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I don't think it's a good idea, since the username must be the same as in the wiki, and if someone has already changed the username previously they can't do it more than 1 time. And the worst thing would be that it would be difficult to recognize the users. And it would be too confusing.
 
I think it would be a bad idea to "sell" evaluations. I know we need donations. I get that. I don't know how bad the situation is, as of all of this, but that puts our legitimacy into question. Profile customization options are an excellent idea, ditto for signatures- I've seen people lamenting that only AKM has an image. But I'd be against giving out evaluations, any more than we already do, of course. Equal access for all.
 
I like the general concept (even if I won't be able to give any money myself for quite a while), but I do agree with Bambu that selling evaluations is a bad look. Even then, how would this even work? How would staff get chosen to evaluate these threads? Does it need to be your own thread, or can it be someone else's thread that you're just interested in? How would we keep track of who's used up their monthly evaluations?

Also, are animated banners currently possible? If not, that could be another idea for supporter benefits. Maybe also a label like what staff and supporters get, except it can be changed to say whatever the supporter wants (within reason, of course).
 
I think it would be a bad idea to "sell" evaluations. I know we need donations. I get that. I don't know how bad the situation is, as of all of this, but that puts our legitimacy into question. Profile customization options are an excellent idea, ditto for signatures- I've seen people lamenting that only AKM has an image. But I'd be against giving out evaluations, any more than we already do, of course. Equal access for all.
I obviously agree with your assessment in principle, but we really need the financing, and the evaluated threads would also obviously not have any greater than normal guarantees to be accepted.
I like the general concept (even if I won't be able to give any money myself for quite a while), but I do agree with Bambu that selling evaluations is a bad look. Even then, how would this even work? How would staff get chosen to evaluate these threads? Does it need to be your own thread, or can it be someone else's thread that you're just interested in? How would we keep track of who's used up their monthly evaluations?
I was thinking that we could start a wiki management thread for this that our administrators and thread moderators should subscribe to, and that the submitted requests would be for Deluxe Members' own content revision threads only.
 
Please explain what you mean with custom emoticons. I thought that we already have quite a lot of them to select from. If you mean adding new ones to our list that is available for all members, that seems a bit risky, if offensive or copyrighted images are uploaded.

Yeah, adding one new one available for all members, for as long as that person is pledged. Due to the one-off nature, a staff member could evaluate them before adding it (rather than giving the user free reign to upload as many as they want).

Custom reactions could turn into a problem, if negative ones that spread toxicity are used for example.

I'd have a similar idea here; only allow positive, unoffensive custom reactions to be added. But I do understand if you still see a risk of even positive reactions being used in an ironic and negative way.

Well, we don't have a feature function

I was thinking in this section, since we don't seem to add them too often (three of the four there have been around for almost/over a year).

but that puts our legitimacy into question.

I don't have this concern, since a response is sold, not a positive/negative one, but I am concerned about how practical it would be to get staff members to actually do that. People should really already be able to ask staff members for evaluations and get them.

Maybe we could structure it something like this?

Yeah, in general that sort of thing. I'm not super fussed about the specifics.
 
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Please explain what you mean with custom emoticons. I thought that we already have quite a lot of them to select from. If you mean adding new ones to our list that is available for all members, that seems a bit risky, if offensive or copyrighted images are uploaded.

Yeah, adding one new one available for all members, for as long as that person is pledged. Due to the one-off nature, a staff member could evaluate them before adding it (rather than giving the user free reign to upload as many as they want).
My apologies, but I do not think that seems realistic to manage practically. XenForo has no such evaluation function that I know of, and I am the only Super Administrator of this forum who is active in it, rather than doing strictly administrative tasks, and I am already overworked while trying to also engage in some to me very important spiritual and physical self-development.
Custom reactions could turn into a problem, if negative ones that spread toxicity are used for example.

I'd have a similar idea here; only allow positive, unoffensive custom reactions to be added. But I do understand if you still see a risk of even positive reactions being used in an ironic and negative way.
Well, there is no practical way to control such a feature efficiently for me either.
Well, we don't have a feature function

I was thinking in this section, since we don't seem to add them too often (three of the four there have been around for almost/over a year).
Only about 5 or 6 of them can be shown at a time that I know of, and I much prefer if the room is taken up by crucial information threads for our community as a whole.
but that puts our legitimacy into question.

I don't have this concern, since a response is sold, not a positive/negative one, but I am concerned about how practical it would be to get staff members to actually do that. People should really already be able to ask staff members for evaluations and get them.
Our staff does not seem to have the time to evaluate most current content revision threads, and as I said above, an official wiki management thread that all of our administrators and thread moderators subscribe to might be an idea for this purpose.
Maybe we could structure it something like this?

Yeah, in general that sort of thing. I'm not super fussed about the specifics.
Okay.
 
and I am the only Super Administrator of this forum who is active in it, rather than doing strictly administrative tasks, and I am already overworked while trying to also engage in some to me very important spiritual and physical self-development.

Are there any Bureaucrats/Administrators who could get similar privileges (or lesser forms of it, so that they can only add emoticons/reactions) that would have the time and trust available for something like that? I don't think that sort of thing's without precedent; iirc AKM ran staff recruitment drives and changed the name colours for staff members, despite just being an Administrator at the time, he had some duties beyond that.

If not, that's understandable.

Only about 5 or 6 of them can be shown at a time that I know of, and I much prefer if the room is taken up by crucial information threads for our community as a whole.


Hmm, this is stretching the idea a bit, but it could use the blue announcements feature, or simply be one monthly megathread for that sort of thing so that it only takes up one spot.

But again, if that's just stretching it too much to fit, that idea could be abandoned.
 
I don't think Admins can change tags for the Xenforo forum, only on the wiki. Only Bureaucrats can do it. Super Mods can look up the approval queue for new users and also see the report queue, but that's about all I know that they exceed regular Admins at.
 
I mean to say that those settings should be configurable. I'd expect, from my knowledge of forums, that one would be able to make "Super Moderator"s able to add custom emoticons/reactions.
 
Only Super Administrators have access to those settings, and I don't mess around with anything complicated out of very valid fear of completely messing up our forum structure, and we pay our system administrator when he performs such tasks for us.
 
I think it's an interesting idea.
  • The ability to have slightly longer signatures.
  • The ability to have a title set (akin to Ant's "Maintenance worker" one).
  • Animated profile pictures could be locked behind it.
I think these are easily workable solutions.
  • The ability to have images in signatures.
  • The ability to feature one thread a month (matches/content revision threads or threads referencing calcs they want feedback on).
I am undecided about these two. If we are giving the ability to have images, we need to strictly define a size so that it doesn't get spammy with big images. The ability to feature/highlight one thread could probably lead to misuse and it could be seen as inappropriate.
 
Hmm, I may have been assuming capabilities that aren't actually there. I suspected that forums could detect the size of embedded images, and limit them in signatures to a reasonable size, but I'm not 100% certain that that's possible with the software used here.
 
2 USD/Month Supporters: No displayed advertisements.

5 USD/Month Super Supporters: No displayed advertisements. Longer signature texts. Larger size for personal animated user avatar images.

10 USD/Month Ultra Supporters: No displayed advertisements. Longer signature texts. Larger size for personal user images. A tastefully worded brief personal description text. A small inoffensive image included in one's signature.

20 USD/Month Deluxe Supporters: No displayed advertisements. Longer signature texts. Larger size for personal user images. A tastefully worded brief personal description text. A small inoffensive image included in one's signature. Making 1 request per month in a pinned wiki management forum request thread for guaranteed staff evaluations of content revision discussion threads, but only for threads that the Deluxe Members have created themselves, and only evaluated in a normal manner, not necessarily with any favourable outcomes.
I updated the suggested benefits list for this.

I think that we could create a pinned wiki management forum request thread that is only available for Deluxe Supporters once a month, and only for evaluating threads that they created themselves.

Our administrators and thread moderators will have to subscribe to the request thread in question. They can give thumbs up to the request messages that have been responded to already.

Again, we have already lost 12,000 Euros during 2 years. We need to do what we can to at least break even so we do not have to eventually shut down.
 
II dunno how feasible this is, or how well liked it is but here are some ideas i had..

I was thinking of something like a "level up" system and an "Exp bar"

I was thinking on how this would work...

on our profiles here on the forum where you click your username and a pull down tab comes out that says "your account" and "bookmarks."

If you click on your username it takes you too your own page.

On that big long blue bar that stretches across the bottom where we got 4 classifictions called "profile post" "latest activity" Postings" and "about"

Maybe add another classification called "Supported Verses"

Here you can put verses you "support" or maybe it would be better to say "Verses where your commonly post in?" Dunno on the naming and description

But anyways

You put the verse you most frequent threads with. So anytime your in a thread that is "Tagged" wiht that verse. if you post in that thread you get "xp" to level up. Getting likes also helps level up by earning more xp

Have it something like

Supporters cap at level 10

Super Supporters cap at level 50

Ultra Supporters cap at level 100


Maybe also add a prestige system. Every time you "Reset" your progress it takes longer to level up.

My thoughts with this was to add a bit more fun with the wiki and increase wiki interactions perhaps

Though it sounded better in my head and dumb when written out...

Just an idea i guess...






My 2nd idea

Maybe do something a little more with the bagdes we get. On our own personal page on the wiki, have a separate wall for "badges"

random examples;


Have a badge titled" Veteran wiki member" and to obtain it "You must be apart of the wiki for 5 years or more."

Maybe also some log in bonus ones. And these badges can be displayed for other people on regular threads but to prevent it from getting to spam cap it at certain # say 4


Also maybe have a setting for other people to disable their display




My 3rd idea which is a bit more extreme

If the wiki is struggling and since were still far from our goal.

make it so new members when they join have to wait 3 months to get full forum access. Set character limits on threads, set a picture limit, set a reply limit per day, set a limit on links.

If they don't want to be hindered then for $1 usd per month they can get full access with no limits but still suffer ads lol

only hindered for 3 months*






4th idea...

perhaps introduce a special section of the forum for supporters only?

This section wouldn't have any advatanges over the others but this section would just have like

The top 10 "Hottest" threads on the forum? Or top 10 most viewed?




Dunno how good these ideas are. I knwo their probably not going to be to well liked. I love the forum and the wiki so im just tossing ideas out that might help...
 
  1. Sounds prohibitively difficult to implement.
  2. Sounds moderately difficult to implement, and also like it would do little in terms of support.
  3. The possibility of a new member not being able to practically engage in a discussion because they're unwilling/unable to pay is bad enough for me to not want this suggestion implemented.
  4. I don't think many people would be interested in this.
 
Don't personally like the idea of forcing staff members to evaluate a thread. It being pinned is okay though.
 
Well, I think that you will unfortunately have to take a bit of a bump for the sake of financing our community, as at least one staff member will have to evaluate each of the at most monthly requests from our deluxe members, but as long as said staff members remember to give a thumbs up/like to each request post that they have responded to already, it shouldn't be very taxing work spread out over 38 staff members, especially as I doubt that many members will become 20 USD supporters.
 
I think for the $20 option it can be changed to "1 pinned revision thread, 1 pinned vs thread, a prioritised calculation request, or a prioritised image render"

If it's possible to set a further expensive option, say $50, you can get one of each plus the other lower tier rewards?
 
I don't think prioritizing paid calculation requests is a good idea.
 
I think for the $20 option it can be changed to "1 pinned revision thread, 1 pinned vs thread, a prioritised calculation request, or a prioritised image render"

I can't think of this setting a good precedent for the forum going forwards. How are we supposed to enforce "prioritised calculation request" or "prioritised image render" in the first place?
 
Something I asked off site but didn't get an answer, so I will ask here, if the ROI is so bad on this site, why did we not go for a free forum site instead initially? Sure, design might have been... Well, not as good, and maybe it lacked few features here and there and maybe the URL wasn't as short as it is now, but at least it would have been free. And ofc most of the free forum sites have the almost the same features as this - like sending messages, threads, boards, etc.
 
Something I asked off site but didn't get an answer, so I will ask here, if the ROI is so bad on this site, why did we not go for a free forum site instead initially? Sure, design might have been... Well, not as good, and maybe it lacked few features here and there and maybe the URL wasn't as short as it is now, but at least it would have been free. And ofc most of the free forum sites have the almost the same features as this - like sending messages, threads, boards, etc.
We needed to move over our old forum discussion threads to a new forum and get sufficient functionality to make it work in practice afterwards. Also, XenForo is what Community Hired always uses to set up their forum services.

However, we currently have to pay for monthly hosting, Cloudflare, and system administrator costs.
 
Anyway, all that I am asking for is that we set up a new official wiki management forum thread that functions almost exactly like our calculation requests thread, but with the difference that somebody in our staff has to take a look at the requests posted there. However, I strongly doubt that more than 3-5 people would even sign up for the 20 USD Deluxe supporter subscription, and there are 38 staff members (administrators + thread moderators) to split the work between, so I don't think that it will be very demanding.
 
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We needed to move over our old forum discussion threads to a new forum and get sufficient functionality to make it work in practice afterwards. Also, XenForo is what Community Hired always uses to set up their forum services.

However, we currently have to pay for monthly hosting, Cloudflare, and system administrator costs.
I know, but my question was, there tons of free alternatives which could be used. It does the same stuff like accounts, threads, boards, bans, reports, etc. All the stuff you essentially need for something like this.
 
Community Hired is thoroughly familiar with how forums work, and this was the best available alternative they knew about.

However, can we stick on topic and drop this part of the discussion please? It is not productive.
 
I updated the suggested benefits list for this.

I think that we could create a pinned wiki management forum request thread that is only available for Deluxe Supporters once a month, and only for evaluating threads that they created themselves.

Our administrators and thread moderators will have to subscribe to the request thread in question. They can give thumbs up to the request messages that have been responded to already.

Again, we have already lost 12,000 Euros during 2 years. We need to do what we can to at least break even so we do not have to eventually shut down.
I'm personally ok with those suggestions. Maybe we should exclude wiki standard revisions and the like, as I don't want to entertain a tiering system debate every few weeks.


Prioritised calc requests were brought up and I'm more sceptical regarding those. I think very often that would just get the answer "the feat is unquantifiable" or "we don't know how to quantify it properly" and that would just be... well, getting nothing. Not even a debate or anything.
 
I'm personally ok with those suggestions. Maybe we should exclude wiki standard revisions and the like, as I don't want to entertain a tiering system debate every few weeks.
Yes, that would be fine. I just had regular verse revision threads in mind. Thank you for the reply.
Prioritised calc requests were brought up and I'm more sceptical regarding those. I think very often that would just get the answer "the feat is unquantifiable" or "we don't know how to quantify it properly" and that would just be... well, getting nothing. Not even a debate or anything.
I think that our calc group is already working very hard and handle most calc requests on their own, but, if they are fine with it, maybe we could include asking for responses to calc group forum threads (for evaluating which calculation for the same feat that should be used) as well? I am not sure though.
 
Given the situation... yeah. I can accept what's suggested. I'm also fine with making an express calc group eval request thread or something.
 
Thank you for the support.
 
I have a suggestion for benefits:

I will assume first that this forum is using Xenforo (correct me if I am wrong)

— Access to the dark mode
— A custom user title
— Color Upgrades (Name color choice)
— Medals (if you donate for 1 year, you get a diamond-looking medal...etc)
 
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