General & specific website features.

So guys, I want to have a brainstorming session with you on what the new website needs in order to become the most amazing animation related website on the Internet.

In order for Psuda to become that amazing place, It needs to expand, improve and change.
It's time for you people to tell us what is wrong with Psuda.
Let us know what you would change about Psuda as it is now.
Also let us know what you'd want to see added to Psuda as features and what you think the site can change regarding looks.
All of this will be taken into consideration in order to build this animation Empire we're all dreaming of!

I'd like you to not simply state stuff like : "black background is ugly, change it"
But actually take the time to think of HOW it needs to change, what would you do to change it and make this place better.
Let's go!

Oh, I made a list the other day when I was trying to make a drawing feature again

this is assumeing the forum is in php BB because most all forums are like Fa and stuff.
Thumbs up on comments (I could do easy)
Rateings on posts like tutorials (easy)
Drawing feature (difficult)
Chatbox(easy)
Rank bars (easy)

All the easy stuff I already know how to do, once we can upload the phpbb to a server at the .com

Okay sounds good!
How about for the actual site, not the forum? anything you'd want to see on there?

Nothing comes to mind lOl

@De8
Posts: 999
PP: 111
lol pretty numbers.

I have a completely blank idea on how the actual website would look, but as for the forum, I think a "Like This" system is good for posts. I don't know if it should be called 'Like' but let's use it for example.
If you ask me, post counts are stupid and not necessary to show in each post; let that be something you can find in your profile info. But for all intents and purposes, I think instead of your post count, it should show how many "Likes" you have.

Furthermore, what if we took the likes, and divided it by your post count, and made that percentage represent the user? That will basically tell the reader how good your posts are. At least, how much people like them.
Come to think of it, instead of only showing how many likes you have, I think it would make a lot of sense to show your post count, and the percentage rating next to it.
We could even determine ranks based on the post count AND rating, and not just the post count.

For example, let's say when someone likes your post, that adds 1 point, or 1 "like" to your posts.
"Dave" has 295 posts, and in his time on the forum, he's gotten his posts "liked" most of the time; let's say he has 220 total likes on all his posts.
Divide 220 by 295 and you get a rating of 74.5%.

That means Dave's user information will show that he has 295 posts and a 74.5% user rating. Based on that, a system automatically will label him with the most fitting rank.

How I think ranks should work is like this:
If you have a very large number of posts and a very high rating, then that would mean you are a very well-liked contributor.
If you have a very large number of posts and a very low, then the ranking system would recognize you as a massive spammer.
If you have a very small number of posts and a very high rating, then that simply means you are starting off well.

In this case, Dave's rank would probably be closer to the last example, except with slightly more posts than a complete newbie.

I think this ranking/rating system would be an excellent way to gauge the quality of each user, and can even be a reference to base user privileges on. Imagine, we could prevent so much trolling in really delicate forums, simply by restricting the place to users with a certain ranking or higher. This could be applied on very subtle levels to pretty much most of the forums. You may respond to that notion with, "Why would we require users to have a base level of integrity to enter certain places?"
And to that I would ask, why would we want users with less than that in those places?

I implore for your criticism/feedback.

Edyrem, your idea sounds pretty good, but we have to really create awareness of this feature in order for people to actually use it and "like" posts.

Also, take into account that some people may get their posts liked simply because they wrote that post, not because it's a good post.

fanboys galore.

Keep in mind as well that there might be percentages of well over 500% on some people, because one post can be liked by more than 1 person.

if I only have 1 post, and psuda has 500 members, and every member likes my post, I have a ridiculous percentage under my name...
We have to work that out somehow, or do you not think that will become a problem later on?

Also, even though you may think post count is a ridiculous think to base rating members on ( I agree with you ) A lot of members on forums worldwide think it's still something that shows and improves one's status on a forum.

We have to counter that somehow, maybe having two types of ranking solves that issue.
1. your Like-rating
2. post count-rating.

A senior member due to post count that has a shitty like-percentage will never become a credible member of Psuda unless he/ she changes his ways.
That sounds good so far.

Also there's a slight chance people will just mess with the system and team up to dislike a member's posts, even though they are good.
Or stuff will happen that happens in videogames these days, called "stat-padding".
This means that people will spam the fuck out of themselves in a topic and like eachothers posts, simply to improve their ratings.
To solve that issue, we have to make sure that every post that we delete, also removes that like from the database and therefore decreases the stats of that person.

Should Psuda also have the feature that any topic opened by a user automatically adds a certain amount of Likes to his account? Because it's also a way of contributing to Psuda that should be appreciated.

Guys I really want your input on this!
Stop lurking and comment to help Psuda out.

I sent you some offline suggestions on MSN.

Yes and they were good, but please also put them up here on Psuda, it's easier for me to find information that way.
I'll be working on this for weeks to come and cant store everything on my pc in separate files. this is easier for organising.

is this for a website or the forums?

Both. all input from you guys is wanted. anything you have in mind for either a website or forum is welcome

Well for the forum I think it seems like there are a lack of people sharing their work. It seems like newer people might be scared to post. I think if the people already here posted more work it would seem more welcoming. Mods/admins should post more work too, it seems like you guys never post your stuff, and that may be scaring people in a way. I'd say just get people to post more of what they do.

Yes but with that possibility also comes a risk.
If people look at too many animations that arent close to their own level, they might feel a sense of demotivation.
That could happen.
So it has to come from both parties, the young and inexperienced being eager about improving and the older experienced people putting up stuff to show what animation can do and be.

For torements and due dates it should have a little panel on the side or something that say for example

10 days till De8 vs Hitorio or something cool like that

Also like FA has a homepage that's made in flash it's like their library of animations we could do that too.

Also we can fix sed problem that om pointed out with a dislike button, and the percent max is 100%
So u can have 500,000,000,012 likes if you have 1 post and be labeled as "starting off well" I'd say 100 posts or more and your reconized as a member if you have over a 50% pecentage and the percent will be right bellow the default pic in green if the number is above 70% well have a neateeral color for 69-50%
and 40-0% will be red. if you have a zero percent and so many posts we should have a temp ban on the accounts (but I guess the mods can do that themselves if the person is anoying or spamming) also I think restrictions to what the user can do by post numbers is stupid but in a way its a good thing to prevent people from makeing BOTS to rate their comments, so I'd say you must have 50+ posts to rate a comment thumbs up or down.
Also if we plan on rateing posts in stars we could do the restriction of you must have 50+ posts and atleast a 70%
Im realy likeing this percentage idea, it should keep mos everyone in check as far as being a troll and being nice on the forum.
Before I read what moh said I was sorta thinking of something similar but I didn't think to average them out.

We should think of ranks too, for this:

Very good insight, de8. I like your 50-post restriction idea.

This is probably really over the top but what if we had, instead of like/dislike, a small panel of ways to rate a post?

"Impressive," "Informative", "Positive," "Funny", or, "Annoying," and "Negative"

That way, someone's rank could have an uncanny degree of precision in describing what kind of poster they are. Of course, this would leave SIX options for a rating instead of like and dislike, which could be pretty confusing... but those are just off the top of my head.

Still, in respect to this system, someone could have a rank of "Skilled Artist" or "Witty Poster" based off of the combination of their ratings! Imagine the possible combinations of these ratings could garner.

Omg like way to many options like what would their be 36 different ranks? 0.0

Exactly.
Ofc I'm being way out of the realism box but I think it's worth entertaining the idea.

Yea definitely, I like the idea just to much code... but if we could make it happen it's actually a really good idea. Catogorizeing each thing someone says to create a accurate rank for them on how they contribute to the site... but it is a lot of things to take into mind.

yeah, like the fact that it's annoying as fuck to have 6 different ways to rate a comment, but it might actually be comfortable... but still, I don't know.

Anyway, what we want out of this rating system is a really telling data on the users, but we want it without the potentially annoying rating system of all these choices.

De8 says
We could have 2 things
like
1 for your comments
would be ur pecentage
then
for your posts
the things you rate with stars
you could have a rank on that
like
if you have good rateings in general for the artistic and help section
you would be labled as a good artist
or somehing idk
Moh says
hmm
that's fucking beautiful.
De8 says
Ikr!
Moh says
data affected by where the data's coming from!
___________

Moh says
rating for comments and ratings for psots?
as in... original posts vs thread replies?
De8 says
well thumbs up and thumbs down for replys
for original posts rateings
Moh says
like, thread starter posts
hmm
idk about that, because we give advice all the time on threads
just a simple like-dislike rating might not do it justice.
Well I mean, what's the harm in having a rating system where you have several TYPES of things (like smart/funny) ?
I mean, it's like rating a post out of 6
except... each level is very different.

We could also color code each rating in a really cool way, kind of like this:



The dominant color of the user's ratings could even tint his username!
Plus, we could encourage the users to rate things frequently as they see them, because they could get a small amount of Psuda Points (for lack of a better word) for each rating they make, causing the community to be full of users actively rating things. And the best part is, users can't rate until they're rated high enough to be considered a contributor! And as long as the new users post, we can be sure that they'll be rated because users get rewarded for rating other users.

And "Psuda Points" can buy you signature space enhancements, avatar space enhancements, cool borders for your signatures, username changes, username coloring, some neat little badges or symbols on your profile and info, etc.

Idk, lets not get to caught up on what you can buy and stuff thats like, idk I'm not a fan of point systems in that sort I like the colors idea though. any thing that can make a regular user stand out a bit :3

What if the topics were the things that gave your name color like your most posted in topic
say u have 100 posts
50 in art
50 in animation
Animation is blue
and art is yellow
your color would be green that would be awesome we could blend to about 25 percent of the colors so thats like a lot of different possible colors

Hey, that's not too shabby, mate.

But why don't you like points/currency/token systems?