[Tohopekaliga]

Hey guys!

Lately, I've been thinking about the posting patterns of Trisphee, and what it looks like to a newbie.

Namely, we rarely get people posting new threads, so it kind of looks like doing that is discouraged (which it most certainly isn't!).

So! I got to thinking about ways to encourage people to post more, make more threads, and generally have a wider variety of things to peruse.

I talked with the Staff some about several ideas, and now I wanna see what everyone would like to see on this topic.



So!


My idea is to give additional posting rewards to users, once a day (telling them they get these rewards, of course). The exact numbers of what earns the rewards would need to be decided still, of course, but the gist is:

You get a reward for posting in a number of different threads in a day.

You get another reward for having a number of different users post in your thread, with a minimum post length (so, no thread of just "bump").


For the created-thread rewards, there'd be a cap on how much you can get from a given thread, so if you happen to make a thread that's existed as long as, say, Jibber-Jabber, you wouldn't keep reaping the rewards. There would also be, I think, a limit to how many different threads will give you rewards at once.



Another idea put forth, that could also work, is to have a super-low chance item grant (actually, a collection of items that are, at present SOOPER SEEKRET) on posting, so the only way to earn them would be to post a lot.



What kinds of rewards are we talking about for adding things? Aurum is a possibility, of course, but we don't want to have too much of that handed out. Makes a bit of a Gaia problem if you do.

We have a few additional minigame type things in the works, to go along with the Crane Game. Once those are ready, an idea is to make them all use the Pandora Tokens that Crane Game currently uses, and instead of just giving you 3 a day, make those be the additional posting rewards.


My question to you, wonderful users of Trisphee, is what would you like to see in regards to posting rewards? And general activity, of course.

[CupcakeDolly]

Do sooper seekret items! <3 It'd be like getting presents for just being lovely li'l people!

Also, this is an idea that just popped into my head, so feel completely free to disregard it: What if there was a very small chance that after you post, a message pops up saying, "You have entered super posting mode! For the next hour, you will earn 1.5x aurum from posting!"
...Or something like that.
That way the site wouldn't be passing out TOO much aurum as a reward, plus it would encourage people to post EVEN MORE! =D

[Illusion]

I'm not a fan of any additional posting bonuses.

Now additional bonuses for running a successful thread like having a bunch of posts means you get one of those super special bonuses you have plan.

Thread creation is important for sure .

[Tohopekaliga]

My reasoning behind providing the bonus both to threads and posts is that if it's only threads, there's less incentive to post in other people's threads. (Other than the obvious of being interested in their discussions, which is not, I suppose, a bad thing in itself.)

[Lawtan]

I am not sure if that would resolve it or not. Though it may be interesting enough for people (new ones, or old ones who left/only stay during the holidays) to stick around more. It likely won't have an effect on those already posting here.

[Salone]

I think, in my infinite unwisdom, that maybe if some sort of newbie tutorial was discussed and implemented, that a "Hello I am a new user" thread should be a requirement as part of the tutorial process.

I like the idea of maybe a set of random item sets being made for threads, although not publishing the chances or amount required, that way it's not encouraged to make tons of meaningless threads.

I think the big issue is they see the sea of threads in each section and get a little discouraged, especially with some of them having such long inactivity dates. If we could somehow, maybe, make some of those go away or do some reorganizing to give the appearance that we are busy... We do have a lot of threads posted in daily, but they're so spread out we have the appearance of being dead when we're actually not.

We're fairly nice people, except for maybe like, Galla, who we all know is dead on the inside and looks for any chance to feast on users. Aside from that everyone is of the welcoming bunch. I think maybe a referral system that rewards those who stick around with some decent items, as well as the person who brought them here. Pyramid scheme tactics!

[Illusion]

Actually removing dates would be a good idea salone and allow me to add to that. So instead of posts saying the exact date, why not change them to words like

"Recently, Not Too Long Ago, A While Ago, Sometime Ago, and Ancient Times."

So Instead of seeing: "Posted 11/15/2015 12am." It would say "Posted Recently."

Keep ancient as a title for something like a year or two old post.

Figure out the times, but just don't let users know the time differences between the words. Admins/Mods can read them as the proper time if they wanted to.

A part of me also wants to remove the see who's online part as well. Seeing that no one is on can quickly have someone leave instead of posting once or twice. What's important is that someone attempts to post even once. But this idea I'm not too sure on, depends on everyone else.

But I still don't think just for posting should there be additional awards, thread making yes. But like you said that might encourage people to only care about their threads. But wouldn't that also mean they have to attract other people as well? Running charities, market threads, art shops, and so on.

The only thing close to additional awards I can agree with is a reward system for posting at least once (or five, whichever) daily (with a considerable amount of word length) and that's it. With rewards getting higher to a max of a week, but every day you long in after that continues to give you the max week bonus as long you log in and post once a day. What the rewards can be? Dunno. Aurum, random commons, maybe a RIG that gives out multiple commons, extremely small chance for like 10 runes (only when you have a 7 day bonus going on)? Maybe a chance for a reward system exclusive RIG with it's own prize pool as well that has a chance to appear after like day 3+ ( Odds slightly increase each day maxing out at 7+) A RIG behind a RIG, but that's mostly just to prevent too many people getting the RIG too fast, you want it to be stretched out a bit. (You might even add items to those RIG's as well.)

Oh and Pyramid scheme tactics? That's.. Sort of hard to accomplish. People can easily make mules and say they had referral them, then post with both accounts to redeem any exclusive/extravagant reward. The only thing I can think of is to have it so if someone invites someone they get like 5% or less of the aurum that person makes when posting on Trisphee if they inserted that persons name when joined, short term that is a nice motivation, but long term someone could had been successful and invited like 1,000 people to the site and be making way too much aurum inflating the system (granted we have a ton of aurum sinks with the shops, and more could always be made.) And getting 1,000 new players for one account would be impressive on it's own right, and probably deserves that aurum for bringing in that many people. <-- Only way I see a referral system working.
I have also suggested in a past to bring back referral contests and you could pull a Scrimshaw and provide a exclusive reward to anyone who participates and gets at least 1 person to join Trisphee with at least 10-15 posts. (You can check to see if it's a mule as well.) This way it's more micro-mangable manageable to snuff up users who are lying for the exclusive award during the contest time period then it would be to have it open ended and people could be abusing this at anytime of day.

But still I don't think additional posting rewards would be good in the long run. Maybe, and I mean just maybe have a charge meter, and once a person types a considerable amount and have that charge reach 100% they get some sort of time bonus (like 5-10 minutes0, like they have more luck in games, maybe a small aurum boost, when the wonder trade is completely up, they have a chance at getting a uncommon for a common, or rare for a uncommon. But that's pretty stretching it, and some things would have to be monitored and so on.

I can keep coming up with ideas, but other then the refer ideas and date posted. I really don't like bringing up ideas based on a system like this. :/ I'll keep thinking about it though.


edit: While my head and note card drawer of ideas for Trisphee is open other ideas:

A avatar contest system based on thumbs up and thumbs downs only, people entering the contest can only thumb up other submissions or ignore them, but cannot thumbs down. Winning avatars featured on front page.

Announcement icon, and on front page a list of recent announcements.

Storing other avatars into a save system (this was brought up before) so you can have multiple avatars/outfits saved. It costs 10 runes for additional avatar saves, but give people a starting number of 2-3 save spots.

Featured Threads on Home Page

Game where you can save any image as your pet (so like take Trisphee items, save a single image of those animals, and dispense them randomly. So think like most egg clicking games/signatures, but it's more straight forward, no evolutions, ect.), clicking on it to feed it and take care of it, and when maxed out you pet can be converted into prizes then resets to 0 clicks.

Oh look an old idea that can be re-purpose into a posting rewards, give random stat points for doing daily Trisphee tasks. +1 Str for posting 100 times or something. Then use those points and establish some sort of game that uses them. It could also be +1 to Posting or things not necessary the generic stat system. These could also be used for events, or even just roleplaying purposes with event forum based games based on them. (So like dungeons and dragons, with like Salone the dungeon master or something.) A lot of potential.

... I'll wait until I gets a reply on what's already written before coming up with more chizz.

[Tohopekaliga]

Originally Posted by Salone

I think, in my infinite unwisdom, that maybe if some sort of newbie tutorial was discussed and implemented, that a "Hello I am a new user" thread should be a requirement as part of the tutorial process.

New User tutorials are definitely in the development plan, although there's a few things to do first. :)

I like the idea of maybe a set of random item sets being made for threads, although not publishing the chances or amount required, that way it's not encouraged to make tons of meaningless threads.

I think the big issue is they see the sea of threads in each section and get a little discouraged, especially with some of them having such long inactivity dates. If we could somehow, maybe, make some of those go away or do some reorganizing to give the appearance that we are busy... We do have a lot of threads posted in daily, but they're so spread out we have the appearance of being dead when we're actually not.

Well, some reorganizing of the forums is in the process. Was delayed a bit to let the Halloween event go through.

We're fairly nice people, except for maybe like, Galla, who we all know is dead on the inside and looks for any chance to feast on users. Aside from that everyone is of the welcoming bunch. I think maybe a referral system that rewards those who stick around with some decent items, as well as the person who brought them here. Pyramid scheme tactics!

Bonuses for referred people activity had occurred to me (including things like...get a bonus 10% of runes bought by your referred people, up to a certain amount), but I'm not really convinced that type of thing is actually helpful.

Originally Posted by Illusion

Actually removing dates would be a good idea salone and allow me to add to that. So instead of posts saying the exact date, why not change them to words like

"Recently, Not Too Long Ago, A While Ago, Sometime Ago, and Ancient Times."

So Instead of seeing: "Posted 11/15/2015 12am." It would say "Posted Recently."

Keep ancient as a title for something like a year or two old post.

Figure out the times, but just don't let users know the time differences between the words. Admins/Mods can read them as the proper time if they wanted to.

Hmm...I don't like the idea of entirely removing last post time, but obscuring it behind things like "Posted Recently" (then hover that to see the actual time, or something) is not a terrible idea. Entirely doable, too.

A part of me also wants to remove the see who's online part as well. Seeing that no one is on can quickly have someone leave instead of posting once or twice. What's important is that someone attempts to post even once. But this idea I'm not too sure on, depends on everyone else.

If I removed Who's Online, I would prefer to replace it with "Today's active users," which would show people from the past 24 hours. It's nice to see a list of online/active people, and according to vBulletin, we do have about 40 users who at least log in each day.

But I still don't think just for posting should there be additional awards, thread making yes. But like you said that might encourage people to only care about their threads. But wouldn't that also mean they have to attract other people as well? Running charities, market threads, art shops, and so on.

The only thing close to additional awards I can agree with is a reward system for posting at least once (or five, whichever) daily (with a considerable amount of word length) and that's it. With rewards getting higher to a max of a week, but every day you long in after that continues to give you the max week bonus as long you log in and post once a day. What the rewards can be? Dunno. Aurum, random commons, maybe a RIG that gives out multiple commons, extremely small chance for like 10 runes (only when you have a 7 day bonus going on)? Maybe a chance for a reward system exclusive RIG with it's own prize pool as well that has a chance to appear after like day 3+ ( Odds slightly increase each day maxing out at 7+) A RIG behind a RIG, but that's mostly just to prevent too many people getting the RIG too fast, you want it to be stretched out a bit. (You might even add items to those RIG's as well.)

It is difficult figuring out the best way to approach these things... That's why I want to be very public about the decisions and the process of arriving at it. I'm no sage of activity improvement. Rewards for threads are the main thing I want to do, post rewards, well, it seems like a good thing to go along with it, but I could do without it for a while, see how it goes.

Oh and Pyramid scheme tactics? That's.. Sort of hard to accomplish. People can easily make mules and say they had referral them, then post with both accounts to redeem any exclusive/extravagant reward. The only thing I can think of is to have it so if someone invites someone they get like 5% or less of the aurum that person makes when posting on Trisphee if they inserted that persons name when joined, short term that is a nice motivation, but long term someone could had been successful and invited like 1,000 people to the site and be making way too much aurum inflating the system (granted we have a ton of aurum sinks with the shops, and more could always be made.) And getting 1,000 new players for one account would be impressive on it's own right, and probably deserves that aurum for bringing in that many people. <-- Only way I see a referral system working.
I have also suggested in a past to bring back referral contests and you could pull a Scrimshaw and provide a exclusive reward to anyone who participates and gets at least 1 person to join Trisphee with at least 10-15 posts. (You can check to see if it's a mule as well.) This way it's more micro-mangable manageable to snuff up users who are lying for the exclusive award during the contest time period then it would be to have it open ended and people could be abusing this at anytime of day.

Yeah, referral contests are a bit iffy.

But still I don't think additional posting rewards would be good in the long run. Maybe, and I mean just maybe have a charge meter, and once a person types a considerable amount and have that charge reach 100% they get some sort of time bonus (like 5-10 minutes0, like they have more luck in games, maybe a small aurum boost, when the wonder trade is completely up, they have a chance at getting a uncommon for a common, or rare for a uncommon. But that's pretty stretching it, and some things would have to be monitored and so on.

Charge meter? Interesting idea.

I can keep coming up with ideas, but other then the refer ideas and date posted. I really don't like bringing up ideas based on a system like this. :/ I'll keep thinking about it though.


edit: While my head and note card drawer of ideas for Trisphee is open other ideas:

A avatar contest system based on thumbs up and thumbs downs only, people entering the contest can only thumb up other submissions or ignore them, but cannot thumbs down. Winning avatars featured on front page.

Announcement icon, and on front page a list of recent announcements.

Storing other avatars into a save system (this was brought up before) so you can have multiple avatars/outfits saved. It costs 10 runes for additional avatar saves, but give people a starting number of 2-3 save spots.

Featured Threads on Home Page

Game where you can save any image as your pet (so like take Trisphee items, save a single image of those animals, and dispense them randomly. So think like most egg clicking games/signatures, but it's more straight forward, no evolutions, ect.), clicking on it to feed it and take care of it, and when maxed out you pet can be converted into prizes then resets to 0 clicks.

Oh look an old idea that can be re-purpose into a posting rewards, give random stat points for doing daily Trisphee tasks. +1 Str for posting 100 times or something. Then use those points and establish some sort of game that uses them. It could also be +1 to Posting or things not necessary the generic stat system. These could also be used for events, or even just roleplaying purposes with event forum based games based on them. (So like dungeons and dragons, with like Salone the dungeon master or something.) A lot of potential.

... I'll wait until I gets a reply on what's already written before coming up with more chizz.

Hmm, an interesting list of ideas. I am already planning on having an avatar save system (with some enhancements on top of your suggestion, in fact). We'll see about the other ones.

[Illusion]

Originally Posted by Tohopekaliga

If I removed Who's Online, I would prefer to replace it with "Today's active users," which would show people from the past 24 hours. It's nice to see a list of online/active people, and according to vBulletin, we do have about 40 users who at least log in each day.

I like this idea in it's entirety. +1

Other ideas:

- Reviving the Board Games thread, the problem in the past was that with regular aurum rewards the forum became abused for quick aurum farming, but it did keep everyone active.
You could allow posts in the forum to dispense tickets (1 ticket per post)that can be exchanged in a games corner shop. (Tickets can also be dispensed in current and future games but would yield more tickets than a typical forum post.)
And if there was a daily charge meter you could use that 100% charge to allow more tickets to be dispensed at a fixed rate.

- Gift Giving Option so Users don't have to accept a trade for a gift. (Can add mystery gift with message that will be PM'd to users.)

- The ability to share pictures in a gallery for threads, dumping images individual boxes when making a thread/post to show a bunch of smaller condensed images that can pop out in a frame at full size when clicked on in a scroll-able library.

So like:
[<- Scroll] [Pic] [Pic] [Pic] [Pic] [Scroll ->]

- Daily Tasks. Get a reward or rewards of some kind when fulfilling daily requirements.
So a list like:
Post 10 times in the forums today
Play Crane Game
Save your avatar/Change it
Buy something from the shops with aurum.
Donate 5 items
Trade someone 1-3 times
Post on someone's profile
ect.

- Accounts can be made by linking to your Facebook account. Or current accounts can be made by linking to Facebook. Also can be done with Google+, Twitter, and so on.

- Ability to poke users:
Could be called tickle, rasberry, whatever. Just go on their profile and press the Poke/whatever button. The other user just gets a small notification on their profile/homepage that they've been poked and by who did the poking.

- Ability to makes polls for thread.

- Number/dice generator for posts

- Trophies award to users during events. So if you won a avatar contest during the Halloween event for example you can a gold trophy, these trophies are displayed in your profiles, and can also be shared in your signatures. When you hover over a trophy it will say the title "Halloween 2015 Contest Winner 1st Place"

[Tohopekaliga]

Sei helpfully reminded me (in much more polite terms) that I was being a dick, and forgot that we'd agreed to delay the forum rearranging until after Halloween...So expect the forums to look more streamlined in organization very soon! :O

Originally Posted by Illusion

I like this idea in it's entirety. +1

Other ideas:

- Reviving the Board Games thread, the problem in the past was that with regular aurum rewards the forum became abused for quick aurum farming, but it did keep everyone active.
You could allow posts in the forum to dispense tickets (1 ticket per post)that can be exchanged in a games corner shop. (Tickets can also be dispensed in current and future games but would yield more tickets than a typical forum post.)
And if there was a daily charge meter you could use that 100% charge to allow more tickets to be dispensed at a fixed rate.

- Gift Giving Option so Users don't have to accept a trade for a gift. (Can add mystery gift with message that will be PM'd to users.)

Well, a COD trade with no cost is effectively the same as a gift, but I agree we do need an explicit "give gift" option.

- The ability to share pictures in a gallery for threads, dumping images individual boxes when making a thread/post to show a bunch of smaller condensed images that can pop out in a frame at full size when clicked on in a scroll-able library.

So like:
[<- Scroll] [Pic] [Pic] [Pic] [Pic] [Scroll ->]

Not a bad idea.

- Daily Tasks. Get a reward or rewards of some kind when fulfilling daily requirements.
So a list like:
Post 10 times in the forums today
Play Crane Game
Save your avatar/Change it
Buy something from the shops with aurum.
Donate 5 items
Trade someone 1-3 times
Post on someone's profile
ect.

This I like. :) I was cruising around other avatar sites recently to see how they do various things, and one of them (I wanna say Solia?) has "quests" for things like "post x times." It's not a bad idea. Daily tasks or challenges or something sound like a nice variation on the theme.

- Accounts can be made by linking to your Facebook account. Or current accounts can be made by linking to Facebook. Also can be done with Google+, Twitter, and so on.

I'm not a big fan of account linking like that. I avoid doing it as much as possible, and if it's the only option for a site, I'm less likely to make an account. That said, I wouldn't be entirely opposed to doing it.

- Ability to poke users:
Could be called tickle, rasberry, whatever. Just go on their profile and press the Poke/whatever button. The other user just gets a small notification on their profile/homepage that they've been poked and by who did the poking.

Why?

- Ability to makes polls for thread.

Polls are a thing you can do already.

- Number/dice generator for posts

Hmm, yeah, that could be useful.

- Trophies award to users during events. So if you won a avatar contest during the Halloween event for example you can a gold trophy, these trophies are displayed in your profiles, and can also be shared in your signatures. When you hover over a trophy it will say the title "Halloween 2015 Contest Winner 1st Place"

That could be cool. :) Would need a bit of groundwork in code and art, but wouldn't be too bad.

[Illusion]

Originally Posted by Tohopekaliga

Why?

It means someone is trying to get your attention. It's virtually meaningless and it's for fun purposes only.

Polls are a thing you can do already.

WAIT WHA? Since when!?

[Tohopekaliga]

Polls have been a feature of vBulletin (that's the software that powers the forums) since 2001 or so. Trisphee's been around since 2010. :P

[Den]

Originally Posted by Illusion

It means someone is trying to get your attention. It's virtually meaningless and it's for fun purposes only.

>.> they can get out of hand quickly... A friend of mine on another site and I have a poke war going that's come to about 600 pokes back and forth between the two of us...

[Obsidian]

I'm not sure what to think, to be perfectly honest. I attempted to make a rewards idea suggestion and got shot down.

Meh, it's whatever.

Edit:
Thought about it a bit more. I wouldn't do this. So I have nothing to offer. I lurk.. "Super Secret" rewards aren't going to make me change that unless I know for sure what the reward item is beforehand and if it's even worth (to me) to try to get.

[Tohopekaliga]

Well, naturally, if we were giving items at low probability, we'd tell you what they are, some of them, anyway.

Items already exist for this general purpose, but I don't wish to say what they are, in case we use them elsewhere. :P

[Coda]

Thread rewards: I'm fine with giving some nominal (nothing valuable) rewards for creating threads, but I also don't want to put rewards in for successful threads. That sounds like a good way to reward users who happen to be first to the punch on a topic that's guaranteed to be popular, and to make users who can't think of a good topic idea (let's face it, not everyone who can participate in a conversation can necessarily think of a subject for a new one) feel left out.

Game tokens: Back in the day we'd discussed a non-disappearing game token. Your Pandora tokens would get used first (and refill to 3 as now) and when you're out then you'd automatically use the other type.

N-Day Active rewards: I agree with the suggestion that users get rewards for posting over time instead of just in bursts. Maybe if you post at least once a week you get to retain some special status.

Saved Avatars: The code is already in the system for it and it's worked for years. The complicated part is putting a UI on it that doesn't cause confusion.

Who's Online: I agree with 24-hour-active users instead of currently-active users.

Board Games: Why board games? What's wrong with Forum Games?

Gifts: There's already a "send items immediately" function in the trade system. I absolutely DO NOT want a way for items to appear directly in someone's inventory. Way too much room for error.

Picture gallery: I don't want to support uploads to Trisphee, but I guess I would be OK with a gallery-like bbcode function.

Daily challenges: I like this idea. Let's talk more about it.

Linking to other sites' accounts: A good idea in theory, but messy in practice.

RNG for posts: Useful, should do this.

Trophies: Agreed, good idea, but needs some art.