. Maybe even some kinda 3/4 step diagram illustrating this?
1 - draft on modo w/ recorder on, make notes about your picks, deck and matches 2 - upload your draft file to syd, add comments and descriptions of how it fared
3 - other users vote on whether they agreed with your picks, and leave comments on these and your end-result deck
4 - you get an agreement percentage and points into the overall draft rankings!

In a way, this is awfully similar to the process users on bragster go through...


Another thing - perhaps more stats (eg: rank by average draft score) such that it's not jsut the person who does the most drafts on top? And WAY later down the line, add achievements/medals as incentives?

[Philip Dickinson]

go mobile! i could write an Android app for you, got some buddies who could do iPhone and Blackberry ones too. get ads on them from admob and you've got instant revenue!

[Ben Titmarsh]

Implemented some big changes to the view draft interface this weekend.

* No more agree/disgaree and card list select box. You now choose your pick by clicking on the card :)
* THE pick (i.e. the pick chosen by the community) is marked with a green tick
* My pick (if different from community pick) is marked with a red tick
* You can turn off display of ticks and other user comments so that you can make your pick without being influenced.
* Moved everything around a bit to give the comments more room

I've put up a new draft for you guys to check out the changes. As ever, do let me know if you like it and if you come across any problems.

[Louis Mackie]

Ugh, I spent ages typing up my draft but it wont submit it. I have it in stasis in a tab - should I open another window and copy-paste?

[Ben Titmarsh]

Oh man, really sorry. I think you mustve caght the site, mid-deployment. Please copy-paste and accept my apologies for the annoyance!

Just added average draft rating & improved layout in internet explorer.

Louis Mackie said:

Ugh, I spent ages typing up my draft but it wont submit it. I have it in stasis in a tab - should I open another window and copy-paste?

[Ben Titmarsh]

In fact, if you want to send me the saved .html file & the draft .txt file, i'll save you the trouble and do it for you! I can tweak the database so it's one of your drafts rather than mine.

[e-mail]

Louis Mackie said:

Ugh, I spent ages typing up my draft but it wont submit it. I have it in stasis in a tab - should I open another window and copy-paste?

[Louis Mackie]

It turns out my introduction was too long but it didn't give me any sort of reminder.