Although Utopian reviewers do have a few tools for doing the reviews, some of them are not well maintained. They are updated when it is needed but not actively developed, which is a pity I would say. Thus I decided to give it a try and bring an alternative (set of) tools that could make the reviews easier and more comfortable to do.
The initial steps are going to be small, and I must warn you that the progress may be irregular. On the other hand, I take it as an opportunity to learn something new, e.g. to make a Chrome browser extension called UTmod. As @amosbastian started learning new things, I was far behind. But at least I can take his creation as a template when trying to configure tools such as webpack or browser manifest file.
Anyway, what is it about? I'd like to introduce a super early version of a browser extension that should ease the review process. UTmod currently does not contain many features. Though, I was able to recreate the review questionnaire and add a few things on top of it. You will not need to go to https://review.utopian.io anymore. At least that is the first goal.
UTmod features
Initial mockup of the extension
I started working on the design "sketch". I made a potential self-made design which I thought could work well. In the end, I took the mockup as a simple guide. The final version will be slightly different.
The idea was to have essential things visible all the time. In this case, it is the score. I took the idea of @amosbastian to include an additional slider to adjust score if needed. The more straightforward part of the implementation has been done, but as I mentioned at the beginning, it is not final.
Category questions
As expected, the questions are displayed according to the selected category. The extension is still bound to the list of the official questions. That means I had to preserve the order of data as a link to the review result is generated during the review. Other than that, extending the questions base should be quite easy and can be changed if needed as the questionnaire is generated dynamically.
Score
A part of the work was a redefinition of the scoring system. Unlike in the current questionnaire, I changed the model to utilise score weights multiplication. The range remains from 0 to 100, but it is going to be more dynamic thanks to the sliders. A reviewer will be able to adjust the score if they have a reason to do so.
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Review comment
The aim is to make it easy to write a review comment. For the moment, I added only a simple text area for custom comments. It is not mandatory to use it, but when you click the "Copy comment" button, your comment will be included as well. Otherwise, you will get the usual comment footer with a link to the review result and a link to the Discord server.
Todo
It is obvious the extension is not final, and its layout may not be the best. It works, but it will be improved.
- Adjust layouts.
- Style sliders, add checkpoints to it.
- Require a comment if the default score is changed.
- Post a comment from the extension directly.
- Add some features to the posts at steemit, busy, steempeak for readers to know the status of a contribution.
- Create icons for the extension.
- Other points will come in time.
Would you use such an extension? Which features would you like to see? Let me know in the comments.
Disclaimer: The extension has been created at my own discretion. Although the scoring model is working, it is an experiment and has not been officially approved by the Utopian team.
Repository
You can find the source code at https://github.com/espoem/UTmod-extension/.