Website Improvements

PhantomDragoon · Thu May 27, 2010 5:09 pm

Hello i'm new to this forum and have a couple of suggestions for forum improvements.

You could change the registration system. It took me a whole 2 days to get my account to be activated. So instead the admins activating it. the activation e-mail should be sent to your e-mail account.

Thu May 27, 2010 5:59 pm

Hello, and welcome to the forums. At the moment there is no alternative for that registration process, as we have hundreds of spam bots that sign up. In the future there might be a forum upgrade that includes some anti-bot measures, but for now this is all we have

See this thread for more on the forum upgrade.

PhantomDragoon · Fri May 28, 2010 5:02 pm

Anyway there are other things that can be upgraded like

A thanking system that allows you to thank other members when they helped you with something.

Fri May 28, 2010 5:42 pm

PhantomDragoon wrote:Anyway there are other things that can be upgraded like

A thanking system that allows you to thank other members when they helped you with something.

Click on their forum name. Click on private message.

PhantomDragoon · Sat May 29, 2010 7:56 am

Atarlost wrote:
PhantomDragoon wrote:Anyway there are other things that can be upgraded like

A thanking system that allows you to thank other members when they helped you with something.
Click on their forum name. Click on private message.

Duh i know that you can thank by a PM. But i meant that there should be a button under everyone else than you named Thank. When you click the button under the post it should display something Like thanked by "eg: PhantomDragoon" and under each users post there should be a count on how many they thanked and the thanks they got.

Sat May 29, 2010 5:06 pm

PhantomDragoon wrote:
Atarlost wrote:
PhantomDragoon wrote:Anyway there are other things that can be upgraded like

A thanking system that allows you to thank other members when they helped you with something.
Click on their forum name. Click on private message.
Duh i know that you can thank by a PM. But i meant that there should be a button under everyone else than you named Thank. When you click the button under the post it should display something Like thanked by "eg: PhantomDragoon" and under each users post there should be a count on how many they thanked and the thanks they got.

Why? That just amounts to "rate this user" which is inherently cliquish and divisive.

schilcote · Sun May 30, 2010 3:35 pm

Don't start a conversation with Atarlost. It never ends well.

Personally, it took me a few weeks to get verified when I tried to register... long time ago....

[flashback waves]

P.S.:

Oh, I'm Schilcote, or Schil for short. I'm the comic relief anti-hero.

Sun May 30, 2010 3:48 pm

schilcote wrote:Personally, it took me a few weeks to get verified when I tried to register... long time ago....

I took advantage of the contact link in Xelerus and asked if he could get in touch with an admin here.

Thanks again, bmbl.

PhantomDragoon · Mon May 31, 2010 6:40 am

Don't anyone care about the forums? U guys sounds like u don't need any improvements.

But can u add atleast a reputation system. User can add -ve or +ve 1 reputaion which showed under their posts?

Mon May 31, 2010 9:07 am

Hi, we are a small community, with a nearly spam-free forums thanks to those restrictive rules. The number of active users at any time posting on the forums is probably around 50.
Forum upgrading is taken seriously and we have a thread for it. However, facebook-like functions such as "like" or "thank" , "poke" are totally useless in this context.
we are all here to enjoy this fantastic game and we are all here to help you about anything.
In the future, when we will have more than 1000000 active users (and we will, let's be bold!

) we can discuss again the matter.

Mon May 31, 2010 9:24 am

digdug wrote:nearly spam-free forums thanks to those restrictive rules.

That's one area where there is room for improvement. There doesn't seem to be any basis for telling whether someone is a) human or b) sincere in his interest in transcendence. All you know is their username (and possibly email).

It would be much more efficient to use one of the various 'enter the squiggly letters' type checks, and you could also include an area in the registration form for the prospective user to introduce himself.

schilcote · Mon May 31, 2010 1:11 pm

ptbptb wrote:
digdug wrote:nearly spam-free forums thanks to those restrictive rules.
It would be much more efficient to use one of the various 'enter the squiggly letters' type checks, and you could also include an area in the registration form for the phrospective user to introduce himself.

It's called a captcha.

Maybe we should have a system similar to the one Perculi has on his forums?

Or, better yet, I have a revolutionarily awesome idea. When a new forumite registers, instead of sending an email to George, he'd send an email to a special address that would automatically route it to one of us. The system would be opt-in, and open only to current forum members. If the system was infiltrated somehow, there would only be a 1 in n chance of the registration message being sent to the subversive, n being the number of members who opted in. Instead of heaping the load on George (who, unlike myself, has a life outside of the virtual world), the system would distribute the messages among the participants. If the arbitor decides to give the one registering the green light, he must simply send a reply to the system containing a standardized message to that effect. If he decides not to, he simply deletes the message and the account never gets validated.

The only problem would be officially validating the account. I'd need access to the SQL database, ignoring the fact that I would have to then figure out two communication formats (SMTP and SQL). Perhaps it would be easier to have the system send an email to George, but that would sort of defeat the entire point of the system. It's an interesting problem...

The only trouble would be officially validating the

Mon May 31, 2010 2:54 pm

I agree that a captcha and some of the other bot coutermeasures out there should be used. We are not a high profile target for the spammers, so if we (whoever is in charge of the forum software, GambitDash perhaps) come up with some small customizations in the registration process, then we wont have bot makers immediately adjusting their bots to compensate.

On such example is adding a form element to the registration form, with a name, say "Billing Address", and in every way giving the impression that it is required, but hiding the input field from the user, via css or javascript, or simply using a hidden input field. If this field is actually filled out when the form is submitted, then there is a very high probability that it was submitted by a bot.

All in all there are many ways to deter bots nad improve the website/forums. The only problem is time.

schilcote wrote: ..snip..
The only problem would be
..snip..

Apart from actually coding the system you mean

schilcote · Tue Jun 01, 2010 11:55 am

alterecco wrote: deter bots nad

alterecco wrote:
schilcote wrote: ..snip..
The only problem would be
..snip..
Apart from actually coding the system you mean

That's the easy part!

robbybarbera · Tue Jun 01, 2010 6:06 pm

I had sent a registration in and got an e-mail saying in a couple of days that I would be sent an activation e-mail. I never received after about a week and I read around on the forums (as a guest) some where to send another e-mail to verify I was real. I did that and about an hour or so later I got an e-mail saying my account was activated. Personally I think this is a good registration procedure not the most efficient but does help the keep the forums clear of junk. Which is a good thing in my opinion.

just my two cents on it