Ohio is just me and Sentios standing in a field with a handful of amish people... not much going on here

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I'm a little late to the party because I was busy with life, but can you please just take out the obnoxious gold color? Make it a color that doesn't completely clash with the site scheme, that's all I ask.

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we're in the process of changing the site scheme, actually.

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I'm still the Queen of Dicks

Embrace change, my friends! But don't expect a complete overhaul.

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I respect this.



Thanks! I'm sorry if anything I said could have been interpreted as insulting to you, too (some of it, yeah, definitely could). You're fairly solid, using as evidence this minor argument becoming a much more substantial and polite discussion. :)



Understood.



Now see, I AGREE with you on not liking "randomness". However, I believe Spam's spontaneity to not necessarily be a breach into randomness, but more like "improvised role play" in any given thread.



Completely agreed again. :)



And that's fine. If you do ever want to try it, though, I would recommend it. You'd just have to keep in mind that the threads are, by and large, not outright RANDOM, but more like tweets on Twitter--short ideas that spring into big ideas. I think the comparison is apt. Spam is the "Texting-minded" forum.



I understand and respect this, and will leave you alone on this matter henceforth.



See, now, this is what I want out of the Gold Forum: a platform for veterans, like you, to be able to address issues to the forum without bearing the responsibility as a mod to enforce those policy decisions. An impromptu senate, of sorts, that lets you bring up topical information for the betterment of the forums.

Valhallen has already made the most significant idea on this idea, and said that the system should have more than one tier, and be treated not as an elitism clique caste stratification, but as a reward system for participating in the community.

Here, in my head, is a brief go-over of how I would like the system to work with those multi-tiers

Newbies join, and if they stay for a month or two, they are auto-upgraded to a "bronze" tier, and can now MAKE their own threads, having proven that they like the forums enough to want to provide content.

Then, they stick around longer, and offer to help newbies, and are generally being great, so they get again, automatically tuned up to a "silver" tier, where they can manage more forum privileges. The forum right now has no "attachment" permissions, and that could be one of the things that trusted members earn: the ability to upload into the forum's database, pictures and documents.

Finally, they would have to, by reading the rules for the system, go into their user control panel and privately apply for Gold Membership.

In the Gold forum, veterans would be able to discuss the forums and have a direct connection to the moderators so that they have a way to let the moderators know of an issue or innovation they'd prefer.

And they'd get the privilege to embed flash files, which is quite neat, I think.

That way, the forum has incentive for newbies to want to gain bonuses in the forum by adhering to its principles, and the community has a sense of upward progression.

Gold Card Members would be strictly and explicitly told that it is their job to help newbies and lower-tiered people to get to the Gold level, and we would have a very strict policy on using Gold privileges, so that any abuse would be quickly stamped out, and if they abused it, like, more than two times, they'd immediately lose Gold Membership and drop down straight back to non-tiered, as punishment. Then they'd have to reprove and work their way back up.

We're not trying to be dividing, we're trying to make a system that encourages the growth of the community.

Does that sound more reasonable?

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Bleedcomics Staff Writer/Editor, , and Keeper of the Jar Brain of Secret President. RIP Ku Ku Ku \(-^.^-)/ U Wuz A REAL N***A!!!!!!!
"We're quite aware of this. BR is no happy rainbow face man. He is simply our neighborhood best fucking poster." ~ Warbear
Puff Most Epic.

I got a question for you RPers. I know at least some of you either larp or dress up in costumes, so do you have any idea where I can get a Castlevania related outfit for Halloween? I'd prefer Richter Belmont or Dracula.

I'm sorry, bro. This sounds like a horrible idea, but all the rest you said seemed fine.
If you take away a newbie's power to make threads right after they join, you're already taking away part of the fun of joining a forum. Sure, the threads they make can be crap but it's a price we gotta pay.

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I'd have to agree with Hiryu on that one. Wouldn't that also mean they couldn't make welcome threads?

It would also be staggering to Art and literature.
And I suppose they could introduce themselves in a single thread but it wouldn't be as personal.

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My realism workshop Updated April 24, 2013: Not the best

Give them a thread cap?

I don't know if that's possible though.

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

But it would deter some of those n00bs who only post threads to ask what happened to Zim or where Bleedman is.

Again, it's a small price we have to pay.

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I don't feel it's right to restrict newcomers just because some of them are going to be stupid. The ones that would make a thread asking those questions would probably just ask in other threads. It's happened before.

Yes, I understand how you intend it to work but I'm just not certain it'll work out like that.

Everyone on the forum should be able to voice their opinions about the state and growth of the forum. I realize you're not saying they can't, but rather you want to give veterans a direct link to mods and such, but everyone already has that link. The mods are not isolated in a sphere where no one can approach them. They're just posters like everyone else. Posting in the same threads as everyone else. I think it would work better if there were just one stickied thread titled something like "Forum change suggestions" and allow everyone to post in it. If a good idea is brought up or discussed then it would be up to the mods/admins to determine whether or not it should be allowed.

I just don't really see a need for a whole other group. I mean it already seems like almost every person who has been around the forum for longer than a year is in the Gold status. It runs the risk of too many voices trying to have their say in the decision making. I don't think the forum is large enough to where the mods and admins need assistance in making decisions.

You also run the risk of alienating newer people. You may see it as incentive to be a contributing member of the community but I feel it could just as easily be a deterrent. A guy might not make a post because he's too intimidated by being new and not being one of the gold members or whatever.

The incentive for sticking around on the forum should be because you like the community. As we are now we're so insular that it's probably intimidating to outsiders. I'll reiterate what I said before, but if we want to attract newer posters, then the most active forum can't be called "Spam". It can't be a whole section of smart people pretending to be stupid people pretending to be smart people. It's very similar to the FYAD subforum on SomethingAwful. It's a bunch of people essentially playing a "role" with a lot of in-jokes and ironic humor. It's not really reflective of people's actual personalities and interests.

Basically what I'm saying is if we want to rebuild the community we have to make the forum a forum again and not just a group hangout for established friends.

Why the fuck would you do that.

Seriously, this is probably one of the most appealing forum layouts that I've seen on my long tenure on the internet.

Maybe take off the comics or whatever because I couldn't give less of a shit, but don't fuck with the colors or anything.

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Going to echo the above, I don't think disallowing people from posting threads is a good idea, if you absolutely insist you could require them to have a small minimum number of posts (which might help with bots as well) but otherwise it's just a bad idea to disallow functions which are core to the activity of a forum.

it's kinda already been decided, sorry.

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I'm still the Queen of Dicks

You say it like things can't be undecided.

It's not like a large bureaucracy here or something. Backtracking on the dime's not exactly logistically difficult.

Any difficulty would have to be emotional.

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Twitter | Transistor Glamor | Tumblr | MAL

It's been suggested before that we could use interchangeable schemes.
But I don't think it's going to happen.

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My realism workshop Updated April 24, 2013: Not the best

I'm beginning to sense a problem.

Seems that Spam has a slightly more direct hand in things that are changing here.

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

It's not that spam has a direct hand but that most of the Gold members are from spam.
You could apply if you seriously wanted to voice your concerns.

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My realism workshop Updated April 24, 2013: Not the best

That's...not really a good correction. It's like me saying "the government has a lot of "name of town"" in it, and you then saying "No, they just happen to have a lot of members who come from there."

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

A lot of forums allow a drop-down list of forum skins for each member to choose from. Is this what we'll be doing? I, and obviously others, would like to keep the current scheme, while others could change it to their liking for themselves. It isn't really fair to force a permanent change simply because the majority of the gold members don't like the current scheme. I really don't see why it needs to be changed, anyway.

But I gotta agree with most people here, I don't see the need to change the colour scheme. It's easy on the eyes and it isn't really bad, some of you just wanna be picky.

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it just happens to be that a strong concentration of people who care about the forum (openly at least) are in spam. we are definitely open to, and in fact welcome, people who frequent other subforums who fit the criteria to have a wider variety of people in our little think-tank.

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I'm still the Queen of Dicks

Ha ah ha.

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Final Fantasy IX was the best Final Fantasy game ever and if you think otherwise you are WRONG!

My fanfiction account. Comments and criticisms are very welcome.