OK the attachment feature as it is now is pretty much worthless to me
It seems to me that the current mods for the attachment feature that are being developed are really just patches to meet the needs of only a few ubb.thread sites and to make it work a little better.
No one is really thinking about how this feature will be applied by the "average" LARGE community.
Now, in a large community, first and foremost you cant simply allow all your members to upload an attachment into any forum for any reason (or no reason) like you are doing here at ubbthreads. My pokemon site averages 35gig a month in bandwidth. If I allowed my members to attach things in this manner it would go through the roof. Therefore, I think most large communities are going to restrict attachments to a few forums only.
No one is going to make an "Attachment Forum" where members are free to upload anything and everything. Generally I think that each forum you have that allows attachments would have a theme. For instance, I made an "Art Contest" forum where members were allowed to upload their custom artwork. Here at threadsdev you have several forums just for mods, others for templates, etc..
In any community the overall goal is maximum user participation.
So I ask myself:
How does the file attachment feature help increase maximum user participation? What is to be gained by allowing a member to upload a file? How will the community benefit by this? How will MemberX benefit personally by this?
Community benefits:
when a member posts an attachment here at ubbdev.com its one more mod for people to use. More mods = more things to keep your members online reading and more reasons to return = More members online = more members visible in the "Who's Online = an overall impression of high traffic/high activity within the site by everyone. If no one is attaching files, these benefits are lost
Member benefits:
All members who attach files have the benefit of: having it displayed/reviewed by the public. Getting to read replies/pm's etc generated by his actions.
Currently, thats about it.... and its simply not enough! The more benefits you give memberX for his actions, the more likely he is to repeat his actions. If the additional benefits encourage your members to post 2 attachments in a month instead of 1, you increase your maximum user participation and your community benefits 100%!
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What can do done with the file attachment feature to increase the Member Benefits, thus increasing maximum user participation?
Real Life Example:
www.FARTS.COM Laugh now, then continue reading because this is a serious example of why the attachment feature is useless to me currently. This site is 100% dependent on the attachment features for "maximum user participation".
Farts.com is a web site geared towards (you guessed it) Farting. Stories, Jokes, Videos, if it is about farts, its there. It's been operating since 1995.
Members can participate in one of 3 ways:
Fart of the Day - People sit at home on their pc and record their farts and send them to us in .wav format. Visitors could look at any/all of these submitted farts and rate them on a scale of 1-5. Each day the higest rated fart was picked as Fart Of The Day. This winner is sent to our mailing list of @350,000 people and there are links to it all over the site. This is our most popular thing on farts.com
Joke of the Day - members submit their favorite joke/story to us. works the same as above.
(we used our internal programmers to develop the programming and database required to do run these features)
Surfing around the site - aside from the database of 50,000 jokes and farts, we also have a ton of other content on the site, including celebrity farts, fart videos and anything else we could find fart related. however none of it was interactive..
After several years our database and programming required extensive upgrades and that combined with other server issues forced us to look for alternatives.
I installed ubb.classic 6.3.0.1 on this site on 4-17-2002, 132 days ago. We currently have 7,491 registered members. This is the first forum of any kind to be used there.
Now, ubb.classic does not have attachment features, so I had to use some mods to accomplish it. Unfortunately, these mods pretty much duplicated the current features used here... In other words, ubbt6.1b1 and ubb.classic+mod = identical in most aspects. The changes I made to the file attachment feature are identical to the changes i think need to be made to ubbt's
1. Take a look at the Fart of the Day Forum
http://www.farts.com/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=forum;f=2;hardset=;start_point=;DaysPrune= The first thing you will notice is that at the top of the forum you see the current Fart of the Day. You are able to listen to it, comment on it, PM the author or view the author's profile. This FOTD changes daily based on its rank using the Rate This Topic feature which has been modified so that it only looks at submissions >=3 days old to give them enough time to accumulate votes.
Member Benefit #1: if MemberX attaches a file here and wins, his/her attachment will be featured at the top of the forum page for all to see. The contact links, etc ensure that MemberX gets a lot of replies, a lot of pm's and in general a lot of attention for his work.
Member benefit #2: In addition, MemberX is given a custom "blue ribbon" that appears under their avatar.
what this page lacks:
First off you will notice that the "Submit Your Fart" button is everywhere. The reason for this is that the "Post" button does not convey the true actions of what people think they should be doing. When people enter this forum, they know that they arent "posting" anything, they are "submitting" their entry. ubb.classic and ubbt share the same problem in that the current Post button is just WAY too small and is easily overlooked. In this forum where I want people to submit things, I need to make that process as easy as possible.
Whether its images or sound files or movies, why must members click on 1 post to reach the attachment? Then, to view the next post they must click the back button, click on the next post and so on. I have seen one hack that places an image in the subject based on the file type, however I would like to see that expanded so that the image actually links to the file. Since my forum is all .wav files members could just look at the list of topics and can listen to the files without having to read each post.
2. OK now view a a post within the Fart of the Day forum
ex:
http://www.farts.com/discussions/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=2;t=000504 The first thing you will notice the giant RATE THIS FART dropdown window. both ubb.classic and ubbt have made the voting function almost impossible to find. Since the whole idea behind rating a topic is to determine a winner (why else do you rate things) this should be the biggest thing on the page. In addition, without it there is no Maximum User Participation unless the visitor replies.
What else was the Rate this Topic really made for? Most sites have a Just Talk *general discussions or other type forum where people just talk about stupid crap. Surely the Rate this topic feature wasnt meant to be used to rate these!
What this page lacks:
Again, ubb.classic and especially ubbt are hiding the attachment! I know someone is working on allowing the attachment to be updated by the post author, but you also need to bring the attachment out in the open
Your mod/beta mod forums and my fart forum are the same in that the only reason people are posting there is to attach something. When members visit these forums, they arent doing so to read posts, they are doing to see the attachments.. So why is the attachment link so tiny?
This page should be redesigned so that the attachment is the primary thing they see. REAL BIG "HEY THIS IS THE ATTACHMENT" and include information about it (information taken when the file was attached) and then after that the replies
OK now click the "submit your fart" button
ex:
http://www.farts.com/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=newtopic;f=2 Once again, ubbclassic and ubbt have essentially done the same thing. If memberX clicks the Submit Your Fart button, he is expecting to Submit His Fart. The first thing the newtopic page should be doing is requesting information on the attachment.
Name of attachment, description, and the browse button to upload, etc...
The actual post should be made secondary. Remember people are attaching files, not posting a message. The post field should be used as "additional information" and come below the attachment information.
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needed member benefit: Attachment Ownership
What other attachments has MemberX posted? A link in their profile showing all the attachments MemberX has submitted would be nice. If the Rate This Topic feature is incorporated it could also show his "Score" (vote average) for each submission as well as links to the actual post/attachments.
If any of his submissions win a daily award it could indicate this as well.
In essence what this would do is give MemberX the feeling that his contributions are appreciated, he gets additional recognition for having more than 1 submission, he is able to link to his submissions on other web sites (on his home page, in his sig at other forums, etc) which brings new visitors, and most importantly it would encourage MemberX to submit again! And that is our goal, is it not?
Phew I need a break... SOrry, i got too much time on my hand waiting on import bugs to be resolved
