Ways to make this a better website.

Ok, well I have come up with a few more Ideas. Please tell me what you think about them, don't be afriad to voice your opinions either.

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1) Make a Contact Moderators Thread

2) Ability to remove any user's ability to visit the message boards (Ban from the Forums)

3) Have an unban request, where members can request to be unbanned from the forum as well as the chat

4) Incorparate the list below into the site somewhere

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Moderation

The P&Q Message Boards are a moderated forum. However, the moderators cannot be everywhere and see everything. If you see something that is against the Board Rules, please report it to the Contact Moderators thread. Note that the moderators have the final say-so in any situation that you report to the Contact Moderators thread. They will evaluate the situation on a case-by-case basis and take appropriate action where needed.

What Is A Moderator?

Moderators are volunteers who generously give their time to help board users with questions about our sites and boards. They also are the peacekeepers and are here to ensure that all visitors enjoy their stay. This means enforcing the
Board Rules and User Agreement.

What Do Moderators Do?

Moderators monitor board posts and respond to complaints to keep posting free of undesirable content as described in the Board Rules and P&Q User Agreement. They enforce the board rules, and can delete posts, edit posts as well as remove any user's ability to visit the boards. If a moderator lets you know you are close to crossing the line, take heed of the warning. Likewise, if your thread was deleted or locked by a moderator, do not repost the topic. They deserve respect and appreciation for their time.

Bans

If you log onto the P&Q message boards and receive a message that you have been banned, please submit an unban request and wait for an P&Q Board Moderator to get in touch with you. Bans are private matters between the Moderators and person banned and will not be discussed publicly or through third parties. It is not acceptable to return to the boards under another username. If you do, your ban time may be extended.

What If I Disagree With A Moderator?

Moderators are not perfect and are only human. Disagreements occur. Try to communicate with them first on a respectful level and settle your disagreement. They are not targets for your obscenities, flames or general insults. If you do not agree with a decision, you are not entitled to start a thread arguing about the verdict or flaming any of the moderators. Any such messages will be removed. This extends to Private Messages and unban requests as well, and you are not entitled to insult moderators via either of these methods. Also note that bans are between the user banned and the moderators, and moderators cannot respond about bans publicly. Any correspondence about ban length and reason will be handled through unban requests. If you feel a verdict is unfair, please contact another Moderator. You are also welcome to contact the Administrators through the Contact Us page, but be prepared to review the Board Rules again and know that the site is able to verify your accusations. The Administrators will not mediate opinion and will only get involved if Board Rules have been violated.

Nice^^

I've got another one. When a person gets banned, I think they and others should still have the privilege of reading their poems.

Also, before an account is deleted, give that person time to save their poems to their computers.

They're good idea's! =)

I concur.

1) Make a Contact Moderators Thread

"Great Idea, only I don't think Moderators have the power to un-ban a member."

^^The point is, that the Mods will have that power. Yes, Mods have the power to Un-ban a member in the chat. As for the Forums, Mods have no Ban or Un-ban power. That would be something that would be implemented onto the site.

2) Ability to remove any user's ability to visit the message boards (Ban from the Forums)

"Now isn't that harsh, this poetry site was made to welcome all. Not to seperate ourself to those who made mistakes or vented someone. "

^^That is why there would be a Un-ban request where members can request to be Un-banned. This is not harsh, this is more for the spammers than anything else.

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"Respect is an attitude of acknowledging the feelings and interests of another party in a relationship, and of treating as consequential for the self the helping or harming of the other." ... "Respect is sometimes loosely used as a synonym for politeness or manners, though these are behaviours, whereas respect is an attitude."

^^ Quoted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Respect

Read the whole article if you want to learn more on Respect.

Ciao, Joe

WAYS TO MAKE THIS BETTER:

1) Make it a 13+ only site. No offence to you minors, but it makes life SO much easier if you'd all just stop lying about your age anyway. And yeah: I did used to lie about my age in pubs. But I understood the consequences. Here you kids have NO consequences.

It has to stop. And something as profound and prone to abuse as this place could be an admirable starting point.

2) Forum polls:

I recently quit what had once been quite an entertaining private group. However, I felt that the main users used bullying tactics and had a sinister and quite ironic pack mentality that quickly spoiled the whole experience for me. I expressed my desire to part ways after making my feelings plain, and was removed immediately: reinforcing my belief that if you don't agree with the "top dog" you are an outcast without question.

In my experience you can get a much broader representation of what is going on in a forum by having anonymous polls that people can create and vote on. You know: democracy. It's an odd concept I know...

3) Cross-referencing poems:

I am sure I am not alone in feeling that some poems fit more than one category. Perhaps introducing a "tag" system whereby you can enter certain keywords that readers might search out might be an idea rather than the quite rigid system that's in place now.

Right now I still really like this site despite the abundance of bullshitters I'm informed dominate the place. Sorry for the coarse language, but I like to make my feelings plain. It seems to be the thing to do...

Gee, I hope I rambled on enough...

It would be unfair of me to say. They know who they are. So do their simpering disciples.

"Italian Stallion:You say spammers, but certain people aren't spammers, and are not plagiarisers...So if they did speak their opinion to a fellow member which breached in your terms a rule. Should they also leave for telling it like it is."

^^ No this is just a way for people who "abuse" the Forums (Spam, Use unnessicary profanity, etc.) And where already warned about their doings, to "learn a lesson" Like I said, there would be an Un-ban request, where members can request to be un-banned.

I kinda like Ed's first and third idea. They're pretty good! =)

Ismail, you continue to post in here under your new account, and given that I've just come back after having been banned for standing up for members of this site, I'm not very impressed that you are posting with impunity after breaking the rules enough to earn yourself 10 points.

Dainz must have looked at your case by now and decided you are not fit to be reinstated, he did with me and here I am. as are others.

I'd ask you to stop posting, or I'll confer with my fellow mods and have something done about this constant morphing banned members seem keen on. It's an insult to the time we take to moderate.

The rules are about to be overhauled, Janis has by now a print out of about 40 high quality ideas from both the members and the mods. I don't know how many will be implemented, but things are about to change.

PS, I don't think there should be an age restriction, though it is very tempting, be assured the signing up process will be radically improved to raise everyones awareness of how things work in here, and if I have my way, once implemented, everyone who logs iin afterwards, will have to agree or not be allowed to post.

This isn't a fascist believe or die scenario, none of the potential new rules are dogmatic or harsh so don't worry.

Who are you again? I'm still catching up on all the characters in this soap opera, out to screw this site up totally.

(Ismail, that is...)

"When a person gets banned, I think they and others should still have the privilege of reading their poems."

^ I think that's a good idea. If they get banned, we should still be able to read their poetry. A lot of the poems are inspirational, why delete them?

Also, before an account is deleted, give that person time to save their poems to their computers.
^Also a good idea. Give them some time before banning them. All of their hard work being deleted so quickly, it's just not right.

^^ By banning, we would not be deleting their accounts and poems, that is when one is suspended. When one' is Banned it is only for the chat or Forum. You would be banned from the Forum (not beinging able to post or read the threads in the forums) Or banned from the chat (not having access to the chat room at all) Like I said has nothing to do with deleting one's poems or deleting their account. And yes they would still have access to read and comment on poems, submit poems, and all the other great stuff on the site.

Ciao, Joe

^ Okay,
when someone is suspended all of their hard work is deleted. That's what i was basically getting at. Several people's acoounts were suspended and their poems went along with it. I just don't think it's fair to the poets or members, that their work be deleted.

^^ it is very clear to all members to save your work before posting it on this site.

Term # 8 states, "Save your poems on your computer before you submit them here."

I believe that is very clear to the members, if they are suspended, it shouldn't matter, they where warned and it states right in the "terms of use" to save your poems.

The "Terms of use" can be found here

http://www.poems-and-quotes.com/terms.html

Ciao, Joe

Some of us have saved ours, but others havn't. I understand what you're getting at, but i still believe something else should be done about it. The terms of use do state that we should save our poems, but we should be given a warning right before being suspended as well. At least i think we should. My point is that we should still be able to read poems after a member has been suspended.

"My point is that we should still be able to read poems after a member has been suspended."

^^ you can read poems, unless you mean reading the suspended users poems.

With awards, you have to have a certain number of forum comments, poems etc.... I think it would be good if there were some way we could keep track of how far along we are, to see if we're getting any closer to the award.

Also...can you have some sort of search for the forums?

Forum searching! Damn, I forgot about that. I've started a "forum suggestions" topic in the "Feedback and suggestions" forum.

stickies, I posted earlier on how to do this but I asked Ken what I had done to be banned and it was deleted, I'll do it again because he is gone and I will come back.

the forums are sorted by timestamps are they not?
On the main page for the forum (Other, Member's message, friendship, etc...) You should add a line of code where the timestamp for the sticky is updated:

$stickyTime = time();

for each additional sticky it would just be:

$stickyX = time() -x; //where x == # of stickies - 1

and to prevent a regular message from getting up in the stickies if only for a few seconds

$message = time() - n; //where n == # stickies.

then add it to the database.

Talanador

P.S. I agree 100% with a forum search but I don't know how to do it. Although you can add the red numbers untill they check their poetry, not just until they log out. Have it set the boolean when they check it instead of when they logout.

"Also...can you have some sort of search for the forums?"

^^ There is a search that is going to be implemented for the Forums and quotes and of course the poem search is already there.

The Forum search, you will be able to search by Forum, threads, posts, and usernames.

As for having Stickies, that is also going to be implemented onto the site.

Ciao, Joe

Okay, just trying to be helpful, someone told me you didn't know how to code a sticky so I put that up.

Best of luck in doing all of that, if you need help, you know I can program.

Talanador/Malfist

I've been here for a long time so theres some thing ive thought about....

1. Make it so you can not copy writing from poem pages... i've seen this done on other sites where it wont let you copy any writing, that way you literally have to sit there with a pen and write out the poem to steal it

2. Short stories section.

3. Allow club leaders to CONTROL their own boards (we can't edit our forums or lock threads)

4. I've seen this on another site where when you rate a poem, you can not see previous votes and you get a scale on how close you are to other peoples votes, whether you average voting higher or lower than the votes already on poems. This means people aren't swayed by others judgements, they have to make there own and people can tell if they're generally too harsh or too generous.

5. Give us REAL contests! Let us enter into contests instead of picking out a few of the same sort of poems from the same sort of people for the "weekly contest" on the fromt page. Expand, even if you let some of the higher status members who are willing to run them. They can choose the rules for the contest...This gives everyone who wants a chance to have one.

6. Give a short email to people who are suspended from the site as to why.

7. Let us have a Favourite Poems section. This allows people to favourite poems from people and others to look through that list and read older poems from people. This could have a cap if you think people will take it over the top to 3 or 4 a day, but rather than a whole list of favourite authors, you can at least favourite specific poem of theres you love.

8. As said, put up above all the poems any comments and they can be checked off as read when the poet has read and done what they like because i find it nearly impossible with 70 poems, let alone when i write more.

Just some thoughts
kt