Reply To: Streamlining the Forums View

[peter]

Brian wrote:

I want to throw this out there, as I see it as related to streamlining the forum experience, so I am dropping it in here. I am not a fan of large “sigs”. I prefer that they be limited to one line (link fine, banners no). I know there is a thread elsewhere discussing increasing the sig size. When there is an active thread, it can seem that half of the scrolling space is repeated sigs. Shouldn’t a click on the user name bring up a profile page with potentially copious biographical information? Namaste.

I’ll be super candid about the signature editing capabilities. It’s disappointing. There are a few very old that add some extras to the signature and I tried them all out — although it’s a bad idea to use a several year or more plugin, conflicts with other scripts and plugins and security risks. One ended up causing a problem I needed a server technician to fix (I sent out a site wide notice about that recently). There’s really no editing of the signatures that’s built into the platform. I even linked to the only decent plugin I know of and its $200 US and I frankly hit my budget, I have gotten some people who’ve said they’d contribute to the site, and I plan on setting an option to contribute and if people want some functionality that I agree would benefit the site and it requires an additional plugin or custom development, if they want to pay for it, I’ll manage it. But the reality is, I don’t have any revenue plans for this site because I just didn’t / don’t see that as realistic when the community is less than 10,000 or more. So I considered it not worth the hassle and the theme I’m using doesn’t even allow for advertising. I’m open to moving to a theme that does, maybe a year from now. Consequently, until then, functionality that can’t be achieved with the existing controls will not be happening in  the next 6 – 12 months.

What I’d personally love to do for signatures is be able to use the same editor that I set up for forum posts. But the only option for that would require spending $200 just for that capability and I hit the budget without putting it in there. Granted, I’ve had one person offer to contribute $150 to the site and if we want to do it that way, and it’s functionality people want I’m on board. As far as scaling down signatures, I ‘m aware of a way to do it beyond custom coding. But personally, I don’t have any objection to graphics in signatures and I would actually prefer that developers use their logo and I’ll tell you specifically why — and Greg from Orange Tree Samples suggested  that developers and contractors self identify in a post.

So why do I want it with specific examples, and Greg and many developers know these facts. Two contactors for Impact Soundworks have made attacks on  Impact Soundworks competitors at VI Control. Mike Greene is friends with the owner of IS and allows it, even joins in and eggs it on. But these contractors don’t disclose that they work for a competitor when attacking a developer. — which isn’t something I would ever permit, of course, but Mike eggs it on and that is how he operates. Add to this that one of the Impact Soundworks contractors also has a history of shilling, showering praise on Impact Soundworks libraries over competitors and not disclosing their employment with Impact Soundworks. So yeah, most of the bad behavior is by the same developer. The other Kontakt developers know this stuff, talk about it, but would never post about it like i just did because they don’t want a backlash, especially a backlash on VI-Control by Mike Greene.

So, I only have two developer here now. But to entice developers and their contractors to comply and to make it easy for them to be identified in the community as we grow, I would prefer that each developer and contractor to a developer (s) has their logo in their signature, that way everyone in the community can very quickly identify a developer or contractor with the related company and if we find any developers or their contractors engaged in the practices that Impact Soundworks contractors famously engage in on VI-Control people can easily report it and we can address it.

Ah, the beauty of owning this place is that I don’t have to worry about being banned for sharing some knowledge that most Kontakt developers know but most buyers of sample libraries have no idea about. Policies — as you know well — are often not written for the best members of society, but for the worst and that is certainly true of why I want a big identifier in developers and their contractors signatures. They like the looks of it, I like that it makes them easy to spot and any bad applies are easily identified, while ethical developers have no downside.

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