shoutbox

that is all

good shout

personally I think it could force the forum to slip back into a quiet place to be and thus would put off potential members

I think that having a shoutbox is a great idea, mainly because it will provide a place for most of the banter to take place. I've noticed that a lot of threads here quickly go off topic and whilst this may not be too much of a problem in general chat threads, I'm sure I'm not the only one who finds it slightly frustrating having to navigate through the off topic-ness that frequently occurs in a progress blog, for example.

Don't get me wrong, I love banter and off topic tangents. However there is a time and a place for such, and a progress blog or for sale thread is not it.

A shoutbox will grab the attention of potential members and show them the atmosphere that we have here. To be honest, if I was a guest reading through a progress blog that was comprised of 5% updates, 25% conversation about the project and 70% meaningless crap, I may have second thoughts about signing up and creating my progress blog in the knowledge that it's going to be diluted like that.

Just my two cents.

Thankyou for that feedback huw,

I do agree with you there it can be a little annoying with the progress threads(the main one is project meatsword and lets face it thats not a blog), I recon both me and alex will have to up our game a little in the progress threads more than anywhere in future. The recent flow of traffic seems to of overwhelmed us

General chat and car chat threads i'm fine with a little derailment, but newbies, blogs, for sale and events is a different matter.

We've always tried to keep away from a over moderated forum as we have all been members of them before i'm sure and it did get annoying, hence why there is little here.

me personally I've always hated the shoutbox on past forums i've been on, especially on quiet forums.

plus we added the shoutbox to this forum briefly when the thanks buttons came in and because of the layout(unless stu can do anything different) it looked wank.

I would read all that, but your posts are wayyyyyyyyyyyyy to long

TBH i think my mods are letting me down

There is a simple answer... ban James!

Thanks for your input huw, as Woz says we've always tried to avoid moderating where we can, because we've been in Nazi style clubs where all members bow down to a select few.

But maybe now member flow has picked up it's time to start getting a little meaner.

Shout box is a good idea, but as said i don't want it directing posts from the forum...

I'll Kick Alex and Woz into shape and get them Modding Certain forums a little harder...

Huw wrote:

I think that having a shoutbox is a great idea, mainly because it will provide a place for most of the banter to take place. I've noticed that a lot of threads here quickly go off topic and whilst this may not be too much of a problem in general chat threads, I'm sure I'm not the only one who finds it slightly frustrating having to navigate through the off topic-ness that frequently occurs in a progress blog, for example.

+1 - it's fine in general chat but a lot of threads turn into pages of off topic chat about the city never getting finished Which is funny, but that can also put members off when each technical thread/progress blog goes off on tangents!

the spam would all go away if you'd finish that fudging car you know

in all seriousness I don't feel a shoutbox will remove spam from the forum, it'll add more. and what I wouldnt like to see logging onto the forum every day is;

<stu>anyone there?
<james> gayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy
<woz/alex> FINISH THE CITY

doesn't set the right tone for what we're trying to achieve here, which ultimatley is not just a forum for like-minded people, but also a strong pool of people prepared to do trackdays regularly that we can use to bring our prices down collectively.

to do that you need to be taken seriously and looking like a cruise site won't do that.

In terms of moderation, both myself and Woz are very careful about what we moderate. Anyone that knows me, knows I have absolutely no issue with pissing people off (hai ), but I'd prefer it wasn't because I stopped the banter that makes the site stand out from certain others. Moderation should be consistent, justifiable and shouldn't detract from the content.

I would like to see blogs with just the info locked down, and chatter in members cars - a carbon copy of the blog. It's pointless having projects nobody can talk about!!! that's half the fun.

I dont think it would hurt to have a banter thread, but trying to break into a conversation that's gone on for hundreds of posts isn't something new people will find easy.

MGM wrote:

<stu>anyone there?
<james> gayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy
<woz/alex> FINISH THE CITY

Lmao

MGM wrote:

I would like to see blogs with just the info locked down, and chatter in members cars - a carbon copy of the blog. It's pointless having projects nobody can talk about!!! that's half the fun.

I dont think it would hurt to have a banter thread, but trying to break into a conversation that's gone on for hundreds of posts isn't something new people will find easy.

Agree with that also, perhaps sort out the progress blogs, as a lot of us have put our progress blogs in members cars by accident

IMO. Progress Blogs, is just that a blog. Maybe we shouls go down the 106boners line of only the owner being able to post in it??

But then i like commenting on mods, or bitching about them... so having a carbon copy may be a good idea, but two threads to update would be a bit of a nightmare?

Techincal is another section of the forum spaff shouldn't be allowed. Any in there from now will be removed.

Newbie threads shouldn't be spammed too much, and they aren't, except Jamesys sister, but thats a different case

is there no script to copy posts from one thread into another if you link them?

maybe it needs to be a choice, its a copy and paste job at the end of the day for the thread owner. if you want comments on your latest update, copying and pasting from the blog to the chat thread is a small thing.

Jamesy's sister is welsh, a bit of spam is a welcome change to all that well used mutton

Shoutboxes in my opinion either get overly used and the forum dries up as people post less in threads.
Or they dont get used at all, bar the odd person going 'hello, anyone about?' and so on and so forth.

I agree the spamming of threads should be kept to certain areas. Like its been said the technical, for sale and places where people need help or advice should be kept clean and conscise.

But random banter should be allowed in general chat and the like.

my 2p

gaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy


I think it would be a good idea.

Not to remove spam, but instead of having shitty threads


Like Happy Birthday XXX threads

Just a shoutbox,

Happy Birthday XXX


as an example

P.S HTML needs to be turned on to view this



<object width="250" height="360" id="obj_1274516148345"><param name="movie" value="http://Built4Track.chatango.com/group"/><param name="wmode" value="transparent"/><param name="AllowScriptAccess" VALUE="always"/><param name="AllowNetworking" VALUE="all"/><param name="AllowFullScreen" VALUE="true"/><param name="flashvars" value="cid=1274516148345&b=60&f=50&l=999999&q=999999&r=100&s=1"/><embed id="emb_1274516148345" src="http://Built4Track.chatango.com/group" width="200" height="380" wmode="transparent" allowScriptAccess="always" allowNetworking="all" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowFullScreen="true" flashvars="cid=1274516148345&b=60&f=50&l=999999&q=999999&r=100&s=1"></embed></object><br>[ <a href="http://Built4Track.chatango.com/clonegroup?ts=1274516148345">Copy this</a> | <a href="http://chatango.com/creategroup?ts=1274516148345">Start New</a> | <a href="http://Built4Track.chatango.com">Full Size</a> ]



EDIT view how it would look on the forum as a module http://swfco.forumotion.com/index.htm or as a separate page www.built4track.chatango.com

Personally i think a shoutbox is a pointless idea, if you have a shout box then whats the point in general chat? Surely that should be the place for all the random posts asking about each other's day or birthday messages.

I'm sure if you search hard enough ive spammed somewhere but i do get abit pissed off at how off topic most threads go, especially in more serious threads. I wouldn't say ive whored the club url about, but i have done my bit spreading the word and in a couple of cases all the points mentioned so far have stopped either people registering, or coming back.

As for the member's car's or project threads, i feel anyone shuld be allowed to post in any threads as many have good questions or feedback which i'm sure most appreciate, but it does need moderating more.

yeah I know took me an hour do do some clearing up in the members blogs the other night, but i'm getting there.