|  |
| Suggestions Make suggestions for changes to MMOwned.com |
 | 
10-31-2008
|  | MMOwned WebDev Legendary User | | | Join Date: Jan 2008
Posts: 1,915
Nominated 5 Times in 1 Post Reputation: 1029 Points: 22,671, Level: 21 | Level up: 17%, 1,329 Points needed |    | | | What not to suggest, and how to make a suggestion.
I've seen a whole bunch of suggestions lately, that while have good intentions, are kind of blind to how to the site is setup, and maintained.
Firstly, I'll go down the list of things you should not suggest, and (hopefully, clearly) explain why you should not suggest these things. Then later I'll give a quick example as to how you should suggest things.
Things not to suggest:
- Changing forum titles. (See the explanation of Google below)
- New member groups, or titles.
- New staff members, or suggesting existing staff members be removed.
- Removing members from the database. (See the explanation of Google below)
- Removing posts from the database. (See the explanation of Google below)
- New forums for unknown MMO titles, or non MMO games.
- Forums for topics not relating to exploits, hacks, bots, or guides, related to GAMING ONLY.
- Changing rep requirements, or post requirements for certain sections, without a very good, and valid reason.
- New chat features (Java based, more AJAX based, etc chat systems)
- Useless plug-ins or 'products' (as vB puts them) that are mainly based for smaller forums.
- More as I think of them, or see them.
A quick explanation on how Google (and other sites) index websites:
Google (GoogleBot, bots, spiders) periodically crawls websites to index content. (The stuff you see when you search Google, is the direct result of crawling web pages for their content, and URLs) As all of you can see, MMOwned and FPSOwned use something called SEO (Search Engine Optimization). It's blatantly apparent from the URLs you see while browsing both sites. This turns 'garbled' URL names, into easily read (by humans, and bots) URLs. (For example, mmowned.com/forums/suggestions/ is actually something like mmowned.com/forums/index.php?f=152. Big difference don't you think?)
Google (being the largest search engine on the internet), penalizes websites that have multiple content, and a lot of 404s. (Unreachable pages) So, if we were to change the Suggestions section, to Site Suggestions, the URL would be, forums/site-suggestions/ instead of forums/suggestions/, which would not only cause 404 errors (gracefully handled by vBulletin in the form of the wonderful 'Page not found' page), but also multiple content in the eyes of Google, and other search engine spiders. This not only penalizes MMOwned and FPSOwned with multiple content, but also changes the old indexed pages, into those lovely page not found pages, which not only lowers site traffic, but also lowers whats called Page Rank. (Page Rank is just how Google ranks certain pages on certain topics and content)
So, in short, changing URLs to different pages, or creating multiple pages on the same content (a result of the previous) will hurt MMOwned and FPSOwned more than you think.
Explanations on things not to suggest:
- See above Google explanation.
- New member groups or titles, are unnecessary, and nothing more than more maintenance when new features are added. We already have about 10 usergroups, and even more titles. These all need seperate permissions set for each individual forum, and board wide. Sure, we'd all like to see more ranks, and groups (I personally want the black name group!) but it's unlikely that things like this will happen.
- The MMOwned staff decide when more staff members are needed. Not the members of MMOwned. The staff recognize those users who help out a lot, and do take notice. There's no need to tell them about it, as 99% of the time, they already know.
- As per #3, they also know about those staff members who need to be removed of their position. However, this doesn't mean that members can't speak up if they don't agree with the staff. Send a PM to a different member of the staff, or the staff member you have a problem with. Just please, don't spam the PM boxes of the staff because someone deleted your thread. If it was deleted, there was a reason.
- See the explanation on Google. Old members do look bad, I won't lie. However, there are a few sites out there that rank websites (forums specifically) on their amount of members, posts, threads, etc. Removing these members could cause some drastic effects. This will also effect the content Google has indexed.
- Again, see the explanation on Google. Also, this will remove all the content Google has indexed over the past few years, which will greatly hurt MMOwned in terms of traffic.
- MMOwned and FPSOwned are geared towards exploits, hacks, bots, and guides for MMOs and FPSs. We're not here to hack other people's computers, or learn how to hack Google to do nasty things. There are other sites out there that do that, and all the power to them. But that's not what this site is about. It's a gaming site, not a 'teach me to be a uber 1337 h4xx0r' site. This applies to key-loggers, trojans, RATs, and the like. Tools, or methods.
- Rep is controlled by admins, and admins alone. They have the final say on what requirements are what. (I can't speak for the other staff members, or what happens at staff meetings, so please correct me if I'm wrong.) Rep and post requirements have been set to where they are for a reason, and unless you have a really good reason as to why they should change, don't bother posting. The account giveaway section has a 50 post + some rep requirement, for a reason. Don't be angry because you can't get free stuff with only 3 posts. Contribute, and you'll be free to roam around wherever you want.
- MMOwned and FPSOwned has a shout box, that is restricted to Donators, Contributors, Elites, Legendaries, and the staff members. It's a great feature of the site for those that can use it, and it won't change (except for, of course, updates to the shout box itself). The shout box in use now, causes enough server load to bring some sites to their knees, and this shout box is incredibly light weight, and feature rich. Having some Java based shout box, is pointless, and not worth the time to install it. (Every user would be required to have Java installed to do so) Also, on the topic of 'Live Chat' or something similar; these types of things are unnecessary, and pointless. We're not selling anything here that would require a Live Chat or equivalent.
- vBulletin has hundreds upon hundreds of plug-ins and products to make forums more customized. However, most of these are either pointless, to heavy to work with high traffic forums, or just plain stupid. Some of these mods include: WoWHead Tooltips, XBox Live account mods, announcement banners, random skin mods, and the like. I'll explain a bit on the WoWHead Tooltips, and why they're a bad idea, not only for MMOwned and FPSOwned, but for the users of the site as well. Each tooltip the mod creates, needs to download the data from another site, and pull the info from the local database. Thats 1-4 queries, and up to 80kb extra data per page, per tooltip. That's a lot of server load, and bandwith for such a simple thing, when you can easily just go to WoWHead and search for it there. To add to that, it's only for WoW, not all MMOs. You wouldn't be able to use [item]Some Random AoC Item[/item] would you?
There are a lot of other things that are unecessary for a major site like MMOwned and FPSOwned. Those were just a few of them.
Next on the list is the way things are being suggested. A good amount of the suggestions I've read (about 40% or so) have been 1-2 line suggestions, with no real reason for why whatever is being suggested, should happen.
Here's what I'm talking about:
Quote: |
We should have a rank for <insert random reason> because it would make people want to do that.
| Doesn't quite make you want to actually do anything does it? There's no reason to why the rank should be added, just that you should because people might want to. A better suggestion would be:
Quote: |
We should have a section for throwing around ideas for new bots or programs, so people can get a better idea about what people would like to see in the program. It will help get more interest in projects, and further the community in those areas with much more help from other members. Also, it will possibly make some of those projects use MMOwned as their home, so if they ever get big, MMOwned will grow with it. Although it may be a dud, it can be removed later if it's not used.
| Notice the difference? You see both sides of the suggestion, why to add it, and what would happen if you do add it. Also, as a kicker, what would happen if the suggestion fails. There's no reason why you can't take 5 minutes to write a decently well thought out post, before just throwing it in the bin and hoping it will happen.
I hope this helps some people. 
Last edited by KuRIoS; 11-02-2008 at 01:45 PM.
|
Donate to remove ads, get your "DONATOR title, and get access to the MMOwned community's elite Shoutbawx.
10-31-2008
|  | Administrator | | | Join Date: Feb 2008 Location: MMOwned Headquarters
Posts: 375
Reputation: 206 Level up: 94%, 75 Points needed | | | | Well said Apoc! We want good suggestions and fresh ideas but this covers a lot of what we don't need. |
10-31-2008
|  | ﴾͡๏̯͡๏﴿ SupraM0d ﴾͡๏̯͡๏﴿ | | | Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: In yo mind.
Posts: 1,126
Reputation: 605 Points: 13,062, Level: 14 | Level up: 59%, 538 Points needed | | | | /Clap.
I'll read this later, but since it's from Apoc I know it's full of win. |
10-31-2008
|  | Sergeant | | | Join Date: Sep 2008
Posts: 54
Reputation: 5 | | | wow very nice apoc. |
10-31-2008
|  | EpicServices.Net | | | Join Date: Jan 2008 Location: Netherlands
Posts: 1,823
Reputation: 408 Points: 12,011, Level: 13 | Level up: 78%, 289 Points needed | | | | Nice, "suggesting existing staff members be removed." made me lol |
12-14-2008
|  | Contributor | | | Join Date: Jun 2006
Posts: 2,377
Reputation: 113 Points: 27,804, Level: 24 | Level up: 36%, 1,096 Points needed | | | Quote:
Originally Posted by Obama  i suggest mor cowbell. | 2 week bump, for a sticky... E_P_I_C
__________________ Retired Model Editing Expert - July 2005 to July 2008
 |
12-14-2008
| | Banned | | | Join Date: Nov 2008
Posts: 109
Reputation: 3 | | Quote:
Originally Posted by Demonkunga | lol..epicccc  |
01-08-2009
| | Site n00b.. (A leecher if I've been here for more than a month and can't earn 5 rep) | | | Join Date: Jan 2009
Posts: 17
Reputation: 3 | | | support
good suggestions i thinks. thumb! |
01-08-2009
| | Master Sergeant | | | Join Date: Oct 2008
Posts: 96
Reputation: 10 Level up: 38%, 310 Points needed | | | | you realize this is a 31-10 thread ?
Last edited by xXCharleyXx; 01-08-2009 at 11:24 PM.
|
01-09-2009
|  | Site n00b.. (A leecher if I've been here for more than a month and can't earn 5 rep) | | | Join Date: Nov 2008
Posts: 101
Reputation: 3 | | | where do you find time to write sumthing like this? |
01-09-2009
| ![Anarchy [RD]'s Avatar](http://www.mmowned.com/forums/customavatars/avatar172336_1.gif) | Contributor | | | Join Date: Jan 2008 Location: Australia
Posts: 508
Reputation: 130 Level up: 25%, 602 Points needed | | | Apoc, you're always full of win
nicely said |
01-13-2009
|  | What's a Parog? Legendary User | | | Join Date: May 2007
Posts: 1,371
Nominated 1 Times in 1 Post Reputation: 706 Points: 16,457, Level: 17 | Level up: 5%, 1,343 Points needed | | |
__________________
Internet rule 99: Whenever you see anyone by the name of Parog, wherever it may be, you MUST ask publicly what a Parog is. IE: "What's a Parog?" - Repeat until the internet is filled with nothing but "What's a Parog?".
|
01-13-2009
|  | Contributor | | | Join Date: Nov 2007 Location: Game Development
Posts: 855
Reputation: 261 Level up: 16%, 759 Points needed | | | | ya we dont need more boobs .. |
01-13-2009
| | Site n00b.. (A leecher if I've been here for more than a month and can't earn 5 rep) | | | Join Date: Jan 2009
Posts: 7
Reputation: 1 | | | mmm good read :lol wut o.O : | |
Posting Rules
| You may not post new threads You may not post replies You may not post attachments You may not edit your posts
HTML code is Off
| | |
All times are GMT -4. The time now is 10:46 PM.
|
