An updated skin, and welcome back

I thought you were gone and you changed your password to something random? Can you proof that you are corbo?

@Corbo: If you're referring to the current state of the site, then please do note that most of SEN's HTML is hard-coded (so to speak), meaning that the skin system has no control over it. In any case I will release new code for the Forum Index as soon as I'm able to, though I may have to revert it instantly because certain browsers love to pretend that entire sections of a CSS file (such as every line of code pertaining to the Forum Index during my last test) don't exist.

The new FI code will have some presentational details (I'll try to make it match your mockup better) and its code will be vastly improved.

I'm posting to piss Devourer off i.e Posts: 4445

Hey so I remember Devlin saying that minerals aren't being put under people's avatar because not a lot of people have minerals yet..

But I think, in contrary, putting the minerals under people's avatar will get people wanting more minerals, and therefore participating.. I think this is very important.
Also, if you imagine yourself as this random guy who has just started joining SEN... I would have no clues about the minerals system... That's bad, because it COULD be just the thing that'll make the person decide to participate or not.

I think despite that not many people have minerals, i think it should still be put under their avatars... A lil friendly competition never hurts..

As for the achievement points thing, it'd only work if there're rewards...

We're discussing redoing minerals completely at the moment. A majority of minerals earned will still be based on contributions, but we are looking into other ways to earn smaller amount as well.

Currently we're thinking achievement points lead to more minerals. Like if you get a certain amount of achievement points, you get a very large mineral bonus.

Where are mah mineralz?

You could just give out 1 mineral for each activity point, 1 or 2 for each post, and large amounts (e.x. in the hundreds) for things like contests. A lot of people have worried about the system being abused if minerals are given for posts or activity, but this is an easy counter; simply give pathetically small amounts for posting and other abuse-prone earning methods. Makes it possible for the average Joe to earn some minerals (which justifies their display on profiles and underneath post avatars) without opening the system to abuse.

@David

I don't think that's a good idea.
I think if we do minerals as achievement pts bonuses, it'd give a lot more incentives.. like for example, 50 pts = +10 minerals.. 100 pts = +50 minerals .. 500 pts = +200 minerals .. 1000pts = +500 minerals.. and these bonuses should be set in stone... this'll make people try to get those points so they can get these large bonuses.. if it's going to be 1 pt / 1 mineral, then the incentive isn't as strong, and people will whine about how pts and minerals are the same thing :\

If the ratio is (roughly) 2:1 it's still the same thing...

Wait, what's this about achievement points?

@David
I think they're points you get when get achievements on sc2.

I was thinking activity and posts could count for minerals, with achievement points being used as UU said. Activity would be 2 minerals while posts is 1 minerals. Items range 500+
Contributions and contest prizes would range from 20-100 mins?
Of course we would all have to start with zero mins and not base it on the current activity and posts. If post/ mineral ratio is too high, we could lower the mins gained from posts such as 1/2 mins per post.

where can i look for an explanation of all these resources and points?

Jesus, please, stop with the currencies. We definitely don't need more currencies.

The "Contest Points" are probably going to be renamed "Achievement Points." You will earn them for placing in SEN contests or contributions (be it maps, tutorials, whatever). After earning a certain amount of points, you get a large sum of Minerals. That would be the incentive to participate in contests and contribute as a whole to SEN.

On top of that, you'll theoretically earn Minerals for things like posts, map uploads, map reviews, possible forum games, etc. though this will be an extremely small amount of Minerals so it ends up being more beneficial to try to get the Achievement Points.

So... Achivement points are nothing but a way to get minerals. Why not do it directly?

Because Achievement Points don't go away, so if we have a "Top 10" list or something based on Achievement Points, we wont have to worry about them disappearing like we would if they were spendable like Minerals.

you could have a "minerals earned" counter, which counts total earned, whether spent or not

Achievement points will be earned only through explicit contributions (contests, maps, tutorials), whereas minerals will come from many places.

More importantly, Achievement Points will be used to factor into things that affect your standing on SEN, whereas the main purpose of minerals will be for fun (financing non-SC related things, forum games, fun extras, etc.)

Factor into things that affect your standing on SEN? That's inaccurate. Did I have no standing before winning a contest? No - because standing isn't reflected in mapping contributions (lol, me mapping).

Having two currencies is just... dirty and unnecessary. First alternate idea: Create a log of mapping-related activities that's public for each member. Whenever they upload a map, it's updated (maybe make it hierarchical, so one could click on that log entry and expand it to view all subsequent edits). Whenever they win a contest, it's updated. Etc. It'll be a chart in their profile, along with general such statistics, such as "contests participated in', 'contests won', 'maps uploaded', 'maps authored', etc. Each of those achievements will give them minerals, and their mapping contributions are public. Really, when I want to see how good a mapper someone is, I can check either their 'mapping' post count or their 'maps uploaded' count. Being here for a while leads to one getting a feel for everyone's abilities even without the post/uploaded data. 'Achievement Point' is a repetitive statistic.

Plus, I won't really be particularly impressed by someone taking the time to make a 'technically impressive' yet unpopular and unplayed map. Contests are fine and all, but the best things that a mapper can do are 1) Make a popular map and 2) Expand a limit so someone else can make a popular map. And though this particular contest is, indeed, a very good one, I strongly doubt, based on SEN's record, that the subsequent one will be as useful.

Egh. I just really think that overcomplicating SEN is bad, and that you're doing that.