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Khallayne

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Before I started moving, I copy/pasted in the intro thread. I always read the OP and answered any question I saw, tried to explain why posting their eggs was against the rules, and apply my response to whatever was in the first post.

 

It is an extremely tiresome thing to do some times, even copy/pasting, you have the 1 minute wait between posts. This makes it a boring task, but I think it is nice that some people are willing to take time to do it. Whether they are advertising a favorite site, upping post count, welcoming new players and trying to make the climate seem warmer, or whatever their aims. Yes, for there to be 2 or 4 posts that all say the same thing without addressing any issues in the OP can seem tiresome, but as Skauble says, unless you want to step in and contribute, perhaps we should all be grateful that someone is doing something there.

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I've been a forum admin before, and there was a moderator section. But there wasn't any chit-chat, it was strictly business. Any chit-chat was moved onto the main forum. I think a section for moderators is a good idea because there are so many issues on the forum that if moderators only had a PM system to contact each other, TJ and all the moderators would have full PM boxes all the time.

 

See, I really don't see the point of artists having a secret area to talk about their cats. Why can't you do that in GD? There's a thread for Pets. Maybe you only want to share that information with your artist buddies, but couldn't that just go to PM? Regular users have site friends too that maybe they'd only like to share certain things with, but they don't get our own forum to do that. They do it over the pm system, or with outside programs like msn.

 

I can understand the need for an artist section where work is done. I don't understand the need for one where it sounds like you guys are mostly just a club house talking about random things that only artists are invited to. It just doesn't sound that necessary.

While I don't mean to beat a dead horse, I think you're misunderstanding some of what goes on.

 

Yes, a lot of it is pointless chatter, but they're often about things that we only feel comfortable telling to the other artists. I'll use myself as an example.

 

The ladies in the Artist Section are some of my best friends. I go to them for advice, or I cry to them if things go really, really wrong. There are things that the entire forum base don't need to know about me or anyone else. Personal drama. It's easiest to contact everyone in there than trying to hunt them down on MSN.

 

I know it seems like a club, but they do work in there. It's a safe place free from prying eyes where we can plan surprises for you guys, the users. It's a place where they can work and occasionally unwind. And since it seems like a lot of people like to use artists as scapegoats (made from observations since my retirement), they need it. They're wonderful people, and not all of them want drama. A few bad apples have spoiled the bunch, and we've all had our personal drama on site.

 

As for making the site a friendlier place? that has to be done collectively as a whole. Sure, mods can sit around and tell you all to play nice, but the truth is, not everyone will get along. The key is tolerance and respect. The golden rule, if you will. Mods can force it, but the members really should know better.

 

And now, I slink back into retirement. There's little to no chance that I'll reply to any comments made on this post. Sorry.

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Way back when I first joined the forum here, I wandered into Suggestions, and took a look at one of the threads where a collaboration of artists was working on a project. I think it was La Femme, but it's been a long time and I don't remember for sure. After reading the entire thread, some 70 pages, I composed a pm to the mod who was looking after this section at that time. My question was simply, "why are the artists working out in the public eye this way? They'll never be able to get anything done. There should be a private, hidden place for them to work." That was the way it was done in a forum I was previously part of, and it worked very well. The artists that were part of the collaboration could bounce ideas and artwork off each other without random people not involved coming in and telling them they should be doing it <this> way, instead of <that> way. Maybe that random person was a perfectly good artist, but it wasn't their project, was it? So, in an effort to please, they'd redo the sprite, yet again. And another random person would come in, and tell them they should be doing it <that> way instead of <this> way. No wonder the artists doing the project were frustrated. I don't know that my PM had any effect on subsequent events, but shortly after that the thread vanished into a private area.

 

I'm not part of the in-cave artists (yet) and so don't have access to this hidden artists' area, but I completely and totally believe it's needed. It doesn't matter what they discuss there, just that they have a private place where they can work.

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Kila - your art work is terrific - and I for one had NO issues with the artists private forum. I just wish you'd be back there ! (I am DESPERATE for a Leetle...)

 

Happy New Year. smile.gif

Edited by fuzzbucket

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Thank you, but I get rather tired of hearing about my posts in intros, when no one seems to realize that if I don't approve them no one gets access to the bloody forum! I approve or not many intro's daily, I can not post special individual welcomes.

 

I have a life off the forum instead of picking apart members at least trying to help new members why can't we focus on trying to fix things that aren't working? Members post CP in intros, how many of you post in intro's?

But _Z_, everybody loves your post. Please continue to post it sad.gif

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But no one needs to respond to the C&P posts. Why would those stop people from responding to the original post? I admit that this is the part I'm not getting so maybe someone could clarify for me - if people want something better than the welcoming posts there are, who are they suggesting should be the ones making them?

That sums up my feelings exactly. That and it strikes me as very, VERY odd that people are actively reading CP posts and tsking that they are not answered to their liking, then moving on. That's a rather backwards thing to do when you hold in your hands the opportunity to alter it. Sounds like a lot of work, just to be negative.

 

And apologies Z if it seemed as my question appeared to be a welcoming committee instead of your posts. I meant in addition to since it appears people want to do something extra.

 

I'd also ask people to consider that copy/paste links are in the vein of teaching a man to fish. It's an intro forum after all, not a help section. And I think it's better to teach someone from the start, where to go find things, rather than try to answer every question there. Especially as many here feel the search function is very bad.

 

It may be this thread has run it's course for usefulness. None of this last bit if about things the mods can affect. So... perhaps here is something that would be useful for ye mods. I was job browsing a day or so ago. There are many, many good account rep jobs out there that pay quite well. As large as this community is, I'd say working this place would be as good as any internship. And thinking of people who work such communities I thought of the WoW forums. If you are interested, you might try taking a look at them for ideas. I'd say two of their mods are very good at dealing with what can be, an openly hostile community. Zahrym and Nethaera. You can visit this link and click on the show all blue posts at the top to see them. http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/

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The C&P post discussion really brings up some memories-when I first joined, I actually PMed Z about how her posts were impersonal. xd.png

 

Being a newbie can be troublesome. Really, Z, your C&P posts are great!

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The C&P post discussion really brings up some memories-when I first joined, I actually PMed Z about how her posts were impersonal. xd.png

Funny, I got the opposite! xd.png I got a personal scribble from Z in her mandatory C+P post.

 

I don't mind the C+P posts, as long as some of them offer some information and/or help, as in links or offer to answer questions in PM.

 

About the Artist Section: Were I work we have bosses telling us upfront that we are there to work and NOT being social. Guess what? We feel like crap and are not doing a good job. The group I'm in have come up with ways to be social anyway, things like text messages and Facebook plus going out on After Work. Now other groups are jealous of us for being a tight group. I'm getting the same vibes here. huh.gif

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The post from Z is extremely helpful to newbies, and it was my bible for some time. I still have a quick link to it...

 

I'd go and greet and be my really friendly self, but two things put me off. One is I don't want to be accused of using it to up my post count, and the other is that I'm very aware that I'm much older than the vast majority here, and perhaps young ones are looking for young friends. I realise that I'm probably totally wrong in thinking that but it's been the reason I don't greet.

 

...and... I'd selfishly like to see on the forum...

 

A link to members' posts in their profile.

 

 

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The post from Z is extremely helpful to newbies, and it was my bible for some time. I still have a quick link to it...

 

I'd go and greet and be my really friendly self, but two things put me off. One is I don't want to be accused of using it to up my post count, and the other is that I'm very aware that I'm much older than the vast majority here, and perhaps young ones are looking for young friends. I realise that I'm probably totally wrong in thinking that but it's been the reason I don't greet.

 

...and... I'd selfishly like to see on the forum...

 

A link to members' posts in their profile.

There IS one. Just under the member name (and I am WAY older than you.... biggrin.gif)

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...and... I'd selfishly like to see on the forum...

 

A link to members' posts in their profile.

What do you mean? The link under your nick name in your profile saying "Find all posts by this member" already list all the posts of a member? huh.gif

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I think we can all agree that Z's intro section posts are the good kind of copy-pasta. They're informative, useful, and help her get her job done.

 

I would like to have some more conversation about doing away with publicly displayed post counts. Anyone feel up to listing out some pros and cons?

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I think there should be a rule, "If you do not contribute to a Topic, do not post. If someone answered faster than you, but said the same, use the delete option. " To prevent the seemingly gloating about newbie questions and also to keep topics short, without "(Quote) this/signed/qft" postings which do not contribute to a healthy discussion.

For Example this Question-Topic

The first answer was completly correct and answered everything, but still there were more postings, some saying more or less the same or demanding the Topic to be deleted or moved.

 

Also I would like to see a rule like "Postings should contain at least ten correctly spelled words and have a coherent meaning"

 

This Forum is in some aspects really strict but then in other unbelievably lax. It is really quite unnerving. I see no clear "line": This you can do, that you cannot, but more sort of: If you break this rule you are evil and damned, but if you break that one we oversee it, everyone does. It makes new people nervous, either stick to your own rules and enforce them on everyone or do not make such rules you do not intend to use.

Like the spam rule, there indeed is a lot of spam in the news topics, no denying it, many posts with just one word, they do not contribute anything, apart from the posting counter of the poster and making the thread more unclear. But I have never seen those postings get deleted with the remark to please read the Forum rules like every egg spam is. (okay it would be a lot of work, because the first 30-50 postings of every news thread consts of YAY and/or kthnx) News topics are kind of impotant and should not be the spamrefuge of the forum.

 

Just my opinion.

Edited by urusta

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I think we can all agree that Z's intro section posts are the good kind of copy-pasta.  They're informative, useful, and help her get her job done.

 

I would like to have some more conversation about doing away with publicly displayed post counts.  Anyone feel up to listing out some pros and cons?

There are only a few purposes that I can think of that the post counts serve:

 

1. It's used as a gauge for applying for moderating positions.

 

2. It can help other members in making judgments about certain players or the things they're saying. It is by no means foolproof or all that should be relied on, but there is some benefit in knowing that a person is active in a forum, because-

  • - It can be an indicator of experience

 

- It means that their negative actions can directly haunt them in a place where they spend a lot of their time.

3. It can encourage people to actively participate.

 

But, frankly, I don't think that those things really make it worth keeping. However, if they are worth keeping, I would think that having the count in one's profile would serve the same purpose without the creating the need to increase it as some kind of status symbol because it wouldn't be readily obvious. That would allow people to know if they qualified to apply to be a moderator and it would allow other people to go and check a person's activity if they felt that it would be a good indicator of something.

 

There's still the matter of encouraging people to be active, but I'm not sure how much of a concern that is here as far as goals of the forum go. I do think, though, that we would either need get rid of the custom user titles or allow everyone to have them. I'd be okay with either.

 

There's probably more, but that's all that I can think of right now.

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I don't know how useful posts counts are. The way I've always seen them is how another poster mentioned them, "You joined in X month of this year, but you have over 4,000 posts... You really don't have anything else to do, do you?" I'm a terminal lurker with occasional bouts of chattiness, like right now, but I don't often want to post if I don't have anything to say about a topic. Admittedly, I'm occasionally silly and try to joke -it never works, mind you- so I only chime in when something seems off about a discussion or I think a perspective has occurred to me that hasn't been previously addressed.

 

On the other hand, I've basically read every thread in News, Suggestions, Site Discussion and Help back for the last 5 pages or so. So I'm pretty well caught up with most of the topics that have cropped up within a month or so of my joining the forum even though it's rare that I speak up on any of them. Mostly it's because I have nothing constructive to say, or I'm just gathering more information on the subject through following other responses.

 

Before anyone asks, I've been an admin/mod of an Email RP for the last seven years now, and I got started in persona approval, so I had to know the ins and outs of the fandom, our game's particular rules and be friendly while I explained the same "no, you can't do this" to the umpteenth newbie to that game, why a rule from a previous game doesn't or did apply. That being said, I was very inclined to be similarly "helpful" in the Introductions thread, but feared being hit for "spamming" the thread, as I lacked any super-special criteria that would make me be worth listening to, such as modship or being part of a project as an assurance of quality. For me, the minute-wait between posts wouldn't be a bother. If I have to wait a minute before I can post anyway, that's plenty of time to at least type out a suitably personalized post for that person and answer questions they might have.

 

That being said, less copy-paste from people who are not Z the better, you have to wait a minute between posts anyway so it does you no harm to actually read the OP and tailor your rote reply to it. By the way, if I hurt your feelings by the bot observation, Z, take heart as it was not intended to do that, I've had problems for years of being suspected of being a bot myself. Especially when speaking to people in realtime in chat and over IM. I like a good rote reply in that kind of situation, a welcome to the game, a brief rundown of the rules and that it's the same for everyone.

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Happy New Year, everyone.

 

Post count, we all agree doesn't mean anything. (I believe new members have to have ten posts before the big red box goes away.) Members CP'ing in Intros is difficult to ban. Allowing some but not others is not fair, plus having to go back and read all of them is a lot of repetitive work.

 

~I hope this makes sense, I perhaps enjoyed New years, a little more then I should have.~ Coffee anyone? blink.gif

Edited by _Z_

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Happy New Year, everyone.

 

Post count, we all agree doesn't mean anything. (I believe new members have to have ten posts before the big red box goes away.) Members CP'ing in Intros is difficult to ban. Allowing some but not others is not fair, plus having to go back and read all of them is a lot of repetitive work.

 

~I hope this makes sense, I perhaps enjoyed New years, a little more then I should have.~ Coffee anyone? blink.gif

Yes please - and PLEASE keep putting up YOUR intro posts - they really ARE useful.

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The coffee kicked in, If I put a new Guidelines sticky in Intros, requesting CP replies/links, must provide info not already posted? Would that help? Any other ideas to make Intros more personal and friendly?

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The coffee kicked in, If I put a new Guidelines sticky in Intros, requesting CP replies/links, must provide info not already posted? Would that help? Any other ideas to make Intros more personal and friendly?

I'm generally a fan of guidelines, so they have my support. However, and I know I may be in the minority here, I really don't think that many people get to this forum and leave because they got a few C&P replies to their welcome (and, in fact, I've seen people in those threads say thanks).

 

All that cutting out the C&P greetings is guaranteed to do is cut responses to the posts. And I think that getting only one reply is worse than getting four C&P replies, especially when those replies offer the poster up as someone to PM if needed. And LadyAmlaruil2 confirmed that new people actually do take up that offer and that she has answered quite a few PMs.

 

Honestly, I think that giving someone a number of people to PM is a wonderful thing and actually is a personal touch. It tells me, "I know that I post a bunch of these things, and that they're not all personalized, but if you do need something or want to reach out then I'm here to give you the personal attention you need." That's what "feel free to contact me with questions" means. Again, that's a message that's obviously getting through if the current greeters are getting PMs.

 

There seem to be two things happening in the Intro section now:

 

1. C&P greetings

2. A lack of personal greetings

 

For some reason, people are tying those two things together and I'm not certain why, because it seems as if only the second one is the problem. If what the new members are actually missing is the individualized touches, then that's where the attention should be focused. Because if a welcome post gets three or four personalized welcomes and three or four C&P welcomes, then they'll get the warm and fuzzy feeling of individual welcome and the sense that people are trying to pass on some necessary info. Win-win.

 

But instead of just going and posting the welcomes themselves (which I want to say clearly that some of the people here are now doing and I think that's a really good thing), people want the current greeters to do things differently, regardless of effort or time constraints. I think that's ridiculous. The C&P replies are only problematic in that they're all that's there. And if people want to fix that then they can do that themselves instead of volunteering other people (again noting that some people have gone to do that).

 

So, personally, I think that the current greeters are fine. Stopping them won't create a welcome, it will just create silence. If people go post personalized greetings, the others won't stand out and it should all be good. Besides, what I see in most of those posts in the intro forum is - your post, a post linking to the mentoring project, and one that's just a hello. Sometimes there's another post with a repeat link to the rules, but I don't think it's going to kill anyone to get that link twice.

 

What I do think would help is a Welcome Wagon that someone mentioned earlier. We have the mentoring project, which is member organized player assistance, so I don't see why there can't be a member organized welcome. If there was a group of people doing it then each person would only have to answer maybe five posts a day to create a really warm welcome and balance out the other greetings. It wouldn't require a huge effort from people who give individual replies, nor would it necessitate telling people to stop their current method of welcome.

 

On a side note - glad to hear you had a rocking New Years. smile.gif

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What I do think would help is a Welcome Wagon that someone mentioned earlier. We have the mentoring project, which is member organized player assistance, so I don't see why there can't be a member organized welcome. If there was a group of people doing it then each person would only have to answer maybe five posts a day to create a really warm welcome and balance out the other greetings. It wouldn't require a huge effort from people who give individual replies, nor would it necessitate telling people to stop their current method of welcome.

Now this idea I like. It was the lack of personal greetings that bothered me in Intros.

 

And remember this: the tone set when a person first enters a forum will impact their perception of that forum for a considerable time. So a warm welcome would create a more friendly, family type atmosphere. They'll begin their active participation with the expectation that people here are glad to see them.

 

_Z_, if you would like, I'd love to be part of organizing a Welcome Wagon.

 

And Happy New Year. It's good to hear that people enjoyed their holiday. smile.gif

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After reading all 20 pages of this thread, I had an idea that might alleviate some of the problems people have:

 

1) New users not reading guidelines, rules or stickies

2) The average user feeling as though they are not a valued member of the community or they have no rights.

3) Artists receiving special privileges vs. what a non-artist suspects artists receive.

4) Lack of, or too much, transparency.

5) The actual influence mods and artists have over what occurs on the site and forum.

 

Most games, even free ones, have some sort of EULA (End-User Licensing Agreement). Granted, this is not the 'game' portion of Dragon Cave, but the forum. However, why not create a forum 'EULA'?

 

When a person signs up for the forum, the first thing they are presented with is the Forum EULA. It outlines the 'hard & fast' rules - what constitutes spam, warning levels and consequences, those sorts of things. It could also mention rules for user names, prohibitions against '1337 spk/txtspk', dragon spam, duplicate posts, circumventing filters, all that entails proper use of the forum, along with things like 'experience may change with forum use', copyright/intellectual property rights, how to file complaints and arbitration... typical EULA stuff.

 

It would also outline the member levels, user rights, artist rights, mod rights & responsibilities, so everyone knows right off the bat who gets what and why they get it.

 

I can already predict a number of 'no one reads EULAs!' responses... so...

 

Once the person has scrolled through the EULA, and clicks the 'Acknowledge EULA' button, there is a 20-question quiz with randomized questions so no two potential users could exchange the information necessary to become a member. The user has to pass the quiz in order to be a contributing member of the forum.

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That's a good idea perzephone, but do we really want new users to have to jump through hoops to join? We'd just be trading one thing for another.

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That's a good idea perzephone, but do we really want new users to have to jump through hoops to join? We'd just be trading one thing for another.

This... The only thing I've ever had to complete an EULA quiz like that for was my federal student loan application, which is kinda a totally different league than the DC forums....

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That's a good idea perzephone, but do we really want new users to have to jump through hoops to join? We'd just be trading one thing for another.

Which is preferable, making someone jump through a few hoops, or having ten people jump on them in their first post for making the same faux pas that a thousand other new members made before them?

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Which is preferable, making someone jump through a few hoops, or having ten people jump on them in their first post for making the same faux pas that a thousand other new members made before them?

Honestly, I would rather have the latter, as repeated questions would still happen even with the quiz. It happens on other sites, and actually makes such situations worse as now the members have further justification for jumping on the newbies. Not to mention is gives even the members who don't do such things an unwelcoming and strict atmosphere. As it stands, you only get that atmosphere if you make a mistake.

Edited by Nectaris

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