Suggestion on how donor avatars could be handled

DSC · Mar 11, 2013

First, this. I was going to post it in the Feedback forum, but decided to do it here. My main focus here is to suggest a new system, not criticize the current one. =P

Well, I'm here today to put my two cents about the way donor avatars are handled. First off, I know only admins and globals can change the big avatars because they require a direct edit on the user settings. However, don't you think there can be better options than using a thread in donor loungue? It's quite easy for the admins/globals to forget about it, making us wait too many time for such a minor thing.

I was thinking on maybe implementing a system that works like the "report spam" buttons. But instead of being shown in posts, the option only appears under Perk Manager in User Center (like the options to change the UI, title and whatnot). When going to the "Donor Avatar" section, the user finds a button to upload his new avatar, exactly like User Images are handled (I'm not 100% sure on this because I don't know how UI changes works, so if anyone can show me a screenshot of the UI page on User Center it would help a lot on supporting this suggestion).

After sending the new avatar, the request is automatically available for any admin/global to be filled (exactly like in the "report spam" feature), or maybe is automatically sent by PM to an online admin/global. Or maybe it could just work exactly like the UI change system but since I have absolutely no idea on how it works I can't suggest this =P. This way we don't need to wait too much time to get our avatars updated, even with that "only admins and globals can change avatars" limitation. After all, 3 days having to use this instead of this makes quite a difference. =p

Thoughts?

Heeatz · Mar 11, 2013

DSC · Mar 11, 2013

Thanks a lot Heeatz. =)

So it looks like the avatar change could be similar to the UI change system. It would just be needed to copypaste the UI php page, edit the texts, and make a new item on the "Perk Manager" menu called "Donor Avatar" (and do some coding too, of course).

Since the big avatar is a donor perk, it would fit more in User Center under the Perk Manager menu. Seems reasonable?

Heeatz · Mar 11, 2013

It does indeed. That seems the place it needs to be, as it is a donor perk. I support. I do think the thread in DL is just stupid and unlooked upon atm

szskateman22 · Mar 11, 2013

It makes a lot of sense to have it placed in the donor perks section of the UC. I feel that MoonGlare - our Graphics Mod - should be added to the people who can approve of them... Since, ya know, he's our graphics mod. :noworry:

The fact that our ART thread is hidden in the donor lounge is rather bothersome. And now that I'm looking at it, there are a few requests just sitting in there (3 at the moment). I understand that most of our admins/globals are busy but this problem could be more easily solved with a quick-approval system like you stated.

TL;DR I support this.

I_DONT_BOT · Mar 11, 2013

Making MG have the perms would be a main to separate them from other global perms. The best way for this to be implemented the same way as the UI's, where they get approved in there, just the only problem is that they might take 2-4 days like the UI's.

DSC · Mar 11, 2013

Yeah, In a way or another, we still depend on the admins and globals to change our avatars... Maybe it could be possible to make bot the UI and Avatar change system automatic? I know it needs a direct edit on the user settings, but it definitely isn't impossible to automate this proccess.

Now that we are talking about it, I realised that we depend on staff to other simple edits aswell, like changing a thread title and icon. Is it really needed? I mean, more customisation is always great.

SuF · Mar 11, 2013

I'll ask Matthew about how feasible this is. I think that he has not done it in the past for various reasons but I could be wrong.

Matthew · Mar 12, 2013

DSCsmw said:
Yeah, In a way or another, we still depend on the admins and globals to change our avatars... Maybe it could be possible to make bot the UI and Avatar change system automatic? I know it needs a direct edit on the user settings, but it definitely isn't impossible to automate this proccess.

Now that we are talking about it, I realised that we depend on staff to other simple edits aswell, like changing a thread title and icon. Is it really needed? I mean, more customisation is always great.

It's possible to automate the process, but we haven't automated it on purpose. If it were automated, people could use whatever images they want without staff having a chance to make sure they are appropriate. Furthermore, when it comes to thread title changes, we want to police those as well to make sure they're not inappropriate or scam attempts. We have reasons for these things, you know... vBulletin is capable of letting users do a lot of things on their own, we choose not to.

Donor perks are perks, they're not some incredibly important RIGHT users have. They are a courtesy we extend to those who choose to support our site. So, I'm really not at all worried about approvals taking 1 day or 1 week.

Avatars are different from username images in that they are stored differently by vBulletin. Avatars actually get stored in a vBulletin datastore. Username images are just uploaded as images and embedded with an <img /> tag. Being embedded this way makes it easy for us to have a simple approval process as we don't have to do anything in the database. With avatars, we would have to get the image into the datastore somehow.

So you can see, it's a bit more complex for avatars. I can look into it, but I'm not going to make any guarantees... vBulletin is actually supposed to let users choose their own avatars, but for some reason the Donor usergroup avatar specifications don't work correctly.

invocation · Mar 12, 2013

Matthew said:
It's possible to automate the process, but we haven't automated it on purpose. If it were automated, people could use whatever images they want without staff having a chance to make sure they are appropriate. Furthermore, when it comes to thread title changes, we want to police those as well to make sure they're not inappropriate or scam attempts. We have reasons for these things, you know... vBulletin is capable of letting users do a lot of things on their own, we choose not to.

Donor perks are perks, they're not some incredibly important RIGHT users have. They are a courtesy we extend to those who choose to support our site. So, I'm really not at all worried about approvals taking 1 day or 1 week.

Avatars are different from username images in that they are stored differently by vBulletin. Avatars actually get stored in a vBulletin datastore. Username images are just uploaded as images and embedded with an <img /> tag. Being embedded this way makes it easy for us to have a simple approval process as we don't have to do anything in the database. With avatars, we would have to get the image into the datastore somehow.

So you can see, it's a bit more complex for avatars. I can look into it, but I'm not going to make any guarantees... vBulletin is actually supposed to let users choose their own avatars, but for some reason the Donor usergroup avatar specifications don't work correctly.

Then have a system where you can approve avatars before they're added to a users account?

TradeFortress · Mar 12, 2013

Matthew said:
It's possible to automate the process, but we haven't automated it on purpose. If it were automated, people could use whatever images they want without staff having a chance to make sure they are appropriate. Furthermore, when it comes to thread title changes, we want to police those as well to make sure they're not inappropriate or scam attempts. We have reasons for these things, you know... vBulletin is capable of letting users do a lot of things on their own, we choose not to.

Donor perks are perks, they're not some incredibly important RIGHT users have. They are a courtesy we extend to those who choose to support our site. So, I'm really not at all worried about approvals taking 1 day or 1 week.

Avatars are different from username images in that they are stored differently by vBulletin. Avatars actually get stored in a vBulletin datastore. Username images are just uploaded as images and embedded with an <img /> tag. Being embedded this way makes it easy for us to have a simple approval process as we don't have to do anything in the database. With avatars, we would have to get the image into the datastore somehow.

So you can see, it's a bit more complex for avatars. I can look into it, but I'm not going to make any guarantees... vBulletin is actually supposed to let users choose their own avatars, but for some reason the Donor usergroup avatar specifications don't work correctly.

I don't think anything would happen if you gave donator's more permissions. Nobody will want to risk there donation for something like that, and the users would catch it fairly quickly if anything did happen. On the scammer's threads/avatars/etc. the users here are pretty quick to post and report it labeling it a scam.

SuF · Mar 12, 2013

invocation said:
Then have a system where you can approve avatars before they're added to a users account?

What he's saying is that he would need to make a way to get them into the database after checking them and stuff. Right now we just use the vBulletin tools for it. It's slightly more annoying than username images since those are just in a folder.

szskateman22 · Mar 12, 2013

SuF said:
What he's saying is that he would need to make a way to get them into the database after checking them and stuff. Right now we just use the vBulletin tools for it. It's slightly more annoying than username images since those are just in a folder.

In other words, this will probably takes weeks -> months to code properly in order to even attempt to implement it. It's not just a drop and go sort of thing. It takes a lot of hours and time worth of dedication from Matthew just to get this going (if it's even possible to get it going).

DSC · Mar 17, 2013

Matthew said:
It's possible to automate the process, but we haven't automated it on purpose. If it were automated, people could use whatever images they want without staff having a chance to make sure they are appropriate. Furthermore, when it comes to thread title changes, we want to police those as well to make sure they're not inappropriate or scam attempts. We have reasons for these things, you know... vBulletin is capable of letting users do a lot of things on their own, we choose not to.

Donor perks are perks, they're not some incredibly important RIGHT users have. They are a courtesy we extend to those who choose to support our site. So, I'm really not at all worried about approvals taking 1 day or 1 week.

Avatars are different from username images in that they are stored differently by vBulletin. Avatars actually get stored in a vBulletin datastore. Username images are just uploaded as images and embedded with an <img /> tag. Being embedded this way makes it easy for us to have a simple approval process as we don't have to do anything in the database. With avatars, we would have to get the image into the datastore somehow.

So you can see, it's a bit more complex for avatars. I can look into it, but I'm not going to make any guarantees... vBulletin is actually supposed to let users choose their own avatars, but for some reason the Donor usergroup avatar specifications don't work correctly.

I understand your point. But isn't there a way to, let's say, automatically send a PM to a global/admin when someone posts in that thread in donor loungue? I understand it's quite easy to make a fake donor rank/UI with the 150x100px size of a donor avatar, and that these avatars need to be moderated before using. But the moderation time is too long, because there's no way for a moderator to know if there are new avatar change requests without going to that thread and checking it by himself, so it's easy for everyone to forget about that.

I know the perks are a courtesy, but waiting one week to get an avatar changed is quite annoying, meh. =P

ASAPgang · Mar 18, 2013

What's the difference between someone that's not a donor uploading any type of avatar that they want at 80x80 and a donor (who, presumably wouldn't want to risk their account) updating their avatar to something with a bigger dimension to their account? There are no requests for smaller avatars, but there is for larger? Someone advise, sorry if I've missed anything.
I support this and believe it should be implemented ASAP.
I understand that the past week the main priority has been hackings etc, but waiting 5 -7 days for an avatar request change is quite a long time.

DSC · Mar 19, 2013

Actually, we need to make a request to get donor avatars changed because they are stored (and embeded) differently from the normal avatars. Matthew already told this proccess could be automated, but people could simply donate $5 and use the bigger avatar to make a fake UI + $300-or-something donor rank, and use this to scam people. This is why moderators have to see the avatars before approving the change request.

But the point here is: there could be another way to handle with this. By "handle", I mean "let the mods know that someone did a request", because all of them keep forgetting about it too often. And we are always having to PM someone to give a look at that thread and fill the change requests, otherwise nobody will even notice that.

I still think that making a new area for Donor Avatar in the User Center that works exactly like the User Image one wouldn't be a bad choice. =P