[Dhabih]

Wow, i miss the forums for a couple days and stuff happens.

Some thoughts,...(please excuse my grammar and spelling, i wrote this quick)

Non-creditation of Artwork (did i just make up a new word? )
------------

People posting art "inspired by", "sketched from" or straight up "rip-off" others: This is something i have a feeling will never go away. There will always be someone who either doesnt understand the importance of crediting someone and makes an honest mistake, or just thinks they can get away with it. I only ask that when someone is caught in this, just state it matter of factly , perhaps they are 12 or something and don't really get the concept of crediting people, so go easy on them, unless they shoot themselves in the foot and bring it on themselves. I am saying this regardless of what happened over the weekend and not in reference to anyone, this is something i've been thinking of before. When i get the "Forum Guidelines" page up, i'll be sure i put in BOLD and COLOR, to credit artwork.

Flame wars
------------
Along these same lines, i was thinking recently of what i need to do in the case of flame wars. Luckily these seem to be more rare than before, but they still pop up from time to time. I try to be very open in what i allow but when threads begin to become pointless i think its fair to me and everyone else if i close the thread. The only reason i may not close it right after 2 or 3 threads is sometimes the original poster may not have a chance to give his/her side of the story, so i leave it for a few threads and once i think each side has said something at least one or two times in their defense, the thread will be close if its going nowhere. The last few days, i let it go longer than normal, only because i didnt notice it till tonight. If someone has a better policy for this, let me know, 'cause i'm still learning this moderator gig.


Content of Art:
------------

Something else that will be in the guidelines once its online is regarding the content of artwork. Pornographic artwork is not allowed here and will be deleted as soon as i see it. I mean hardcore porn, stuff you would NOT see in an R-rated movie. Artful nudes and such are fine. Main reason being there are people of all ages here and i'd like to keep the content (if not the language) respectable. I don't think this has ever needed to be applied yet, but i just noticed a post where I think there originally was something like that, its been edited away now, so i didnt need to do anything, but i thought i'd mention it here. Don't worry, this won't infringe on your artistic freedom or anything, you will have to try pretty hard to be obsene to have your artwork deleted.

Hugeness of the forums
------------

After going through your responses to my posts about the difficulty of keeping up with things and whether or not to split the forums up, some preliminary things i will be doing are:

-- Showing more threads per page so they don't disappear into the black pit of "Next Page"

-- Icons that match the topic better so that you can skim through and find those posts you are interested in easier. (some faces will still be there)

-- As far as splitting the forums, personally i'd rather not, one of the main reasons that was brought up a number of times is that 1 forum is still going to be the more popular one, and i'm afraid people are gonna eventually post in both since they will get more exposure this way. Also i like to read everything on one page and not jump around so much. This said, I still haven't decided what to do. Perhaps once the FAQ is compiled there will be less repeat questions. But for now forums will stay as one until i decide what to do with it.

I had something else i wanted to say, but i forgot, so...uhm...yeah. have a nice day

-Dhaba-daba-doo

------------------
http://www.sijun.com/



[This message has been edited by Dhabih (edited September 05, 2000).]

[dEATH.Tool]

Sounds like the man has a plan! LucK!

------------------
.life without fear is the perfect nightmare.

[Joachim]

great ideas Dhabih,
I really look forward to when you've implemented these features. And, the rules seem fine.

------------------
Joachim's Place

[ceenda]

Dhabih, could you improve the embarresmant smiley? I end up using that quite often...

[Spitfire]

Yeah we need more smileys. I volunteer to make some, if anyone else can code em in

We need an evil smily, and a disturbed smiley, and a sleepy smiley..and...and...*aaaahh* where are my blue pills? doc? DOC? THE PENCILS!!!!

[ceenda]

HEY! How about a NUUUUDE smiley???

I like to look at Sijun at work, and whilst I appreciate a well drawn nude as much as the next man(or woman), my employer doesn't...

[This message has been edited by ceenda (edited September 05, 2000).]

[Chapel]

Nicely put Dhabih! Sounds like a good plan.

[surferboi]

Dhabih: I gotta give you credit for how smooth this forum runs... it's one of the nicest ones i've had the pleasure of using.

As far as plagiarizing is concerned... i say we brand them for life and flog them severly... but anyways maybe a lil scanner or some kid drawin with crayons tryin to color in between the lines icon by their nick or... (my mind wonders off sometimes) something =)

btw any chance you could do a tutorial on how u draw n shade eyes if ya get a chance?

[Sumaleth]

A comment on the last item; hugeness of the forum.

I dont think splitting 3D out from the forum would do much to change this since so little 3D gets posted. Maybe there would be more if there was a separate forum for it but it would have to fight for interest from several other very popular 3D forums.

My question is this; why aren't threads that have changed since you last read them tagged with a marker of some sort? The forum knows when you were last on (it tells you on the front page), so it'd be great if it could keep track of threads too.

For the last year or so I've been using a column on the side of my jotter to keep tabs of what I've read. Before I start reading I write down the date of the most recent post (eg. 5 9:05am) and when I come back tomorrow I find that time and start reading backwards from there.

It'd be nicer if it put little arrows on updated topics. Only a minor problem with an otherwise smoothly run forum.

Cheers,
Sumaleth

[aquamire]

You the man Dhab. Very good ideas, of which I think most people will whole heartedly agree with.

I have on gripe tho. In the newest version of UBB when you go to reply to a thread, that little section below which shows the thread beforehand (usually used for reference) has that annoying little scroll box. Is there a way to turn that off? I find it to be slightly annoying, and unless your in some big old 1600x1280 resolution, you have to scroll down just to see it. Anyone know what Im saying?



------------------
/Aq
[email protected]

[Dhabih]

Sumaleth: The threads should be marked. All new threads that have been added or added to should have an icon on the left of them...normally its just a folder, but if its new since your last visit it should be a folder with a little pice of white paper in it. I'm not sure why it wont show for you, maybe something to do with your cookies...i dunno.. Anyone else not seeing this?

-dhab

------------------
http://www.sijun.com/

[Dhabih]

I think sh4de is right, if you bookmark directly to the digital art forums and not the main forums page, the "new since you last were here" icons dont show up.

[dr . bang]

How could you guys NOT have icon that match the topic?!! This is probably the most important thing, this will saves people alot of time who have to go through 5880276901762906317681 post.

[SushiMaster]

Actually, splitting the forum will not produce double-postings so long as it is appropriately enforced. Once in a while, there will still be newbies or spammers who will just post the same post in two forums, but in those cases the duplicates (which are in the wrong forums) should simply be deleted!

Of course, this requires a moderator who browses all the forums, but that shouldn't be too hard to find, and it sounds much harder than it actually is. Over at pank's ( http://pub1.ezboard.com/bpankpagesforum.html ) and at TopazDesigns ( http://pub1.ezboard.com/btopazdesigns.html ) this is the system we are using, and, as you can see if you follow the links, there are many more forums there than here, yet there is hardly any cross-posting.

Why? Because so long as it is understood by the members that cross-posting is BAAAAD, you won't even need a moderator because the members will themselves moderate any newbie or spammer by telling them what they think of cross-posting (hopefully in a polite way)...

No, in fact the job is not so hard at all so long as the members are reasonable. Over at the DBM board ( http://pub2.ezboard.com/bdbmforum.html ), moderation gets very hard at times, because of the extremely large proportion of newbies. Yet last year DBM had no moderator for a very long time. The forum did eventually descend into hell, and moderators had to be appointed and drastic measures taken, but that took many months, because forums self-moderate themselves.

If an idiot spammer/lamer arrived at TopazDesigns, he would do very little damage. Why? Because first of all no one would pay attention to him, and, within less than a day a moderator would notice the spamming, or his mind would be pointed to it by someone else.

The only requirement when you split the forums is that people respect the splitting and post in the appropriate categories. When that rule is not followed, it should simply be enforced - and most people will thank you for it! For instance, if you, or one of your moderators happens to see a traditional art piece in the digital art forum, chances are it will already have several replies gently indicating the traditional art forum as a better place, and you will simply move the thread to the other forum!

But that will rarely happen. You'll find that most people will visit most of the forums, once they're split intelligently. This is true on all the boards I visit. While the sijun.com forum is unique, it is not different from other boards in that respect, and I can almost say without any doubt that it will be true of this forum too!

Anyway, sorry for this long post, I know your time is precious. Good luck in dealing with this :-)

Daniel

[Anthony]

Why not limit each user to, say, two threads/week or something(with special exception for Fred ans Spooge )?

------------------
-Anthony
Carpe Carpem

[shahar2k]

Veteran Icon? how about a special icon given to people with a certain credance on the forum (fred, spooge, jochaim, loki oh and maybe even Dhabih sorta like special credit when the masters speak, or something similar

------------------
"Avoid needless embarrassment. Practice the correct pronunciation of your deity's name in the privacy of your own room before chanting it in public. Flash cards are often helpful." --The Evil Cultist's Hand Guide

[Loki]

Thanks for the honours, shahar, but I think it's a bad idea ... why should we have special credance? As I know Spooger & Fred they wouldn't want a tag like that either.
It's fine that people repsect those guys (and yes, maybe little Loki too, if he's not busy flaming people), but that would make people wait for 'the guys with the tags' and easier dismiss anyone else's competent opinion, since they don't have a tag ...
Thanks, but no thanks.

As for the rest: FAQ's are great - splitting the forum is not, because what makes this place cool is the diversity. If someone wants to throw a 3D image in the mix - why not?
Let's not put up rules to obstruct the nice freeflow of this place. I can't see any major problems with it right now ...
Too many posts - great!

Thanks

Loki

[Muzman]

F.Y'all's.I.
My bookmark skips this site's front end (for the sake of load time), the new/updated thread icons show ok.
the url is http://www.sijun.com/cgi-bin/Ultimate.cgi

if that's what you've got and it still doesn't work try messing around with your profile (I think there's a 'mark all as read' option which effectively kills everything in your cookie appart from password etc)

[sh4de]

I had this same problem some time ago. don't know why.

Sumaleth: do you have a bookmark to this forum? if so what is the addres.
I mean.. hmm (damn it�s hard to explain something in english) .. do you go through dhabihs page or that page where you'll have to choise from "digital art forum" and "random musings".

i think my folder icons didn't work because my bookmark was directly to the "digital art forum"-page and I didn't go through that choise page.

sorry if this message doesn't make any sense or that isn't the reason why it doesn't work and Im just waisting everyones time

[SushiMaster]

Loki, diversity is not affected by splitting up the forums. In fact, if anything, it increases the diversity of posts, and allows all posters to pay more attention to all the threads. It also increases the lifetime of the poor little things (the threads), thus allowing more people to see them and comment on them (if they want to).

Of course one forum will still be more popular than the others, but it will have perhaps ten posts a day instead of thirty, so for those people more interested in that particular aspect, it will be easier to follow. For those who are interested in everything, browsing all the forums is not only not forbidden, it's encouraged. As I said, most people on the aforementioned boards browse all or most of the forums in those boards. What do they not browse? What they're not interested in. Well, you won't get people to comment on stuff by forcing it down their throat :-P

Splitting good.

Veteran Tags bad.

Daniel

[Leo]

Argeed with some dudez above... and in addition just a bit of my expirience (sorry for my english btw).
Long ago in russian part of fidonet we've a su.render echo - all related to 3D stuff (modelling, rendering, texturing, art&techincal questions etc.) Just imagine how many topics|posts i've seen? Right, A LOT OF. And how many topics|posts i've downloaded? Right, ALL OF THEM. Why? Because of the technical limits of fidonet system.

Now, on this forum i read only if something sparks my interest. So the problem is how to locate something interesting for me? Back to su.render we've a message TAGS (or sort of attributes) before topic's subject. For example questions for Lightwave 3D will be marked as [LW] %subj% , for 3DS MAX - [MAX] %subj% and so on. So how about making normal icons easy to understand here on forum? (not only these happy smiles) One icon for topics contains image(s) post, another for technical guestions etc. ... just need to choose the appropriate kind of design.
All these veteran icons, honour tags, limits per user posts blah blah blah are crap - they will only split our community to newbies and pros and limit our freedom... well sort of. Yeah, we need rules like Dhabih posted above, cuz anarchy isn't so kewl thing.
As for splitting well maybe it will work and maybe not. It's depending of the content.
Eh need to stop now. Any more ideas?

Thanks

Leo

[General Confusion]

I'm kind of jammed today with work, so if this was covered, sorry, I didn't get to read any previous post. I saw a forum yesterday, dvdtalk.com, and when a thread has more than one page in it, the additional pages appear as page numbers similar to the way it does here, but it appeared in the thread list next to the title of the thread. Very good for people who want to bypass the first page of a thread, when they might have already seen it. Just a suggestion, since a revamp seems to be happening!


and also when searching a screen name, (on my end,) it seems to only search a persons' first 200 posts. It seems to cut off there, even though they may have posted more than that.

later

------------------
State of Confusion

[Jorge]

Some days ago I did not get those "new posts" icons in the left of the threads. I was using Internet Explorer's autocomplete feature typing directly "sijun" in the address bar.

Lately I've been entering it through the main entrance (http://www.sijun.com/cgi-bin/Ultimate.cgi?action=intro) and those icons are back. I think you have to go though the page where you have to choose between the 2 forums for this to notice you are logging back.

I did not experiment a lot on this, so I am not sure if I am right.

------------------
Jorge

[hennifer]

i know it will never happen, but if you could configured UBB so that junior members could only add to existing topics, not start topics until they're a full member, you'd ease them into the group here and eliminate all the kinds of crap we've seen lately. it would also encourage people to add to existing threads instead of making tons of new ones. if a person is really serious about posting here, it shouldn't take long to reach member status. and if for some reason you needed to skip the period, i'm sure you have the power to do that.

anyways like i said, i'm sure you'll never do this.

------------------
hennifer

[Visigoth]

No! That's a great idea! If only we had something like that for the past few months...

------------------
Your car is a fiberglass penis extension.

[Sumaleth]

I worked out why my "new posts" icons aren't working.

First thing I usually do when I get up in the morning is load up the forum and do a quick glance through the first page to see if there are any particularly interesting topics but thats all I look at. I might do this a couple of times during the day too if I'm bored.

These visits reset the icons so when I come back at the end of the day to do my real look through the new postings the icons aren't right.

I wish it worked manually instead, like a button you could press to reset the "read" icons.

Sumaleth

[Francis]

Yes - no hierarchy please.

------------------
Francis Tsai
TeamGT Studios

[SushiMaster]

A solution to this would be to use the Ezboard system, VERY good in this respect, and has many extremely many features, very similar to UBB, but nicer... but I doubt Dhabih wants to switch so...

I just wanted to cast my vote against the limitation for junior members to not be able to post, or the equivalent idea of having "veteran tags", will just contribute to scare newbies away. I disagree with that philosophy.

Daniel

[hennifer]

if you don't think there's a hierarchy here already, then you're blind. ..in which case it must be difficult to draw.

------------------
hennifer

[Jeezus]

how so? sure some of us are better artists than others and may recieve more praise\recognition, but i dont see any hierarchy of power here.