The Suggestion Box

Hey MoFos,

I've recently finished overhauling another site of mine, M. Night Shayamalan Online, and though I'm working on a number of other projects, I do have a bit more time to devote to MoFo these days.

So, as a result, I'd like to open things up to suggestions. Yes, that's right; you all have your own programmer on call. Any ideas are welcome, though I'll have to throw out a few caveats:

• I probably can't make an idea reality if it's too ambitious. I don't want one idea to eat up the majority of all this...unless, of course, it's an especially great idea.

• I'm looking more for mid-range projects and improvements. Little tweaks are still fair game, but I'm hoping to add new areas and functionality to the site, as opposed to minorly altering what's already here.

• Things that will have appeal to non-posting visitors will probably be given some preference. Most of my changes have been improving the experience for the existing member, and that'll always remain the focus, but I would like to do a bit more to lure people to the site initially. This one's not a hard rule by any means; just a general leaning.

• If I shoot down or pick apart an idea, please don't take it personally. It's probably just me thinking out loud about the logistics and feasability of said idea. The idea might be good, but overly difficult, or have a bad work/reward type ratio thingamajig. So, please don't think I'm passing judgement on an idea if I don't do it, or explain why I can't, etc.

Now that that's out of the way...any takers? Come on, no idea's too stupid to say out loud, and if it is, well, we'll all have a good time making fun of it.

I kid, I kid.

The main complaint I still hear from the more casual users I know is that the review side of the main page needs to get more attention. They like to go to a page that has many of the latest reviews before each weekend to get their favorite MoFo's opinions on the latest stuff. Many don't want to be bothered searching threads for the info.

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I was wondering the same thing only for the Movie tab thread. There are an awful lot of great mini-reviews and opinions tucked away in all those pages. Is there any way to have the search engine bring up the page the movie your searching for is on and not just the thread?

yes actually, as Holden has tought me, you do have that option in the search thingamajiggy already...you just put " show results for posts" instead of threads.....very useful...

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Yoda, this is more of an update I guess you'd say then a item. But here goes. Remember that PHP chat room you installed? Well, it's not a stable release right now but, they have a beta of 1.03 which has some several new features that would be quite handy in making it more usable. For one, when someone IMs in the chat room the tab will flash bringing attention that way you don't have to keep checking back and forth from whatever else you're doing. And the number one feature everyone else wants is the ability to see who is in the chat room. Just go to the main site and you can look at how it's setup. Well, that's about it.

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"Film is a disease. When it infects your bloodstream it takes over as the number one hormone. It bosses the enzymes, directs the pineal gland, plays Iago to your psyche. As with heroin, the antidote to Film is more Film." - Frank Capra

Ok, here's what I lie awake yearning for:
I want to be able to see more of the results on the rep stuff. The top 5, even for a day, has been dominated by Purandura for weeks now. Meanwhile, I got a lot of negative rep not long ago and I have no idea why, and can't even find out which posts were repped.

It's true that statistics tend to be truer when there are more responses, as any individual response loses it's power to sway the results. But it seems like the results we're getting on the rep thing right now are badly skewed by people being vindictive. Holden got 26 negative reps in a single day, the other day, and didn't post anything that was particularly remarkable. Just someone having a hissy. That's a misuse of anonymity.

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Review: Cabin in the Woods 8/10

Okay, sorry for the delay. Here are some of the actionable ideas so far:

You're right about this. I've made a couple of attempts to "run" the reviews area off of the reviews on the boards here, but each time, either part-way or most of the way through developing the new area, it's become apparent to me that it just wasn't coming together right. Perhaps I'm being overly picky, but I haven't come up with a particularly striking, organized, efficient way to do this yet.

It has to be a priority, though, for reasons like the ones you've mentioned. The big trouble, really, is that while there are plenty of good reviews on the forums, most of them read more like posts than standalone reviews. Which is fine, but makes it somewhat troublesome to extract them and place them in the Reviews area as if they were more traditional reviews.

What do you guys think?


You're right. I'll see if I can program in a limit to the number of times you can rep someone in either direction in a day (one of the options on the old system that I liked a great deal).

Some sort of breakdown of rep is coming, as well, as numerous members have mentioned it. The system is going to stay fully anonymous, I think, but I'm going to try a few features to let users know where their posts stand.

I wanna know why everytime I try to log out, it fails at first but then I click something and finally I'm logged out. This happens to me at every computer I'm at.

Oh, oh, oh, I do have a suggestion. Maybe you could change the design/look of Movie Forums again? Perhaps make it more colorful? Brighter? Flashier? It's kinda dark and drab now.

Okay, now, each person, when viewing their own posts, instead of the thumbs up/thumbs down icons, or the "Thanks!" message, will see their rating for that post (Either a green number for positive, a red one for negative, or the word "Even").

I'm still going to put something more comprehensive together, but I thought this would be helpful as well (and in the meantime).


Yeah, this has been a problem for awhile. It's baffled me to the point where I'm simply going to assume the next forum upgrade will fix it. Hopefully I'll upgrade sometime in the next few weeks; I'm waiting for vBulletin 3.6 to come out, at which time I'll have to categorize the numerous modifications I've made so I can reapply them afterwards.

I can't tell if this is sarcasm or not. If it isn't: I'm in love with the general layout, and probably always will be, and it's dark by design, as it suits the subject matter. That said, I'm open to suggestions on adding little flourishes here and there for color (there's quite a bit on the forum main page, for example...is that the kind of thing you're suggesting; more of that?).

No, I wasn't being sarcastic. I was just imagining Movie Forums being redone in a different way - maybe more white instead of black? I know that's kind of typical of online forums, but, it'd be different here.

What do you mean by that Yoda? Are you saying all the subject matter is usually dark for the most part?

I'd like to see Movie Forums maybe bathed in blue or ...... GOLD.


*not being sarcastic

I was thinking mainly of movie theaters. A lot of movie-related websites use dark color schemes for this reason, I think. There are, of course, numerous exceptions, but I do think there's a correlation, and for good reason.

As for using white; again, I'm open to ideas, but I really can't think of anything offhand that wouldn't either look a bit odd, or involve a massive overhaul in the site's layout.

I think of movie theatres as being red.

Is there any way of allowing people to customise their own display, colour-wise??

(I'm kind of doubting there is - but y'never know)

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Virtual Reality chatter on a movie site? Got endless amounts of it here. Reviews over here

Ahh ok. That makes sense. I honestly never had a problem with the black color here. Unique in it's own way. And yeah, when the light's go out, all movie theatres look the same even with their little trail of floor lights.

I can see maybe the color sky blue in the back.


Or even a background image of a movie screen with seats. (I know, I've been workin' too long at Cinemark )

I feel totally the same way and just assumed improved rep feedback was in the works, cause I have no idea how many points I have, if i've gone up or down, or even what my best or worst post is. I'll be pretty content with a happy medium......as long as something is on the way

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