Oh right, i misunderstood. *edits*

I voted for more forum events and a community project.

I don't think we should have any more forums, what we have now has worked for years and I think if we added any more forums we'd have to make more forums than we intended. As if there's a forum for Anime, you could argue that Sports would need a forum also.

And a community project would bring us together as a group, because at the moment I can see quite a fine line between the OT Clan and the GD tribe. [Where some members don't post in OT or GD] Hopefully then we'll become a happier, funner site [Yeah...] or at least we'll know each other a little better, I mean just 10 minutes ago I saw a member with 100 posts who I'd never seen before.

Forum events partly falls under what I just said, but it's also abit of fun and the Oddlympics were a good example of this. Need I say more?

I'm against the frontpage, we used to have that... Oddworldian.net I believe, and it was a nuisance. There's already OW Universe and other websites affliated with the site, I think it'd be simpler to keep the OWF as it is.

- Rexy

Hmm, I used to cruise Oddworldian a lot, I preferred it over Oddworld Web, but I recall it only having a link to these forums, like Oddworld Web had as well. I don't think it was a frontpage. Only Alcar can let us see the truth about it, no?

Anyways, as for them options, stuff like Oddlympics would be cool.

Ummz... What's a shop hack? I've tried figuring it out from people's context and even looking it up, but I'm not having any luck. :confused:

I'll vote soon after someone explains this.

It's a hack for a forum that allows people to rate your posts for points and with points you can buy shiny new stuff. Unless you're a mod, in which case you f.uck the system by editing it all. YAY!

That sounds sexy. I would love that sort of thing. Actaully, I would really love pretty much all the options on the poll, sans N-O RPGs.

But my question still remains, how will others be informed of these new changes, so as to attract new (And awesome) members?

I'm for the increasing of user content etc over in Fan Corner. The past six months it's been the most active ever since three years ago and I'd like that trend to continue.

Contests were originally planned back in the day by Alector and I, then Paramiteabe and myself, and eventually Oddguy started jumpstarting things as well, but I did a lot of hard thinking, and ran into several problems trying to find a perfect formula or the best way of running the contest and judging scenarios, etc. Unfortunately, with most concepts such as a contest or an election, award, I knew they might simply turn into popularity contests even by non biased judging. But yeah like I said some more activity over there is always good and I'm open to anyone's suggestions as well. Cheers!

Yeah, like the guys said shop hack is a thing where you postcounts mean prizes! Basically for each post you gain "money" that you can spend on various stuff to funk up your postbit. It rewards contribution basically.

It can be set up in a myriad ways. It can be set to give money for each positive rating of a post, or just to give money for whenever you post, as well as to give money for threads or page views. Basically whatever you want. I'm most in favour of money per post, since ratings might be a bit slow. But that would be down to the mods and admins to decide really.

When the Oddworld Forums were using UBB instead of vB, they were hosted on Sydney's Oddworldian server. There was no oddworldforums.net domain as of yet, so to reach the forums you would have to type in a very long address which did start with oddworldian.net.

However, there was also a 'splash' page back in the day, which had lovely pictures showing off both Oddworldian and Oddworld-Web, as they were the two forum 'sponsors'.

Alcar...

Ah right, my bad, then.

But wouldn't that create more spam? As people would want to make more money they would post more pointless posts. I know that the staff got rid of post counts quite a while ago due to spam.

I'm not saying it's a bad idea, it's a great idea. I'm just wary of the post count thing.

- Rexy

Well, we still have postcounts, so I don't know quite what you're talking about in that regard.

I think that, quite possibly, somewhere at the back of your mind, you're worried that this whole shop hack thing would "legalise" spamming, and moderators would be so swamped with spam that they wouldn't be able to do anything about it anyway.

The fact is that, while it's possible and has happened on some forums that have lax rules and use shop hack variants, I've NEVER, not even once seen spam on a forum that uses shop hack while at the same time having a strict no spam policy. Spam generally means money removal, warnings, and bannings, and therefore any spammers hoping to make lots of cash will soon find out that their clever scheme will bring them nothing other than a swift boot to the crotch. If people want to make lots of money, they need to be REALLY decent members who make lots of good contributions to the forums - so long as those contributions are properly spelled and interesting, then that's all that matters. Spamming is the fast way to get yourself into "virtual overdraft" as it were.

The shop hack system does not reward bad behaviour if the moderators patrol the forums like they're supposed to, and in fact the shop hack system would allow moderators another form of punishment (money removal) for misbehaving.

Well, I'm a mod on a couple of forums, i might be able to advertise ac bit, something along the lines of:
Oddworld Fourms: Even if you don't like Oddworld, you'll like this site. Some of the best general discussion on the 'net, intelligent members, forum events and a wholesome community etc. etc. or something like that. Although I'll only advertise when the decisions have been made on what to add, that way I can advertise the new and shiny stuff.

Again, at the Webquad series of forums, where I moderate, and CS used to go, we used the punishment of money removal, and it is very effective. You do get a tad more spam with shop hacks, but if the mods delete it and then reduct the offender's money/shop stuff, and the other members ignore the spam, than everything is fine. Also ,I've looked at some of the old Oddlympics stuff, anfd it looks like a lot of fun, we should also have those old annual member awards thingies, if they're still going. I'd be happy to see either of those back.

We had those a while ago. It was around January or so, I think. All I remember is I was almost there too long to be eligible for best new member (which I won! :)).

So... Someone tell me of these glorious prizes and whatnot we would buy with the moneys of shop hackyness.

I think we should hold the awards again.

Prizes could be many things - custom titles, funky editing for custom titles, the ability to sticky one thread, to get a cool person to make an avatar for you or whatever

I'm really loving these ideas, so kudos to everybody who contributed. I voted for the forum-wide community project, because we have a whole lot of talented members who would make such a project a joy to work on (whatever it might be). With any luck, it will hopefully bring everybody together in a positive way, while giving us something to do as we wait for OWI's next big move. If this is too ambitious for us, then any one of the other choices would do just fine, I like 'em all!

Yeah. Some forums have gone the whole nine yards with it and allow you to change your stars, custom title, user name, as well as the background colours of your postbit - I've even seen some forums where you can buy yourself moderator privelidges for huge sums of money.

I think we could potentially have a lot of fun with it.

sounds good to me, one question. If we get his shop hack thing, will our posts before we install shop hack count

No, everyone would start out with zero.

What? I want to keep my post count. Why can we just monitor the new posts, like a boz that says, "shop posts," or something and then keep the post sopunt we have now too?

Couldnt we just hide the post count like we did a few years back, where it simply kept it for that person to know in their profile but not shown when they posted?

You'll keep your postcount dipshit, I mean you won't start out with any money, you'll have to earn it from the moment the shop hack is installed.

Postcount and moneycount are seperate. You don't "spend" your postcount on things.

I think the currency should be moolah, afterall, this is a forum dedicated to Oddworld. And perhaps make more Oddworld and shop related things for Oddworld fans to spend money on in General Discussion.

man if we did start out with money we would have had, xaiver would be soooooooooo rich, he has 11,000 posts

Uh, I don't mean to be weird but what's all this "shop" thing that you guys are talking about?

Try reading through the rest of the thread smellyman: http://www.oddworldforums.net/showpo...9&postcount=45

Or alternatively, smellygirl?

Great idea! Moolah, yes, I like that. Hehe. :D

So would we go to zero posts on the shop hack postcount or overall postcount? And if the latter, then what happens to our old posts, do they get deleted?

When the shop hack gets installed, the post-counts wont get changed, but there'll be another static, showing how much money you have. You get money per post or per good rating i guess. Read the previous posts for mor info :P

Okay, so how long is this poll/thread going to be open? There needs to be a set date for final votes, so we can get things moving.

And how many votes should a suggestion have to be implemented? I say we should do whatever the top 3 are or something.

Good point, Ambi. I'll close the poll on Friday.

I have a few concerns about the two selections that are in the lead, and I'll be sure to make these concerns public if the selections are still in the lead by Friday (which they probably will, meh).

You know guys, it would help if you like, VOTED for shop hack. You know, in that poll? The one up top? Yeah, that's the one.

Cause right now there's only 6 votes so at the moment it doesn't look like it's going to be implemented.

The name is probably confusing to a lot of members... heck, I didn't know what the Hell it was until I read the description in someone's post.

Hmm, yes, and I don't think everyone was aware that the poll was multiple choice either.

I think we might have to have a repoll, and this time make everything clear in the first post.

I wouldn't worry about a repoll. The way things are shaping up, Shop Hack and Front Page are looking like the most feasible options, to me at least. The poll isn't set in stone or anything; we're just getting a general idea of what people want.

I only voted for one thing. I wasn't expected being able to choose mutiple options. This is most irregular.

I can always edit votes in as long as I don't have a bunch of people wanting to change their responses.

I'd much rather just edit in votes instead of doing a repoll.

Oh, I've read through and I think I get the idea of it now. Sounds like a good idea to me.

Make an 18+ section.