Electo-o-nomicron 2008

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Viking-Sensei
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Electo-o-nomicron 2008

Post by Viking-Sensei »

That's right, it's that time of the year again - we're gearing up towards the annual event where I try and inspire all of you to vote on important board issues, and almost all of you completely ignore me anyway. To open things up a little bit from last year, voting will take place the entire week of Saturday, Nov 1st, with polls closing Friday, Nov 7th at 2359 EST.

Here's the issues we have thusfar:

Issue 1: The Admin Council Nomination
As dictated in the doctrine of the boards, one of the members of the Admin Council is to be a directly-elected representative of the forums. The current incumbant is Graybeard.

If you would like to nominate someone (including yourself), reply back to this post clearly stating "I nominate _______ for the Admin Council." I will contact that person, and assuming they accept, add them to the official ballot that will go out on November 1st.

Since there are no term limits for the elected Admin, Graybeard is automatically entered (unless he should decide not to run, at which time he needs to say so) as a candidate. That means if there are no other nominations, the incumbant (aka Graybeard) automatically wins without a vote. If there are nominations, then the issue will go to ballot and be voted on the week of November 1st.

Issue 2: The Third Admin
Last year, we voted to keep the number down to 2 for the time being, as there wasn't all that much going on (yet), reserving the right to activate the third position (the 2nd appointee) at any time it was deemed required. We did have to activate an emergency 3rd Admin due to the windstorm last month, however we still do not have a regular admin.

The board is significantly more active than it was at this time last year, and with the issues raised by the windstorm, it might not be a bad time to re-visit the the question of whether or not we need a third Admin.

Issue 2b: The Third Admin Continued
The third admin slot is decided by Impy and Poe... however there's no rule saying that we, the people of the forums, can't make recommendations. So, if Issue 2 passes, than I propose Issue 2b acts as an official endorsement from the forums for a selected candidate.

If you would like to nominate someone (including yourself), reply back to this post clearly stating "I nominate _______ for the Admin Council." I will contact that person, and assuming they accept, add them to the official ballot that will go out on November 1st.

Remember, due to the nature of this position, nomination and election does not ensure a seat on the Admin Council - the issue will still have to be decided by Impy and Poe. This just provides official endorsement for a chosen candidate.

Issue 3: Global Moderators
Last year, we voted not to have category moderators at that time due to the relative inactivity of the forums, with the ability to activate as needed.

Since that time, several instances have arisen where a moderator had to be appointed, either for a short term or for the long run. A standard moderator position was created in the Games category a few months ago due to the Mafia game. During the windstorm I created the "Team Captains" to police the boards during the extended absence of the entire admin and ownership structure.

Instead of category moderators as the charter had previously suggested, I would like to create two permenent "Global Moderator" positions... one elected by the Admin Council, the other nominated by the people of the forums. They would assume the roles of guardian and (to some degree) custodian of the forums, allowing the Admin Council to work on bigger and better things.

To aid them in their quest, the two people holding these powers would be able to edit, delete, and move individual posts, move and lock topics, and to warn individuals violating the spirit of the forums.

Issue 3b: Global Moderator Nominations
If you would like to nominate someone (including yourself), reply back to this post clearly stating "I nominate _______ for the Golbal Moderator position." I will contact that person, and assuming they accept, add them to the official ballot that will go out on November 1st. This person only gains the post if issue 3 passes.

Issue 4: Activating Image Posting Rights
Originally, the power to post images was going to be a reserved privelage for those subsrcibing to the Errant Story Plus subscription service. The problem is... that service doesn't exist yet.

I spoke to Impy some months back and got approval to offer to you, the people, the right to post images in any forum on the board. There are still some issues to be considered, however, which is why I decided to put this up for a vote instead of simply turning it on.

There will be no image hosting. You're on your own for that.

Image posting drastically increases the possibility of someone posting up NSFW pictures, which might get people viewing from their jobs in trouble. Also, there is the issue of load times and forum functionality, as people posting large and crazy images can cause some problems.

We haven't had a lot of problems with this happening in the image-enabled areas... yet... but image posting is a power, and with power comes corruption... comes the Viking Hammer... comes pain. We'll do our best to police, but once again, it's going to be up to you to police yourselves, since it's ultimately you the posters who are going to suffer if things go horribly, horribly wrong.

Issue 5: Activating Signature Rights
Same as image posting, the power to have signatures was going to be a reserved privelage for those subsrcibing to the Errant Story Plus subscription service. Just as with Issue 4, I have gotten permission to turn this on for everyone to use, but wanted to make sure this is what the people of the forums wanted.

Some rules:
Images in signatures will be limited in dimensions to a maximum size - it still hasn't been decided yet, but I'm pushing towards banner size (468x60) and to a maximum file size also to be determined, probably somewhere in the 80k range. That'll allow for limited animation, but still keep page load times reasonable.

Again, NSFW images and increased load times are issues with these too. All we can do is monitor the situation and remove the privlages of those who can't follow the rules.

NEW - SUBMIT YOUR ISSUE!
Do you have an issue you'd like to put up to a vote? Want something we don't have/want to get rid of something we do? Submit it to us for consideration... if you don't feel comfortable doing so in public, you can PM Graybeard or I. If we of the Admin Council feel your cause is just, we'll add it to the official list.
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Tiamat
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Re: Electo-o-nomicron 2008

Post by Tiamat »

I nominate Boss Out of Town as Global Moderator.
I nominate Graybeard for the Admin Council.

As far as images and signatures go, here's my two cents:

Images are, for the most part, fine. I understand some concerns about NSFW material, but I think most of us are mature enough, at least, to keep that kind of thing under a spoiler tag or something. Signatures are fine too, assuming they're not incredibly obnoxious - for example, very long, or text in multiple colors.

Which brings me to my actual concern - signatures with images. I, personally, detest them - no matter how cool a person thinks their nifty sig-image is, no matter how tasteful the pixel constraints, people will get tired of looking at it really fast. The best case, in my view, is to simply lock out BB codes from being used in signatures, but I don't know if the software allows that. Hopefully this'd get people to actually think about their signature content.

Of course, most of these concerns are a moot point with this crowd - we typically know how to behave ourselves so that most of these rules aren't necessary. Still, in the event we have a sudden influx of new people or something, I'd at least like these points considered.
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Graybeard
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Re: Electo-o-nomicron 2008

Post by Graybeard »

I'm willing to do this again, and endorse the nomination of Boss as a global moderator.
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LordofNightmares
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Re: Electo-o-nomicron 2008

Post by LordofNightmares »

I Nom. Viking (for the 3rd slot) and GB(adminCouns) and Big Boss(GAdmn)
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Viking-Sensei
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Re: Electo-o-nomicron 2008

Post by Viking-Sensei »

I think the Admin council would retain the right to veto any signatures that we... took issue with. We'll post some guidelines, of course, before hand... size, content, all that stuff, to try and herd people in the right direction... but given the fact that you're all going to have to be dealing with and looking at these regularly, that's exactly why I wanted to make it an "our" decision that everyone voted on.
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Imp-Chan
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Re: Electo-o-nomicron 2008

Post by Imp-Chan »

While I'm fine with enabling signatures, and links are totally fine with me, my preference would be for forum signatures without images. A line or two of text isn't that distracting, it's easy to skip over on the way to the next post in a thread, but an image can quickly get annoying and is much harder to ignore.

If the decision is made to allow images in the signatures, though, I feel like banner size is definitely too large. Not only does it eat space and attention, it enables unscrupulous spammer-types to bypass our advertising and annoy everyone else, something we very much cannot afford.

^-^'

Edit: Viking-sensei pointed out a need clarify my post.
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Sareth
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Re: Electo-o-nomicron 2008

Post by Sareth »

A question regarding images in signatures.

On other forums, I typically slip a 350x20 bar linking back to my DeviantArt account. It's just one of those little things. I've always considered it fairly unobtrusive because of it's size and simplistic appearance. But I could be wrong. Impy, would something like that be one of those things that bothers you? I'm trying to get a better idea of the parameters of what we are looking at here.

(For those wanting to see the banner, it can be found at http://fc08.deviantart.com/fs8/i/2005/3 ... lgarve.png)
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Viking-Sensei
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Re: Electo-o-nomicron 2008

Post by Viking-Sensei »

I think the big concern was opening ourselves up to those who might spam, either automatically (using a bot) or just by posting a whole lot to get their link on here as much as possible. We haven't really had an issue with bots (yet) or postwhoring (again yet), but the fear generally (and correctly) is that this would open us up a fair bit more to that mentality.

That, and Impy is afeared (again, rightfully so) that the nice, clean, shiny boards of goodness here are going to become besmirched with the foul taint of... whatever was foul and tainty at Kyhm. I argued (and continue to) that while the boards are indeed still nice and shiny, that after a year of use, some of the shinyness needs to be replaced by a more homey, lived-in approach.

There is something to be said for the huge, distracting nature of some signatures - I'm still pushing for the standard single small banner size (468x60) to be the maximum... like this:
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But only one of those. and maybe a line of text.... or, no image and a couple of lines of text... I'm just worried that any less than that is going to defeat the entire point of this. I want people to have a chance to be artistic, you know, show off their individual nature... with the banner size, there's some room for some art, but not so much that it can't be manageable.

Ultimately, the goal of the signature's restrictions is that it shouldn't a) be page-breakingly-wide, so as to make the forums unviewable to those of us still using 800x600 resolutions, b) too scroll-intensively-high, so as to present a giant wall of otherwise useless text and images, or c) too large a file or loading from so slow a source that it otherwise impacts the ability of others to use the forums.

And, of course, if this all negotiable - if we start out low and it works well, maybe we can increase the size restrictions as time goes on... if we have problems from the start, we may have to abolish images from signatures, or re-remove them again from the list of options.
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LordofNightmares
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Re: Electo-o-nomicron 2008

Post by LordofNightmares »

Yes I do Agree with you on that, Too many sig or banners just gets annoying.
And by the way that is a good banner there, I love it lol.
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Re: Electo-o-nomicron 2008

Post by RubberBandMan »

I go to one webcomic forum that is almost un-readable because of the long sigs and too much images. Most boards that I like the best just have space for the banner size Viking Sensei put up, and it works pretty well. I read the forums here because of the people who post, and if they have something they feel is awesome enough to be in their sig, I normally check it out.

The real problem is when 90% of a post is nothing but images, links, and random (pointless) garbage from an IRC chat that is all formatted like its on their Myspace, and not just a little tag at the bottom of the post. I hate having to look for what part of the post is the content and what part is just the indulgent sig. Sure, its not bad to have a sig that looks nice, but people are going to read it once and then scroll past it every other time... and scroll, and scroll and scroll until they notice that the huge posts they loaded goes on for two or three pages and only have about two paragraphs of content.
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