In the Wanted: Players forum, here's what I think should be changed:

1. In the Search for Game Advertisements, the bottom right corner button should be "add filter" not "ad filter".  I'm adding an ad filter, but "ad filter" at first made me think that it would filter some sort of non-RPoL advertisements.

2. A new option should be added to the Search for Game Advertisements box that lets me filter out games which are not currently accepting new members.

H'mmm ...

1) -1.  I'm more than happy that "Ad Filter" is for filtering advertisements.  "Add Filter" doesn't sit right with me as a filter actually subtracts from the items being displayed. <grins>

2) +1.  GM has to have the requesting players flag on in their game to post the ad originally, but if they subsequently turn the flag off (assumedly because the game is full) then there's no point me looking at the ad and/or the game thread if I can't join anyway.  Not to say that others might not find some fun in that, otherwise I'd suggest only displaying ads where the game is still open (though that would probably be a huge system overhead if the code had to check every thread first before loading), so a compromise would be to have the same checkbox "only games accepting players" that you get on the browse/search the games link from the main page.

1.  What about "Filter Ads"?

2> +1 I'd like this, too.

In reply to Genghis the Hutt (msg # 1):

1.  Also -1.  You're filtering the ads, with an "ad filter".  Also, not sure why you'd think that "ad filter" refers to non-RPoL ads - only ads for RPoL games are permitted in the forum.

2.  +0.  Not sure how well filtering for games that are looking for players using the flag would work, since many GMs forget to turn it off.  I think that filtering by ad age is better.  If somebody went to the trouble of bumping the ad recently, that's a pretty good sign that they might still be taking players.

Not when you increase the time displayed from the nominal "last week" to last 2 or 3 weeks (or longer).  Then you get more games. :p

Well, it's been a year and a half at least since I last logged into RPoL and that button wasn't there before.  I wasn't sure what the button would do and I didn't want to click it at first.

I know, you'd think that, wouldn't you.  I thought that too.  I picked a game system and saw two games in the list.  I increased the time to three weeks and got ten or so games.  #3 and #4 in the list weren't accepting new players, but #5 was.  It would be cool if I could've filtered out #3 and #4 so that I didn't have to dip into the game to see if it was accepting new players or not.

While I'm dreaming, it would be nice to be able to filter games by GM name as well, either to show or to not show games by a particular GM.  Not show more than show.

You can already find game ads by a specific GM.  Use the Search link at the bottom left corner of the screen, select "Poster" and enter the GM's name as the search term.

That feature has been my friend a multitude of times in the past.

Is it possible to not show games by a specific GM?  That's what I'm more interested in, not show more than show.

Excluding certain keywords is doable with most major search engines, with the syntax possibly varying between them. I don't know if this site borrows an external engine to perform or uses its own however.

Ah, but that's because the selection is already filtered ... so you're actually changing what's being filtered to not subtract as many. :P

But yes, I take the point.  Lunarius's "Filter Ads" might be better for us pedants ... or even just "Filter" (as BBR says, what else are you going to filter there) ?

I think excluding particular GMs would be more trouble than it's worth, though ... weigh up the odds of there being so many of 'em you wouldn't want to play with and the likelihood of them actually advertising games when you're looking, and those games being in a system you're looking for - I'd rather keep the interface simple and just manually bypass any name that rings alarm bells.