I would suggest awarding negative minerals for posting in the Other forums were I not concerned about being taken seriously...

Two things:

Minerals are SRS FUCKING BUSINESS. Like the Internet. I mean, when you accumulate more minerals you level up your awesome level, gain moderator status, and then graduate to RL. Oh wait, that's not how it works. Minerals are around to get you.. more minerals? It's just a fun side contribution to make this place more engaging. The fewer minerals people get, the less fun they have.

More importantly, we need to cut it out with the negative reinforcement. Removing mineral contributions from things like Serious Discussion will not cause more people to work on Starcraft. It will not magically increase the amount of mapping production. If it leads to more spam threads in the Starcraft forums, then these are the same threads that were in Serious Discussion before, and I think moving the spam to Starcraft is hardly productive. The only thing you will do is depress the people who aren't contributing to Starcraft now and make them leave instead of contributing to the other forums. Yes, I'm aware there are people who think this would be a brilliant idea. But I repeat that this will not spur some magical renaissance of mapping productivity.

Make maps. Take part in contests. Help people. Amazingly, you get minerals for that too.

Quote from DT_Battlekruser

I would suggest awarding negative minerals for posting in the Other forums were I not concerned about being taken seriously...

Two things:

Minerals are SRS FUCKING BUSINESS. Like the Internet. I mean, when you accumulate more minerals you level up your awesome level, gain moderator status, and then graduate to RL. Oh wait, that's not how it works. Minerals are around to get you.. more minerals? It's just a fun side contribution to make this place more engaging. The fewer minerals people get, the less fun they have.

More importantly, we need to cut it out with the negative reinforcement. Removing mineral contributions from things like Serious Discussion will not cause more people to work on Starcraft. It will not magically increase the amount of mapping production. If it leads to more spam threads in the Starcraft forums, then these are the same threads that were in Serious Discussion before, and I think moving the spam to Starcraft is hardly productive. The only thing you will do is depress the people who aren't contributing to Starcraft now and make them leave instead of contributing to the other forums. Yes, I'm aware there are people who think this would be a brilliant idea. But I repeat that this will not spur some magical renaissance of mapping productivity.

Make maps. Take part in contests. Help people. Amazingly, you get minerals for that too.

This. All of it. I don't know any better way to put it. I honestly thought that you were serious until "Oh wait, that's not how it works." SCI mapmaking is nearly, if not completely dead, and those that remain need nearly no help. I don't contribute to SCII mapmaking because I don't want to spend $60 on a game that doesn't better my educational and/or future. In fact, rather than bettering it, chances are good that it will actually deter me from doing the sparse homework I currently do.

But, I digress. It's as you say. Removing minerals for the Null forums that have them will make no impact upon on-topic forums, save for more spam and/or somewhat quicker, lousier answers, but no noticeable increase in any aspect of actual mapping. People that peruse the forums that previously had minerals did not do so because they got a small mineral amount from it, but more because they enjoy debate (SD), giving/receiving technological help (Tech) or gaming advice/groupings (Games), or sharing their creative genes (MAL). For the most part, any active mapper as far as I know contributes to Other forums far less frequently than they do to on-topic forums. You use the Balloon example from Payne, yet he is infinitely more active in SCII mapping than in off-topic games and whatnot.

TL;DR: DTBK for Prez.

Leave me alone! D:
And for sure this topic doesn't deserve the Nullers' attention.
And for sure any non-mapping-related forum shouldn't give any minerals (or maybe a max of 1 mineral per post? ).

P.S. Previewing an OP removes its selected icon.

I'll just put this out in the open. When we first started discussing the return of minerals, it was coupled with a long brainstorming topic about getting SEN back into the world of StarCraft. This site hasn't been devoted to map-making in years. Our "Other" forums have become much more active than I assume was intended, and now we've got more people interested in forum games than SC/SC2 maps. SEN was very late in getting onto the StarCraft 2 scene, especially with SC2Mapster coming along quickly. Our first SC2 contest was what we figured to be a first step in the right direction of turning SEN into a SC2-centric community. Later we redesigned everything to look slicker thanks to Corbo's layout. Neither of these things seemed to help much given the dismal turnout for the contest and endless complaints about the new look. We discussed the idea of an "Achievement Point" system for contests, rewarding a new currency for making maps, and even continuing to pay cash prizes for winning entries in future contests. So far nothing is really getting us going, and despite having a few more maps in production, we're still just a social community more interested in "Other" things. I've always loved this community, but SEN's heyday is long gone. We probably wont ever be the top again, and I don't really care to reach that pinnacle anyway. I'll still work on my maps, and I hope down the line we have bunch more people getting involved in at least bringing this website back into the map-making groove. The problem is how do we get back on track?

Yes, minerals were essentially brought back as incentive to take part in the main focus of SEN (StarCraft and StarCraft 2). Instead of introducing multiple currencies, we just redid minerals so that people could earn them for posting in certain forums, but also earn large amounts of them for contributing to contests, the wiki, etc. I removed them from the "Other" forums because, as Aristo put it, people aren't coming here to ask us for custom signatures, questions about building computers, or discussing time and mathematics. Ultimately we have seen a relatively huge increase in posting in our assistance forums from new members. They obviously don't care about minerals (since they probably know nothing about them), but they're asking questions about SC2 because they legitimately need help. As an added bonus to helping people find solutions to their problems, members can earn minerals by posting in their topics. As an even larger bonus, they an also add these solutions to our wiki and in time earn a higher amount of minerals. And here's a secret for everyone: creating Map Production or Map Showcase topics will get you the most amount of minerals.

That said, it seems like everyone is complaining about minerals and the store because of the lack of signatures. If we gave signature enablers to everyone and left minerals-per-posts to the SC forums, would people complain as much? What are you guys striving for via minerals other than signatures? My guess is the custom smiley or name color, which are really expensive. To earn those non-basic forum items, you'd have to contribute to what this site exists for. For as much as we all complain about payne's mineral whoring, he's trying his hardest to write Wiki articles and help as many people as he can with SC2 questions. Obviously a lot of his earnings come from the forum games, but he's posted enough in the SC2 forums to earn minerals to play in the first place.

And what does the lack of minerals have to do with people having things to say? Members can still post regardless of whether or not they are rewarded with minerals. I think this sort of mindset is really driving the mineral argument sometimes, and that's not good.

NOTE: Me and DevliN has had this discussion multiple times with each other because I heart minerals so much. But basically the same points I give every time it comes up, just give me some name colour!

I just want fairness in our system. If you deem it necessary to remove titles and signatures and name colours have us purchase them for minerals, then so be it. But the fact is that you removed it only for 95% of the population while 5% of the population gets to go around acting like nothing happened. You're right though, if you had included minerals in this current state but left our signatures and titles alone, there would be so much less complaining. But I'm not sure what kind of response you were expecting, you give us signatures and titles for free for such a long time because we couldn't gain minerals, but when we get our minerals back (in a terrible round-about system where prices were inflated and mineral gains were abysmal) you take away signatures and titles away from most of us. Signatures have almost always been a given on this forum, and to relegate it to making us buy it, of course people will get upset. And don't even get me started on name colours, at least in v4 everyone had an equal chance of getting one, but now you could ONLY get a name colour if you were in the small time period in which minerals were available and name colours were available, which most of us weren't or most of us didn't realize we would not get another chance for years. Either give no one name colours anymore or least give people the option of buying them again so we can at least hope one day to see our names in epic colours. And then you force the skin change on us when it was barely tested and optimized, we go from 6+ skin choices to 1 for the longest time.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Sep 21 2010, 8:18 am by Taylor Swift.

Nothing is preventing you from buying name colors, though. If people don't want to contribute to the SC aspect of the site, that's fine, but then they miss out on things like name colors. I'm all for giving everyone back signatures, and before Devourer left that was basically the plan.

EDIT:
Again the major issue I see is that people are complaining about having to post in SC-related sections on a website centered around SC. Why is it really that big of a problem? We all came here because of StarCraft and now the thought of posting about it is somehow revolting.

(payne, I'm not targeting you. You just happened to be the most prominent example of a member exhibiting exploitative behavior. Nothing against you personally, really )


I don't believe that's how it'll unfold, DTBK. I was going to post about this, but DevliN beat me to it:

Let's say people are not rewarded minerals at all, and they post X topics in Serious Discussion. After introducing minerals to SD, the incentive for posting there increases, and they post Y topics in Serious Discussion. Question: If Y is greater than X, then how do we account for the extra topics that are the difference (Y-X) between the old post count and new post count?

Obviously, this excess of topics would not have been made had there not been mineral incentives involved. The point of Serious Discussion (and pretty much every other forum, for that matter) is to create discussions about interesting topics. Thsee extra discussions are effectively trash, since the posters of these extra topics did not care enough about the content to post without mineral incentives. That is why this:

[quote\DT_Battlekruser]The only thing you will do is depress the people who aren't contributing to Starcraft now and make them leave instead of contributing to the other forums.[/quote]

...is inaccurate. If the posters are genuinely interested in the topic, they will post it regardless of whether or not they receive minerals for it.

Threads like this again demonstrates that threads in the purgatory between "not important enough to post about" and "not rewarding enough for me to bother typing it up" turn up in forums because minerals are involved. Minerals generate spam as a necessary consequence. However, we probably don't realize that spam in SC forums is beneficial to the site. Spam in "Other" forums will not get us any more hits. Spam in SC2 forums lead to SEN showing up as the first result in Google Searches for "zerg spit". It doesn't matter if we don't like the content. More site visits is good, and potentially outweighs the drawbacks of having that little bit of extra non-content in SC-related forums.

Ultimo, this is basically what I was preaching all the time. We can't throw half finished features at the community and expect them to be overjoyed. Unfortunately enthusiasm made my arguments go unheard. And this is why I miss Moose. He made decisions I didn't agree with, but at least he followed a clear line.

There's no reason to let the "Other" forum group generate minerals other than to increase the mineral gain overall which is not necessary. And even if you think it is, then it makes more sense to just increase the modifiers of eligible forums or the base mineral gain.
If people get depressed because letting SEN help them buy a new gfx card doesn't help them get a name color then you know something is wrong. My bet is with the member, not with the site.

Damn, you revealed my secret plan to quickly get mineralz0rs: create a bunch of fake vaporwares
Fixed.

Quote from DevliN

Quote from LoTu)S

Why remove minerals from forums that have the most meaning in the "other" section? Most people have things to say in other forums too. D:

And what does the lack of minerals have to do with people having things to say? Members can still post regardless of whether or not they are rewarded with minerals. I think this sort of mindset is really driving the mineral argument sometimes, and that's not good.

So you're admitting that people in SD, the most rule-bound forum on SEN, where people sometimes take 20 minutes or more to type a single post of >1000 words, deserve the same minerals as a post in Null that follows this form:

[quote]
^this.

Something is wrong here. Nobody is arguing for Null or Introduction minerals. The forums being argued for are much more moderated than Null, and contribute to the well-being of SEN users as a whole (well, at least Technology and MAL does...). I'm not willing to spend $60 on a game that will make me waste more time than I already do, just for enjoyment and the ability to get a signature. The fuss isn't about signatures anymore, it's more about forums that people take seriously having minerals removed from them. I don't care if I have a signature, and since I rarely post in those forums (9.699%), it doesn't affect me at all, really.

Also, I know that posts in SC2 mapmaking will generate more google hits. How many people see us on google and decide to join, let alone actively participate? I remember back in 2003 or so, when I first stumbled upon SEN. I got information from it, thought it was nice and all, then left. I visited probably 10 times a month because google sent me here. Never signed up until the Stormcoast-Fortress forums shut down because of a small group (5 or so, then one disappeared) kids flaming each other, myself included. The reason why I joined was not because google proved that SEN had a wide variety of quality information, it was because I really didn't have anywhere else to go, and SEN looked accepting enough.

TL;DR: Removing minerals from Other forums that still deserve them is pointless. People will still post in them, and no more so than in actual mapping forums, especially since far more minerals and PR can be obtained in mapping forums for the same amount of effort. Even if it does increase the productivity, there wont be a large increase in the newcomers to SEN, and even less of those will become productive.

Playing devil's advocate for a minute here, I'm admitting that the people in SD, the most rule-bound forum on SEN, where people sometimes take 20 minutes or more to type a single post of >1000 words, deserve no minerals just like they don't in Null. People have been posting thought-provoking posts in SD without mineral rewards for a very long time, so why should that change anything? My point about all this is that if we gave signatures back to everyone (which seems to be a large part of the argument) and said that you had to participate in contests, make maps, or help with the wiki to earn something like a custom smiley and name color, then that should be acceptable. The biggest issue with the minerals and store seems to be that we are removing a "basic forum object" like a signature and forcing people to post in non-"Other" forums to get it. So, again, if we just give signatures back then people have nothing to complain about. Name colors and custom smileys are not basic forum objects, so I see no reason why we can't continue to force people to contribute to the StarCraft portion of SEN in order to earn them. Also keep in mind that you can earn minerals for posting in the StarCraft 1 forums as well, a game I'm sure everyone here has still.

[quote:name=NudeRaider]There's no reason to let the "Other" forum group generate minerals other than to increase the mineral gain overall which is not necessary. And even if you think it is, then it makes more sense to just increase the modifiers of eligible forums or the base mineral gain.[/quote]
Right. If we were to put minerals back in "Other" forums, I'd be more inclined to put them in at a .50 or .75 modifier so that you still get more for participating in the SC-related forums.

Like I said, I could live with something like that. Name colours has always been a thing you had to earn, I don't remember if we had titles in v4 but I really don't mind about titles either. Now just add back shadow and italics like the old day and we'll be I think you could put a lot of more things in the store besides taking away signatures at least Like quirky things that show up in your profile like medals (like Excaliban, but more reasonably priced. )

'

My point was not that you will drive people away from SEN, but that the only effect of removing minerals from Other forums would be this. (Again, there are people who think this is a good idea.)

I've always been a conservative, so I support what worked fine in the past. Back in the day, the mineral gain was 2-16 minerals for everything excluding Null, Welcome, and clan forums. But I can understand if we want to keep it to 1-8 for Other forums, I suppose.

On a related note, however, signatures and avatars should definitely come to members by default or be awarded for some trivial number of activity (like 5 or 10).

Quote from DevliN

Right. If we were to put minerals back in "Other" forums, I'd be more inclined to put them in at a .50 or .75 modifier so that you still get more for participating in the SC-related forums.

Quote from poison_us

Something like .1 multiplier could be used on MA&L, while .2 on Tech and .25 on SD would work...

I posted this earlier, at even lower rates than what you'd approve of...but ofc it was ignored because it came from a regular, and was a small(er) post.

Sorry I didn't see that earlier. I assure you it had nothing to do with you being a Regular.

Imo it's no problem when you have to post 2 months actively to get your signature. Until then you have your avatar to personalize yourself and an earned signature is just valued higher than one you get by default. I know that by first hand experience. For anyone who is too lazy/inactive whatever to gain measly 150-200 minerals in a reasonable time span there's still disable fun. These people won't get enough minerals for special items anyway.

What I've said above refers to a finished mineral system.

Well, since this is a buglist, not a mineral system discussion topic, I feel the right to post this: Having SEN open in multiple tabs (on chrome) breaks the Auto-Refresh for the shoutbox. I'm not sure when it occurred, but my guess is it happened when I refreshed a page and SEN sent two shoutbox thingies at the same time, and mysql doesn't like that or whatever.

Also, please don't overlook this just because I'm a regular :sadface:

EDIT: From SEN's Faq, #10:


Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Sep 21 2010, 8:53 pm by poison_us.

I request :hurr2:



Edit: Store prices still disappoint me. Are they ever gonna be static prices like Aris stated. Double the value is too hax for me.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Sep 23 2010, 12:19 am by LoTu)S.

They should be based off of stock, like my previous post somewhere else, but (in the spirit of Kaias) that's not going to happen. Ideally, we should have a system in which the prices are predictable, yet of moderate difficulty to get the minerals for non-"standard" forum gizmos and stuffs. I forgot the formula I made, but the real average for it was much higher than the average of the range, so that would satisfy those who appreciate inflation. Also, I'd definitely be willing to make these types of formulas for all the items, but chances are staffers aren't going to approve of the idea, even though it could bridge the gap between those who want more available items and those who want them given already.

EDIT: This is a fun idea, but would be a huge pain. How about, rather than the one price for every number of the item, if at each level it varied by +/- 10% of the minimum? What I'm saying is, if you have a price that's supposed to be 150, and the minimum is 50, then the price range at 150 is 155 ~ 145. I know it's a stupid idea, but it's random and maybe people will like it. I don't know.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Sep 23 2010, 12:59 pm by poison_us.

This:
instead of this ;D.

Or we could just change it to :wink: or something. Lets face it, most of the people hate ;D, and would prefer ;D