Old HotW Thread

[bls1999]

This page is a microcosm of bad incentives.
You've got ten roles with seven different colors. You're setting up a ranking that goes from "registering" to "making a lot of posts" to "getting a contest approved" to "donating money" to "becoming staff" to "being bls1999". You're encouraging people to care about this ranking, whether that's your intention or not. You inserted a referral link instead of just a link to the register page because you're treating a high referral count as an end unto itself. You put a top referrers ranking on the front page so nobody forgets who the important people are.

I went ahead and removed top donors because, to be frank, I don't think that role will ever do anything. As for the rest, I physically cannot give certain users access to some forums without giving them a secondary usergroup. If I could do that, I would only have one group for all of the members. Regarding staff colors, they are meant to stand out on the forums as they do on PR2 so people know who's who.

I also removed my referral link from that post and removed myself from the top referrers board.

Don't put rankings of any kind on the front page or really any page that isn't dedicated to rankings.

If someone has a suggestion for that space, I'd be happy to hear it. It's there currently 1) because I don't have anything better to put there and 2) because I want people to have an incentive to invite more members to the site.

Don't list thank counts anywhere other than people's profiles.

I just disabled thank counts on author panels on posts. Let me know if they appear anywhere else.

Keep at most two username colors for registered users, for regular users and for forum moderators, because there's some practical benefit to being able to see who can help you with administrative stuff but the rest is only useful for bragging purposes.

See above re: staff colors and usergroups.

Don't call people with 200 posts "ultimate members". It would help to just say that people with more than 200 posts can change their usernames, without giving it a special name. Many people on JV actually cared about being an ultimate member™, and that's terrible. They wouldn't care as much if it was just the ability to change your username and user title, without status attached to it.

I'll have to think about a different way to differentiate between users who do and don't have those perks.

If you want to get an icon don't turn it into a contest. Ask people for suggestions, then do a quick poll in the same thread. You'll get the same results without the drama and status games.

The reason I made it into a contest was 1) to give an incentive to participate and 2) to stimulate the community. We got tons of fantastic submissions and at the time of posting have had over 30 people vote in the poll.

Don't make contests all official with a formal approval process and whatever it was that JV had going on. You don't have to lower the standards, you just need to avoid making it into a status thing.

How do you feel it's a status thing right now, other than that to which I've responded?

Acknowleding how bad HotW was is good, but JV had enormous structural problems that you're copying.

It's my mission to make this website as welcoming as possible. There are many hierarchal features that come stock with MyBB, such as a reputation, thread ratings, etc. I disabled all of that because that's not where the community's attention should be focused.

This is some great feedback that I cherish. Thanks for voicing your concerns here. If you have any more suggestions, please let me know.