David something has to be done

[mark thorpe]

not everyone likes it being over complicated either...

 

[lhuser]

I agree there, but it needs a slight bit of fixing in the templates. The main one is the page selection. Usually, a nice, page without the need to scroll sideways to access page 1549.

not everyone likes it being over complicated either...

It's true. Simple, but not too disorganised. Simple would be just to rearange the tables and templates. We'll be fine after.

 

[compguy91]

Sure some might not like over simplicity or being too complex, but with complexity you can be either basic or complex. With simplicity you can only be simple which means less room for flexibility.

 

[Half Evil]

Having a custom signature, or a custom avatar reflecting personality is not complex.

 

[root]

Look, we have now over 25,000 members, and the number of members constantly returing hasn't changed from when we just had 12,000 members.

somewhat amazingly, circa 13,000 people joined, asked a question and either left after that question was answered, or left without the question being answered.

actually a lot of those members signed up simply to leave porn links.

In fact, everyone is still the same, thats why they all have some many thousands of posts...

We NEED more members to return. Something to make the forum want to make them to want to come back.

well why don't we all try being better at helping people out?

Professionalism for a forum aimed at young teens is not the way to go.

I'm not a young teen, what makes you so sure that this foprum is aimed at young teens, I always assumed that computerforums.org was aimed at providing a place to talk about computers?
tell me if I'm wrong! I didn't realise that this was supposed to be some sort of private myspace for your benefit.

Sorry, but I'm on other forums that do allow custom things, and its becoming more apparent something needs to be changed.

Please think about it.

Custom Av's
Custom formatted Sig's
More smilies

That would help a ton in my honest opinon. It works everywhere else.

I actually find it funny, I really laughed when I read this, allowed, (no I'm not joking), you honestly think that people who come to these forums will be impressed by a bunch of toys enough to stay here forever and be a part of a community who main care is what picture is next to their screen name, or what little picture they get to put underneath their post or how many damned emoticons they can cram into a sentance.

Actually webmonkey, if they're so unprofessional how come they have 958 active members while we have at most 50? How come their community is flourishing while ours isn't?

Face it everyone, there are severe problems with the staff and members over here. It seems like members here are so focused on their popularity rather then helping out and having a meaningful discussion. Reputation and post counts are the root of all of this.

That, bundled with a staff that doesn't seem to know how to keep site discussions under wraps makes for a very corrupt community.

That's the reason why legacy members such as Lord Kalthorn, Paradox, Alvino, and UK31337 have left.

Actually, I agree with what jon has written here, the problem is the staff and members not the community on the whole.
UK31337 didn't leave he was banned,
LK left because he got busy at work, I know this becaue I talked to him offsite as well and was helping him on a coding project, he didn't have enough time to do the things that he wanted to do in his spare time, let alone come here and argue with everyone.

Yeah XFS is really going strong. I believe it is based on their customability.

A person sees their forums, sees all the awesome stuff you could do with an acc, like custom sigs, avs... and is really impressed. He comes over here and sees basically blank profiles... what will he choose?

he'll choose the site that helps the most.
the site with the strongest community, most people comming here are not going to care if they can have a few gadgets that look cool.

No, it's based on their strong community and staff. Features have nothing to do with this. There are still text based communities out there are doing great.

Take Computing.net for example.
http://www.computing.net/

that said, if I recall correctly, Seti, Wombat, Lurkswithin and Maurice all left computing.net to come here!

None of which contribute to a truly healthy community.

exactly... pretty buttons, pictures etc don't make a good forum, members make a good forum.

Well, the customization features are going to attract a huge number of people, and at least half of them will be good members.

really you're wrong. a strong community, a helpful place where posts are answered etc will attract memmbers, not shiny buttons.

You're not understanding my point. It's not the software that runs the forum to blame, it's the community in a whole.

I get your point, and agree.

I am just saying that to get a good community, we need to offer them something special.

I am also saying that new members WILL go to the forum with the most toys.

No they won't I'm going to use the example expertsexchange.com
it's a computer website where a lot of professionals post, it used to be free, there are no toys, no signatures, no custom avatars... they only 'toy' is a heavily moderated rep system. that forum is so popular that people actually pay to read it now!

I think we could attract a lot of new members IF:
1. members suggestions were actually listened to such as the idea of custom avatars or something.
2. we had a friendly staff
3. we projected the image that we actually care about members here instead of it being a popularity contest.

I really hate when peopel say this, it's just some sort of BS emotional blackmail, yes, there is clearly a problem here, members don't stay, but constantly banging on about custom avatars is not helping.
friendlier stayy may help, I'll agree.
the popularity contest theme of this forum doesn't help, the race for post count/rep count is silly, but if you mean when you say care about members carry out every suggestin not matter whether others have the opinion that it might be detrimental to the forum, then I just don't agree.

I'm saying that if the mod situation isn't fixed and we don't get things back on track I'd rather go to a forum with more toys. This has been going on too long and has been neglected too long, both of those things combined isn't good.

Custom avatars won't hurt the forum. Just require them to be hosted somewhere else then you won't have to worry about bandwidth. If we were really that concerned about space, would we save every single post ever made and never delete any like we do now? I have yet to see any posts truly deleted, all that's done is a simple . and that's it. All that does is raise post count. I guess we can have post counts of 238471902378412908572390457812907 but no avatars? honestly I don't care about custom avatars, but if you're not going to allow us those then AT LEAST get a decent staff.

make some suggestions then... who'd be better staff, we had the privellage of allowing virtually unmoderated threads where you could say what you thought of the mods and tell them where they could improve, practically everyone said all the mods were great except brookfield.

I think that your overlooking the fact that this forum is far too cliquey, if you have differing views from anyone else, you get shot down.......if you truly believe that adding custom sigs and avatars is going to attract new members then I think your deluding yourself.

This may sound critical and having been here for some bit now, your face either fits or it doesn't, there is always an instant suspicion about new members also unfortunately its attracted the likes of spammers, or people whom don't seem to be adding to the forum, or the community, because it is a community. The likes of 'George Monks' whom persistently renew their membership despite being banned on numerous occasions.

This forum appears to like the drama, it seems to think there is a status symbol in achieving rep and post count, in no other forum that I frequent is there such an obsession with post count and rep, in fact you can still look back and out of the last maybe 100 threads, created in the social lounge probably 15% of them are created in regards to 'oh look I have 1000 posts, or so much rep etc...' lose that obsession and actually focus on contributing to the forum and I am sure it will start to thrive.

completly agree, in fact the last forum that I left and didn't come back to I left because it was too cliche like, there were groups of people that practically ran the place, the older members seemed immune to discipline and frequently were allowed to get away with whatever they liked whilst newer members were banned for following their example.

 

[root]

yeah ill agree with that one big time, he also ignores a lot of my PM's, hopefully he will reply to the one i sent him today, i took like 20min. to write that thing just for a forum , this just proves how lazy i really am though, mainly because ive been sitting at this computer for the past 3 hours doing nothing but talking on here, listening to music, and watching vids. i hope my computer apps teacher likes how fast i can type

so this forum is a bad place because david doesn't have time to examine and reply to everything that you write?!

Well, this is kinda like a communist forum.

We have no choice. No choice in avatars, signatures, custom title (select few), forum skin etc.

Were pretty much told to deal with what we have or leave. And it doesn't suit everyones tastes, so we need variety.

IMO.

why not say it like it is, it doesn't suite your taste, I don't see how you think that having a few pretty pictures are going to make people think that this place is the mutts nuts and are going to want to stay?

Now the question is, who would want to take on the responsibility?

I would assume that if any more mods were selected the selections would be made in private by the existing mods. as they have been made in the past.

im sure there is tons, i know people like dude_se, muz, and myself, as long as others would be more than willing to do it.

again, it's not really a case of putting yourself and your friends names forward, the mods selections have been done in the past based on what the mods felt the particular members quality contribution to the forum was.

The more I think about it, the more I think, we may have a few different faces around, but some of our major posters are gone, or seldom here.

As the member base grows, nothing changes, and it gets old. All I ask is for something refreshing.




This is my proposal....


Custom Avatars, size up to like 80x80.
Custom signatures to include formatting, and image codes, but images only to xxx by xxx pixles.
New theme.
Custom Titles to everyone
No rep

Well the rep can even go, that doesn;t really matter.

But if you notice, almost every successful forum will have customizable stuff. We don't have that.

again that's not true, in fact most sucessful forums that people desperatly want to join don't have these things.

i dont like custom titles to everyone, i would say everone who is a guru or senior member.

and avs should be up to 100x100, 96x96 is the standard

that's make the avatars twice as big as they are now, IMO it's look terrible.

There unprofessional.... This site will never be.

You are all right.... Spam doesn't help but the forum isn't as active anymore... It used to be like a live chat. Maybe it's because we don't have custom sigs and that... I would quite like them.

The thing is... the site is so slow but there are at least 12,000 members who should be deleted... Think how much faster the site would be.

Have a serious think about this one please3 David.

do you really think that deleting 12,000 rows from the member table will massivly improve the speed of the forums?!!!

Ok, let me make this very clear

Agreed lol ,This should be our new logo:

Yeah, because no one is joining. And I know they aren't joining because of staff problems. They wouldnt have been here long enough to know about any of they are new!!

no, people are joining, you made a point of saying that ~13,000 new peopel joined and didn't stay! that could be because of staff problems.

So basically its down to making the forum look fun, and giving a reason for old members to stay, and not get bored, and go to a more fun place.

I disagree, this place should become inviting by the quality of the posts here and the atmosphere, not the amount of pretty pictures next to peoples names

I think (after thinking about it more) we should dump the privileged and dump rep, and give everyone the custom title option. Or forget the option, and add another 2,3 automatic titles. I mean thats the simplest of things. The only people we have left are getting more and more posts, and not even getting a fucking 2 word title above their petty forced avatar. If you have 7,000 posts, you should be acknowledged as something more then guru. I mean someone as seasoned of a member with 7,000 posts should not be the same as a newer member with only 1k.

I agree more ranks would be better than custom titles, but it just increases the race to post.

I've said for a long time the word GURU should be dropped from the member rankings as well.

Seriously, you really have to give into what your members want. Even if you don't like it, its what everyone wants, and sooner or later, the forum will fail because you cant keep with the times.

If you want to keep us (myself included) something has gotta change for the better.

so the crux of what you're saying is give me what I want, else I'll stamp my feet and cry then never come back!!

perhaps it's attitudes like the one you're showing now that is keeping people away!

Why not just give priveleged members mod status without the official mod title. Normally on forums you have your main mods say in red. Then you have other global mods say in blue that may have say the simple ability of removing spam or editing a post.

mostly because it'd be bad to allow people to just randomly delete posts,



had to double post as I was over the limit for a simgle post.

 

[Half Evil]

oh yes, stamping feet and crying and never coming back is exactly what i was going for, thanks root.

I shouldnt have to fight for my opinion. ive said it, its done, some agree, some don't, whatever. ive said what i think, and thats that.

 

[hascet]

I agree with Arrizx's ideas I'de like to see them implemented on the forum, because it is pretty boring around here...and thats my opinion without having to write an essay

Also, to the person who said to pm David about av's, or smilies, well, this has been up for several months now, and I can't remember if I actually Pm'ed Dave about it, but I know that I made a post about it.
www.seanstech.net/avatars

 

[root]

oh yes, stamping feet and crying and never coming back is exactly what i was going for, thanks root.

I shouldnt have to fight for my opinion. ive said it, its done, some agree, some don't, whatever. ive said what i think, and thats that.

well.. clearly my opinion differs from yours...

the point I was making is that we all have different opinions but none of the rest of us are threatening to leave if our ideas and opinions aren't followed to the letter!


I think there is a deep rooted problem on this forum, to do with social dynamic and the amount of help offered by people here, and the way in which potentially new people are often chased away by heavy handed moderation.

it wasn't all that long ago people would sign up with a thread saying hi and their first response would be a post from a mod saying follow the rules else I'll ban you...

this isn't the most inviting forum around. nor is it the most engaging, either intelectually nor funwise.
it does have a healthy balance of the two.



I'm just saying that we should look for solutions, not ways to cover the problems.

if David can't implement all the suggestions then perhaps he should consider getting another admin to help.
if the mods can't clear up spam fast enough then perhaps we need more mods.
if people arn't answering questions then perhaps we should look for ways to try to get people into and involved in the help sections of the forum rather than just the social lounge, (a great way of doing this would be making social lounge posts not count towards post count).

personally, I feel once we've sorted out the problems with the forum dynamics, then we should be sorting out the eye candy like avatars and ranks.

 

[TRDCorolla1]

if David can't implement all the suggestions then perhaps he should consider getting another admin to help.
if the mods can't clear up spam fast enough then perhaps we need more mods.
if people arn't answering questions then perhaps we should look for ways to try to get people into and involved in the help sections of the forum rather than just the social lounge, (a great way of doing this would be making social lounge posts not count towards post count).

personally, I feel once we've sorted out the problems with the forum dynamics, then we should be sorting out the eye candy like avatars and ranks.

I've mentioned that before in previous threads too. I find it quite a turnaround, honestly. If people ARE in fact concerned with post count, they are more than willing to help in any way they can in the help section of the forum instead of the social lounge. Trust me, the forum I'm on right now (besides coming on here) implements that and wow, you can see the help factor. People still post in the "Off Topic" forum so that's good, but you see tons more posts in the Hardware and Software sections of the forum (where most of the productivity takes place).

Of course, spamming the hardware section is there too but mods can handle that with warnings and bans as necessary so that problem is solved.