How can we make the 405th great?

[Art Andrews]

As mentioned elsewhere, we are very excited to be managing this community! We think it has a tremendous amount of potential and want to see it grow and flourish, but we need YOUR help to do that! This thread is for posting your thoughts and ideas about 1) existing changes as they are made and 2) changes you would like to see made.

Please bear in mind that there is only a handful of us and 10s of thousands of you, so we may not respond to every post or comment on every idea but we WILL read and consider every idea, comment and even criticism. Some things we should be able to implement quickly and easily while others may take time or not be feasible at all. Be patient with us as we already have a tremendous backlog of things that need to be done, but one-by-one, we will get to them.

 

[WandererTJ]

The strain on the server for that would be pretty severe as it would have to constantly keep count of every thread for every member. It already does this in a broad way by notifying you if there are new posts or not. I have never seen a mod that kept a count like this and I suspect that is due to the amount of strain it would add to the server.

Okay! Thanks for letting me know.

These forums show the # of replies and # of views at your UserCP for your subscribed threads and your started/created threads with the most recent posts in them. It has the latest 10 for subscribed and latest 5 for started threads.
http://defenderoftexel.com/index.php

 

[Art Andrews]

What happened to ranks and such? Are they totally gone or what?

If you mean the Infantrymen title, yes, that is gone. Outside of identifying staff and New members, we won't revisit titles or "ranks" until after the costume club aspect of the community is fully implemented.

 

[Vrogy]

As recently as April people were looking to get a real wiki going here. Could that happen? Mediawiki is nice.

There's the Halo Costuming Wikia, but its content is limited, and pretty outdated now. I think Ral Partha is pretty much holding it together (major props).

 

[Art Andrews]

As recently as April people were looking to get a real wiki going here. Could that happen? Mediawiki is nice.

There's the Halo Costuming Wikia, but its content is limited, and pretty outdated now. I think Ral Partha is pretty much holding it together (major props).

There is wiki software that bolts into vBulletin, but like anything else, it take dedication from the community and fans to make it work. We have already seen great success with the digital file archive. If we could see the same for a wiki... sure!

 

[Dracosfire83]

content unavailable

 

[Chernobyl]

Any chance you can add the banned members from the RPF to the banned list here?

If you're referring to known trouble-makers or people within the costuming community that are generally undesirable (recasters/credit theft, the like) then I'd agree with you. However, I'd be wary on the side of making sweeping bans of members simply because of issues in another community.

For example: a member banned from the RPF for swearing/poor attitude may be an upstanding and helpful member on another community, and until they step out of line elsewhere, I'd call foul on taking action for 'minor offences'. After all, people change and there's always the chance that a member may prove him/herself worthy in the community - but, then again, I've always been the type to give second chances and try to forgive wherever possible. Lord knows I can be insufferable at times (and I make my apologies here and now for any times I've ever trodden on any toes), but I'd hate to think that infractions on one site would follow me around to other areas of the community, that hardly seems fair.

That said, and as I said before, members found to be committing serious offences that affect the whole costuming community (again: recasting, taking credit for the work of others, etc) would be better off dealt with. Those sorts of activities border on the illegal and I don't think we as a community need those types of people around.

That's my side of things, anyway.

 

[Art Andrews]

Any chance you can add the banned members from the RPF to the banned list here?

This is a tricky matter. Our general attitude is this. From here forward, if you get banned at any one of our sites, you get banned at all of our sites. However, that is not retroactive. If someone was banned at the RPF before we began managing the 405th, we typically won't ban them at the 405th proactively. However, part of our job is to try to provide some level of security for the members of the communities we manage. If there are members here who are known troublemakers, who have been banned from the RPF, please send me a PM regarding that individual and we will look at them on a case by casae basis... but don't expect mass bannings.

 

[colbs]

Any chance you can add the banned members from the RPF to the banned list here?

If they did that this or any community wouldn't grow just because a user didn't get along with one community shouldnt be punished in another they are apart of because they were judged unfairly in another. A warning system would be more effective

 

[WandererTJ]

Great, now I have to stop trolling the other forums.....




(Just kidding though, I don't)

 

[Art Andrews]

If they did that this or any community wouldn't grow just because a user didn't get along with one community shouldnt be punished in another they are apart of because they were judged unfairly in another. A warning system would be more effective

I am going to have to disagree with you there... at least in regard to our communities. One of the things we implement across all of our communities are a unified rule set. The rules here are the same as the rules at the RPF, TDH, the Lair, etc. We like doing this because you then know what is expected of you no matter which of our sites you are visiting.

I also want to make it clear that we never "punish" members. We don't believe it is our job to bend anyone to our will or to make them do what we want. When a member signs up for one of our sites they agree that while they are on our site, they will obey the rules we have created for that community. It is completely their choice whether or not to follow the rules and we won't try to make anyone follow the rules. However, if a member is not willing to follow the rules, they can't use our sites. It isn't a punishment.. it is just a choice on the member's part. By choosing not to follow the rules, they are choosing not to be a part of the community.

That may seem like an odd approach to management but we have found that trying to make someone follow rules that they do not want to follow is a complete waste of our time and energy so we don't bother.

We do have an infraction system, but it is used more to make sure that a member fully understands what the rules are as our default assumption is that no one who wants to be a part of the community would willfully break the rules and that if a rule is broken, it is most likely because of a lack of understand of what our expectations are. We will bend over backwards to try to make sure a member fully understands our expectations, but once we are sure they do, if they continue to break the rules we cannot continue to allow them to use our sites.

 

[Chernobyl]

they were judged unfairly in another.

I wouldn't say at least that much - I'm not of the opinion that our new owners aren't quick to ban and will try to judge each case as fairly as they can before taking action. Fair moderating is something the 405th has.... well, in the past, people have contested it as iffy. But, from what I see, things have been as above-board and as fair as possible.

A warning system would be more effective

I believe we already have one - whether it's visible or not is another thing entirely. For minor things, I assume members are verbally warned, before it's escalated to a number of -ACTUAL- warns, before then suspensions and bans are handed out.

 

[Vrogy]

Here's another (probably) irritating suggestion: Making .WEBM files attachable/embeddable.
more info on them here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebM

Basically, though, they're long gif or short video-type content. Short and sweet. Good for building technique demos or showing off parts with a few camera shots.

For example, here's an ~800kb one of a few weapons in the latest halo 5 promotional video:
http://a.pomf.se/ibasiz.webm

 

[WandererTJ]

I had not heard of WebM until today. That's pretty cool!

 

[Art Andrews]

Here's another (probably) irritating suggestion: Making .WEBM files attachable/embeddable.
more info on them here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebM

Basically, though, they're long gif or short video-type content. Short and sweet. Good for building technique demos or showing off parts with a few camera shots.

For example, here's an ~800kb one of a few weapons in the latest halo 5 promotional video:
http://a.pomf.se/ibasiz.webm

Will have to look into the technical feasibility of them, but I like the idea!

 

[Art Andrews]

So, Vrogy, you mean something like this?

[h5video]http://a.pomf.se/ibasiz.webm[/h5video]

 

[Art Andrews]

Added in bbcode h5video. You can now use that to post html5 based videos directly to the site.

 

[MyrHerder]

FYI, Tapatalk does not appear to support h5video (yet). I only see the bbcode spelled out.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

 

[Art Andrews]

FYI, Tapatalk does not appear to support h5video (yet). I only see the bbcode spelled out.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

Have I mentioned my extreme dislike of Tapatalk?

 

[MyrHerder]

Show me another free app on Android that let's me browse and follow subscribed threads with notifications, and I'll give it a try. Until then, this is my only way to participate in forums with my work/home schedule.

 

[Zaff]

I've been wondering, with there already being several non-Halo models, builds, and general interest here, and with that growing with the fasts approaching release of Destiny, should an area be set up in the forums for non-Halo costuming? Looking at the current topic areas, we have Elite, Recruit, and everything else is all Halo this or Halo that. So I guess what I'm wondering is should there be a catch-all "miscellaneous costuming" or "non-Halo costuming," should things just be left as they are, or with the push for a more Halo-centric focus to the group as a whole, will the non-Halo stuff be getting phased out and possibly even relocated to a different site? In a way I wouldn't have many objections to a separate "405th: Destiny Division" so to speak, but at the same time, I like having basically all my costuming chatter bundled together on one site rather than having several different forums to keep up with.