Guerrilla

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.

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...

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.

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.

There is a [vid][/vid] tag you can use, but it's not very well advertised since it's a custom tag and there's not button for it.
Works like this:

[vid]URL to your video[/vid]

which should look like this:

Time does fly, doesn't it...

TLDR: Anyway, it's been three years since the big move. Please let us how we're doing.

Since we pulled the switch on February 13 2019:

• 1827 members have logged in. (2021: 1472, 2020: 984)
• 845 new members have signed up. (2021: 589, 2020: 306)
• 170 spammers have been banned. (2021: 138, 2020: 103)
• 840 threads have seen activity. (2021:609 , 2020: 335)
• 694 new threads have been started. (2021: 499, 2020: 269)
• 27 models have been released. (2021: 23, 2020: 13)

Anyway, how do you think we've been doing?
Is there anything you particularly like or dislike about the site?
Are there some new features you would like to see here? Are we missing something really essential?
Is the site easy and fun to use?
Is there some content you would like to see from us (you know, official Scifi-Meshes stuff)? Or are you just here to look at other members' work?
Are you streaming your work, selling models or taking commissions? Is there something we can do to help you promote those things?
Are you actually interested in people streaming their work or taking commissions, or just here for the forums?
Any interest in challenges? If yes, big ones with prizes or small quick and fun stuff like weekly or monthly challenges? If not, why is that?
Have you checked out our Discord?
We kind of shuttered our Instagram, and didn't use our Facebook and Twitter at all last year. Did anyone notice?

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.