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Brian Coltrane

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Awright, so I'm an idiot and I can't figure out how to make a sig work. But, I'm havin' all kinds of fun editing MaryAnne's posts. Purely in the interest of testing, of course. :p

This new forum format seems robust enuff, don'tcha think?

I'm digging it so far, though there's a lot I haven't experimented with yet. The ability to add thumbnail pics is pretty cool.

post-2631-143050809109_thumb.jpg

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I'll admit I'm not the technical one of the group. There is a cap to the avatar sizes now. In fact I couldn't get my own avatar to work, as apparently I exceeded the Ego Limit. So, the first thing I do as a moderator is yell for tech support. Stuff like this keeps me humble.

We may have to tweak a few things (ouch!) but so far this system looks pretty good.

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I much rather preferred the old board. And not for nothing, the avatar problems didn't need to be problems. Moderators could've but a size cap on them in the old board as far as I know, or they could've gone in and resized them themselves. Also, demanding certain sizes coulda worked too. Dunno why y'all were content to live and let live there.

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I much rather preferred the old board. And not for nothing, the avatar problems didn't need to be problems. Moderators could've but a size cap on them in the old board as far as I know, or they could've gone in and resized them themselves. Also, demanding certain sizes coulda worked too. Dunno why y'all were content to live and let live there.

As far as I know, there was no way to cap sizes on avatars on the old board. Even so, avatars weren't the only problem... sigs were too. And I'm pretty sure there was no way to cap sig sizes on the old board.

Demanding rarely gets you very far around here. I doubt everyone would listen if we demanded people change their avatar sizes. As for moderators resizing avatars themselves, there are three of us and 2500+ members. Do you know how long it would take to make sure everyone was in compliance and resize the avatars of those that weren't?

Anyway, the avatar problem was not our main impetus to changing software. The older board was less secure (it was hacked about 5 or 6 times over the years) and was much easier to spam. With this new board, we have added features that can weed out most spammers before they can even access the system. There is also a finer grain of control over users that allows us to give warnings and temporary bannings instead of permanent bannings for users we feel can redeem themselves after disruptive and inappropriate behavior. I believe that makes for a much better, family friendly environment and that's why we upgraded.

We evaluated several options and this was the best one for our needs. I think in the long run, most people will see the added benefit.

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This is very true. I administrate a different (non DoH) forum with close to 2,000 people on it, and without V-Bullitin format, I found it to be very hard to weed out the junk and get rid of troublemakers who come in trying to sell all kinds of non-family-friendly junk to the forum. V-Bullitin has a great means in which new members can be checked automatically to keep the spammers and computer bots out of the system. I can't say much for the old system here, because I wasn't around here long enough to get used to it. But, I can say that I am really overjoyed with this upgrade. At the very least, it is a format that I can easily navigate. :)

I don't really want to pick nits with anyone about this, we all have our preferences, but we regular forum members don't always see the nonsense that administrators go through in working a forum. Based entirely on my experiences, sometimes it can be downright unsettling.

The issue of huge sigs are not as easy to moderate as one may think. This involves a massive amount of PMs and haggling with members to keep their graphics at a reasonable size. I have seen countless forums go over the top with graphic issues, and the ones with obnoxious signature sizes I left because I got tired of scrolling screen after screen trying to see what these people were posting.

I know this from experience, and a lot of people have gotten downright angry with me when I've said their sig is too large on the forum where I work, some people have gone as far as to ignore my messages. The problem is there are a lot of people who use dialup connections who have a really hard time trying to read a forum because of the obscene amount of graphics on some people's signature files. Not everyone uses high speed internet connections, so forums have to take these folks into consideration. A lot of forums out there simply won't do it, and they miss out on a lot of members as a result.

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I have to say that when I accessed the site and found everything changed I was not happy lol but then it was 3am and trying to figure out something knew at that time of day is frustrating. Now that I've learned the ropes in the light of day things really haven't changed that much as far as actual posting. As for the avatars and sig lines I like the new format better because I am one of those dial up users that big sigs and graphics makes it hard to read the things on the forum I want to read.

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I wanted to add to what Mufn said about the avatars....at one point when I posted that using avatars was available on the old board, I asked nicely for folks to keep the pics to a smaller size. I was pretty much ignored. LOL With so many members on this board, there was no way I could individualy PM each person who had larger avatars and ask them to please reduce the size. Plus, I had a feeling, and as Enos Fan described from other board admin experience, I would be ignored further or would upset somebody.

Anyway! I'm liking this new board software. Especially in keeping out the junk sign ups and spammers. More often then not we would get around 10 to 15 new sign ups per day on the old board and all of them I would have to go in and check individually and then delete and then ban email addresses and what not. At one point we were totally bombed with junk registrations with somebody using the hotmail email. There must've been close to 50 sign ups within a two day period. I ended up having ban ALL hotmail email addresses because of it.

The less amount of time I have to spend policing, the more I can spend playing. I'm all for that. Khee!

Now, Brian said something about editin' my posts. ROFL. I did find a pic attached to one of them. Wonder if he edited any others. Hmmmm.....

:)

post-2558-143050809121_thumb.jpg

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Hey, was just going by what the other board admins have said when similar situations've come up. I been doing boards like this for a few years now so I know about all the hassles and such. I know one board I go on the admin hadda turn off signature pictures to make his point, then turned 'em back on and things stayed relatively kosher for about a year. Of course now things're going back as they were so I guess maybe it didn't work in the long run... Er, I'm sure I had a point in there somewhere. :p

'Sides, Meadow, out of all those members how many are still active? Not like you would've had to manage every single member on the board, just the ones who actually post. I'm sure this forum has it's fair share of "dead" screen names. Just saying. :)

Ah well, I'll adjust. But you folks really oughta consider consolidating some of these forum sections together. It's a mighty long list to wade through. I mean, just for example, you could merge the videogames and merchandise forums into one since, technically, videogames ARE merchandise and we may not really see another Dukes game in a while. Just a thought, don't gotta be getting SO specific.

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Ah well, I'll adjust. But you folks really oughta consider consolidating some of these forum sections together. It's a mighty long list to wade through. I mean, just for example, you could merge the videogames and merchandise forums into one since, technically, videogames ARE merchandise and we may not really see another Dukes game in a while. Just a thought, don't gotta be getting SO specific.

Well, we COULD do that, but what other merchandise out there would you talk about cheat codes, strategies, and shtuff like that about? :D

I think we'll leave things as is for a bit, let folks get used to the new forums. And then, well... who knows. We might consolidate. We might add more! MUAHAHAHAHA. :D LOL.

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  • 13 years later...
On 1/31/2007 at 7:22 PM, MaryAnne said:

I wanted to add to what Mufn said about the avatars....at one point when I posted that using avatars was available on the old board, I asked nicely for folks to keep the pics to a smaller size. I was pretty much ignored. LOL With so many members on this board, there was no way I could individualy PM each person who had larger avatars and ask them to please reduce the size. Plus, I had a feeling, and as Enos Fan described from other board admin experience, I would be ignored further or would upset somebody.

Anyway! I'm liking this new board software. Especially in keeping out the junk sign ups and spammers. More often then not we would get around 10 to 15 new sign ups per day on the old board and all of them I would have to go in and check individually and then delete and then ban email addresses and what not. At one point we were totally bombed with junk registrations with somebody using the hotmail email. There must've been close to 50 sign ups within a two day period. I ended up having ban ALL hotmail email addresses because of it.

The less amount of time I have to spend policing, the more I can spend playing. I'm all for that. Khee!

Now, Brian said something about editin' my posts. ROFL. I did find a pic attached to one of them. Wonder if he edited any others. Hmmmm.....

:)

post-2558-143050809121_thumb.jpg

Hi Cousin MaryAnne. I love yer picture ya got there. Pretty cool Deputy.

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