[Mike]

I've been watching the statues now that there's a status updates box on the skin I use for IF and I've noticed many inappropriate status messages. I usually follow them into the person's profile and find even more garbage in their profile. So I figured I'd make a thread as a warning to everyone who posts here and uses these features:

I will ban you without warning if I see any more of this crap in your status messages or profiles. In the end, IF is a forum dedicated to a fantasy series geared toward kids and young adults. This is not a place for you to be disgusting, perverted, or rude. I pay the bill for this website and while I'm not so active here any more, I spent a large part of the first three or four years on this forum building this community. I will not tolerate this stuff.

This is also a good time to remind everyone that I will ban anyone I see trolling outside of FTD. I personally hate FTD, as the staff of IF is well aware, but I tolerate it because I want to keep all of the unfunny trolls in their little corner. Once you stray outside of this forum and start trolling people, you're gone. This especially goes for The Cycle forums.

Always remember that your rights to post on IF are a privilege, not a right. I will sleep just fine if I have to ban someone (or many someones if it comes down to that).

I realize you might thing I'm a jerk or a buzz kill but oh well. I want IF to remain a nice, friendly, and welcoming community. The few people here who are disgusting/rude/immature will not be allowed to ruin the forum for people looking to come here to have a nice and clean experience.

Cheers!

[Ultima]

.../raises hand sheepishly

I admit and agree it was stupid of me to put that on my profile. I was in a weird mood and thought it was funny, but it just came off as tasteless.

Apologies, Mike. Won't happen again.

And other people learn. Perversion does not equate to funniness. You have your Twitters for that crap.

~Liv

[Pompoon]

That's what Facebook is for.

[Ultima]

Pompoon, on 07 March 2010 - 07:27 PM, said:

That's what Facebook is for.

I don't have that luxury. 99% of my facebook friends are my family. My very, very Catholic family.

[Sogemplow]

I don't even like those status updates on facebook and I'm pretty perplexed why we have them here. I'm even more perplexed about why people would post FTD material somewhere where they know its going to be on the front page. Its beyond stupidity honestly.

[Master of the Blade]

Soggie, it is because these folks be geniuses.

I didnt even realise we had that feature on here.....I suppose I probably should have checked out the new features that took Allison and co so long to get installed and working

[Pompoon]

You need to be more observant Nate. And for some unknown reason, I totally just typed Quoth. XD

[Arthryn]

THANKS MIKE.

We've already made some changes to the status thingy (we reduced the number of displayed statuses so it would be less like some dumb shoutbox. The next step, in the event you guys abuse the statuses (which you have been gasp) is to take out the easy status field on the index page, so you have the inconvenience of going to your profile page to update your status. Or we could also turn the status box thing off entirely.

Also, if you guys don't like the social networky aspect of the new profile pages, I believe we can switch them back to the old IPB 2.3 format. That way, there will be NO statuses and social networky crap.

[Candy Spots]

Mike and Arthyrn, thank you both so much for bringing this up! I know that I for one do not like to inadvertently read inappropriate stuff like that and I am glad to see I am not the only one.

[Fusaichi Pegasus]

Arthryn, on 08 March 2010 - 02:49 PM, said:

Also, if you guys don't like the social networky aspect of the new profile pages, I believe we can switch them back to the old IPB 2.3 format. That way, there will be NO statuses and social networky crap.

I've always thought that forums are for discussion, social networks are for rubbishy chit chat. IPB 2.3's profile was a perfect combination of the two. It allowed for chit chat, while placing an added emphasis on the user posts/threads.

While I love facebook, the current profile layout could very easily draw some users away from the forum content. I doubt IF will suffer too greatly activity wise, but it's by no means ideal.

So yeah, I'm all for going back to the way things were.

[Mike]

If the way things are now is encouraging people to spend more time on IF to do social networky stuff, then that's a good thing for the website. If it was affecting the regular forum activity (people posting less), we'd kill it. That'd be the only reason other than the purpose of this thread (people abusing it)... and I'd much rather just ban the abusers, not delete the function entirely.

But yeah, I've noticed a few people complaining about the fact that it's 'too social networky', to which I have to ask: why not just ignore it? If you don't like the feature, ok - don't use it.

[Master of the Blade]

Which is exactly what I plan on doing.

I know full well why they were installed. It is a modern thing which the younger members will undoubtably love using, as it is akin to Facebook etc. Those that don't want to use them, wel just don't.

They don't intrude on the page, like I said I didn't even notice them to start with, so there shouldn't be any need to alter the forum set again.

Just live with it.

[Morzansspawn]

I personally think it's cool, But I have to ask would advertising stuff like say an RPG be considered abuse?

[Arthryn]

That's being determined currently in the staff board. I'll post a new thread about statuses really soon that actually details issues like this.

[Pompoon]

I rather like them. I haven't personally come across any inappropriate statuses. It's a good way to shout out what you're doing, before you go to your favorite threads. That's how I work it anyway.