Senior Member? Junior Member?

[Ajuk999]

Shouldn't it be something else instead of "Senior Member" or "Junior Member"?

I think it would be more creative to do titles like:

1-10 posts = Airman
35 posts = Airman First Class
50 posts = Senior Airman
65 posts = Staff Sergeant
80 posts = Technical Sergeant
110 posts = Master Sergeant
150 posts = Senior Sergeant
190 posts = Command Sergeant
210 posts = Second Lieutenant
240 posts = First Lieutenant
265 posts = Captain
295 posts = Lieutenant Major
345 posts = Major
375 posts = Lieutenant Colonel
400 posts = Colonel
435 posts = Brigadier General
480 posts = Lieutenant General
500+ posts = General

But I have no Idea wether or not you can edit the ranks to be that specific. So we could do this if the first concept didn't work:

150 posts=Senior Sergeant
275 posts=Colonel
350+ posts= General

And the Moderators title could remain the same or it could be "Ambassador" or something of the like.
I think that implementing a different system, wether it be my suggestion or another, would make the Altitude Forums more creative. The only problem with this idea I have, is that it would encourage people to post more and make useless posts which I wouldn't promote. But I think for the most part the Users of this community are Mature, maybe the new ones we would have to worry about but then again, there will always be "spam bots" and thats why we have Moderators. Our current system has encouraged people to spam also, so it really doesn't make a difference.

Another idea would be to allow "Custom" titles. Were people could make their own titles. But that would lead people to make goofy titles which wouldn't look good at all in a Forums Community. Users would have such different names that it would look like a Giant Troll Fest. I don't like this idea.

The reason I bring this up, is because there are very helpful members, who donate time, thoughts, and advice relentlessly, and they should be able to have a better title or rank in the community. When a new User joins the Community, and within months they are "Senior Member" that just took away the respect or title they deserve from the users who have contributed for long periods of time, to be equal with the new Users. So we could either modify the current system, like what I suggest, or raise the amount of posts it would need to be a "Senior Member" or whatever.
This thought is only a suggestion, please IMPROVE and comment on it. Your thoughts are welcome.

Anything specific I left out of here, just post your questions.

[Pieface]

I do agree that it would be cool to give the forums a more altitude-ish feel, and the plane based ranks would be a great way to accomplish that. Since it's a small community, we pretty much already know who the more useful posters are, but this would still be a nice change IMO.

Of course, the Devs' work on the game always takes precedence over work on the forums.

[Ajuk999]

I agree Pieface. Is there any similar ideas you or anyone else have had?

[as red as black]

1000 posts = kuja900

[Varonth]

A nice idea.
And to support the altitude feeling, it would be cool if someone could design an altitude forum skin.

[Jacques Strap]

It would be nice, but some people would post a ton of spam, unhelpful advice, and 10char threads only for the purpose of advancing in forum rank.

[Pieface]

Originally Posted by Ajuk999

Is there any similar ideas you or anyone else have had?

A while back someone suggested having a list of preselected Avatars from which you could choose one to display to the left to your name in your posts. Obviously they couldn't be large, animated, and it would be a bad idea to allow people to upload custom ones because of how it might affect the readers. What seemed to me to be a good idea was to include small images of all the colors of the five different Altitude planes and allow people to pick from those. That would also give you a neat way of displaying what was your favorite plane when posting, and would tie the forums more tightly to the game itself (as your rank suggestion would do).

Obviously having a colorful Altitude themed skin for the forums would also be pretty cool, as long as it was well designed and didn't hurt people's eyes. The problem with custom vBulletin skins though is that it takes a lot of time and advanced HTML and CSS knowledge to be able to design something worthwhile. Unfortunately I don't have any of these things...

Originally Posted by Jacques Strap

It would be nice, but some people would post a ton of spam, unhelpful advice, and 10char threads only for the purpose of advancing in forum rank.

Which could then be promptly deleted and infracted if they were obviously useless. I think if people actually like the idea, it would be possible to design something that works for everyone and doesn't encourage people to abuse the system.

Anyway, just a couple of thoughts.

Edit: Though I do like the simple feeling of the forums right now, so it might be a situation of "if it's not broken, don't fix it."

[classicallad]

I agree, adding avatars or ranks for post numbers will only encourage trolls and spam artists such as myself to harass the community further with our crass demeanor lude behaviour.

Keep it as it is it works just fine

[Ajuk999]

Well people do it now class. And of course people are going to attempt to spam and make useless threads or posts, but not only do they do it now, the Moderators I am sure would add a rule to the Forum Rules, and people that did spam would be infracted or banned from repeated error and breaking of rules. So to say it would be wrong because people would spam is a very weak argument, people will learn with rules an proper guidelines. When people get infracted, they pay attention, so it is easy to just forget it or what have you, but it would be more creative to have a new rank system or "Title" system. That problem isn't really an issue. There are always going to be "Spammers" and people still to this day continue to post "Useless' threads. And people still troll. So that isn't going to stop entirely class, we just need to make sure we are on top of it.

[tgleaf]

Originally Posted by classicallad

I agree, adding avatars or ranks for post numbers will only encourage trolls and spam artists such as myself to harass the community further with our crass demeanor lude behaviour.

Keep it as it is it works just fine

Yes, what class and Jacques said.

The only way I could see nuanced ranks working is to have a rating system that allows community members to rate the value of posts. Otherwise, someone like Ajuk with 4.8 posts per day would have an advantage over people who carefully consider what they post and only post 0.5 per day. And for the record, I do _not_ think rating of posts is a good idea for our community (there are other threads on that idea that also tend to shoot it down).

The system I see working is for forum moderators to award contributing members with "ranks" (if you will)... e.g. "contributor," "mentor," etc. Again, not a perfect system as some people have felt that some moderators play favorites with bans, etc. (again, not weighing in with my personal viewpoints, just stating it as a factor).

[Triped]

Post count has nothing to do with helpfulness. Look at me.

[andy]

put forum ranks so we could have forum ranks abusers and a whole new drama!!

EDIT: just joking, imo its ok as it is now, we dont really need 12yo trolls to spam the forum in order to have the highest rank.

[tomato man]

i like this think dude, it will be nice too see it

[Ajuk999]

Well many of people in this thread keep saying or stating people would spam more or what have you. But in fact people already do that, and that is why we have a Moderator System These leaders are hired to make sure the Forum Rules are kept. So the problem isn't if people will spam, which they do already, it's if people will have an incentive to post helpful posts. If spam is all you can think that can come out of an Forums idea, well that simply isn't true, Forums, as I have said so many times, will always have "trolls" and "Spammers" and "Spam" so this is not a matter of increasing "spam"

What I am basically suggesting, is that people are rewarded for their helpfulness. If someone is a helpful Forums member, always giving advice and tips on how to do things, then they should be given a cool title. I know for fact that Administrators of Forums can change titles of members in the community. And if people make themselves helpful, they served and continue to serve the community as being helpful, they should be able to get some small reward like a "title"

Now that being said, let's work off of what I just said. Quit coming up with the age old arguments and points.

[tgleaf]

With all due respect, Ajuk, you contradicted yourself completely. Your first post (to lead off the thread) suggested giving people increasingly attractive titles for the number of posts they create.

Then, when people argued against that system, you got upset and said people were bringing up old arguments and finally concluded by repeating exactly what I said a few posts above. Yes, mods could decide if/when/how to change people's titles to reflect their helpfulness. Seems like a decent idea.

[Ajuk999]

Well, Everyone has made their points, their points have influenced my way of thinking on this matter, so I concluded

Well many of people in this thread keep saying or stating people would spam more or what have you. But in fact people already do that, and that is why we have a Moderator System These leaders are hired to make sure the Forum Rules are kept. So the problem isn't if people will spam, which they do already, it's if people will have an incentive to post helpful posts. If spam is all you can think that can come out of an Forums idea, well that simply isn't true, Forums, as I have said so many times, will always have "trolls" and "Spammers" and "Spam" so this is not a matter of increasing "spam"

What I am basically suggesting, is that people are rewarded for their helpfulness. If someone is a helpful Forums member, always giving advice and tips on how to do things, then they should be given a cool title. I know for fact that Administrators of Forums can change titles of members in the community. And if people make themselves helpful, they served and continue to serve the community as being helpful, they should be able to get some small reward like a "title"

Now that being said, let's work off of what I just said. Quit coming up with the age old arguments and points.

Also, I can see each and every point for what it is worth, some have made sense, while others have played their part as a platitude. I am only suggesting a cleaner community by rewards. People tend to put more effort into something when they are rewarded or there is an incentive. I also Understand what you mean Tgleaf.

Well that is the great thing about Forums, Someone makes an idea, and soon others are expressing their thoughts, with different opinions and thoughts, great ideas and systems are produced. So I did change my stance. I do believe rewarding useless posts is quite stupid, but I do strongly believe that making useful posts, should be rewarded.

[Ajuk999]

For the sake of Illustration, here is somewhat of what it would look like.



It would be quite easy to add titles too.

[nesnl]

I believe you mean Commander In Chief not Commander & Chief.

But just as an overall comment to the idea of this thread, while it seems like a cool idea, in practice I think that it would provide little to no value to the actual community. We are a small community and we all know who the good posters are and who usually makes relevant comments and suggestions. This system would add no actual usable information and would only promote people posting for the sake of posting.

[Evan20000]

I would make the post distribution 1, 25, 100, 250, 550, 1000. This cuts down on unneeded ranks and people will stay at a given rank for a decent period of time so it's somewhat meaningful.

[Kuja900]

How can I not support an opportunity for a fancy label, do this!

[Mt.Vesuvius]

Once you get over 1,000 posts the title should be:

Junior Beagle in Training