The New Design Thread

Hey Yoda, as I am new I didn't see the forum on christmas, so do you like turn on some xmas decoration? I love one that makes the backround snow, it's pretty cool and you can turn it off if it bothers you. Despite that, I can't think ins something the forum needs something else. Although its a little stupid to think in xmas on June ;(. The other thing I thought was like having the snake minigame somewhere

Yup, we add a snow effect. It's been a tradition for over a decade, and people seem to really like it. They usually get on my case if I wait too long to put it up.

Another idea i'd like to pitch is when you go to lists that you are able to enter your popcorn rating for the movie beside it so people can see what you thought of it. It's cool to see all of what people have seen, but I think it'd make people look at it more if you added that.

Not a bad idea, but wouldn't it decrease activity on members' lists? Half the fun of making lists is finding out how other members think of your favorites. Buckets of popcorn don't do much.

I guess that's true. Maybe a thumbs up or down thing a la Siskel/Ebert? I really don't know just trying to throw things up there

It's a solid idea, and it's related to something I've been thinking of doing. I'll add it to the list, for sure.

It's always a little sensitive doing stuff like this, because on one hand, this is a cool idea and really helps organize things. On the other hand, it largely renders threads like Movie Tab superfluous. Is that good or bad? Hard to say. I'm always trying to take the chaos of the forums and pull order out of it, with things like tagged reviews, but if you do that too much, why use the forums? Etc.

This has probably been suggested before and my apologies if it has, but is there any way to make it so that a member will get (at least temporarily) banned after a certain number of spam reports?

Not that the mods aren't doing a great job, they are, but spammers have a knack for striking when there's nobody to police them and when the forum is in the midst of a spam attack it can be virtually unusable. I diligently report every spam thread I see, but they seem to make new ones faster than I can report the existing ones.

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It'd have to be a bit more advanced than that, to make sure it didn't accidentally ban longtime users or something. But yeah, the recent attacks have convinced me to sit down and write in some new functionality. Hopefully won't be more than a couple of days.

Sounds like an inside job to me.

I've said it a few times, they seem to be timing themselves to when Mods aren't about.


Loner started using invisible mode after I told him.


But yeah, if Yods can put in a function that deletes after two reports, and temporarily bans at the same time, it'll certainly cut back on the hundreds of threads that appear. It'd also make it easier for us lot who help out with that report button to halt the spam when we can, and save the Mods the hard work of removing them afterwards.


The Mods are all doing a sterling job though, I mean that... it's just a bit of a pain when they aren't about and we get 4 or 5 bots, plus the occasional real person with an agenda, working in tandem.

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Well what I had in mind was maybe like a 12 hour or even 6 hour ban after like 10 spam reports (from at least two different members). That would stop the spammer and give time for a mod to come online and review it to make sure that it was a legitimate spammer. Then the mod could either make the ban permanent or lift it.

Posted elsewhere, but relevant to the last few posts here, I've made a few tweaks to the spam reporting system:

• User is banned if three people report one of their posts within an hour.
• All mods are notified of the banning to make sure it's legitimate.
• All mods and users with at least 500 posts are exempt.

Note that it takes three users, not three spam reports. This is to make sure one person can't ban anyone by themselves, even though this would probably help more often than it would hurt.

I might be adding a few more rules on top of this. Specifically, having a user's threads wiped out if they meet some (very narrow) criteria. But for now, this should at least give you guys the ability to stop the spam from piling up if a mod isn't around. Thanks to everyone for the suggestions, and for your patience.

Exempt from what anything specific? Or just that they can't post ? What if they have roughly 500 or 500 exactly, per say, and then don't come on for a day because they are busy and then come on and they are 'exempt'? Do they need to rush and create their 501st post? Just curious.

It just means they can't report spam..

He said at least 500 so i'm assuming 500 exactly should do the trick

Got it.

"All mods and users with at least 500 posts are exempt."


I think it means that if you have at least 500 posts, you can't get banned by MoFos using the report button. It's a failsafe that keeps regular contributors to the site from getting banned by accident.

Oh yeah my bad. ^^

What Rodent said.

Or on purpose Just think, just six clicks and we could get rid of Sexy and Honeykid

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Gotta love this design