Board Game Arena

Usually I report a bug from time to time. And I like to testing Beta Games. But, after I put some custom styles to make text from Games Notes bigger, I can't access to the bug page anymore.

It's really annoying to have to remove my custom styles, report the bug and activate them again.

I didn't even knew what was the problem until I read some answers from developers on the forums. Of course, I understand the point of view of them. But we, as users that want to test games and report bugs to fix them and improve them (also for free), deserve some consideration: If find that the current message on bug page with no real explanation is very rude.

I updated this bug report about this problem and proposed the same solution that have been already proposed some time ago: Add a switch, so we can activate/deactivate it: https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=12363

With no information about why access is blocked, people is only removing, posting, restoring. So the problem is the same: No one is retesting the game without the custom css.

Please, remove you css one more time and vote up this bug, so we can be taken in consideration.

Thank you!

There's others post about this problem:
https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=195530
https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=71083

I get the frustration, and I have voted for your report (in spite of it not affecting me personally), but I'm a little unclear how a button to deactivate, and reactivate (assuming it is in your profile) is much more convenient than dumping your CSS into a text file and then putting it back after interacting with the bug tracking area.

Conversely, if people realise this is why they can't raise/vote for bugs, as others have pointed out, users will disable, raise/vote for the bug (without checking that it WASN'T due to their CSS), so I'm not sure the feature is doing what BGA thinks it is anyway. Maybe they think enough people won't realise. I suspect it would be better to indicate a user has custom CSS when they raise a bug and/or have them attach it in some way to the bug.

Thank you very much for your vote.

IMO, a button is more convenient because it's easier and less effort to "only click on that button twice" than open a Notepad, cut the CSS, click "Save", dumping it on the Notepad, and then, copy from Notepad, close it, paste and click on "Save". And there's the risk to make some mistake on the CSS when copy and paste.

If you want people to help for free (submitting bugs) give them an easy way to do it. As more effort needed, less people is going to do it.

Even for the testing, it's easier: I click on the check to deactivate, refresh the game page and see if the bug is there, I click on it to activate and check the differences..

Yeah, see, even if you deactivate it to check the bug, what happens if it IS because of your CSS? How do you figure out which part of your CSS is the problem (short of cutting out huge chunks and process of elimination, which requires the notepad and copy-paste thing)? Even if someone does figure out which part is the problem, how does the player decide if that's still a bug, or if it's improper use of CSS? This is why I feel like it's better to give the dev your CSS, and they can take a look at that - hopefully the dev should have an idea looking at CSS and the bug whether they're likely to be connected. Even if they're unsure on some, they can rule out others to, yes, this is a bug or no, that's your CSS causing issues.

Diagnosing bugs is a big part of my day job, and I can't tell you how many times I cannot solve a bug until I basically get a copy of a customer's specific config to test with. Sometimes the answer is, oh, you're doing that thing, yeah, that's not how you use that feature and yeah it will break and no, we're not fixing it. Sometimes it's a case of, oh, you did x, y, z, q and m - I forgot q was even a thing you could do that would affect this, or we've never seen a system using m before, we didn't even know that was a thing.

nik592 wrote: ↑17 October 2025, 08:38 This is why I feel like it's better to give the dev your CSS, and they can take a look at that - hopefully the dev should have an idea looking at CSS and the bug whether they're likely to be connected.

Dev here. Like the vast majority of developers here, I maintain games as a volunteer. I'm not going to spend time debugging your CSS for you. If the bug only affects one person, devs are going to focus our limited resources on improving other aspects of games.

The idea sounds great in theory, but we're stretched thin as it is. I have no time and no interest in debugging custom configurations.

Kayvon wrote: ↑17 October 2025, 23:33

nik592 wrote: ↑17 October 2025, 08:38 This is why I feel like it's better to give the dev your CSS, and they can take a look at that - hopefully the dev should have an idea looking at CSS and the bug whether they're likely to be connected.

Dev here. Like the vast majority of developers here, I maintain games as a volunteer. I'm not going to spend time debugging your CSS for you. If the bug only affects one person, devs are going to focus our limited resources on improving other aspects of games.

The idea sounds great in theory, but we're stretched thin as it is. I have no time and no interest in debugging custom configurations.

I'm not suggesting you debug it. I'm saying there are bugs you can look at and say, no, that's probably not caused by the CSS, yes, that one almost definitely is, and this one I'm really not sure. Bugs in the first category deserve investigation and/or fixing. Bugs in the second and third category can be set aside as not being worth the time to investigate and/or fix. Moreover, you can suggest to the raising player that THEY test without their CSS and see if it's still a problem.

Right now, if I was unfamiliar with CSS and had just copy-pasted something someone else had suggested in the forums, if I REALLY wanted to post my bug, I'd move my CSS to a notepad, post my bug, put my CSS back. I wouldn't mention I had custom CSS, I wouldn't test it without my custom CSS, and I'd lodge a bug that isn't replicable by the devs. That's also wasted time.