Improvements to the forum

[Chester]

There has been a lot of talk about this forum changing a little in recent times. I would like to start this thread to try to get some discussion on how to improve the forum. You never know, Mark (or one of the other admins) might just read this and like our ideas. But, maybe my warning level will increase.

Please try to be constructive or just a little bit destructive.

One thing I would like to see is an incentive program. There seems to be a disincentive program to prevent people from doing bad things but what is there to try to make people do good? I know, people are going to response and say that we should all be helping people out of the goodness of our hearts. But i don't see too many people doing that at the moment. The disincentive program (warning levels and banning) seems to have made some people more childish than they have ever been and has made others go hide and stop posting messages.

It seems to be easy for the Administrators to monitor how bad people have been by increasing the warning level but why not have a series of stars underneath the names of people who have been giving good advice and helping out? (it would be good if this was visible to all members) And why not have an experience level where people who are known for their good advice have something to indicate that within their profiles. One thing I have always worried about is beginners giving other beginners advice. And Santa can i also have a colony of zebra plecos? (just thought I would throw this in just in case i get 3 wishes)

Oh, and throw away the post count that people have. It just provides an incentive for people to produce meaningless posts to try to get up to the 1,000 mark or to get classified as a certain type of fish.

That is my 5 cents worth.

Hopefully the Admin team doesn't get the wrong impression with this post. You are all doing a great job. I just thought I would mention some things.

[Vanessa the Venustus]

The post count is also a way for people to know who has more experience.

It is not totally reliable, as some people have a high number of posts simply because they like making lots of silly comments, and others may have years of fish keeping experience but only have been on the forums a short while.

Despite this, its still not generally a bad way to know who has experience or has been here a long time.

I like your idea about having stars as an incentive for people to give good advice.

But how do you judge what is good advice? some may think advice was bad, even if the person who gave it meant to help.

overall i think the forums are set up and run very well

cant think of too many suggestions at the moment.

[ViS]

The post count will stay, as most people seem to like it. It does show who has been around for a while, and most of the time means they have made lots of good contributions to the forum.

I think your star system is a pretty good idea. We'll look into it.

If anyone has a person or two in mind that they think has contributed well regularly to the forum, PM an admin and we'll discuss whether to award them a new title or something.

I'm a little confused as to why people are so worried about the warn system. I hope everyone realises that the member themselves and the mods are the only people who can see the warn level? No other members know who else has any warns against them, so it shouldn't worry anyone except those who have the actual warning. Those people then just need to be good for a while and the level will be reduced again.

[Adrian09]

Are you serious in saying people actually post to get their count up to 1000 and to be classified as a different fish?

That is honestly sad hehe!

I've been on these forums for a while now and I've barely cracked 50 posts.

The warn thing is good, and yeah only you and the admin ppl can see them

If it drives people to stop posting then I guess it is doing its job. Anyway if that is their reaction to a few warnings then who wants them around?

It seems pretty hard to actually get any warning movement anyway.

The stars are an ok idea I guess, but judging by the enlightenment Calvus has given us on the personalities of some forum members then we might have people striving to get their star count up and receive a flood of "helpful" information which might not be a great idea either.

To me the forum seems to be functioning fine on the whole. Needs a bit of a tune up and oil change, that's all.

[Chester]

Adrian09, if you think the forum needs a bit of a tune up and a oil change then what sort of oil do you suggest? This is what I am getting at. The forum seems to be different but people aren't really willing to come forth on how to improve things.

BTW if you are on the forum as much as me then you will notice that as people get to close to big numbers such as 500 or 1000 the number of meaningless posts that they make seems to increase.

I think Nigel for one is someone who knows a lot about fish. And just putting him in the "ACE Advertisers" group doesn't indicate exactly how much he knows about fish. I am sure others agree about this. That is why I proposed a seperate way of indicating who amongst us are the experts.

Andy, I am sure we both know people who have high post counts just people they ask heaps of questions or sells lots of things in the classifieds. The post count is a completely unreliable way of judging peoples experience.

We also seem to have photo competitions which encourage forum users to take pictures but maybe there should be a 'Member of the Month' that gets a prize too.

[Adrian09]

Some sort of Rating given by the admin team who deem certain people good for advice could be added in their information/side bar thingy, so that the number of posts does not represent experience.

I do realise people do put a large number of posts, but there is probably little one can do about that apart from proceed with caution when taking their advice.

Most people are probably smart enough to wait to act only after a few people have replied to their question, so if some advice contradicts the other then hopefully the majority of people replicating this advice are correct.

Maybe Nigel can have "Cichlid God" next to his posts, so we all know he is dishing out the good stuff hehe. Same as people like Cichlids_au and such because their advice is often spot on.

On another forum I am a member which is much much bigger than this one, they do not allow anyone to reply to the buy and sell threads, which stops bumps and pointless posts which seems to work well. The admin team could add that as a rule and to prevent people reposting everytime it goes off the screen, they can just delete the new posts that are the same as the old ones, unless they are from a few pages back.

Also to stop some clutter, making a 'Tank/Filter/Technical Items For Sale' section will mean that if you want a fish you know where to go and if you want a tank or stand you know where to go.

This will also help keep your ads on the front page for longer.

As far as number of posts you can't control that, people will be people. Usually everyone knows not to trust the person who talks too much:)

[foai]

I agree that a lot of the posts can seem, at times, very trivial.

My suggestion for improving the forum would be to addition/variation of the Aquarium Related Classifieds section. My concept is a "Breeders/For Sale" section where people can register the fish they are breeding, whether any are for sale (and at what price) and their location. That way if people are interested in a particular species of a fish they can go straight ot the name of the species and find the competing prices and nearest breeder to them. It would be useful also if people wanted to mix the bloodlines of their current stock. It is also (in effect) a central register of cichlids in Australia.

At the moment there are a lot of WTB posts which this service would negate. Also it stops the same question being asked every week or so "ie WTB Alto Comp Gold". Anybody who is a regular user of the forum knows the answer is "Fins".

It would also make a lot of the fish FS posts redundant as well as people could just post centrally and remove when sold.

I have no idea if this would be an easy task to arrange (or even if it has merits) but it would remove a lot of the blather that occurs on the forum re sales.

Cheers

David

[r.d.m]

i would like to see bad lfs products or suppliers exposed for the scoundrels they are! surely if theve done the wrong thing and been given the oppurtunity of redress then i cant see any legal reason why they shouldnt suffer the terrible wrath of the posters,im also a member of a motorcycle forum based in the us and they take wrongdoers to the cleaners! the truth isnt wrong or bad or illegal,the last time i looked we still live in a free country,we have the power!

[Ducksta]

reddevilman - the people who have been duped do have right to state the facts. Problems arise when people start throwing opinion and hearsay into the mix on a public forum. That is a quick way to get the forum shut down and legal action taken out against the site administration and any users involved. I have witnessed first hand great sites with massive user bases being shut down, and since the forum made no money and was non-profit, the lawsuit became civil action against users and staff of the board for their part in the 'slander'

foai - we have a central breeders register. It works great. I get more sales from my post there than I do from trying to move stuff in the classifieds. Provided you spell species names correctly, a simple search will show everybody who has what you want. You can then browse for somebody local, or if your keen, not so local to break up the blood ties in a colony.

[Ash]

I like the catergorised F/S forum idea, though as Ducksta said the breeders register kind of makes it redundant in a way. The way I see it anyone selling fry is usually trying to breed them so they could post in the breeders register - only once of spawns or surplus adult fish usually get listed in the other F/S area anyway so this seems to be the norm.

So far as "wtb" posts, n00bs will be n00bs (me included ) and repost no matter how many stickys/FAQ's/etc you spoonfeed them.

As for a "reward" or star system, atm I personally view a moderators/admins opinion highly (as I'm sure would others) so some sort of sign pointing out who has valid experience/opinions would be great, though seeing Nigel's ad banner & him having the advertisers label kind of points him out already (as it does for sooty).

I know I haven't been around here very long but I've learnt a heap from this place & thus far have only met helpful knowledgeable people (except for rude PM guy)

I don't know why everyone seems to think there is a problem with the forum?

Cheers

Ash