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This page is a reverse-chronological list of the changes that the X-Day Manager has made to the X-Day 2003 web site since October 22nd, when the first public email announcement for the opening of X-Day 2003 was sent. You should make note of any items that have changed since your last visit, since they may affect how you participate in X-Day 2003 or otherwise use this website. This is *not* a list of differences since X-Day 2002 and earlier.
2004 June 11: The graphics for the award winners are finally posted. Sorry for the 6-month delay, but there was a good reason. The person who volunteered to make these graphics, Dra, had suffered a hard computer crash before the graphics could be delivered, and it took all this time to afford to get a replacement computer and finish the job. But finish them she has, and they are now posted, ready for your taking.
2004 April 5: This web site has now been archived, in a manner of speaking. It still uses a live database. I plan to convert this archived site into static files within a few months, freeing up the database for X-Day 2004.
2004 January 12: I made some updates to the "Results"->"2004 Plans" page, these two being the largest: 1. The 2004 X-Day will have two separate sub-events that run back to back, which are the "showcase" and the "competition"; the first lets you show off what you did and gather feedback, in a non-competitive environment; the second lets you pick a smaller number of your creations and have them compete for awards with those of others (that the winners keep), and winners are picked based on a sum of weighted votes (weighted lets you pick several). 2. The rule to separate slash into its own category has been removed; in its place is a better description for what goes in Elseworlds, which is basically anything that can't be reconciled with canon (see the details to understand this).
2004 January 10: I have posted the final official award winners list, with some improvements, and you can see them now under "Results and Winners". These are the official results, and submissions have only won an award if they show 1st, 2nd, etc beside them. Some other worthy submissions have not won awards because their creators have 3 of the same type already. Even if your submission did not get an award, you can still cite its rating number on any promotional literature. There were 100 awards handed out altogether, to 60 participants, out of 397 competing submissions. Let me officially declare that the fact this came to exactly 100 was a complete fluke; I didn't plan it that way at all. Other small changes were made on the site.
2004 January 4: I have finished all the remaining work on this website, save a bit of clean-up, and archiving. I have compiled the final official award winners list, and it is ready to display now, except that I am giving my staff a day or two to look it over for mistakes (there are many differences from the ratings lists). I have added the pages "X-Day Improvement Survey Results" and "Initial Plans for the 2004 X-Day" under "Results and Winners", where you can see them right now, and give me extra feedback if you want.
2003 December 31: Added the page which shows the main popular rating/voting results for this year, consisting of the numerical rating averages and breakdowns, plus the credited feedback comments. The page for the award winners is not yet done; they will be taken from the top items on the existing results page, but some top items won't get awards.
2003 December 29: Shut down all site editing functions. You may no longer log in, edit anything, or create accounts. The Survey is also closed. Reenabled the View Submissions pages.
2003 December 21: Closed the Rating Period, and temporarily also closed the View Submissions pages. You can still edit your Survey responses or your public profile for the next few days, until the 2003 Winners are announced.
2003 December 18: Removed the under-rated submissions notices from the View Submissions and View Participants pages. As a result, the Submissions List pages will load a lot faster (say, in 2 seconds instead of 8), and they will look less cluttered.
2003 December 10: A few easy to do changes that were inspired by early Survey responses. 1. Updated the Participant List screen so that only the X-Day participants who have either entered submissions or who have edited their public profile (a 'P' is beside their name) appear in this list. Now people who just come to vote/rate won't appear on the list unless they want to be. Also added a count of all participants to the header, including those not listed. 2. Updated both screen types where lists of submissions appear (View Submissions, participant details) so that it is easy to know at a glance (with a '*CW*') which submissions have content warnings attached to them. Since about 25% (110) of submissions have content warnings, this will help people who don't want to see them avoid a lot of trial-and-error clicking. I also cleared the warnings for about 2-dozen submissions that triggered false-positives, saying things like 'no warnings' or 'rated G'. Note that the remaining warnings run the gamut from mild to serious; if you think one actually shouldn't have a warning, given context, then write me about it.
2003 December 9: 1. Five accounts were disabled today because their email boxes were bouncing messages; in some cases, the email box no longer exists, and in others, the mailboxes were full. 2. Updated the message that appears when a disabled account tries to log in; it now says the reasons are mainly because the email box no longer exists or is full. 3. Updated message beside the 'you are not logged in' to name some web browsers that don't allow you to change their proxy settings, and ones that do.
2003 December 8: 1. Added new screen 'Survey to Improve X-Day' which will operate until the end of the competition, closing when the Rating/Voting period does. 2. The submissions list is now frozen for the rest of X-Day 2003, and the Rating/Voting period will continue for the next 2 weeks.
2003 December 4: 1. The remaining dates for X-Day 2003 have been finalized. You have until 23:59 of December 7th to make any corrections to your existing submission details that may be needed. After that, the submission details will be frozen for the last 2 weeks. The Rating period will close at 23:59pm of December 21st, at which point all editing functions on the site will close; until the 21st close, new accounts may still be made and public profiles updated. 2. Updated the on-site documentation relating to Awards. The details for determination of winners are now finalized. The Artistic Quality rankings that voters give to submissions are now the only numbers that will determine whether they win or not (highest average number wins). The Subject Appreciation number and the text comments do not contribute to awards, and are for informational purposes only. (Previously it was said that the Subject may contribute 1/4 of the weight but that was stated as not finalized.) In light of this, you may want to review the ratings you have already given, if you gave different numbers to Quality and Subject (if they were the same, the rule change will have no effect). A second effect of this change is that now only the Artistic Quality has to be valued by 5 people for a submission to qualify to win. 3. The code to count under-rated subs will now only look for non-zero AQ values. 4. Placed reminder of above change by the voting form (only AQ counts towards awards). 5. Updated the voting rules to expressly forbid co-ordinated group voting (when multiple people give the same numbers to the same submissions on instruction of one person). While legal in general politics; people should think for themselves here.
2003 December 3: 1. Now the under-rated summary count isn't on the initial View/Rate Submissions screen either (as it made that gateway page slow); it was put on its own, optional page. 2. More active subcategory consolidation. On Fan Web Sites, 2 subcategories were joined into 1 (archives), and 2 more were removed from lack of submissions (news/journalism and games), and 5 were left unchanged. On Fan Art, 2 were removed from lack of submissions (image manip portraits, collages), and 12 were left unchanged. On Fan Media, 5 were removed from non-use, and 3 were unchanged. So now there are 33 active subcategories left for this year.
2003 December 2: 1. Fixed a design flaw regarding the 'View/Rate Submissions' pages which made them a lot slower to load than they should be, currently about 10-15 seconds rather than 1-5. (The slow-down was linear with the number of ratings being given, and would have worstened over time.) Specifically, it was the count of under-rated submissions which appeared in the View Submissions main submenu; this calculation was expensive and it was being redone for every View Submissions page. I moved these numbers so that they now only display (and are calculated) on the initial View Submissions screen, for those who want to know. Now the list screens load in 1-4 seconds, and the detail screens in 1 second, as it should be. 2. The active subcategories have started being consolidated, so empty ones no longer show up, and those with very few submissions were consolidated with others, where they are compatible. Today the Fan Fiction was done, with 4 subcategories being joined into 2 (Poetry and Serials), and 10 left unchanged.
2003 November 30: A few site updates to correspond to the closing of the Submissions Period, done at midnight tonight. 1. You can no longer add new submissions; however, you can make fixes to existing ones for a little while. 2. All submissions can now be rated, including those flagged not to be rated early (it's no longer early). 3. Updated info on the main page.
2003 November 27: Performed a complete backup of the X-Day 2003 database, from the web server to my own computer, during the hour between 15:20 and 16:20 PST. While nothing on the site itself changed, every account, submission, and rating stored in the database prior to that time now has extra protection against disaster. Likewise all code and documentation is in both places on a daily basis. I will now proceed to make another twin copy of everything on to CD.
2003 November 26: Major updates were made to the Archives section. Most of the X-Day 2000 web site is uploaded, as much as I could salvage so far (but most of the 2000 fan art image files seem to be corrupted for some reason, which I will have to look into). Better news: A pristine copy of the entire X-Day 1999 website has also been uploaded; this was copied from the still-live original on GeoCities (1999 is the only previous X-Day original site that still seems to be working). Finally, the submissions list page has been uploaded for each of 1998, 1997, and 1996. Mysteries still remain though, such as, was there an X-Day before 1996? A comment on the 1996 page seems to suggest this.
2003 November 25: 1. Removed the boolean question, 'are you a friend of this creator' from the rating forms, plus all references to it in the documentation. Now there is just two numerical rating questions and the text box for comments. The removed question was of dubious value before, and in most circumstances its result wouldn't have been used; it was also confusing some voters as to what it means. 2. Added new subcategory 'Hand Drawn With Computer Colouring: Multiple Version Collections' where a single submission has multiple images, all of which are derived from the same original. 3. Changed the order that the Fan Media subcategories are displayed; the 3 that actually have submissions are now all at the top of the list, so they are more visible. 4. The deadline for new submissions is now solidified at 23:59 of November 30th; updates of existing ones will be allowed for a few days after.
2003 November 23: 1. Updated the View/Rate Submissions lists so that submissions which can not be rated early are no longer included in the counts of submissions which are currently under-rated, and they no longer have the '*' beside them. It was futile to draw voters' attention to submissions which they can't rate yet. Also, the count beside the main Submissions list submenus has now been reversed, so the second number is now the number of submissions that *are* under-rated (just like those by the subcategory headings).
2003 November 22: 1. Updated the Create Account section so that it no longer includes the new account password in the report when saying the account creation worked; it neither shows up in the HTML success message nor in the generated email; however, the 'password reminder' functionality still works as before, which never showed the password in the web page. 2. Minor update to the same section so that all generated emails start with 'X-Day 2003' and not just 'X-Day'. 3. Fixed a bug in the Participant list where sometimes a person's submission count was too low. 4. Fixed a bug in the Submissions lists where sometimes it says a person didn't rate a submission when in fact they did. 5. Updated the View/Rate Submissions lists, both the main one and the one under each participant, so it shows which submissions have been rated by at least 5 participants or not; you should consider those which are under-rated to be a higher priority when looking for something to rate next, assuming you are qualified and interested.
2003 November 21: 1. Updated the Submissions and Participants viewer pages so that when you are logged in you can see right in the list what rating you gave to each submission; this should make it easier to find ones you haven't rated yet, and do some comparisons between ones you have. 2. Updated the View Participants main list so it shows a count of submissions entered beside each person's name.
2003 November 19: 1. Fixed a bug in the 'View/Rate Submissions' (and 'View/Rate Participants') screens which caused submissions to disappear from the lists after someone had rated them. Thanks to all of you who reported the problems which stemmed from this. And no, you didn't do anything wrong; and submissions are not supposed to disappear when you rate them. So you should now be able to resume viewing and rating the submissions without problems. Now, given the nature of the problem, I do not think that any info in the database was actually damaged; however, feel free to go back to submissions that you rated and check that the rating or comment values are what you expect. 2. Added a notice to the Login/Logout screen which appears if your account is disabled. I had to disable an account today because their email address stopped working for several days (DNS lookup on the domain failed), as did the person's website. Putting a note on my site is the only means I have left to communicate with said person. But the message I left isn't person-specific.
2003 November 18: The rating/voting period has begun. Created the public detail screens for viewing and rating the submissions. Updated the list under 'View/Rate Submissions' so each list item is now a hyperlink to said detail screens. Also updated the 'View/Rate Participants' screen so it now lists all of a participant's (approved) submissions in one place; you can also go to the submission detail screen from that list. This new functionality is still rough around the edges, but it should be fully working.
2003 November 17: Created the first version of the 'View/Rate Submissions' screens. You should go there now and see if all of your submissions are accounted for and appear in the right places, such as the correct subcategory and competitive status (items not approved by a judge won't appear anywhere, of course). Currently just the main list is visible; you can't click on the list items yet to view their details. If you need this, then wait until tomorrow.
2003 November 16: Migrated all the web site data to a new back-end database, and switched the web site code to use the new location. There was 540K of data migrated, which consisted of 3195 records in 20 tables. This included the data for 100 user accounts, 56 user profiles, and 157 submissions. Note that the tables for storing ratings/votes are not created yet.
2003 November 15: All documentation updates: 1. Added a piece of troubleshooting documentation to the 'you are not logged in' message about not using proxy servers when you have trouble staying logged in; 3 people have reported problems staying logged in, and more may have been afflicted. 2. Added a reminder to the top of the 'Manage Submissions' page so that submitted web sites make sure to link back to the X-Day 2003 site; this link omission is a common problem and causes the web site to be rejected for listing. 3. Added new page 'Awards' under 'Details and Rules' to describe how the X-Day award winners will be determined from the voting period results. 4. Updated submission rules page to better describe how image manipulation art should be submitted. 5. Updated the Judges general documentation page page to better describe the process judges follow when evaluating entries for listing (the info was moved there from the Judge Submissions page). 6. Updated several pages to explicitely say that the voting period will overlap with the submissions period, they used to say the periods would not overlap.
2003 November 12: 1. Corrected a bug relating to the handling of the '&' character (and others) in user-entered urls when they are displayed; that bug would cause a 'broken link' when the url is actually correct. 2. Added a Delete button in 'Manage Submissions' so participants can remove extra submissions that they create by mistake; this button is only available until a submission has been approved by a judge.
2003 November 7: I have finished creating the 'Judge Submissions' screens, which are used by the X-Day Judges to do things like approve submissions for public listing, or to reject them temporarily citing things to fix, or to move entries to different subcategories where necessary. I also updated the 'Manage Submissions' page so that participants who had any submissions rejected will be able to respond, either by fixing or refuting the problem, and putting their submission back on the 'to evaluate' queue.
2003 November 4: 1. Made further refinements to 'Manage Submissions', such as making it easy to test the urls that you entered for each submission, including X-Day Hosted ones, and such as showing you the listing approval status for each; 2. Small update to 'Use FTP Server' by adding a note to say where to point your web browser when looking for X-Day Hosted subs that you uploaded (currently http://xday.info/hosted_subs_2003/).
2003 November 3: 1. Updated the 'Manage Submissions' pages so that they enforce the 'maximum competing submissions' rule that is mentioned on the 'Details and Rules' pages; the submissions list page also gives you feedback on your current situation, saying how many more items of each category you can make competitive. 2. Added new page 'Use FTP Server' which explains how to upload submissions that you want hosted on the X-Day web server; so you can now use this feature if you need it.
2003 November 1: 1. Added some shared code which records email and database errors to a log file, so that I would be aware of them; previously the error conditions were simply printed on the visitors' screen; 2. fixed a bug in the 'login' mechanism which caused a 'duplicate key' database error under some circumstances, preventing login, such as when the visitor switches computers while already logged in and tries to login again; 3. added a mandatory 'year made' field to 'Manage Submissions', which I forgot to add initially; the field defaults to 2003, but should be changed if applicable; 4. updated the main menus to reflect that the voting/rating page is now combined with the 'View Submissions' page; form fields for rating rateable submissions appear beside them when you are logged in.
2003 October 30: Updated the 'Manage Submissions' pages to smooth out some rough edges, and retested them: 1. added/modified some instructional text on the form to clarify when you are editing an existing submission vs adding a new one; 2. added a human-readable error message for the quality control check that insures each submission has a unique title and url; 3. updated the 'url' fields so that they can handle relative urls for any submissions hosted on the X-Day server; 4. added a new form field that lets you specify whether other visitors are allowed to start rating (voting) your submission right away, or whether they have to wait until the submissions period ends (in case you're not ready yet); 5. removed the indicator of whether the submission was approved by a judge for listing or not (it will go on a different page instead).
2003 October 28: 1. The submissions period has begun. Created the initial 'Manage Submissions' forms, which let you register your new submissions for listing, as well as let you edit the details of earlier entered submissions. 2. Overhauled the archives section regarding X-Day 2002 and X-Day 2001; some files were moved around, broken links were fixed, and older duplicates of various files were removed.
2003 October 27: 1. A site-wide update was made today concerning background details in the database and the code; the database was partly restructured to store information in a different way, and the code was updated to work with the changes. All the site forms were re-tested to make sure they still work. They should look the same as before. Some work was done towards making the submissions forms, but they aren't useable yet. Also, a consideration was made, and posted on the front page, to make the voting period overlap with the submissions period; it would be done in a way that works.
2003 October 24: Some updates to the Archives section to have proper links to the works for each year.
2003 October 23: 1. The per-subcategory limit of 2 has been removed, while the main category limit of 10 remains; this was changed to prevent unfair situations based on a technicality of what sub-category a work is placed in. 2. Built the screen 'Edit Profile', so you can now enter the personal details that you want to appear on your 'about the author' page, which was also built today, under 'View Participants'.
2003 October 22: The initial public release. The Details and Rules are basically finalized, although they may be revised further based on user feedback. I have coded the functionality for you to create an X-Day account, be reminded of your password, and log into your account.
If you choose to bookmark this web site for later, or link to it from your own web site, please use this url: "http://www.xday.info".
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This site has been designed to be fully useable on any web browser; you should be able to navigate to all site pages, use all input forms, and read all of the site text, including all Fan Fiction. However, this site is graphics-oriented and will look better in a relatively new web browser that supports images and cascading style sheets; obviously, you also will need graphics support to view the Fan Art. The site should be fast even to dial-up modem users.
This web site displays and/or incorporates creative works by a wide variety of people; each work is Copyright (c) by its contributor, and they are credited in each place where their work is displayed in full or in part. Portions of this web site that do not have explicit credits, including the main organizational design, textual history or instructions, visual layouts, graphics, and program or database code, are Copyright (c) Darren Duncan and/or Shannon Pipik.
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Site last updated 2004 June 11.