How can we make the 405th great?

Hide them classifieds!!!!!

Until you finish a suit, you shouldn't be able to see it(?)

Azsendi said:

Until you finish a suit, you shouldn't be able to see it(?)

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I wouldn't go that far. I've been around over two years and don't even have one single individual piece completed. Some people have been around even longer than I have and likewise don't have a full suit built. I was thinking more along the lines of the time restriction that use to be in place. Well, technically it wasn't"time" so much as "rank," as you couldn't see the classifieds until you were an Infantryman, which relied on both time spent and number of posts made. But the point is, we couldn't just sign up, log on, and immediately start lighting up every ad in the classifieds posting on damn near every thread asking "is this still available" even though the listing is over a year old.

Now as I understand it the Marketplace "experience" is under scrutiny and discussion amongst the staff. If I may venture some suggestions, perhaps giving the OP the ability to delete their ad after the transaction is complete would help solve part of the problem (necro-posting on long sold item listings). A restriction on how early new members can post to or even view the Marketplace would be a good step towards weeding out those who are only here to buy stuff with little to no interest in ever attempting to make something of their own (and the entire purpose of this community is to guide and share in the process of making our own builds). And lastly, if it is at all possible, perhaps in the marketplace alone posting could be restricted to creating the listing, and then only the OP can post further in that "thread," for the sake of updating the listing or simply to post that a transaction has been completed and the listing is now closed. If only the OP can post, newbies can't necro-post (or spam post) and maybe, just maybe, people will actually contact the OP directly through the messaging system the way they're supposed to in the first place.

Zaff said:

-snip-

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That sounds really good. Hopefully, we would get more input and improve on this idea.

What is really needed is something we already have at the RPF, a better sales forum that automatically removes threads after a certain amount of time. That will resolve this and several other issues.

Zaff said:

I wouldn't go that far. I've been around over two years and don't even have one single individual piece completed. Some people have been around even longer than I have and likewise don't have a full suit built. I was thinking more along the lines of the time restriction that use to be in place. Well, technically it wasn't"time" so much as "rank," as you couldn't see the classifieds until you were an Infantryman, which relied on both time spent and number of posts made. But the point is, we couldn't just sign up, log on, and immediately start lighting up every ad in the classifieds posting on damn near every thread asking "is this still available" even though the listing is over a year old.

Now as I understand it the Marketplace "experience" is under scrutiny and discussion amongst the staff. If I may venture some suggestions, perhaps giving the OP the ability to delete their ad after the transaction is complete would help solve part of the problem (necro-posting on long sold item listings). A restriction on how early new members can post to or even view the Marketplace would be a good step towards weeding out those who are only here to buy stuff with little to no interest in ever attempting to make something of their own (and the entire purpose of this community is to guide and share in the process of making our own builds). And lastly, if it is at all possible, perhaps in the marketplace alone posting could be restricted to creating the listing, and then only the OP can post further in that "thread," for the sake of updating the listing or simply to post that a transaction has been completed and the listing is now closed. If only the OP can post, newbies can't necro-post (or spam post) and maybe, just maybe, people will actually contact the OP directly through the messaging system the way they're supposed to in the first place.

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Art Andrews said:

What is really needed is something we already have at the RPF, a better sales forum that automatically removes threads after a certain amount of time. That will resolve this and several other issues.

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That certainly would take care of a lot of the issues. Although that won't do much about the new members immediately running to the marketplace to buy stuff rather than even attempting to learn how to make their own. The marketplace is a useful tool, but it really needs to take a backseat to actually building it ourselves.

The file archive could benefit from having a Preview button to see and revise how a file upload post looks before it goes "live" for all to see. We can preview forum posts, we can preview PM's, we should be able to preview archive uploads before they're saved. Also, mention tags do not seem to be working when added to a file description in the archive.

The new email format for subscriptions and other notifications is not formatted as nicely as the old way. Where before there was very clear distinction between site text and notification text, now it's just a wall of small italicized text. Most of the changes to the site have been good under the new ownership, some have not been and this is one of them.

I noticed on the 501st they have an introductory area for noobs to introduce themselves...When I looked at the website it was very easily noticeable. I thought maybe this could help with "Introducing threads"

PHIL-907 said:

I noticed on the 501st they have an introductory area for noobs to introduce themselves...When I looked at the website it was very easily noticeable. I thought maybe this could help with "Introducing threads"

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Post up a link please.

Well, I forgot my username on the website but it's basically like where the Elite build place was on here but it was for introducing yourself.

There is an introduction thread in the new recruit section of this site

Topic 1: I like that we now have buttons to link to our facebook, twitter, and whatever, but I don't have a Pinterest or an Instagram, I hardly/never use my Twitter, and I keep all my Youtube videos private. We also have options for Skype and AIM.

So I have to ask, why only limit us to just those options?
I feel like it would be nice to expand the options we have.

For your consideration Art Andrews:
• Photobucket
• DeviantArt
• Grabcad
• LinkedIn
• KIK (Popular Instant Messenger for Mobile Devices, very thin)
• Line (Alternative Instant Messenger for Mobile Devices, has more features than Kik)

I think I might be missing a few popular things that could be added, but I think an expansion that included those would be great!


Topic 2: RE: Introduction Thread Section
I can kinda understand the interest for something like that, but it would just add clutter. Unless there is an extremely high demand for an Introduce Yourself section, which would show by the thread always getting lots and lots of new posts to the point it would need to be broken up, then things are fine as they are.
Noobs are going to post "hey I'm new" in the wrong sections regardless, and if I want to know more about someone, I will go to their profile, not the Introduce Yourself thread. Part of me even feels like the thread is unnecessary.
Maybe it would be better to just call more attention to the members that just recently joined...

(EDIT: After thinking about all of this, I decided to go back and add expand my profile, so my About Me has a lot more details now )


Topic 3: I originally tied this in with Topic 2, but decided to split it off since I ended up getting pretty distant from Topic 2.
If you are the kind of person that just wants to share life updates rather than project updates, then maybe threads are not the place to do that, maybe that is something that the Blog section could be used for.

In that regard, I would like to see the blog section get revamped a bit. Personally, I would like to be able to Blog to only myself, by giving blogs one of 3 options:
1) Public View, shows up in 405th Blog section and can be found from your profile
2) Public View, only can be found by navigating to a person's profile
3) Private View, only the creator has access to it.
This would add a lot of options to what we could do with blogs. Maybe I find a string of text or a useful tip that someone posted, and rather than Bookmarking the post or whatever, I'd simply like to create a note for myself. When I create that note, it's mostly just for me, it might help others, but it isn't something I'm trying to call everyone's attention to, so I would likely post it under the 2nd option.

I think having the ability to Enable/Disable commenting would be a nice addition as well, or instead just limit it so that you are the only one that can add comments.

(EDIT: After thinking about all of this, I decided to go back and add expand my profile, so my About Me has a lot more details now )

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WandererTJ

I just read over your profile, good read! I must say we are very like minded in our design interest. Funny my uncle just said I should go to college to learn about prosthetics.

I was a;so thinking that the blog section was a bit dead. I'm not the typing person but I would also like to give blogging a try.

I think a "Friends only" view option would come in handy as well for blogs.

Master Builder said:

WandererTJ
I was also thinking that the blog section was a bit dead. I'm not the typing person but I would also like to give blogging a try.

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Well, in all fairness, it is a bit dead. It suffered a lot from spam bots at one point which hurt it pretty badly.
There are 241 pages of Blogs, and I'm pretty sure about 100 of those pages are full of blogs that spam bots made.

Another thing to note, is some people don't know how to blog, or what the blog section is for, so they never navigate there. I personally don't typically use it in a standard way, when I create a blog, sometimes it is just for me to make notes in, and sometimes I would actually prefer not to share it or make it public. If the Blog section of this website was cluttered by similar-minded individuals like myself who use blogs as a means to quickly jump to and look through a list of tips and info you have collected, that could kill off the Blog section as well.
At the same time though, and perhaps it would be best to share this in a Blog, but...

Now, you might be wondering what in the hell I've been talking about in terms of making notes for myself and whatnot using the website's Blog feature...

The best example I can provide is my Armor Build Plan. While I haven't yet started on my armor, I have at least began to start gathering supplies. I hope that everything I have needed in terms of ordering things online will be received in the next two weeks.
Because I haven't officially started construction on my build, I thought it would be best if I just avoided and held off on posting a thread, but I did want to keep track of my ideas and thoughts somewhere I could easily reach on my desktop/laptop/phone without having to always download and upload it dropbox or wherever.

Like I said, this is more for me personally, I don't mind other people seeing it, but I would prefer it if they held off commenting on it since it is meant mostly for my use.
Here it is:
http://www.405th.com/entry.php/3314-Ideas-for-Personal-Halo-Reach-Armor-amp-Weapons-(Update)

I noticed some folks in my state are not listed on the member map even though they are clearly 405th members, that have roll called on my regiment forum thread. As such I wanted to ask here, if we can have a feature added to the forum that would let us message members in a particular state only, or regiment only. Maybe something that would have radio boxes where you could select all by regiment, state, or select individuals based upon proximity or simply by list. This would give an easy way to communicate to groups that may attend regional only cons and such about upcoming gatherings and other such events. Also a regional or regimental calendar could help with this tool.

Thanks for asking about ideas as well!

Asgardianhammer said:

I noticed some folks in my state are not listed on the member map even though they are clearly 405th members, that have roll called on my regiment forum thread. As such I wanted to ask here, if we can have a feature added to the forum that would let us message members in a particular state only, or regiment only. Maybe something that would have radio boxes where you could select all by regiment, state, or select individuals based upon proximity or simply by list. This would give an easy way to communicate to groups that may attend regional only cons and such about upcoming gatherings and other such events. Also a regional or regimental calendar could help with this tool.

Thanks for asking about ideas as well!

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You won't find everyone on the member map where you expect them to be for two reasons. Firstly, the member map is an entirely voluntary feature. Members choose whether or not to allow 405th.com to access their IP address in order to place a pin on the map. And the second reason is, this particular mapping feature has a terrible track record for actually placing pins where members are located. At least a dozen members here in the States found their pins off the coast of Africa (literally OFF the coast, as in out in the middle of the ocean) and not everyone has taken the time to relocate their pin to its proper place (or in some cases, they're still trying to figure out where in the world their pin got planted). The map is a useful tool, but it's not perfectly accurate nor all-encompassing by design. After all, not everyone is comfortable broadcasting their location for all to see (perfectly understandable).

A region/state specific messaging system would be useful, but in a sense, we already have that in the form of the Regiment-specific forum areas, where events and other such announcements can be posted for anyone in the area to see. However, like the member map, Regiments are also entirely voluntary. Nobody is forcibly "placed" in a Regiment. They have to reach out and ask to have their names added to the list by the regimental leader, and in turn they get a little badge added to their profile stating which regiment they are a part of. There are many members who are not yet "officially" a part of a regiment for any number of reasons. The regimental forums are, at least at this time, the most reliable way of getting information to a specific geographical region.

Regimental calendars sound very useful, particularly to help members keep track of when events are happening and where, and it also presents the opportunity for a more personal touch, like adding birthdays or join dates, although personally I would assume join dates would be secondary, if not tertiary (simply put, not a main focus of the feature).

Zaff said:

Regimental calendars sound very useful, particularly to help members keep track of when events are happening and where, and it also presents the opportunity for a more personal touch, like adding birthdays or join dates, although personally I would assume join dates would be secondary, if not tertiary (simply put, not a main focus of the feature).

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Second this!

Zaff said:

Regimental calendars sound very useful, particularly to help members keep track of when events are happening and where, and it also presents the opportunity for a more personal touch, like adding birthdays or join dates, although personally I would assume join dates would be secondary, if not tertiary (simply put, not a main focus of the feature).

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These would be a great idea. Google calender is pretty simple to you and you can just give people a link to the calender. It can break up events into hours in every day so if you had to do several things in one day this would be very useful.

I know for the Colonial regiment I have listed all the known con's and events that I can find, and others have told me about. I am working on creating such for each area as well. A calendar would be very helpful. It would make everything a lot more visually impactful, and help show when things overlap in time frames.