Taking in both the positives and negatives about this whole thing, I'm also pretty split now. I can't control the feels I feel.

On one hand, the idea of giving people a reason to contribute is exceptional, having new people strive for something and sticking around. Maybe make something of themselves and create an impact. It's something new that's not been seen on Snafu for quite some time, and it's both refreshing, if not a bit intimidating. And it inspires people to form a bit of comrodery to make things better for others and address issues.

But on the other hand, you have something that could create a more plain-to-see hierarchy. The people on top having power over those below more wide spread, and a rise of concerns of frustrations, people trying to worm their way up, etcetera, etcetera. Something you see happen on plenty of other sites to have people get ahead and looked upon as glorious.

There's a lot to speculate, but where it goes is all up to those setting it up and how it's implemented. The thing about it though, as Rival said, we need more of an influx of folks to get this thing going. And what brings people here at the very start? The comics. Despite being a joke to regulars here, that's an issue that needs to be settled at one point to get things rolling. That is unless another form of advertising the forum is found. It'd be a waste of a system if we just have the trickle of people we do coming in. What issues that can be settled otherwise is what mods are for.

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"Cogito, ergo vos es eggo." A.K.A. "I think, therefore you are a waffle."

Thanks, Ali.

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This, this exactly.

That said he's got a valid point. It's likely that the gold card thing will just turn into another kind of animosity like the old 'there's the forums and then there's the spam forum' type of thing if it ever kicks off. Of course in order for it to kick off at all the real issue has to be addressed, we're just not drawing enough people in. I mean if we look at the total registered users compared to the maybe 50 active members across all boards the board has a .2% retention, even the gold card thing gave us 100 times better retention that would still only be 20% retention. We need lots of people coming in if we want any significant number to stay.

I mean I realize I'm basing that on a group where 11690 people have never posted but still that's a .5% retention if I exclude them.

And I love how you tell people not to generalize my opinion as applying to everyone, then in the same sentence generalize my opinion that I just think everything is stupid. Good work.

You're half right, though. I would have found the gold membership stupid no matter what part of the forum it came from, or even if it didn't come from this forum at all. That's because it is a bad idea.

It's going to have the opposite effect as intended. It's not going to make new people who show up go "Hey I wanna get in on that" it's just going to give new people the impression that we're closed off and have a fucked up power structure where we consider only certain people to be the "gold" standard.

If you want the community to grow and have new members stick around then you need to do something that makes the community seem more accepting to outsiders, not less.

For one thing, the most active forum can't be "Spam" or at least it can't be called that. That gives off the impression that everything in there is nonsense, and to be honest, a lot of it still is. Call it "off-topic" or "general discussion" and cut down on the white noise threads. No more threads about "guys I'm totally gonna go smoke some weed now" or threads filled with nothing but the letter Z. It's dumb and serves no purpose. At least pretend that the forum exists for discussion and not just for a group of friends.

Reduce the total nonsense posts to just one spam thread or something, that way if someone absolutely has to talk about the awesome cookie they just had then they can post it there instead of making a whole new thread for it and cluttering the entire subsection.

Like, I get you guys have good intentions with trying to give incentive for people to stick around and post, but I don't think it'll work or it will work on the wrong sorts of people. People that think post quantity is better than quality, etc. That's not who you want.

edit: No matter what happens this forum will never be as active as it once was. That would probably require Dave to start updating his comic again since it is sort of the headliner of this entire site.

Awww, you know I love you, Ro. :3 I am aware that Dorian is rather opinionated, but as a whole, RP has never looked kindly on Spam and those who dwell there and many new members who come to RP are often put off from Spam because of what other rpers say. Albeit, a few players have integrated into Spam, but as a ratio, those who frown upon Spam have been in the majority. Whether Dorian would have disliked the gold idea wherever it came from is not far off from my point. It was started by and is maintained by Spam regulars, so I take it as a criticism to them (us) by extension. He is, of course, entitled to his opinion and I am entitled to my interpretation of it.

It may be mostly maintained by Spam regulars, right now, but it's not a Spam exclusive thing.

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And I never meant to say that it was.

I'm just saying you shouldn't have taken it personally, because it's not an exclusive thing. That's all.

My post was mostly intended to be informative.

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Actually, lot's of forums have things like stars from 1-5 or little titles like junior member and senior member. Things outside of Modship.

Even with the gold thing, it doesn't change much since it's just as useless as those titles like senior or junior member.

Cause I find that, on those sites, a lot of those senior people are complete twats and mostly ignored the senior thing.

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“One day you wake up and realize the world can be conquered.”

CodeTwink had the premium membership, which is where the idea came from. Although they charged to upgrade for it and their forum was godawful.

Dorian: Which is why I used "most everything" instead of everything, since it's just a majority. And it's fact, not generalization, that you comment about disliking things more often than you've stated you've liked them.

Math: I know, cause I'm just lovable, baby. But yes, while that has occured, most the people who felt that way are either gone, inactive, or have changed, about half or more of the currently active RPers visit Spam, myself included... But I'm basing this on having not seen any RPers badmouth Spam in some time.

Just wanted to fix that to make sure we didn't get into another RP V Spam thing. Then we all just end up looking like idiots, like every other time before.

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The Gold Card system is probably going to change a lot from what it is now. We're still nailing down what exactly it should do and how it should do it. In the meantime, more input is nice. What does RP think it would take to give new members an incentive to stay around?

Five bucks?

A shiny bright background?

Kittens?

New comics that actually attract people?

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“One day you wake up and realize the world can be conquered.”

Keeping them around would likely require efforts from active members to help them adjust and enjoy the forum. And including subjects that they could participate in regularly. Each section has their own methods for this already, so I think we just need to be sure we have enough active members to accomodate this. But that's all rather basic.

I think a more pressing matter is that the forum requires ways to attract new members more frequently. First method being active comics, as stated.

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BR is working on the comics thing.
We're currently looking for someone that is good with code to change the appearance of the gold forum and probably of the rest too.

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Might need to hunt down one of the old programmers, or visit a general php forum. Sure we could find a tutorial at least, if not find someone who already knows.

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I'm trying to get an expert on code that I know to check this up, currently the code to change is in the gold section.

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Yes because it was a bad idea for those forums too. Saying other forums do a thing doesn't mean what they're doing is right or effective, as evidenced in your own post where you say the senior members were twats and no one paid attention to their "higher" status.

This just proves the other issue with a tiered member system. Some people are bound to get it in their head that they're better because they're part of some exclusive club. And if they're not? Then what's the point of having it at all?

Any sort of membership tier thing for a discussion forum is silly.



Your qualifier of "most" doesn't change the fact that the tone of your post was basically saying "ignore him, hating things is what he does". I have valid reasons for thinking this forum feature is bad. This isn't an exercise in being contrarian, just my honest opinion. And it really has nothing to do with my opinion of Spam either (other than I think it would help attract people if it were cleaned up a bit).

Hearing all of your opinions is actually very helpful for us as we try and figure out what the best course of action will be so I would like to urge everyone here to keep commenting what you think is good and what you think is not so good. Of course if you can keep it constructive, that would be much more preferred since that gives us more to work with.

Dorian: Ah. That makes it more clear, then. I do apologize for that as I had no intentions of that nature when typing. If anything, my implied message was meant to be "Don't take it too harsh, that's how he operates." I have no problems with you talking or otherwise contributing.

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So what if they start acting like twats? All that will mean is that it shows their true colours as complete douches. And even if it actually was meant to mean that they were better somehow, if they start acting like twats, they're still twats. Just with a different colour name, and probably not even deserving of it because of aforementioned twatness. The gold only means something if you let it mean something. It's not like modship.

It has as much meaning as a self-appointed village council or something.

Basically, while there may not be much good in it, I don't see many problems, and none that aren't easy to fix or ignore.

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“One day you wake up and realize the world can be conquered.”

I just want custom titles again.

I actually mentioned that last night.

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Tuor: Stuff is our resident, hot mess, alcoholic.
Senel: Stuff is the patron saint of getting shitfaced. You replaced your organs with an engine that runs solely on alcohol.
RIP Lucky. I love you so much.

I could do me some gold.

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Anybody could, but not everybody should. :3