State of the polycount, Summer 2008
founder
Howdy folks,
Been awhile without any updates on my end and it's time to update everyone on the state of everything that's happening around these parts.
Why vBulletin?
As you noticed we dumped the UBB boards that had been our reliable pony for years. We have a lot of reasons for looking around for alternatives but the gist is that vBulletin is stronger message board software than ubb.threads and comes with better support.
We're able to put more things in to the forums to make it an overall better experience for you guys. One of the goals was to increase the ease of posting by way of a WYSIWYG editor, so that the quality in posts goes up and so far we've noticed an increase. Other features we've added so far which you may or may not be aware of is:
Okay, but what about the crappy new look!?
Haha, we know how the majority of you feel about the new theme. You guys did a good job on letting me know how much you love it.
This is a temporary theme update - it's not the 'new' style we're going with now that we're on vBulletin - that's actually being made by professionals. That, and our logo/identity. If you want to sumbit a theme for consideration, you know where to find us.
Basically, the short story is we wanted to change the software to vBulletin on Polycount's 10th birthday and we wanted to keep that a secret, so we told no one. We couldnt send out cakes to every one. Now that its out there, we've asked for help from our members who do this sort of things professionally and they're busy working away on Polycount one sexy beast.
Infractions
One of the abilities of vBulletin is user infractions and we're going to start utilizing that feature. The reason being, we want to see some actual respect between members from time to time so that discussions can be had without it resorting to name calling, trolling, or cats. (Well, maybe cats are fine ).
We're an opinionated bunch here which I flippin' love, but when it turns to the shit storms we often create it gets a little embarrassing, don't you agree? Wed like to bring the level of discussion here a little above where its been. If thats too much for you, please delete the link to the forums from your browser as were no longer going to get along.
Without getting technical, the way infractions works is simple: Get a slap on the wrist 3 times in 5 days, and you're on a 5 day temporary ban. The first infraction will get you a warning if the moderator or admin issuing it believes it to be useful at the time.
While banned, you can still browse the forums but you'll have lost your posting privileges. If you can't control yourself from there on out, we'll have to discuss the repercussions.
Here's a few things that may get you a slap:
Help wanted
On the note of moderators, we're looking to fill out our moderator team with 2 new members. Myself, MoP, hawken, adamBrome, and bearkub are already watching over the boards but some can dedicate more time than others.
Ultimately, we'd like to have our moderators spread amongst as many hemispheres as possible. So, we'd like it if those who take this role be from Europe, Asia, or Australia. But with that said, anyone is welcome to put their name in the hat as we'll take anyone we figure best for the job.
The general role of moderator is to help maintain the site by enforcing our rules. We'll go in to more details once you're on the team.
Important: A few of you have already PM'd Adam about this which is great, but I'd like to ask you to do it again if you are still interested. Additionally, if you were a moderator in the past but have been somewhat inactive and would like to continue please let us know.
adamBrome? Administrator? Uh oh...
Also on a note that a lot of people are probably wondering about, Mr. Brome has indeed been tinkering on the inner working of polycount. He came to Kub and me last year with an idea and a plan on reinvigorating the site and making it better than we could have imagined. We were a little skeptical, but we gave him a little rope and hes been doing a great job ever since. A lot of the momentum that we have is the direct result of his involvement. He definitely should be given a large community hug for the love and effort hes been putting into the site for the community. He has been working with me every week to review plans and ideas on where we are going. He does his damnest to implement it all after weve signed off on it. Dont be too worried, everything is still as it always was. Were still the same old space station of green and black love. Our deepest concern is keeping this community active and vibrant. Were the oldest game art community out here and wed like to continue making sure its here for you.
cheers,
Been awhile without any updates on my end and it's time to update everyone on the state of everything that's happening around these parts.
Why vBulletin?
As you noticed we dumped the UBB boards that had been our reliable pony for years. We have a lot of reasons for looking around for alternatives but the gist is that vBulletin is stronger message board software than ubb.threads and comes with better support.
We're able to put more things in to the forums to make it an overall better experience for you guys. One of the goals was to increase the ease of posting by way of a WYSIWYG editor, so that the quality in posts goes up and so far we've noticed an increase. Other features we've added so far which you may or may not be aware of is:
spoiler tags
WYSIWYG editor
Greater text control
Changing colour, size, font, font style etc. is easier now
Increased user profile options (Gamer tags, LinkedIn, etc). If you have suggestions for what you'd like to see in this regard, let us know!
Increased user security
thread tagging (more on this at another time)
image wrapping (more on this at another time)
On top of ease of posting for you guys, it has stronger page formatting for us so that we can write posts of a more professional caliber. Part of us switching was how easy it would be to edit text, include word wrapping, ease of previewing, and so on. If all things go as planned one of our 'major updates' we have coming will really utilize this update and we're pretty stoked about it.w00t!
Imbedded video support WYSIWYG editor
Greater text control
Changing colour, size, font, font style etc. is easier now
Increased user profile options (Gamer tags, LinkedIn, etc). If you have suggestions for what you'd like to see in this regard, let us know!
Increased user security
thread tagging (more on this at another time)
image wrapping (more on this at another time)
Okay, but what about the crappy new look!?
Haha, we know how the majority of you feel about the new theme. You guys did a good job on letting me know how much you love it.
This is a temporary theme update - it's not the 'new' style we're going with now that we're on vBulletin - that's actually being made by professionals. That, and our logo/identity. If you want to sumbit a theme for consideration, you know where to find us.Basically, the short story is we wanted to change the software to vBulletin on Polycount's 10th birthday and we wanted to keep that a secret, so we told no one. We couldnt send out cakes to every one. Now that its out there, we've asked for help from our members who do this sort of things professionally and they're busy working away on Polycount one sexy beast.
Infractions
One of the abilities of vBulletin is user infractions and we're going to start utilizing that feature. The reason being, we want to see some actual respect between members from time to time so that discussions can be had without it resorting to name calling, trolling, or cats. (Well, maybe cats are fine ).
We're an opinionated bunch here which I flippin' love, but when it turns to the shit storms we often create it gets a little embarrassing, don't you agree? Wed like to bring the level of discussion here a little above where its been. If thats too much for you, please delete the link to the forums from your browser as were no longer going to get along.
Without getting technical, the way infractions works is simple: Get a slap on the wrist 3 times in 5 days, and you're on a 5 day temporary ban. The first infraction will get you a warning if the moderator or admin issuing it believes it to be useful at the time.
While banned, you can still browse the forums but you'll have lost your posting privileges. If you can't control yourself from there on out, we'll have to discuss the repercussions.
Here's a few things that may get you a slap:
Name calling
Trolling
Obnoxious thread derailment
Reporting a thread without just cause
General douche-baggery
If you see someone doing any of the above, you're welcome to report the thread and one of the moderators will handle that post accordingly. Trolling
Obnoxious thread derailment
Reporting a thread without just cause
General douche-baggery
Help wanted
On the note of moderators, we're looking to fill out our moderator team with 2 new members. Myself, MoP, hawken, adamBrome, and bearkub are already watching over the boards but some can dedicate more time than others.
Ultimately, we'd like to have our moderators spread amongst as many hemispheres as possible. So, we'd like it if those who take this role be from Europe, Asia, or Australia. But with that said, anyone is welcome to put their name in the hat as we'll take anyone we figure best for the job.
The general role of moderator is to help maintain the site by enforcing our rules. We'll go in to more details once you're on the team.
Important: A few of you have already PM'd Adam about this which is great, but I'd like to ask you to do it again if you are still interested. Additionally, if you were a moderator in the past but have been somewhat inactive and would like to continue please let us know.
adamBrome? Administrator? Uh oh...
Also on a note that a lot of people are probably wondering about, Mr. Brome has indeed been tinkering on the inner working of polycount. He came to Kub and me last year with an idea and a plan on reinvigorating the site and making it better than we could have imagined. We were a little skeptical, but we gave him a little rope and hes been doing a great job ever since. A lot of the momentum that we have is the direct result of his involvement. He definitely should be given a large community hug for the love and effort hes been putting into the site for the community. He has been working with me every week to review plans and ideas on where we are going. He does his damnest to implement it all after weve signed off on it. Dont be too worried, everything is still as it always was. Were still the same old space station of green and black love. Our deepest concern is keeping this community active and vibrant. Were the oldest game art community out here and wed like to continue making sure its here for you.
cheers,
Replies
jk
Sounds good guys, love the upgrades, looking forward to whatever else you guys cook up.
too many changes bad!
Spark
Bizzarely I've kinda gotten used to this theme, So long as the new theme aint as harsh on the eyes as the old one I don't mind :]
No cats? = Thank the lord!
Here's to the next decade
Agreed. It's easy to see how much work has gone into Polycount, and it's appreciated. :icon60:
saludos!
im hoping i qualify for just enough infractions to be one of the cool kids without being sent home from schoool
the new boards, once gotten used to, work just right and Adam's not broken anything so I think all's cool
I have noticed that the forums have been getting more harsh at times, then again it might be me getting older- But the fundemental thing that makes Polycount great is that you're always going to get some kind of help and there's always something interesting to read about or pretty things to look at
We've had 10 years of PC, and at one point it was looking like it was a bit touch and go whether we'd see another 10 out of it but now I know that this place is an institution and hopefully will be around for quite some time to come
I think everyone should raise a glass/spliff whatever you celebrate with and toast everyone involved in running Polycount
Thanks for that.
As for the look, I just was revisiting my own little mockups last week! Would you be interested? (even tho I am sure that what you have in the works is great!)
Later down the road it would be neat to have a bunch of different schemes to choose from.
- BoBo
Please don't merge with cgtalk or something now
I hope this board doesn't become too uptight.
Thanks for the hard work.
Alex
That said: Thank you for all the hard work. These feel really robust as boards go.
As far as themes go, the boards have a css theme selection dropdown, so couldn't we have a number of themes to choose from? I'd love to be able to switch between themes from Hawken, Pior, and Qubism as the mood struck me. Or hey, a Bobo-Crazy-Monkey theme? A Poop Green melty greentooth theme? Polycount retro theme? could all be awesome and totally community generated, and thankfully stylesheets don't take up that much room either. You could fit all of the above just in MOP's post count. :P
Hey, mergers are the answer to everything these days!
But yea I agree with...
I always thought the douchebaggery was part of Polycount's charm. :P
I'm having a lot of fun doing this. rogue, bk, myself, and everyone else involved seem to be pretty excited about what's coming down the pipe so the next little while will be fun!
For mods - a number of you have sent me PM's and they were all from N. America. Would be awesome for us to get at least one of those spots filled out by someone from over there
As for infractions, don't fret killingpeople & Tulkamir. We won't be dishing the things out like hotcakes or anything. They'll be so infrequent, I doubt you'll even recognize that we're using them. :thumbup:
First thing on our agenda is getting some shirts out to everyone who wants them. It's a bit away until we're ready to do this because we'd like to go with quality shirts. We need to ensure thats what we're getting before releasing them to you guys but we'll let you know as soon as they're good to go.
As for themes from people here, I can't see how that'd harm anything. It's a great idea and the way Vailias describes it.. it just sounds awesome. Before we do this though, I'd like to establish the new updates first then roll out the community styles so feel free to work on some in the mean time.
INFRACTED
I have a suggestion, it seems that the pimping and previews board has been overrun by people posting their portfolios/websites for critique. I think it could be much less cluttered if there was a separate board just for portfolios, and keep artwork to the pimping board.
Also, can't wait to see the shirt designs
I don't think we need another forum unless we plan to replace an older one. One of the things I like about PC and HATE about other boards, is that its not all fractured to hell and back. More places to check, more clicking, more chances I will miss something. I don't think we get enough traffic that we need a zillion sub forums.
I would probably ignore any new P&P type sub forums like I ignore the request thread.
Why fracture when a sticky/announcement will do just as well. It should have 90% of the crits we typically see, as well as links to articles like Ricks setting up a quick portfolio, and Jon Jones "your portfolio repels jobs". That might cut down on some of the portfolio traffic. I think they where previously stickied but not in a way that anyone would think to click on them before posting.
Personally I like seeing all the portfolios gives me a good sense of where someones at.
i really like the new boards. i can't tell you how happy i was to come back after not doing any art for many years, and find alot of the old polycounters still here. alot of ya'lls work inspired me so much when i was young and impressionable lol. planted a seed in my mind that i haven't been able to shake since. not even after many years of absence.
and i would hate to start seeing subforums. that's the thing i hate about conceptart.org. there's so much great art and articles but it's too damn hard to find. even gameartisans has the problem imo. though there's is just generally too much going on for my tastes.
basically sometimes less is more imo.
Agreed. They're often fire-and-forget and used to avoid formal explanation of warning, it's not personal and it also smears your quick profile (at the left of the posts) with a nice number. Perhaps that would affect legitimate company hirings?
I can see this feature being used out of spite. such as this very post.
I'm all for publicly flogging the moron who kept posting every other week "warez is all teh models at!?"
Its that kind of crap that should get infractions as fast as possible.
I'm not a mod so its not really up to me. But from hanging around as much as I do, thats the general vibe I get and I doubt Kub, R13, MoP or Adam (and other mods) would do much to break polycount. I think the would like us to act "brotherly" instead of "I'm teh king of teh interweb and youz iz all moronz!".
Brothers fight sometimes but at the end of the day everyones family. When people start to draw battle lines that would sever family ties then I think its time for someone to step in and call a time out. Which is what it sounds like this infraction policy is about. Having some kind of punishment system can be helpful, otherwise its Lord of the Flies.
just my 24 cents...
leilei, a little credit to the other guys on this team, please. We're adults, not 12 year kids. We're not going to be tossing infractions around like their shrukens of spite. We simply do NOT hit the infraction button and call it a day. We've a system in place that requires us to write an explaination to that user using PM's so they can find out why. Infraction count/points don't show up on your user profile, so relax.
Anyway, thats all I'll say on infractions. They aren't a big deal. They won't effect your time @ Polycount. They're just away for us to put fires out a little earlier than normal.
And Adam, my offer is still on the table if you need help with stuff. This is my specialty. I can also get naked, but that'll cost you extra.
...it will cost you your eyes. I've heard the reports.
Nyway, Nice to know POlyyycount is still INshape after all thoses years!, GJ to the Old and NEW!
ben
Gone are the days of a few guys whipping up a fun little mod with some model/texture swaps and new maps. You need about 10-20 guys with a lot of free time, or a lot of determination (or both) to make the kind of mods that the kids these days seem to want.
Basically they all fancy themselves as mini-production-studios, intent on creating professional quality work, and therefore they set themselves up a nice little website with custom graphics, galleries and user forums to discuss their mod.
And they never get anything released.
One nice case against that recently:
Wheels of War is a mod that's nicely managed, with a small dedicated team and a consistent release schedule. They're doing it because it's fun, and it's working... in fact I believe that "thefatladysings" works on that mod as an artist.
Although I dunno why those guys never post their art here, haha!
Bloody modders with their own custom sites...