Help me help you help NPF

[Hanuman]

OK guys, I think some people have expressed pretty clear wishes that these forums need to be a little more awesome, just a little.

Come up with one legit idea each, how exactly would you make these forums more awesome? What could be done?

Post your idea, whoever gets the best idea wins a free custom signature banner (classy photoshop).

[Seil]

I looked up awesome things on the internet and found this list of awesome things. (http://1000awesomethings.com/the-top-1000/)

I thought if one wanted to change the way he/she was viewed, he/she started with physical appearance.

[POS Industries]

At this time, we are open to ideas via PM or some other private mode of communication (or even by posting in Forum Related Stuff) but if anyone is going to make an open suggestion box for ways to improve the forums, it will be us.

Thank you for your interest in making our community a better place!

[POS Industries]

So after some very immediate soul searching I've decided to reopen and slightly retool this thread for my own purposes.

I took this job because I feel like we as a community have hit a rough patch and wanted to do my part to at least help the place run a little more smoothly, if nothing else. But I haven't really been sure how to go about that and find myself walking a bit of a tightrope at the moment, and have just been relegating myself to the role of beat cop until I figure out where I really want to go with this whole mess I've gotten myself into.

The staff has been hard at work refining and updating the forum rules, including an administrative code of conduct that looks like it'll help keep the peace insofar as potential interpersonal tensions are concerned, so I feel it's important that you all know that's really happening and we're not just blowing smoke up your ass on the matter.

But I also want everyone to feel like their ideas matter, so I'm basically executing what I said in my previous post and opening a public suggestion box to see what sort of fun and exciting stuff you guys might have had rattling around in your imaginations. Something new to really spice things up in our delightfully gloomy dark gray on slightly less dark gray internet haven we have here.

I don't want this to be a competition, though, so I'm nixing the custom signature for whoever Lev thought might "win" the thread, because I don't want there to be a "best" idea so much as a bunch of really good ideas that we as a community can see about throwing together.

So I really want to know: What do you folks have in mind?

[Mike McC]

Temp-Ban everyone who uses phrases "Made of win" "full of win" 'awesome sauce' and other shudder-inducing terrible internet talking memes that were likely birthed of 4chan.

I figure that can only improve things.

[POS Industries]

I have no intention of going that far, but I currently find myself longing for the days when "4chan" was wordfiltered to "tv". I honestly have no idea why we undid that.

But I'm looking more for community ideas that I can maybe see about helping with and less administrative ideas that I actually have no say over whatsoever.

[Amake]

Back when the Internet was young, one might have described things as "Made of equal parts distilled victory in fluid form and gold" or "Imagine the word 'GOOD' spelled out in concrete letters six hundred feet tall, painted pink, backlit with neon and wrapped in laurels". Those were the good old days. . .

Anyway, how about comic edits? It's the big thing over at Awkward Zombie, I'm sure it would give at least some entertainment, even if it's hard to imagine making Brian's golden words somehow funnier. Imagine I said something with slightly less asskissing involved.

[Bells]

But to what extension are we talking about feasible suggestions and what would be "too much"?

I mean, are we talking about Hardcode Forum changes, cosmetic changes, rule setting...? You know, like north we can follow so this thread actually gets somewhere positive.

[POS Industries]

But to what extension are we talking about feasible suggestions and what would be "too much"?

I mean, are we talking about Hardcode Forum changes, cosmetic changes, rule setting...? You know, like north we can follow so this thread actually gets somewhere positive.
Basically stuff like what IQ suggested. Community activity sort of deals. Things in that nebulous gray area between "regular wacky thread" and "things that specifically have to be done by the staff." Like forum games, for instance.

I actually rather like the comic edits idea, IQ. I'm not exactly sure how well it would work for a sprite comic like 8BT, but it might be feasible for Warbot, HIKYM, or perhaps even Atomic Robo if the usage of existing materials for the purposes of parody was deemed okay by the people who worked on them.

Besides, I'd be a hypocrite if I said I was against it. (http://www.nuklearforums.com/showpost.php?p=923821&postcount=93)

[Meister]

Anyway, how about comic edits?
If past attempts at threads in a similar vein are any indication, all you'd get is a thread where, at best, two or three people post edits, and while everyone else says how much they like the edits, it dies after 17 posts. (Please prove me wrong and a pessimist!)

e: it would work fantastic with 8BT because you could easily edit image content.

This thread (http://www.nuklearforums.com/showthread.php?t=37982) is a good example of what I've personally come to dislike. It seems that an awful lot of threads are destined to become many pages of the ever-same back-and-forth one-liner contest, and while that's entertaining (not so much to me, but obviously to you guys, so hey), it's entertaining only very briefly, and I'd kinda like that balanced out by more threads that are not just silly, but also interesting, and remain interesting even if you read them in two months, or six months, or two years.

[Kim]

If past attempts at threads in a similar vein are any indication, all you'd get is a thread where, at best, two or three people post edits, and while everyone else says how much they like the edits, it dies after 17 posts. (Please prove me wrong and a pessimist!)

You could do what you've done with the member comics and have a stickied thread for edits, and a separate one for comments on the edits. Having them stickied would increase activity, I think, and keeping the comments in a separate thread would keep the edit thread from derailing into just talking about said edits.

[POS Industries]

I'd kinda like that balanced out by more threads that are not just silly, but also interesting, and remain interesting even if you read them in two months, or six months, or two years.
We already have a forum for that (http://www.nuklearforums.com/forumdisplay.php?f=6), if I do say so myself.

But my best advice for anyone who says he wants better threads is to make those threads himself and lead by example.

You could do what you've done with the member comics and have a stickied thread for edits, and a separate one for comments on the edits. Having them stickied would increase activity, I think, and keeping the comments in a separate thread would keep the edit thread from derailing into just talking about said edits.
So basically like the NPF member comics except located in the Clevinger fan discussion subforum? Not a bad way to go about it.

[Meister]

I prefer to do my pretending to be a magical wood elf around a table with fellow humans as God intended, thank you very much. :crossarms:

seriously though you are, of course, right and I can't really complain about how my last few threads turned out. So it does work!

e: I'd try one not stickied thread first to see if it catches on, because there are probably almost enough stickies in there.

[Bells]

How about some "permanent" games? Like, image editing games or captioning

Also some writing games would fit with the regulars here...

Also, well, i'm not 100% sure about that but, Kotaku.com has this weekly Photoshop contest, maybe there is something to work with that using The comics here or even the camwhore thread.

[Meister]

Some of the games here have been running for thousands of posts, that's probably as permanent as it ever gets.

[Amake]

Well, 20 posts would maybe be sufficient for each thread.

I was thinking, maybe one would hand-pick a comic from the archives, or a page of Atomic Robo if that were to be allowed, and present that as the theme on which to make edits for some time, I'm thinking at least two weeks. After that, a winner may be declared and awarded a no-prize. Repeat as needed. 8BT alone has material for 40 years of that.

Another idea: A "Further Introductions" thread, partly to get to know each other all over again and partly because no one remembers the first introductions you post. (I had to look to make sure there was an introduction thread at all.)

Tell us something personal about yourself in at least 100 words. (Keep it above the belt.) And here's the kicker: To encourage back and forth conversation, you have to comment on at least three posts, in 25 words or more, before talking about yourself. Unless you're one of the first three people to write replies of course. They're cooler than you.

Maybe you'd need at least 100 posts to participate, or maybe that's too elitistic.

[Krylo]

I prefer to do my pretending to be a magical wood elf around a table with fellow humans as God intended, thank you very much. :crossarms:

We haven't had one of THOSE RPs down there for awhile.

Someone should probably run one soon.

[POS Industries]

We've actually had a permanent caption contest running in the games forum for years now, though I do believe it could stand to have some new blood in the water. We tried a Photoshop contest game, as well, but it didn't really garner a lot of activity due to various combinations of not having proper image editing software/not being particularly skilled with said software/just being goddamn lazy fuckers (PS I qualified for all three!).

A collaborative writing game might not be a bad idea. We had one where we had people adding one sentence each to a story and taking it off in different wild directions that I recall was a lot of fun. Might be something worth trying again.

Also, Fenris is currently gauging interest in reviving the "Guess That Forum Member" game (http://www.nuklearforums.com/showthread.php?p=1042725), and I know I'd love to see it get going again, as well.

[Meister]

I was thinking, maybe one would hand-pick a comic from the archives, or a page of Atomic Robo if that were to be allowed, and present that as the theme on which to make edits for some time, I'm thinking at least two weeks. After that, a winner may be declared and awarded a no-prize. Repeat as needed. 8BT alone has material for 40 years of that.
I'd rather we didn't bother with such a formal setup with set themes and declaring winners and all. Just, y'know, make a thread with a few good starter images and we'll see if it catches on. :)

e: like, someone might post a page as the theme for two weeks, but someone else might have great ideas for six different pages and doesn't want to wait 14 weeks until they're "allowed" to do each one so they drop it altogether. Plus there's only so much you can do with one page.

[Amake]

Keeping it formal would help keep interest up I think. But obviously edits not part of the game would still be allowed.

Okay, it's better to see if there is any interest first of all. Now what forum should it be in? Brian's Projects I guess.

REdit: Alrighty then! Wait, I have to make edits now? e_e

[Meister]

I'd say General. Brian's Projects is for stuff Brian does.

[Donomni]

I have no intention of going that far, but I currently find myself longing for the days when "4chan" was wordfiltered to "tv". I honestly have no idea why we undid that.

Well, we could replace 4chan with "hackers on steroids".

Or, to be really long and witty, "that one place overestimated by fox news."

More serious-ish, we could pick a multiplayer vidja game every month or so that people dive into together, for groups and whatnot, and when people drift off like they normally do, we pick another one.

[Azisien]

I know it probably wouldn't be in huge demand but I might as well echo my former belief of a built in dice roller, for use in RPs or the like. I don't know much about forum coding but I know back in the day one Google search produced multiple blocks of code for phpbb dice rollers you could just toss in.

And I just make that suggestion because I've watched dice-based RPs curl over and die, in my mind because it's just awful to play without dice rolling built in. I suppose dice-rolling RPs might just suck, though.

edit: for instance this (http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=113972).

[A Zarkin' Frood]

Well, we could replace 4chan with "hackers on steroids".

Or, to be really long and witty, "that one place overestimated by fox news."


I actually stumbled across a thread in some forum a while a go where a guy complained that his name was "I got fucked in the ass-something".
Turns out his name got wortfiltered to that from "lol-something".
The mods were kind enough to change it back.
Maybe we should just make it so every instance of "epic fail" or "epic win" gets filtered to "I am a failure of a human being in every conceivable way, good sir or madam. I apologize for my shortcomings and hope you have a nice day."

Alternatively it could be filtered to the picture of a giant dick. So mods can ban more people for posting pictures of dicks.

[bluestarultor]

I know it probably wouldn't be in huge demand but I might as well echo my former belief of a built in dice roller, for use in RPs or the like. I don't know much about forum coding but I know back in the day one Google search produced multiple blocks of code for phpbb dice rollers you could just toss in.

And I just make that suggestion because I've watched dice-based RPs curl over and die, in my mind because it's just awful to play without dice rolling built in. I suppose dice-rolling RPs might just suck, though.

edit: for instance this (http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=113972).

Writing a custom die roller or random number chooser is actually incredibly easy. Okay, maybe not a visual one like that, necessarily, but one that spits out text is quite simple. I don't see it being an issue to add one with even better capabilities.

One thing I do want to suggest, though, is that it go into some special portion of the post that's not editable, just so people can't go changing their rolls. Not that I think people here aren't trustworthy, but just as a good practice.

[shiney]

It would be easier to install an AJAX / other form of chat and use the dice roller there for real-time interaction.

Also, "epic fail, epic win" ragehate stuff -- you know how elitist it sounds to rag on people for that? Pretty high form of jackassery really. Yeah we're not going to do anything with it and my suggestion is to move on to a new LOLZ-inducing train of thought.

[Nikose Tyris]

I actually really like the idea of an AJAX chat behind a link.

[bluestarultor]

So basically just get another Yaplet (http://go.yaplet.com/?css=http://www.geocities.com/snch3j1b/testlet.css&title=Yaplet&url=http://www.nuklearforums.com/) over here?

[Nikose Tyris]

Only one that isn't terrible.

[shiney]

Yeah Yaplet is gay for robots.

[Nikose Tyris]

Can AJAX be incorporated into our top bar, near USER CP? and can it be run off of the Forum Database so we use the same user/pass combo to login? Just to help cement identities in chat.

[shiney]

Yes and yes -- it will take me some time to implement 'cause my free time is caught up at the mo' but I'll get it set up.

[A Zarkin' Frood]

Will it be possible to have like... two rooms in that chat? One for the RPers to roll dice and be elves in and one that is... gay for robots i.e. a chatroom for everyone who's not an elf.

Sorry if this post is messy/messsier than my average post, I'm deprived of sleep again and can't fall asleep no matter how hard I try.

[phil_]

Great, now I need to go mess with my signature to figure out what's word-filtering into "gay for robots."

Also, I'm not sure how I feel about the idea of chat8bit being at the top of every page.

[shiney]

It would only be a link to it, not the actual chat.

[Hanuman]

Another idea: A "Further Introductions" thread, partly to get to know each other all over again
Cool idea =]
Tell us something personal about yourself in at least 100 words. (Keep it above the belt.) And here's the kicker: To encourage back and forth conversation, you have to comment on at least three posts, in 25 words or more, before talking about yourself. Unless you're one of the first three people to write replies of course. They're cooler than you.

Maybe you'd need at least 100 posts to participate, or maybe that's too elitistic.
Wait, what? I agree that posting needs to be meaningful as a community-- like the whole public announcement world-devouring thread needs to be archived or something every 1-2 months to make more people feel like tackling it on a regular basis, but I don't know about all these numbers things... whatever you guys think is going to appeal to the members =]

More serious-ish, we could pick a multiplayer vidja game every month or so that people dive into together, for groups and whatnot, and when people drift off like they normally do, we pick another one.
This worked fairly well for D2, a good 6-8 player community within the game and because of all the pokemon threads I'm seeing I think we do have a spot for some sort of gaming project like this. The D2 thing has faded, I still play once in a while, along with starcraft, but I'm not dependably active.

I know it probably wouldn't be in huge demand but I might as well echo my former belief of a built in dice roller
Easy to install, non-intrusive to the viewing experience, I don't see why not but I wouldn't mind seeing the reason this shouldn't be done.

Is AJAX that easy to program?
This forum would be epically successful if it had something like openRPG in it. Can you imagine? =S

[bluestarultor]

Is AJAX that easy to program?
This forum would be epically successful if it had something like openRPG in it. Can you imagine? =S

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AJAX

AJAX is incredibly easy to program. Sadly, I can only say this from knowing how easy JavaScript, DOM, and XML are individually, because it's not becoming part of the Tech's curriculum until next year. (Basically, I'm just missing the XMLHttpRequest and practice.)

But given all the parts of it, no, it's not that hard if you know Javascript.

[shiney]

It's basically "put AJAX here" "configurate" "profit". I'm just not available to do all that at the mo'.

[A Zarkin' Frood]

Great, now I need to go mess with my signature to figure out what's word-filtering into "gay for robots."


Don't worry, I was just echoing shiney. But if you find something let me know.

[Ecks]

This worked fairly well for D2, a good 6-8 player community within the game and because of all the pokemon threads I'm seeing I think we do have a spot for some sort of gaming project like this.

As far as that's concerned, maybe everyone who's into Pokemon on NPF can organize something via Shoddy Battle? I prefer the good 'ole DS WiFi myself, but for others who aren't as well equipped in that regard, (and it IS a tad bit easier, as it's not hard to post and play Shoddy at the same time) perhaps it's something that can be looked at?

I also second IQ's suggestion of a Further Introductions thread. I'm sure you're all just bustling to know what we crazy Michiganders are up to.

[stabbity death]

This (http://www.v3arcade.com/forums/arcade.php) would look totally awesome on the forum.