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Official Suggestions Thread

Now that the ZI/ZD thing is all official like, I'd feel like I should comment on this even as all final decisions come down to Jimmy himself - and based on the brief time I have seen him work behind the scenes this year, I can tell he knows what he is doing. I trust his judgement.

For starters, I dislike the coin system. One of the biggest reason I dislike it is because of a principal at ZI, where literally no one is above another. Sure, I am a paid staff member at technically "the head of ZI", but reality is, my opinion and viewpoint for new things at ZI isn't above the staff, and our staff opinions aren't above the fans. A coin/point system sort of makes for a public showing of "have and have nots", which does, arbitrarily, create a divide between new members and old. But I also respect it has been a system here for a long time, so I don't want to disrupt it. Just publicing voicing that I am against it.
I kind of agree with you on how the credit system could cause a divide of sorts, but I don't think it's gotten to that point yet since we all agree on the general uselessness of rupees and aside from occasional jokes, richer members don't really have any extra prestige or anything.
So that being said, it should no surprise I am against using for emotes when the primary reason given for using it is spam. Regardless of if you think past current, and future modes can properly deal with spam, reality is there hasn't been a emote related spam report in a long time, meaning that a vast majority of the users don't actually think there is a emote spam problem going on in the first place.
Well, most members think that if an emote is used two times in succession or such, it's spam, so a lot of members do seem to think there's a spam problem. but yeah there hasn't really been emote spam in awhile
The last thing that should happen is a change to emotes in order to appeal to a small amount of the users - which appears to be one or two users.
Funnily enough, this just happened recently.


I also agree with the blog price thing. I think it should be brought down by a hundred or so rupees.
 

DARK MASTER

The Emperor
Joined
Apr 29, 2010
@Nathanial Rumphol-Janc please choose an actual avatar.

Anyhow, I largely agree with the bulk of your post, but I would argue while our rupee system does technically display "have and have nots" it's also based on participation, anybody can get that amount of rupees — it's not inherited, when I die my ZD rupees won't go to our son @Lozjam rather our turkey foundation @Misty and I started.
 

Dio

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I like the coin system. It would work as a good motivator to come up with new threads and posts IF rupees were actually worth something.

There needs to be shop items at all levels. For myself there is nothing I can't afford many times over. There should be items that cost thousands and there should be items that can be gotten for people with just 25 rupees. It means there is something to buy at whatever level poster you are.

For starters, I dislike the coin system. One of the biggest reason I dislike it is because of a principal at ZI, where literally no one is above another. Sure, I am a paid staff member at technically "the head of ZI", but reality is, my opinion and viewpoint for new things at ZI isn't above the staff, and our staff opinions aren't above the fans.

There is always a heirachy. You yourself have positional authority and more power than an average member. To say you aren't above them is false. The reality is you are. It isn't doable to create a system where nobody is above another. Even amongst regular members there are always older members, members who post more, members who are liked more. People up top and people below. That's just the way things are, in life and on forums.
 

Jamie

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I like the coin system. It would work as a good motivator to come up with new threads and posts IF rupees were actually worth something.

There needs to be shop items at all levels. For myself there is nothing I can't afford many times over. There should be items that cost thousands and there should be items that can be gotten for people with just 25 rupees. It means there is something to buy at whatever level poster you are.



There is always a heirachy. You yourself have positional authority and more power than an average member. To say you aren't above them is false. The reality is you are. It isn't doable to create a system where nobody is above another. Even amongst regular members there are always older members, members who post more, members who are liked more. People up top and people below. That's just the way things are, in life and on forums.
I don't even believe the whole "staff opinions are worth the same" bs, that's just a downright lie. That's not the case for anything in the world, be it a forum, a company, or a country. People with more authority have more weight to their opinions. That's the point of having authority.

I agree with you with the coin system, too. There's lots of potential with it.
 
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Djinn

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I see no particular issue with the money system. It was always intended to be a fun little extra thing for the forum, before we had things to collect for your profile page (something I really wish we could recreate now) and the unlocking of forum things was more of a secondary aspect. It is never meant to create any divide between members, and really that sounds more like tinfoil hattery than anything else. It is not exactly a big deal to make a couple threads or post some to get some more money together.

Right now it is limited because we have not yet come up with a whole lot for it, the Xenforo shop is incredibly small atm because no one has developed much for it in the first place before we got it here.
 
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@Nathanial Rumphol-Janc please choose an actual avatar.

Maybe some day, sure. Or, I could keep using the default, as I proudly display the pathetic xenforo defaults (and ones I am sure we should probably change). Either way, it's different and unique, so I'll stick with it for now. :)

Anyhow, I largely agree with the bulk of your post, but I would argue while our rupee system does technically display "have and have nots" it's also based on participation, anybody can get that amount of rupees — it's not inherited, when I die my ZD rupees won't go to our son @Lozjam rather our turkey foundation @Misty and I started.

Of course. As I said, I don't actually want to shake things up. Just figured I'd throw my two cents in to help frame my viewpoint of on charging for emotes and the current cost of starting a blog. None of it really applies to me anyways, but I just thought I'd frame where I am coming from for context.

I like the coin system. It would work as a good motivator to come up with new threads and posts IF rupees were actually worth something.

There needs to be shop items at all levels. For myself there is nothing I can't afford many times over. There should be items that cost thousands and there should be items that can be gotten for people with just 25 rupees. It means there is something to buy at whatever level poster you are.

Shops are nice for some things. Never really seen a forum with a shop I really thought added value or increased activity. In fact, the most active forums out there don't do any nonsense with points or rewards, shops, games, yada yada. People are there talking about things because they want to be there talking about things. They don't need incentives to want to do something. But again, its' been here for a long time. No point in going back at this juncture.


There is always a heirachy. You yourself have positional authority and more power than an average member. To say you aren't above them is false. The reality is you are. It isn't doable to create a system where nobody is above another. Even amongst regular members there are always older members, members who post more, members who are liked more. People up top and people below. That's just the way things are, in life and on forums.

I don't even believe the whole "staff opinions are worth the same" bs, that's just a downright lie. That's not the case for anything in the world, be it a forum, a company, or a country. People with more authority have more weight to their opinions. That's the point of having authority.

I agree with you with the coin system, too. There's lots of potential with it.

Lumped these together with some highlights to address uniformly from my end. I am, technically, above everyone at ZI save Mases from a positional standpoint. Things at ZI happen quicker, faster, and more directly when I am directly invovled. Traffic is higher when I am busy putting in work then when I am absent. Of this, there is no doubt, and ZI becomes a more prosperous place when I am around. However, that doesn't mean I actually view my opinions being above everyone else. I really don't. There was at time years ago when I certainly did, but today, what makes ZI so special is that everyone has almost equal input, and if a staff member didn't get a say on something, it's generally because they didn't care to have a say or they just weren't around at the time when a decision needed to be made. And sure, you can argue that all of us staff at ZI are above the readers, because we control the literal platform. As in, we put content on the platform that ZI is for all of them to read. But, unlike most places on the net - any reader, be them just discovered us today or been an avid reader for years, can be on the staff if they have the skillset in place for it.

Also, in regards to MOST major changes at ZI in the past few years, the fans have been in the know and we've been completely transparent, allowing them equal say on the matters at hand. This is not common practice - and it's certainly not a practice Mases himself adheres to, which sort of goes at odds with my management technique. However, thankfully he's fairly hands off at ZI save a couple areas (like the forums), so for the most part a vast majority of ZI still operates under the same way it has for years.

But, I definitely disagree that someone's opinion is less important because they are new and not established in the community. That's elitism. The key thing is being able to recognize viable stuff from the garbage - and even long term members can take advantage of them being well known to push things that have no business being considered seriously.

Obviously I can't pretend that people in the community at ZI don't seem to respect what I have to say more because of who I am, but that's them. It's not how my management style works. I am glad folks respect me because of my work, but ZI hasn't been "what I wanted it to be solely" for ages. It's all about open trasparency. ZI can run this way because we're not some for profit company trying to shove product down your throats. Rather, we're doing what we do out of passion and love for a series. 18 years and counting here running fan sites. :) Hoping for another 18 more!
 

Jamie

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Just because you want to equalize everyone's opinions doesn't mean that's a full reality. Firstly it's nearly impossible to get the opinion of every single person who uses the site, but secondly and more importantly, you are one of the few that can actually swing the hammer and make a decision final.

Yourself aside, because I do not know you well enough to have a plethora of examples, I am positive a multitude of things have been done on this site without the majorities consent or often without any consent at all. Yes we are told when something is going to happen but unless you want 6 months to make every decision you can't have a poll for everything. The staff have more authority than us. Aside from reports I have literally no say in who gets punished and who doesn't. I am not equal to the mods who give out these punishments, punishments which I might add are the farthest thing from transparent, and I agree with how it is now, because making punishment transparent shames people.
 
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Just because you want to equalize everyone's opinions doesn't mean that's a full reality. Firstly it's nearly impossible to get the opinion of every single person who uses the site, but secondly and more importantly, you are one of the few that can actually swing the hammer and make a decision final.

Yourself aside, because I do not know you well enough to have a plethora of examples, I am positive a multitude of things have been done on this site without the majorities consent or often without any consent at all. Yes we are told when something is going to happen but unless you want 6 months to make every decision you can't have a poll for everything. The staff have more authority than us. Aside from reports I have literally no say in who gets punished and who doesn't. I am not equal to the mods who give out these punishments, punishments which I might add are the farthest thing from transparent, and I agree with how it is now, because making punishment transparent shames people.

It should be noted - I do not manage the forums. I certainly can get a say on things, but how the forums run is not equal to in any way how ZI runs. We don't even work within the same fundamental rule set. So the forums team is completely independent of the site and how these boards are ran works that same way. So yes, I can talk about how I run ZI - but how I run ZI isn't how the forums are ran, given that these forums were ZD's for so long alone. Sorry you feel things aren't transparent here, but I haven't been around long enough to see these issues myself. I hope it's something that can get better. Transparency builds trust.

As for ZI - everyone's opinion does matter almost equally. There are times decisions have to be made for the betterment of the site for reasons a general userbase may not understand (say, a new ad placement), but even then we consider reactions to such things seriously. We originally experimented with a new comment system due to the common complaints about disqus, and after experimenting the community wanted us to go back - so we did.

Decisions are made sometimes without a majority input because the majority doesn't care until they see a change. Just like a vast majority of the 90 or so active users aren't reading the threads here in the suggestion area. THey aren't really going to be aware of changes until they see them happen, and then they may voice up.

Same is true at ZI. What content we make, how often we do it, is all decided by fans and we typically have yearly polls for it. We take the criticism levied at how we do things and use it to do them better, yada yada.

Obviously your right, everyone can't literally be equal or nothing would get done efficiently. I do have to make decisions, sometimes rather quickly. But we never ignore or disregard. Everyone's opinion does count and does matter, and even a decision was made, reactions to it can dictate if a different change is needed.
 

DARK MASTER

The Emperor
Joined
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@Nathanial Rumphol-Janc I think that mentality is very good for ZD/ZI, because many of us went through extreme hassle trying to get that fundamentally ingrained.

Nate, how would you currently describe your forum role?
 
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Jamie

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Do you guys realize that some users lost as many as 2,000 posts now? I hope you understand that no one ever takes the non post count forums seriously. I guess all of the posts about my sickly mother or my depression in TOYM aren't worth an addition to my post count? I guess a picture thread isn't suitable for the Community Area (which, at this point, what is?)

This is a silly change and should have not been done without the consent of the user base. If @Nathanial Rumphol-Janc is right that ZI has always had a transparency where everyone matters, then he must be upset that ZD-i doesn't seem to show the same courtesy.
 

Jamie

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I suggest that when changes are made, users can at least be allowed to give feedback immediately, not a month down the line when the staff who supposedly care about the community enough to make said changes, can be bothered to drag their arses out of bed to listen to said feedback :)
I suggest changes like this don't be made without users input to begin with, let alone no input for a month after it happens.
 

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