Guerrilla

Looks like 12 months have flown past since the big forum move, so I guess I should make a thread about it. At some point I was planning on some song and dance to mark the occasion, if we got this far, but honestly it just kinda slipped my mind until now.

So uh... Yay! 12 months. I guess it's a good time to ask 'What do you want from us?' again...

Is there anything you particularly like? How about dislike? What would you like to see more of? What features would you like to see? Is there something that would totally make you visit more often? Is there something keeping you from visiting more often? Did you know we have a Discord and that it's actually pretty good? Do you want challenges? Video content? Live streaming? Podcasts? Reviews? Tutorials? Articles? More models? More Star Trek? Less Star Trek? Better Star Wars? Should we just move to TikTok?

Basically, once again, let us know how we're doing, and what we should be doing instead.

Or, you know, just post GIFs...

Lizzy777 wrote: »

I haven't felt the need for basic forum coding beyond embedding images and basic text formatting. Though some of the gamification badges stuff could use a bit more explanation with a mouseover or page describing what they are. I still don't know what some of the badges I have are from. For example, Level IV? What is it and why do I have it?

It's just a bit of fun and games, and a number you can increase. It may also tell a casual observer who has been around a while and who is just starting out on SFM. Basically there's a running score (think of it as reputation or XP) next to your profile. You get points mainly from people liking your posts, although there are other badges for anniversaries and post count milestones that net you a couple of points. Level IV just means you have reached over... *checks notes*... 600 points.

From what I'm reading though, the gamification maybe isn't really adding much to the user experience from an average user's point of view, so maybe that's a feature that can be dropped or at least reduced somewhat. I was going to use them as rewards for challenges, but we haven't reached the critical mass of people and interest to run any yet.

Also, technically @MadKoiFish already won Scifi-Meshes, since he hit level X a while ago.

We've had this chat a number of times now and I'm not particularly fond of repeating myself. Good bye Alan. You're taking a break.

TLDR: Posting in your own old threads no longer triggers the Necropost tag

We have a handy little addon that tags threads that haven't had any replies in a long time with an ominous Necropost tag with skulls and everything when they get bumped. This is to let general membership know that the thread in question isn't necessarily brand new hotness worth looking at, but rather an old one that someone dug up from the archives. That's all fine, but we also encourage people returning to their old projects and the Necropost tag was indifferent of who posted a reply in the old ass thread, so I had to remove them manually whenever I happened to peruse the forums on a computer or my iPad (couldn't do it from my phone for reasons that are mostly my fault). That is, until this day. I just added a check of whether or not the person posting the comment is the person who started the thread. If yes, no necropost tag. Otherwise, necropost tags with skulls and everything and the all the shame that goes with it. In addition to making my life marginally more convenient, it also should eliminate up to several hours of unfair necropost stigma, when returning to your own old projects.

So, go forth and return to an old project, if you feel like it.

As always, you can report any bugs here or the #site-server-support channel on the Discord.

TLDR: You can now see a sum of all the likes in any given thread when you mouse over it to get an idea how popular they are. Also, liking posts has a small but visible effect on the whole thread.

A few weeks ago @McC asked on Discord, if there is a way to sort or bump threads based on likes; not necessarily to turn things into a popularity contest like Reddit or other social media, but to show appreciation to people's hard work and have that appreciation have a visible effect on their threads. I can see the appeal, but I've been very consciously avoiding any kind of visible popularity metrics or anything resembling a recommendation algorithm, because that whole mechanism is a big part of what's wrong with the internet these days, and I'd like to try and do better on my middling scifi forum. The internet ruled when it was millions of sites that you had to find yourself instead of a few hundred recommendations regurgitated to you by a couple of awful tech giants, but that's a different discussion.

Anyway, I do appreciate the desire to support people's threads, so I came up with something of a compromise. The basic philosophy will not change. The forum will serve up threads in chronological order based on the latest reply just like it always has, instead of trying to guess what's popular or would suit your specific tastes*. I've added a little more impact to the likes though. Now, in addition to increasing people's reputation (that's the points next to your username, which get you levels every now and then) the total number of likes gets listed on the forum index as a sort of a thread score. Bigger numbers mean more likes in general, so that probably means nice work or good discussion. I didn't want to make them too prominent to keep this from turning into too big of a popularity contest, so you'll need to mouse over a thread on the index to see its score.

*) You can always search for specific tags if you absolutely want to only see something specific.

In other, smaller updates, I added a little skull on the necroposting tag to make it more menacing. Please, don't dig up really old threads for abandoned projects and bump them. Returning to your old stuff is always appreciated, but bugging people, many of whom may have not been around in years, for updates is not cool. If you want to appreciate someone's work but not disrupt the flow of the forum, might I recommend the Like button?

Alan,

I'm having a hard time imagining anything you posted could even accidentally be read as constructive.

I'm sure we all should know who you are and all the impressive things you've done, but we don't. You haven't really made any particular splash in the community, so to most people here you're just some random dude asking for models in a really sketchy way and then acting kinda shitty about it, when you didn't get your way.

So, I'd like you to stop posting in this thread now. You've made your bid and it was declined very politely, so we'll have no more of this. It's up to you whether it's because you decided to be cool and move on or because I made the decision for you.

And to answer the inevitable What? You gonna ban me just for being honest and offering to help?: No. It'll probably be for acting smug and like we owe you something as community without making an effort to be a part of it, and it would be like you were never even here. Up to you.

If this is another commissioned piece you should credit the author, or preferably have them post the project themselves. We've been through this and I don't particularly enjoy repeating myself.

Hi @BigBen1967 and welcome to Scifi-Meshes.

A couple of things:
1. Please check the dates before bumping a thread. This one hasn't had any activity since 2014. The post dates are under the username. Just check the latest one before you post a reply.
2. Please don't just show up to advertise your stuff available elsewhere. We're all for for promoting and elevating the work of our community members, but that means that you should be a part of the community, not just show up in an old thread and tell people to find you on Facebook. You could post your station in Finished Work or our Discord, for example and take it from there.

Please check the Community Guidelines when you get a chance.

TLDR: Please check the dates before responding to a topic, especially in Work In Progress

We've had something of an influx of new people and people who haven't been here in a while show up lately. That's pretty neat. Welcome (back) everyone! It looks like a quick little refresher on forum etiquette and community guidelines might be necessary though:

You have probably seen one of these guys on the lower left corner of your screen, when typing a response to a really old thread:


Also, from Them Rules:

Don't ask for models
Releasing or not releasing a model is up to the artist, and it's not really something you should bring up in their project threads.

Don't ask for updates
I'm sure the author would post them, if they had them.

So,

1. Please check the date of the previous posts before typing your response. You can find it under people's username in all posts:
   
   If you want the exact date, you can hover over it. Anything more than 6 months ago should probably be avoided, if you're not adding anything substantial to the conversation. You can always private message (Message button in their profile) to try and reach them. Posting in their profile is kind of like a Facebook wall, and equally useless. It's not private nor does it send notifications as far as I know. If someone's profile doesn't have any badges, it means they haven't logged in since we switched forum software in February 2019 (so at least 5 years).
2. However, returning to your own old projects is always appreciated. It'll get tagged with the Necropost tag automatically, but I'll remove any extraneous ones, whenever I'm on the forums. Can't do it on mobile though, so I need to be on my computer or iPad at the time. If removing seems to be taking an unusually long time, send me a private message or ping me on Discord.
3. It's not that big a deal on all forums though. Like necroposting in Finished Work or General Discussion is generally not that big of a faux pas, since they move quite a bit slower. Finished pictures are still worth looking at and people like to go back to old conversations, when a new season starts and so on.

Why do we frown upon asking for models? Because we try to run this place for artists first and foremost and a bunch of people contacting one person to get something out of them probably gets pretty exhausting after a while. We would rather offer a safe haven from that kind of thing here. We're all about the actual work here, so more of a journey than destination type community after all. We encourage and welcome sharing models and resources, but never expect or require it. You can reach out in private, but if the answer is no (or silence), that's the end of that.

Thanks for reading. Let me know, if you have any comments and suggestions on the current policy here.

Someone (I think it was @McC originally) suggested a more compact main index, so you wouldn't have to scroll down to see the whole forum. We're not changing the main theme, but there's a compact theme available now, for those that prefer a more compressed view. It probably won't be any faster, since it's mainly just hiding things in the CSS, but the main index should pretty much fit on a single 1080p screen.

You can change your theme in Edit Profile. The new theme is available in the same swanky colors (Blue, Gold and Red) as the main one.

Let me know, what you think. As usual, you can report any bugs you find here.