DEAR ASSHOLES WHO WHINE A LOT
 

"Man turn on display names" vs. "we really like trollin trollin"

COMPROMISE

Most of the time name changes are obvious. Fat jokes? Gotta be Mo0. Not rocket science really.

BUT. BUT. Sometimes poorly done name changes occur. These happen mostly when Shin wants them done. (all of mine are awesome)

When this happens, people inevitably whine about display names. Display names are no fun for anyone. ANYONE. I don't care who you are but you are a vacuum for all things nice and a source of extreme Nazism.

SO, HERE IS A MIDDLE GROUND.

I have created a new profile field. You can not edit it. HOWEVER, it will appear in someone's profile if admins put shit in it.

It is TRUE NAME

HERE IS DEVO

HERE IS A PICTURE OF DEVO

http://colonelskills.belkanairforce....votruename.jpg

You can even SEARCH FOR IT using member advanced search

See?

http://colonelskills.belkanairforce....namesearch.jpg

We will put shit in there when it's not PAINFULLY OBVIOUS who this person is.

THERE. COMPROMISE REACHED. NOW SHUT THE HELL UP

lol a feature that requires constant staff attention to work properly

points for optimism I guess

Or just leave it in as a constant. Whatever the person's true user name is will stay there regardless of what their name appears as.

Imma keep up on it charlie.

I don't have codin' access, this is the best I can do.

it's not hard to fill out one profile field when changin names. Luckily one of the few people who can do it is the oldbag.jpg and another is so sick of the whining that he's willin to do, so it should work out

The obviousness of a name change is completely subjective and it all depends on how "in" somebody is on the joke. I had no clue who any of the HIV avengers were or whatever the shit that was all about, and I'm sure I'm not alone there. The only time they're obvious is if the person's name is still somewhat a part of it. Like when Shin was Lady ShinShin, or when you were Colonel FuckFaggot.

I dunno, I guess my whole point is, what's the point of conversing with one another if we have to do extra legwork to figure out who is who? The idea of having usernames is that you can easily identify with someone when discussing shit on a discussion board. Sure the boards aren't as active, but people still spend an awful lot of time in Chocojournal and it gets unnerving when people are trying to insult my taste in movies and I can't tell who is who. It would be as if we all went to the meet and decided to wear masks the whole time, except this is worse since there's no easily-identifyable features that make us stand out, whereas at the meet, I simply need to look directly into the sun to find the spot where Sass blocks it out, or look down at Dope's legs to find his thigh-high socks.

I like the thought behind this, and I appreciate the compromise, but I think we can do better. The best case scenario would be the ability to see the "true names" on the thread without having to click into a dozen different profiles. Would it be possible to put the true name in the drop down menu when you click on the username? That's *kinda* like display names, right?

I don't know shit about coding, so what I'm suggesting might not be as easy as adding a field to a profile, but it's the best I have for now. Since the TRUE NAME field is searchable, couldn't that theoretically be easily worked into the drop down menu?

Again, I don't know fuckall about coding or what kind of access you have and what kind of access this requires, but tell me if I'm wrong here. Look at the image below:

http://img232.imageshack.us/img232/5...00406at712.png

Every instance of the word "Colonel Skills" is basically just code that says <username> or <user number> right?

That said... Since you were able to easily add another field to people's profiles, couldn't you just as easily add another field to that drop down menu that just says <TRUE NAME> or something?

Tryin' to be constructive, here. I'm all for compromise but this compromise still requires people to go into profiles to see who is who, which shouldn't be a requirement to participate in a discussion.

Extra legwork = 1 extra click is also awesome. Is the profile not an easily identifiable feature? It's RIGHT THERE. I would say forcing yourself to look down at dope's socks and interpolating is the same as glancing at a profile page.

This sounds like "I appreciate the compromise, but this isn't the solution I wanted so fuck you". :(

Running with this metaphor!

So here's something. Someone wants to dress up in an e-costume. Maybe they are wearing a good rubber mask, but this profile funfun time is the same as taking two seconds out to think "HMM THIS PERSON IS SHAPED LIKE A CAPO. WALKS LIKE A CAPO. TALKS LIKE A CAPO. JEWS LIKE A CAPO. MAYBE IT'S A CAPO"

There is no inconvenience in clicking someone's avatar. All you folks want is the answer force fed to you. Nah nigga, that ain't how it works. This is an easy cheat sheet, though. If you care about what joe asshole says, pop BAM you got the answer. One doesn't require someone jumpin about saying "LOOK, BATMAN OVER THERE IS ACTUALLY BRUCE WAYNE".

How's this. I will put it into everybody's field on name change. Not just the "obvious" ones. (Obvious would have been Mo0, and pretty much any permutations on an obvious name like the ones you listed, by the way. Not the seven dwarves, or that god forsaken HIV awareness group. Any Eras or theme weeks would also be tagged, since the problem with checking master threads is also clearly that it is so inconvenient! )

Why would you need to differentiate here? I thought that was something everyone did. Not like it would make a difference.

Sprout's bad analogy notwithstanding, I agree it's much better to have the name in the drop down menu (as the display names feature was originally implemented). I appreciate your taking a step in the right direction, Skills, but it's not much better than what I do now: clicking on a person's journal. From the journal, I can tell either a) exactly who that person is, or b) that person is British, and thus I don't care who they are.

Having it in the drop down menu means not having to click to another page, scroll down to the right part of the profile, then hit back to go back to the thread (which means extra loading if you're surfing from a phone or slow internet spot).

It's right there... All the way at the bottom of a separate page. With Dope's socks, I simply need to turn my head. With this solution, I need to click the profile link, wait for it to load, scroll down, and find the true name. Then I need to repeat that process for every person whose name I don't recognize, which is typically a dozen or so at a time. And then if I forget who DA SYPHILIS BUSTER is, I need to do it again. And then I need to do it again if DA SYPHILIS BUSTER becomes HorseCock McGillicuddy.

Yeah, fine, it's not THAT much work compared to writing a novel or building a house. But compared to simply glancing over and seeing the username, the way it typically is, it's like 600% more work. They're unnecessary steps just to see who's who when the idea of usernames is to prevent this sort of thing. Why not just revert back to the ICQ days when we all had numbers instead of usernames?

Your solution has indeed made our typical method of figuring everybody out much easier, but I'd argue that it hasn't "fixed" anything. The problem is that the same handful of members are changing their names on a near-constant basis for no real good reason, and it's clearly becoming a nuisance to the majority of other users who actually want to participate, whether it's posting or just lurking.

It's not what I meant, I assure you. I'm happy you're actually doing something instead of being a peen about it, but I just feel like more can be done to satisfy everyone. If not, so be it, but I felt it had to be said. Seriously, I'm glad you're making an effort. All I'm saying is, why stop here when we could probably do more?

Because he lacks any power to actually do more. I agree that this is a kludgy implementation but aside from a 24/7 harassment campaign directed at CHz this is what we're getting.

2FORT 2FORUMS

http://insulinfunk.net/wp-content/up...f2-428x400.jpg

http://media.playhaven.com/u7rl4flKj...dwater0108.jpg

POOFT

http://img30.imageshack.us/img30/595...tgrass0089.jpg

Look, the spy isn't going to tell you who he is. It's up to you to figure it out with SMART POWERS

do you really need to know who it is so bad, I guess people that have trouble with name changes have to sit down and construct a psychologic profile before posting, who can I troll and get away with it? Who will actually talk back and make sense? or just simply "oh god it's devo she is going to chase me down until I see her bitching in my own turds".


this isn't some prison, you don't need to be aware at all times who is going to knock your soap in the showers next time. If you people want to add something to a discusion just focus in the content anyhow, if all you want to contribute is your current username post it in a giant font with rainbow colors.



I leave a token for inspiration.

This entire argument strikes me as a little ridiculous. Both sides seem to think there is a group of people hell bent on changing their user names as much as possible. This group of people do not exist. There is just Skills having fun changing the names of whoever he wants, or whoever Shin wants. Nobody else is really pro name-changing, they're just anti pissy-whining. State simply why you're against name changes without mopey passive aggressive phrasing and suddenly there is no argument.

I mean, that's what it could have been. Too much groaning has gone on already to salvage this pissfest.

Or we could just change everyone's name to Clamjouster.

Personally, I like the idea that we all just pick a fucking name and stick with it.

No checking profiles for subtextual clues. No compromises. Just doing what makes the most sense and not having to worry about the random whims of three people with the power to affect stupid changes, or the capricious needs of seven members of #gfchat to alter their identities based upon the latest inside joke.

If you can't settle on a name and make a fucking commitment to that identity, just tell me to stick a bunch of asterisks or question marks in your name space so that at least everyone will know you're the fool who can never make up his or her mind.


And while we're having moments of honesty, I'm really not so crazy about references like "oldbag.jpg"

kickass, now someone please change my name to Mouthful of Pirates

What I'm reading here is that I have to give Skills more power.

This can be arranged.

No! Don't do it! You'll destroy us all! Destroy us all.

Whenever I submit a post or comment, as sporadic as that may be, it is most often that I share something I found to be humorous to the extent that I caused myself to laugh or smile (incredulous as that may seem). I do so with the belief that a person, or perhaps multiple people, will read what I have submitted and also find some humor in what I have shared. I may not be humorous enough to make someone laugh or smile with each attempt, but I think it's occasionally worth the effort to spread good cheer around when the chances of doing so are in your favor. If someone were to change my username because it was humorous in some way and people were dismissive of what I said based on an unfamiliarity with my username, I would think that the loss would be theirs.

I am, shall we say, less than satisfied with your unpaid service to this free Internet video game forum I frequent.

Here is an itemized list of my complaints, all of which I expect to be remedied by morning:

I'm not anti-fun.

I'm anti-confusion.

Get it straight.

Early-onset dementia is no excuse.

Why is anyone still remotely surprised Crash is a boring old man shaking his fist at kids playing on his lawn?

P.S.

Most name changes come out of the thread-that-doesn't-end. Not GFchat.

Unfortunately, I'm with the pissy whiny front. Ace Combat month, inside jokes. My fading mentality has a hard enough time crawling back to these forums when it finds the potency to do so. That extra guessing game just takes it outta me.

My new name owns, I'm so glad to be able to post with it BUT OH NO WHO AM I ON INTERNET FORUM??????? ANONYMITY?!?!?!??!?!?!

True that. Certainly all the ones I'm responsible for come from there or journals and most of the name changes I go through are other people's choices.

It's not like we change people's names that often and I like to think that generally it's still pretty clear who the person is afterwards. Admittedly I'm a bit easier to spot thanks to my fabulous water-mark but of all the recent changes, it was only the HIV thing that could have led to any confusion and that was kinda the point. If you can't tell who someone is from the style and content of their posts and their av and sig then chances are they're not saying anything too monumental. I really don't see why it makes such a difference to people whether they know immediately who made a particular post and to reiterate, we don't even do it that much.

Crash, the only namechange request I've not cc'd you into recently was changing the HIV ones to Dwarves, other than that I've given you a complete head's up of changes and in fact reasons therefore for every one I've requested so you can't complain about being out of the loop there.

The whole point of name changes is either for cheap laughs or to be annoying, either to the person who's name gets changed or to everyone else. I guess what's happened is that myself and Skills have ended up being the most active mods here and as such, our collective sense of humour has become the over-riding force behind the majority of mod actions of late. Now I'm not going to stop contributing to the place because God knows hardly anyone else ever posts but maybe we need some balance. Now might be a good time to shake up the staff a bit, let those who have no interest in moderating the place anymore step down and get some new blood in who might have some good ideas about how to get some interaction going here that extend beyond coming up with increasingly inventive ways to fuck with people's posts and profiles.

Or you could just make me and Skills admins. :)

I am totally on board this admin powers for everyone gig and by everyone I mean include me in this fun party too. =)

Shin and Skills... admins?

...

...

...

Forecasting a boardwide crash 2 hours after it is effected. You heard it here first.

2 hours?

I think 10 minutes is closer to the mark.

The counterpoint is that to somebody who's not a part of the joke, and doesn't really give a damn about the joke because he doesn't give a damn about the endless thread, it's actually annoying.

Yeah, I had a list of who was who with the STD Stooges but it was buried in my PM box. That thing does fill steadily. Did you seriously think I was going to fish for it each time I was confused by a changed name? That's really too much work.

Eventually, I began to consistently remember who was who. It wasn't an overnight process but I had them mostly figured out.

But then they all became dwarves. Suddenly, the mystery was renewed and I was scratching my head again. That's not funny, it's frustrating. I don't give a shit if one person thinks they're behaving like Disney characters and wants their names to reflect this - or whatever the story is. I want their names to reflect who the fuck they actually are, so that I don't have to take numerous extra steps to know who I'm potentially addressing. And in the end, what I want is far more important to me, so I'm going to speak out about it.

This is about consistency, and it's about everyone knowing what the hell is going on. If I can't keep this shit straight, how is the average member who doesn't show up each and every day supposed to?

Honestly, I'd rather have the old feature that allowed one to turn off ridiculous name changes. It was very convenient, and I know I'm not the only person who feels this way.

Also, get off my lawn. I'm keeping your football. I remember when television was good and music didn't suck. Gas was once affordable. Andy Rooney was once funny. Soda came in glass bottles. My back hurts. And it's time for my Metamucil.

The only reason they became dwarves is because there were seven names to change and I thought it apt. They came close to being named after days of the week and the annoyance of ambiguity was exactly what I was going for.

Not knowing who people is can be fun, just look at aeroplane week. Like I said though, if my sense of humour is off-kilter with the rest of the boards then get someone involved who's a counter-point to that. Or, do exactly what you did, pull rank and change everything back again. That's cool, you're an admin, that's your perogative.

Apparently it's not because people are all "O NO U SO ANTI-FUN Y U H8 LOLZ?"

I just want things to make sense, even for a short period. Why is this so much to ask?

It's not too much to ask. As site admin, one of the key things you do is tell the mods to stop fucking about so much from time to time, and that's what you've done here. Skills tried to appease the whinging masses but apparently not well enough but there isn't really an issue here at the end of the day. You want fewer silly names and I know Styphon has had enough of the really long ones if nothing else so we'll cut it out for now.

Anyone got Miles' opinion on comedy name changes? :tpg:

To be fair, what I think doesn't hold that much currency anymore.

You're still one of only five people with the power to ban me or de-mod me here. You tell me to do something I'll do it, mate.

Are you sure you are on the right website

Can I go back to being Dopey, since I made it painfully obvious who I was, by the inclusion of both my Serispic and true achievement card? Considering that I never change my avatar, either, I'll wait until then to ask for a change back.


Oh and the fact that I have links to my journal in the sig, too? Except they're horribly broken for some reason that I can't determine. When I edit the sig, the link is perfectly fine. It's only when parsed that it fucks up.

Better yet, and not trying to be funny or anything but has anybody seen Miles? I haven't heard from him in a bit and it seems like he's busy off living his life and shit. Also if the mods haven't heard from him then who would have?

http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e1...0601710450.jpg

Look at you, no spine having Brit!

Miles still posts on Facebook all the time. No idea if he pays attention to GFF though.

Curious how the owner of this place (Bobo, and then Miles and Bigblah) tend to lose interest.

Well excuuuuuuuuuse me for defering to the guy we elected as someone to defer to. =P

Well you've gotta remember niggas are getting busy (and also older) man. I know Miles has a j-o-b and school and Blah just got himself a serious gig not too long ago. At least they, unlike Bobo, left somebody behind who could actually look after the place.

However, considering CHzs recent campaign to see how much power he can give Skills before the place implodes, I am kinda worried about that part.

Pffffff, shoe licker!!!!!!!!!!!!11111111

Lick this, bitch.

:grabsdick:

I think the solution here is to make me a moderator

Because then I will fix everything

>implying you don't eat everything already

http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e1...0596772865.jpg

don't see why not

Additional Spam:
KAPOW

Is Mo0 really a mod now or did you just give him a nifty custom title?

Also... how much access does an admin have on this here forum? Can they make code changes if they know how to? Cause maybe the solution here is for Crash to learn some PHP and get busy. Not with implementing display names necessarily, but I agree with the many people who said that putting true names on the drop-down menu would be fine.

Before you accuse me of whining, Skills, I have no trouble telling who is who during most of the changes, but the recent STD name chain kinda lost me, as do the themed weeks like AC Era, or Merv Deli.

You know, Tails, even I was scratching my head over that bit.

Some admins have code access, some do not.

I do not, and don't because that would create delicious chaos.

Crash does not because handing someone vBulletin of all things and saying HERE LEARN SOME PHP is a recipe for complete and utter disaster on a scale not seen since Hiroshima.

Is that so? I would have thought you could learn by making small changes, assuming some minimal prior knowledge of programming. I've often wanted to test that theory (I know the minimum about PHP) but unfortunately the only way to get a chance to play with the code is by paying for it, and I've no desire to do that.

I suppose there are probably torrents but it does not feature especially highly on my list of priorities in life. It's way down there in fact, behind a whole lot of things. It would be nice to take a look, but not worth any money.

I suppose you're right that it's not a good idea for anyone to get code access unless they know what they're up to, but I'm just saying that there's ONE way for staff to get their goals accomplished, if they can acquire the relevant skill.

Did you just say you were an admin? Your title says S Mod, though? Not that it is in any way important. I'm just curious.

Last of all, someone was mentioning Miles' absence, but where on Earth is Blah these days, does he still come to chat at least? I would check for myself, but I'm afraid of GFChat. I think it would devour me and grind my bones to a fine powder. Which Shin would undoubtedly snort, having mistaken it for coke.

Crash, when did you decide doing a dullenplain impression was a good idea?

Cause it isn't.

Even a little bit.

It gets even worse when you flat out admit you don't care if other people are having fun, because YOU aren't having fun.

This is less get off my lawn and more get off your lawn. And all lawns in general. In fact fuck you for loving things that are green.

Honestly, it's not as if giving someone code access means they actually have to learn code. For almost any function you can imagine someone's already written something for vB that you can just plug in. You think I would have ever got my dice if I waited around for one of these mooks to write code for them?

I'm quite jealous of how far beyond S-Mod powers you already are, unless you're just sending requests to CHz like I do.

Soluzar, Admins can all technically chage the code but in practice it's only really CHz that does so. We all generally know our limits here so if everyone else died and I ended up as default admin for example, I'd venture no further than the name change, subforum creation and pissing about with forum descriptions sections of the admin control panel. Hence there would be little point in making me an admin, I can achieve more by sending a stream of requests to CHz to break things for me.

Most of us S-mods can edit sigs and avatars (And put any size pic in the avatar space), delete posts, ban people of lower rank than ourselves and edit threadbans. Skills can apparently do more than that but like I said, I've yet to ask CHz to do something for me and be turned down.

I have no idea if CHz writes this stuff from scratch or borrows bits, all I know is that if I ask him to sort something, he does. It's a pretty much perfect working relationship.

Crash, I was simply trying to head off a pointless arguement and divert attention from the fact that any drama arising from name changes is at least 50% my fault. Playing the staff rank card seemed easier than producing a load of tl;dr posts that I know Tails hates so much. :)

I did notice there's a vast number of code snippets waiting to be placed into any vBulletin installation. I've investigated a little, in the past. However I assume once you've modded everything to the extent that Bobo/Blah/Miles/CHz and whoever else have here, it takes some degree of skill to actually avoid breaking anything in the process of integrating new code snippets.

Thanks for the info, Shin. It often seems like the mods here get a bit more access than on other forums I've visited, but if that's just an illusion caused by CHz being so eminently willing to oblige your requests, it explains a lot. I'm pretty sure at least SOME of the things you've done in the past aren't possible for s-mods in standard vBulletin. Like when you give someone a picture instead of a custom title....

While we're on the subject, how on Earth do you have a custom background for your posts? I have never seen that anywhere else, it must be some custom CHz magic, right?

That's not how it works. It sounds like it would be as simple as that but working in any codebase that's larger than your Intro to Java final exam will show you that it's not that simple.

Additional Spam:
Dicerolling is straightforward and would probably never require any customization. You can't say the same for something like the journals or the glory that was GFFort. I'm not saying that I think coding should be a requirement for an administration position, I'm just saying that GFFort was fuckin' sweet as hell.

I asked CHz, sent him a pic and he did the rest. Since then I've been fervently hoping nobody would take it away again.

could we just have, like, a sparticus week


month


year


fuck it im making a sparticus forum of my own

I... am making a Spartacus forum.

This was not what I meant.

vBulletin is a horrible thing to learn on.

One doesn't learn to ride a bike when trying to ride away from a bear that is trying to eat you, for example.

Did somebody say something about a bear?

Fine. People can do whatever the fuck they want, be called whatever the hell they like.

I'm not gonna try to pretend my opinion matters any longer, nor will I try to force anyone to consider my perspective. That's a silly idea around here, anyhow.

Some of you, I'll see you in June. Possibly.

Everyone else, get fucked.

I've seen toddlers handle losing more gracefully than this.

I feel as though your reaction may be mildly disproportionate to the level of seriousness with which this discussion was conducted.

You must hang out with some cool toddlers.

Basil's not a toddler, Pang, he's a grown-ass man

nana nana boo boo stick your head in doo doo

It wasn't so much that you forced them to consider your perspective as you forced them to see the boards through your perspective.

I don't see that many people disagreeing with you in here Crash, certainly there's not enough serious opposition to warrant throwing your toys out of the pram like that.

Jesus christ I work overtime for one day and Crash quits the internet.

Seriously, I can't babysit you guys 24/7.

In what world do you live in Crash where everyone has to agree with you for everything to be okay?

And seriously, how many tantrums is this in the past few months? Three? Four?

Take a deep breath, you're capable of that now, and stop being such a whiny cunt because people have the audacity not to agree with you about unimportant shit.

Whoa. Wasn't expecting that.

whoa what's goin on

Stop talking about lawns for god's sake.

I mean, that's Paco's specialty.

It's not the name change issue.

Look, there's just a lot of shit you don't know about. Shit that has nothing to do with Gamingforce. It's not even the Bonesteel's Bitch saga.

Fact is, my life is fucking hell right now and it's all I can do some days to not come completely unraveled at the seams. Sometimes the burden is too much and it spills over onto the internet.

So I'm taking a break from GFF.

Crash, I feel sad when you call me names or say bad things to me.

Cool. And if you'd said that in a journal entry, we'd all have been sad to see you go, wished you well as we fully realise real life takes precedence over the internet, and welcomed you back when you got shit together.

Instead you snapped at inconsequential shit and stormed off, making you look like a crazy person.

Hope your real life stuff works itself out, and in a speedy manner. Best of luck, Al.

Display names aren't hard, you just use a custom profile field (hell even Skills already implemented one) and change the postbit template to use that field under whatever conditions are deemed appropriate.

Although CHz totally knows how to do it so I guess that wasn't the issue in the first place, sorry guys I'll just leave