Hey,
I was reading the newspaper and i noticed this article;

No suprises
No suprises at América-RN stadium as América-RN won the game in front of 54200 fans.

I know everyone has the right to write an article, but isn’t this one saying nothing?! America-RN won infront of fans….yeah ok? against who? With what score? I think those are the most importent elements for an article?

Nicky

Agreed. I’ll add some more information to this article and make sure the articles have at least the basic information when we approve them ;)

In fact, the plan is to have the link to the match (with the result) in all articles. So it is not mandatory to mention it on the text.

Now articles have that info. I am also planning one more addon to our newspaper functionality that will make the articles more interesting. Wait and see :D. cheers

Quality of articles will improve as time passes by… I am sure more suggestion will appear in the future as ppl get fed up of similar articles everyday…
But i think we could do something more about the space available in the newspaper. Most of the space for seems to have gone waste… Or is it just me who thinks so???

this is just a beta, there i coming more in the newspaper by time :)

Eheh And we have 2 articles like that, I used the option to correct “suprises” on that one but the option was to create another article :D
You can delete mine and correct the original…
The space available in the newspaper I believe its because there are not enouph templates to cover all the results…

i know:) :P well… three kinds of templates for three kinds of spaces… i believe there will be some more changes in the overall structure in the coming days…
i was actually saying about those spaces below the published articles … unpublished spaces will be covered as we go full fledged:)

We are working on that, Nicky (Vaughn) is also taking a look at what we have now and giving suggestions. The reason for the blank space below the articles is because each article size has a large range of possibilities. For example, the main article is somewhere between 560 and 1120 characters, so when a 560 characters articles is picked for that space there is a lot of free spaces. Don’t forget the fact that the articles will be translated and become bigger in most languages. Our translators will have a lot of work (me included) for next month updates :D

Are there any types of results that are lacking in articles? I imagine that a lot of people will have gone for certain types such as big win or big loss results! If so, let us know which ones you need more of.

On another note, it looks like the newspaper is generated every tick? I can’t always login after the main league game meaning that I miss the newspaper for the main results. How about publishing the last 3 newspapers so you I can go back and read it rather than reading about unimportant friendlies!

for those small articles on the top how about displaying only specific no of characters for other articles and an additional link ( for eg more) that would open the whole article. that would make them of uniform size in the front page

EDIT: why is this html formatting not working in forum:S

I thought about that. But that could make the newspaper a pain to read :). Or maybe not, lets see.

About the html formatting not working in the forum, I have noticed that a couple days ago..no idea :(

@Neil Green: these are the types of articles we have only 1 approved template for

The winner and the loser really were the expected teams – Small negative difference. Example: expectation 4×0 result 3×0
The winner and the loser really were the expected teams – Medium negative difference. Example: expectation 4×0 result 2×0
The winner and the loser were not the expected teams – Small difference. Example: expectation 1×0 result 0×1
The winner and the loser were not the expected teams – Medium difference. Example: expectation 1×0 result 0×2
Tied match result (Both teams scored the same number of goals) – Small difference. Example: expectation 1×0 result 1×1
Expected tie but one of the teams won – Large difference. Example: expectation 0×0 result 3×0

You guys don’t forget we need all 3 sizes ;)

Thanks!

my the then 16th placed team (levante, recently promoted ;) ) thrashed 8th placed Almeria by 4-0. isn’t that a newspaper item with spaces still available???
you guys will be facing lots of such questions in coming days:P ;)

Matches are not picked by surprising results but by importance. For instance, a legue match between the first and second places (no matter the score, could be 0×0) will have higher priority than yours, no matter the result. Of course this is just our initial approach, we were afraid that considering surprising results as an important factor would cause these results to dominate the newspaper.

gab, i found that:) my away game against getafe got on the headlines for those reasons you just stated. but i think proper articles are not being selected for the kind of matches. Levante led Getafe ( home game for getafe) for almost 80% of the game, but at the end lost 4-3 to Getafe. I am sure Getafe must have fielded second string players, but then levante did have its fair share of suspensions to most important players.

I am not complaining about my teams loss, but just saying that we can improve the kind of articles being selected based on the result. The article selected was something like " Getafe didn’t have any problem in beating levanted by 4X3 as expected". I think the kind selected were “Match Result As Expected” and “Score were as expected”, but should have been more like “Match Result As Expected” and “Small Positive Difference”. If the selection was correct then, may be we are making mistakes in writing articles. Something like phishing, where our function add(a,b) actually performs the subtraction operation.

i think submitting more articles is the only way forward.

i would also like to ask the relevance of this newspaper heading: “Bore draw leads to winning streak!” ?
How can a draw extend your winning streak? it might extend your “not losing streak” (or however you define it) but a winning streak…

Small Positive difference means 1 goal difference more than expected, so in this case you mean it should be small negative difference (expected 5-3 was 4-3). I believe that in this particular case the article selected did not have the sub-category, just the category “Match Result As Expected”.

You’re right about this heading, doesn’t seem right :D

Haha, that was one of mine. It was a play on words, “streak” as in “to run naked in public”, hence the reference to a streaker in the article. I think you’re right though, we all have to consider that English is not the first language of everyone here and therefore won’t necessarily understand the humour.

Just to pick up on something Nirabdha said, I understand that you have a selection criteria for which articles take priority, but should we not be picking at least enough matches to fill all the articles rather than leave gaps?

Any thoughts on being able to view the last 2 or 3 newspapers in case you miss the one after the main league tick?

Are there plans to be able to view newspapers for other leagues/countries eventually?

cheers.

I’m also not keen on articles which just state the match result given that we now have the same at the bottom of each article. It’s distracting that these are links that show up in green, it would look better if all the article text was black.

Filling the gaps: we thought about it, but soon we’ll have enough articles and there will be no gaps.

View the last 2 or 3 newspapers: we’ll have that.

Other countries newspaper: we’ll also have that, for now you can put the country number in the newspaper url, like http://www.rubysoccer.com/game/newspaper/1 will show you the newspaper for Brazil, FastTicker.

thought about my suggestion made my mail ? :)

how about using display name for reporters… sometimes i myself might be reporting my own game:( sounds quite weird at those situations when the manager (in the article) talks to himself and reports to the newspaper…:)

(we can always change our display names and they are different from the name we use as managers…)

@Vaughn: I’ll let this one for Danilo :)
@Nirabdha: I don’t think that’s problem, it’s just there to let everybody know who wrote that article…a few people like me use the same display name and full name

Just a little one… Benfica v Brest result in the newspaper was in as a draw, Brest won on pens. Just something that needs tweaking

@Vaughn: I am on a tough week at work. Will get back to this as soon as possible.

I saw an error in an article I had written when it appeared in the newspaper so thought I’d correct it with the “suggest another text for this article” button in the actual newspaper. What this actually seems to do is allow you to do is submit a brand new article which will be very similar to the original. I now have two almost identical articles that have been approved, one of them with mistakes.

Might be good to have the facility to edit and also delete your own approved articles. Perhaps the “suggest another text….” button in the newspaper article should be to propose amendments to the original editor as mistakes are found rather than create a new one?

If you have time, perhaps you could delete the earlier version of my article titled “%{match.loser_team.name} self-destruct” – the one that lists the same team playing itself!

By the way, excellent work on the newspaper so far, I think it’s a great start!

The idea is that, after approval, you cant delete or change it anymore. But you can send a message to us so we can edit it :D. I will take care of this one…

Great thanks.

I was thinking that the edit facility would allow you to make changes to your own articles which would then be resubmitted for approval in the same way as the new articles, so you guys can still keep control. Might be easier than emailing you guys and trying to explain what the mistake!