New Forums... Old Forums ... Changes

Hi everyone,

I haven't posted for a while but I havea few things I'd like to share with you and I hope that you'll agree.

1. I miss my Avatar - a lot of the people here spent time and effrts on their avatars and logos.
now I know that it's a speed problem with all the graphics but still some people deserve their avatars.

in order to filter out those who are not worthy I suggest the following ratings:
0-500 posts - no avatars
500-700 - server assigned avatar
700-1000 - posts - custom avatars
every 1000 posts you are entitled to a new avatar

2. Usage - some people have not loged in months..
many people left and haven't come back and there are lots of people who log in post their question and after they get the answer never come back.

I suggest deleting any user account that shows no activity in 60 days - unless that user emailed and asked to be kept active.

that should help things to speed up quite a lot.

3. History - I know a lot of us like the old posts - but these forums had waves of junk posts and it's not needed to keep those..

I would suggest keeping 6 months on the tech forums and 1 month on the "techville" forums..


4. User ratings - we had a lot of people who left. I personally made an effort to be worthy of my "tech god" status and so did many others. I want my rating back and more steps to aspire to.

I did offer this before: users that post mostly junk to higher their ratings will be deleted and will have to start over from zero (that would solve that problem)

also I would suggest new ratings

0-49 Newbie (no star)
50-149 Junior member (no star)
150-249 Member (one white star)
250-349 Tech Wannabe (two white stars)
350-499 Tech (three white stars)
500-699 Advanced Tech (three gold stars)
700-999 Master Tech (four gold stars)
1000-1399 Tech God (five gold stars)
1400-1899 Master Tech God (five rainbow stars)
1900-2499 Xtreme Tech God (six rainbow stars)
2500-4999 Mega Tech God (Seven Rainbow stars)
Over 5000 posts - Certified DriverGuy (Seven CD's)

as for moderators:

Moderator 999-1999 posts (Six blue Shields)
Master Moderator 2000-2999 (Seven Blue Shields)
Xtreme Moderator 3000-3999 (Seven Gold Shields)
Mega Moderator 4000+ (eight Gold sheilds)
Site Admin - whatever he likes :)

5. Graphics - with all the "speeding up" ideas above I really liked the amazing graphics of about 4 months ago. it made the forums look great and professional.

the new look I finds really boring (although very clear)

Please speak your mind ...
:cool:

You asked for our opinions, so here goes mine.

1. Although the forums were cool with all those avatars, icons, ratings and stuff, I prefer the current interface. The first reason is the speed. Windrivers forums loads faster now. The second reason is all those useless posts like "Hey, I'm a Master Tech now", or "Driverguy, please let me change my avatar", or "What's an avatar. How can I load mine" etc.. etc.

2. We can't start deleting inactive user accounts. I don't agree on that. I know users who post every 3 or 4 months or even once or twice a year. But they are still members of Windrivers Forums. Sending an email requesting not to be deleted, would add an extra responsibility to Scott whose time is always valuable.

3. About the History, I would say that topics on the Tech forums could be deleted after a year and the ones on the Techville after a month or two.
I'm not sure though if this could be difficult or time-consuming for Scott.

The new interface might be boring, but the forums are running better now.

One last thing. Lets keep in mind that the current UBB version is still a Beta.

I totally agree with condor on the most part....the forums looked sweet b4 the purple one, and it would be great to have them as they were, and condor's modifications would work well in my opinion...i guess it means id have to post a bit more to get my custom avatar back *sigh*

Burn.

leave it like it is ... who needs a status and who needs stars ... condor your one who im surprised about this .. since your a person of true help and get it right the first time ... i know i have used your advice many times and it worked (btw thank you) .. however this issue is what caused many problems .. as far as im concerned removeing the amount of posts could go to .. i do go back and look at old topics from years ago and get help from them still ... besides it nice to see how things change and you can even learn from things from the old days .. and yes some of us do have enuff time to reseach this info ... so in this case if it isnt broke .. then dont fix it ...

I agree with Jva. Preach ON BRUTHA!

I think the forums have become more focused on helping people in the last few months, where it should be. Not focused on useless fluff like avatars, stars, ratings, banned users, WHINING, politics, and other crap like that. If you miss your avatar, you can put it in your signature like I did. The avatars are still stored on the server in the path <a href="http://forums.windrivers.com/cgi-bin/forum3/avatars/custom/" target="_blank">http://forums.windrivers.com/cgi-bin/forum3/avatars/custom/</a> - Condor, your avatar is located here:

http://forums.windrivers.com/cgi-bin...stom/12128.gif
<a href="http://forums.windrivers.com/cgi-bin/forum3/avatars/custom/12128.gif" target="_blank">http://forums.windrivers.com/cgi-bin/forum3/avatars/custom/12128.gif</a>

The forum slowness wasn't because of all the extra hacks and things that Scott added to the site. It was because of some dumb perl script that was sucking up all the CPU time. And the reason the hacks are gone is because the forum software was upgraded. There aren't a lot of hacks developed for this version of the UBB yet.

I haven't been an active member of this site for a full year, but I have to say that right now is the best that it's been. I don't understand how the site would benefit by bringing back or changing ratings, avatar rules, etc. That just makes things more complicated and distracts us from the task at hand. Right now there is somebody in these forums desperate for help and their job is depending on it! And we're farting around arguing about some stupid GIF? gimme a break!

I love helping people and that's where we must stay focused or we end up getting sidetracked on completely irrelevant issues and end up hurting the site owners and ourselves in the process.

Sure I miss some of the old people, but people have lives and if they decide to move on, then that's AOK. There are more new people joining here all the time (I think 5000 users in the last 6 months!) and WinDrivers forums will live on...

1. I miss my Avatar
I realy don't have tme to mess with peopl's custom avatars and such so I probably won't bring this back.

4. User ratings This MAY, MAY be back just for fun if I can get rid of the tech lounge posts in the figure.

5. Graphics - The look wil be back somewhat after the UBB is out of beta

I'll be leaving all the history and memebers, won't make things any faster or slower and I'm still working on something right now to make things even faster. I will be adding back all the hacks that make the forum easier to use, again when ou of beta.

[quote]Originally posted by WinDrivers:
<strong>1. I miss my Avatar
I realy don't have tme to mess with peopl's custom avatars and such so I probably won't bring this back.

4. User ratings This MAY, MAY be back just for fun if I can get rid of the tech lounge posts in the figure.

5. Graphics - The look wil be back somewhat after the UBB is out of beta

I'll be leaving all the history and memebers, won't make things any faster or slower and I'm still working on something right now to make things even faster. I will be adding back all the hacks that make the forum easier to use, again when ou of beta.</strong><hr></blockquote>

Sounds good.

Just a question, couldnt you make it so we set the custom avatar ourselves, and host it? I mean, if the problem is that you are worried about explict or unwanted avatars, i believe people can be sensible, and if they cant, they shouldnt be here...so ban them.

Any chance u could set it up like that?

Thanx,

Burn.

Thanks for the attention and reply DG :)

I just liked the forums a lot more with more graphics and like Mac just explained they weren't the cause of the slow downs. I realize this is a beta version so I'll just wait for the release to be out ..

As for Junk posts of "hey I'm master tech now"
like I said - useres who abuse the ratings can be deleted and will have to start from zero again.

As far as Avatar are concerned - 99% of the UBBs on the net allow for avatars it seems to me that ONE Custome avatar every 1000 - 2000 posts shouldn't prove to be a major problem. (the last time I checked there were only a habndful of useres with thousands of posts..)

Mac - I always said that support is why we 're here but that doesn't mean we're not suppose to have a little more fun..

I wasn't complaining (sorry if it came out this way) I was just pointing out some nice ideas that will spice things up.

I'm sure we all noticed that everything is much more relaxed and I was just wondering if we can help get this site back to its intense nature..

Now let me add one more thing - I know that everyone has mixed feelings about ratings and graphics. However this is not a question of features but of people. The way to deal with a group of immature people is not eliminating the feature but rather eliminating that user.

Mac, we can use black and white with fixed width fonts, no icons (graemlins) no signatures just simple text - you think it will help the professionalism ? ;)

the way I see it - if you can be professional in B&W you can be professional in colors too ;)

[quote]Originally posted by Condor:
<strong>
As for Junk posts of "hey I'm master tech now"
like I said - useres who abuse the ratings can be deleted and will have to start from zero again.
</strong><hr></blockquote>

Then, at least 10 more Moderators are needed, because there are lots of people who post similar topics. Some of them think they ARE master Techs because they have replied to 300 or 500 topics. Others just want to add more replies to their score and others do it because they don't have anything else to do on a Tech BBS.

We must try to prevent such actions BEFORE they are made and not delete them afterwards.
That's my opinion.

I think DG has the right idea ... lets just help ... and enjoy it .. hes giving us us a couch and a fridge and things ... making it too personal here makes people feel to at home like i used to be and thats when trouble starts

I think MacGyver has made a good point, i havent been here long, but from the some of the responses i had back about the "ratings war" i dont think rating should be brought back.

and also, we are definatly here to help people.

Garak, Over and Out.

My 2 cents on ratings


Ratings should be:

Administrator
Moderator
Member

Just because you have a lot of post,
Doesn't mean you are saying much!

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An obstacle is something you see when you take your eyes off your goal.

As a still very new member....I suggest you leave it as it is now.......I belong to several machinist groups also and they have no ratings or status......but everyone who frequents knows who the master machinists are. Likewise I have figured out who to listen to here and I didn't use the status symbols. Just my humble opinion..........

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Rudolph N. Koester
CPT,SC
Retired (disability)
Formerly MAD MACHINIST
Must be smarter than the piece of equipment one is attempting to work on

I see the avatars are on https://forums.windrivers.com/

Can I use the custom one I sent?

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This signature cannot be shown due to restrictions on this Board. Please contact your System Administrator

Quote:

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<font face="Tahoma, Arial, Helvetica, Verdana, Geneva" size="2">Originally posted by condor:
Now let me add one more thing - I know that everyone has mixed feelings about ratings and graphics. However this is not a question of features but of people. The way to deal with a group of immature people is not eliminating the feature but rather eliminating that user.

Mac, we can use black and white with fixed width fonts, no icons (graemlins) no signatures just simple text - you think it will help the professionalism ? ;)

the way I see it - if you can be professional in B&W you can be professional in colors too ;)</font>

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I'm with You,Condor https://forums.windrivers.com/

Why not to add little fun to the forums?
Honestly - how many of You wanted to be "Master Tech","Tech GoD" etc? https://forums.windrivers.com/
Some of us tried to rich that rank within few weeks only! Remember,who?

Seriously saying,it was funny, but somehow stimulated members to post more often here.

As for useless replies I'd suggest not to count posts in "chat" threads of forum (if it's possible,of course).
As for avatars - many of us are easy recognizable by funny and nice avatars.
And I can bet - some of us can forget member's exact nickname,but remember his/her nice avatar... IMHO,of course. https://forums.windrivers.com/

[This message has been edited by Ruslan (edited September 10, 2001).]