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"EXTRA EXTRA GAMEADAY PRIZE (Life on the Forums) WINNER ANNOUNCED"

After due consideration here are the results.

Everybody wants User Profiles.

RBS says lean some of the GAD prizes towards lesser forums to boost them and he suggests we include a "what's going on in the forums" or "forum news" somewhere.

Gaming Boy would like to see more input from the staff to start topics and kick-start discussion.

Grix suggests we have a tournament where we all download game to our PC and play against each other.

er-no wants a "who is here" link. You click on it and it tells you the names of most recent posters (good idea). And er-no wants the Notables to be given something to do (a request which I have just complied with in Chat forums)

TheBest_2K1 is keen on putting people in a hot seat. Everybody fires questions at the poor so...

Quazimodo would like links to your "Latest Post" and your web site url in your stats window (excellent).

Meka would like us to hold a song contest and have counters to see how many people have read a thread. pb backs this up with a similar request on reviews.

Cookie Monster suggests a Cluedo-style murder mystery event.

Dan2K1 would like on-line darts.

Dringo is keen to repeat some "Opposite Posts" - I believe this is intended to be head to head challenges on specific arguments.

Chr!stos says we should sometimes vote for Gameaday winners, instead of them being always picked by staff.

Salevunit suggested a Winning Posts Forum (view only), plus Tag of the Day competitions, Search Facilities and Caution Tags. The latter is a particularly strong suggestion, i.e. to give warning tags to people likely to face a ban.

BUT THE WINNER IS:
The prize is for the best SET of suggestions. The winner is SHEEPY for the following ideas:

FOG Lotto
Round Number Prizes (e.g. at 10,000 posts in a forum)
"Number Day" I think this means we would all be anonymous.
Vote people off the forums Big Brother style (love that).
Guess the Phantom Poster.
Complaint Button (already in place now with the report link)
Improve the message filter and the feedback from it.

Contratulations SHEEPY and I hope you enjoy munching your prize.

Thank you again to all those who contributed and sorry not to be able to mention everybody.

*********

These were the original rules.

This latest EXTRA GAMEADAY is for the best SET of suggestions for "adding life" to the forums.

Imagine that you are in charge of the forums. What would you do to start some interesting debate or to make the place more interesting?

Please DO NOT suggest things which require (much) programming. And don't suggest a chart of Gameaday winners as it is already being sorted.

We already have:
Top Posters chart
Notable/Regular/Newbie system with 'orrible colours
Voting for Notables
Extra Gameaday Prizes
Protected "Prime Topics" forum
"Stats" for history on contributors
Taglines

Closing date is August 1st or shortly thereafter, and it's the best set that wins. All the posts that you make will count towards your set.

Have an SR titles compo thingy you pick a game or certain genre, and then they get the title or SR RPG champ or something.

What could happen is that, a quiz is run for a week and whoever gets the most amounts of questions right is the winner and gets the SR title!

Offer probation before banning someone. If someone posts banworthy material, put them on a probation of 100 posts where they cannot win a GAD to prove their worth. Spamming the 100 will result in a banning. change their tagline to "on probation" so the rest of us can have fun winding him/her up.

have a mugshot of one of the users every month, so we can all see who they really are.

with the "latest message" button, have another so you see the latest message in a forum that you have posted on, to see replies easier. mark topics in the topics list ones that you have posted on, so you can see the ones you have posted on or just read.

Have an extra choice in the newbie/regular/notable system. Something above notable. If someone is awarded notable status then you could give them a free gift or a t-shirt. Then if someone is voted the one better than notable you could give them a free game. Have a section where peoples views about the site and magazine can be posted and you choose some that are printed in your magazine.

Lots of these ideas where posted in the last GAD in Prime Topics (site features)... by different people...


...I don't think there are any more ideas left!

Have full-time moderators.

Give the Notables a bit mroe to do. Once a fortnight, a Notable is selected by SR and they then have to write a post on a subject that SR chooses. This way it gives the Notables a sense of responsibility and we get a bit of input from SR on the forums.

Offer users the chance to change the colour scheme of the forums. If we could modify it to our own tastes it'd stop us from complaining about it :-D

To make things more interesting there could be the question of the day forum.
One of the special reserve staff posts a question, eg. Why wasn't the Dreamcast a success?, and everyone can give their views and thoughts. If everyone was serious about it, it could be quite popular.
The best answer for that day would get a point and then if it worked out there could be a chart for the people with the most points, i.e. the top quality posters.
At the end of the month the highest place would get a higher status or something good, I don't know!

I know it's been said but (I've added a bit) have profiles for any status from Regular and above, with a few exceptions.
I say this because some newbies (Not me of course!) would probably write a load of rubbish.
But newbies may do their own profile if it's suitable and not spam, otherwise they risk being banned temporarily.

I'm not sure how much programming this would require but I'll say it anyway.

Since everyone wants a "Who's here?" List why not, on the stats of the person, put when their last post was posted. It would give people an idea of when that person was on or if they're still on.