With the last two mapping challenges producing few entries than we hoped for, I think it’s a good time to question the mapping challenges.

I have been running these for over 5 years now and there have been ups and downs throughout that time.

What I would like to do with this post is question almost every aspect of them and see if anything interesting comes up.

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From today, users of the PLAY archive pages can now view the author of almost each and every map.

Thanks goes to Jan for writing the code to make it happen, which was harder than it might have sounded because we had to extract the details from the post and put them into a custom field.

There are a few maps and mods that don’t have the details, but those are the ones that got truncated when I moved database servers, but at least it makes it easier for me to find them and then slowly update them.

I have tried to make as few changes as possible to the authors spelling but a couple of times I have made changes. For example I have change the Euro sign for an “e” in the hope that it makes it easy to find.

The Author column is sortable and filterable just like all the other columns, so finding maps by your favourite author should be easier than searching the site.

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Hi Everybody, every year around early Summer I run a donation drive. I don’t like asking for donations, but it’s necessary.

In the past, I have used some buttons and widgets to collect the money, but this year I couldn’t find any I liked (Chip-in has closed).

I will therefore be giving you my PayPal email address and asking you to make donations that way. I know for people without PayPal accounts, that’s not convenient but I can’t see another way to do – if you know a good way, please let me know.

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