PROTOCOLS OF THE ELDERS OF BG [Forum feedback, Auntie Isla Wants YOU, &c.]

[Rhinox]

it's called subscriptions. Check the Quick links link near the top

[Kuya]

This might already exist and I just haven't found it, but is there a feature that let's you track treads you like to frequent so you can keep on top of them without having to go into each subforum and see if there are new posts to read? And I don't mean the subscriptions, I don't want a bunch of notifications on my phone or in my email. I'm thinking like something you could click on in the header of each thread to add them to a track list and then that list could display on the sidebar or at the top of the forums, and also maybe in your profile, as links so you could just jump into the thread.

Go to thread tools and subscribe to the thread. You can alter the settings in your profile so new posts in said thread do not send emails or text.

[zoobernut]

This might already exist and I just haven't found it, but is there a feature that let's you track treads you like to frequent so you can keep on top of them without having to go into each subforum and see if there are new posts to read? And I don't mean the subscriptions, I don't want a bunch of notifications on my phone or in my email. I'm thinking like something you could click on in the header of each thread to add them to a track list and then that list could display on the sidebar or at the top of the forums, and also maybe in your profile, as links so you could just jump into the thread.

That would be kinda cool if there was a section that popped up at the top of the main forum page that was custom for each person that was a list of their top 5 most frequently visited threads or something to that effect.

[RKenshin]

I fail at brevity, as usual, but here's my spiel on one debatable feature:

Spoiler: show

I know there are mixed feelings on a voting/rating system, and I share the concerns. But I feel like it could still be worthwhile to entertain, possibly with some modifications.

Benefit of this being, done right it could increase overall traffic and popularity of the forums as a whole and possible even establish it better as a resource for information. Rating/rewarding posters that contribute to major threads and/or continually answer questions could encourage more activity for both questions and answers/discussion.

Playing around with the idea… Your rating could be kept private (possibly even mod-only viewable?), if we wanted to avoid convoluting the forum with rating concerns/contests/epeening. Have some sort of a cheesy raffle/competition/BG-award (or whatever) every so often to recognize people that achieved the highest ratings. Or maybe have rewards for specific forums. Or a ‘top-5 in X forum/thread’ list. Who knows.

Could potentially even restrict this rating to certain threads (if possible)? Random question threads, help/advice threads, random image thread (up-vote people that regularly contribute), or whatever.

I know the idea of this still sounds bleh, and I kind of feel the same way.

But the potential issue is that whenever I have a tough question about something, it ends up being resolved by a Google search that often leads to someone asking a similar question on a site with a community rating system (like recently, a tech question on Tom’s Hardware)… or asking the question on a site like that myself. I don’t typically come here for the tough ones. So the benefit I see is that some sort of minor rating system experiment may encourage posters to come here for tougher questions (and even attract new ones), and generate more discussion. Or for something like the random image-type threads (main one, or wallpaper one, or NSFW, whatever), it could help encourage contributing more often/better quality.

Maybe people don’t want BG to go in that direction (certainly wouldn’t want there to be 50 new question threads a day here, particularly letmegooglethatforyou ones, which is why restricting it to threads/sections may be desirable), and that’s fine if so, but I figure it was worth consideration.

My two cents.

[Ragns]

Can you fix the BG Bucket, it wont allow .bmp files to be uploaded (unless im missing something?)

I will never allow people to upload files that are 10 times larger to download than gif,jpg,png.

I guess I could work on making the Bucket automagically convert files in proper formats but I'd have to be very bored to put that on top of my list.

[Tajin]

Disagree. 99% of the time if I'm reading posts quickly, I use the avatar to associate the post with the author. Plus it was hilarious for a week or so when people thought Rhinox and Meteora were the same.

This goes on the same page as the ignore function, the feature is there but you can choose to use it or not. Want to use 1 avatar cool, want to use a bunch cool too.

Edit: you can opt out of receiving emails when you subscribe to a thread. And you can subscribe to a subforum on tapatalk if you use it; wih notifications or without.

[Ragns]

I wish they'd make banner ads non-optional since the ones they do show aren't really all that bad and that way we'd probably never need donation drives ever. I've yet to see a misbehaving ProjectWonderful banner on any site.

So far I really like how non-assholeish Project Wonderful are but they're still 1/10th of AdSense's income.

[Selamis]

Oh also, seconding the sidebar feature being a permanent control option rather than hiding each time I wipe cookies.

[Antithesis]

I'd pay $500.00 in donations over a period of three months for Greenpink skin.

[Ragns]

Oh also, seconding the sidebar feature being a permanent control option rather than hiding each time I wipe cookies.

When people QQ about broken stuff outside of the BG Forums Issues forum it tends to get lost.

Short answer: since the sidebar is a core feature of vBulletin I doubt I'll invest much time into fixing their crap.

[Brill Weave]

I would like to be able to link to posts in locked threads just as easily as in an unlocked thread

Also can we remove Brill's ability to use quote tags without the little link to the actual post and who said it? It's the worst

You leave me alone fucker!


edit see because you tried to imitate me you made my post all wonky!

[Cail]

oh brill..

[Brill Weave]

[Ksandra]

So far I really like how non-assholeish Project Wonderful are but they're still 1/10th of AdSense's income.

would income increase if it was ads full-time?

[Ragns]

would income increase if it was ads full-time?

There's limits to whore out BG.

[Nightfyre]

What If i odd, is the lack of music discussion on this board. XD

Even the music thread has stagnated at this point. I'd guess a lot of people simply go to other sites for that if they're discussing it online. I get my fix through a musician's forum for example; there's a ton of active music discussion there for obvious reasons and it's a useful resource for me as a musician. I imagine generating more music-related traffic would be good for the site as a whole, though I'm not sure how much I'd care for it personally with the inevitable blow-up of THINGS I DO NOT LIKE.

I think part of the reason may also be that music discussion doesn't really fit with BG's approach towards thread organization with broad-category threads. People are going to want a thread for each specific artist, which spikes thread count in a hurry and probably necessitates a subforum, but at the same time there's not nearly enough active music discussion here to warrant a subforum. This may also be part of the cause of the music thread dying off, people go there to check out music but unless you're into something that happens to be popular in that thread you'll end up skipping over quite a few posts.

Would be a good way to share music, as long as the music has been gathered legally ofc. Maybe rips off youtube, which are still legal or something. Throw those on a playlist, let people check off and on songs they'd like in the rotation, volume control, whether they want the thing on at all or not for those who still prefer whatever they're listening to already. Maybe even have some of bgs own artists throw in their own music, so people outside of spam can listen to perms music etc, and dudes in gd who'll get flamed for a "hey my band just recorded a new song" thread don't have to worry about retards bashing their music, regardless of it sucking or not.

I really like this. Admittedly quite a bit of self-interest at work there if you let BGers upload original works, but it's a great idea regardless. Playlists make a decent sort of easy "recommend" list, so that takes care of itself, and maybe a "preview" button for each track for convenience when picking out songs.

Also, just on the music part... might want to separate it by Genre, heh.

Only in a very, very broad sense and even then I'd prefer to sort playlists rather than individual songs. If you're checking a box to play certain types of music, then you end up with either a mixed bag of things you like and shit you don't if it's too general or you end up with Isla's aforementioned clusterfuck if you try to be specific.

[Ksandra]

You know, dunno what is possible or whether it's worth it. But how would people like having an actual bg stream? vs. going to justin. tv

In my head I think it'd be kinda cool if people sign up to have a stream of them playing a game go up either in a separate window (with a link at the top) or have it be small on the side bar. Might increase traffic, iono.

[Bregor]

You know, dunno what is possible or whether it's worth it. But how would people like having an actual bg stream? vs. going to justin. tv

In my head I think it'd be kinda cool if people sign up to have a stream of them playing a game go up either in a separate window (with a link at the top) or have it be small on the side bar. Might increase traffic, iono.

SASSAGES

[Caiyuo]

This might already exist and I just haven't found it, but is there a feature that let's you track treads you like to frequent so you can keep on top of them without having to go into each subforum and see if there are new posts to read? And I don't mean the subscriptions, I don't want a bunch of notifications on my phone or in my email. I'm thinking like something you could click on in the header of each thread to add them to a track list and then that list could display on the sidebar or at the top of the forums, and also maybe in your profile, as links so you could just jump into the thread.

I really like the idea of this and was thinking of something similar, but I don't know how doable it is. I use the thread subscriptions and set it to auto-subscribe to everything I've posted in with no notifications so my bluegartr.com/usercp.php always has a list of updated threads I want to look at, but would it be possible to make thread subscriptions quicker/easier? Like the same way the User CP has "reply | unsubscribe", it would be neat to have those options to reply, subscribe or unsubscribe listed next to each thread when looking at a forum or reading the results of a What's New search. Like the difference here:

[Caiyuo]

I fail at brevity, as usual, but here's my spiel on one debatable feature:

Spoiler: show

I know there are mixed feelings on a voting/rating system, and I share the concerns. But I feel like it could still be worthwhile to entertain, possibly with some modifications.

Benefit of this being, done right it could increase overall traffic and popularity of the forums as a whole and possible even establish it better as a resource for information. Rating/rewarding posters that contribute to major threads and/or continually answer questions could encourage more activity for both questions and answers/discussion.

Playing around with the idea… Your rating could be kept private (possibly even mod-only viewable?), if we wanted to avoid convoluting the forum with rating concerns/contests/epeening. Have some sort of a cheesy raffle/competition/BG-award (or whatever) every so often to recognize people that achieved the highest ratings. Or maybe have rewards for specific forums. Or a ‘top-5 in X forum/thread’ list. Who knows.

Could potentially even restrict this rating to certain threads (if possible)? Random question threads, help/advice threads, random image thread (up-vote people that regularly contribute), or whatever.

I know the idea of this still sounds bleh, and I kind of feel the same way.

But the potential issue is that whenever I have a tough question about something, it ends up being resolved by a Google search that often leads to someone asking a similar question on a site with a community rating system (like recently, a tech question on Tom’s Hardware)… or asking the question on a site like that myself. I don’t typically come here for the tough ones. So the benefit I see is that some sort of minor rating system experiment may encourage posters to come here for tougher questions (and even attract new ones), and generate more discussion. Or for something like the random image-type threads (main one, or wallpaper one, or NSFW, whatever), it could help encourage contributing more often/better quality.

Maybe people don’t want BG to go in that direction (certainly wouldn’t want there to be 50 new question threads a day here, particularly letmegooglethatforyou ones, which is why restricting it to threads/sections may be desirable), and that’s fine if so, but I figure it was worth consideration.

My two cents.

Also I really like this if only for differentiating between posters when you can't have more than a vague idea of who actually knows what they're talking about. There's plenty of people in the Tech forum who answers questions in the RQT and PC Build thread who I'd like to see recognized, too, if only to convey "you can probably trust this person's opinion."