In Forum: Announcements
By User: Battler
- bckf: I personally agree with you, but you see, when we accepted posting on the forum as a valid contribution to get FTP Access, it was abused by people who just wanted to spam their way in. We got many people who posted the 10 contributing posts they needed to post and after getting FTP Access, started posting crap or even just disappeared from the forum and kept leeching to the FTP.
Though, I have to say, a big reason of why there was so much abuse of the system is because the contributing post guidelines were way too lax and ambiguous, so quite often posts contributing nothing much were accepted simply because they met the guidelines in place. Hence it wasn't really knowledge that was valued, but more like 10 posts that met some very low standard of contribution. And most people who wanted a change in the system, focused too much on the quantity of posts required and too little on the minimum quality of posts required. Most proposals were to increase the post count, while the real solution IMHO would have been to raise the standard required.
I personally thing the best way would be to give users two options to obtain access to the FTP:
1. Through the forum, by posting 15-20 contributing posts where the standard required should be higher than it was in the old days and with no ambiguities;
2. By contributing one or more titles to the FTP, but with the ability to bypass the forum completely if one so wishes, which means we'd need a databse of non-forum users that could log in to their own area where they would be able to obtain FTP details - let me details:
- They would get instant access to upload FTP credentials which they could use to upload what they want to upload to the FTP;
- They would also be given a form to fill in with the details of the release and nickname to be credited by, as well as e-mail address, that would then in case of acceptance be used to send them details of the non-forum FTP Access page where they would be able to lock their IP and generate their FTP Password.
That way people with no knowledge would be weeded out, and both knowledge and title contributions would be equally rewarded.
I also propose that these guidelines (
http://forums.glitchcity.info/index.php ... 646.0.html
) from the Glitch City Laboratories Forum on the treatment of new users be implemented and followed, as it would make sure those with less knowledge feel welcome on this forum and know they can get help from those of us with more knowledge, Staff included. We should be a community for everyone that discuss things maturely, even if they have little knowledge, and not a community for elitists that scoffs at those who know less with "just Google it, it's 5 minutes". Of course, we'll still get bad people who will annoy us with useless or even offensive posts, but well, the Report Post function exists for a reason.