ATTN! Potential Site Changes-PLEASE READ!

[Drakon]

Greetings. I hope you've all had a fun, safe weekend without SHH! vampiring all your time.

As some of you know, while we were booted off Hype for some much-needed maintainance, a good portion of us used our exile time to visit our sister site, Coming Soon!. While there, I kind of got a bit miffed at everyone complaining "Oh, this site sucks compared to Hype!" and, in particular "I miss my avatar and siggy! Now I've gotta spam to get my post count up!" So, I made a thread, and it seems that a decent amount of you guys are somewhat in agreement with me on several ideas. I know most of you aren't even going to bother reading the entire thread once you realize it's over 200 posts, so here's my proposal to limiting some of the more blatant spam and keeping a viable reward system in place.

1--Set up a "Game/Trivia thread" for stuff like "Last thing you ate/drank/wore on your head" or "Three Word Story" that's separate from actual community. Posts in this forum will NOT count towards your post count. This will eliminate all these kind of threads for community so that we can get back to discussing "you know, the important stuff". And by, discuss, I mean pages. Not, at most, 3 posts. There are people who have at least 40-75% of their one-word posts in spammy threads like "Last thing you ate/drank/peed/pooped/wore on your head", or something similar just because they want an avatar/sig/title. I'm all for chat-chat til you're hands fall off. Hell, if you look in Games, I'm in the top 10 in terms of chat thread posters. But there's a difference between chat and crap.

2--User Join Dates will actually contribute to earning an avatar and such, in addition to post count. This way, if you're banned under your regular name, you won't be able to go back to an old name and still have avatars and such. By doing this, I hope it makes a lot of the people who like to "sit on the fence" when it comes to getting in trouble think twice, because they'd lose everything, and it'd be harder to just spam them back. This will would very well with the above idea. To quote a good friend--"The idea behind those things is that they are "privileges" or "rewards" that are meant to be earned by being a contributing member of a community over a period of time." By combining length of membership and post count as prerequisites for benefits, only members who are both active and patient would be rewarded and there would be less benefit from spamming. Also, bans would become a lot more meaningful when you not only lose a few nights worth of spamming, but you can also lose up to 6 months of your life.

Something like this order--

Signature--1 Week
Custom Title--2 Weeks and 100 posts
Small Avatar--1 Month and 300 posts
Medium Avatar--3 Month and 1000 posts
Large Avatar--6 Months and 2500 posts

With these ideas in mind, hopefully it would help keep Community feeling more like a Community rather than a collection of random people. Conversations will be able to mean more, there would be less spam to wade through, and everyone can have a little more fun. I know I'm being a little idealistic here, but that's what ideas are for--being idealistic.

Please post thoughts here, and vote. The poll will be up for two weeks.
THIS IS A MULTIPLE CHOICE POLL!!

[Spider-Man Luvr28]

......What?Cliffnotes.

[Da Docta]

Great additions, Drak.

[theShape]

Thank you, Drakon. Good work on getting rid of the spammers.

[Drakon]

Please vote!

[Carter]

Carter no like change.
But you're the boss....

[Superman4ever]

UGH!!!! About time...I've been recommending user join date = bigger Avi for...well, 4ever now!

I've been on here since 2003 and only have 4,000 post... while all you other overachieving bastards (who have been here 6 months) have all the goodies like LARGE avatars and stuff (using my gifs may I add)!

Either way, though, this sounds promising!

[Da Docta]

Wow, tied.

[Ebil Gig]

Shouldn't there be a both option as well on the poll?

[Batty for Bats!]

Drakon.. I'd be lost without you.[/spam]

Sounds like a good idea. I'm glad that you actually have imput of other posters before you went off and did it. I know that nearly 99.9% of all of my posts have come from the Community board. But I'm not entirely sure of what you are saying. Are you saying it will be metaphorically a new site? or literally? and would that mean that my post cut is started a new? Sorry man. I'm not the sharpest doornob around

[SsM]

I like both of the ideas. I think eliminating the stupid "last thing" from the post count will there in elimate alot of those threads

[Electrix]

I don't like Option 1
I like Option 2

[Da Docta]

Originally Posted by Ebil Gig

Shouldn't there be a both option as well on the poll?

You can vote twice.

[Superman4ever]

Originally Posted by Drakon

Please vote!

Yes times infinity...(does that count).

My J.Ho gif diserves to be BIGGER! Like on the Newsarama boards...

[squeekness]

I like both these ideas, too.

[The Chairman]

I like both ideas as well. Good job, Drakon.

[Stringer]

Option 2 is cool

[E-Mack]

These changes are pretty acceptable.

What about changes in regards to the forum's appearance, though? Wasn't there talk about someone here working on it while the site was down?

[Ebil Gig]

Originally Posted by Dr. Victor Lehnsherr

You can vote twice.

Right. Didn't notice that.

[theShape]

I like them both, to be honest. Ever since I've bee here, I always thought that new users should not only earn sigs and such with posts, but also with the length of time they're here.

I also find it extremely annoying when people spend all of their posting in those threads like "what's the last thing you did" and all that. I won't name him since I'm sure you're aware of what he does, but this user has gotten well over 6000 posts in less than a month by posting mainly in all of those threads, and spamming in others as well. I don't think they deserve to be here if they won't contribute to the discussions. So making those posts NOT count would be very smart.

So I vote both, I guess. Though either one would be fine.

[X-Ray]

Would birthday threads fall under the 1st option? Because it is kind of spamming since I, along with others, just post 3 word posts.

Oh, I choice the 1st option.

"Set up a "Game/Trivia thread" for stuff like "Last thing you ate/drank/wore on your head" or "Three Word Story" that's separate from actual community. Posts in this forum will NOT count towards your post count."

I voted for both ideas because they sound decent. The larger avvy for an user with more than 6 Months and 2500 posts under their belt is real nice. But I'm still leaning more towards the 1st option.

[twylight]

How exactly will option 2 effect the active community posters now?

What sorts of threads would fall under the game/trivia forum, and what would be the standard for which to judge them by?

[Superman4ever]

You're all overachieving bastards!

[Bat Attack]

I like them both.

[Michael Corleone]

I think both ideas are decent. I think #1 will do a good job at slowing down spam and just overall pointless stuff. #2 will be nice because I think it rewards folks that are veteran members yet don't post constantly.