2010-11-25, 23:01 | Link #1 |
Senior Member
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Leechers on Signature/Avatar request threads
Well I suppose I'll open up the topic as the problem for leechers, or Hit & Run people as we say it, has become apparent and they're steadily increasing. Almost daily someone posts an avatar or signature request on their respective threads, only to to disappear and never seen again once the requester gets what he wants.
The rules already state that you're not allowed to request if it's for use on elsewhere but it's not enough. As long as people don't pay attention to when the user was registered or his posts and make signatures for them, these people will keep coming back. Simple solution would be similar to what Felix suggested in the Spoiler Policy thread. If possible, add white and black lists. All current users should go automatically to the white list, and all new created accounts would be added to the white list after certain amount of time if they have been active after their registration date. I would like to hear opinions of other users and of course Moderators, and what can be done about this issue, if anything ?
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2010-11-25, 23:44 | Link #2 |
Administrator
Join Date: Dec 2003
Age: 41
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This is just my own opinion, but I don't think this is a moderation/administration problem. The artists who do work on avatars/signatures are volunteering their time, so it's basically up to them to decide if the person making the request is "worthy" or not. If you want to try to establish certain common expectations, perhaps the artists could form a sort of "Guild" and agree amongst themselves what the requirements should be. There are certain common sense point-of-order rules (like not making too many requests at once, waiting some time between requests, etc.) that are more to prevent obvious abuse of the system, but beyond that I don't think the staff should decide whether an artist should do volunteer work or not. If you have evidence that someone is requesting signatures for use elsewhere, I suppose you could report it, but once the person gets what they're after they'll probably leave anyway (so banning them won't help much).
Anyway, like I said, that's just my own personal opinion; not sure what the other staff will think.
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2010-11-26, 03:43 | Link #3 | |
♪ ~ ♫
Artist
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As to how we can prevent this from happening; only thing you can do is doing research on the person requesting a sig/avie, if you want to fulfill his/her request. I generally just stopped doing requests a long ago, since quite a few people don't even know what they want. Asking for a sig, using it for a week and then asking for another one. That just insults our effort. Another thing happening to me - someone didn't even ask for a permission; used my sigs on other forums while using my own image hosting site. So they stole "my" art, used it elsewhere so I can't see it AND ate my bandwidth on Photobucket. Revenge was sweet though, I just made a different image with the same filename.
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2010-11-26, 12:43 | Link #4 | |
Spoilaphobic
Join Date: Jan 2009
Location: USA
Age: 37
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Quote:
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2010-11-26, 14:15 | Link #5 |
sleepyhead
Author
Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: event horizon
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I personally do only batch jobs when I want to promote a series and burn some free time, so I don't really mind where people use them, it's all the same to me. That said I'm pretty sure I speak for the majority when I say, it's a pain to solve conflicts and "problems". Any little thing the staff could do to streamline the system would be very welcome.
regarding the technical aspect... Pretty sure the whitelist/blacklist would not work for this case. To solve this problem technically, it is fairly complicated business. I can see two approaches, in both you leverage on the Album feature of the forum. In one each user could have his own "avatar album" (which appears on a CP page only) and others could submit to it (this if fairly complicated and problematic) - the idea is to have the creator submit to the requester. Another more simple and efficient way is again each user has his own special "avatar" album but only he can add to it; other people can see it and have a button to "Claim" a avatar there (only one person can claim it at any given time). The "caption" (album) of the avatar is used as hover text. In both methods the idea is to eliminate the intermediate steps between request and use. With the steps cleared, the avatar image can be obfuscated into the system. There's no effective way to hide it (permanently) but a simple goal to force people to at best have to make a screen shot and go into a editor to get the image is doable (because this provides reasonable protection for things like a gif animation in particular). There are several methods:
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2010-11-26, 20:25 | Link #6 |
Senior Member
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Well, I didn't mean that people won't be allowed to save images from this forum at all.. It's obvious people might come across nice signature, save it and use it elsewhere.. I just find it annoying you get requested something specific, you work on it for quite some time and then you never even get to see it used.
Also I agree with you Larthak .. Although I don't do signatures and it doesn't happen so often for avatars, people switching their av/sigs like once per day and thus requesting daily something new is just annoying. If moderators don't see this as a problem then I guess nothing can be done but then why do we have a rule '' Do not request Sig/avatars for use at elsewhere '' in the very first post of these threads ?
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2010-11-26, 21:01 | Link #7 | ||
sleepyhead
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Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: event horizon
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I am pretty sure that is a request, not a rule. Obviously moderators here, no matter how bold, have no power outside this domain. This particular instance of the issue is actually fairly tamed as well. There have been issues where people would steal avatars, use them, and/or claim to have made them on other sites. I've also witnessed cases of the inverse happening: fairly well known posters here accused of stealing from fairly well known sites. I know for a fact, moderators/administrators were very aware of both... and have since hopefully resolved the issue (or, at least they did a good job in preventing pandemonium).
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2010-11-26, 23:44 | Link #8 |
THE BRITISH ARE COMING!!!
Graphic Designer
Join Date: Aug 2007
Location: UK
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Someone mentioned a post rule, you have to have a certain amount of posts before requesting? Personally I think that would be the best and easiest solution, it shouldn't take that long for a person to get 25-50 posts, and you'd be able to tell from those posts whether a person is a leecher or not.
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2010-11-26, 23:52 | Link #9 |
Senior Member
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^I thought about this too and it was actually me ( I think ) who mentioned this in the Signature thread. I just wasn't sure if they can implement something like this and thought perhaps the Whitelist thing would be easier to do ..
If it is possible though, would be nice to see it happen.
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2010-11-26, 23:56 | Link #10 | |
sleepyhead
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Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: event horizon
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2010-11-27, 06:19 | Link #11 |
Kira_Naruto, the ecchi
Graphic Designer
Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: http://www.exciting-tits.com/
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Back when I was active filling requests, I simply ignores anyone with junior member tag status.. Most leechers dont change that. The default stays until the users have more then 100 forum posts.. Of course, at that time, we do have one guy who requested on average 1 signature per day which is a source of constant hilarious topic of discussion between me and Riker at that time, because he usually targets either one of us alternately He did now joins the GD group and have his own signature thread that he made himself, so its kinda moot point right now
If I'm feeling a bit hardworking I usually peeked at the requester's post trail. <- I still use it to determined when peoples tries to add me as their friends.
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2010-11-27, 06:40 | Link #12 |
Call me MK! :)
Graphic Designer
Join Date: Oct 2009
Location: The top of the world.
Age: 34
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I agree with Dist. Is it possible to make rule on the first post in each request threads (including those in sub forums) that you have to have at least 50+ posts before you can ask for sig. Also if it's possible to include that posts from 'requests' and 'rate that' kind of threads don't count.
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2010-11-27, 11:01 | Link #13 | |
THE BRITISH ARE COMING!!!
Graphic Designer
Join Date: Aug 2007
Location: UK
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Just edit the rule into the first post, adding a bit about requests and spam threads not counting. As for the rest, you just have to look at their profile, that'll tell you how many posts they have, and there's usually a link that lets you see where and what they've posted. It should go something like this. Member A: Posts request. Member B: Checks profile, notices they have less than __ posts, tells Member A they can't request until they have __ posts. Member A: Leaves forum for good, or posts __ times. Requests again. Member B: Checks profile again, checks posts, notices Member A has only posted in spam threads. Tells Member A to GTFO. Maybe not exactly like that, but you get what I mean (hopefully). The only problem is request TAKERS ignoring the rule, in which case you just remind them of it like you would requesters.
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2010-11-27, 11:05 | Link #14 |
sleepyhead
Author
Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: event horizon
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If you want to do it like that we could have a option in user CP to make post counts visible in the postbit (by default set to OFF).
The process to adding such a option is the same as with adding a legacy/normal postbit switch which I've explained in another thread (NightWish should know what I'm talking about).
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2010-11-27, 18:46 | Link #15 |
Administrator
Join Date: Dec 2003
Age: 41
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a) As I said before, I don't think this is something that should be made into a rule. Volunteers can decide for themselves the conditions for doing free work.
b) Doing things based on post count is stupid, because it just encourages people to find threads where they can start posting nonsense so they can meet some artificial threshold (who would decide what the threshold is anyway?). It will only increase forum spam, so I am firmly against it. Besides that, just because someone does meet the post threshold doesn't mean that anyone has to agree to their request either. It's 100% volunteer. Number of posts is not a valid indicator of the poster's quality or dedication to these boards. c) Don't expect that we will add any form of "white-listing", make post counts visible in the postbit (or add options to enable such), or make any changes to the functionality or appearance of the boards. If there are baseline "point of order" sort of rules that could be added, then maybe, but I still favour voluntary agreements amongst those doing the work -- the staff are stretched thin enough as it is that we're not going to be able to police more rules effectively.
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2010-11-28, 00:11 | Link #16 |
Manga Addict
Join Date: Sep 2009
Location: England, UK
Age: 32
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As much as cannot stand it when users do this 'hit and run' tactic, I have to agree with relentless. At no point have I felt obliged to carry out a poster's request, no matter their join date or post count. Some designers are perfectly fine with people joining up to the forum only to request a signature, and taking away their ability to make them doesn't work in my books. Hell, some members have joined AS just to make signatures.
I play it much like KiNA. A bit of detective work only takes around a minute. If someone wants to make a signature only for the user to then disappear elsewhere with it, then let them. At least then you know that your efforts have not been in vain. |
2010-11-28, 07:00 | Link #17 | |
sleepyhead
Author
Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: event horizon
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The problems you mention don't exist since the requesters aren't mind readers to know what methodology the one handling it uses; nobody said anything about writing it down as a rule either. Regardless of how the discussion here goes, I would still do it the way I want to (ie. make lots and lots, and not care how/where it's used).
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2010-12-08, 16:18 | Link #20 | |
Strangely dependable...
Join Date: Nov 2006
Location: some random place out there...
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I thought I'd move the discussion here:
From the Sig Request Thread: Quote:
As for post count limit, as was mentioned earlier here, the problem is that would just instigate a lot of unwanted spam. I've seen that happen in many other forums that have the post count rules. I agree with relentlessflame and others that we can just leave it as is, and let the sig makers decide for themselves. Checking on their post history and such before you decide is simple enough right now.
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