Hey team.

Evolution has been around for more than a year now (I think our birthday was April?). And we in the mod team are constantly looking at ways to improve the forum. So with this in mind we will be reviewing all aspects of our community and we'd love it to have as much contribution from you guys.

So here's what we want. If you have an opinion on any aspect of the forum, write it down and email it to me at [REMOVED] and we will include it in our inquiry (The Texta Inquiry :D).

Obviously you can still post stuff up at the feedback thread, so if you can make submissions a little more meaningful than "I think we need more emoticons" than that would be helpful. If it's possible submissions should not just include a problem but how you think that problem could be solved (ie "Mods are too harsh, they should be less harsh).

I look forward to hearing from you all soon.

The gaming forums are getting a couple of posts in 'em every day, but not nearly enough. I like the idea of a general gaming forum, like at hyper, because it gives a more specific place to post about gaming issues, rather than off topic. Another idea might be to collapse console gaming into the one forum. If a noob comes to this place and sees one new post in the Gamecube forum, and then maybe one in the Xbox forum, but none in the PS2 forum, and they are a PS2 owner, then they move on. Collapse all the forums into the one, and it'll give the forums a look of activity. We know that this forum has active and regular members, but the way the forum is currently set-up, then it doesn't really look like it for outsiders.

Oh, yes thats a great idea. I like it.

Here's how I'd set the forums up -

Off Topic
Film Tele and Music
General Gaming
Console Gaming
PC Gaming
Handheld Gaming

...or something like that.

I'm a one console owner, so I rarely even visit the PS or Xbox forums. Collapse them into the one, and then I'd comment a lot more on the other consoles. It gives the whole thing a better flow, IMO, and a much better spread of discussion. Individual forums are alright for the bigger forums, like Hyper, but for the smaller forums it really gives the place a feel of inactivity.

Also, get rid of that Shadow Link guy as mod. He hasn't posted in months, and hasn't been a regular poster since the middle of last year.

I brought that to attention about 4 months ago.

Yeah, because we don't have that many people visiting each designated forum, having them come under "console gaming" will make people more inclined to just check out other threads that are listed in front of them.

On the post new thread page, there could be say 4 or 5 radio buttons, with "Xbox", "PS2", "GCN", "PC" and even "General", and users will have to select one before posting the thread. Then when the thread is added to the list, it has the selection before the thread name. Eg "[XBOX] GTA San Andreas", or "[PC] Age of Empires 3".

Did that make any sense?

Yeah, it's called a filter, Manny. :P

Yeah that made sense, and it's a good idea.

Hey team, just thought I should add that my email doesn't have any restrictions as far as abusive content goes so you can feel free to cain us as much as you like and obviously any submissions will be completely confidential and will not have any bearing on how you're treated in the forum (ie you won't get a warning for being abusive). That said, the purpose of this is to make the forum better and sending abusive emails will not be beneficial to that cause.

I just had a look at the memberlist, to find that "Shadowlink" guy that Hello was talking about, and it really is atrocious. The setup, that is. I know that all the Mods and Adminerators and Admins are in different groups for a reason, but it really makes it hard to find an actual "List" of anything, when you have to go from each subheading to the next, just to find one person. An example is that Estapol and Trinity are in two different groups, but are both Adminerators, and for what purpose? So they can have two totally ridiculous post counts? Or is there actually a reason, like different rights or something?

Perhaps a bit of pruning of the groups is in order?

Ah, if you want to find the mod team, all you need to do is to go to the bottom of the index and click on 'Our mod team' (may or may not be the actual phrasing). The Mods are all in seperate groups due to the different badges.

And no Estapol and Trin are not Adminerators purely so they could have gimmick post counts, When Gregg left we figured we could use another admin and just wound up giving Trin and Estapol admin powers, the name 'Adminerator' is merely superflous, but it sort've puts them at an in-between rank. Civic and Mach are the supreme overlords. :P

Shadow Link's mod powers were going to be taken a long while ago, I don't know why it hasn't happened yet.

I thought as much, about the badges (for the different forums).

I figured what Adminerator meant, but my point is that both of them have their own group. There are two Adminerator groups, and three Admin groups, each with only one person. This may also be for the badges?

In fact, one of the Admin groups has no members :P.

Yeah, there are multiple admin groups because Mach, Civ and Gregg all had different badges. When Gregg left he was removed from the group with his badge, however the group hasn't been deleted.

The same applies to the Adminerators.

Firstly, cheers for giving us a proper chance to air our concerns and push for some change. I appreciate it.

Now. In my opinion, the main thing that needs to be changed here is the rules governing us, and especially when we cross into the confrantational side of things. I'd be the first one to admit that there must be limits as to what a person can say. A good example of over-stepping the line is when I gave Pres a towelling sometime last year, throwing in derogatory insults of hilarious extremes, or the time when I attacked TJO over his teeth. Or, when DZ lost it and filled his posts with as many f-words as humanely possible. This stuff should be censored and we SHOULD get warnings.

That deserves a warning.

That does not deserve a warning. But I got one.

I was banned for personal reasons that time. Sytadel admitted as much. What I'd like to see less of is special treatment aimed towards me. I find it pretty hard to change when I'm still treated the same by the moderating team. For such a long period of time I did absolutely nothing to warrant even a crook eye at Evo. Something in the vicinity of 4 months. DZ railed off an offensive post, and little more than a month later is being congratulated for his good behaviour. My meter stood at 80% and didn't decrease in that 4 month period. I can't help but feel that is because of my past reputation. You expected me to fuck up, and it was eventually deemed that I did, even though I clearly didn't. Even mods agreed with that one. I was unbanned, then when I was put on a probation, I was banned for the above post aimed at Syt. <_<

Also, one of the rules is 'Do not post things with the intention to annoy other users'. Um... shouldn't we all have been warned at one point? :rolleyes: The rules are outdated and need reviewing immediately.

Lastly, I'd like you to accept that objectivity is the fuel that maintains forums, and especially this one. With a dwindling user base, we need these kinds of threads every now and then to spark life into the forum. Although I think DZ is a apple-necked schlub, I'd hate to seem him banned, and I'd hate to see him banned for calling someone an idiot. Idiots and pricks are always the most hated members of a forum, but they are also the ones keeping it afloat. Some better appreciation of what keeps the forums running would be, uh, appreciated. The Fantastic Four, Hello, Maverick, DZ and myself, are the most well known personalities of these forums. 3 of them are close to being banned, and are out of favour with the mods almost constantly. I do not ask for special treatment, I ask that we be treated fairly. I do not believe I have been treated entirely fairly, nor do I think Mav and DZ have been.

Leniency is what we need, and a better appreciation of some of the members. Sure, we are not perfect children, but the family would lose all its lustre if they were removed permenantly. ;)

If you need more specific examples of what I feel needs to be changed, I'll come up with them, but it's late and I'm tired...

That's the only reason for the amount of groups; badges.
Originally we only had a few groups (Members, Mods, Admins and the Root Admin(main admin)), but when we dicided to change it so that everyone had their own badges, the only way to do was to make a group for each badge, which is why there are so many groups.(there's one for each "Winner" group as well)
If you guys are really bothered with this I guess we could re-arrange them

That would be Gregg(no GhostBoy)'s group which he removed himself from when he left. ;)

As for post counts, Trin and myself really don't care about how many posts we have. Especially considering that when we opened up, people had the option of getting their post counts from Hyper, VC or PalGN re-instated here...it kinda defeated the purpose.

Though once again, if you guys think that my extremely negative post count is an issue, I'll quite gladly set it back to 0.

Frankly I don't think we should have post counts under our names at all...but I've already been shut-down on that issue.

EDIT: Damn, posted just after Moggo...I'll respond tommorow as it's getting late. :needsleep:

Though I will say this; thankyou for responding so politely without resorting to personal insults. :thumbsup:

How about adding some RSS feeds - I don't think it's too much work for the admins and it's very useful for those that use them!

I'll see if that's possible, though we don't have much freedom with the code side of things, so don't hold your breath. ;)

Man should'a gone to bed ages ago...

Alrighty, as you may have noticed I've had a tinker with some admin stuff and what you see is pretty much the best we can do. The code that makes up the actual forum part isn't accessable to us, nor is the navigational area or the banner. The best we can do is put code inbetween these parts (exactly what I've done). On the plus side, there's no restrictions on the HTML we can use, so an RSS feed is most certainly possible if it's wanted.

I was thinking of possibly having a small banner area above the board itself showing something like the most popular threads over the last few days. Could be easily hidden away with javascript so those who don't want to see it won't have to (just like the quick reply box). Only problem is that I'm not sure how to query the database for the required entries, or even if it can be done on this system. :ramjet:

I think it needs to look like this:

Feedback
Off Topic
General Gaming
Mod Forum
Banned Member Forum*

*for members with special privileges.

This is what me and Manny M were talking about. It seems very cluttered, but the ntsc-uk forums are damn big and don't seem to have much modding. Even if there can't be a filter put in place, as Manny asked, it's just up to the user or the mods to put a bracket after the thread title with the console name in it, or, even just type 'xbox', or whatever, in that little title bar underneath the main thread title. I think it's a great idea.

Having all the gaming systems in the one section will be better since some threads will get recognition that otherwise would'nt have, and it will increase the time we spend on the forums, instead of waiting for pages to load (it helps for those on 56K / those who download stuff when reading forums).

DZ may go off his nut at times, but i think he is often a major contributor to the forums, and he sparks many a discussion. So if he were banned, the activity level of the forums would almost certainly decrease. Mav also contributes a lot to the forums, and the banning of either of these members would be a major loss.

No, Estapol, your post count doesn't bother me :P. I was just saying that if your seperate groups were only for post counts, then that would bother me.

Film/TV/Music isn't going anywhere DZ. :P

Actually, this is EXACTLY what i'm talking about

http://www.nforce.nl/forum/viewforum.php?f...7fb7c99e636ba76

Here's hoping you can access it without being a member.

Also Moggo, when it comes to consistency in warnings, I understand where you're coming from, and it's duly noted.

Ok I have a suggestion. As I understand it the mods and admins are currently discussing changing the warning and banning system - which seems like it might be a postive step forward. I think it would be even more postive if this dicussion happened in public. If you're looking to make decisions that are for the good of the majority of posters - I think it's important to know what they want. Obviously it can be discussed in the mods forum as well - and you really have no obligation to listen to what non mods think but I think it would make people feel a lot better if they were given more of an opportunity to work towards the improvements. Of course if you're going to do this you should set some basic ground rules - like posts that are bitching about the current system should be deleted - it should be a discussion about what changes to be made - people can complain else where.

Of course some random person like myself could just create a topic like that but I think the gesture of the mods/admins doing it would show a great attitude from them to listen to peoples suggestions and to be positive about it.

Anyway it's just a suggestion.

I believe the essentially plan was to come to a general agreement on what we would feel would work first and then get the forum's opinion on it before putting it in place. I don't believe we planned on leaving our members out of the loop.

Can't believe you locked that other post.

Why y'all gotta be censoring my shit yo?

Yeah totally - coupled with the new rules makes it feel like any kind of criticism can get you banned. "inciting others to flame" - that sounds like bullshit to me. Why should I be responsible for how others react to my posts? Flaming is a choice - it's up to the person flaming not to be provoked. Argh those new rules are so silly - do you really think that they will make the forum better or will they just stifle discussion because people have so little freedom.

Locking topics is another issue too. I think you and the other mods have to realise that it's concievable that people will have something to add to a conversation that you haven't thought of. Often topics go on way longer than was neccessary but I really don't understand why that is a problem. There's no obligation to read the topic. An example was at a forum I moderate at - we were discussing the appropriateness of talking about doing drugs on the forum. First we discussed it privately. Then we opened the topic up to all the users. After about 4 pages of discussion we felt that a good agreement had been made. 3 or 4 people continued the discussion for another 2 or 3 pages. So what? If they felt the need to argue silly points over and over that's their problem - we felt we already had an answer and pretty much ignored the topic - they felt like they were still being able to express their opinions on forum policy.

I can't speak for everybody else but personally I would enjoy the forum more if there was more freedom. I have a pretty thick skin - if somebody wants to call me "an idiot" or "a moron" or even a "fucking stupid loser whose presence on this planet makes life horrible for everybody" then that's fine - I don't agree with those sentiments but I've probably reached a point in my life where childish insults don't worry me very much. If people want to post insults than surely the more mature people on the forum can not drop the their level and can deal with it - and if they show leadership maybe the people resorting to insults will learn something as well.

You guys should get some money together, buy some webspace and a domain and put together a non-invisionfree forum. Y'know, just to look more professional and stuff. >_> and you could have a seperate website for some reason or something.

...

What's with the 'test text' in read all over the forum?? Something to do with the changes?

Yeah, and you can generate money with Google ads. We (the members) promise to click an ad everytime we log on. That way, it'll pay back what you put in for the domain.

Why you gotta be making me click on shit yo?

evo has always seemed pretty laid back and free to me, especially compared to hyper. it seems only behaviour like moggo's and a few others gets warning/banning attention which is fair enough :D otherwise, it's a pretty casual place to be.

Elprez has been listening to too much hiphop and reading too many Source issues, and probably watching too many Jet Li movies.

:P

Why you always sayin' "shit" and "yo", yo?

What is up with the new rules? Created by one authorative figure of the boards instead of all of them? Furthermore, created because despite the fact that there was nothing wrong with that thread that magically got locked, the criticism couldn't be handled by said authorative figure and he decides to change the rules because of it?

Please. This is just getting completely ridiculous. Infact, it is complete and utter bullshit.

But look at that, I'm trolling because I'm probably 'provoking' other members, guess that's another person to ban then eh? :rolleyes:

What up wit dissin' my gangsta background yo?

This reminds me of Lord of the Flies.

I think it's more like Everybody Loves Raymond. Same shit for the past 17 seasons, and everybody just goes round in circles.

Is Elprez robert, or Ray's mum?