A word about Meme Replies

Actually, it’s pretty close. If the company that paid for the advertising space isn’t seeing a return on their investment, they’re not going to keep paying for it. They may not have a way to track the exact number of people who drive past, but there’s still a direct correlation between that number and the change in their sales.

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So now that I understand this rule a bit better, I get it. as winter said [quote=“Winterstorm345, post:63, topic:28389”]
You’re browsing the boards when “Oh hey! Winter uploaded a new MOC!” You check it out and can tell a lot of effort has been put into this MOC, but then you see one exposed ball joint, so all you reply is an image that says “Triggered”
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When someone does something like that it can be kinda frustrating, like you put effort into something and they don’t even talk about it just make a joke that gives you no real feedback. Hasn’t really happened to me but I can see it happen to others.

(forbidden don want good discussion, forbidden only wants spam)

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http://cdn4.designbyhumans.com/product/design/u828922/pr93600-2-1634728-640x640-b-p-313131.jpg

But yeah, this rule seems pretty normal. It’d be rather annoying to scroll through a conversation of solely images.

I don’t really understand why people are flipping out. As long as the image has proper context and you have means to properly integrate it into the conversation, you can still post it.

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And how do you plan on proving that? There is absolutely no way to prove that people only like posts based on the person and not the content. Some users may be more likable, but simply is because their post content is more likable. There has to be a reason as to why people like a person to begin with, and on these forums, it is what they are posting that gets the likes. The only people that get likes based on who they are, as apposed to their content, are folks like you who have an established name in the community.

You seem to enjoy exaggerating, don’t you? I’m sure there are plenty of places were 22 people are the majority, but to try and prove your point you’ve made a claim that belittles the facts, to imply that it is less than what it really is.

The point still stands that 22 members thought it was like-worthy. Whether or not they liked it today, yesterday, or last year, they still liked the post. If we were debating the popularity of images over time, it could be a factor, but the point of sharing the post was to point out, with evidence, that image replies can be of value on their own.

But the point of the image still stands, seeing as how Lego shouldn’t have any different values across different brands, with Bionicle and Hero Factory both needing to uphold the same values.

http://images.hellogiggles.com/uploads/2013/07/18/Do-not-think-it-means.jpeg
(It’s just a linked image, not an uploaded one, so it doesn’t waste your serverspace)

A meme would be reusing a popular image or phrase, not just any funny image.

The definition of a meme: “An element of a culture or system of behavior that may be considered to be passed from one individual to another by nongenetic means, especially imitation. A humorous image, video, piece of text, etc. that is copied (often with slight variations) and spread rapidly by Internet users.

“The boards are virtually broken”: Any user can figure this out.

“members are leaving”: Actual posts from boards member saying they aren’t coming back, members just up and leaving (technically could be for other reasons as well), and even boards members becoming more active on other platforms and crediting it to the level of brokeness the boards are going through.

“ranks being lost”: Moderators (who would know just as much, if not presumably more than you) have stated this before, and sited it as one of the reasons PROJECT MESSAGE has been discontinued on the boards.

“It takes hundreds of times to post a comment, like a post, etc”: This may have been an embellishment, but close to a hundred tries is not. There are posts with records of how many tries it took to post, and the fact that doing so has caught on is sad.

As stated above, we do have the word of the Moderators, and that imo (and presumably for others as well) is more important than yours, seeing as how the Moderators are the ones who quite obviously have dedicated large sums of time to using the boards, the back-end, and interacting with the users; far more than you personally have done.

No, we don’t have specifically the exact numbers, but unless you can be any more transparent with revealing the true statistics that you say you have access to, we don’t have any evidence that you aren’t bluffing. If you want to claim that our remarks aren’t of substance, you first need to prove that yours are, and with more than just the “I’m Eljay from TTV which means I’m more important and knowledgeable than you or any of your sources”.

And I’ll repeat, we have both the experience of using the boards and the word of the Moderators who presumably would know more than you. Give us reason to believe otherwise and we might, but so far all you have been doing is saying that we know nothing and that you know everything and only citing being a cast member as your source.

I’d wager that he does indeed understand the issue quite well, if not all the ins and out on the technical side. 502s and 403s have made the site fairly unusable, and new rules like this can make it less enjoyable.

Don’t act like the boards are solely something you guys are doing for the sake of the fans, a sort of sacrifice without any gains. First, the most obvious point to make, is the ad revenue. I can’t say how much you make off of it, but there are plenty of users that are visiting with ads that are generating at least some revenue. Granted, I don’t have exact numbers, but if the ads weren’t profitable, and you were solely going for the best user exprience out of pure kindness of the heart, there wouldn’t be ads. They are worth something. Secondly, having your own community helps with fan retention. If a fan joins your message boards as a regularly visiting member, the TTV brand is embedded deeper into their everyday life, which will mean they will be more likely to watch your videos over a longer period of time, as opposed to just having you in their subscription feed. And of course, those retained viewers due to the boards also add to their worth.

First off, Skype? Ew. Skype is almost as broken as your site has been the past week or so.

But yes, Discord. The place were most of the boards users already have migrated to, due to the issues and fallout here has been.


All this to say that, as always, Eljay really shouldn’t try being the TTV PR guy. Unintentional Instigator, the PR guy? Really? I believe the real issue that Scar, I, and others have is that the user experience has been declining for a while, but has gotten extremely rapid lately, and adding another rule instead of solving the other problems isn’t gonna help. Most users haven’t left simply because they’d miss the people, not the service.

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I must’ve missed something. At what point did popularity have anything to do with this rule change?

We’re not “plenty of places”. We’re the TTV Message Boards. We’re not Little Johnny’s parents; they make their own rules.

Anything can be of value on its own. Somebody clicking a “like” button is all but valueless microsecond action. Even so, just because a number of people like something that doesn’t mean it’s good.

Congratulations; you can Google. Doesn’t change the rules.

Really? Broken? You seem to have posted a novel-length post just fine. A bug or two is a far, far cry from broken. Now who’s the one exaggerating?

Assumptions.

The onus is upon you to prove what you’re saying. You guys made the assumptious claims that started this facade.

Eljay did not say or imply that in any way. You’re putting words in his mouth.

Don’t act like you’re coming here for our sake either.

Define “plenty” and how you gathered this data. Or are you making even more assumptions?

Do you know why BZPower has Premier Membership options where you pay for perks like a blog, rank images, etc.? Because ad revenue doesn’t come close to covering the cost of the forums. They merely help offset the cost. Not one cent of ad revenue is saved. Now consider that TTV doesn’t restrict various message board functions to paying members.

This is correct. It’s business. But part of the responsibility of forming a community around your brand is making logical decisions such as rule changes. If some people leave because they don’t like the rule but the rule is overall better for the boards we have a term for that: Turnover.

Amazing how close they are when Skype has an entire development team dedicated to it. I take this as a compliment.

This is the most befuddling comment I’ve seen. The two are not related in any way whatsoever. It’s like getting mad at a police officer for giving you a speeding ticket when we still have trillions of dollars of national debt. Really, wat?

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Alright this is becoming a hot topic so I might as well say something.

This new topic, ‘targeting’ meme replies- it’s nothing new. Spam has been against the rules since the day the site opened. All I feel happened here was one rule was clarified by a cast member.

Meme topics have also always been against the rules- something a lot of young members do and forget about (or just didn’t read) rule. But that doesn’t make it ok. See?[quote=“Jon, post:1, topic:9196”]
Joke Topics are not allowed anywhere on the boards.The exception to this is the Master-exclusive Highly Suspect Hideout.
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And as Ranaki said,[quote=“Ranaki_Pakewa, post:68, topic:28389”]
The definition of a meme: “An element of a culture or system of behavior that may be considered to be passed from one individual to another by nongenetic means, especially imitation. A humorous image, video, piece of text, etc. that is copied (often with slight variations) and spread rapidly by Internet users.”
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Meme = joke. Therefore, let’s compare this to an IRL situation. If all I did was be annoying to people and say nothing but jokes, with no intellectual discussion or conversation, no one would like me. And in real situations, you can’t just turn everything into a joke. Like, I can’t just go to school and make “dank memes” everywhere, I need to put thought into it. There’s a time and a place for everything. And like I said before, this is nothing new.[quote=“Jon, post:1, topic:9196”]
Spam

Use common sense.
Do not post stuff that is unreadable or off topic.
Do not post useless content, such as only hashtags.
The staff retain discretion to decide what is and is not allowed.
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If it’s off topic, you can’t post it. In order to keep a civil discussion place with no hostility, rules must be set in place. Same reason with political and NSFW discussion. And double posts might as well be the same thing.

AND I think another worthy thing to note would be Eljay said you can be suspended for doing so. For the third time, nothing new. This is in the rules.

Again, see? It’s not like this is something new that just got implemented today. All I did was cite the rules, just like this topic.

But that doesn’t mean I don’t feel that can’t implement my own opinion on this rule while this topic is still up. Simply put, if it’s done on an intellectual way, it should be allowed. For example, Ranaki used the perfect example on this very topic.


It was used in a good way. After all, memes are dirivite of a certain situation that becomes popularized and used across the Internet (or World Wide Web for us old timers). And this isn’t some copy and pasted Google Definition, it’s how I perceive things. After all, I am not exactly new to these boards.

Like, I have seen this site grown, and I’m really active. I come on here almost everyday. I really love this site. But some rules just need to be made. Like for example, the leak policy. That rule worked out perfectly.

So all in all, I don’t think anyone was completely wrong. In fact, no one really did anything. All this topic was was a clarification of the rules. Again, just restating the rules. A friendly reminder was what this was.

It’s just saying add to discussion. For example in the Bionicle 2016 topic I have used a few memes and gifs myself but not without adding a paragraph around them. (I’m sure someone has seen these posts) And I know people are starting to be affected by this ordeal:

But I get it. The reason we got this ‘friendly reminder’ (again my words) is because of the recent 502 and 403 surge. This was the reason Project MESSAGE was moved to Discord and why this is happening. And it does take up server space. So did what Ranaki did.

Use photo sharing websites instead of using precious space and wasting website space. In fact, this really even shouldn’t just go for memes- I feel all images, if possible, should be linked, such MOC images.

And that’s it. Spam is nothing new, and there wasn’t even really a reason for this too be as big as a problem as its becoming. And yeah I’m usually the type of guy to make a meme and say something like “MEMEZ R OUR LYFE BLOOD” but I feel this needed actually discussion. Like what we are trying to achieve. I really tried to be on everyone’s side with this one. And everyone else probably made better posts then me anyway. Ranaki, Scar, Eljay, Takuma, and King all had great points.

TL;DR?

Just read the rules.

11 Likes

If you’re leaving, why are you still posting here?

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I was directly refering to Eljay’s comment about quote;

where he implied popularity, not content, is what constitutes a like.

Again, you’ve taken what I’m saying away from it’s context. I was directly referring to his absolute statement, which was used to trivialize Scar’s point. Give me proof that I’m wrong, but generally 22 likes on a post that isn’t the start of a topic is generally high for the boards.

By that logic, in what measure can you value something as good or bad? Aside from a supreme deity declaring “Thou shalt not meme”, how can it’s value be measured aside from the affirmation of our peers? Likes are the boards measure of value. Each like is more than just a microsecond action, it is a persons explicit support or recognition of the content of the post.

Never said it didn’t.[quote=“TakumaNuva, post:69, topic:28389”]
Really? Broken? You seem to have posted a novel-length post just fine. A bug or two is a far, far cry from broken. Now who’s the one exaggerating?
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Aside from the time it takes to write a novel-length post, a normal shorter post has doubled in time to post due to the need for incessant button-mashing for the post to actually post.

Unless you can provide pure evidence, your dismissals are no more than a toddler sticking their fingers in their ears. If you can provide proof that Eljay has done more than Slime, John, Waj, etc, I’ll gladly accept otherwise. However, with real evidence you can find that according to the Users page, you can find that all three of the aforementioned Moderators have spent more time with the site than Eljay.




Even Scar and I have more experience with the Boards than Eljay



Is that enough proof, and not just assumptions for you?

Are the other testimonies on this very topic not enough? Unless you’re asking for me to divulge private chat room messages, you can find many testimonies across the site of how often the errors occur, and the amount of abandoned accounts of long-time users are also public for you to see on the Users page.

Never said I was, just pointing out that this site isn’t only a labor of love.

Simply put, unless every one of the users has an adblocker, each and every non-adblocking user is generating ads. Not that hard a concept, unless you just want to apply “assumptions” to everything. Need me to link you to the Google AdSense page to prove that ads generate revenue?[quote=“TakumaNuva, post:69, topic:28389”]
Do you know why BZPower has Premier Membership options where you pay for perks like a blog, rank images, etc.? Because ad revenue doesn’t come close to covering the cost of the forums. They merely help offset the cost. Not one cent of ad revenue is saved. Now consider that TTV doesn’t restrict various message board functions to paying members.
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They also have how many giveaways? And don’t say that it is only sets that Lego has donated for that purpose, unless they have been stockpiling retired sets from over ten years ago for it. I work in IT and know how much serverspace can cost, and ad revenue can compensate for server cost. [quote=“TakumaNuva, post:69, topic:28389”]
This is the most befuddling comment I’ve seen. The two are not related in any way whatsoever. It’s like getting mad at a police officer for giving you a speeding ticket when we still have trillions of dollars of national debt. Really, wat?
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It’s closer to spoilered for politics The war on drugs, which has been just as much of a lost cause as Prohibition was, while the money, manpower, etc could’ve been used for other things.

If I’ve missed anything, I’m sure you’ll let me know. :stuck_out_tongue:

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I might get a lot of flack for this, but I am going to throw my hat into the ring about this. Personally, I agree with both of these and it would be hard to decide which post describes my opinion better.

I personally have my own evidence of something like this happening (except it wasn’t a meme).

My most liked post was on the Bionicle is Officially Cancelled Topic where I posted a quote that I felt described the end of G2 Bionicle and was something that people could discuss.

Link is here:

However, Meso posted right under me with the word “sigh” that added almost nothing to the discussion, yet at the time of posting this, his post has almost 75% more likes than my post.

The reason for this is most likely caused by Meso being a cast member, so people will like almost whatever he posts, because they want to look “cool” or something like that. You then compare this to a Master who has not been on the boards that long, so most people don’t know that much about him.

All in all, the main reason people get likes on the boards is mostly because of what they post, but it can sometimes be attributed to the amount of popularity they have among the other users of the boards

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Dear Lord, Anaru. Please stop acting like a child. Even I know to at least stay civilized with my posts, even if I’m not exactly TTV’s favorite right now.

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Gonna give my word as a Mod here for a second: the biggest issue on the site is the glitchiness, not the memes.

So why are you guys complaining about spammy memes being outlawed? (Which has, for quite a while, been a rule we’ve been enforcing regardless.) You guys are practically defending Double Posts when you do this.

Sure the Double Post rule is weird, but it helps us make more thorough discussion and utilizes the site’s functions for the better. Plus it cuts down on spam. That’s what this rule is meant to do, I think. To make sure we encourage discussion.

Plus memes aren’t being 100% banned. Did you guys miss this?

But those are just my thoughts.

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I would like to thank @Scarilian, @pizzacheetah, @Ranaki_Pakewa, and anyone else who has been able to provide their input in mature and meaningful ways. I understand there is a lot to this rule that might not be ideal to many users, and I am more then willing to have a dialogue with our members regarding it, so long as we can do so appropriately.

Between this, work, and the stupid 403 error I’m really swamped at the moment. But I’ll do my best to address everyone when I get the chance and make any adjustments if I deem them necessary.

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I still don’t get why everyone is saying things like “TTV is trying to take away our jokes” when they’re really not, @Eljay clearly said that we could still post memes, we just need to add more discussion, an example would be


I see an awesome moc, so I post an image that perfectly sums up my feelings about it, but instead of just putting that, I also include what I like about the MOC some constructive criticism (If it’s needed) all while maintaining a positive look on the MOC, because someone did put effort into making it

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ok

Well, I guess I might as well touch on this. A while ago I remember a case (I’m not saying names but people may remember) when a user once posted something like ‘yeah’ and the user was a long time user, and the post got quite a handful of likes. But then another, news user said basically ‘yeah’ and got no to a few likes. This could be an isolated case tho.

That’s not to say this always happens, but sometimes the user is a factor in likes, especially if they are a good poster and don’t post often. Usually less of something is more appreciated, one of the points that is trying to be made with this whole ordeal.

I’m going to back you up on this and say this is correct.

This is also true. It seems that the site actually handles the shorter posts worse, maybe the long posts need less time to process or something. Idk how it works.

The users page is the post solid eve since on the site there is. There are statistics as previously mentioned however they are not publicly available to all users. However, tho less adenced, the most concrete evidence would be that page.

I remember this. Like I said, earlier, there was another example of this and I think you had an even better one than I.

This also frequently happens when the “OG users” log on. (People who were the very first masters) Many of them rarely still visit, so people like their posts. Like I said in my last post,[quote=“moa, post:70, topic:28389”]
After all, I am not exactly new to these boards.
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I have seen it happen.

Exactly. Spammy memes are outlawed, but they weren’t outlawed today. People seem to be forgetting this.

Thank you!

This was the perfect post TBH, you summed up everything in a paragraph.

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Were both of them responding to the same post?

1 Like

I think everyone is missing that jokes aren’t outlawed, we just should add more
discussion and actual thoughts to the jokes, and to be less spammy about how we use these memes.

I didn’t end up saying something really dumb right? I do that from time to time.

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Thank you Moa, you just made my day

No, but you did kind of just paraphrase my point that’s two posts up. :stuck_out_tongue:

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