Announcement 4/07/2017 DPF "State of the Forum" Address and (Possibility of) DPF 2.0

[tiggermickey]

I will be here more often ...

 

[speedwaystar1]

I have no problem with an annual membership fee , as long as it's not too much .
I have zero idea what's involved with being a mod but I'm here most days and if I can help I'm happy to do so

 

[jadeites-lady]

I think a donation button would be great. I'm not sure if there's an option to set it for "donation" or "gift" through PayPal, but that would be good. I prefer that to a GoFundMe account.

As far as mods go, there are my thoughts: I think activity is important within the community, but there seems to be a lot of behind the scenes things that mods do that I know I wouldn't want to do, including mediating disputes, determining whether posts should be edited/deleted, that sort of thing. I think it should be someone who is an established trader and is somewhat seasoned - has been involved in DPF for several years now and still has time to deal with the sort of stuff that mods deal with. One has to set aside their own personal feelings for particular pin traders and act as a neutral mediator when dealing with disputes and, well, that's hard to do for a younger person (sorry to insult younger people, but that's IMHO).

I know a lot of the pin trading community has left DPF for Facebook and other social media, while others do both (me I'm just here, sis is both here and FB).

I went to the front page to see who the mods/admin are. Besides Cicada is:
dancecats (admin)
broncobilly83 (global mod)
starry_solo (mod)
fordracing31 (mod)
Disneyqueenuk (mod)

It does look like imp & movingthestars are no longer mods, although I think that imp might have been a correspondent (orange vs green). Tiggermickey is a good correspondent.

I know TheOtherSteve hasn't been on in a while (another correspondent) but that's due to some personal issues that I'm not at liberty to discuss. I really enjoyed his "Live in Hollywood" reports for DSSH releases and miss those!

 

[CCofRR13]

I've been coming here almost daily for a year and half. I love it here. I'm all for helping whether it be a membership fee, donation button or pin donation game....count me in.

My only suggestion is to weed through the posts and get rid of (or archive) older posts more frequently. I know, in my early days, I was guilty of finding old threads (not paying attention to the date) and thinking it was active.

Thanks to all the women/men behind the curtain that makes this forum operator.

 

[tiggermickey]

I've been coming here almost daily for a year and half. I love it here. I'm all for helping whether it be a membership fee, donation button or pin donation game....count me in.

My only suggestion is to weed through the posts and get rid of (or archive) older posts more frequently. I know, in my early days, I was guilty of finding old threads (not paying attention to the date) and thinking it was active.

Thanks to all the women/men behind the curtain that makes this forum operator.

i agree, there's a lot of dead threads !!

 

[Cicada]

I've been coming here almost daily for a year and half. I love it here. I'm all for helping whether it be a membership fee, donation button or pin donation game....count me in.

My only suggestion is to weed through the posts and get rid of (or archive) older posts more frequently. I know, in my early days, I was guilty of finding old threads (not paying attention to the date) and thinking it was active.

Thanks to all the women/men behind the curtain that makes this forum operator.

good suggestion; My intent was to keep all the posts since the inception available, since there's quite a lot of good, useful info in older threads. Archiving the most popular/biggest, or most helpful threads could be a possibility, and placing them in an "archived" forum for research purposes only. But, I'd still like to keep _all_ threads since...forever, really, available. Perhaps locking threads older than, say 6 months or a year -- might be something we can do when the "new" forums come.

 

[Cicada]

I personally feel that it would be good to have a donate button, with maybe a special fund drive for a week or two a' la NPR but without the giveaway umbrellas . I definitely don't think that there should be a membership fee to join. New and old members may not want to contribute until they are comfortable and I'm sure some seriously just cannot afford a monthly fee. A few perks like more storage would be great, and better messaging is a must.

That would be the idea of the "forum supporter" subscription -- free membership, as it stands now, wouldnt be affected, and people would still be able to sign up and post entirely free of charge; the sub would just allow some extra perks, either for those who'd simply like to support, or for those who'd make use of the perks.

Seems like donations is an avenue most seem to be okay with. I'll think of something this week, and maybe we I can set some goals for the immediate term (new forum software, and some hosting costs), and then some goals for further out (covering hosting costs for the year, etc).

 

[Damiens pins]

I would be willing to donate some pins to help with the cost of running the site I think the best thing to do is do a pin drive everyone donates a pin which would help towards the cost of the site I don't think it's a good idea to charge for extra things on website this has been tried before on other sites in which I don't think it was that popular this is just my thoughts on is

 

[tiggermickey]

I would do a yearly fee ...I rather do that ...if possible !!

 

[starry_solo]

I've been cleaning up dead threads where I am able to (I don't have access to certain portion of the forums)

 

[tiggermickey]

Oh ok ,Li I thought you had access to all ,sorry about that

 

[hopemax]

I don't want people getting to remove happy with old threads. There is a lot of good info that comes out at the times pins are released, or counterfeit/scrapper details. At the time, and for a few years people think, "everyone knows that," and the next thing you know it's 10 years later and new people don't know that, and are skeptical, and older people can't remember all the specifics.

But I have thought in the past, that mods could do a better job of keeping the Sticky threads current and/or relevant.

 

[starry_solo]

My hope for the old threads is to have an archive similar to what is available for the sales portion of our forum (closed) so that it is still accessible to the forum members in a search but not able to be commented on.

Right now, there is a portion of the forum where we put drama threads that are no longer accessible to all forum members, just staff of DPF.

Obviously that takes space. But I did ask for it since I agree that it does have important information in the threads.

For the marketplace threads, I'm going to be moving threads older than six months (six months without a post) to the closed section

 

[Ocean7]

I'm relatively new to the community and value it's intent & members.

You've gotten a lot of good feedback re: site quirks and improvement ideas (btw: thanks for explanations).
I'd like to suggest making it a little more intuitive- simpler to leave member feedback, post images, as Matty mentioned the pm's. I don't use tap-talk- maybe that resolves these things.

unibears fundraising post sounds like fun and would create a lot of participation.

i would pay an annual membership fee to keep this worthwhile forum active. Besides the things already mentioned for paying members (not sure I need) perhaps a cool badge in the sidebar under our avatars.

Thanks to all of you who keep this forum operating.

 

[CCofRR13]

I understand the need to keep some of the older posts for informative purposes. I think I was mainly thinking of the Marketplace - for sale/trade in particular. I have seen many people (myself included) not pay attention to the dates and inquiring about pins for sale/trade that are long gone.

 

[starry_solo]

I'm cleaning up the marketplace (well, the for sale/wanted portion first) right now. I'm moving all pre-January 2017 threads to the closed section of the forum. I had cleaned it last year, moving all threads prior to Junet 2016 into the closed section of the forum.

I have noticed a lot of members not following the marketplace rules (no more than two of each type of threads per forum, so max is two for sale, two wanted, etc.)

It would help us immensely if members closed their own threads when they were done with them (at least in the marketplace area)

 

[Tbird]

Just another suggestion would be to ask for pin donations and members can donate a pin (or two or three, whatever they feel like donating) and each month you auction off a pin or two or three and all the proceeds go to the website.

 

[CCofRR13]

Just another suggestion would be to ask for pin donations and members can donate a pin (or two or three, whatever they feel like donating) and each month you auction off a pin or two or three and all the proceeds go to the website.

I like this idea

 

[Cicada]

Been busy with a little housekeeping lately — Li asked me to create "Archive" forums for Pin Zaps/Swaps and for Secret Santa, so those have been created, and I've moved older threads into these archives. The archives are still searchable, but new posts aren't allowed.

So, all of the good information stays, but can't be bumped up anymore.

I think having a forum with like the "Best Hits" or biggest threads with the most useful information could be helpful for new (and old) members as a reference — and I may add that in the future, but I'll need some additional help in identifying good threads to move there.

 

[hopemax]

I think we could use a Release Info archive. You could put the 2016 releases thread, the 2016 PTD thread, The Other Steve's DSF release day threads, the U.K. Release threads, and any older release flier threads.

 

[dancecats]

good suggestion; My intent was to keep all the posts since the inception available, since there's quite a lot of good, useful info in older threads. Archiving the most popular/biggest, or most helpful threads could be a possibility, and placing them in an "archived" forum for research purposes only. But, I'd still like to keep _all_ threads since...forever, really, available. Perhaps locking threads older than, say 6 months or a year -- might be something we can do when the "new" forums come.

This is exactly why I haven't closed many (really any) threads. Unless, of course, they have been so drama-laden they have to be closed or are in blatant violation of DPF rules and cannot be edited to bring back into compliance (and so on). I was thinking, for future, maybe we can lock threads that go 3-4 weeks without a response and archive them 6-12 months after that. I was thinking that each forum could have its own archives, where its inactive threads are stored. That way, everyone can see them but they won't clutter up the active threads.

Cleaning up other parts of the forum, in itself, isn't the problem. The problem is deciding what to do with the threads once they're removed from their original location. We don't want to delete them, we want them accessible, so ... there they stay (for now).

 

[swscref]

Thank you to everyone for all the hard work you've done and continue to do. I'd be happy to contribute in any way possible from pins, donations, membership or coding. Just let me know.

 

[timeerkat]

Here are my thoughts:

I would be happy to contribute in any way I can (one time or monthly donation, donating pins for a fundraising game or auction, bidding on pins auctions and entering pin games, etc.) DPF is probably my most frequently visited site, and I am happy to contribute to the community. Of course, I realize not everyone is in the position to donate, so I support the forum being free for use for all and just a few extras given to donors.

I would love extra PM box space for donors! I don't feel a separate or extra forum would be necessary, though.

I have no idea how feasible this would be, but on another forum I used to spend time on, there was a built-in random number generator feature. I would love if something like that could be implemented. It would come in handy for games, giveaways, and sales threads. (Of course, I know that coding could be very complicated for something like that, so I don't expect it, I just thought I'd throw it out as a suggestion.)

 

[jadeites-lady]

Sis & I are happy to donate pins

 

[AvatarAng1]

As far as mods go, there are my thoughts: I think activity is important within the community, but there seems to be a lot of behind the scenes things that mods do that I know I wouldn't want to do, including mediating disputes, determining whether posts should be edited/deleted, that sort of thing. I think it should be someone who is an established trader and is somewhat seasoned - has been involved in DPF for several years now and still has time to deal with the sort of stuff that mods deal with. One has to set aside their own personal feelings for particular pin traders and act as a neutral mediator when dealing with disputes and, well, that's hard to do for a younger person (sorry to insult younger people, but that's IMHO).

"Age is something that doesn't matter, unless you are a cheese."

-Luis Bunuel


I don't think age should really be a reason for someone to be a moderator lol. However, I do agree that moderators should have a bit of DPF membership time under their belt.





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