Build and Shoot

There's been much discussion already amongst people regarding activity of the forum, the same old vicious circles of people fighting, quitting and returning and drama that tails it. I think there needs to be something that actually encourages people to post on the forums other than having to read the odd announcements, modding sections or just hang around in the lounge without much to do other than playing pretty mediocre forum games such as counting to 1000 out of sheer boredom.

I propose that we implement the following things:
- Forum reputation > This could be limited to only positive reputation, or have both negative and positive. This gives people reward for having good posts, as well as bad ones, therefore making it easier to identify the users will well-thought posts in comparison to those who just seem to complain and bicker. Forum rep could allow images to be sent through rep, to forum emoticon to just regular/formatted text.

- Forum-side prizes > Long have we had many different competitions with almost little reward to motivate people to actually make an effort when it comes to competitions or anything of the sort. I couldn't blame them, as if there's little to play for, why play at all?

I propose the following forum-side prizes:
Custom titles > These can come in a few forms, such as coloured custom titles (also could be in different fonts), small imagery to fit the custom title area
Name sparkles / Similar > Have some sort of gif-type imagery to appear on the person's name
Temporary competition badges > Could be given for an "x" amount of times to a person before they can earn the permanent badge, as they've shown consistency to gain the badge for the respective activity. However let me stress this shouldn't be the only way to gain permanent badges, just another method to get yourself "seen".
Larger avatars > Could be a user group that allows people a slightly longer avatar for the period they've won the prize for.
The above should be held by the winner for 2-3 months before their prizes expire and they can re-enter if they wish to regain these privileges, therefore giving other people a chance and not making the forum into a rainbow-fest.

Trophies
Tin gave me this idea. These could actually be edited for more official competitions, such as map making, to give winners trophies such as "Winner of #13 Mapping context". These could also be permanent as these could be for the more prominent competitions as well as since they number the competition. Again like temporary competition badges, if they earn enough of these trophies, they should be given the permanent badges but like I said before, this shouldn't be the only method to earn the permanent badges but another method to be "seen".

Overall, I feel these kind of rewards for people making an effort for meaningful posts and work could span to a lot of different activities around the forum such as Art, Modding, Mapping, Scripts, Short stories, Comic (art/story), Videos.

I know this is a lot to ask overnight and it may not even happen, but I think considering it should be on the cards, since even though it may be tedious here or there to find the plugins or get them added in, they should be very rewarding in terms of retaining at least some of the forum population and possibly attracting lurking guests who find nothing at the moment to keep them around long term. Lastly although this isn't the meaning of this thread, I want to also point out this could give a lot better use to section mods, which have been questioned by a few people with their use, this gives them a lot more to monitor, handle and allows them to communicate their findings back to the global forum staff.

The forum should be social place and I think having some kind of appreciation for users and something to work towards, even if it may be very trivial, could still be the reason people join and that people stay, keeping this community together that little bit more, giving light to creativity and taking it from the usual spam you may find.


tl;dr - Long ass fucking post, didn't even think it would get this far, but basically just adding reputation and some forum-side prizes to keep the forums a bit more up in terms of activities and keep things interesting.

I value opinions of course, so have your say, I think to break the cycle of what we call constant "shitposts", we need something meaningful.

Forum reputation - Negative would be abusable, with people ganging up on others and rating every one of their posts down (even if some are fine) just because of personal vendettas. Same for positive only personal preferences or mod worship instead of vendettas. I'd just recommend a +1 button instead (with an option for anonymity), to combat all the pointless quoting posts and 'lol'/'yes' single post comments.

Prizes - I'm not sure if the owners get enough revenue to give out items that cost $$$ every now and then. There's a lottery at christmas which is good enough imo.

Trophies - not a bad idea, I think badges should have a bit more meaning so having people actually work for them might be cool.

Titles, sparkles, decorations, etc - let's not turn this into MySpace or some IMVU.
Flashing GIFs in avatars and sigs or badges or whatever would just deteriorate the forums even more. It's already bad enough with some people making sigs 2x larger than their posts.
To break the cycle of shitposts you just get rid of the shitposters or take away their toys like those smilies. ---------->
Also your thread title sucks and is misleading.

Updated OP, also the prizes wouldn't be money, it would be forum-side privileges/rewards.

Anyway, most of this stuff is throwing around ideas, the main suggestion is basically some sort of appreciation for users' posts, work as well as little forum privileges/rewards for a limited period of time.

As for the rainbow/sparklies, they're just ideas too, they can really be other alternatives, however I have said for these to be limited on purpose so many people don't have these at once, so it doesn't make everything so damn colourful. There could also be limitations so the same person doesn't win in a row, such as excluding them for the immediate next competition after they've won for that given type of competition. This way it cycles between people but also many users don't run around like forum lightbulbs.

gen wanted touhou, ok updated name.

Forum achievements? There's already stuff you could unlock like 'Post Demon' by post what? 750 posts? Maybe some more of those sounds fun.

Actually, what about a leveling system? Like you gain levels by contributing to the forum and unlock other privileges on the forum? Just a random idea.

Jedelas wrote:

Forum achievements? There's already stuff you could unlock like 'Post Demon' by post what? 750 posts? Maybe some more of those sounds fun.

Actually, what about a leveling system? Like you gain levels by contributing to the forum and unlock other privileges on the forum? Just a random idea.

IMO:

Not bad, but as for like post unlocks, I think that just attracts more meaningless posts, because there's not much on the forum to post on when it comes to posting something useful/constructive. As well as being quite difficult. It will be easier if there are competitions, showcases and request shops (Mods/Maps/Art/Scripts) to work towards.

A levelling system wouldn't be too bad but it depends what it is, not something like a race to the finish, especially to with posting lol.

Fleischgeruch wrote:

Forum reputation - Negative would be abusable, with people ganging up on others and rating every one of their posts down (even if some are fine) just because of personal vendettas. Same for positive only personal preferences or mod worship instead of vendettas. I'd just recommend a +1 button instead (with an option for anonymity), to combat all the pointless quoting posts and 'lol'/'yes' single post comments.

Yes.

I'm a user of several forums that have a reputation system in place, and many people abused it for personal reasons. Later on rules were added to avoid this.

Our good friend rakiru is a moderator on those forums, and he made a great post on how reputation should be used:
http://www.teamavolition.com/topic/1722 ... on-system/

Be careful what you wish for, like every idealist "utopian" desire to make something better, there are unintended reverberations every damn time.

If anyone in a position of authority decides to follow through with any of the above ideas, it would need thorough planning, complete forethought etc. to gain my support, and not become something worse than the status quo.

Yes I am well aware that it would need thorough planning and rules in place to ensure these features are used properly. This could only be something that danhezee and co. can do.

However if handled right, it could be a great step forward.

dont we all know that if it took a year to make rules that should exist since day 1 then we would have to wait few next years for reputation or something similar to it

I'm all for adding a "like" button for posts, which would probably lead to some stronger groupthink like Fleischy was saying, but it'll definitely get rid of the pointless agreeing posts. Definitely no negative rep button, that could be easily abused.

Shaz wrote:

I propose that we implement the following things:
- Forum reputation > This could be limited to only positive reputation, or have both negative and positive. This gives people reward for having good posts, as well as bad ones, therefore making it easier to identify the users will well-thought posts in comparison to those who just seem to complain and bicker. Forum rep could allow images to be sent through rep, to forum emoticon to just regular/formatted text.

- Forum-side prizes > Long have we had many different competitions with almost little reward to motivate people to actually make an effort when it comes to competitions or anything of the sort. I couldn't blame them, as if there's little to play for, why play at all?

I propose the following forum-side prizes:
Custom titles > These can come in a few forms, such as coloured custom titles (also could be in different fonts), small imagery to fit the custom title area
Name sparkles / Similar > Have some sort of gif-type imagery to appear on the person's name
Temporary competition badges > Could be given for an "x" amount of times to a person before they can earn the permanent badge, as they've shown consistency to gain the badge for the respective activity. However let me stress this shouldn't be the only way to gain permanent badges, just another method to get yourself "seen".
Larger avatars > Could be a user group that allows people a slightly longer avatar for the period they've won the prize for.
The above should be held by the winner for 2-3 months before their prizes expire and they can re-enter if they wish to regain these privileges, therefore giving other people a chance and not making the forum into a rainbow-fest.

Titles shouldn't be a prize, it just be something you can get, like the old fourms.
Sparkles; Only if I can turn them off.
Temp badges should be fine.
No comment on larger avatars.

Also, in general, I don't feel people should be rewarded for "making an effort for meaningful posts."

EldredChandler wrote:

Titles shouldn't be a prize, it just be something you can get, like the old fourms.
Sparkles; Only if I can turn them off.
Temp badges should be fine.
No comment on larger avatars.

Also, in general, I don't feel people should be rewarded for "making an effort for meaningful posts."

Regular text titles should be added nonetheless (no clue why they haven't been already tbh), however to get them edited to have different fonts / colours and small imagery, you should win them. So they're just customised further to the person's liking.

As for meaningful posts, it's more like forum prizes for things like competition winners of different sorts (multiple types, so that everyone has a chance), as there's not always a way to reward people for their work other than handing out permanent badges. Reputation can be added to any post really, not just meaningful posts and like others said, just positive rep since most of the forum hasn't got the mental capacity to use negative rep sensibly.

So far my ideas for competitions that these prizes can be applied on are:
- Script competitions (Something fairly small, monthly etc)
- Modding competitions
- Mapping competitions
- Story-writing
- Comic, picture/story (Inspired by Flei)
- Graphics design
- Caption competition (Lounge stuff)
- (Possibly a) Server of the month (Can be a community-held vote, less visible rewards like temporary badges for staff for limited period)
(Last one is more of a game-based reward, may improve the quality/admin activity on some servers to gain recognition).

People who excel in these competitions or in general in doing some of this stuff should get the relevant permanent badge eventually anyway, this is just a bit of extra stuff they can try obtain.

Some may work, some may not, but the idea is that the section mods would oversee this and people could get involved in several areas of the forum.