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It's 2016, and I have questions about NeoGAF

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Can I request to know who banned me that one time ?

Nope. Well, you can request, but unless the mod in question wants to tell you we won't answer.

Since so many mods are reading this thread, why can't we click the orange logo when we search our own posts to see what is new in that thread? It's my most wanted feature at the moment.

The people who have built the forum themes aren't always available so fixes and improvements happen intermittently but pm me a screenshot of your issue and I'll see what we can do.

One thing I noticed is that GAF mods seem to be internet famous enough to be mentioned elsewhere, which I think is kinda cool, actually.

Oh god I hope I'm not on this list.

- is there any way you could automatically list the length of user bans and possibly which TOS rule was broken (for instance, x user is banned y months for making racist remarks)? I'd imagine it would free up some time for you since people wouldn't PM you to find out or clog up threads with ban speculation. Thanks in advance!

I've been a regular on forums that did this in the past. My experience was that it led to much, much more fighting about moderation because people page through it looking for minor inconsistencies instead of considering the big picture. I don't think it's productive the way people think it will be.
 
I've been a regular on forums that did this in the past. My experience was that it led to much, much more fighting about moderation because people page through it looking for minor inconsistencies instead of considering the big picture. I don't think it's productive the way people think it will be.

Thanks! Stump gave me a very similar answer as well. Makes sense.
 
EVSMu.jpg
Hah, hadn't seen that meme in a long time.

I still have no idea when or how or why I got my tag.
Do you like Storage Wars?

Damn, EightBitNate with a new tag, all right...
Be careful with what you wish for and all that.

GAF dark theme for life. It's so much easier on the eyes.
No lies detected.

Those Gold shots are obviously fake, GAF Gold is dark theme only
Of course, required for the superior experience.

Story checks out

I think it's better not to have a tag, because it stays with you forever, and some of them are downright embarrassing.
Not really, there are times where your tag gets replaced by another one or just plain removed (I'm obviously ignoring the "Junior" and "Banned" tags here :P)

Once or twice a year, we make suggestions as to people we feel like might be good on the team, and EviLore either takes those suggestions or doesn't. It's been a while since the last batch so I would expect more sometime in Q1 2016.
For some reason I expected the process to be like "GAF Idol" or "The Mod Factor".

First rule of GAF: Never ask to be tagged.
It's like tempting fate.

Nope. That happened at the same time I got the little member.
So like the opposite of Sculli :O

Wait, isn't Stump the mod who was on Conan or something? He had a funny smile and thumbs up that was perfect for a .gif.
Yup, I have seen a couple of users have a pic of that as their avatar.
 
Okay so for everyone out of the loop, I decided to just explain what NeoGAF Gold is.

So for a while, I was like you guys, and I was certain that Gold wasn't real and that it was some joke made up to mock XBL or PS+ or some shit like that. Haha, very funny guys. There's even the little trick that changes the logo to some corny "NeoGAF Gold" thing when you type the Konami code on this site. Let me just tell you; it's all to throw you off.

The features you guys cram for? Quote searching and gifatars? I have those. And so do lots of others. And it's all because we were invited to the closed beta for Gold.


(I had to take a pic with my phone. The beta is able to detect if a screenshot is taken.)

There's also a whole other discussion section after Gaming and OT. The members only area is pretty much just pages upon pages of insider info. It's a GAFers wet dream. I'm not kidding when I say that. It's pretty much just an open developer forum; games in development, screenshots of announced games, new hardware, etc.

What the admins have done is paid some of the industry's best devs to share their secrets with us. Each thread has it's own NDA for crying out loud. I, unfortunately can't talk about what I've seen for obvious reasons. Let's just say one particular thread posted this week gave full details about a piece of hardware that rhymes with "MX".

That's precisely the reason no one wants to admit Gold is real; it's too good to give up. And it's kind of a meta-joke now; people thinking it isn't real. Wake up. I'm tired of hiding it. Enough is enough.

Archive this post. Screenshot it. Don't be surprised if it's gone within the hour. I'll most definitely get banned for this post, but it's soooo worth it.
Ahahahahahah



Please, Gold me. :(
 
Since we're on it, what are the chances that sometime in the future, the avatar dimensions can be increased? 100x120 is so tiny, it's hard to make avatars that look decent because of the quality it ends up as since the limit is at 50 KB only.
 
Since we're on it, what are the chances that sometime in the future, the avatar dimensions can be increased? 100x120 is so tiny, it's hard to make avatars that look decent because of the quality it ends up as since the limit is at 50 KB only.

Now we're talking. 40px increase in each direction pls.
 
doesn't work anyway, I try that once every three months

now I keep track of the forum activity of like half the mod team - see what threads they post in, learn their posting habits, find out more about their interests (and their weaknesses). I feel this is the ticket to success

I know you're joking but still, relax, tags are something magical that just happens, don't try to force it, you'll end up breaking the rules for no reason. Maybe they aren't meant for you, but only a chosen few.
 
Since we're on it, what are the chances that sometime in the future, the avatar dimensions can be increased? 100x120 is so tiny, it's hard to make avatars that look decent because of the quality it ends up as since the limit is at 50 KB only.
Speaking of avatars, I heard they used to support the gif format. Why aren't there gif avatars anymore?
 
Charle, of course you are mentioned everywhere. You're a freaking octopus!

On the GIF avatars, I think it was having a certain strain on the servers. Imagine E3 with freaking GIF avatars. GAF would remain down all the time.

Since we're on it, what are the chances that sometime in the future, the avatar dimensions can be increased? 100x120 is so tiny, it's hard to make avatars that look decent because of the quality it ends up as since the limit is at 50 KB only.

Whoa, what is this? Your tag! It's animated!
 
Does being a member over a junior offer access to any other parts of the site? For instance, under the Control Panel > Misc, I don't have access to Event Reminders. Was curious if that was a member feature or something else.
 
Speaking of avatars, I heard they used to support the gif format. Why aren't there gif avatars anymore?

Animated avatars were removed in April 2011 (when it became feasible to do so because we shifted to avatars being hosted on the site's servers). They were removed to reduce visual clutter.

Does being a member over a junior offer access to any other parts of the site? For instance, under the Control Panel > Misc, I don't have access to Event Reminders. Was curious if that was a member feature or something else.

I don't think anyone has access to event reminders. GAF has a lot of things like that that are sort of vestigial remnants of vBulletin that are turned off but still visible somewhere. To my knowledge, there are no functionality differences besides not being able to start new threads. The PM inbox limit might be slightly different, but I'm not up to speed on what those limits are set to.
 
I don't think anyone has access to event reminders. GAF has a lot of things like that that are sort of vestigial remnants of vBulletin that are turned off but still visible somewhere. To my knowledge, there are no functionality differences besides not being able to start new threads. The PM inbox limit might be slightly different, but I'm not up to speed on what those limits are set to.
Got it, thank you.

I remember on the old GT forums they switched it up a few times, twas disappointing when everyone's old post count got deleted. I think after that I became more of a lurker on forums hahah
 
Given how people have talked about it in past gaf speculation threads, the friends list feature on gaf seems rather unused like the event reminders.
 
I have a question. Who manages the forum archive and who decides which threads go in it?

Edit: I like to use the gaf friends function, but I doubt half of the people I sent requests to have seen the requests.
 
Here are two random, minor questions since I'll occasionally search for and browse older threads:

Why are some former members listed as "guests"? They seem slightly different from bans, and if you browse the forum while not logged in, their posts are highlighted in blue. You can see an example in the Winnie the Pooh baseball thread here, but I've also come across "guest" posts in other older threads. Is it just a quirk of the forum software?

Also, why do some posts completely disappear? Again in the Winnie the Pooh thread, several members quote a post by "El Topo" supposedly made in the first few replies (example here), but the post doesn't actually appear in the thread... even if a member gets banned or decides to leave, I thought their posts would still be preserved.
 
I have a question. Who manages the forum archive and who decides which threads go in it?

Edit: I like to use the gaf friends function, but I doubt half of the people I sent requests to have seen the requests.
I don't even know where you see said requests.
 
I don't even know where you see said requests.
you just go to your control panel


Oh oh oh, I have a question about some thread titles:

What do things like "LTTP" and "RTTP" mean?
late to the party

return to the party

also speaking of friend lists, there's a guy on my friend list who has been permed since like september 2014 and joined in august 2014.

who were they? why are they on my friend list?
 
Here are two random, minor questions since I'll occasionally search for and browse older threads:

Why are some former members listed as "guests"? They seem slightly different from bans, and if you browse the forum while not logged in, their posts are highlighted in blue. You can see an example in the Winnie the Pooh baseball thread here, but I've also come across "guest" posts in other older threads. Is it just a quirk of the forum software?


Also, why do some posts completely disappear? Again in the Winnie the Pooh thread, several members quote a post by "El Topo" supposedly made in the first few replies (example here), but the post doesn't actually appear in the thread... even if a member gets banned or decides to leave, I thought their posts would still be preserved.

If someone is listed as a guest, that means they screwed up badly enough for their account to actually be completely deleted from the site. That has only happened a handful of times ever.

Posts disappear when we delete them. We actually delete a lot of posts, for various reasons. To attempt to prevent a derail, or if content that would get us in trouble with ad providers is posted, or occasionally (rarely) if a user presents a reason good enough for us to remove their posts from the site, or a handful of other reasons. Generally, we try to delete posts before we resort to bans, if we get there fast enough. Sometimes we don't, or sometimes a ban is a better idea. Sometimes deletion and a ban happen together.
 
Here are two random, minor questions since I'll occasionally search for and browse older threads:

Why are some former members listed as "guests"? They seem slightly different from bans, and if you browse the forum while not logged in, their posts are highlighted in blue. You can see an example in the Winnie the Pooh baseball thread here, but I've also come across "guest" posts in other older threads. Is it just a quirk of the forum software?

This happens when an account is deleted without their posts being deleted. I can't say why that user's account was deleted--you would have to ask EviLore, to my knowledge no moderator has ever done this (I'm not even sure we can).

Also, why do some posts completely disappear? Again in the Winnie the Pooh thread, several members quote a post by "El Topo" supposedly made in the first few replies (example here), but the post doesn't actually appear in the thread... even if a member gets banned or decides to leave, I thought their posts would still be preserved.

Posts are soft-deleted (marked as invisible) for a variety of reasons. We mark them as invisible so they are still in the database and we can look at them, they are just not visible for regular users. The most common reasons are to remove thread derails or remove personal information at a user's request. I believe in this case, El Topo requested his posts be deleted in bulk on or about July 2014. We do not normally process bulk deletion requests unless there's an extenuating circumstance.
 
If someone is listed as a guest, that means they screwed up badly enough for their account to actually be completely deleted from the site. That has only happened a handful of times ever.

Posts disappear when we delete them. We actually delete a lot of posts, for various reasons. To attempt to prevent a derail, or if content that would get us in trouble with ad providers is posted, or occasionally (rarely) if a user presents a reason good enough for us to remove their posts from the site, or a handful of other reasons. Generally, we try to delete posts before we resort to bans, if we get there fast enough. Sometimes we don't, or sometimes a ban is a better idea. Sometimes deletion and a ban happen together.

This happens when an account is deleted without their posts being deleted. I can't say why that user's account was deleted--you would have to ask EviLore, to my knowledge no moderator has ever done this (I'm not even sure we can).

Wow, really informative, and deeper answers than I was expecting - thanks!
 
Imagine GIF avatars with how Chrome sometimes acts. Damn, it would be horrible.
 
I have one: Can mods see a full history of post edits? Because I'm so OCD that I make about a dozen edits after I've proofread like three times.

Yes, sort of. vBulletin doesn't save post edits in the first minute or so since they were posted (i.e. the "stealth edit" window). But if there's an edit notice generated then we can see it.

Here, let me show you what I see from your post:
TXTfuJL.png


And then I can take a diff of the two edits I select:
zri4XQg.png


So it's a lot like what you can see on Wikipedia.
 
Yes, sort of. vBulletin doesn't save post edits in the first minute or so since they were posted (i.e. the "stealth edit" window). But if there's an edit notice generated then we can see it.

Here, let me show you what I see from your post:
http://i.imgur.com/TXTfuJL.png[img]

And then I can take a diff of the two edits I select:
[img]http://i.imgur.com/zri4XQg.png[img]

So it's a lot like what you can see on Wikipedia.[/QUOTE]
Whoa, that's pretty cool actually. Thanks for the peek behind the curtain.
 
Will there ever be another big website upgrade? Aside from mobilegaf aka bestgaf, I haven't noticed any big changes.
 
I'm staying on GAF at least until I get tagged. Then, and only then, will the long, long night reach its end and I can consider moving on.
 
I wonder if anyone has been banned for posting something that's against the rules but was edited before anyone noticed, but still was caught in the edit history.
 
I wonder if anyone has been banned for posting something that's against the rules but was edited before anyone noticed, but still was caught in the edit history.

Yes, although typically if it seems like someone realizes what they did wrong that's going to weigh on how we respond to what they did.
 
Once or twice a year, we make suggestions as to people we feel like might be good on the team, and EviLore either takes those suggestions or doesn't. It's been a while since the last batch so I would expect more sometime in Q1 2016.
Is the salary for mods going up in 2016?

I remember being begged to be a mod a few years back but said no because salary was a joke, and I ain't got no time for charity.

A Toyota Yaris for the company car? Child please, Evilore.
 
Now we're talking. 40px increase in each direction pls.
150x150 would be pretty boss. That gives people a lot to work with whether they prefer square, horizontal or vertical. And let everyone who wants to upgrade the size host it externally, like from Imgur. I don't see the harm, at all.

If people still live with 90s internet so much that 150x150 makes such a bigger difference from 100x120, then they should just disable the avatars from their control panel. Most forums and SNS use sizes larger than us anyway.
 
And let everyone who wants to upgrade the size host it externally, like from Imgur. I don't see the harm, at all.

I don't think there's much appetite to upgrade avatar sizes (I have no real opinion; my sense is that using the rest of the box horizontally wouldn't be a bad thing but adding vertical height is going to cause more empty space with short posts and it's not super clear how it would scale to mobile... but that's just my opinion as a user, I have no input into what happens at a site level), but there is no way in hell avatars will ever be hosted externally again.

There are a number of problems with external avatar hosting:
- Old avatars being deleted
- Old avatars being recycled into porn
- Image hosts shutting down every few years and tanking the site
- External domains randomly having domain-level authentication turned on causing authentication popups
- Speed and responsiveness issues

That's absolutely positively 100% a non-starter.
 
150x150 would be pretty boss. That gives people a lot to work with whether they prefer square, horizontal or vertical. And let everyone who wants to upgrade the size host it externally, like from Imgur. I don't see the harm, at all.

If people still live with 90s internet so much that 150x150 makes such a bigger difference from 100x120, then they should just disable the avatars from their control panel. Most forums and SNS use sizes larger than us anyway.

Most forums other than NeoGAF are also dying a quick and terrible death in the modern age of social media. Unless you include Reddit in the forum category, which happens to also be minimalist in design.

Avatar dimensions have absolutely nothing to do with system performance. It's part of a set of design choices to emphasize post content first and foremost.
 
2. How do the little member titles work? Some people just have "member", and others have weird things under them. Users have said mods(?) set them. What's up with that, do you ask for one or something? Is it assigned to you just randomly?

As to the member titles, they're tags and mods most definitely give them to you. Either from something awesome you posted or from something so embarrassing you gotta be shamed haha

Been a LONG time since I saw one, but there used to be threads set up just for tag fishers. They usually got a funny tag related to fish.
 
I don't think there's much appetite to upgrade avatar sizes (I have no real opinion; my sense is that using the rest of the box horizontally wouldn't be a bad thing but adding vertical height is going to cause more empty space with short posts and it's not super clear how it would scale to mobile... but that's just my opinion as a user, I have no input into what happens at a site level), but there is no way in hell avatars will ever be hosted externally again.

There are a number of problems with external avatar hosting:
- Old avatars being deleted
- Old avatars being recycled into porn
- Image hosts shutting down every few years and tanking the site
- External domains randomly having domain-level authentication turned on causing authentication popups
- Speed and responsiveness issues

That's absolutely positively 100% a non-starter.

Most forums other than NeoGAF are also dying a quick and terrible death in the modern age of social media. Unless you include Reddit in the forum category, which happens to also be minimalist in design.

Avatar dimensions have absolutely nothing to do with system performance. It's part of a set of design choices to emphasize post content first and foremost.
Thanks for the replies! Stump makes good points I didn't think of. My whole idea was so it would be a bit easier to find art/photos to use as a stock since, like I sad, 100x120/50 KB makes stuff kinda crumbled sometimes (I feel only a certain type of art would work since the rest would get its quality lost in compression when cropping and resizing it to 100.

Also, since a horizontal size change won't really change the posting like that, would increasing from 100x120 to 120x120 be completely out of the question, even in the near/far future?
 
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