Here it is, your chance to post your suggestions, wishlist items, and/or complaints regarding this community. [;)]
In the upcoming months we’ll be reviewing options for upgrading the community section of all of our websites. This covers the forums, events, clubs list, links, and your member accounts. What features do you like or dislike? What would you like to see improved upon? No matter how large/small you think something is, post it here for discussion. You never know. Now we’re not promising anything here…just opening this up for discussion at the moment.
I’ll list what we’re currently aware of…
Suggestions / Wishlist
Member Gallery - upload your photos directly to the site vs. linking to hosted images
Member Profile Photo - upload your photo directly to the site vs. linking to hosted image
Additional Ranks/Stars
Chat
Complaints / Unresolved Issues
Login/Logout Issues - Members having difficulty logging in or being logged out during visit to the website.
Search - Search page not working (search times out)
Search - Listing of post by members not working past page 1
Email Notification - Not working for everyone
Large Graphics/Photos
Large Signatures
Group Builds - The complaint is in regards to organization (where to locate these within the forum). With the popularity and quantity, where to locate these threads with easy access but without taking up space on the first page of posts.
if i were to list some wishes they would be as follows:
-member awards, some members have recieved awards for builds in local and national shows. they should be recognized for them.
-recognize outstanding builds, there have been some fantastic builds in this forum. i feel that they should be pointed out, much like the online newsletter highlights different threads. the staff of fsm is an excellent judge for these.
i will check my list at those two items. there are many things that would improve the forum and many things that would take away from the atmosphere of the forums. too much altering may be more detrimetal than helpful.
Seriously, even if it’s already been said, post if you’d like to see that feature (or if you don’t want to see it). If it’s something you think is outrageous, post it anyways…ya never know.
Anyone have any thoughts regarding what would improve the group builds experience (from start to finish)? [;)]
The login/logout fix seems to be going well so far (it’s only been 24 hours tho’).
First off I’d like to say that the sigs add a lot of personality and I wouldn’t change them a bit. This forum stands out heads and shoulders above all the rest as far as the sense of community that has been created here and I think the personalized sig pictures have had a lot to do with it. They seem to serve the same function that avatars serve on other forums.
The main feature I’d like to see is a trading forum (I know, I know).[:)]
Search feature fix. I’m not sure if I was using it right, but I think the search brings back the entire thread, rather than just the post. Gets a bit annoying if I’ve gotta scan through 25 pages of posts before I find the item I was looking for…
Some sort of indicator on the thread that tells you whether or not you’ve posted in that thread or not. Check out automotiveforums.com or aircraftresourcecenter.com to see how this works. (Once you’ve logged in, it puts a black ‘dot’ over the folder in the topics list if you’ve posted in it.)
No problems with the format. You could do away with the OT forum though and I wouldn’t miss it. Its an international modeling forum not a blog site.
A direct post of photos rather than linking to a site would be nice.
Anything that would improve the visual media of the site would certainly be welcome.
A repository of articles by staff or members would be helpful. These could be how to’s, product reviews, tips and tricks. I know that abreviated versions show up in the separate forum catagories but something more elaboate would be an asset.
Fix the search engine
[This has been broken for way too long.]
A member’s trading post
[The policy is just plain dumb. Kalambach and FSM are NOT going to lose money by allowing a forum for member trades because they never would have made the money to begin with. No member in his right mind is going to take out a $10 classified ad to sell four $12 kits! An administrator can moderate and immediately delete posts from obvious commercial activities.]
A member’s photo gallery broken down by genre (photos uploaded by members)
[Moderated by an administrator to ensure size and content standards are met.]
Ability for members to delete their own posts, even if replies have been added
[This would allow members to clean-up old, out-of-date, or no longer applicable posts without having to go through administration.]
That’s all for now. Thanks for this opportunity to express our views.
I think the single greatest suggestion is a member’s gallery. The ability to post pics directly would be fully exploited by a lot of our members. However, I could understand space becoming an issue with that. Chat would be OK, but it’s not something I’d use, so whatever.
One quarell I have is with the current state of Group Builds. Personally, I think the inclusion of a dedicated GB forum is ok, but I can’t help but notice that the participation levels of some of the active GB’s has dropped quite a bit since the portal was added. What I’d like to see is two separate GB forums, one dedicated to land/sea vehicles of all types (including ships) and another dedicated to anything flying. Just a suggestion. EIther way, I think the GB issue is one that definitely needs to be addressed.
A flea-market forum would be great. I understand the current FSM policy is to not allow users to sell their own items online. However, create a forum for this purpose alone, as this would be a wonderful addition. Considering the level of involvement in this hobby by many of our members, this group would be a great asset to everyone.
I think a Members Gallery would be a great addition, but it would require some built in restraint. Size & number of pics could become an issue. Would not like to see file size limited in a way that degrades pic quality, ARC has an 80mb limit which requires a lot of compression for most digipics.
A Trading Post would be nice, although I can understand FSM reservations since this is a commercial site. Still, something like Plane Trading on Hyperscale would be fun.
Fix the search function. I don’t even try to use it anymore. Not worth the hassle.