Minor suggestions and big question

[Dina]

About sticky's and announcements:

1. Make the rules obvious once in the beginning to new members. (Already doing that?)
2. Make the rules available from any page through for instance a humble button in the top like 'watched topics' (this instead of the rules as Announcements in each forum).
3. If there's an important announcement which everyone should know but it's enough to say once I'd personally rather see the members recieving it as PMs instead (as long as it doesn't become spams!).

Reaching admins/mods:

1. I'd like one address to reach the admins (as the thought was regarding the ombudsmen). One address to reach a certain forum's mods ex. modsplace@...., modsmain@.... etc.
2. An easy contactinfo-list from, for instance, the FAQ-button and/or the Memberlist-button (this contactinfo cannot be found on too many places I believe, or too easy).
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I also got a big question for the future which seem relevent since it's often an issue when new suggestions are made: Is there a plan for how to handle the expanding BUS? I may be remembering wrong here but wasn't it about at least 500 members less when I joined in February? Maybe thousand? This increase cannot have been constant through time and then is there also an expectation about even higher increase of new members with time as BUS becomes a bigger name? Any thoughts? Any plan?

[sassy koala]

I'm only posting in color to differentiate between me and you....

1. Make the rules obvious once in the beginning to new members. (Already doing that?)
I believe that when you register at bus, you have to read the rules, or soemthing.
2. Make the rules available from any page through for instance a humble button in the top like 'watched topics' (this instead of the rules as Announcements in each forum).
That's an interesting idea, but I'm not sure it would get any attention as it would as a topic on the board

3. If there's an important announcement which everyone should know but it's enough to say once I'd personally rather see the members recieving it as PMs instead (as long as it doesn't become spams!).
The problem is that you can't do a mass, group pm. it has to be individually and with thousands of people, that would take alot of time.

Reaching admins/mods:

1. I'd like one address to reach the admins (as the thought was regarding the ombudsmen). One address to reach a certain forum's mods ex. modsplace@...., modsmain@.... etc.
If you hit the write a report, you will be sending a pm to all the mods and admins. So, they will all get it. Otherwise to contact individual ones, you can click on their names at the top of the paage and send a pm.

2. An easy contactinfo-list from, for instance, the FAQ-button and/or the Memberlist-button (this contactinfo cannot be found on too many places I believe, or too easy).

Contact info in regards to what? e-mail, or other things? If you go into a persons profile, you can click the e-mail button and shoot off an e-mail pretty quick. Otherwise, any other info I think is up to the individual user to provide, if they want to.

[Laura]

3. If there's an important announcement which everyone should know but it's enough to say once I'd personally rather see the members recieving it as PMs instead (as long as it doesn't become spams!).
The problem is that you can't do a mass, group pm. it has to be individually and with thousands of people, that would take alot of time.

The admins can send mass email (not to a selected group, only to entire board or whole usergroups) but I don't think we can do it with pm. We never use this feature as far as I know. I wonder what the consensus is, whether emails or stickies are preferred?

[jamie28]

something like that, maybe, mab.

but yeah, i find it a realy nuisance to have half a page of stickies and announcements a the beginning of every forum. just a personal pet peeve, i guess, but it seems to take up a lot of space, where i'd rather see a variety of posts and different topics.

also, if a thread is popular it doesn't really need to be stickied. it will be bumped often just because people post in it. if people stop posting in it.......let it die a natural death.

jamie

[Dina]

Yeah Jamie kinda put the hammer on the nail with the boredom regarding many stickies and announcements. Personally I never see when something important or new is happening since they're all there all the time and I simply scroll them out of view.
In the beginning I thought I was doing something wrong since it kept saying everywhere that I gotta read this before my next post...

I don't know if I'm the only one who couldn't find anything for several months. I still find it quite hard. Now I know where the board-leadership structure-thread can be found but it's not updated.

Otherwise to contact individual ones, you can click on their names at the top of the paage and send a pm.

Yeah but problem with that is that they have to be online right (admins)? There's no easy and not forgetable way to find who's an admin/mod, where, how to contact her/him, the ombudsmen - what are they for, how do I contact them, regarding what shall I contact sine nomine and bla bla.'
I just simply miss a collected "BUS- contactinfo"-page.

/Dina -tired

[swanfaerie]

well the good news is, most things aren't forever stickified. perhaps if the stickies were destickied sooner that would help with the long list at the beginning of some forums?

[Tiarin]

Yeah but problem with that is that they have to be online right (admins)? There's no easy and not forgetable way to find who's an admin/mod, where, how to contact her/him, the ombudsmen - what are they for, how do I contact them, regarding what shall I contact sine nomine and bla bla.'
I just simply miss a collected "BUS- contactinfo"-page.

on the index page, each forum has the mods for it listed next to it. also, they're listed at the top of the forum (the "moderators" that's above "users browsing this forum"). you can click on the names there (regardless of whether someone is online) and go to someone's profile and send a pm.

(at least that's how it's set up in subsilver; is it the same in other themes?)

i can see how a handy contact info page which included the ombudspeople could be useful, though; maybe we could add them to the board leadership info when we update it?

[guest11]

Perhaps I'm thinking into this too much... but BUS is basically a database, right? I'm pretty sure I could write a VB program that could poke into the database and send mass PMs... it might take a day or so, but I'm pretty sure I could do it.

Perhaps I'm thinking BUS is a lot simpler than it is, but I thought it was basically a database. And PMs were stored in fields in a table in that database. So a program could be written that would change the fields so that essentially, a PM can be sent to everyone... correct me if I'm wrong.

[Green Beauty]

I would just like to point out that there are some members on bus who do not like to recieve pm's and therefore will not read them.

[guest11]

The same is true of e-mails... and the threads that are stickied. There is no way to get everyone to read a certain message...

[Dina]

silverdragonfly:

Still I know it's easier to find the mods than the admins, 'cause there is a differnece between mods and admins right? And I've already pointed out that it's mostly the admins which are hard to find, unless they are online, if there's not anything I've missed? Except finding the thread here in administrativia.
Anyway, my English is quite fine but still it took a while to get used to an English board (never visited one before), and maybe therefore it was even harder to find everything.

*Dina just wanna point out how fine it would be with a simple and clear contactlist-info to reach from everywhere on the board and if there's an interest she can collect it and write it all down in a nice *.txt *

Deskana and Alex:

Yeah, no one can force anyone to read any info. But I would jump up and sing a crazy frog-song to anyone who let me get rid of all the stickies, 'cause I'd really like some info but I get really tired by all the stickies which are always there, even when I've read them, and therefore I never see any important stuff anylonger...

[Tiarin]

i can see how the admin thing is confusing. the people listed as "moderators" for the main board are actually the admins (but there's no way you would know that just from looking.)

i think we're going to add a contact list somewhere; it's a really good idea.

[jamie28]

Yeah, no one can force anyone to read any info. But I would jump up and sing a crazy frog-song to anyone who let me get rid of all the stickies, 'cause I'd really like some info but I get really tired by all the stickies which are always there, even when I've read them, and therefore I never see any important stuff anylonger...

same here.

i sort of glanced at all the stickies, now i just scroll past them. if there have been any new ones since i joined, i probably missed them

e-mails and/or pm's would be more likely to be read by more people, more often, i think.

jamie

[Dina]

silverdragonfly wrote:
the people listed as "moderators" for the main board are actually the admins

Really? Haha no I had no idea, now I finally get what everyone has said for a while! Hehe only took me a half year then to get it... These are the mods of main (and main is the forum called Bodies under siege right?) Laura, Proximity, splitimage, Chimera, limestone, silverdragonfly AND also these are always the administrators of the whole board? + sine nomine? Had no idea.

Actually there's no way to know that Bodies under siege-part is the mainforum either. I have just made a conclusion that that's the way since there's most new posts there.

i think we're going to add a contact list somewhere

Ah I would love that!



/Dina - in pyjamas at 1.21 pm...