Ad Hominem's idea thread.

[Louie Dawgs]

First off, I'll state that these ideas are directed at the three following goals:

First, increasing and keeping site members
Second, reducing the amount of cheating
Third, funneling people to the forums.

1.

Repackage the voting system.

What do I mean by this? Re-brand it. The concept of having a "voting" system means there's something to be won, some goal to achieve. All we need here is a name change. Make it a "selection" system. Ask people to "select who they think had the better verse". It removes some of the pure competitive nature from battles, and would remove from the number of people who see it as the only goal on the site.

2.

Move the goalposts.

We need more tangible benefits. Right now the only real "prize" on this site is being the champ or winning battles. Shit needs to change to an "award" system of benefits. What do I mean? Defeat a notable member you get an award. Improve throughout the month, win an award. Have a great battle, win an award.
Vote well, win an award. Participate in the forums, win an award


What could the awards be? A lot of shit. Larger avatars, custom user names, .gif avatars, recognition ect ect...

Essentially, give people awards for doing notable shit.

3. Recognize those of us who did well.

As in, redo the ranking system from "most wins" to "most awards".

Or have different awards worth a different number of points, and the person with the most points is ranked higher.

Also, tournament invitation should be decided in this way.

4. Streamline the forums, and add an improvement section.

Pretty straightforward. Make the forums less cluttered, add in a forum for people who want to improve/have their verses looked at.

5. Funnel people to the forums. It's my thinking that the forums are where the best members are, and it's causal in the manner that they are the best members because they are on the forums, not the other way around.

Thus, we have to get people here.

Here's my thought, when there is a big announcement, ALWAYS announce it in the forums.

Then, force people to pay attention. Chat flagging is great but not enough. Here's what we should do. Pop-ups. Make one of those pop-up boxes that people have to click in to close. It's too easy to ignore chat flags.

6. Add moderators.

Seriously, make more. Way more. The idea should no longer be that we want mods to be able to punish cheaters, but we want mods looking at a high number of battles and adding in criticism and the whatnot.

7. Add skins.

Seriously, were all getting tired of looking at the black and blue. New colors please.

8. Advertise improvement.

That's what we need to make this site about.

When people start a battle, have a little prompt: "Stuck or just need help?" BOOM. Link to the previously suggested improvement forum.

Have the system message someone every time they win/lose a battle. When they win, send a congratulations, when they lose, tell them to try again and recommend they visit the (linked) improvement forum.

9. Have an "infraction history" thing on everyone profile, showing infractions they've had recently.

Comment.

[Louie Dawgs]

It is a little TL;DR