A suggestion regarding custom avatars

Guys guys GUYS

guys

It's the internet calm down take a deep breath. There's a lot of jumping on the "hey it's Glenn let's disagree with him this will be awesome 0/\0" bandwagon but he makes some rather valid points. The forums are, for all intents and purposes, stagnant. Personally I think part of the problem is the members we love to ban so much are the colorful personalities that make the forum life cool; perhaps in lulling times a bit of relaxation on the rules would be in order.

I don't really care about the custom avatars either way but I do agree the best policy is to probably put the post milestone somewhere achievable with about 3 months of moderate activity posting. At one point in our forums' history it was pretty feasible for a user to make 45-50 posts per day and I argued for the 1,000 post milestone since the chatty group of newbies at the time was able to rocket to custom avatars over the course of their first month or so. Now it seems to me that the most dedicated of posters can attain maybe 4-5 posts per day (and that is if you take the risk of starting a thread) and I think a 500 post limit is more appropriate. For those of you guys talking about the 'effort' and 'work' you made for 1,000 posts, please consider the effort is stored as a series of magnetic pulses on a metal platter and all of your 'effort' and 'work' is subject to deletion if whoever it is that runs the site these days decides to pull the plug. Please. If the avatar was the reason you made all 1,000 of your posts then you are on the forums for all the wrong reasons; didn't you make any friends?

Take a look at the Member Pages PHP pet project I started and never really finished about 3 semesters ago. As I entered each member, I compiled a list of the members who I honestly couldn't recall seeing for months and it was something like 60% of the user group. Where did these guys go? Most of them were several thousands of posts deep in AGN; surely they didn't just pack up their stuff and decide to leave one day? A lot of them were eliminated in big time forums drama but I seriously don't know where a lot of our coolest members went.

So really honestly I think Glenn is acting out of legitimate concern for these forums and at the same time I think no one can really say what is leading to this period of stagnation. Maybe another ZC release will save the day, but I don't know.

I don't think the forums have gone quite stagnant yet. Some areas of the forums are still getting quite a bit of action, while others have slowed down a tad. The answer to this, I don't know. Maybe some of the members had things to take care of in their real lives. Maybe they just got tired of it and decided to never come back. What ever their reasons, all we can really do is continue posting as we are now. Changing the avatar limits or what not probably won't help much, if at all. :mischief:

In my opinion, AGN is more stagnant these days for several reasons:

1) Maturation of the initial core members.
At least in its middle years, when I joined, the active members consisted of some core, older members, who were frequently staff or friends of the staff, and younger groupies. As the years rolled by the older members graduated high school and then college, got lives, and found they had little time left for an online gaming forum. War Lord is semi-retired. Shadowblazer, who would devote a lot of time to installing all kinds of special forum hacks, moved on. Most of the rest of the senior staff is much less active than before. Projects that were previously maintained with great energy now lie abandoned: the above-mentioned member pages, the superlatives, anime girl of the day, etc. The younger members either scattered or themselves matured and became interesting and active members, but as a whole never seemed to fill the shoes of the retired members in terms of energy and initiative. Maybe there's a bigger rift between the members and the staff, the newbies and the old; maybe, not having been there during the community's youth, they feel less attached to and invested in it. I don't know.

2) Success of the staff at maintaining order.
The upper staff has, in recent years, finally succeeded at establishing and maintaining order among the established members. There is no staff infighting, and certainly not in public; rules in the forums are enforced efficiently. And paradoxically, with the establishment of order, forum interest diminished.
Human nature is fascinated by the spectacle. As evidence, look to the public executions, to the Counter-Reformation's attempt to draw people back to religion by embellishing church ceremonies, to the way news, or even the weather, is presented on TV. It is thus not surprising that, several years ago, the interest of the AGN forums came from, very roughly
30% ZC
10% Gaming discussion
10% Miscellaneous discussion
50% Forum melodrama.
Forum drama not only gave people reasons to stay active on the forums, to keep up with the antics of DC, Nightmare, BigJoe, or whoever had blown a fuse that week, but also allowed members, by rooting for and defending their favorite staff member, or providing banal commentary, to become emotionally invested here. Personalities shone through the dozen lines of text and thumb-sized avatars in a way not possible during dry discussion of the latest movie, game, or internet fad. As evidence, go read the archives, in particular DC's "leaked beta" or Breaker's "Sign's [sic] you are a newbie" threads: they are priceless classics, even today, and though there was flaming everywhere, the community was having fun, and felt alive.

That's my two cent analysis, in any case. Most importantly, AGN is very active in what I consider its most important function, serving as a central point for ZC testing, development, and discussion.

EDIT: I just went to look in the forum archives and there are no threads there anymore, besides the picture post. WTF? What's the point of having an archive, and then pruning its threads?

DarkDragon wrote:
That's my two cent analysis, in any case. Most importantly, AGN is very active in what I consider its most important function, serving as a central point for ZC testing, development, and discussion.

DarkDragon wrote:
2) Success of the staff at maintaining order.
The upper staff has, in recent years, finally succeeded at establishing and maintaining order among the established members. There is no staff infighting, and certainly not in public; rules in the forums are enforced efficiently. And paradoxically, with the establishment of order, forum interest diminished.
Human nature is fascinated by the spectacle. As evidence, look to the public executions, to the Counter-Reformation's attempt to draw people back to religion by embellishing church ceremonies, to the way news, or even the weather, is presented on TV. It is thus not surprising that, several years ago, the interest of the AGN forums came from, very roughly
30% ZC
10% Gaming discussion
10% Miscellaneous discussion
50% Forum melodrama.
Forum drama not only gave people reasons to stay active on the forums, to keep up with the antics of DC, Nightmare, BigJoe, or whoever had blown a fuse that week, but also allowed members, by rooting for and defending their favorite staff member, or providing banal commentary, to become emotionally invested here. Personalities shone through the dozen lines of text and thumb-sized avatars in a way not possible during dry discussion of the latest movie, game, or internet fad. As evidence, go read the archives, in particular DC's "leaked beta" or Breaker's "Sign's [sic] you are a newbie" threads: they are priceless classics, even today, and though there was flaming everywhere, the community was having fun, and felt alive.

I agree with you 100% on this point. I have always been a strong advocate of a healthy amount of drama. I understand there is a such thing as too much drama, but there is a balance that must be maintained, or else a community simply loses its flavor.

One recent example of the staff going too far that I could point out, just so we know what we are talking about, is when Beldaran returned to the forums. Beldaran is without a doubt one of the more interesting people here. His posts are very fun to read. Breaker made a rather minor flame towards one of the members in a thread here in GD, and Beldaran gave him a little warning for flaming in sort of a tongue-in-cheek sort of way. It was pretty funny and cute. Unfortunately, a few moments later, Beldaran found himself "Perma-Banned" again, and things went back to their normal dullness. I personally find this simply ridiculous.

The forum drama is a very important part of the forum structure. Let's recap the above mentioned points in a twofold set:

1) Beldaran is banned. He cannot post. He cannot post to spark activity nor continue it. He always made not only some very interesting posts, but a lot of them. Why? That's nobody's concern of his own, but damnit, he contributed, and he contributed often, and I'm sure you can tolerate one or two assholisms to allow a forum to continue to thrive. It doesn't matter if "One member won't make a difference." The more activity that you have, the better, and honestly, at this stage of AGN's low-activity phase, you need every. single. member, actively and happily participating so GD at least doesn't take that final dive into total boredom and just move on. (To chat, possibly. I'd like to see that. ^ ^.)

2) Drama is, again, a rather large factor in a forum's life. The more CONTAINED drama there is, the more people are willing to watch it and stay for the show as well as the intermission. I make everybody popcorn, and they gossip about everything from the drama to their underwear (Whatever) while things are simmering down. It's a good setup. Considering how everything seems to be "More mature," and, hopefully, more self aware, I (As in, not you.) wouldn't mind seeing GB brought back, though under more of a carefully watched setting so as not to see someone commenting and not flaming to not get flamed back for not having flamed at all. Again, just because you're stepping into GB doesn't mean you need to flame nor be flamed. Just because you're in GB doesn't mean the forum has magically sucked all sense of common decency from you.

... ... and man, the staff need to post more. Just a little confirmation here and there that "Hey there. I care about you. I'm just not here that often to show it because I have a life, but I still do care about the forums. Really." Having inactive staff is just ... ... awkward. ._o Probably moreso because all of that "Hey, I'm still here" stuff only takes place behind the members' backs in the private forums where the members can't see to confirm their ever-watchful presence on the forums.

[center]This post was made with love.[/center]

For the 1k posts thing, that was a personal goal for me that had me keep coming back. I still come back to this place because there's interesting discussions to be had. And speaking of avatars, I remember back when it was UBB and there was a number of Sonic & Knuckles avatars, I still miss those (that and the drama from GB)

(edit) who unbanned Glenn again?

1000 posts doesn't seem that big of a deal to some people, but then again, some of the new guys/gals who join the forum may be daunted by the task of gaining 1k posts so they can get a custom av/title. I didn't really care for it, but I made that many posts anyway when I joined back in my high school years. I think I made my 1k in about 2-3 months time. Meh. As long as people post in moderation, then they can get their 1000 posts and get a custom av. Moving on...

As for the forums not getting enough activity, I'd have to disagree. This place has enough foot traffic here to keep it going for awhile now. Personally though, I think some of the staff should post more often. It gives ya a warm tingly feeling inside, knowing that someone cares. :kitty:

Another thing. Drama is good. Life is boring and too short, so spice it up. :kawaii: And though I don't ever recall posting in GB, it would be nice to see it again, even if it was put into another area like MPQ or Anime was into FG and GED (respectivly) were. :kitty:

So waitaminute...

I'm paying for my animated avatar?
When did this happen?

MasterSwordUltima wrote:So waitaminute...

I'm paying for my animated avatar?
When did this happen?

No you aren't paying for your avatar.

A premimum membership is available to anyone. If you buy a premium membership and you don't have 1,000 posts it allows you a custom avatar.

Not sure when that ever happened, but I have heard about it.

I worked REALLY hard to hit 1,000 posts, and it practically took forever to hit. After all, this WAS the first forum I had ever visited in my entire life, back when I was 13. I still remember the crappy avatar I put up the instant I hit 1,000 like a couple years ago. It showed the LttP Link in the middle of a (kind of) lifelike forest with fog. To me, it was a bit high, and I would agree with lowering it a bit. Making the goal so high is like encouraging spammers to come right in if they want custom avatars or a custom title. They'd basically have three choices:

Become a moderator, admin, developer, or tester.
Get a Premium membership
Make 1,000 posts.

I would definitely go for lowering it down to about at least 750 if it hasn't already been lowered.

I doubt that anyone would spam 1000 posts. Spamming 50 takes a good few minutes, and after that, most would get bored and figure it not worth it.

MasterSwordUltima wrote:I doubt that anyone would spam 1000 posts. Spamming 50 takes a good few minutes, and after that, most would get bored and figure it not worth it.

For someone who has been here since 2001, you should know better than this. It just doesn't happen nowadays since its hard to mask your spam when there is so little activity going on at the same time.

Be reasonable Glenn. Would you honestly sit before a computer, typing some bullshit, then clicking the POST button, then waiting for it to send, then clicking on the NEW REPLY button, typing some more bullshit, click the POST button, wait for it to send again...one thousand times? Has anyone actually completely spammed their way to 1000? I highly doubt that.

AND when they delete the spam your post count just goes back down.

MasterSwordUltima wrote:Be reasonable Glenn. Would you honestly sit before a computer, typing some bullshit, then clicking the POST button, then waiting for it to send, then clicking on the NEW REPLY button, typing some more bullshit, click the POST button, wait for it to send again...one thousand times? Has anyone actually completely spammed their way to 1000? I highly doubt that.

Doubt it all you want. Countless times during AGN's most active years has some new idiot appeared, and started posting total crap, and in 3 weeks people would start pointing out how that member already has his 1000 posts. Haven't you ever wondered why I made it so that posts in the Forum Games forum don't count toward your post count? That was where a large part of the problem was, because it was very easy to get away with spamming that forum. Frankly, I don't see why it surprises you so much that people on the Internet would do such a thing.

franpa wrote:AND when they delete the spam your post count just goes back down.

That would be true if spam were actually deleted. Rather, it has been the policy here for the majority of AGN's existence for nothing to be deleted under any circumstance (other than just pruning old stuff) so there will be some record of what has happened.

ShadowTiger wrote:
1) Beldaran is banned. He cannot post. He cannot post to spark activity nor continue it.

No he isn't. He and Glenn (obviously) were unbanned awhile ago. Infact, the only people on the ban list right now are spammers. When somebody gets banned, it rarely lasts longer than a few weeks (except in Glenn's case). I just never make an attempt to let them know when it's been lifted.

They gotta figure that out for themselves.

1000 post limit is fine, if that's the only thing that the new members want out of this forum, screw 'em. They won't be very productive. The 1000 post limit is to weed out the week.

I do think it's about time to bring GB back. That place always had some fun readings. I think most members like watching debates between brave/stupid members making/arguing a point.

MasterSwordUltima wrote:I doubt that anyone would spam 1000 posts. Spamming 50 takes a good few minutes, and after that, most would get bored and figure it not worth it.

I agree that the forums are kind of dying, but personally I haven't been hanging around too much because the content just isn't here anymore. Zelda Classic is old news, and the drama that formally kept us entertained left when various longtime members got banned, and seeing the same clingy people keep coming back gets old after the first ten times it happens (seriously Glenn what the fuck is wrong with you?). And many of the people in the former cliques have grown up and have moved on.

After I got to college and subsquently got involved in more real life social things, and the SomethingAwful and Doomworld communities covering my online time, I didn't really feel the need to hang around here, and for fun decided to see how much trolling I could get away with before I got banned. After I got banned, I left quietly and didn't even think about AGN for months. Because really, what does this place have to offer except memories of glory days long past? Nowadays I drop in every so often just to see if there is something worth replying to, but all I find are five topics about Zelda in General Games, and some random shit in General Discussion.

It's not even necissarily a bad thing either, it's just that without some sort of stable base and something to attract new members to stick around, all communities die out after a time.

The Cyborg wrote:I don't know if it was all spam, but anybody remember SixTen? If I remember correctly, he got 1K posts within 2-3 months.

Months. Bam. Took MONTHS!

Yeah, I've been active here for a couple of YEARS, and I havent even breached the 500 mark. And believe me, I post at EVERY oppertunity I get.

Kinda a moot point on the Avatars tho, now that WL has enabled them for all.

Shit's a lot different now from back in 2001 when I first joined. A lot of mainstream members who I guess helped add identity to the community are gone. (Flashman, Menokh, DarthCronic(LordCronic), GuitarManTim, Kenage, JJ, Foxy, TSA, etc.). People were friendlier for the most part too. I look back at this forum every now and then and see less people I know, and more that are new to me. It's not a bad thing, but these new members just seem to come with an aura of negativity. The old members who used to identify the community for me are, gone. And the new members that identify AGN with are either complete fucking jackasses or kiss asses spewing their obnoxious bullshit.

Masamune wrote:Shit's a lot different now from back in 2001 when I first joined. A lot of mainstream members who I guess helped add identity to the community are gone. (Flashman, Menokh, DarthCronic(LordCronic), GuitarManTim, Kenage, JJ, Foxy, TSA, etc.). People were friendlier for the most part too. I look back at this forum every now and then and see less people I know, and more that are new to me. It's not a bad thing, but these new members just seem to come with an aura of negativity. The old members who used to identify the community for me are, gone. And the new members that identify AGN with are either complete fucking jackasses or kiss asses spewing their obnoxious bullshit.

I agree with a lot of that. However, there are some cool newer members here and there that I've noticed over the past year that stand out on their own in one way or another that keeps me interested in the boards. I'm not a very active poster anymore, but I still read just about everything that goes on around here, and I still find that there are some members that have good stuff to read every now and then. I'm just sad to see that there isn't nearly as much content as there used to be. I'd add to it, but I'm terrible with words and with people skills and what not.

Amaster42 wrote:Yeah, I've been active here for a couple of YEARS, and I havent even breached the 500 mark. And believe me, I post at EVERY oppertunity I get.

Kinda a moot point on the Avatars tho, now that WL has enabled them for all.

2005 isn't years.

Also, Masamune, I remember all of those people. I liked TSA a lot, and Cyclone too. JJ Maxx used to be a GM for SE too. GuitarManTim was hip too. Jeez.

MasterSwordUltima wrote:2005 isn't years.

Whatever happened to Gannonator and Project Seven, anyway?

Kairyu wrote:Yes it is. Two of them, technically.

Whatever happened to Gannonator and Project Seven, anyway?

Ganonator hasn't logged in since May of 06. If I remember correctly he doesn't plan on returning.

"years" is more of a +3 term. If a Kindergarten kid graduates to second grade, doesn't seem right if the mom says that child has been going to school for years, y'know? Oh, silly analogies.

As for custom avatars, I love it! 😃 I wasn't expecting this to be passed.

Kairyu wrote:Yes it is. Two of them, technically.

Whatever happened to Gannonator and Project Seven, anyway?

No, it's not even two years. December 2005 - January 2007, barely over 1. Thats not, YEARS.

Yes, but you didn't mention the months.
I still kinda remember TSA's farewell, but that was hardly unexpected or unannounced. I think Cyclone left over some kind of drama, but it was a long time ago.

As far as I know, Flash Man and Cronic still post once in a while.