Coming Changes To The Boards

[trilobyte]

I wanted to give everyone a heads-up to a couple changes that we're going to make to the way the boards are organized. I love our site and our community, but I think we can do better with the way they are organized. Plus, we learned an awful lot over the course of the last season and now it's time to put what we've learned to good use.

Starting with next year's event, Tickets will become a section of its own, and live right beneath the Greeter's Station. Because it all starts with a ticket. Subforums: Tickets Discussion, Tickets Offered, Tickets Wanted. The 'Offered' and 'Wanted' boards will be pretty down-to-business, with everything else ticket-related yet not part of the ticket process taking place in the discussion board. I appreciate all the efforts of the other moderators and so many of the site regulars in helping to keep the 2011 ticket boards from melting down last summer, and trying to point ticket seekers in the right direction, and I think the above organization will save folks a lot of time and energy, as well as provide a space for joke threads, philosophical debates, and any other discussions related to the ticketing process.

Preparation is going to see a bit of an overhaul. The FAQ board continues to be empty, and will go away for the time being. Share Resources, while awesome, is mostly a board filled with year-specific topics (rideshare discussions, resource sharing at the event, etc). So it will become a year-specific board (we'll move the few 'evergreen' threads forward with each year's event). That leaves our poor, over-worked and way too sticky Q&A Tips and Tricks board. We're going to expand this significantly. The new Preparation subforums: Food & Drink, Shelter & Camping, Power & Illumination, Clothing & Playawear, Q&A Tips And Tricks. We're on the fence about having a Keeping Cool section as well, where people could discuss anything from swamp coolers to cooler management/dry ice, as well as misting systems and just plain beating the heat. Unless you guys feel strongly that it should be added right away I'm inclined to hold off for now (and continue to let those discussions live in the catch-all Q&A board). I think the new/expanded Preparation board will not only make it easier for people to find what they're looking for and eliminate that half-page of sticky threads, but offer up a better space to talk about different aspects of preparing for the playa.

The 2012 Burning Man Event section will only see minor changes that you may have already gathered from what's been said above. Subforums: 2012 Art & Performance, 2012 Theme Camps, 2012 Share Resources, 2012 Theme Discussion

Greeters' Station: Start Here, All About Burning Man, Year Round Connections, Years Past, and ePlaya Feedback won't see any changes.

[junglesmacks]

"Smothered in awesomesauce" to quote you! Beautiful, beautiful work.

If I may make a suggestion with the tickets offered thread: Make a form that must be filled out as with the rideshare board? This way you MUST state a firm price instead of having to go back and ask everyone that simply posts "Ticket for sale PM me" to please fix it.. or.. weed out the ones just baiting people with ticket promises as long as they beg and plead through heart wrenching story...

[Bob]

Um, good luck. Suggest keeping topic titles brief to avoid unnecessary scrolling.

[trilobyte]

@junglesmacks - if we're able to find a workable module for the board to allow for such a thing, it's something to be seriously considered. In fairness, though, it wasn't that huge a problem in 2011. I think that by organizing it better to begin with it won't be such a convoluted mess if and when the event hits the point of selling out in 2012.

@Bob - thanks. There will probably be some scrolling on the index page later in the fall (when 2012 boards are added while 2011 boards and LnF are still there), but I'll certainly be mindful of it. While my desktop computer's got the nice big display and pointing device with easy scrolling, my laptop screen's on the smaller side. We'll try to be as efficient with the space as possible.

[ibdave]

Thanks for the work you new Mods are putting in and still THANKS to the rest of the Mods...

Think about away to help those with lost/stolen bikes post what info is needed.. Like where they live in default world and maybe a way to point out to them before they post that the $$ to ship is crazy for the basic bike(bigbox store crap).. They may need help realizing it's a wash and to make better plans....
thanks

[Elderberry]

I love change!

Also like your new avatar trilobyte.

Hey, can you put the avatars back on the left side of the page while you're at it?

[trilobyte]

@ibdave, write up a post in the specific board with recommendations and PM me, I'll happily make it a sticky.

@jkisha, that's a possibility, though it would involve getting hands really dirty in messing around with template files (something I don't want to try tackling just yet). I'll add it to my 'technical goo' list to be researched and worked on as I get the opportunity.

[theCryptofishist]

I notice that the new pm has the string of previous posts in a conversation. Does anyone know if you can delete the earlier messages and still keep the entire conversation?

[Trishntek]

Trilobyte,,,, thank you Thank You THANK YOU!

Now what about obvious spammers who seem to have their way without limits?

[theCryptofishist]

Have there been many spammers? I haven't seen them in a couple of days.

[trilobyte]

While they did occasionally have their way, they've certainly had limits. Since mid-August we've taken a MUCH more aggressive stance on defense and banning accounts (you likely won't see repeat offenders for very long, certainly nothing like frogfufffic or obliquewhatshisname ever again), and then we added to the team to help take things out more quickly. Then this morning we switched over the old school (and largely useless) default captcha and hooked up the Google reCAPTCHA system. Same general concept, except Google's got the resources to do the technology dance with spammers. Yeah, some will still get through, but I think it's a step forward. There's an even better form of captcha technology we're also eyeballing, but that will have to wait until after some minor site updates take place (the minor updates will also help out in the security/anti-spam department).

Hopefully you've seen less spam on the boards lately (since, say, Wednesday or Thursday of last week), but that's primarily because of my fellow mods (we're still getting hit hard as ever).

@Crypto - no idea about PM's and keeping conversations, I've never spent much time messing around with that bit. Anybody else have any ideas, or willing to play around and report back?

[Trishntek]

While they did occasionally have their way, they've certainly had limits. Since mid-August we've taken a MUCH more aggressive stance on defense and banning accounts (you likely won't see repeat offenders for very long, certainly nothing like frogfufffic or obliquewhatshisname ever again), and then we added to the team to help take things out more quickly. Then this morning we switched over the old school (and largely useless) default captcha and hooked up the Google reCAPTCHA system. Same general concept, except Google's got the resources to do the technology dance with spammers. Yeah, some will still get through, but I think it's a step forward. There's an even better form of captcha technology we're also eyeballing, but that will have to wait until after some minor site updates take place (the minor updates will also help out in the security/anti-spam department).

Hopefully you've seen less spam on the boards lately (since, say, Wednesday or Thursday of last week), but that's primarily because of my fellow mods (we're still getting hit hard as ever).

YAY!

[Maizie]

Huzzah! Sounds fantastic, I'm looking forward to it . . . planning for 2012 started during Exodus, haha. =)

[Lady V]

Fantastic! I welcome the Keeping Cool board, also, whenever you all get around to it.

[theCryptofishist]

Okay, I just reported spam.

[Bob]

I am amused to see where some of the Q&A threads got sorted -- eg "Boobs on the playa" in the Food topic area.

[trilobyte]

That and a couple other threads that should have been in a different place were inadvertently put there instead of someplace else.

If you see anything out of place, feel free to flag the post and one of the mods will take a look at it and get it put into the right spot.

[graidawg]

can we call you uncle trilo to keep a sense of continuity from aunty em because you are super cool Mr trilo sir and i want to be able to introduce to any future palya wives as uncle trilo my favorite current mod?

obviously playa wives depend on me not getting a permanant wife. then you can be step uncle trilo.

[wedeliver]

So Shared Resources which has been around as part of Preparation is now being moved to be a yearly topic and retitled. Kinda like changing history. but I guess there are reasons for the change. Thanks for the heads up.

Also, I offer to folks going and coming to BRC a place to sleep, shit, shower and shave at my RV park located between Klamath Falls, Oregon and BRC, In the past, shared resouces seemed like a good place to let people know about the above. Any suggestions for the future.

[trilobyte]

Shared Resources still does all the things it's done in the past. It's just that the majority of them are annual. The retitling is only to add the year in front, What you may not have seen or noticed is that in past years, post-burn a lot of the content either gets moved or deleted by moderators. It makes much more sense to renew shared resources with each year's event, and simply move the small number of threads that are evergreen (persist from year to year) to carry them forward into the new year.

In the case of your generous offer of a place to stay, when the new boards get rolled out you can either re-post the offer, or ping any of the mods and we'll gladly make sure your thread is carried forward.

[Bob]

Keeping Cool is a subset of Camping, but RVs and bikes deserve their own Q&A threads, IMO.

[trilobyte]

I think RV's belongs with the shelter & camping section (a lot of camps include RV's, tents, shade structures, etc). I agree that bikes probably warrants a breakout, but possibly in a broader transportation category that would cover all manner of PMV's as well as mutant vehicles.

[trilobyte]

I've added a new sub-forum to Preparation:

Transportation
Bikes, trikes, personal mobility and mutant vehicles - this is the place to discuss transportation to, from, or on the playa.

Rideshares & RV shares would still belong with share resources, but pretty much everything else vehicular would fit in here. I've gone through the last couple years of the Q&A Tips & Tricks board looking for threads to be moved, if you see something I missed (or moved to the wrong place), let me know and I'll get it moved.