New Forum Privleges

What would you like to see added or fixed in FOF?
Forum rules
This topic is 13 years and 6 months old. Instead of replying, please begin a new topic, or search for another related topic that may be more suitable.
FoF 4EVA!!
SoD Sasquatch
Member
Posts: 161
Joined: March 27th, 2008
Location: Conway, AR
Reputation: 0
Contact:

New Forum Privleges

Postby SoD Sasquatch » Mon Sep 13, 2010 10:17 am

*This Forum post is for logical discussion ONLY, please no spamming, flaming, or getting angry for no good reason. I would love to hear your opinions in a nice pro/con way.*

So here's the thing guys, I'm not even a fretter or moderator but even I can see how much this website and all of its' community members are being taken advantage of. I feel as tho the people who actually do something for the FoF community are not getting payed any gratitude. There are so many leechers on the site that just come in here and they download the game, the themes, and all of the songs they want. They never have to make any contributions at all.
Fretters, Moderators, Coders, and everyone else in the community spends a lot of their hard time and energy to create great things on this website and I have watched the FoF community grow and become one of the biggest things I have seen in a long time, it really is amazing what you can do when everyone pitches in! While the "community" continues to help in anyway possible, you still have many, many people out there who do not even bother to say "Thank you" for fretting a song, or leave their opinions about something; they just go around downloading things and getting everything they want for free.
Here's my proposition:
We get rid of this problem in a slow and organized fashion. We re-create the websites privlege system, we let the people who do something for the community actually get things and the people who don't do anything at all get very limited access to Forum pages and downloads. We call it "Platnium Membership" or something, (if you know what i'm getting at). You will click on a link to download a song pack or view certain Forums and you will be locked out of them stating "Forum for platinum members only" etc.
Membership is based on many things and these should, of course, be discussed on every aspect and detail of the community. Access should be granted upon things like: Karma (which would have to be reset if possible), Contributions to the community, #'s of forum posts, # of ideas brought to FOF, donations, anything and everything that people do 2 help out the community. Basically, if you help here in anyway, you should be given a membership. Of course, this also brings up something else: How would final membership status be determined. Perhaps on an automatic system from the server based on #'s, perhaps based on approval from a moderator/administrator/and(or) user acceptance(feedback) in the community, or it could be one person's job to just give out memberships and karma all day.
This forum discussion will probably be a very busy one because it is so broad and there are just endless possibilities here but I believe that it would help the community out a lot and it would make people feel like they are more appreciated. Let me what you guys think, list some pros/cons, ideas, and how this will help/hurt the community. Please keep your ideas respectful and to the point. If you would like to talk to me personally, hit me up on PM or my msn (windows live) messenger: ThaSasquatch
*******************************************************************************************
Last edited by SoD Sasquatch on Mon Sep 13, 2010 10:31 am, edited 2 times in total.
User avatar
ADeadlierSnake
Member
Posts: 377
Joined: May 16th, 2009
Reputation: 1
Contact:

Re: New Forum Privleges

Postby ADeadlierSnake » Mon Sep 13, 2010 10:25 am

Awesome, i think you did a great job laying that out. I think that everything here is a great idea, and would love to see what other people have to say about it. Since we have discussed all this on Messenger, i dont have much to say atm, but i will once people start giving out there opinions and such. I do think however that we are in desperate need of some form of system that prevents leechers from having unlimited access to everything here in the forums. Especially when they wont even take 2 god damn seconds to thank a fretter (or anyone else for that matter) for all their hard work. Fretting, coding, editing, brainstorming, and whatever the hell else there is that goes on behind the scenes here (which is FAR too much to name!), is NOT easy, and lots of people DO put in a lot of hard work for this community. So i really do agree with pretty much everything here, although im not sure i would call it a "membership" or anything. I dont think it needs a name. If you contribute, then you get privileges, if you wanna be a leecher, then you dont. That simple.
Image

Spoiler:

<RedShadow>: ADD Adumbshlt, A Dork Amak Adorkdork dorkdork=Nickolodeon=Nickelodeon

FoF 4EVA!!
SoD Sasquatch
Member
Posts: 161
Joined: March 27th, 2008
Location: Conway, AR
Reputation: 0
Contact:

Re: New Forum Privleges

Postby SoD Sasquatch » Mon Sep 13, 2010 10:27 am

I really appreciate the feedback here, I'm sure I am not going to be the only person here who is going to either agree with this or having something strong to say about it. As always, it's good to hear from you Snake.
Emperor naru
User avatar
nwru
Administrator
Posts: 3529
Joined: October 14th, 2006
Location: /dev/null
Reputation: 64
Contact:

Re: New Forum Privileges

Postby nwru » Mon Sep 13, 2010 2:57 pm

Only speaking for myself, I feel that this community is based on a strong foundation of openness for all and should stay that way.

You are correct that the vast majority of our registered users do not post or contribute. Is there a feasible way to force them to do so? We haven't been able to come up with one in the past. For that matter, do we WANT them to contribute? I would guess that the quantity of contributions would go up but the quality would go down. Also, keep in mind that this forum's age demographic is relatively young. The older members tend to contribute more and higher quality material.

The mechanism is there for people to give thanks and a virtual pat on the back. It's up to their discretion to do so. I imagine the age factor comes in to play here too. The song database would streamline people giving opinions of the charts. Ratings of themes are handled pretty well in the FoFiX themes topic.

I hope these random thoughts make some sense :cool:

<fuzion> 'This topic requires a FoF-FF Platinum Account'
Use the Search feature first to find answers to your questions. Chances are that they have been asked before!

Forum FAQ / Frets On Fire Wiki
User avatar
fuzion
Member
Posts: 382
Joined: September 12th, 2007
Reputation: 0

Re: New Forum Privleges

Postby fuzion » Mon Sep 13, 2010 2:58 pm

A few opinions:
  • Almost nothing posted on here qualifies for legitimate sales. Practically every theme, song, and mod is in violation of some kind of license and charging for it would invite more trouble than we need.
  • I doubt anyone in charge is going to change a relatively successful board based on suggestions of a brand new person (or even one made by someone with a solid history and reputation).
  • Donations don't work unless the majority of your core user base is over 18 and has a credit card. Same goes for subscriptions. Again, I am wholly against asking for money for songs.

In agreement:
  • Contribution based permissions to "premium content" is a sound idea. The problem is figuring out how to track these contributions in a transparent manner, negating any possible ways to game the system while managing to do present the stats and such in a way that doesn't look like every other crappy "you must thank the user before you can see the link" forum mod. This sounds like an awful lot of work just to stroke a few egos and force leeches to acknowledge that they downloaded something...
User avatar
ADeadlierSnake
Member
Posts: 377
Joined: May 16th, 2009
Reputation: 1
Contact:

Re: New Forum Privleges

Postby ADeadlierSnake » Mon Sep 13, 2010 3:08 pm

fuzion wrote:A few opinions:
  • Almost nothing posted on here qualifies for legitimate sales. Practically every theme, song, and mod is in violation of some kind of license and charging for it would invite more trouble than we need.
  • I doubt anyone in charge is going to change a relatively successful board based on suggestions of a brand new person (or even one made by someone with a solid history and reputation).
  • Donations don't work unless the majority of your core user base is over 18 and has a credit card. Same goes for subscriptions. Again, I am wholly against asking for money for songs.


For clarification: we had not even thought of charging people money, so thats not what we meant. We just meant that people who contributed more (through fretting, developing, posting, editing, etc) would have more access to the forums.

fuzion wrote:In agreement:
  • Contribution based permissions to "premium content" is a sound idea. The problem is figuring out how to track these contributions in a transparent manner, negating any possible ways to game the system while managing to do present the stats and such in a way that doesn't look like every other crappy "you must thank the user before you can see the link" forum mod. This sounds like an awful lot of work just to stroke a few egos and force leeches to acknowledge that they downloaded something...


One idea that i had for tracking contributions, is to have each person who wants greater access, apply for it. I know the admins/mods already have their hands full with lots of stuff, so i had an idea that maybe a couple people who are willing to take the responsibility, be promoted to mods. These new mods would then be in charge of all requests from users who wish to have greater forum access. They get to decide who to approve and who to deny. They would have to be completely unbiased in their job of course.
Image

Spoiler:

<RedShadow>: ADD Adumbshlt, A Dork Amak Adorkdork dorkdork=Nickolodeon=Nickelodeon

Best. Avatar. Ever.
User avatar
neostriker73
Member
Posts: 117
Joined: January 17th, 2010
Reputation: 0

Re: New Forum Privleges

Postby neostriker73 » Mon Sep 13, 2010 4:47 pm

This is supposed to be a RB/GH clone for free. If you have to pay for songs, it would be better just to get RB2. Rapidly lowering the users. The more peopel get free songs, the more this forum is supported. We here are people that help.And yes. There would be 100 more topics flooding the forums just for people to get songs, all of them off-sync, fail note placement,etc. Plus this game has lots of illegal content, selling it will probably get LOTs of good fretters in huge legal trouble.And contribution, if we do that. Only like 150 people will be left in the forums, because about 2000 people don't know how to make songs.
ImageImage


One of the few Expert+ drum players
User avatar
ADeadlierSnake
Member
Posts: 377
Joined: May 16th, 2009
Reputation: 1
Contact:

Re: New Forum Privleges

Postby ADeadlierSnake » Mon Sep 13, 2010 4:51 pm

Do i need to spell it out for you?

NO ONE SAID ANYTHING REGARDING MONEY!!!!!

PLEASE read before you post!

Thank you.
Image

Spoiler:

<RedShadow>: ADD Adumbshlt, A Dork Amak Adorkdork dorkdork=Nickolodeon=Nickelodeon

Emperor naru
User avatar
nwru
Administrator
Posts: 3529
Joined: October 14th, 2006
Location: /dev/null
Reputation: 64
Contact:

Re: New Forum Privleges

Postby nwru » Mon Sep 13, 2010 4:52 pm

ADeadlierSnake wrote:For clarification: we had not even thought of charging people money, so thats not what we meant. We just meant that people who contributed more (through fretting, developing, posting, editing, etc) would have more access to the forums.

neostriker73 wrote:This is supposed to be a RB/GH clone for free. If you have to pay for songs, it would be better just to get RB2.

Topic shift: let's talk about how to make users read previous posts before posting themselves :glare:
Use the Search feature first to find answers to your questions. Chances are that they have been asked before!

Forum FAQ / Frets On Fire Wiki
DRUMZZZ!
User avatar
Typhus
Member
Posts: 1423
Joined: December 29th, 2008
Location: Lisbon, Portugal
Reputation: 3
Contact:

Re: New Forum Privleges

Postby Typhus » Mon Sep 13, 2010 5:01 pm

I actually agree with the "main idea", you know like the platinum user (or power user...call it what you want).

I must honestly say that the main reason for me to stop charting songs, on a regular basis, was the fact that I really feel like no one cares about it. I've spent A LOT of time around it and, sometimes, not even a "thank you" was received. Worse than that, there were actually some complaints (and I've seen that a lot around here) about what I've (and other fretters) delivered to the community. That made me think things like..."I won't do it anymore, cause "they" don't deserve it".

Anyway, I doubt this will go forward, for starters the main thing is...it's already too late, I'm afraid.

Cya!

Nothing for now...

Click Here -> Latest W.I.P. song is Ride The Sky by Helloween

Kotti wrote:One of the many songs Typhus made for FoFH3. Check out his song thread, he deserves more recognition than is getting...
lukarocker wrote:Your latest Arch enemy song made my decision! YOU ARE MY NUMBER ONE FRETTER!!!
nariel99 wrote:But luckily , you find the post and were interested in the project. And the result : a pure moment of epicness in Frets on Fire . Once again thank you...
death_au wrote:Power metal covers of pop songs = WIN
+ Frets on Fire = EPIC WIN. Thank you Typhus :thumbup:
OPIK wrote:+ All difficulties included. That's PRECISELY why TYPHUS is in my "Personnal TOP 3 Best Fretters" !
dertanz wrote:NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO DON'T EVER QUIT... man you are one of my fav charters :crying: you can't quit... if you quit charting I'd quit playing :crying:
DaBackStabber666 wrote:I love your frettings :D
loth wrote:Typhus YOU SO RULE!! I love playing the songs you have fretted! :2thumbsup: Even on Supereasy the accurate representation of the music comes out. What a pleasure playing these, I can't wait for more metal tunes from you. Thanks SO much for doing ALL LEVELS, my fun meter is on high! :thumbup:
THANKS GUYS!!

My Song Thread [ALL DIFFICULTIES] | Alternative/Rock/Metal Genres
Lamb Of God - Ashes Of The Wake -> FULL ALBUM
Lamb Of God - Sacrament -> MASTER TRACKS|FULL ALBUM|ALL INSTRUMENTS
Lamb Of God - Wrath -> MASTER TRACKS|FULL ALBUM|ALL INSTRUMENTS
Check out Puppetz Advanced Song Tutorial, now with instructions on how to use Anchors.
User avatar
ADeadlierSnake
Member
Posts: 377
Joined: May 16th, 2009
Reputation: 1
Contact:

Re: New Forum Privleges

Postby ADeadlierSnake » Mon Sep 13, 2010 5:07 pm

@Typhus, this is one of the main reasons i so strongly support this idea. If fretting werent such a great boredom killer, i would have stopped long ago due to the fact that no one even gives a damn. So i strongly support any possible changes that could be made to stop or reduce the sickening number of leechers we have on this site and to reward all the people who put the time and effort into making the fof community amazing. Because it really is amazing. At least i think so.
Image

Spoiler:

<RedShadow>: ADD Adumbshlt, A Dork Amak Adorkdork dorkdork=Nickolodeon=Nickelodeon

Derp
User avatar
slashfan7964
Member
Posts: 5182
Joined: June 13th, 2009
Location: FoF-FF Retirement Home
Reputation: 8
Contact:

Re: New Forum Privleges

Postby slashfan7964 » Mon Sep 13, 2010 5:22 pm

The only reason I fret songs is to do the ones I want. If honestly if people really don't care as much as everyone says, I'll retire (I'm thinking about it anyway). I only release them cause I know friends of mine like them, but other than that...



I support this, all the way.
Image

My Song Thread
Current Songs: 98
Secret Project in the Works! Check this signature for active updates!
My second band, Tetanus with Metallicaholic666 is recording a demo tape. Full album to follow.
Black Moon Broods...
User avatar
aander91
Member
Posts: 4876
Joined: December 15th, 2007
Reputation: 0
Contact:

Re: New Forum Privleges

Postby aander91 » Mon Sep 13, 2010 5:55 pm

This is a bad bad idea. Your heart is in the right place, but this is just bad news. Look at what you posted. You're putting massive emphasis on post count. If users are simply posting to get their post count up, then you are going to have colossal problems. Imaged hundreds of users just posting so that they can get access to downloads? It'd be a nightmare. You'd need like 1 mod for every 5 active users. Also, I strongly believe that this site has so much quality material because it's just a hobby. If it became people's job, you'd run into all sorts of problems. Take a look at Jam Legend for instance. I used to do work for them, but the problem was that everyone had their own style and sometimes people's styles were just plain wrong. I tried to police what I thought was the right way to do it, but others tried to police it their way and on top of that, you had your every day user's input (which was most of the time completely incorrect and perverted). When everyone can provide their own material with trivial input from equal level users that can just be brushed off, you get more things done. Tl;dr: less red tape. I got so fed up with arguing with everyone at JL that I've pretty much dropped it completely and am now free to chart whatever I want however I want, and I'd like to keep it that way. Not saying that's what this has to become, but if you started restricting access to certain parts of the forum (threads with quality), then who decides what quality is? I think Susa has better charts than amak, but then someone may think amak's thread has more quality stuff in it because of the diverse pickings. Then someone has to police it and all hell breaks loose. Let's just keep things simple and continue doing what we've been doing for years.

Sure, being thanked is nice, and hell, I betched about that at JL too. But this is different. You get thanked in ways other than a ribbon or a badge. If you contribute, you get respect (not to be confused with karma), and here, that can pretty much get you anything.
COUNTERPOINT

1st Place-July 2010 Guitar Charting Competition
2nd Place-March 2010 Guitar Charting Competition
3rd Place-August 2009 Guitar Charting Competition
4th Place-December 2009 Guitar Charting Competition

Vidya Game Music arranged for String Ensemble
FoF 4EVA!!
SoD Sasquatch
Member
Posts: 161
Joined: March 27th, 2008
Location: Conway, AR
Reputation: 0
Contact:

Re: New Forum Privleges

Postby SoD Sasquatch » Mon Sep 13, 2010 6:23 pm

Yes, I would also like to re-clarify the "No Money option", I said nothing in this discussion about selling anything, I'm completely against that and it would probably be even more illegal than it already is. Remember that I said membership would be based on MANY things and would have to be approved. (By the way, I would like to be a member of the group of people who help decide who gets access or not). I really like what aander said about people "having jobs" around here rather than "doing it for fun", he is correct, he knows because he has had people work with him and drop out and he has felt like he "had" to do something and didn't have the option. We're not getting payed to do any of this stuff, it's all completely volunteer and it should stay to the volunteering rules, which are: do what you want, anything that would help, but please do something. On another note, I did NOT say that users had to post songs or other material to be considered "active" in the community. I completely agree that this would be a bad idea because you would be forcing people who has no experience in the "Fofix creation" of things to create something. We would just have a giant pile of "crap" that no one will use and no one will really respect. The point of the entire discussion is that we don't need to have people just be able to get access to EVERYTHING when they won't even say "Thank you" or something every once in a while. I think that the fretters/moderators/admins would agree anyway that it wouldn't be that big of a deal to get rid of all of these leechers anyway. If it requires you to actually do something, a lot of those people are going to leave. The people who actually do something in the community are starting to speak up, and everyone will soon understand why it's such a big issue. Hell, I've already heard from a couple of you that you didn't feel like your work was appreciated and you want to just give up and stop working all together. Slashfan, who cares if you just make what content you want to play, no one has asked you to create anything and you're not required to. Most of the stuff you create, though, people also enjoy. If you decide to retire from song writing I would be very sad because you've always made such good songs but don't feel like you're "obligated" to do anything around here. That goes for everyone else: don't feel like you "have" to do anything around here, you all have done so much so why should you have to put up with all the negative comments, and the "hey, make me this song" and such. Thank you all for your comments on the situation so far, I just thought Snake and I would get this discussion off our chest, and once again, I really appreciate all that you guys do in the community. (BTW, haha, if it was based "Majorly" on Karma, I don't think Slashfan would ever get a membership! LoL)
User avatar
ADeadlierSnake
Member
Posts: 377
Joined: May 16th, 2009
Reputation: 1
Contact:

Re: New Forum Privleges

Postby ADeadlierSnake » Mon Sep 13, 2010 6:24 pm

@aander No, god forbid it was based on post count. It would NOT just be based on that. It would be based on how much you contribute to the forum. And that would be up to the mods (or mods) who got promoted to decide. I thought the exact same thing about it being based on post count. That wouldnt help at all, because itd promote spam to get privileges, like you said.

As far as the contributing getting you respect, i REALLY wish that were the case, but before i went into IRC for the first time, no one even knew who i was, and i had already fretted over 50 songs. 50 songs and i have yet to get thank you's from more than 5 people. And i know there tons of other people out there in the same position. Maybe im just in a unique position though. Idk.

Anyways, you may not agree with what me and sasquatch are suggesting, but i still do appreciate the feedback. Thanks for the post :biggrin:
Image

Spoiler:

<RedShadow>: ADD Adumbshlt, A Dork Amak Adorkdork dorkdork=Nickolodeon=Nickelodeon


Return to “Thoughts ?”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 12 guests