What do you think of the Icon Store?

[Andy]

Most of you are familiar with the Icon Store (http://www.youngwritersonline.net/ishop.php), where you can buy icons for your profile with the points earned from critiquing. I want to know what you all think of it. There's a possibility that we may get rid of it for several reasons:

1. site security (prevent hacking)
2. the shop is not compatible with the most recent version of this forum
3. ^ that most recent version has some good anti-spam features
4. to use the critique points for a different purpose: prevent members from posting more literature than they're critiquing.

Please answer the poll.

[Rafael Domination]

Well, I love it and all, but if that's what it'll take to get rid of those spamming &%)!'s, then I'm all up for it. Sacrifices must be made. *sniffles*

By the way, who voted YES! GET RID OF IT!!! That's just harsh :P

Edit: do we get our points back? :crazy:

[Shaun]

In theory the points wouldn't be given back, but we'd change the system into a critique point system and maybe we'd have to devise other ways to reward folks...

[Andy]

Edit: do we get our points back? :crazy:
We could do that. I can change the shop so everyone can sell their items back and get some good % of points in return.

I was thinking about some sort of reward/award system to replace this one. But we'll see what's available.

[GeorgeMichael]

By the way, who voted YES! GET RID OF IT!!! That's just harsh :P



:whistle: :whistle: :whistle: :whistle:

what? I'm just practicing my whistling.

but really, I just like the idea of the points system to post. :)

[Carraka]

I don't think you should use the critique points to prevent members from posting more literature than they're critiquing. Because if you did that, I know that you would probably lose one member that's sitting right in this chair ...

On the other hand, perhaps I post less literature than I critique, if anything can be less than zero, so maybe it's okay.

Anyway, yeah. I won't miss the Icon Store. It doesn't do anything.

[Shaun]

While I agree on principle, Carr, it's just getting out of hand and a lot of people are just taking advantage. Some members will leave if we don't do anything about it. We don't want to have a disproportionate critique system, but one that at least works on an 1 to 1 ratio. You give one good critique, you get a point and you can go off and post. In reality, this wouldn't even affect you, Carr, unless you disappeared for months and then came back and didn't critique. We're just getting a lot of material being posted by members who haven't critiqued, and we've seen a lot of new members show up, post a crapload of work, and then leave. We want to prevent that because the idea behind this site is give and receive, not take and leave.

Edit: There's no guarantee we're doing a point system. We are going to have a new mod though who will be focusing on the lit area.

[Rafael Domination]

New Mod? Will it be Imelda by any chance? I mean, she's got the experience! :D

*Plus you can rightfully crown her as queen. But yeah, just a suggestion...to make things easier for you*

[Shaun]

She has a site to run on her own. I didn't ask her about it, but I made the assumption that she wouldn't like to be a mod here as well as on TW.

[Rafael Domination]

Well then, I guess it's vote my nominations then! ^^

[Shaun]

Just a note on moderators: even though we don't have votes around here for who becomes a mod, we DO want your opinion. We try to choose people that we think most of you will like, but if you have a problem you can PM Andy or me at any time about it. It's best if you PM us at the same time, though, in case one of us happens to be out that day or something. I try to get on every day, but sometimes my time here is limited during school. In any case, we do want your opinion, your concerns, etc. Just PM us. If you're upset about how things are working around here, just tell us.


Also, about the critique point system: because we are adding a mod we won't be implementing a point system immediately. Most likely we'll wait until we really really need it. With a new mod to watch the lit area I think we'll be okay. We're also going to be enacting new policies and such. That sounds scary, but it's not :P.

[GeorgeMichael]

New Mod? Will it be Imelda by any chance? I mean, she's got the experience! :D

:P that's exactly what I said in the chatroom :), but yeah, she's busy already

[Imelda]

Busy? You people haven't seen my schedule, then.

Thanks for not asking, Shaun. I really appreciate you randomly making assumptions and/or lying to people about your reasons. Makes me feel warm and tingly inside.

I think I'm going to go gorge myself on chocolate. Or slit my wrists, depending on how crappily my family treat me over the next ten minutes ...

[Shaun]

??? You have a site of your own to run! If you wanted to be a mod you could have mentioned that you weren't too busy. Besides, you have TW and the magazine...and me to take care of! And I'm a handful as it is!

[Rafael Domination]

Okay...this could get out of hand pretty soon :crazy:

But, anyways, when is the newest version of the site gonna be installed?

[Shaun]

Not a clue. That's up to Andy. I imagine there will be a fair bit of warning before we upgrade though, since it might mean the site goes down for a few hours.

[Andy]

The actual downtime shouldn't be too long. Perhaps half an hour?

The real issue that will take a while are all those site info/web pages, and the look of the forum. Those are all custom changes that we will need to add again. The forum will be completely operational. It will just be bare-bones for a day or so. :D

[Guessed]

So there hasn't been any downtime yet, then? Drat - that extinguishes the spark of hope that my school /didn't/ ban this website, and that the server was just being silly.

Since my home computer (which I'm on now) is as slow as a can of peas, I guess I can't post much. Or often. I'll just make each post a page long, so as to still communicate the same amount of dialogue. :P

And my simile works, right? I mean, you never see a can of peas going fast... voluntarily. x.o Maybe /I'm/ the slow one here.

[Shaun]

If you saw a Database Error there was some downtime last night. I don't know what happened or if Andy is fully aware that it happened...but if you saw downtime at your school it might have been because of that.

[Guessed]

No, because it happened both this morning and at lunch. I have Eastern Standard Time, so for instance it's about 5:40 here. Probably just blocked the site. :[ Curse those authoritarian censors. I wasn't doing anything objectionable on this site... save being an idiot and wasting time. ^^;

[Andy]

Uhhh, I WAS fully aware of the downtime.

http://www.youngwritersonline.net/showthread.php?t=1059

[Starry]

No, because it happened both this morning and at lunch. I have Eastern Standard Time, so for instance it's about 5:40 here. Probably just blocked the site. :[ Curse those authoritarian censors. I wasn't doing anything objectionable on this site... save being an idiot and wasting time. ^^;

I don't think that it's the school servers, Guessed, because the blocking works on the county server level and I can still get on fine at school. (I love the way the blocking works, it just blocks the most-viewed non-educational sites-- though some people are really pissed now that it finally blocked fanfiction.net :] ) So something must have been screwed up that day, whether it was the server, the individual computer, the school's internet access...something like that.

[Guessed]

It turns out YWO wasn't blocked - it really was the downtime that prevented me. So I can still get on at school. Sorry for my conspiratorial whinging.

Interesting that it's on a county level, though. They must send the link to the higher-ups to put it on the block list; I know they did that with /another/ site I would spend copious lengths of time on.