Feature request: "Looking for team/players" about ctftime.org

[kyprizel]

Have you checked https://ctftime.org/dating/ ? May be it needs more documentation.

[gynvael]

Hmm, is it linked anywhere? It's the first time I see it.

Also, what's a "tag"?

[kyprizel]

There is a link in faq. Tag is a "tag", something like "web", "reversing" etc - there should be suggest.

[psifertex]

The page itself could certainly use a bit more explanation. Right now when I go there it's empty. Maybe only because I'm on a team already and there are no players looking to get picked up, but even just a short explanation at the top would be useful.

[kyprizel]

May be someone can help me with a text?

[psifertex]

I'm happy to help provide some text for it -- it's not entirely clear to me though how the process works. Anyone who isn't on a team has the option to enter tags describing their interests? And anybody looking for a player can filter on those tags?

[kyprizel]

You can filter people who marked "Looking for a team" and set skills in theis profiles.

[psifertex]

Ok, I see now, I played with it a bit, made issue #14 (which ironically has a typo itself in the title) to update the profile text, and then here's some suggested text for the /dating/ page:

---starttext----
Enter skills or tags to find CTF players interested in joining a new team. When players select 'Looking for a team' in their profile setting, they will appear here if you search for a skill they've entered. If you've entered your information there and no one has contacted you, you might be interested in the OpenToAll CTF team formed on reddit.
---endttext----

I think the biggest problem is that people might not have ideas of what to search for. I think some suggested tags (or even showing all tags in the database and letting people select them) would make a big difference. It would also be nice to list a total count on that page of the number of people looking for teams.

Once those changes are in place, I think promoting it via reddit/twitter/etc would be good to encourage more people to use it and be aware of it.

[kyprizel]

Thank you! Done. There is a tag suggestion when you start typing. Like "web" or "crypto" (may be we should add it to the text).

[psifertex]

Excellent, looks better. I still think it would be helpful to show all tags people have put in the database, but that's a good start.

Also, minor nitpick, but I think they'd look better in separate p tags, or just one big paragraph with no breaks instead of the br tags in between. Not a huge deal though, just a very minor suggestion.

[kyprizel]

I changed the behaviour - now only tags which can lead to some players suggested.

[psifertex]

I like it. Yeah, I think that interface is perfect. Be too much if the entire list were always shown. Very nice. @gynvael how's the new interface strike you? More clear how it works? I definitely think it's an improvement.

[gynvael]

So to bump up this thread - I've hired a small firm do patch up a site I had in mind - it's in Polish on purpose, since I don't want to collide with ctftime.org's dating system (rather than that, I wanted to fill an opening on the Polish CTF scene).
http://ctfteam.pl

I think doing a similar interface on CTFTime.org would be a little more user-friendly.

[kyprizel]

Nice! I like the idea marking team as "interested in new players". What the "Web/Crypto/etc" numbers mean?