If I Had My Druthers...

These are some changes that I'd make to this site:

• Cliquey veterans (yes you!) welcome more new members, especially if their 'welcome' post is informative and hopeful.
• The moderators simply moderate less, only closing threads or banning members if it involves something illegal or clearly disrupts discussions (as per the TOS).
• Members use the Report Post button more often.
• Nude avatars are allowed. This is the Internet, you run into nudity all the time. Non-members can't see avatars anyway.
• Multiple accounts, say up to three, are allowed, so long as you keep a "primary" account.
• If members are banned, they are informed of their infraction.
• Rob posts more often, and becomes more involved with his site. He seems to be the ultimate lurker.
• Tiered membership, as Lex noted elsewhere. Those with high levels can view videos, keep more PMs in their mailbox, etc. Gold members still only see gallery images.
• More information on the homepage, including Most Active Threads, which I know vBulletin has.
• Rep Power. I liked it, and it weeded out the troublemakers.
• Bring back free gold memberships to those who post verification photos.
• A Circumcision forum is created.
• Cock posts would be instantly moved from Women's Issues.
• Last visited date/time under member's image in forums
• Fix caching problem in Opera, and incorrect gallery image counts.
• A series of stickied tutorial threads, with screen caps and simple instructional text, on starting posts, replying to posts, uploading photos/videos, editing posts, etc.
• allow flash avatars
• allow Spoiler text in posts

I'd like to see this site a bit less reliant on moderators, but still not completely without some government.

Re-allow images in sigs. :3 Had them for about a week in my membership.

I'm not really a fan. I come here for info more than anything. Those signature images seem to just make pages load more slowly. There are many other ways to develop a unique identity on here.

Not bad, rec. Who helped you?
Some kweschuns:

Multiple accounts, say up to three, are allowed, so long as you keep a "primary" account.
Why?

Rep Power. I liked it, and it weeded out the troublemakers.
What dat?

Allow Spoiler text in posts.
What dat?

Several reasons:
- When people are banned, they always seem to come back with a new alias. Banning members encourages multiple accounts.
- It doesn't seem all that horrible if somebody has more than one virtual identity on this site, but within reason. I have about 6 email accounts, all for different purposes, for example.
- Sometimes members change accounts rather than just changing their usernames. In this case, they need two accounts during this transition.

You don't remember it from last fall? You could give rep points to members who you thought contributed positively to the site. I think that it worked because members like DC, SP, NIC, yourself, and, ahem, myself, had high rep points.... members like Lafever and Arliss did not. It worked.

If you were going to review a movie, book, etc, and you want to hide the spoiler section, you can do it easily by placing it a [spoiler] block.

These are the points that I entirely agree with you on. Great post!

1) I don't care if someone has multiple accounts, and I've never understood the strong policy that LPSG maintains against them.
But how would multiple account affect a banning? If I were not only Rubi, but also Diamond (oops) and Amethyst, would all three have to go, or only the one on which I was delinquent?
Having two accounts during a deliberate transition is allowed now, right? You just have to let the mods know.

2) Ah yes, rep points. My question about them is: What difference did they make? Did they, for example, in any way change the behavior of Arliss or Lafever?

3) Spoiler texts sound like a good idea.

Yo' duh man, rec.

I would certainly not be against many of those... some wouldn't effect me I reckon.

People hated the rep points thing aparently - I was off on one when it happened so I don't really fully understand why. I've seen it used on a few other sites (admitedly smaller ones) and it has worked OK.

I'm definitely for the multiple accounts being not such a serious sin. Most people wouldn't use it - some people would but not for evil The kind of people who are going to use secondary accounts to fuck with people are going to do it, or equivalent, anyway.

Rep points were only in place a couple of weeks before biting it, weren't they. I think it is impossible to tell what effect they would have had. And no, they may not effect the behaviour of the Arlisses and the Lafevers but they may well effect how other members react to those kind of posters (not take them so seriously) or even give the mods a better indication of how the membership at large feels about those kind of posters.

I couldn't agree more. The mods/admins will delete all of your accounts if you are busted. I think that users should at least have a primary account, so that only the others get deleted if they are busted. This way we wouldn't have to deal with the Chicagosam fiasco again.
They gave much-needed objectivity to the decision process of banning them, no? If nobody thought that they contributed positively to the site (ie, they had low rep points), then the decision is more clear cut.

I see blocks of spoiler text and I think they can be useful. Not essential, but useful.

P.S. I forgot to add another thing to the list. vBulletin has mods/patches/modules that let you prevent double posts. They take about 2 minutes to install. I wonder why Rob doesn't do this.

I have noticed that you can't post exactly the same thing within a given time frame (don't recall what it is) - the double post thing that seems to happen quite often is due to lag - sometimes on the server and maybe sometimes on the user's end.

i agree with basically everything said, especially the part about cliquey veterans. i know too many members who've complained about that same situation.

but with members being being banned, aren't they usually informed of the problem when they're banned? if not, that's horrrible.

I see several manifestations, from Kudos to Mojo. It's really all the same. Maybe Rep Points was a poor title, likening it to a popularity contest.

Confession:
Long ago, had a second account that I used to post a few times. I only posted postiively, so I think that's why I wasn't banned entirely. I think that it can go either way, but people already log in with aliases (ie. Bob123 from the work computer and Rob321 from the home computer).

I think that many members, particularly those with low rep points, mistook them for a popularity contest. I think that rep points gave everyone, including the mods, a fair barometer of how the site was going and who the informative and popular members were, which could certainly affect the success of a thread.

I don't mind if they are cliquey, but I wish they made a point of welcoming new members once in a blue moon--especially those noobs who take the time to write a pleasant introduction. Getting a greeting from someone who has, say, 3,000 posts and is not a mod/admin would be very welcoming!

Ask Banly!

I don't think the forum needs changed much at all. Maybe less controversy and hateful bashing, a little less hijackin of posts, there is so much spam in this data base I don't know how it don't crash. I don't like members getting banned either without warning. But if someone is that abrasive that people complain about them I don't see them listening to a warning . I thought banning was banning of an ip address therefore a second account from that ip address would be banned also. I could be wrong.

Yeah - I've seen it called Kudos and a plus / minus system of Exhalting / Smiting and various other manefestations. Another thing I've seen is a board member's 'Member' title change with post count. So for example on an evolution related site you could start as protoplasm and move up through various evolved states as your post count hits 50 , 100 , 500 , 1000 and so on. It may seem kind of childish in some ways, but we do watch our milestones here (many of us), so why not have a marker?

Actually yeah, I should do that more often - I remember a few 'names' appeared on my intro thread and it made me feel this was an inclusive site.

Well - my ban was a temp ban so I got the oportunity to ask when I got back. But I got no reason with the ban, no mod / admin contacted me during the ban and I did have to ask when I got back - the info was not volunteered (plus the responses were individual - there did not seem to be an official answer, as it were). So I would say no - a banned member is generally not told the why and wherefores of the ban - but then in the ToS it doesn't say they will be, nor indeed that the admin team really needs a reason. But let's not get into all that.