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Suggestions

Stewart

Stewart

Active Member
Twenty ideas for this forum. I know that the mods don't have such powers, so it's for Darren when he gets a chance.

  1. Get the Mature Discussion section up and running;
  2. Get the moderation sorted out;
  3. Remove the Testing forum - it's ugly;
  4. Remove Harry Potter and Tolkien subforums - they aren't that busy to warrant them. The mania around them is due to decline (Tolkien now that the films are all out; Potter once the last book is released)
  5. Add a News forum, for people to post stories relevant to books and authors rather then anywhere
  6. Update the forum software to vBulletin v3.6.0
  7. Add a hell of a lot of domains into the banning section to reduce the increase in spam that has beset this board in recent days.
  8. Remove the link to Tech Interest until you've done whatever it is you have in mind for it. As it is, Tech Interest became the online equivalent of the Marie Celeste. Cliff Richard has seen more action than it since Concordia acquired it.
  9. Blend the Horror forum with Sci-Fi and Fantasy. That way the main three speculative fiction forms are all together in one place.
  10. Remove the Historical fiction forum. It has seen little activity since its inception. If it doesn't attract people to post, then there's no point in it.
  11. Start adding literary events to the forum's calendar.
  12. Bring in a naming convention for posts so that they are easier to find. My suggestion would be to encourage people to title threads like so: Stephen King: The Stand That way, when people do searches on authors or books the thread title will immediately be more descriptive and makes it easier to find content one wants.
  13. Get some decent competitions up and going. A forum this size should be getting a fair number of enquiries for publicity and stuff from publishers. Make the competitions more interactive for the prizes, so none of these enter your name in the prize draw comps.
  14. Combine the Film and Music forums and form a Media forum. The focus should be on books but if you need these areas to branch off then try to minimise them.
  15. Remove post counts...from public view, at the very least.
  16. Encourage the use of reputations (forum software).
  17. Remove the Comedy forum. It's not working.
  18. Trim down the number of Stickies floating about around the forum.
  19. Put some PHP in to limit those threads marked 15 and 18 from being seen (or posted) by people under those ages.
  20. Consider taking the forum a step forward in a Web 2.0 way by allowing people to tag threads with this hack.
 
Peder said:
Can't help asking: What are reputations?
Click to expand...

Sometimes it's called Karma on other forums. If someone makes a good post, you credit them; if someone makes a bad post, you debit them. It encourages people to be nicer because their reputation is affected by how they interact with others. Usually you can only credit/debit someone once every so often. After time, when the reputations settle, it should begin to show those members who are more reliable/involved/etc. and is a much better indication of a response than trusting the person with the highest post count.

Say you were looking for some book suggestions. Who would you choose as being reliable? The person with the good reputation (as given by his peers) or the newbie who suggests Redemption by Wayne Sharrocks?
 
Thanks for the answer, Stewart. I thought it was something else.
But still, one vote "no, thanks" re karma.
Peder
 
Peder said:
"no, thanks" re karma.
Click to expand...

True. The more I think about it, it's something that works better on technical forums where you can credit someone who gives a good response to your problem.

It would probably get abused anyway. People debiting other members for taking a swipe at their beloved The Da Vinci Code, or something.
 
Re the reputation/karma capacity.

Who defines what a "good post" consists of, and how are those people selected? Are there points for wit and sarcasam, or does spelling and punctuation count.
Or does everyone jump pell mell into the pool and scream FIRE! at the same time.

Sounds like a good recipe for disaster.

OTOH, I do wish the so called Mature threads would begin. :rolleyes:
 
Thanks Stewart,
Would that agreement, or close to it, were so quickly achieved on other matters in this forum. :)
A landmark event! :rolleyes:
Peder
 
pontalba said:
Re the reputation/karma capacity.

Who defines what a "good post" consists of, and how are those people selected? Are there points for wit and sarcasam, or does spelling and punctuation count.
Click to expand...

It works on an each to their own basis. You like something: credit; you dislike: debit; you don't care either way; don't bother. Usually in the admin panel you can set reputation levels which work on a banding system i.e. 0 to 20, 21 to 50, etc. in much the same way that on most forums you can get a status based on post count.
 
01 - 15: Yes, definately.

17 - 20: Yes.

16: No. People on this forum will abuse it. (Although, if it were in place, I would throw some positive karma Stewart's way for starting this thread; everything mentioned needs some serious consideration for this forum to develop)
 
Virtually all of those suggestions sound like good admin for a generally improved forum for everyone. The only two that affect people personally and directly, that I see, would be "post count", which has been discussed before, and "reputation/karma," being discussed now.

Re post count, I don't see the issue with having it displayed as it is. But if that is an issue I would prefer to see it retained on a member's profile, similar for example to where the member's three greatest books, gender and age can be viewed. That should be osbcure enough. Or if that is even too visible, then I would prefer listing it on the private portion of a member's profile. I like it. It is my teddy bear and I pat it when I go to bed at night. :)
Peder
 
As to the post count, it is nice to be able to easily notice how many posts a person has. If their count is extremely low, there is the assumption that they have just registered, and since I don't pay too much attention to the "introductions" threads, that is nice.
Also it indicates to some extent the posters participation in the fourm.

I don't understand enough of the software stuff to have any informed opinion, but progress usually is good (I say that somewhat reservedly). And I don't understand #7 either. Banned section?
As in BOTM banned books?

As far as the threads that are under used, so what? Maybe they would be just the thing to attract someone terrific someday.

But please, oh Please.....implement the mature threads ASAP !
 
pontalba said:
And I don't understand #7 either. Banned section?
As in BOTM banned books?
Click to expand...

No. In the Admin section there is the chance to ban certain users, even before they have registered. Recently we've been getting a number of spammers joining the forum (they've also been to my history forum, Palimpsest, and about a million other vBulletin forums) and a number of them share one common trait: the domain of the email they register with.

The mods don't have the ability to delete these users and sometimes, after banning, they keep on coming. A typical one is people coming from some_email_address@gawab.com. In the admin panel you can set the forum to reject all registrations by putting @gawab in. Or, another favourite, @mail.ru for all our Russian lolitas who come looking for men to marry. ;)

Another feature is to ban users with certain names. You may have noticed a member appear a few times with the name phsum003. I've seen this a few times so I just banned any usernames with phsum in their name from registering. Since the majority of these are bots then they probably don't know what to do - but at least you are making attempts to stop them posting potentially harmful links before they get the chance.

Cuts down some work for the mods too when the software is working in their favour. ;)
 
I would disagree with combining the Film and Music topics. They are very popular areas and deserve to be on their own. You would be better combining the 2 Writer topics, Writers Block & Writers Showcase, as they are not near as popular.
 
muggle said:
I would disagree with combining the Film and Music topics. They are very popular areas and deserve to be on their own. You would be better combining the 2 Writer topics, Writers Block & Writers Showcase, as they are not near as popular.
Click to expand...

Rather than combine the writing forums, I'd move the Writer Block section into the Showcase as a subforum.
I suggest the merge into a media forum as the music is nowhere near as popular as the film and movie forum, having failed to achieve even 20% of the number of threads that the film forum has since their inception.
 
Stewart said:
Rather than combine the writing forums, I'd move the Writer Block section into the Showcase as a subforum.
I suggest the merge into a media forum as the music is nowhere near as popular as the film and movie forum, having failed to achieve even 20% of the number of threads that the film forum has since their inception.
Click to expand...
However, of the approx 22 Forums the Music ranks number 9 in popularity if counting the number of posts. There are 13 Forums with less posts.

Another subject. On the site where I am co-administrator we can ban members by:
I.P
Hostname
email address
username
 
Without a test forum how will computer idiots like me ever work out the kinks without smudging an established thread?

Could it not be made that the test forum exists but never moves to the new posts section when someone uses it? That way you'll only see it when your looking for it.
 
Good suggestions.
But what the forum really needs is an active admin that actually has an interest in the site.
 
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