GW's Presentation

[The Ghost Writer]

The lights in the conference room slowly dim as the automatic shades drop down over the windows looking out over the busy streets of the technologically advanced Caligo cityscape. The man wearing a gray, pin-strip suit with sleek black hair turned around to press a button on the holopad before him sitting on the long conference table, where Chuck Norris and several officials of the esteemed Footsteps of Ghosts cabal sat, ready to hear the man's proposals.

In the center of the room, a large holographic sphere appeared, hovering just inches above the conference table. Around the sphere, two proposals faded into existence and slowly began to circle.

---

The first suggestion: Reactivation and modification of the reputation system.

Members of FOG, you used to have a reputation system provided by Forumotion scripting activated for your use on this forum; but you deactivated it at the immediate sign of civil unrest because of "negative votes" and that it would turn into a "popularity contest". WELL NO MORE, I SAY!

Using CSS you can modify the reputation system's functions to wear there is no more negative voting, and no more negative results. Rename the reputation system in the admin panel to something along the lines of a "thanks" or "thumbs-up" system. After that, simply dive into the CSS panel and replace the + link to "up" a reputation with an icon (like a thumbs-up icon, or maybe, to humor you, a tiny ghost). Remove the - link to prevent others from reducing a user's reputation (or little army of ghosts).

Now, looking at past suggestions regarding your CSS many of you seem to have given up on working with it. In truth, you can actually do a lot to this board with a little know-how. To prove it:

Code:

/*--------------- REPUTATION ADJUSTMENTS ----------------*/

.vote .vote-button, .vote-no-bar {
  display:none;
}
.vote .vote-button:first-child {
    display:block;
}
.vote .vote-button a {
    background-image: url('http://oi55.tinypic.com/jf7r5l.jpg') !important;
    padding-right: 25px;
    padding-top: 22px;
    background-repeat: no-repeat;
    font-size: 0px !important;
}

.vote .vote-bar {
border:none;
  width: 20px;
  height: 10px;
  margin: 0 auto;
  font-size: 0;
  margin-left: -25px;
}

.vote .vote-bar-plus {
  background-image: url('http://oi55.tinypic.com/rm47iu.jpg');
  background-repeat:no-repeat;
  background-color: transparent;
  }

There's your CSS for modifying the reputation system. This is the same CSS I use on my own test board. The icons provided are coffee cups; I changed my reputation system into a "Cup o' Joe" system, where if a user likes another's person post, they bought them a cup o' joe to show their appreciation. To do this, a user would click on the coffee cup with a green + symbol (that's apart of the picture itself, not the text that Forumotion put in). When the page reloaded, the user would see just a simple coffee cup without a +, telling them that the Cup o' Joe was successfully awarded.

As you can see, Forumotion's crappy system can be modified into your own Like system; similar to Facebook and such.

The second suggestion: Add a little JavaScript functionality and blow away your competition with a neat feature... Post Profile Switching

In three easy steps, you can use JavaScript to add a neat little button to the top of thread pages where, when a user clicks on it, it swaps the position of the post-profiles from the right to the left, and vise-versa. Using a cookie, everytime the user returns to the forum, they won't have to click the button again to re-swap the position of the post-profiles. They stay where they last left them!

The script used is simple; and I'll be happy to teach it to Fate (who, I believe, is your only technician/admin at the moment) if you wish to have it.

[Dio the Awesome]

Dio sitting to Chuck Norris's right steeples his fingers in anticipation. Surely this man had no idea what he was getting himself into. His foot hovered over the pedal which would drop the man through a hole in the floor, and into the pool of sharks and guppies. (The guppies were there to make victims giggle. We don't want to be too cruel...)

Then the man spoke. He had a gentle inflection in his voice, and he had a most gentlemanly tone. Dio decided he could suffer the mans request a moment longer.

The request seemed simple, and he had done most of the work himself. This pleased Dio, who allowed a small smile to grace his lips. This was an idea he could get behind.

But then the man asked for something more, and once again Dio caressed the trap door with his foot. A second request was presumptuous. The request sounded to Dio, most frivilous; not needing to be implemented, but more like an icing on the bountiful cake that was FoG.

But he did not drop the man into the pit. He gave a silent thumbs up for idea one, and waited for his associates to deliberate.

[The Ghost Writer]

The man scratched the back of his head and smiled sheepishly. "Yeah the guys down at the Caligo Tech Initiative made me put that pork about the post-profiles into the proposal. Its just a neat feature, I suppose."

As a final addition to his proposal, the man presses another button on his holopad, commanding another image on the holo-sphere to appear, showing his test-site for demonstration purposes.

http://tealeafwriting.forumotion.com/t7-cups-o-joe#8

(The rotating arrows above the post-stream will switch the profiles)

[Kathryn Lacey]

On one hand, the "like" system is nice, but just because there wouldn't be a negative option wouldn't mean it wouldn't turn into a popularity contest. People could feel depressed because they don't have as many likes as others, and it just seems a little unnecessary.

I feel it's unnecessary to rotate which side has the personal profile thing, too. Sorry. =3

[xraineyesx]

Unnecessary, maybe, but people like options sometimes, Kathryn. However, I can see where you are coming from with the like thing. I thought it was kind of a neat idea, but I can also see how it could be nothing more than a popularity contest.

[Guilty Carrion]

I don't see much of a point to either of these, to be frank. Removing the negative button dosen't change the game, just it's methods.

The second proposal, is kinda...again, pointless. In the terms of your pitch, by adding a neat little widget to 'beat the competition'...we have competition? Most other RP sites, speaking from both expeirence and other people's horror stories, are rather...meh, at best, and I wouldn't exactly be interested in beating them, thus drawing their usual crowd to this cozy corner of the interweb.

So, yeah, I'm kinda againest it.

[The Ghost Writer]

Thanks for the input, everyone! Keep the feedback coming.

[Kalon Ordona II]

I voted for Chuck Norris in the spirit of encouragement. ^_^ I would have voted for neither, but I'm impressed at Ghost Writer's abilities and ideas for improvement.

I don't think we want the like system unless they're attached to posts only, not users. In other words, users wouldn't have their total counted or displayed, and instead you'd just see a number of ghosts or something next to a post. On the other hand, we might not even need that. The whole point of this place is that we're serious about writing. Posts do and should speak for themselves.

The profile switching option might be nice, but there's something to be said for uniformity, so I'm on the fence about that idea as well. I'd probably be against theme switchers, for example. I like the idea of everyone seeing FOG the same way, more than I like the idea of more viewing options.

I'd love to keep seeing ideas for improving FOG, though!
Things I'd feel safe improving would be things other than the color scheme and layout. Buttons, smileys, fonts, text options, and tools--more of those would always be welcome, I think. Streamlining, graphic design, and subtle new features. Those would be the directions I would recommend focusing on. Not that I have professional knowledge about this sort of thing. Just my humble opinion.

[The Melancholy Spirit]

I'm not so much into the uniformity of everyone seeing FoG as the same, myself, but that the current look of the site fits the name perfectly in my mind.

[The Ghost Writer]

In response to Kalon, the user statistics in relation to votes can also be removed. Once again, the popularity contest argument can be tossed. Unless you really want to worry about more ghosts your one post has compared to another single post... Just an FYI to all there.

[Guest]

Question: What would be the benefits of "rating" people's posts in this way?

I've seen it used on other forums as you say it can be set up - first as a kind of "star rating" on an entire thread, which almost nobody used and hardly made a difference anyway(wow, lots of people like the "Favorite songs" thread. And?). I also saw it on another forum where you could "+" individual post and at least half the posts on that forum were people going "+1, that comment was WIN, man!" to someone else's post.

It just seems a bit of a superficial reward system, to me. Wouldn't it just be easier to say "I agree with you and like what you said and here's why..." to begin with? Unless, I'm missing something about it?

[The Melancholy Spirit]

Yeah, I agree with that Time. I mean, a popularity contest really only comes into play when you have an immature group of people. Which, thankfully we don't. Granted the site wouldn't be free of it, but it isn't really a concern of mine. I just see the entire thing as, well, rather pointless. Word of mouth, or text of key in this case, works just as fine. I've been in several role-plays with people where we tell each other when we really liked a certain post by them, or a certain character, whatever.

[Chainlinc3]

Personally, both of these ideas seem unnecessary, the second more so than the first. I personally like rep systems, because they DO turn into a popularity contest-- it allows you to easily find people who clearly have been around a while, know the ropes (so you can ask them questions), and have acquired a fair bit of respect during their time (so you can be fairly sure they aren't a serial killer). That being said, the little ghosts on each profile bar (not sure what the technical measure for that is, but I think it has to do with either posts or time active) serves much the same purpose as far as I'm concerned, and with a community as small as this it isn't hard to get a mod's attention anyway.

But yeah. A rep system just wouldn't have a purpose beyond superficial numbers.

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