Lists are a Changing

Hey Gang,

Today were pushing a lot of code that has a lot of changes, one of those big changes is how were changing Lists. I know lists have been mostly unstable since launch, mainly because we did not account for the incredibly large lists that sites like Comicvine and Giantbomb support. So in order to accomodate these larger lists we've had to restructure how lists work. Here's an overview of the changes.

Unordered vs Ordered

The big change with lists is that we've introduced two kinds of lists: Ordered and Unordered. Ordered lists are the same old lists your used too, except now they have one caveat: They can have a maximum of 100 items. I know some people might find that number to be a bummer, but its a number we settled on being able to support from a backend point of view and a front end point of view.

On the flip side of that though, Unordered lists can be any possible size! You can have as many things associated to them as you want, and the pages will actually load now.

What about my old lists?

Don't worry if you are worried about your old lists being too long now that there's a limit on Ordered lists. This change will not break any old lists. Those lists will still be viewable (even large ordered lists will now be properly paginated so you can view them), it's just lists going forward that will have these limitations.

We've also included tools for you to be able to convert your old unordered lists to the new ordered lists. If your list has more than 100 items you will have to do this if you want to continue to edit it. (Although beware, due to worries of database problems the other direction can only be done by mod request)

End Times

So this is the major change to lists I've been working on for a while, to make them work again. I'm really sorry that they have been so buggy for so long. I'm also sorry that for some people I know 100 items is going to seem too small for an ordered list. If the demand for larger ordered lists exists, we may be able to bump that number up a bit.

I've tried to make the new ui pretty self explanatory, but if anyone is having trouble please post here and I can try and elaborate.

Thank you for your time,

Ian

More like The Beginning Of Good Times!

Thanks for all the hard work, Ian and crew! Always fun to see changes and imrovements on the site.

Hey @marino, its time for you to make your case why your ordered lists should be infinite size!

It's nice to see this communication.

Question: Do lists still allow duplicate entries? My preference is that they don't allow duplicate entries. I don't have a feel for what most people want, though.

Yes they do allow for duplicate entries.

New notifications and now this? You lads have been busy! Thanks! Ill try to properly update my "Games Ive S-Ranked" list now.

Tell me all you know about Lists and Sets!

I converted an ordered list to an unordered list. I can't remove items from it now. It says that it saved and it reloads the list, but the items I deleted remain.

@014: Which list and which items?

@014: Actually I am able to reproduce. Will investigate and fix ASAP.

A bit bummed out that my Pages Created list can't be ordered any more, it was nice to have the pages in the order I made them. Though I suppose I can just make new ordered lists as needed. Will old 100+ ordered list expire at any point? I like to just keep it around if I can.

@blacklagoon: Old 100+ lists will not. Also the order of the unordered lists is the order that you add them to the list. So if you add a new item to it, it will always be at the end (I plan to allow asc/desc later).

Haha went back to look at some of my old lists and some of them look pretty silly now. The previous site didn't allow paragraphs for item description text but if you inserted HTML code you could get it to work. Unfortunately that means that if anyone were to look at those lists now they'd seem random "<br>" inserted after each paragraph.

A fix for deleting items from the ordered lists will be coming soon, may have to wait till after GBs live stream.

Why limit it to 100? Seems like a weird restriction to have in 2013.

@tmthomsen: Its a combination of a limitation of the backend and the ui. It may not seem like it but dealing with ordered lists that have a lot of items in them can kill the backend (if you have a 1000 item list, and you move item 999 to item 333 thats 666 rows that need to be updated, which is something that could be exploited). It's also hard to make a good ui on the front end for dealing with ordering list items across pages.

The specific # 100 was decided as a good limit we know we are safe supporting on the backend, and a number that makes sense for the most common list use case (Top lists, which getting beyond 100 become unwieldy)

I'm a bit confused, you say the old lists are still viewable, but what about editing? Will my old list freak out if I try to add to it?

If your list has more than 100 items you will have to do this if you want to continue to edit it.

Does this mean that I HAVE to convert it to Unordered in order to edit it without breaking it? As I see it now, my old list is Ordered by default.

Ranking things is too hard, so unordered lists make me happy.

Nice! Glad to see this repaired and updated. Should just about be like Christmas for us fans of @mento.

Been trying to add Ni No Kuni , Bioshock Infinite and Tekken Revolution to my list here to no avail. =(

http://www.giantbomb.com/profile/demoskinos/lists/my-current-s-rank-list/77972

I hate you! Now my video game collection list I've been working on putting on the site for 4 years can never be fully realized.

(Side note: I'm just kidding, I kind of gave up on that when Darkadia stole my list creativity away by being a way easier list creation website, but it gets data from Giantbomb so in a round about way it's still within the family)

@ltsquigs Is there any intention to bring back the ability to insert clickable links to individual items on lists? I used basic html code to do this. I use links a lot in my Free PC Games list and found it a very useful way to give people convenient access to the game itself as well as cite official sources to lend legitimacy to the information.

I turned my "Games I beat list" into an unordered list because I passed 100 and now it's alphabetized anymore. I HATE YOU

I clicked "Save Page" on my 200+ item list then it saved the list with 60+ items, then I deleted it because fuck.

I've heard on the Xbox ONE your lists can be a 1000 long!

Okay, so here's what's wrong with this.

• When I checked my Wish List, which was ordered and had over 100 items (as it already existed prior to this update), the first item in the list was ranked #2.

• The first page of the list ended at item #94, and if I wanted to keep editing the list I had to go to the second page on the list. Yet doing this would discard all the edits I had made to the first page, since it had to actually load a new page altogether, and not just run some script or something.

• After I converted my Wish List to an "Unordered List" the items within it were completely scrambled. Everything is out of order now and that's incredibly frustrating. They might not be numbered, but that does not mean that I don't want them in a particular order.

I'm glad that lists are finally working well again (though I thought they already were? I haven't had issues in months I think), but these seem to be some oversights that you guys could get to.

Thanks for all the hard work Ian.

I spent hours putting my collection in chronological order. I have something like 60 games (I bought an iOS device for the first time in the middle of May) to add to it. This limitation is... I don't fucking know what to do. I can't have my collection in random order and even if it doesn't shuffle when you add items it being impossible to add items to the head of the list just... makes it impossible to continue. Fuck me. What the fuck am I supposed to do?

I guess... I could split them into 4 lists of arbitrary length differentiated by random benchmarks? Maybe. Alright, the end of the list of 302. The first current generation game is at 215. That's less than a 100, that's one. Let's see... second arbitrary distinction... When I found Giant Bomb? That would be at... 152. That's less than a hundred, that's a list. Let's see... Should split the remaining list in two and then use "Bought an iPhone" to mark off the current stuff. Let's see... The point where I got a PS3 at 80? No, fuck that, not big enough. How about the 3DS point? Where's that at? 92. Perfect.

Okay, gameplan. Make 5 lists to contain 360 items plus any that will come in in the future.

-List One: Childhood List (Nintendo)

-List Two: Current Gen Before Giant Bomb (360 + Wii/DS + TF2)

-List Three: Current Gen Up To Release of 3DS (360 + Wii/DS + PC)

-List Four: Current Gen Up To Purchase of iPhone (360 + Wii U/Wii/3DS + PS3 + PC)

-List Five: iPhone Purchase Up To Next Gen (Everything Available)

List 6 will be next gen until that list fills up. God only knows how I'll section that off when the time comes. Maybe I'll just have to be more picky to avoid filling up these damn lists.

There is an order to unordered lists. Its the order that you add the items in. (For converted lists, it may be a bit wonky as we didn't use to store that data)

Totally not posting something on our staging server to test some stuff!

I think 100 is too low of a number, it pretty much makes me want to stop keeping track of my collection and games I have beaten because they are out of order, also the unorderness(?) feels completely random since I had to convert it. Just my 2 cents, take 'em or leave 'em.

I have now 5 lists to keep track of my collection. This was the only solution that would allow me to keep them in strict chronological order with newer games on top. If anyone wants to check them out that'd be cool, I did just spend a few hours getting it all together. It has ratings and a paragraph or so of opinion for each game!

• Part 1: Childhood (SNES, N64, GBA, Gamecube and DS) (First)
• Part 2: Last Gen PreGB (DS, 360, Gamecube, Wii & TF2)
• Part 3: Last Gen PostGB (DS, 360, Wii & PC)
• Part 4: New Hardware Begins (3DS, 360, Wii, Wii U, PS3 & PC)
• Part 5: After iPhone (3DS, 360, Wii U, PS3, iOS, Vita & PC) (Current)
• Special Edition: Kickstarter

Edit: Hey, someone voted down 3 of them! Why would you do such a thing to lists I spent hours and hours on? Also I added a Kickstarter Special Edition to list games I've kickstarted. It is a list of 2.

@rchen Hey man ignore this post, its a test.

This was quite the disappointing change, given that my list of completed games will have to be split into many separate lists if I wish to keep it in some sort of order. On the other hand it forced me to finally split my list of games owned into multiple lists, based on system. I like ordered lists far more than random, but I'll survive.

I just converted my Games beat list, It was at 172 items and now it says 110. This was the only place I had my information tracked and I am going to be pretty sad if I cannot get this fixed. The other issue is I didn't know it was changed where a game you have on the list can be added a second time and now no matter how many times I hit remove Persona 4 golden is on there three to four times and a few others. Please find a way to get my previous version of my list back -_- You don't even have to fix the issue just send me a copy of the list! I really miss the old Giantbomb site -_- quests and lists were perfect -_-

I just lost about 90 items on my collection list (approx 300 long) after converting to an unordered list and then trying to add a new item. Not sure what happened, but might be worth checking in case it is a common bug?

I just lost ~80 items from my list when saving after deleting a single item. It was already unordered. I also had some of my items added to both the first page and last page right before that.

Luckily I found a Google cache of the list :/ (@eightbitshik maybe you can try doing that too? Google for your list and check the cached page)

@ftomato: Thanks, getting a cached version of the list worked for me too!

I just lost about 30 items off my list, which is a huge bummer. Anyway to get em back?

@ftomato: I just lost another 100 items!!! Ahhhhhh wtf are you guys doing to me giving me a heart attack :(! and Ftomato thank you for that, I'll give it a shot after I go to the store and get something to drink to calm down O_o

The cache did help a lot, I still fill like I'm missing things. It's pretty sad that there hasn't been a response to this yet and how poorly the new system is. Very disappointed.

@ltsquigs

Just checking to see if the issue of people having items deleted off their lists is fixed or not. Giant Bomb is currently the only place I keep a list of "Games I've Beaten" with the info filled out. It's a list I've kept updated for several years now.

Please add an option to invert the order (or keep the new elements on the top), I'd like to have the new games first