Poll: The Board Upgrade

[firepokemon]

Yay its finally happened, we've been upgraded to 3.7 vBulletin series. First thing I've noticed is that its slower. But seeing other forums upgrade this has been the situation everywhere.

Anyway from what I can gather the main things attached to the 3.7 vBulletin series are Social Groups, Friends, Visitor Messages, Photo Albums and some forums have profile customisations.

We don't seem to have profile customisation so that must be disabled. Its lame and stupid anyway really. There are tagging on some boards and boardmarking but they're also pretty lame and I don't think we have them.

But we do appear to have Photo Albums, Social Groups, Friends and Vistor Messages.

So my poll is what of those features will you use?

Photo Album - I may upload a few photos, one of myself, the other of my dog and whatever else pops up. But really I don't think its something I will use much.

Social Groups - LOL I've already created one, but really these social group things everywhere have proven to be rather failures and thus its not something I will actively use.

Friends - Eh quite a nice feature on other boards I have a few friends, may befriend a few here but really its not something I will use often.

Visitor Messages - I think this feature is great personally. I can see myself using this to wish people Happy Birthday so much more personal than other ways of doing it. I think it could be useful to say read a fanfic but not have much to say but you can potentially visitor message them just to say you're reading the story and you're enjoying it.

Anyway these updates have made Message Boards to be more like social networking sites. While I think some things are great. Really I don't think they're things that are that useful for me nor for my other people.

[Heald]

"firepokemon has not made any friends yet"

LOL

[Toxicity]

Visitor Messages will probably be the most used.

Only other thing I can see being used frequently is the Album; saves us the struggle of remaking picture threads, no?

[shazza]

I'll only enjoy the upgrade if you be my friend, firepokemon.

P.S: Who updated it and when?

[firepokemon]

I'll only enjoy the upgrade if you be my friend, firepokemon.

P.S: Who updated it and when?

Kevin updated it around 12am NZT, so 10pm AEST.

"firepokemon has not made any friends yet"

LOL

OMG how dreadful, my life is over. Though it would be nice to have maybe one person befriend me, lol.

[Drusilla]

*bouncebounce* I'm having way too much fun playing with this thing...

We do indeed have tagging, though I can see that getting out of control if not monitored. Guess the mods may have to start earning their keep again?

I'm leaving visitor messages everywhere semi-randomly. Wheeee!

I'll probably also use the "Social Groups" thing, so peoples can see who I roll with. Ehehehehe... I dunno, I'm just bored.

[Mikachu Yukitatsu]

I didn't notice a thing.

Anyway, I think I'll use some of the functions when I find out how they work. Visitor Messages sound interesting.

And firepokemon, if it's okay with you, consider me as your friend.

That doesn't mean much, anyway, I regard so many people as my friends even if they don't me.

[Blademaster]

I'm in the mood to have people pissed off at me today, so I'm gonna go right ahead and chip in my two cents, and then some:



Photo Album: I'm pretty sure this is an utterly useless feature considering we have a Photo topic somewhere in Misc. that hasn't been updated in forever. Nobody wants to waste their time updating single pictures here on the board, but suddenly people are gonna open their own fucking Photobucket?

I doubt this feature'll serve much of any use at all, considering maybe 50 people still actually post here regularly, and I'm pretty sure most of them don't give a damn about what their friends' pictures look like (Have I ever mentioned that I hate cameras?).


Social Groups: This very topic is posted in Polls, Clubs, and Games. People are actually gonna start making clubs again? I see we have two already, both of which are exclusive as Hell.

I'm probably gonna contradict myself right after this post and make one of these damn things myself, but only in the interest of it actually being 'social.'

Five bucks say it's dead by Sunday.


Friends: ...Do I even need to comment on this? Does anybody on this site care who anybody else is friends with?

I KNOW who my friends are - I doubt that, say, firepokemon or Shuppet Master will one day up and think, "Man, I wish I knew who Blademaster's friends on this site are!".


Visitor Messages: Public PM's. Great. TPM's gonna have a half-assed chatroom now, a la Youtube's Channels and the near-constant influx of spammers and 6-message conversations that take an hour of tapping F5 to read.



I'll probably resort to using 2 or 3 of these useless add-ons along the way, but my overall attitude on the update?

TPM is dying, and in an 'effort' to save it, Kevin tossed in a few new functions to putz around with that'll maybe attract 2 new members and that will keep the rest of the current remainder of forum-goers preoccupied for about a week before we're back to our typical Oniontown status.

Thanks for caring, Kevin.

[Charles Legend]

Kevin updated it around 12am NZT, so 10pm AEST.



OMG how dreadful, my life is over. Though it would be nice to have maybe one person befriend me, lol.

You mean to tell me that Kevin just now got out of his box of Oreos and upgraded the board. LOL but all joking aside I think he is just trying to make TPM more inviting for the newer users.

And yes Blade you did.

~Charles Legend

[shazza]

I'm pretty sure the only reason Kevin updated was because he noticed there was an update and had some time to spare. He's aware TPM is now mostly a forum just for old members; if he was truly interested in attracting new members he'd start up the main site rather than a vB update.

[Drago]

I KNOW who my friends are - I doubt that, say, firepokemon or Shuppet Master will one day up and think, "Man, I wish I knew who Blademaster's friends on this site are!".

Clearly you don't know fp then.

These features are neat, but ultimately lost on a forum with low traffic. If we were back in the fancy free days of discussing Dragonite vs. Tyranitar and online dating, we would've bought into this stuff like nobody's business (before posting a couple well-thought sentences in our current doings at 'TPM's Pool Party!'), but nowadays we're mostly too apathetic to care. We're quite similar to Morla from the Neverending Story. Know what's funny? Falkor's German name is Fuchur. I giggled.
But hey, why should I bother complaining. I mean, it's something and it's new. Could've just gotten nothing. So I'll be appreciative.

All that being said, one of the features I want to see that's floating around nowadays is reputation. I want to be rewarded for all the fantastical posts I make. I want to 'have a spectacular aura about' and such.

Crap, forgot to actually make poll-type responses. In a condensed form, let's just say I'm largely indifferent to most of the features, though the visitor messages are pretty cool. I've often wondered why it is with these types of profiles you can see how many people have viewed your profile, but rest assured I'll be taking keen notice. If it's more than 11 by the end of the year, I'll consider myself a wild success.

[firepokemon]

The reputation function of VBulletin has been around since 2002, its just that no one has enabled it for here.