Two well thought out and indepth suggestions.

My first suggestion is regarding the forum layout itself for the Middleman forums and sub-forums.

The current layout is extremely messy, and has very poor functionality at the moment. The following picture is my suggestion (Note: The names of the forums and descriptions are simply there to show it, I'm not necessarily suggesting that all the descriptions, etc., should be changed):



For starters, the MiddleMan Forums' (the one you see on the forum index) permissions would be changed so it would act as a category rather than a forum. Nothing actually changes by doing this (how it looks, etc.), it simply makes it so people can't post in it). You would also make the Services and OMM Applications simply categories. The permissions are pretty easy, and I'm sure Matthew could do it within a few minutes.

My second suggestion is to require email confirmation on registrations. I know people say this won't do anything, but the truth is that it does. It deters people from coming back after scamming, and spammers.

You might argue that if they really want to spam, or try to pull a $5 scam, that they'll just confirm their email anyways. That is true, however, most people aren't that determined. It's just a spur of the moment thought when they're bored, and if they have to confirm their email, trust me, it will cut back significantly the amount of trolls, vaders, and spammers. It also just makes the forum look more professional, and shows you at least are trying to deter bots and spammers, etc., from signing up in the first place.

Post any feedback or questions!

 

Good suggestions, but there have been a lot of suggestions regarding the layout. Most of them haven't even been considered. Email confirmation is a definite must, though.

 

I did know that and I actually incorporated an idea from another suggestion (about separating OMM threads from normal MM threads).

Anyways, the suggestion isn't really changing the layout at all. It's simply suggesting that you make some of the forums categories, so you don't have forums, with sub-forums, and sub-forums of those sub-forums, etc. My suggestion is a clean, very organized look for that section.

 

Layout changes would be nice, I don't think there has been much change since I joined. As for the email registration, I believe that is a good idea as well. Even though it might not stop evaders and such entirely, I do agree with you in that people looking to scam a quick 5 dollars or whatever would probably be turned off by the email registration.

 

Thanks!

And yeah, obviously making people confirm their email address won't stop all scamming and spamming, but it will cut down on it a noticeable difference. At the moment you can enter any email address you want. For example, [email protected]8 is a valid email to use at registration. If you require people to make a new email address, sign up, open and confirm the link before they can post at all, it will help a lot. And like I said before, make the site look a lot more professional in my opinion.

 

Hmm. I'll admit it looks more organized, but the OMM forum may get less publicity than the regular middleman section or vice-versa. Right now it's more of a free market, more of a competitive setting.

 

Here's my opinion:

http://sythe.org/showthread.php?p=7723930#post7723930

 

That's actually something I was thinking about. In that case, simply merge that into one forum, instead of two forums, and wallah. I just think you need to change the permissions on a few of the forums to make them act as categories, rather than forums. At the moment, you have forums with sub-forums with sub-forums. There's no point in letting people post or having stickies in the Official MiddleMan forum, simply make it show the sub-forums if clicked upon, and so on.

I was actually thinking about suggesting that as well, lol, it's a very nice feature I see on most other forums. I just forgot to add it, and I figured someone must be against it if it hasn't been implemented by now anyways, haha.

 

Email required = less accounts made = less ad-money for Sythe owners

 

Actually it doesn't, and Sythe.org is owned by one person, not multiple people. Sythe gets paid for page views and clicks, it doesn't matter if those views and clicks are coming from members or guests. /argument

Obviously the email confirmation would weed out the random spammers and scammers, so yes, he would lose a very small amount of revenue since these people wouldn't be making multiple accounts. Regardless, I think he would give up a few dollars to help deter spammers and scammers.

 

Obviously, if someone's a member, they'll return much more often and thus generate that many more views and possibly clicks.

 

Obviously if they're going to actually be a member, they'll confirm their email. This will only affect people who try to make multiple accounts after getting banned, etc. Trust me, from personal experience, and through others' experiences, it cuts down a lot. The old banned members that come back here to troll, or spam, or just the repetitive RS pin scammer will stop coming back.

I know it seems like a small thing, but it's extremely annoying to create a new email and then confirm it for 17 different accounts. At the very least, if you don't want to confirm your email, at least make sure they enter a valid email. At the moment you can enter [email protected]sd and have it go through with no problems.