How can we make the 405th great?

After the tech issues, I think the most important thing that needs to be sorted out is the identity crisis I have seen the 405[SUP]th[/SUP] go through for the past 7 years, and even on MJOLNIR Armor before that. It needs to be decided if the 405[SUP]th[/SUP] is going to have “members” with acceptance guidelines and a charter like the Rebel Legion/501[SUP]st[/SUP]/Mando Mercs, or simply be an online community like the The RPF and Dented Helmet are. Every so often in the past the two options would be tossed around, and for these seven years there have been rumors and rumbling about the “405[SUP]th[/SUP] Membership Charter” but at the same time we were always told that “There are no 405[SUP]th[/SUP] Members, just 405[SUP]th[/SUP] Forum members.”

For the most part it has seemed that the 405[SUP]th[/SUP] had leaned more towards TDH than 501[SUP]st[/SUP] Bounty Hunter’s Guild, and that is perfectly fine. The RPF and TDH both show that you can have large scale forum communities that have no “membership guidelines,” but still have gatherings and participate in events and have booths/panels at conventions. Just definitively deciding on one or the other option will lay out a clear path for the future. If the 405[SUP]th[/SUP] is to be an online community mostly, do we need to develop local chapters/regiments, or is that only necessary if some type of membership guidelines are implemented?

Take for example 405[SUP]th[/SUP] appearances at conventions right now. If the 405[SUP]th[/SUP] decides to have “members” and therefore local chapters, will those local chapters be in charge of planning any events in their area? If the 405[SUP]th[/SUP] remains a forum community will any event planning be done here on the forums with approval for you, Art, and your Admin staff?

As it stands right now, after the hacking incidents and the technical issues and bugs that popped up many people couldn’t access the forums, and since there was no sense of cohesive, unified identity, many people splintered off onto their own individual Facebook pages, public Facebook groups, and private Facebook groups either for local “regiments” or simply groups of like minded Halo costuming friends. This decentralization of event planning away from the forums led to a fair amount of confusion. Everyone was off on their own doing their own thing, and a forum member could show up at a convention to find a 405[SUP]th[/SUP] booth, and yet there was never any mention of it on these forums, because the whole thing was planned in a “member’s only” Facebook group that other forum members had no idea existed.

Hopefully now that the forums are back and operating again we can re-centralize any type of event planning so that all the members in the area or out of state members attending that convention can help plan or at the very least be aware of the plans.

I gotta second wanting the ability to delete our own posts, and if possible, to be able to delete any threads we start. This would take some of the strain off the moderators in the cases of members who make a thread to ask a question that could have been asked on one of the help threads. Instead of having to flag down a moderator and ask them to delete it, that person can delete their own thread and repost their question in the appropriate thread. And for the individual posts, that will help with multi-posts, as well as times when we say the same thing someone else posted as we were typing our own post, etc..

Arcanine said:

If you don't mind me asking, however: what do you have in mind for anti-spam/anti-bot procedures going forwards? What systems will be in place to ensure that new members are welcomed into the forums, while keeping away the unwanted attentions of others?

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We don't have a welcome package in place yet, but will at some point.

Right now, we have changed the registration process from CAPTCHA (which has become all but useless) to a Q&A. We have also introduced an AKISMET based spam checker and we also are using a third program that checks against previous spam accounts and immediately bans new accounts.

Cadet said:

After the tech issues, I think the most important thing that needs to be sorted out is the identity crisis I have seen the 405[SUP]th[/SUP] go through for the past 7 years, and even on MJOLNIR Armor before that. It needs to be decided if the 405[SUP]th[/SUP] is going to have “members” with acceptance guidelines and a charter like the Rebel Legion/501[SUP]st[/SUP]/Mando Mercs, or simply be an online community like the The RPF and Dented Helmet are. Every so often in the past the two options would be tossed around, and for these seven years there have been rumors and rumbling about the “405[SUP]th[/SUP] Membership Charter” but at the same time we were always told that “There are no 405[SUP]th[/SUP] Members, just 405[SUP]th[/SUP] Forum members.”

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I can tell you for sure that we are going to be moving towards a Rebel Legion/501st/Mando Mercs model... taking the best of their aspects, combining them, refining them and making them our own. BUT, it is something that is going to take time to get right and to do properly.

Cadet said:

For the most part it has seemed that the 405[SUP]th[/SUP] had leaned more towards TDH than 501[SUP]st[/SUP] Bounty Hunter’s Guild, and that is perfectly fine. The RPF and TDH both show that you can have large scale forum communities that have no “membership guidelines,” but still have gatherings and participate in events and have booths/panels at conventions. Just definitively deciding on one or the other option will lay out a clear path for the future. If the 405[SUP]th[/SUP] is to be an online community mostly, do we need to develop local chapters/regiments, or is that only necessary if some type of membership guidelines are implemented?

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This site is and will always be an information resource, freely available to anyone who wants to create Halo Props and Costumes. Even after we get a club established, we are not going to lock up those who aren't club members. That is where we will differ from some of the Star Wars costume clubs and will be a bit more like TDH and the RPF. Again, taking the best aspects of all of those communities and combining them here. I can't really go into detail beyond that as we don't know how all of that will shake out. We are getting a LOT of input and a LOT of advice from a LOT of sources on it and we will be getting input from the membership here as well before implementing anything.

Cadet said:

Take for example 405[SUP]th[/SUP] appearances at conventions right now. If the 405[SUP]th[/SUP] decides to have “members” and therefore local chapters, will those local chapters be in charge of planning any events in their area?

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I can't say definitely at this point, but yes, that would be the logical approach.

Cadet said:

If the 405[SUP]th[/SUP] remains a forum community will any event planning be done here on the forums with approval for you, Art, and your Admin staff?

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Again, can't say definitively, but our expectation would be that the local chapters would have their own forums here where they could plan events as they see fit. I have no interest in micro-managing the club. We will set out a charter and from there it will rely on a command structure, no different than the UNSC.

Cadet said:

As it stands right now, after the hacking incidents and the technical issues and bugs that popped up many people couldn’t access the forums, and since there was no sense of cohesive, unified identity, many people splintered off onto their own individual Facebook pages, public Facebook groups, and private Facebook groups either for local “regiments” or simply groups of like minded Halo costuming friends. This decentralization of event planning away from the forums led to a fair amount of confusion. Everyone was off on their own doing their own thing, and a forum member could show up at a convention to find a 405[SUP]th[/SUP] booth, and yet there was never any mention of it on these forums, because the whole thing was planned in a “member’s only” Facebook group that other forum members had no idea existed.

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To some level we can't force anyone to do anything. We don't own Halo. However, in time we hope to draw a lot of those splinters back in to the fold and bring as many as possible under the 405th banner. As with any organization, there is power and influence in numbers. We hope those splinter groups will want to be a part of the larger group and therefore benefit from all that the group has to offer. Time will tell.

Cadet said:

Hopefully now that the forums are back and operating again we can re-centralize any type of event planning so that all the members in the area or out of state members attending that convention can help plan or at the very least be aware of the plans.

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That is our hope although we are realistic in realixing that some people just want to do their own thing and we can't stop them, no different than people who costume in stormtrooper armor but aren't a part of the 501st. However, again, we hope that we help foster such a fantastic community that people WANT to be a part of it!

Zaff said:

I gotta second wanting the ability to delete our own posts, and if possible, to be able to delete any threads we start. This would take some of the strain off the moderators in the cases of members who make a thread to ask a question that could have been asked on one of the help threads. Instead of having to flag down a moderator and ask them to delete it, that person can delete their own thread and repost their question in the appropriate thread. And for the individual posts, that will help with multi-posts, as well as times when we say someone else posted as we were typing our own post, etc..

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Sorry, but that is just not going to happen. It is too easily abused.

A "Site Admin" link that can be used for sending a message to the 405th admins and mods, and learning who the staff is. The existing "Contact Us" link brings up a generic Movie Prop Sites page of links, but no immediate direct link to specific 405th overseers. I've been around for about a year and can only name off the top of my head one admin and two mods. I have no idea who the rest are (if others exist) or where to look up that information, and when I have a question for staff it would be convenient having one link that Cc's them all. Then whomever gets to it first does a Reply All (so the rest of staff knows the inquiry was responded to). I currently have a question regarding the Classifieds (er, now Marketplace) but don't know who to direct the question at.

Could you possibly add States and related things to regiments because its hard to find local members. There already are some regiments though like the 405th pacific but if we could have are own regiment in the forum that would be awesome

RobotChicken said:

A "Site Admin" link that can be used for sending a message to the 405th admins and mods, and learning who the staff is. The existing "Contact Us" link brings up a generic Movie Prop Sites page of links, but no immediate direct link to specific 405th overseers. I've been around for about a year and can only name off the top of my head one admin and two mods. I have no idea who the rest are (if others exist) or where to look up that information, and when I have a question for staff it would be convenient having one link that Cc's them all. Then whomever gets to it first does a Reply All (so the rest of staff knows the inquiry was responded to). I currently have a question regarding the Classifieds (er, now Marketplace) but don't know who to direct the question at.

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Are you guys familiar with the post reporting system? It is the best way to get issues dealt with quickly.

In regard to the staff, I don't want to put anything out yet as I have literally been here less than 24 hours. There are about 10 mods on the staff but I don't know them, know how active they are or know if they will want to continue on as staff under the new management. Once we get that all settled, we will definitely let you know.

In the meantime, if you look at the bottom of the home page at the list of members who are online, the staff shows up in green.

FlusherCape26 said:

Could you possibly add States and related things to regiments because its hard to find local members. There already are some regiments though like the 405th pacific but if we could have are own regiment in the forum that would be awesome

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This is something we are going to have to work out. For the most part, we believe in allowing things to grow organically and leaders to rise from the ranks. For example, you aren't going to see us suddenly "create" a bunch of Regiments. That isn't for us to do. As people within a geographic location begin to coalesce we hope they will see the need for structure as well as a center point for all things Halo. We hope to help provide those assets to them so they can do what they love to do; costume!

The Blogs section of the forums needs a cleaning.
The bots or hackers or spam accounts or whatever seemed to have gotten into the blog section and went on a posting frenzy.

I think it might be nice if I could make some blogs that get listed to the large blog list while others I make (while still visible to others) can only be found when going through my profile.

Personally, I've been using the blogging system to make notes to myself... and that's why I think it would be nice for me to have the option to limit what gets shown on the full Blogs list everyone sees. Not everyone needs to see random notes I make to myself.

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Could you add more editing tools to the default Reply Window without needing to hit the "Go Advanced" button?
Preferably Line break (HR) and Indent.

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While I understand that being able to delete posts can be abused, and if an argument ensued that one of the individuals could delete all their responses and make the other person in the argument look foolish, well, if someone did that to me, I'd delete all of mine too. Argument over, no one is the wiser.
Idk.

I think that you should at least have the ability if you are the latest post and no one has posted after you. Having at least that would be nice.

Arcanine said:

For those with full costumes, would it be possible for members to apply to be promoted to groups dependant upon the costume they complete? For example, ODSTs are grouped into the 'Helljumper' group, SPARTANs are grouped under the 'SPARTAN' group, Marines are grouped under the 'Marine Corps' group, so on and so forth.

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This got me to think about a forum reorganization.

Personally, I've been trying to keep an eye out for Halo Reach builds in order to inspire my own build. I don't have anything against Halo 4 builds, but it would be really nice to have anything and everything in one place.

Likewise, I think it would be nice to do this for all the games in a way....
Maybe something like this:

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New Recruits / Help Forums / General Discussion
- Tutorials Master List (Links to locked versions of all the tutorials on the forums)

Resources:
- Reference Models/Pics for 3D-Modeling
- 3D-Models/Modeling for making Pepakura Files
- Pepakura File Databases
- - - New
- - - Finished / Unfolded
- - - Files converted for Foam Builds
- Requests
- Scaling Help

Creation Discussion (Building Methods and Tips):
- Pepakura + Resin / Carboard
- Foam
- Molding
- Undersuits
- Weapons
- Other

Legendary Showcase (Maybe "Epic" would be a better title, I think "Elite" is kinda confusing since Elites are a species in the Halo universe)

Personal Builds:
- Master Chief 117
- - - Mjolnir Mk IV / Halo Wars / Halo Legends
- - - Mjolnir Mk V / Halo 1
- - - Mjolnir Mk VI / Halo 2 (VI.1) / Halo 3 (VI.2)
- - - Mjolnir Mk VII (GEN2) / Halo 4
- - - Upcoming Game(s) - Halo 5
- Halo 3 Custom Multiplayer Builds (Scout, Hayabusa, etc)
- Halo Reach Builds - Mjolnir Mk VI Prototype
- - - Noble Team Builds (Optional)
- - - Custom Reach Multiplayer Builds (Optional)
- Halo 4 Builds
- Upcoming Games Builds - Halo 5
- ODST Builds
- Marine Builds
- Covenant Forces Builds
- Non-Halo Related Builds (Iron Man, Storm Trooper, Gundam, Robocop, etc)

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Okay, maybe they shouldn't all be for builds. I would love it if all the resource files and threads relating to the particular groups to be sorted appropriately.
Of course, this is for another day, I know there is a lot of maintenance that needs to be done first. I just thought I'd get it out there to see what other members think.

Something to keep in mind, we can use prefixes to help define builds. They don't all have to be in separate forums.

Art Andrews said:

Something to keep in mind, we can use prefixes to help define builds. They don't all have to be in separate forums.

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That's totally true.
Maybe a categories or tags feature could be added that would allow users to sort through content they are interested in looking at.
When creating a build thread maybe have some dropdown menus that let you select what kind of build it is and make it so that you have to select it before the thread can be created. But you can always go back and change it too if you end up doing something divergent with your build.


I do like the idea of having a dedicated Resources subforum like I described above that gives everybody the things they need before they can start their build.
It also addresses the Pepakura Database some of us have been referring to.
Builders need Pepakura Files, Pepakura Files need models to be based off of, Models need Reference pictures and information. It's all one big chain. Of course, some people are skilled enough to just forego all of this and just craft up their armor without any of it.

WandererTJ said:

It also addresses the Pepakura Database some of us have been referring to.
Builders need Pepakura Files, Pepakura Files need models to be based off of, Models need Reference pictures and information. It's all one big chain. Of course, some people are skilled enough to just forego all of this and just craft up their armor without any of it.

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Since I'm not sure if Art has been acquainted with the Database yet, allow me to give him the quick rundown.

I manage/maintain a 4shared folder which contains ~95% of any Halo related (and some other) pep files.
It's designed to be a one-stop-shop, organised as simply as possible, to make finding the right files for a build easy for new and old members alike.
It has been running since mid 2010 (pre Halo Reach), and has ~900 files from all Halo games.

Currently, there is a PSA thread stickied in the Noob/NewRct board, and the "Official" thread (news/updates) is pinned in the CreationDisc>Pep/Cardboard subforum.
You may have to excuse the formatting mess for now. I can imagine I'll have to redo them when I know what the final selection of formatting tags are...

So when we say things like Database "integration", for me, it's mainly because 4shared has broken/removed most of the advanced functionality it used to have back in 2010, and it would also make it easier for new members to find and access it. I would move it over to gDrive, but I really like having the 405th.4shared URL.


Hope that explains it a little.
MS7

E: It's also a little hard to see hyperlinks in text, can we tweak the color to make it a bit more visible?

Fantastic! Will definitely want to talk more to you about this!

MissingSpartan7 said:

Since I'm not sure if Art has been acquainted with the Database yet, allow me to give him the quick rundown.

I manage/maintain a 4shared folder which contains ~95% of any Halo related (and some other) pep files.
It's designed to be a one-stop-shop, organised as simply as possible, to make finding the right files for a build easy for new and old members alike.
It has been running since mid 2010 (pre Halo Reach), and has ~900 files from all Halo games.

Currently, there is a PSA thread stickied in the Noob/NewRct board, and the "Official" thread (news/updates) is pinned in the CreationDisc>Pep/Cardboard subforum.
You may have to excuse the formatting mess for now. I can imagine I'll have to redo them when I know what the final selection of formatting tags are...

So when we say things like Database "integration", for me, it's mainly because 4shared has broken/removed most of the advanced functionality it used to have back in 2010, and it would also make it easier for new members to find and access it. I would move it over to gDrive, but I really like having the 405th.4shared URL.


Hope that explains it a little.
MS7

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MissingSpartan7 said:

E: It's also a little hard to see hyperlinks in text, can we tweak the color to make it a bit more visible?

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Let me see what we can do.

Just FYI, Katsu and several other users have been working on a wiki that might be a useful resource to incorporate. I know they've been trying to get it more official recognition for a while. :

http://405th.wikia.com/wiki/405th_Wiki

Also, I sent you a message via FB regarding the Pacific regiment. We're one of the groups that's been largely organizing via FB and I'd love to move back to the forums if things are finally being cleaned up here.

Lots of us are browsing the forums using mobile devices, (I guess the numbers will increase over the years) and I just realized the best forum app, Tapatalk, isn't working anymore. It did before, although the plugin was outdated, as long as it worked and I was able to browse the forums, it was no big deal. But now I can't access the forums any more. You should fix this asap, browsing the forums via a mobile browser is a pain in the (you know where).

The "new old" forum (v5) had a thumbs up button next to each post. I really liked that feature. Maybe you can implement a like button and counter. There are several reasons for when you just want to show your appreciation or agreement but don't want to write a new post for that, because you don't have to say any more than "Great work!" or maybe it's an old post and you don't want to necro-post, etc.

Are you planing on removing all the locked and dead threads on the forum and Art since you have the support of many 405th veterans you have my support hope you can make the site great but I have but one question will you continue the 405th tradition and make a halo costume of your own?

I'd like to suggest an amendment to the Rules regarding posting:

It's often rather a pain to see users quoting a large string of posted images, only to have them responding with a short message at the end of it. I see this a lot, and it's incredibly annoying to scroll through the same set of images twice for such a meagre response to the thread.

That said, if what I saw about images as an attachment comes about, then the

I'd like to see the new "Re: " taken off the titles of response posts. It's redundant (of course it's a response post!) and takes characters away from the original title (truncating longer titles).