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Official Suggestions Thread

CynicalSquid

Swag Master General
Joined
Aug 1, 2012
Location
The End
Gender
Apache Helicopter
While I do love the idea of having a multitude of username changes, I feel like this would get very confusing without something like ZU has that shows the past usernames of members.

Now I know problems will still come with a limited username change policy, but I feel like you have to put too many unnecessary precautions to avoid abuse making the system confusing. I was just suggesting the addition of one more in case someone makes a mistake with their username change or feel pressured into changing it because of confusion with other members. Your username is something you are recognized by on the forums. If you make a stupid error with changing your username even though you felt like your opinion to change it was firm, you shouldn't have to be burdened with the username for the rest of your ZD life.
 

Locke

Hegemon
Site Staff
Joined
Nov 24, 2009
Location
Redmond, Washington
I looked into censors recently and it isn't very feasible. The database stores the censored text so there's no way to selectively recover the uncensored version. There's one plugin out there that makes it store the uncensored version and selectively apply the censor when retrieving it, but it's quite old, unsupported, undertested, and has implicit performance issues, so I'm not comfortable installing it. Hopefully they'll change the censor behavior in a future version of vB.

There is support for purchasable username changes in vbshop, but no way to add an explicit time limit. It'd only be limited by how quickly you can get enough gold.
 
Alright, I kind of wanted to leave this here as an idea, in case it ends up being impossible to fix the POST exploit in the vBShop. I propose we put a policy in place regarding what you are and are not allowed to do with your "special" username "customizations". Of course, there is always the risk of abuse, regardless of a policy, just because this is ZD and people like to be jerks sometimes. Also another issue with keeping it in place is maintaining fairness. If it's left in place, I think it would be in the community's best interest that if someone is interested in trying it out, we are allowed to tell them how it works. Only because exclusion bothers me, and I don't want people getting upset over it. Of course, we could always have it be more like... they have to ask an authority, such as Mister Lawrencium how to do it.

Either way, I think it should be run by the administration via Private Message regarding what a user intends to do with his or her username. The staff will have to be on their toes and do an excellent job communication, but if that can be the case, it might be manageable. There could always be a thread in the staff forum, keeping an updated and organized list of all the users who have contacted the staff, and exactly what they mentioned in their message about what they intended to do. That way, if they make another change without permission, it can be dealt with. If a user does not notify the staff of it, and edit their username without informing you in advance, even if it does not break any rules, the staff is to send them a Private Message (not an infraction/warning) about it, telling them they need to run it by them first. An administrator will disable their shadow setting after sending the PM. The user will need to respond to that Private Message, asking for approval if he or she wish to re-enable his or her usershadow setting.

Also, I began making a bulleted list of issues that need to be addressed regarding an amendment to the rules section regarding what is not allowed in the usershadow edits. For both reference to rule-following and rule-enforcing. This is primarily what will be looked at in regards to what a user has requested of his or her username in the Private Message.

A user may not do any of the following with his or her username shadow:
• injecting any malicious code into your username that could potentially harm anyone's computer
• anything that would break formatting and/or coding on the rest of the site
• using any image taller than the height of the username (10 pixels)
• setting any image behind the text of the username
• using obnoxious and/or illegible fonts
• using unreasonable font sizes
• altering the color of the username

If a username matches any of the above criteria, the user in question should receive appropriate punishment as well as temporarily restricting their access to using the vBShop (if that is at all possible). Of course, this is a pretty rough outline of what I'm trying to get in place here, and would love input on this. I just think if we can maturely handle the exploit, it could be a good opportunity to further customize the formatting of our usernames to express ourselves a little bit. But it has to be fair or else just totally scratch the idea. Just trying to think of how this would work, and I'm probably not being incredibly realistic here. I'm basing this on a hypothetical ZD where everyone actually does as they're told. Because there always is the what-if scenario of someone deciding to inject something harmful into his username. And an infraction and/or ban won't reverse or remedy all of the people who got affected by such an injection. That needs to be one of the priorities regarding handling the exploit.

If this idea were to work, it will need a lot of smoothing out and cooperation from the rest of the community. I would appreciate any feedback on this matter. I always wanted to have the community aid in writing the rules, so that it is deemed fair by all of us, so this could be a nice start to that. Thanks in advance.
 

Heroine of Time

Rest in peace, Paris Caper...
Joined
Aug 6, 2011
Location
Whiterun
Gender
Take a guess.
There is support for purchasable username changes in vbshop, but no way to add an explicit time limit. It'd only be limited by how quickly you can get enough gold.
It's funny that you mention this, actually. A few years ago I was part of a forum that did this. They made it so that the first name change was relatively cheap (I believe it was 800 gold) and any subsequent ones were far more expensive -- something like 2000 or 3000 gold. And we could always put a time limit on it that's not directly built into the shop. I think they did that, if I remember correctly. You could just say that even if they purchase another username change before whatever the time limit is, they won't be able to use it until then.
 

Justac00lguy

BooBoo
Joined
Jul 1, 2012
Gender
Shewhale
I looked into censors recently and it isn't very feasible. The database stores the censored text so there's no way to selectively recover the uncensored version. There's one plugin out there that makes it store the uncensored version and selectively apply the censor when retrieving it, but it's quite old, unsupported, undertested, and has implicit performance issues, so I'm not comfortable installing it. Hopefully they'll change the censor behavior in a future version of vB.

There is support for purchasable username changes in vbshop, but no way to add an explicit time limit. It'd only be limited by how quickly you can get enough gold.
To be honest, if it can't be done that is, why not just keep it but limit it so to say?

I guess we first have to decide what users can and can't have, but users who abuse it will just get warnings and, if so, infractions. I don't know how to do the exploit nor I care for it, just a suggestion really.
 

CynicalSquid

Swag Master General
Joined
Aug 1, 2012
Location
The End
Gender
Apache Helicopter
It's funny that you mention this, actually. A few years ago I was part of a forum that did this. They made it so that the first name change was relatively cheap (I believe it was 800 gold) and any subsequent ones were far more expensive -- something like 2000 or 3000 gold. And we could always put a time limit on it that's not directly built into the shop. I think they did that, if I remember correctly. You could just say that even if they purchase another username change before whatever the time limit is, they won't be able to use it until then.

This if it can be done.

Or if you're considering a multitude of username changes you could cut out the middle man and just put a time limit and people ask you for a name change when they can.
 

Lord Vain

Dawn of a New Day
Joined
Nov 29, 2011
To be honest, on the whole matter of user name change limitations, I can see how it would be reasonable and how it would not be. If a person is going to like constantly make requests to get their name change like once every 1-3 months or something silly like that, then yeah no, we don't have time for that and the higher-ups are likely to get sick and tired of it quite fast. I could honestly imagine that maybe getting a user name change every 6 months-a year would be more reasonable, have them be stretched out along a good amount of time, and of course only have appropriate name changed be agreed upon.

You could have Gold be involved somehow though, like say, have a member donate x amount of Gold to a higher-up as well to get them to do it as even if such requests would only appear after so long I imagine getting a lot at once could very well prove annoying regardless. What the higher-up member could do with that Gold is beyond me, since there's not much of interest to buy lol, but that's just my opinion and idea in regards to the whole matter. Huh, and actually thinking now, maybe you could like limit it to 2 or 3 requests per higher-up member so not one of them is overworked in regards to the name changing process. I dunno if any of what I had to say made sense honestly, as I think I may have rambled a bit, but I'm just gonna leave my post at that.

[maiamai]kcBHwM[/maiamai]
 
Last edited by a moderator:

Terminus

If I was a wizard this wouldn't be happening to me
Joined
May 20, 2012
Location
Sub-Orbital Trajectory
Gender
Anarcho-Communist
I propose that the Community Co-Ordinator usergroup gets a color identical to that of the group userbadge.

community_coordinator.png


I looked at it in Photoshop and the color tags are: Red: 77 Green: 74 Blue: 136
 
Niobium said:
I looked at it in Photoshop and the color tags are: Red: 77 Green: 74 Blue: 136
That probably is accurate based on the image itself. But, if you wanted the true color for what I used to color it, it's:
8fS3C.png


hex: #4a469d
rgb(74, 70, 157)

The color Niobium pulled will probably be ideal for the BP Brown forum skin, however. Lighter color will show up better.
 

Jimmu

Administrator
Staff member
Administrator
Two Suggestions:

1. An option to hide other user's username customisations (bold, italics, underlines, shadows etc...) in a similar way to being able to hide user profile customisations. (Is this even possible?)

2. A way to tell another users local time. I think I've raised this before but if there is not a plugin that will work well could be have it in our post bit and/or in the "About Me" section of our profile. Even if we could just put "GMT +/- (number)" that would be handy. This would be optional for security sake (people who do not want to show their location).
 

Justac00lguy

BooBoo
Joined
Jul 1, 2012
Gender
Shewhale
I propose that we add a new emote of Diddy Kong from Donkey Kong Country throwing down his hat and stomping on it.
If we're adding new emotes then how about we being back the beloved [noparse]:milkbag:?[/noparse] It's what the community wants.

Also maybe we could bring that emote uploader feature back. I proposed a while back, before it was removed, that mods/admins could check over the emotes to make sure they were suitable for the forum.
 

Ganondwarf

Hyrule's Finest
Joined
Apr 22, 2014
Location
Hyrule
Add dislikes - I've seen them on other vBulletin forums, and they work well. Sometimes you can't convey hatred without clicking a button :)
 

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