And that’s fine. You don’t have to agree. However, that isn’t going to change anything.
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Let’s assume you’re right. You’re still not paying for anything. There’s no money coming out of your pocket. It would be like saying you’re paying the billboard companies to drive down the highway past all the billboards.
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Its like not really that big of a deal.
All Eljay is saying is to add some comments to the picture. Even if it does seem a bit redundant. Even if I haven’t seen it be that big of problem… I mean you guys made the rule so that’s that but it kinda seems unnecessary.
I guess posting just an image as a response to a discussion can be funny but usually that image does not lead to any more discussion. As apposed to image and a comment in 1 post which can lead to more discussion.
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I think there are definitely times when a single picture or joke are entertaining and help make the boards feel friendly and fun, but I can think of just as many times where it ends up being spam. As I stated before, I’m fairly indifferent to this, and I trust that the board moderators and staff will treat members fairly in regard to this rule.
Will we see people post single meme posts still, just now with canned or forced dialogue just to bypass this rule? Probly. Will those posts still add very little to discussion? Sure. Is it a big deal?
Well, I don’t think it really is, but in the end, I feel it’s probly for the best. I know when I post gifs or memes or what have you, I usually feel like I should write something with it anyway, since otherwise I feel like it’s basically getting off-topic. Since I already felt that way, this rule isn’t the craziest thing in the world to me, but I can see why people might get a little upset. “A picture is worth 1000 words” and all that, but I have a feeling that if you use the tools on this message board to your disposal you’ll find that you can convey the meaning you want to in other ways (or even using pictures, but with a quick notation).
The rules of this board are public, simple, clear, and easy to follow. You even get multiple chances to mess up. This is hardly draconian.
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Listen, if you want to throw a temper tantrum cause you aren’t getting your way, be my guest. You’ll be punished based on which rules you break. But you aren’t doing you or anyone else any favors, and you certainly aren’t helping your argument. You’re just acting like a child.
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Perhaps Scar is just trying to add to the discussion?
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I mean, you can change your avatar if you want. Banning you won’t change it.
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Sorry, but we can’t do that. We can’t delete the account if you have posts, and we can’t delete posts over 90 days old. So the account can not be deleted.
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Adding to what Eljay said, it also is not a meme.
It is a screenshot of the HF show to make a point, thus adding to the discussion.
No different from, say, showing a screenshot of JtO to point out an animation mistake, or a Vezon cameo (if there was one).
~W12~
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I actually completely support this Idea, because just think for a second,
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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True, however, highways don’t have an exact amount of page views per day and are paid based on that. The amount of presence actually affects the amount of money the website would make.
Of course, we don’t directly pay TTV, but that doesn’t mean none of us help in any way.
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”
[/quote]
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.
[/quote]
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.”
[/quote]
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.
[/quote]
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.
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If you’re leaving, why are you still posting here?
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