At 12/2/06 03:42 PM, DFox wrote:

At 12/2/06 03:23 PM, Cybex wrote: How do you propose we "fix" the portal?

Read everything I said above, but to kick it off right, get rid of the option that allows people to vote everyday. It's useless, allows downvoting/upvoting, and is completely unnecessary.

Like you said, it's a good business idea and switching to one vote period would probably be very unpopular. And voting everyday also keeps things in check. When a flash is on the top 50 and it doesn't deserve to be, it gets voted off. I'm really sure how that all works, is top 50 only based on score? or popularity? or time passed as well?

So I don't know that much about the scoring system, but one vote for each flash would not go over well with newgroundites.

At 12/2/06 03:42 PM, DFox wrote: I don't see how anyone can debate the multiple vote thing. It makes no sense.

I agree with you there. For awhile I used to vote five on all my submissions for two reasons, one, higher scores; two, quick way to bank experience.

But I realized that all I was doing was hurting myself. If I vote 5 on all of my stuff, I don't get to see its true value anymore. It has been tainted by my greed. I can't look back and say, "Wow, really screwed that one up; won't be doing that again" because everything will look good.

It's like cheating on a test, it may help your grade, but it won't help you learn and reflect.

Then of course there are those pesky down voters. I swear the score on my tutorial is sinking everyday...

At 12/2/06 03:42 PM, DFox wrote: But, I don't see how anyone can debate the multiple vote thing. It makes no sense. Why should you be able to vote every day on a Flash?

I just wanted to argue the point over Voting Power. Its nice to see we've reached an agreement of sorts over it.

Personally I'm inclined to agree about multiple votes. I DO think that you should only be able to vote once on a Flash and be given the option to change your vote.

In practice, I find myself voting less on pieces that are already through the Portal. Even with my ten levels and Police something-or-other rank, what diference is my vote going to make against the thousands I already see before me

TANGENT: The difference between this and real life is we can see how the Flash is doing. I bet if during recent USA elections the scores were displayed live in Time Square and over Fox during the election before each ballot office closed there'd have been a different outcome as people either rush out to mass vote for thier candidate because they know they're failing, or don't bother to travel to the ballot office because they can see thier vote isn't going to topple the juggernaut / add worth to thier winning

But I do still find myself going back to watch pieces over and over, and do occasionally hit the banner ads and let the pop-ups load. No idea how much money Newgrounds actually makes from massvoting (although I'm guessing most of the massvotage groups don't click the ads).

So yeah. I'd personally like to see people being given the opportunity to *change* thier vote. Although with the voting power added to the equation that may be complicated and therefore take up more server calculations.

So we'll remove your *old* score from the current score and recalculate it, and then add your *new* score to the list... oh wait, you were seven levels lower last time... erm...

Perhaps the only option would be to then set the score in stone. But sometimes I find Flashes grow on me, or I decide that my standards have changed and force myself to actually vote on stuff that's already there that I don't want to see in the Top 50 any more. Should I be forced to stick with my original choice of "FIVE!" when I really think it should now be a four? Maybe scores should degrade over time, otherwise there'd be no decay from the Top 50 - no one voting 0 because they can't any more. People may get around that by signing out (Oh snap... what about guests?!) and using other accounts, increasing server lag.

Too many factors already, and we've not gone into even more extreme ideas yet. Got to approach this problem VERY hollisticaly.

But no matter what in the end Adam Phillips work is still at the top, so the voting system is fine and all. I mean one vote per person per flash, Adam Phillips would still be on top except his flash would not be rounded down to the 4.24 mark but stay above the 4.50 mark. Frankly it doesn't matter what anybody says because another will just disagree... fucking liberals!

not to completely change the subject, but it's kinda funny to see how the reg lounge is doing right now. nearly everyone (who is talking, anyway) is typing up long-winded posts.

so i don't break the chain, here goes..

personally, i think the portal is fine as it is. while we do get the retards that downvote or upvote something en masse, there's a lot more people out there that aren't part of a club that will vote fairly. there's 1,000,000+ accounts on newgrounds (yeah, i realize a lot might be alts, so for the sake of argument, lets knock it down to 500,000). now, how many people are part of any flash club, like the lock legion, the clock crew, the glock crew, etc? for the sake of argument, lets just say 50,000 people are in all of those, combined. how will 50,000 people's votes fare against 450,000 people's votes? not so well, even if some of them are people with new accounts or just no account, so again, for argument's sake, 100,000 people with new/no account. that still leaves 350,000 people with good accounts that won't vote because their crew tells them too. these numbers are exaggerated, but i think you all get the point.

and that is why i think the portal is fine. teh edn. feel free to rip apart that paragraph and make me look like a stupid idiot, plzkthx.

At 12/2/06 04:50 PM, Rammer wrote: and that is why i think the portal is fine. teh edn. feel free to rip apart that paragraph and make me look like a stupid idiot, plzkthx.

Done.

The problem with your logic is most of those clean accounts are probably fairly low levels who don't deposit every day because they're not die hard.

And they probably don't vote on the same submissions over and over again to purposefully raise/lower the scores.

Plus, if it's not on the front page... most of them probably don't even notice.

@ onnet, citric squid, yellow coin

Are you sure that the file is in public_htm/

At 12/2/06 05:15 PM, Johnny wrote:

At 12/2/06 04:50 PM, Rammer wrote: and that is why i think the portal is fine. teh edn. feel free to rip apart that paragraph and make me look like a stupid idiot, plzkthx.

Done.

The problem with your logic is most of those clean accounts are probably fairly low levels who don't deposit every day because they're not die hard.

i took that into account already, with the "new/no account people" part.

Hey all, just dropping by to point out my shiny new game:

http://newgrounds.com/portal/view/352168

What do you guys think? Pretty basic, yes, but it didn't take too long to put together.

Tom

At 12/2/06 08:07 PM, YellowCoin wrote: Sorry for the double post, but i have a problem, i just went to use my tablet pen, for the first time in about a month, and it doesn't work, re-installed the drivers, rebooted my pc, and nothing, any help guys?

I've had a similar problem but I still can't seem to fix it, try updating your driver or running it on a different machine.

At 12/2/06 07:06 PM, YellowCoin wrote: Broken?

Nope, ArmorBot only stores whole numbers, so to get the decimal places for the long jump and time attack modes, I had to get it to store the score x100, then divide it by 100 when displaying it in the flash itself. The armorbot tables will obviously therefore be 100x your score, but of course will still be accurate in terms of rankings

Tom~

At 12/2/06 07:39 PM, Luis wrote: angry stuff

Stfu n00B how much cn u no when you only lvl 1 stupid fuk!!11 go back and n00b with sm n00bs u fuckin n00b!111!

n00b.

<3

At 12/2/06 09:47 PM, Rammer wrote: then why are you posting that? you are getting to be a little bit annoying. there's really no need to post shit like that. go look on page 162.

Fine, sorry.

By the way, anyone care to post some samples of their holiday submissions, if they're making one?

meh im over it.

anyway the topic will be locked at the end of the year, negative warned me to not start this thread that it would turn out this way and i didnt bother paying attention to him so yea it was a valiant effort. but yeah it was a bad idea.

At 12/2/06 09:54 PM, Masterswordman wrote:

At 12/2/06 09:47 PM, Rammer wrote: then why are you posting that? you are getting to be a little bit annoying. there's really no need to post shit like that. go look on page 162.

Fine, sorry.

By the way, anyone care to post some samples of their holiday submissions, if they're making one?

sorry i snapped at you >_>

you just remind me a bit of my friend who went by "jediswordsman" and was annoying. just in the name. bah.

anyway, i was wondering how to do some AS stuff. how would you load variables from a php page, which gets them from a database? like, how would i "format" my php so that the variables can be gotten with sendAndLoad? i've never understood that.

At 12/2/06 10:40 PM, Rammer wrote: anyway, i was wondering how to do some AS stuff. how would you load variables from a php page, which gets them from a database? like, how would i "format" my php so that the variables can be gotten with sendAndLoad? i've never understood that.

var1=whatevea&var2=more&var3=dfgdfgfd

At 12/2/06 10:40 PM, Rammer wrote: sorry i snapped at you >_>

you just remind me a bit of my friend who went by "jediswordsman" and was annoying. just in the name. bah.

S' alright.

At 12/2/06 10:45 PM, DFox wrote: var1=whatevea&var2=more&var3=dfgdfgfd

i know, but if the page isn't actually being shown, how would i get those variables into the URL?

At 12/3/06 01:06 AM, Rammer wrote:

At 12/2/06 10:45 PM, DFox wrote: var1=whatevea&var2=more&var3=dfgdfgfd

i know, but if the page isn't actually being shown, how would i get those variables into the URL?

You don't have to... Just have the page output that to the screen like you normally would (echo) and loadVars will pick it up.

At 12/1/06 05:36 PM, CitricSquid wrote:

At 12/1/06 04:51 PM, Bowlofchilli wrote:

At 12/1/06 04:50 PM, PaperBagMask wrote: Why did the chicken cross the road?

Because the pigeons were trying to poop on him.

<3

Your back :O

Why do you always disappear for a month, and then come back, and go again?

onnet.

Lol, I got way too busy and got way into figure skating. lol
And school is ridiculously time consuming nowadays. :|

<3

At 12/3/06 01:08 AM, DFox wrote: You don't have to... Just have the page output that to the screen like you normally would (echo) and loadVars will pick it up.

oh, i see! so it's kind of like using #include on a text file to grab variables? wow, this helps me a lot....thanks!

At 12/3/06 01:56 AM, ShirtTurtle wrote:

At 12/3/06 01:26 AM, Bowlofchilli wrote: Lol, I got way too busy and got way into figure skating. lol
And school is ridiculously time consuming nowadays. :|

<3

me too.
Though im on the christmas holidays.
So no more gay shcool shit for a while.
YAY!

I hate you, I don't get on summer/christmas holidays for another 3 weeks.
I'll most likely gowork on a Flash or two and go to some relatives house.

At 12/2/06 10:21 PM, Luis wrote: meh im over it.

anyway the topic will be locked at the end of the year.

Are we still going to have other things to do though, besides help people? Such as the AS Wars, or the animation shorties competitions?

Because without this thread, regs just become tutors, or so it feels a lot of the time.

At 12/2/06 10:21 PM, Luis wrote: anyway the topic will be locked at the end of the year, negative warned me to not start this thread that it would turn out this way and i didnt bother paying attention to him so yea it was a valiant effort. but yeah it was a bad idea.

I liked the old days where it was at most one or two pages a day. And all that was talked about was Flash.

Or did that never actually happen?

Straying from the topic (of flash creation) is a slippery slope. Mebbe that should've been a rule? Posts must be regarding flash - seriously enforced?

I honestly liked some of the topics that came about from this thread.

Personally, I think we the flash regs who help out contribute to the site should be allowd this small privelege of a thread which is we use to chat and form more of a community. General is basically for chatting, but we're out fo place there. I think we should be allowed this thread even if it does run into spam a lot because it is a nice favour to the flash forum goers that like to add a little social element to the forum instead of just being tutors as mentioned.
Luis, couldnt you like ask Tom if we can keep this open, even if it is a place where we arent gonna talk soley about flash and personal thing/bullshit are gonna come along some of the time?
I dont see there's that big a problem with us having this one thread. Though obviously I may be way off and things like this may be a major enemy to the site. If we're that big a problem, we gotta go but I think if we arent that much of a drain on site resources, we should be allowed to stay.

At 12/3/06 03:28 AM, TheHappySheep wrote: Personally, I think we the flash regs who help out contribute to the site should be allowd this small privelege of a thread which is we use to chat and form more of a community.

i think it was the flash regs that ruined it. someone makes a joke or random comment, and, because he is a reg, a bunch of people start responding to it, making 1 random spam post turn into an entire page of stupid shit. but, then again, thats just what i think. : P

Why can't it just be more controlled rather than locking it. This place has got worse no doubt, but I think that's a bit drastic.

It's a same sort of thing to that video thread in general, people wanted it, not people complain about it and not wanting it. There's gotta be some sort of resting point.

Ah well it's just a big deal over nothing :)

This thread should stay here because even if it may go off-topic a lot it does have a lot of good insight into it from other people. This topic also prevents numerous pointless threads being started in which regs get called noob by noobs.
Some people here can also debate well thought out matters without having to post in the general forum in which a lot of the Flash Forum regs don't like visiting.
Help can also be easily attained because I hate having to make a new thread everytime I forget or don't know how to do something.
How about we actually try and keep this thread on topic to prevent it from getting locked.

Congrats on the 1337th post Bezman :D

At 12/3/06 04:25 AM, Mogly wrote: Why can't it just be more controlled rather than locking it. This place has got worse no doubt, but I think that's a bit drastic.

Yeah, and locking it would just mean that all the spam would diffuse out evenly across the forum like before :P

Random spam is fun and all, but we do need to keep it under control. New rule: In-jokes and responses which don't add to the thread as a whole are allowed so long as they're included as a small part of a post which is actually on topic. How does that sound?

Anyway, in response to what's been said on some previous pages:

At 12/2/06 09:48 AM, Luis wrote: If you are directing your inquiry towards just one person please do not use this thread for it. Theres a wonderful thing by liljim called Private Messaging, it can do lots of cool things like send messages to particular users, it has a huge inbox and everything. Try it!
I will be heavily deleting posts that violate that so please be warned.

I do think that kinda defeats the purpose of a forum. I mean, practically every reply in a help thread is directed primarily at the topic starter, so does that mean that all such threads should have no replies? If it's something which concerns one person and only one person, then fine, PMing is the way to go, but lots of inquiries directed towards individuals either are or have responses which are of interest to a lot of people.

At 12/2/06 01:28 PM, DFox wrote: If the Newgrounds voting system was a real democracy, it would make it MUCH more accurate and fair. Each person should be able to vote on each Flash ONCE, and their vote should count as ONE.

There're two flaws with this, though.

First, an every vote counts system would mean that people's scores would be much more greatly affected by people who get either alts or friends to vote on their stuff. How many people do you know that would spend a year and a half levelling up ten alts to get their voting powers up by 6x, just to get their new submissions through?

Secondly, and more seriously, it would effectively render useless the amount of time spent voting to raise voting power. When users signed up, high voters years an years ago, they were led to believe that continuous and consistent voting would reward them with high voting powers. To take them away at a stage like this would just demmand compensation.

Also, you have the fact that the voting system isn't that bad. Sure, lots of submissions get higher or lower scores than they deserce, sometimes disproportionately so <cough>IllWillPress</cough> but in general, good submissions get green scores; great ones get blue scores and godlike ones get into the fours.

If there was a change I would like to see made, it would be for Wade or someone to get a lot more strict about people voting ones or zeros on high scoring submissions. Lots of people would protest that you vote sero on things if ou want their scores to be loweres, but fuck them; the purpose of a six - score voting panel is to give the score closest to what you thing something deserves, not so you can try to play God and damage something's score as much as possible.

And in response to the talk about locking this thread; the spam needs to be cut down drastically; no question. And it is annoying when good, on topic posts just get swept under the carpet. But locking the thread isn't going to do it any good; it'd be a lot more productive to repeatedly make sure people were aware of the amount of smam-less-ness their posts need here (I didn't even get a chance to see that jimbot post a few pages back), maybe even issuing short term bans in extreme cases, untill people just got a grip. It'd be more rewarding in the long term.

well the problem with this thread is that, it doesnt really suck up any spam at all.. you all are regs and you know the rules and what to do and not to do in the forum.. you werent making junk topics before the regs lounge and i dont suspect you will after its gone... that point is groundless.

In fact this thread adds to spam cause it just sort of ended up giving people the green light to spam, and even i was guilty of it so in that sense this thread just works against what it was intended for.

Theres a whole forum created for general chit chat and one liners and spams of random ideas that come to ones head. The last oh 120 pages of this thread probably had no business here, in jokes that carried on 3 or 4 pages... the whole console wars thing that went on for about 10 pages ... and just random posts like --- hi guys i just farted <end post>
It degrades the forum it adds nothing to anything other than giving people the go ahead to spam, it sends the wrong message and it makes me look bad because i made this thread against the reservations that people who were mods longer than me here had.

And moderating this more heavily doesnt work so dont even bring it up, i think John tried to nicely moderate this but again, IMPORTANT and worthwhile posts on this thread and bumped out of this galaxy in a matter of minutes. So that fails. And this thread shouldnt be a burden on any mod anyway, who the hell wants to have the duty to have to do extra babysitting for this particular thread. nobody. And theres only so much one can do anyway, I cant speak for John or Neg, but I am a pinch biased with regs and unless i absolutely positively have no choice i'll ban. I dont think I've banned any reg in here for something in this thread that to the common person would have most definately deserved a boot.

Anyway I hope I addressed some of the issues involved with this thread. Theres been some great discussions once in a blue moon and ive gotten to know alot more people than i would have otherwise but it is marred by the negativity this thread adds to the forum so its leaving.