I addressed and rewrote some of that in my post. Hopefully tdev. He said no, so I'm defending my opinion. --- Post updated --- HERE IT IS!!! @tdev , I noticed that you voted no for the forum ranks idea. Before you go to another page, please take the time to read this. I’ve put hours of effort into this post. Although I respect your opinion, please hear me out as to why I believe that ranks should be added. Please note that I have used spoilers to prevent this post from taking up too much room. This post is over 6 pages long, so it shows how much I care about these issues, and mostly, how much I care about the devs and the community. Spoiler: Reasons why we need forum ranks (THIS IS OVER 6 PAGES LONG, SO OPEN WITH CAUTION) INTRODUCTION A Forum ranking system is a common feature on many forums, and even BeamNG has the bare bones of one (Members and Devs). A forum ranking system gives members who are active and obey the forum guidelines certain privileges, and can provide a sort of “Reward System” for good behavior. Beamng has a basic ranking system, and I believe that it can be improved, thus I have composed this post to present my arguments and beliefs. This post has my commentary on the rank system, and some case studies on ranking and administration on other online communities. PART ONE: The BeamNG Community BeamNG has a large, diverse and creative community headed by some of the most inventive game developers I’ve ever seen. The BeamNG community is made of modders, forum posters, game developers, movie makers, and other interesting people. BeamNG is a rather strong community for one that revolves around a video game. In BeamNG early stages, most of the community members were a small group of people who were interested in this revolutionary new vehicle sandbox. Actually, some of the developers were still community members at this point. People collaborated with the devs to make amazing things, and eventually some things were discovered that blew everyone’s minds. People realized that BeamNG was not just a racing game, it was an accurate physics sandbox! People started messing with aerodynamics and made planes! Users took to the water with boats! More recently, we’ve been riding the rails! Eventually people took to YouTube and started posting movies. @Nadeox1 posted a series of police chase videos, that showed up in a certain someone’s recommended section while I was watching Need For Speed videos. I began monitoring the community daily, at home, waiting for my father to grade papers at the local high school, at friends houses, etc. I saw an amazing community, and finally I joined the community last year after monitoring it for over a year. People were constantly churning out mods, and people respected each other when I watched the forums, but when I joined I noticed a sudden drop in the quality of posts, mod reviews, etc. I was shocked as I watched the devs scramble to deal with issues that USERS of THEIR GAME had caused. @Nadeox1 learned it the hard way when a couple of users took a stab at wittiness the wrong way (We know this as the “Duck Incident”). The forums have been flooded with people asking for licensed vehicles, and bumping year old threads. Did this all started when I joined, or was it all ignored by me when I was naive? I may have been looking at the past through rose-tinted glasses, but it seems that the quality of the forums has taken a blow as of late, and there are obviously reasons why. PART TWO: The Great Leap Backwards People constantly complain about the forums going in the Sh**er as of late, and I side with them. People have been abusing about every part of the site. The Forums have been abused in many cases (Duck Incident, Update Speculation Thread Controversy, Spam), same with PMs (Porn PM) and the File Uploader has been used to upload things that break the site guidelines (The mod that made covet a penis). This site is too easy to abuse. The second you sign up for an account (You don’t even have to verify that you own the game), you can do about anything on the site. People are thrown in without experience, and without being taught the ways of this site, have no clue what to do. This causes a lot of the issues such as thread-bumping, and asking for licensed cars. The PM system is thought of as private, thus people treat it as such. This is how we ended up with the infamous porn PM. The Review System needs to be rethought. I see reviews that are one star and are just insults to the creator of the mod. There should be a system that verifies if the mod has been downloaded, and if possible, having the moderators review the one-star reviews. PART THREE: The Maturity Divide It’s fairly obvious, some of the members on here act like little kids. I don’t see why you tolerate that. Remember when the “Update Speculation Thread” was locked? That was because there were SIX PAGES of people spamming “I WANT IT NOW!!! GIVE ME THE UPDATE ALREADY!!! Etc…). Those obviously weren't mature members. We don’t need that. Remember when the community was full of creative, mature people? I wish it stayed that way. Unfortunately there’s nothing at this point that allows us to distinguish the immature users from the mature ones. And, without ranks or better moderation, there’s nothing we can do… PART FOUR: The Viral Age Even though YouTube brought me to this community, it’s also a source of problems for this community. At this point, BeamNG is rather successful, so inevitably, famous youtubers start to play it. Said famous youtuber’s viewers are mostly kids. You can see where I’m going with this… Little kids make up a large portion of the immature users. It makes sense, as they haven’t physically and mentally matured yet, but that’s no excuse to have problems on the site. We need a stricter age limit. I know that you guys want to keep the ESRB rating low, but this website currently isn’t there. We have people with NSFW avatars. People on here have pretty bad mouths at times. Sure, all that is against the rules, but unless said rules are enforced, this site isn’t safe for kids. I think that we should either tighten the rules (as you will see in the next section), or we shouldn’t allow little kids on here. PART FIVE: The Slaps on the Wrists You might not want to hear this, but us members only account for most of the issues on the forums. Unfortunately, even though you guys try to regulate our forums as well as you can, it isn’t working… I go to banned members profiles, and I see comments that reveal when they will be returning, and don’t forget that this includes members who’ve harassed the devs, posted entire wikipedia articles on the forums, and even posted PAGES of porn in a PM. You guys are a bit too lenient on troublemakers, and it shows in the community. The Sh*posting keeps coming in droves, so obviously something isn’t working… That little grey box above the posts? I don’t think many people use that! You guys have too much on your shoulders, you’re trying to make this amazing game, and babysit people who act like five year olds at the same time. You need to stop tolerating this crap that causes you stress, and focus on your masterpiece. Undust that ban hammer, and make the community show some respect! You have rules, but it seems that some people act is if they’re only suggestions. PART SIX: A System of Respect and Prestige Now, here comes the good part, the reasons for forum ranks. Please note, that I reference part eight, the case studies, multiple times during this part, so I recommend reading them if there’s stuff you don’t understand. A forum ranking system would be extremely beneficial to this community. It would easily distinguish the experienced users from the immature ones. Regulating new members is necessary. There are accounts made just to cause problems (I found an account called “Fera the Penis Eater”, and there was one account that solely existed to request for someone to buy the game for them). Then there was the account used to release the “Penis Covet”. We need to restrict users until we know that they’re serious and productive members. The opposite extreme also needs to be addressed. We have a number of members who are extremely productive, and who put tons of effort into helping the community, but they have the same privileges as anyone else. A ranking system would be able to provide both restrictions and rewards. However, the ranking system could also be used as a punishment. On the IGCD, anyone who is banned loses ALL of the points that they have accumulated. The same could be done for ranks. If someone is banned for serious reasons, then they should lose any high ranks and special privileges that they gained. A ranking system would have to be custom-tuned for our community, and as I’m not really an expert, or in charge, you guys should set it up yourselves. It’s YOUR community and YOUR game after all. I could provide advice, but you guys need to set it up. One last thing, that will be addressed in part seven… We need community moderators. PART SEVEN: Local Enforcers Let me be blatant. We seriously need community moderators. End of story. As of now, we have the BeamNG devs babysitting all the members, but the Devs are the DEVELOPERS OF THE GAME! I’m sure that the devs like making new vehicles, new content, optimizing the game, and fixing bugs more than cleaning threads. And, the devs don’t need to do this. Community Moderators in other online communities are trusted individuals with basic moderating privileges. They take a large workload off of the main moderators. You guys would benefit from community moderators as you would be able to work on your game in peace and only have to moderate the serious stuff. It makes complete sense to have community moderators, and I’m surprised that we don’t have any. PART EIGHT: Case Studies Spoiler: Case Study: Scratch Scratch is another community that I am rather active on, and it has a very bare-bones approach to a ranking system, but it is very effective in fighting spam. There are two community ranks, and an administrative rank. The New Scratcher rank is given to new users on the site, it gives the user basic access to the site, but it has some restrictions, including the “Sixty Second Rule” on commenting (You cannot post another comment for sixty seconds after posting a previous one). This rule serves as an effective block against spam. New Scratcher cannot use cloud variables, a website feature that uploads data to the cloud, and they have to wait 120 seconds between forum posts. When a user has posted enough projects, comments, etc. and has been on the website for around two weeks, they are promoted to Scratcher. Scratchers do not have to wait between comments, but still have to wait sixty seconds between forum posts (another effective block against spam) (This Sixty Second rule is a source of major controversy on the site, however…). The Scratch Team are the moderators of the site, and they have an administrative role. I used scratch as an example, as it is one of the few online communities that I am used to. Spoiler: Case Study: BeamNG We all know BeamNG, thus I do not need to give a description. BeamNG has two ranks as of this time, one for members, and one for the devs. Members sort of have free reign on what they want to do, they can post in the forums, edit their profiles, pm, and upload files. Anyone is able to make as many accounts as they want and this resulted in many other issues . Developers serve as moderators and also have to develop a game, thus they have a large workload on their shoulders. Spoiler: Case Study: IGCD IGCD (or Internet Games Car Database) is a website that compiles lists of cars in video games and compares them to their real-life counterparts. IGCD has two ranks: Members and Administrators. Members are able to comment on pages, upload images, and compile lists of cars. Administrators are Administrators. Although it doesn’t have forums per say, it has an interesting method of punishment. When members post pictures, reviews, etc. they get “points”. These points are sort of a symbol of prestige, as members with high numbers of points are widely respected by the community. However, if a member breaks the guidelines and is banned, when they return, their points are reset to zero. PART NINE: The Wrap Up I want the dev team to have a long-overdue discussion. Even if you reject my suggestions, you need to seriously discuss the topic of this site. You started as a team of people who cared about their work, and you’ve tried to keep it that way, but I think that this website has been a hurdle. You’ve been forced to rush your updates to the endless wall of “When will the update be ready?”. This community has caused emotional stress for many of your members (@gabester when the SBR4 was despised by the community, even though it’s one of the most original cars I’ve ever seen, @Nadeox1 with the harassment over “Ducky”) and I don’t even think that it has the right to. This community is just a bunch of people tapping at their computers. My suggestions are one of my attempts to help you guys. I can’t possibly imagine what you do (I can’t do JBeam and Materials.cs correctly for the life of me). A ranking system would allow for new members to be regulated and prevent people from joining just to cause problems. Community Moderators would take a lot of the stress off your shoulders, as the little stuff would be taken care of by us. I care about you guys, and I’m just trying to help. If you wish to discuss this subject further, please do it in this thread, as this affects the entire community, thus they deserve to see anything that affects them. Good luck! Fera Spoiler: Links to my sources www.igcd.net (IGCD) www.scratch.mit.edu (Scratch) https://scratch.mit.edu/community_guidelines (Scratch Community Guidelines) https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Stp6rqdN7UM2_0nIcPRNII0ffXqWrI030UmTvZxmPiM/ (IGCD Rules) I hope that you found this useful and were able to see where I was coming from on the concept of forum ranks. If you still wish to not implement these, then I respect that, and we will continue on after this. Thanks for your time!
What you say here is just outstanding. This would most certainly make this forum much better. Users keep saying that they want this forum to get better, this is the way to do it.
I don't want anymore Duckies, no more Wikipedia Articles, no more General Discussion and Update Speculation threads getting locked, and no more garbage. I want this forum to be a better place.
What was the "Duck incident"? I have had the game for a while, but only recently joined the forums. Sorry for the off-topic.
Ok... So the duck incident was when a user was cussing about calculators on the "General Discussion Thread". Nadeox1 thought it would be witty to replace every cuss work with a pixelated duck. Then the shitposting community hijacked the thread for at least 10 pages (Which have been deleted), and one user (I don't remember who) made a website with something messed up involving nadeox and the duck. Then there was a ban wave and all the involved pages were deleted. That's why there are pixelated ducks in some avatars... There's your story...
why did that post felt like reading a political program https://beamng.com/threads/rubber-ducky.36441/#post-544814
i dont mean we need to force users to use pre-made avatars, but it would help clear up blue face avatars and let people who have nsfw avatars still pick an avatar after they lose the privlage
I consider myself a Ducky veteran. I watched that drivel unfold, and I didn't like not one second of it. I really didn't like that duck, and I didn't see any humor in it. The only thing I did like is when tdev and Nadeox1 put that duck in his place.
Yes you are. Quite literally nothing has changed, you joined barely 7 months ago... Welcome to the internet, controversy and spam heaven. As for that other stuff, old news. There was a mod over a year ago that added a dinner plate on a sping to the roof of the Pessima with food that looked like a dick and balls, was pretty hilarious and a good response to all the begging for cars, a thing that also happened long before you joined.. Nope, a lot of mods on the mods section are total shit, they get way less hate than they truly deserve. Good example would be anything by peter beamo, Covet with a line of faces on the roof deleted, 4.5 stars. Jalkku's scratch made Ford Capri, 4 stars. As for the download verifier, was already in place and no longer works, even if it did it takes 1 second to click download then you can leave a review before testing it anyway. Moderators check the reviews all the time. Really? You can't remember more than 2 or 3 users, it took like 10 minutes for me to work out who the jackasses are on here. Again, happened years before you even joined, so no. It didn't make any real difference and surely not in your time. Takes me more time to fart than it does to make a new account, banning paying customers of your game is just a bad idea, period. 3 month bans (like Benjamin Tam and the other cuck got) for posting porn is more than enough. Ranking system is already there to give you an idea of exactly that, the more positive ratings the better, you're basically asking for a system that is already in place... You haven't been here long enough to know this, but we had community moderators, many more moderators in general. It didn't go too well. There were disagreements on what should happen and the differences between individual judgements on what should be the punishment for breaking a given rule. Its better as it is. Most of these are just "administrators" and "members", both of which we already have... Again we had members only forums a few years ago that would only allow people who bought the game to use the forum and download mods, again it was a bad idea and was therefore removed. They really don't care about that, its been that way for years. They are working to a schedule and no amount of begging changes that. No one liked the SBR4 because they found it ugly, which it really was in the early body shell screenshots. There is nothing wrong with that, its their opinion and the very reason the forum exists. As for the Ducky thing, yes that went too far, but again it was like a 3 day thing that got deleted and hasn't been mentioned since, hardly the end of the world. In summary, almost all of these ideas have been in place in the past and removed as they haven't worked well for various reasons. The way things are handled now is better than ever. As someone who has been on the RoR forum since 2008 and BeamNG since day one, it has never been as well moderated and looked after as it is today. The reports I put in are incredibly fast and everything seems to be working well. If it ain't broke don't fix it. tl:dr List of suggestions for things that already existed and failed, moderators are doing a great job already, crisis averted.
Clearly nothing would improve with that mindset. Something needs to be done. Everyday things are getting worse, and like modem said, the current system isn't working. I joined before Fera did, and things didn't seem as bad then as it does now, at least from what I can remember.
What mindset? Thats just what happened. Yes everyone thinks like that, "oh the summers were so much better when I was a kid" "People used to be so much nicer back then" You remember the good shit and forget the bad stuff, thats how it goes.
It's true that bad stuff happens, but it can become preventable. One good thing about what Fera is proposing, is that it would prevent more incidents like the Ducky one from ever happening, or at least occur on a much smaller scale. A lot of the crap that happens on here occurs when its nighttime for tdev and the rest of the staff. If we had more moderators, especially some in the Western Hemisphere, which is something I keep saying, a lot of those incidents would be shot down before they even have the chance to escalate into ones on a larger scale that are remembered months to even years later.
Yes and we had that in the past, theres a reason its gone now. A small team of moderators is way better as its much more predictable and there aren't any unfair judgements. The ducky thing was a thread that was around for a while too, for a couple of days, if I remember correctly nadeox even posted in it before it was deleted, it only got out of hand when someone linked a website they made about it, then it was deleted and hasn't came up since, the moderators had plenty of time to respond to it.
Remember that it sets limitations on users with lower ranks, so that would mean that unruly users would have less access to starting a fuss like that. Another thing Fera proposed, is the possibility of more moderators, either chosen by the staff or voted on by members. The majority of the ones we have now are in the same timezone, and we all see how much it affects this forum. A lot of the stuff here escalates because nobody is there to stop it before it becomes the infamous moments we all remember. With more moderators, there would be somebody around to stop it when other moderators like Nadeox1 and Synsol are asleep. I don't think we need a huge number of moderators, we just need a few more that are in different timezones.
