They're stickied because someone pm'd the mod (or one of the admin) for that section and asked. We aren't mind readers.

 

Exactly. This place is much more than a repository for information. Very social. If the rules were made that rigid, we would not get the human feedback that makes it worthwhile to help each other out. It's a forum, not a shop manual.

The concept of "reputation points" is amusing. Participate here, and you build your own reputation among those who pay attention. No need for anyone to keep score.

I enjoy a lot of the thread resurrections. A lot of them occur because someone searched. The resurrector should always get points for that.

Ken

 

Ill redesign the logo. Does anyone have a actual high-resolution version of the rx8club logo?
Ill make like 10 different versions and have everyone vote on the best.

 

Your mom maintains this forum....

 

Lies... my mom's cooking right now.

 

For me!!!

 

One of the admins should send me a high-res raster image or even better a vector file of the club logo. I will make sure that it looks better, crisper, and stays under 88kb.

 

^ yeah comeon admins send it to him!

 

I'm not saying this is how it should be. But i thought that the main purpose of "lounge" sub-forums was to BS and joke-around.
Keeping the thread to the subject at hand could yield more valuable information ie: A member experiencing a similar problem, or a review/result of a modification.

I actually have a perfect example : DIY: HID leveling sensor rebuild. This is a very great DIY, and I see bad height sensors everyday at work. I always pick out the good springs and set them aside.
Had there been 8(exaggeration) pages of people BS-ing, most members like myself would get discouraged reading non-informative posts, and just go-ahead and try to stretch out their corroded springs. This may or may not work, but I'd rather try to find a spring that works correctly - as designed.
I guess what I'm trying to suggest is DIYs stay locked and to the point unless the OP or moderator are contacted by another member with significant/valuable information.


I agree the reputation system is stupid.

 

All that functionality already exists..

Also, I doubt many forum members would even bother with the frontpage and just skip straight to the forums.
I'm not sure what the pic is supposed to represent, but if it's a mock-up for a frontpage then it's missing quite a lot of things, such as a nav bar.

 

That design you posted looks messy. I don't quite see what you are trying to do here :P

 

lol i love our forum

 

For about 6 months prior to selling the websites I was having a system developed that would have integrated rx8club, rx7club, and mazda3club in a way that would have truly been revolutionary. That was May of '07. In direct talks with the IB team, and the person who is now IB's CTO, I was told that they were VERY interested in this and were working to develop something similar on their own ... and that they planned to implement it within 6 months. Well that was 2 1/2 years ago.

I also delivered a 2 page Word doc to their Development Manager and the now CTO with tons of incredible ideas. Some of these ideas were in a beta stage on my servers and were available for IB to take over development. Again, 2 1/2 years later and exactly 0 of these ideas have been implemented.

At this point it's clear nothing will get done on IB's end. If we want something better we have to do it ourselves, but they booted me from Admin status so I can't do anything myself anymore. What the users can do is make informative posts, and periodially update them with fresh info. For example, I was just thinking today about how somebody needs to consolidate all the thousands of AccessPort posts into an AccessPort FAQ. The same could go with any topic. Members seriously interested in bettering the site can post a FAQ or DIY about any topic. Don't worry about getting all the info right in the first post. As the thread goes on update the first post with better and more updated info, make sure to host the pictures as attachments instead of off-site so that the links don't go dead. If you find that you don't have edit ability, write a Mod with changes you'd like to make to the first post of your FAQ/DIY thread. Digging through 100 pages of BS posts and bickering is what sucks about forums, if that first post is updated often and answers all questions, there's real value there.

The Mods can be more active in this process too, some are already ... the others should follow their lead. Just use threads that are excessively long as suggestions for a topic that might be in need of consolidation.

Here's an example of the simplest idea possible that could be a real nice addition to the site, something I told IB years ago. We need a small icon made that would represent Garage. And users that have a vBGarage entry would have that icon appear under their post count that would link to their Garage entry. So simple and functional, but can't even get that done ... hell, can't even get the Garage working right since they moved it off my servers.

 

They get their ad money, all that matters mate. Business is business, why fix what ain't broke

 

^ exactly what im saying

 

Better site = more traffic = more ad revenues

Some of the ideas in my list were meant specially as ways to generate more revenues. But the fact that they'd take development time means they won't get done. Like POP3 email addresses that'd be <username>@rx8club.com that would be automatically created when you sign up. They could even charge something like $2/month and I bet a ton of people would use them as their primary. Server resources are cheap, but the kicker would be text or HTML ad blocks that would be inserted into the bottom of every message sent from one of the addresses. Even 2 1/2 years ago there was source code on sourceforge to do exactly this, would have taken a few hours of development time and maybe a dedicated server in exchange for a couple grand a month of extra revenues. Seems like a no-brainer to me.

 

If lazyness still pays, why change it?

Not defending them or anything, just that seems to be the mindset

 

Well they are a publicly owned company. You'd think growing profits would be more of a priority to them.

 

History has proven otherwise though, but I agree with you, lots could be done, like a fresh new layout.. that'd be a great start. But oh well, watcha gonna do? Short of making a new forum that is (and that's an option that I don't really see as viable).

Make the most of the forums /shrug

 

Enzo or Ryan- Can you help on the idea Ryan just posed? The garage Icon that links to a person's VB garage? I can easily make the icon but Id need help with placement and making it work.

Enzo you helped me through fixing some of the issues previously Im sure we could do this.

 

Sure, just need to edit 1 template file

 

yeah i'm pretty sure which one too. just need the code...

 

It's a piece of cake, put it in the postbit ... I'm sure you can find the exact code you need to add/edit on vbulletin.org

 

http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=104
http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=79342

5 second search

Lots of stuff in our garage I had custom developed, but since the 'official' version is being updated it might be worth looking into it as an upgrade.

edit - nvm the upgrade, looks like our version is still better, just bugs left over since IB took it.

 

This looks nice, but you'd be counting on IB to get the install and migration of current data over

http://www.cnd-systems.com/cnd_garage.php