What Do We Want in a Board?

[Mistermoonlight]

Here's what I'd like:

1. The freedom to use language as we'd like. On this particular board I can set the word censor myself. I'd encourage everyone to read the TOS at all the boards we're exploring to see what restrictions there are on all aspects, not just this one.

2. The ability to post offsite links.

3. The ability to add smileys.

4. The ability to post jpegs with our post.

5. A support forum that's easy to access for admins

6. A good bit of flexibility in the ability to add graphics and personalize our site so that it looks individual.

7. User-friendly for both casual users and admins

I'm sure that I'm leaving some things out, but this is just to get the conversation started. And of course, some things that are important to me may or may not be important to you.

Difference of opinion and arguments for and against various aspects are welcomed here!

[Mistermoonlight]

Is a banner a picture that appears at the bottom of each person's post?

Oh, let me add another function I'd like: threads with new posts get automatically bumped up to the top, like the former boards we were on.

Oh, I see that this one does that.

[Mistermoonlight]

Thanks for the example. That's what I was thinking it was.

Personally I don't mind it, but I'll go with whatever the group consensus is on the issue.

[Mistermoonlight]

To those of us who remember the original boards on the WB, as well as the first days at the CW, where SuperModsSusieQ and Maxine moderated, as well as those all too short days we enjoyed at the 'new' WB site with no mods . . .

I'd like to echo what someone once said about those days, 'you had to have broad shoulders to survive.' What that essentially meant was that if you were outrageously funny, like SpoonieLuv, DuckduckGooseBud, AeryRocks, HiredAssasin,Dislekseeyuh, or any of a host of others, that carried a lot of weight. You could make fun of others, or even fight, if it was done with finesse and you'd often find the mods on your side. If it was done simply or stupidly you'd find yourself in trouble.

I have zero interest in a board where everyone has to be nice all the time. I want them to be outrageous and funny. I think it has to be done on a case by case basis, and I'd argue for doing things as SusieQ and Maxxine did. Sometimes they banned, when need be, but some of those they banned were also their favorite members.

What can I say, it's complex, but there is a certain vibrant quality that you don't want to lose by making the rules too strict. And a lot of stuff we'll figure out as we go on.

[purpledragon1229]

Dec 21, 2011 20:10:03 GMT -5 @ohleesa said:

I would love a custom avatar but I dislike banners.

What do others think of banners. I find them distracting.

I agree. It's hard to read the board when thay have 2 &3 pictures in their signatures. And while the black is sharp looking it hurts my eyes after awhile.

[Mistermoonlight]

Yay, I finally got a custom avatar going. Just had to resize it correctly.



Such a shame to have to crop this beautiful cover of Krypto flying over the Kent farm:



So I switched to Shelby. Nice to see that GIF's work here.

[anicat]

Puppy!! *waves*

BWAHhahahahaha I "designed" (if you can call hacking away at board options until something worked designing) the interface for our Secret Cas Garrison II last August or thereabouts....and it's all black!!!!

EVERYTHING is all dark and electric looking. No white backgrounds or windows anywhere. Heeheehee I've always liked dark interfaces for the dramatic effect, and this time since I had the control I cranked up the darkness to an 11.

I also designed the masthead for us (print designer-speak for the title/logo area at the top of the page.) If you guys want a masthead designed for this forum, I'd be happy to give it a go too. Never could figure out exactly the size needed, there's no style sheet to go by. So I'll just make anything the same size as our Cas site's, and it will be good to go.

We got all our smilies working, one of our gals was able to add the smilies I had saved out before the CWL shut down: pirate, waving, laughing, blinking heart and angel. OF COURSE I saved blinking heart and angel....wherever Cas fans go, hearts and angels must follow.

And I do like the ability to add a pic/vid to the sig line...if only because every time I see Friday's "Misha middle finger" gif it makes me happy. ;D

[Mistermoonlight]

Good morning Puppy!

And glad you're with us Anicat! Your admin status is functional now. I'm hoping you might have saved the Superman emblem smiley from the CW.

[anicat]

Dec 23, 2011 8:08:53 GMT -5 Mistermoonlight said:

Good morning Puppy!

And glad you're with us Anicat! Your admin status is functional now. I'm hoping you might have saved the Superman emblem smiley from the CW.

Dec 23, 2011 8:08:53 GMT -5 Mistermoonlight said:

Good morning Puppy!

And glad you're with us Anicat! Your admin status is functional now. I'm hoping you might have saved the Superman emblem smiley from the CW.

Happy to be here! But alas, no...no Superman smilie. I only saved out the ones I really wanted but knew I didn't have available to me on Nutral Underground. And I just checked their smilie library, no Superman there either...well over a hundred to choose from and ya'd think there'd be one in there somewhere.

All I did was copy the gifs to my Photobucket account, IDK how our Cas board gal got them into the system from there.

"Code" is a 4-letter word, ya'll know that, right?

Dammit, Jim...I'm a designer, not a programmer!

Here's what I have, saved from the CWL and a couple I stole from NU. ;D

[Mistermoonlight]

Here's a question, and I'm not even sure what the answer is for me yet. I've learned my lesson about not getting things out there in time from our experience with the last WB board.

How long do we want to wait to make a decision as to which board we pick?

On the one hand, we'd want to get things right, and take our time, perhaps even without a deadline.

On the other, the longer we wait the harder it's going to be to reach people, who might have moved off to other things. Sometimes we work better and get more done with a deadline to meet.

Like I said, I don't know what the answer is even for me, but I think it's a good conversation to have.

What do you think?

[Mistermoonlight]

Dec 23, 2011 19:02:21 GMT -5 @ohleesa said:

Dec 23, 2011 18:46:29 GMT -5 Mistermoonlight said:

Here's a question, and I'm not even sure what the answer is for me yet. I've learned my lesson about not getting things out there in time from our experience with the last WB board.

How long do we want to wait to make a decision as to which board we pick?

On the one hand, we'd want to get things right, and take our time, perhaps even without a deadline.

On the other, the longer we wait the harder it's going to be to reach people, who might have moved off to other things. Sometimes we work better and get more done with a deadline to meet.

Like I said, I don't know what the answer is even for me, but I think it's a good conversation to have.

What do you think?

I think it should be soon. People are busy now with the holidays but we should get them involved soon. Based on my Twitter feed-many of the Supernatural fans have been unhappy with their choices of forums.

We got the WB fairly active within a week. At first people were skeptical but they really liked it once they started interacting.

It's amazing what we did there. 72 members by the last day. And in a short amount of time, as you say. And I have to say that the boards we're trying have a lot more freedom than we had even there.

[anicat]

Have any of you visited Harley's site?

newsupernaturalplace.proboards.com

I see a lot of familiar faces there.

[Mistermoonlight]

Oh, that's ProBoards too. Nice to see what you can do with it.

I don't think I know any of those folks, but that's because I posted mostly on the main forum and the one for Smallville.

[Mistermoonlight]

I think what I want is a site that brings all of our former members back together under one umbrella. Kinda like BattleStar Galactica, heading for home. (Lord knows, we've fought some Cylons along the way.)

Something more encompassing in scope than a site erected for just one show.

Boy, they have done some great things with that board, though.

[Mistermoonlight]

You know what I want? First, for us to hit 343 members, the supposed number of members that were on the CW at all times ( ) at the last, then 666 members, the number they had before at all times, supposedly. Then I'll be happy.

[Mistermoonlight]

To get back to the question about how soon we're going to make a decision, I'll put up a poll thread. I need to learn how to do that anyway.

[Mistermoonlight]

I'm sure it's going to look different on a phone. Probably can't handle as much informationn

[Mistermoonlight]

What do you think it is? I'm on the latest version of Internet Explorer and I'm not having any problems.

I may have to wade into the support forum and see if there's anything on this.

[Mistermoonlight]

I'm not much of a techie, but I'm wondering if this post helps anyone who is?

support.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=dyparchive&action=display&thread=309692

[Mistermoonlight]

By the way, folks, I was just over on YouTube, and there are loads of tutorials there on how to do stuff in ProBoards.

[Mistermoonlight]

You know, after just a couple of days of us playing around here I'm willing to say that from the point of view of what you can do here that we couldn't do at the CW, this is infinitely better than the Lounge.

[Mistermoonlight]

I'm very anti-censorship.

I'd say obviously we don't want any porn photos or links.

As far as words go, I'd be perfectly happy to deal with it on a case by case basis. Could be that we don't need to load a lot of words into the word censor at the beginning. If and when there's a problem we can easily modify posts and then discuss whether a word should be added or not amongst ourselves.

[Mistermoonlight]

Yes, you always have to agree to a TOS when creating boards on these free forums. Some are more restrictive, others less. This one's about middle of the road from what I can tell.

There was a fan community I know of that posted x-rated fan fiction on their free board--can't remember which one it was--and when somebody complained they just had them put up an age restriction for viewing it. You had to contact a mod or admin to be added to the list.

If you want to view things narrowly, a lot of the stuff said about the CW here and other places could be considered 'libelous.' My reply to Timmy about color choices. after he said "I won't go schizo, will I?' and I replied that he'd be seeing colors, so it was kind of like an LSD trip, could be read by some as promoting drugs, instead of a tongue-in-cheek comment.

I think we pretty well know what's what. One thing's for sure, we'll learn a lot more as we go on.

[merr]

I thought there was a thread about Emoticons, but I'm not seeing it.

Could we get a better embarassed smilie? The one that we have looks more sad than embarassed. I like the one from the CW where it was all pink/red.

[tanmi]

Dec 29, 2011 13:25:37 GMT -5 merr said:

I thought there was a thread about Emoticons, but I'm not seeing it.

Could we get a better embarassed smilie? The one that we have looks more sad than embarassed. I like the one from the CW where it was all pink/red.

...and a vampire. Please.

[tanmi]

Dec 29, 2011 14:00:57 GMT -5 puppydreams said:

Dec 29, 2011 13:28:49 GMT -5 tanmi said:

...and a vampire. Please.

I am working on the emoticons for the time being. I'm trying to get the basic ones done first, but I'll see what's around. Thanks guys!

No, thanks to you. I don't have a clue.

[illyria99]

Dec 21, 2011 21:49:31 GMT -5 Mistermoonlight said:

To those of us who remember the original boards on the WB, as well as the first days at the CW, where SuperModsSusieQ and Maxine moderated, as well as those all too short days we enjoyed at the 'new' WB site with no mods . . .

I'd like to echo what someone once said about those days, 'you had to have broad shoulders to survive.' What that essentially meant was that if you were outrageously funny, like SpoonieLuv, DuckduckGooseBud, AeryRocks, HiredAssasin,Dislekseeyuh, or any of a host of others, that carried a lot of weight. You could make fun of others, or even fight, if it was done with finesse and you'd often find the mods on your side.

[/b] If it was done simply or stupidly you'd find yourself in trouble.

I have zero interest in a board where everyone has to be nice all the time[/b]. I want them to be outrageous and funny. I think it has to be done on a case by case basis, and I'd argue for doing things as SusieQ and Maxxine did. Sometimes they banned, when need be, but some of those they banned were also their favorite members.

What can I say, it's complex, but there is a certain vibrant quality that you don't want to lose by making the rules too strict.[/b] And a lot of stuff we'll figure out as we go on. [/quote]

Is that so? Really?

[Aeryn]