Got Ideas for the Forum? Post them here!

[Jssy]

Maybe if it did happen they could give an option to turn it on/off in your usercp

[Empired]

Nah cos people would complain unless it was automatically off and you had to turn it on. And then you may as well just go over to habboxlive.com anyway

[Nick]

V7 is coming to mind here. "It'll be here, it'll be here!!!!"

Why won't you be ready to post in November? The Christmas event doesn't start until mid December so you have a little over a month to sort it out between Halloween and Christmas. Can you seriously not write up a new set of rules in five weeks? Is that some kind of joke?
I understand you might want to make this a big thing but five weeks??

Edit: @Jssy; yh I was just mentioning it because HabboQuests forum is extremely popular already and they've done it. I don't think I'd rly like the radio to be on our forum though as I'd just mute it all the time anyway.

I don't work on v7 so I can't help ya there. Of course I am not saying that every project I work on it completed to a high standard because i would be kidding myself.

I am moving around mid / end of November so if I really wanted to I could work on this get it perfect and post it in a few weeks time but really, I don't want to rush it. I think Phil is actually dreading another big event because yes they are a pain to plan and thats another reason why i wasn't planning on doing it anytime soon was to really think about tasks and how the event will work and incorporate the public into the event etc. As I was saying that I was moving, I generally have no clue if my internet will be up even before Christmas. I don't think Phil wants to do this himself but he does have support from General Management and the moderation team although I think he would agree with me and rather get things right rather than smash it out in 5 weeks then post it.

[Phil]

Close Debates

They're not popular, when one does come out it's either completely stupid or the same generic debate that's been done 300 times in the past 10 year (abortion, death penalty as a perfect example of the current 2)

The department itself isn't needed as it's useless and the debates spewed out by Dan are absolutely crap. The member debates could easily be posted within Discuss Anything instead.

For example just now we have the last post being 12 days ago (posted in a member debate), and the last post on official debates being between 20-27 days ago.

Fix the shop on non habbo dark skin

It's ugly and not been modified for the black laoyout

Fix the shop

The only time gold bars are added is if there's a thread about it, then they'll add some for a few minutes then remove them again, either do it periodically (say on the first day of every month) and announce it so everyone has the same chance, or remove gold bars from the shop if you're never going to stock them.

Sell VIP

Do Sulake even care if you sell VIP now? I'm pretty sure they haven't for years, added to that you used to only do it for Christmas (as money was going to charity) and now you seem to do it every holiday event (easter, summer, h'ween, etc), so I'm sure if they were against it you'd already be breaking their rules by doing that, so why not just fully go back to selling it?

Fix your calendar

If you go to the calendar (http://www.habboxforum.com/calendar.php) and click for example the 21st, 2 events booked yet it directs you to the forum homepage. So either it's set to 2 by default so it doesn't look dead or there's something wrong with your script.

Make posting more 'attractive'

You have the Weekly Posting Stats (do you? it's not been posted since the 6th of October) which is meant to encourage people to post, but it doesn't. No-ones going to intentionally post 100 times so they can get VIP for the next week, and repeat it constantly. You need to make people want to post.

For example, if I post a bunch of threads the posts basically doubled.

Take the last weekly stats for example: 0 over 100 posts, 1145 total posts, 166 posters

Take a week I posted a few threads: 2 over 100 posts, 2816 total posts, 191 posters
Another week I posted a few threads: 2 over 100 posts, 2160 total posts, 156 posters

If you want people to post, then you actively need to make threads that people will want to post in, otherwise they'll look at the new posts/activity stream, see nothing and do nothing. They're not going to say oh the forums dead let's liven it up, they'll just look on another forum or do something else.

Encourage the mod team to posts, hell encourage every department to actively post more. Encourage them to actively make threads that'll promote discussion rather than replying to some thread with nothing useful.

Clean up the forum

Take some time, go through the forums and clean it up.

Some examples:
- Sub forums that aren't active - merged with the parent forum in most cases just add a prefix or something.
- Old stickied threads - re-write them so it's appropriate now, or just remove them.

I'm sick of seeing stickied threads by someone who left 8 years ago tbh.

And the likes of temporary stickied threads becoming stuck for 3 years.

In my opinion, all stickied threads should be posted by a 'high' ranking member of staff (be it forum manager, smods, or agms)

Some examples of these could be;

http://www.habboxforum.com/showthread.php?t=720719 - A stickied thread that should have been temp.
http://www.habboxforum.com/forumdisplay.php?f=432 - A subforum that hasn't been posted in for over a year and 6 months



That's all I can be bothered to think about just now

Agreed that something needs to be done about the Debates but I'm not exactly sure what that would be. I'm not sure about scrapping it all together but there should be some way (just like posting in general) to make it a bit more attractive. Possibly make Debates shorter and more frequent like I'm sure they were before.

Dunno what's wrong eith shop on the skin you're on about but I'll have a gawk sometime today. It's on my long to do list for the day. In terms of the stock, I'll send GM a PM in relation to this and now you've added a second thing to my to do list.

Not sure on the problem with the calendar, will check that too.

This afternoon Nick and I were talking about how we can change the prizes for the 100 posts per week or whatever. We haven't come up with anything just yet but hopefully we will have something new for you all next week or the week after. There's a few more ideas that I do have but I'm not sure about them yet. Starting TODAY I'm actually going to be starting up staff posting again so all of the Manager can see how much their staff have been posting each week. I can only speak for my own dept. but I will be encouraging my team to post and create more threads because of this (I already do this but still).

Forum does need a serious clean, it's also been put on my list but it probably won't be done today. hopefully I can give that a good lash this week.

Particularly agree with scott's point about making posting more attractive. It should be part of the job description for moderators. You're the forum department, you specifically should be particularly responsible for posting threads to encourage people to post.

Also I'm looking at the HabboQuests forum and they have an activity stream that shows the latest 3 posts at the top of the page that updates automatically. I'd like something like that please.
And they have the radio on both their main site and the forum. Would remind people to listen to the radio because I never use habbox.com or habboxlive.com unless @Jssy; tells me she is DJing. Actually I can see a downside to that because then I'd have to mute it all the time because I don't like many DJ's shows.

Not sure what you mean by the HabboQuests thing? Is it like the widget we have on habbox.com only it updates automatically? Not sure if it's still there but as Nick said you used to be able to to pen a pop up at the bottom of the forum. We definitely won't be updating it so it plays automatically.

@David; I'll see what can be done

[David]

if you want the radio without the main site use chippiewills chrome plugin
dont bug those of us who don't care with a radio on the forum

[Inseriousity.]

They can't do it in November cos I'm already planning something. I don't think "big events" wise, people have any reason to complain. In fact, maybe there's big event overload at the moment! I think when the Jungle was a make-it-up-as-it-goes-along type of affair, it'd be best if time was spent thoroughly planning it.

As for the mods post target, I agree that threads do need to be created but essentially, a forum isn't about forcing people to post. Personally, I thought the forum was doing quite well until the downtime, there seemed to be more people about at any rate even if that wasn't translating into posts. I think, as well as the 100 posts thing, there could be a QI Award too. A 'Quite Interesting' award for those users that have posted interesting threads that have generated discussion, chosen by the moderation team in a similar fashion to how Member of the Month works. It could be decided monthly with member of the month or weekly with the weekly statistics.

[Phil]

@Empired; The event Nick is referring to will be taking place but as Nick said probably not this year. Especially wqith him moving, then Christmas and then the event that Shoned has planned. This event is going to be big-scale and it these things just can't happen over night. Take my jungle event for example, it was good on paper but not enough planning went into it and in some ways, it was a flop! Things need to be planned efficiently.

[Empired]

I don't work on v7 so I can't help ya there. Of course I am not saying that every project I work on it completed to a high standard because i would be kidding myself.

I am moving around mid / end of November so if I really wanted to I could work on this get it perfect and post it in a few weeks time but really, I don't want to rush it. I think Phil is actually dreading another big event because yes they are a pain to plan and thats another reason why i wasn't planning on doing it anytime soon was to really think about tasks and how the event will work and incorporate the public into the event etc. As I was saying that I was moving, I generally have no clue if my internet will be up even before Christmas. I don't think Phil wants to do this himself but he does have support from General Management and the moderation team although I think he would agree with me and rather get things right rather than smash it out in 5 weeks then post it.

I wasn't telling you to do v7, I was using it as an example of what appears to be happening with making people post more.

If I were General Management I would want to be making the following people make more threads and posts:

• The entire Forum department (including trialists)
• Senior/Head staff in any department
• (Assistant) Managers of any department (yes, both community- and content-based)
• General Management obviously

So if that were the case then surely it wouldn't be up to you and Phil, Nick? I think it should be up to Chris and Sho to come up with the rules and then up to the Managers of each department to make sure they're kept.
Also, are you referring to this as a 'big project'? Are you sure? It's literally just writing a thread about how your staff need to post more and perhaps a quick guideline on what you would consider to promote discussion and what would not promote discussion. I don't think there needs to be a bit on incentives. The incentive should be 'do this or get fired'.

If it's that much of a challenge for whoever is writing it I would volunteer to write it myself but I don't think you'd like that. (Using 'you' as a general term here Nick, not you personally.)

[Jssy]

On the events side of things I think they're really good. I only started using Habbox again in Summer and there's been so much to get involved with, a few years ago I got bored, so staff are definitely doing what they can to bring events/competitions to the community, at the moment I find there is never nothing to do. I really enjoyed Shipwrecked with @Inseriousity; too when I returned, that was a great forum event.

[Empired]

@Phil; thanks for the clarification.

The point about the radio wasn't really a suggestion and tbh I'm not entirely sure why I mentioned it in the first place. I was referring to this in regards to the activity stream (outlined red):


Oh and I like Mike's idea of the QI award and would really like to see that implemented.