JD™ Posted February 28, 2011 Report Share Posted February 28, 2011 You'll be loving that sin bin button JD!! Mwahahaha... Nah, I'm hoping that it had the desired effect of letting the 90% of good people who get put off get through, to bring TF right to where it could and should be. I'm a massive fan of this place, as a lot of us are, and I won't be abusing any sin bin feature for the shits and giggles - but there's definitely going to be some usage on my part because I'm here so bloody much, just like yourself Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JT! Posted February 28, 2011 Report Share Posted February 28, 2011 (edited) Is clicking a button too much effort for you? You'd prefer I sift through 100 odd registrations per week? I have better things to do thanks, but if you're happy to take on that task then let me know. I spend far too many hours working on this forum to try and make it better for unappreciative members like you. Eaaaaassssssssy Tom. He was just joking. I don't think there's anyone on this forum who doesn't appreciate the effort that goes into the place. The problem with the current system is that people don't want to do favors for people. There's no incentive to actually go into New Members Chat and actually validate people - so people don't do it. I like the idea of people being flung straight into Full Members as I remember when I first joined it was ridiculous how long it took for me to get validated. People are going to vote people to the sin bin like crazy, but will rarely vote people back out. I like the idea of the first sin bin vote being a warning shot. But having that warning means you have to think about a bunch of other things such as would there be a time frame where it would give the user chance to edit, like if he makes a shit post, then heads offline, he could easily get two sin bin votes within a minute in a popular thread which would lead to him coming back online and having a warning which he can't do anything about. It's easy to come up with solutions to make it fair, but it just depends what limitations the board has and how much work'll go into it. Ideally, a person should get one warning that comes with a 24 hour posting ban, or 24 hours in the sin bin, they'll also receive a warning to read the rules of the forum to find out what they've done wrong (see further down about member comments). During this 24 hours, a member can't vote to kick to sin bin again, and will never be allowed to vote to send to sin bin from the same post, or an earlier dated post. When the 24 hours is up, he's back to where he started, if he gets voted to the sin bin again, he's there until he gets voted back out. Now that's a nightmare to implement I would have thought (with my zero computer skills in this area) so it might just be easier to have a zero toleration policy. If you post like a gimp, straight to the sin bin untill you get voted back out again. The number of votes it to send someone to the sin bin would have to be thought out carefully, too many and people aren't going to see any result and not bother. But too little and you're going to get people taking advantage of the situation and/or people ending up in the sin bin because voting members don't understand the rules themselves. Allowing users to comment on why someone has been voted to the sin bin would be good. There's no point punishing someone if they don't know what they did wrong. However, allowing TF members to speak their mind freely to new members might not be such a good idea so maybe a drop down box of rules / forum netiquette such as: txt tlk Bad grammar Bad spelling Pics in sigs Advertising Being Pete Wright Offensive posts Overly posting Wrong sub forum etc etc ...would be better. They would then show up on a message / email and fully explain why they're there. One thing that must be done though is it needs to be made very clear what the forum rules are, is it ok for the grammar to slip a bit. If someone refuses to use capitals at all is that worthy of a vote to kick them to the sin bin? Random thought: Maybe have a new group in between SM and Member called 'Janitor' and allow only those trusted people to send people to/from the sin bin with only one vote? (Obviously there'd have to be a fair few Janitors). The advantage to this is that you wouldn't have to set up a system where'd you have to account for people abusing it (as much) because you've be able to chose the members. You could also allow Janitors to move topics now that we have a fair few more sub forums people seem to be making a few more errors. Obviously SM, mods and admin would also be able to solely send people to and from the sin bin as well. Anyway, members who've signed up should be allowed to post in the wanted section, but not the forsale section. The only thing a buyer can do to piss someone off is say 'I'll take this' and not then sending any money / finishing the deal. It's annoying, but no money / parts are lost. This also allows new members to have access to the 2nd hand bikes that new members are looking for (this was always a big concern for me stopping new members from buying as it makes no sense, now the forums are split we can go back to at least allowing them to buy). A beginner discussion section to replace new members chat (or even keep is as new members chat for that matter) is an excellent idea. About the sin bin its self, I don't think the sin bin should be a physical forum. All that would go on in there is bitching really, and there would be no where for them to post in a worthwhile thread to show they're back on track. Maybe give them the group name 'sinner' or 'restricted member' and then only allow them to post topics and posts in new members chat (or whatever it'll be called), then it would end up like how it is now, if they still plan on doing more damage, it's confined to NMC until they're banned, if not, at least they'll have some decent-ish topics to post in until they start posting decent again. The new NMC would be for beginner trials related topics only though, not a general forum like it is now. Edited February 28, 2011 by JT! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JD™ Posted February 28, 2011 Report Share Posted February 28, 2011 Nice stuff JT, as I was reading your post I was thinking that there should be more SMs or another level and then there you were saying it. I personally think that the janitor idea is a good one - there's a lot of people on here who take the time already to report, educate etc which they wouldn't need to do and would be obvious contenders to do a good job in that role - people like MadManMike, Revolver, Muel, and maybe even JT (). I'm not sure you'd need many of them on top of the existing SM and Mod team, just something like 10 people. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dan6061 Posted February 28, 2011 Report Share Posted February 28, 2011 Liking the 'Janitor' idea JT! - That's a good shout. I was saying in another thread ( ) about how there's a lot of members on here that could help contribute to the forum in a big way, given the chance! - You've just came up with the idea I was looking for with that, There's a lot of members that are pretty involved with the validation of new members - MadManMike, JD, to name a couple. They'd be perfect for the job! - Giving the 'Janitors' the rights to 'sin bin' members would be a better way to do it. They'd have a non-biased opinion, and would stop all the haters from grouping up on certain individuals! Imagine if this system was in place when FatPants was in his prime? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
isitafox Posted February 28, 2011 Report Share Posted February 28, 2011 Toms been a busy boy!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Revolver Posted February 28, 2011 Report Share Posted February 28, 2011 I see changes! Exciting! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luke Dunstan Posted February 28, 2011 Report Share Posted February 28, 2011 I think that that 'New Members' should only be allowed to post in a 'New Members' section for 24 hours. That would help eradicate spamming. Otherwise you'd get it all over the forum, which would become infuriating. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Revolver Posted February 28, 2011 Report Share Posted February 28, 2011 If there were janitors, and janitors had the power to negative-rep posts, and negative repped posts were hidden from view for everyone, but not deleted (like when someone's in your ignore list) then spam could at least be hidden. That wouldn't stop spam from being posted everywhere though.. If janitors could also close threads, then spam threads could be controlled. A moderator could then be informed of it via the report system and it could be deleted and the spam user banned. Tomturd, are you coding the PHP for things like this yourself? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tomturd Posted February 28, 2011 Author Report Share Posted February 28, 2011 eep, lots of replies - i've replied inside the quote in red in some places Eaaaaassssssssy Tom. He was just joking. Yep, my bad. Caught me at a bad time, its just quite infuriating when people seem to think this is my 'job', 'cos its not, I get paid to do my job TF is something I do for fun in my spare time, so It can grate a bit when your attempts to improve the forum are continually met with resistance. Ideally, a person should get one warning that comes with a 24 hour posting ban, or 24 hours in the sin bin, they'll also receive a warning to read the rules of the forum to find out what they've done wrong (see further down about member comments). During this 24 hours, a member can't vote to kick to sin bin again, and will never be allowed to vote to send to sin bin from the same post, or an earlier dated post. When the 24 hours is up, he's back to where he started, if he gets voted to the sin bin again, he's there until he gets voted back out. Now that's a nightmare to implement I would have thought (with my zero computer skills in this area) so it might just be easier to have a zero toleration policy. If you post like a gimp, straight to the sin bin untill you get voted back out again. wouldnt be toooo hard, and its something i would try and do 'first vote, get a PM, second vote, 24 hours sin bin, third vote, get a PM, fourth vote, 72 hours sin bin... etc The number of votes it to send someone to the sin bin would have to be thought out carefully, too many and people aren't going to see any result and not bother. But too little and you're going to get people taking advantage of the situation and/or people ending up in the sin bin because voting members don't understand the rules themselves. Allowing users to comment on why someone has been voted to the sin bin would be good. There's no point punishing someone if they don't know what they did wrong. However, allowing TF members to speak their mind freely to new members might not be such a good idea so maybe a drop down box of rules / forum netiquette such as: txt tlk Bad grammar Bad spelling Pics in sigs Advertising Being Pete Wright Offensive posts Overly posting Wrong sub forum etc etc ...would be better. They would then show up on a message / email and fully explain why they're there. all of the above is good, some stuff I've thought of already, some new ideas One thing that must be done though is it needs to be made very clear what the forum rules are, is it ok for the grammar to slip a bit. If someone refuses to use capitals at all is that worthy of a vote to kick them to the sin bin? (no) Random thought: Maybe have a new group in between SM and Member called 'Janitor' and allow only those trusted people to send people to/from the sin bin with only one vote? (Obviously there'd have to be a fair few Janitors). The advantage to this is that you wouldn't have to set up a system where'd you have to account for people abusing it (as much) because you've be able to chose the members. You could also allow Janitors to move topics now that we have a fair few more sub forums people seem to be making a few more errors. Obviously SM, mods and admin would also be able to solely send people to and from the sin bin as well. Anyway, members who've signed up should be allowed to post in the wanted section, but not the forsale section. The only thing a buyer can do to piss someone off is say 'I'll take this' and not then sending any money / finishing the deal. It's annoying, but no money / parts are lost. This also allows new members to have access to the 2nd hand bikes that new members are looking for (this was always a big concern for me stopping new members from buying as it makes no sense, now the forums are split we can go back to at least allowing them to buy). A beginner discussion section to replace new members chat (or even keep is as new members chat for that matter) is an excellent idea. done About the sin bin its self, I don't think the sin bin should be a physical forum. All that would go on in there is bitching really, and there would be no where for them to post in a worthwhile thread to show they're back on track. Maybe give them the group name 'sinner' or 'restricted member' and then only allow them to post topics and posts in new members chat (or whatever it'll be called), then it would end up like how it is now, if they still plan on doing more damage, it's confined to NMC until they're banned, if not, at least they'll have some decent-ish topics to post in until they start posting decent again. As it stands, sin bin is just a member group that is restricted to one post per day, and removed rights to updating status, uploading pictures etc. A cut down version of the full member account The new NMC would be for beginner trials related topics only though, not a general forum like it is now. yep Nice stuff JT, as I was reading your post I was thinking that there should be more SMs or another level and then there you were saying it. I personally think that the janitor idea is a good one - there's a lot of people on here who take the time already to report, educate etc which they wouldn't need to do and would be obvious contenders to do a good job in that role - people like MadManMike, Revolver, Muel, and maybe even JT (). I'm not sure you'd need many of them on top of the existing SM and Mod team, just something like 10 people. I like the janitor idea, let me get this sorted first. Liking the 'Janitor' idea JT! - That's a good shout. I was saying in another thread ( ) about how there's a lot of members on here that could help contribute to the forum in a big way, given the chance! - You've just came up with the idea I was looking for with that, There's a lot of members that are pretty involved with the validation of new members - MadManMike, JD, to name a couple. They'd be perfect for the job! - Giving the 'Janitors' the rights to 'sin bin' members would be a better way to do it. They'd have a non-biased opinion, and would stop all the haters from grouping up on certain individuals! Imagine if this system was in place when FatPants was in his prime? see above I think that that 'New Members' should only be allowed to post in a 'New Members' section for 24 hours. That would help eradicate spamming. Otherwise you'd get it all over the forum, which would become infuriating. See this: If there were janitors, and janitors had the power to negative-rep posts, and negative repped posts were hidden from view for everyone, but not deleted (like when someone's in your ignore list) then spam could at least be hidden. That wouldn't stop spam from being posted everywhere though.. If janitors could also close threads, then spam threads could be controlled. A moderator could then be informed of it via the report system and it could be deleted and the spam user banned. Tomturd, are you coding the PHP for things like this yourself? I've downloaded a ban system that can be modified to implement the sin bin system, needs a bit of work. and yep, I did the validation thing myself, and the videos system a while back, but i'm trying to avoid as much custom coding as possible because I dont really have the time to maintain it : So you might have noticed that I've shuffled the forums around and moved all the pre members into a 'transitional member' group. These will be limited to 5 posts per day and have free reign of the forums (minus Wanted/Trades), just like the new 'New Members' group. After a couple of weeks, to give us time to filter out any rubbish, I'll convert all pre/transitional members to full members. The image I posted above explains it pretty well One more thing, we have about 5 years worth of pre members coming into the forums (this hasn't happened yet, and not sure how many are still active), so it may be a bumpy ride over the next week or 2. Nothing is set in stone and I'll be making adjustments and taking suggestions along the way to find a system that works well for us, so bear with me! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
N.Wood Posted February 28, 2011 Report Share Posted February 28, 2011 I think it'd be good if everyone just chills for the first few weeks, don't get worked up about people asking simple questions in trials chat, putting up with bit of spamming and generally just reporting bad content and not flaring up for the sake of it. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jake Beach Posted February 28, 2011 Report Share Posted February 28, 2011 See this: If a new member joins and make decent posts, will they still have to reach 50 posts before they can become a 'full' member or can they be upgraded early? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Revolver Posted February 28, 2011 Report Share Posted February 28, 2011 I've downloaded a ban system that can be modified to implement the sin bin system, needs a bit of work. and yep, I did the validation thing myself, and the videos system a while back, but i'm trying to avoid as much custom coding as possible because I dont really have the time to maintain it : Well, you're doing a good job. It's human nature to take things for granted but I think that everyone on here appreciates this forum. What do you mean by 'maintain'? Does code degrade after time? Or is it fixing bugs that don't show up immediately, meaning there would be an end to it eventually? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tomturd Posted February 28, 2011 Author Report Share Posted February 28, 2011 If a new member joins and make decent posts, will they still have to reach 50 posts before they can become a 'full' member or can they be upgraded early? 50 posts ins't set in stone, but those limitations mean the earliest they can become a full member is 10 days. Might change that depending on how things go. And not sure, but I may well give mods a button to 'fast track' new members into full members What do you mean by 'maintain'? Does code degrade after time? Or is it fixing bugs that don't show up immediately, meaning there would be an end to it eventually? There isn't really an end because the forum makers (IPS) release big updates every year or so, so every time we upgrade the forum, it generally breaks any custom stuff we've done. So that, and fixing bugs. Same reason we only maintain one skin at a time Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Revolver Posted February 28, 2011 Report Share Posted February 28, 2011 Lame, I guess that's no incentive to make anything big then. Is the videos thing still yours or have they got round to including some video support now? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tomturd Posted February 28, 2011 Author Report Share Posted February 28, 2011 Lame, I guess that's no incentive to make anything big then. Is the videos thing still yours or have they got round to including some video support now? Keep up The gallery supports videos now so I've moved them all into there (http://www.trials-forum.co.uk/gallery/album/2229-videos/). Uploading should work too, but I've not tested it much so I've kept it quiet. The old video system is still mine, but I dont maintain it any more and it'll only work on old versions of invision forum, its here for anyone who's nosey. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Revolver Posted February 28, 2011 Report Share Posted February 28, 2011 I'd seen there was new video support, I didn't know how much of it was your doing though! It might be cool if the videos section and pictures section took you to their respective parts of the gallery, integrating it better. There's the whole video comments system but because of topics it doesn't seem necessary. Sorry to dump all these suggestions on you! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JT! Posted March 1, 2011 Report Share Posted March 1, 2011 Quick work Tom! Bike pics is NMC can go now can't it? Seing as though we have a sub forum for it. Am I right in thinking we can't sin bin people at the moment? Looking good on the whole though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
isitafox Posted March 1, 2011 Report Share Posted March 1, 2011 (edited) Looking forward to everything coming together. Gonna be interesting to see what kind of posts the new members come up with now they have the freedom, I'm sure there's still gonna be some dodgy questions, illiteration and the like but I reckon it'll be a good change. EDIT: Just had a read of the new members guidelines and theres a small spelling error, you've written communitate, I assume this is an error anyway!! EDIT 2: Thought I'd add this in here as well. On an old IP forum I used to go on you used to be able to click on the speech bubbles at the side of threads to mark them as read individually whereas on here you can only do that from the homepage and mark a whole forum as read, is there any chance of changing it?? Edited March 1, 2011 by isitafox Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JT! Posted March 1, 2011 Report Share Posted March 1, 2011 EDIT 2: Thought I'd add this in here as well. On an old IP forum I used to go on you used to be able to click on the speech bubbles at the side of threads to mark them as read individually whereas on here you can only do that from the homepage and mark a whole forum as read, is there any chance of changing it?? There's an orange button to the left of the topic title when viewed from the sub forum main page, not within the topic its self. If that's not there there's no new posts on the topic. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
isitafox Posted March 1, 2011 Report Share Posted March 1, 2011 There's an orange button to the left of the topic title when viewed from the sub forum main page, not within the topic its self. If that's not there there's no new posts on the topic. Yeah I know about that but I'd like to be able to mark a topic as read individually when there has been new posts without going into it. Suppose it doesn't really matter as I can just read the topics I want then go to the main page and mark them all as read. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muel Posted March 3, 2011 Report Share Posted March 3, 2011 The validation system was one of the best things about this forum! Sin bin's don't work in the slightest IMO. If I ever end up in there I'll just make a new account, what's stopping me? Although if you limit the For Sale section to people who have been members for 3 months or longer and have 1000 posts or more like the OCUK forum, it'll still work well. Does this mean that the Senior Member system will be used a bit more now, and will encompass more people? You've got people like Simps, Ash Kennard, JT, PaRtZ, JD, Max Quinn, MadManMike, all have been around for years and have millions of posts, yet none of them are seniors? Bit of a joke IMO. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luke Rainbird Posted March 3, 2011 Report Share Posted March 3, 2011 You realise being a senior isn't just about being on the forum for a long time, right? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
haydon_peter Posted March 3, 2011 Report Share Posted March 3, 2011 And you also realise that there has to be decent new members who have signed up and then only posted a few times and have remained unnoticed, then there will be other people that have signed up and not bothered posting at all because they see that generally the promotion from pre members to members is slow... Yes having the new members like it is at the moment keeps the forum 'tidy' but it also means there are hardly any new people posting on the forum. There are currently 16,000 pre members, hardly any of them are active and I would say that since new members chat started hardly anyone has been promoted to members (In comparison to the 16,000 that have joined). Tom, out of interest do you actually know how many people have been moved from pre members to full members? A change needs to happen, the forum has become stale and boring with the same old groups of mates posting. From an outsiders point of view this forum must be similar to those strange village pubs that are full of locals! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JT! Posted March 4, 2011 Report Share Posted March 4, 2011 And you also realise that there has to be decent new members who have signed up and then only posted a few times and have remained unnoticed, then there will be other people that have signed up and not bothered posting at all because they see that generally the promotion from pre members to members is slow... Yes having the new members like it is at the moment keeps the forum 'tidy' but it also means there are hardly any new people posting on the forum. There are currently 16,000 pre members, hardly any of them are active and I would say that since new members chat started hardly anyone has been promoted to members (In comparison to the 16,000 that have joined). A change needs to happen, the forum has become stale and boring with the same old groups of mates posting. From an outsiders point of view this forum must be similar to those strange village pubs that are full of locals! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
monkeyseemonkeydo Posted March 4, 2011 Report Share Posted March 4, 2011 Although if you limit the For Sale section to people who have been members for 3 months or longer and have 1000 posts or more Seriously? It took me about 5 years to post 1000 times! Edit: Ooh, this was my 4,999th post... what drivel shall I post for my 5,000th? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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