GazelleGames News - Site Improvements & Hiring

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Hello GGn community!

Site Improvements
As part of our ongoing effort of improving the stability of the site, our developers have been hard at work on optimizations and upgrades for various systems. While a lot of these changes have been behind the scenes, we'd like to use this announcement to highlight some of the changes that are more visible to everyone. Of course, this effort isn't finished, and we'll keep working on further improving site systems.

Hit 'n' Runs
After some improvements to the Hit 'n' Run scheduler, we've been able to finally turn it back on. This means that Hit 'n' Run status and ShareScore seeding time should now again be displayed correctly. We haven't stopped there, however, and made two fundamental changes to Hit 'n' Runs:
First, we've removed ratio as a way of clearing a Hit 'n' Run. Previously, a ratio of 0.8 used to prevent a torrent from becoming a Hit 'n' Run. This change was already announced several years ago and the Ratio rules adjusted accordingly but the code wasn't actually changed with that announcement. This remnant of the old system has now been removed; all torrents will need to be seeded for at least 80 hours in order to clear their Hit 'n' Run status.
Second, Hit 'n' Runs will no longer apply to users that have reached Elite Gamer or any higher user class. They will not receive any Hit 'n' Runs nor be subject to Hit 'n' Run Watch.

ShareScore
We've also fixed a minor issue with ShareScore, where the Snatched/Seeding statistic actually took all torrents into account — even deleted ones. This has been changed to only consider torrents that still exist on the site, which should lead to an overall increase in ShareScore.

Reviews
We implemented a new reviews page for both groups and users. If you've ever added any reviews, you can check the new page out here or alternatively view them directly on a game group. We have also significantly increased the maximum character limit of reviews to around 10,000 characters. In addition, reviews can now make full use of bbcode and come with a fancy new editor. If you ever wanted to have a graphic novel as your review, now's your chance! On the group page, reviews will still be limited to a reasonable length with a 'Read more' button to display it in its entirety. Most bbcode will also be stripped from the game page itself to ensure the new feature isn't distracting when browsing a group.

Freeleech Pots & Better.php
There's two more minor additions that have been made: Freeleech pots now increase in price whenever they are filled and decay linearly to their base price over the next 100 days. We hope this will serve as an encouragement for a more diverse range of groups put on freeleech. An image showcasing the price increase effect can be found here. Further, we've added a better page that displays a list of common issues with torrents and groups. This feature should help in improving the overall quality of the site, as well as showing opportunities to help build ratio.

We'd also like to take this opportunity to thank our DEVs who continuously put in a lot of hard work to make these and other improvements come to life.


Hiring

Torrent Moderators
But developing new features and breaking existing ones isn't all that it takes to run the site! We also rely on staff members in a variety of positions to moderate the site. In that regard, we are currently looking for people that would be interested in a TM position for:
PS3/PS4
Retro (DOS, Atari, etc.) games
OSTs
E-Books
Tabletop games

If you are interested and believe you'd make a good candidate, please consider sending in your application. For more information on what is required and how to apply, please visit the latest TM Hiring thread.

Community Moderators
Torrents aren't everything, though, as we're also looking for new Community Moderators to help in planning and organizing various events, updating resources and wiki articles, as well as interacting with the community in pro-active ways. There's a variety of areas where we're looking to bolster our staff team, so if at least one of those sounds interesting to you, please visit the latest CM Hiring thread for more information.

Art Team
Finally, for the few people that have artistic talent, just like to scribble around, or really want to see that parrot pet become a reality, we are also looking for one or two interested users to join the Art team. If you're interested, see this thread for information on how to apply.

GGn Staff