The King of the Forums Contest 2008

Post by **auragongal** » Mon Feb 18, 2008 3:35 pm

Wait, you two know each other in real life? please don't be a stupid question

no, I don't think so.

Post by **Josiah** » Tue Feb 19, 2008 5:29 am

Ok, ok, enough off topic posts here. Let's keep it about the contest please.

Post by **Giga-Gar** » Tue Feb 19, 2008 7:24 pm

Because of the new anti-spam thing and you not having to activate the new accounts, does this mean we lose our new member points?

Post by **Silver** » Tue Feb 19, 2008 8:58 pm

I'm going to make an assumption here and say that you'd still get the points for recruiting new members, but not for sending a PM so the account will be activated faster. And this is assuming that his new trick really works, which isn't guaranteed yet.

On that note... they use an interesting tactic on the Slightly Damned forum. You have to take a personality quiz of sorts to even get to the forum. The questions are... well, like this. Seems to work well enough over there, so we could try to instate something like that if all else fails.

Post by **BionicleMandi121** » Tue Feb 19, 2008 9:42 pm

That's a pretty cute quiz. XD
It'd be interesting to see what kind of questions we'd come up with if we end up using that system...

Post by **Simsmagic** » Tue Feb 19, 2008 9:45 pm

I remember joining a forum recently, they simply had a question that asks while signing up:

Are you a human or a spambot? (type human)

That might work as well. Or, you could put a picture of Pikachu up and say "Which Pokemon is this?"

Post by **Blastotoise** » Tue Feb 19, 2008 9:46 pm

It wont let me join....

Post by **Josiah** » Wed Feb 20, 2008 4:34 am

The new system has been working so far. It it's still working by the end of the week, I'm gonna turn off the admin activation.

The problem with fancy stuff like custom questions and a quiz is that this forum is made from php code. I know absolutely nothing about php code (though it's on my Things I'd Like to Learn Eventually list). The only reason I was able to get the new system running is because, A: it was really easy; and B: there was a step by step instruction manual.

Post by **PoikSpirit** » Sun Mar 02, 2008 8:14 pm

I actually used to know some PhP. I did have a PhPbb forum once, but I didn't use it long enough to find how to edit the PhP code. When I have a little more time I'll see what I can do and e-mail you the source. That is, if you'd like to see it.
You could in theory re-vamp this whole forum then. Is there any other changes that would be good to add, other than the birthday thing? Speaking of which, how would that work? (I wasn't there when you had it.)
Sorry, off topic.

Post by **Josiah** » Mon Mar 03, 2008 7:09 am

That'd be awesome.

The birthday thing had two parts. The first part was that everyone's profile had a spot where they could enter their birthday (Month, Day, and Year), that info would then be added to their profile along with their age (calculated automatically based on the birthday). The second part was that whenever it was someone's birthday (going by their profile of course) it would be announced on the bottom of the main page where the users currently online, newest regestered user, total post number, and all that stuff is.

I think that'd be the main thing for now. Subforums were nice, but we're getting along fine without them. Being able to upload images directly to the forum was also nice...but seems like it'd be a pretty complicated thing to add.

Other than that it's just the appearance. Which I could probably do if I spent long enough deciphering the extremely complex CSS stylesheet phpbb uses (I know basic CSS, but the stylesheet used by these forums is far more complex than any I've ever worked with before, so decided to just lump it together with the PV site redesign project).

Post by **PoikSpirit** » Mon Mar 03, 2008 6:41 pm

Heh. Alright, I'll see what I can do, now that I have some free time.

I've never learned about CSS, so I'll look at that later if I get to it.

Post by **Josiah** » Sun Mar 16, 2008 8:12 am

Ok, this is the final day! I won't count any posts made after midnight (US MST). Winners will be announced either Monday or Tuesday, depending on how long it takes me to do all the math involved.

Post by **Josiah** » Mon Mar 17, 2008 6:25 am

And KOTF 2008 is over! Winners will be announced either a bit later today or sometime tomorrow.

Post by **Josiah** » Mon Mar 17, 2008 10:45 am

The point totalling is done. Before I announce the winners, I'll announce the points won by completing secret bonuses. BTW: There were more secret bonuses than these, but no one got them.

Bonus 1: Posting the Most Days in Saying Hi
1st: Blastotoise (18 days) - 10 points
2nd: Silver (13 days) - 5 points

Bonus 2: Posting the Most Art
1st: Silver - 10 points
2nd: Shauni AND Sims - 5 points

Bonus 3: Using All Items in a Vending Machine Fight Post
Simsmagic - 3 points

Bonus 4: Helping Count Posts
Silver & Gar - 20 points
((And now everyone is gonna want to help next year...except that I may or may not give bonus points for this then.))

And the winners of the 2008 KOTF Contest are...

King of the Forums - Silver
Prince of the Forums - Blastotoise
Duke of the Forums - Doodleshark

The full standings and final point totals are are...
Silver – 429
Blastotoise - 421
Doodleshark - 191
Gardialvior - 178
Artemis - 90
Simsmagic - 82
Voltaggia - 82
Kisori – 77
Kaida - 74
PoikSpirit - 74
Pikachu22052 – 69
Cheezdude – 65
Atma - 63
Shadowman - 58
Shauni – 49
Matrix Kirby - 49
Terra5 – 43
King Hyperion - 38
Soul Man – 37
BionicleMandi - 36
Celebifly – 31
auragongal - 25
Neo Zanther - 24
Shans – 23
Imposter404 - 2

As you can see, the competition for 1st and 3rd place were very close.
Marley (Blastotoise) made more posts than anyone else by a decent amount but the majority of those were game posts and he didn't get any bonuses other than the Saying Hi one. Silver didn't make anywhere near as many game posts as Marley but he made a quite a lot more regular posts and got lots of bonus points (mainly from the bonus challenges) that allowed him to pull ahead at the end.
For 3rd, Gar had a lot more game posts than Doodle but Doodle had a few more regular posts and RP posts and the bonus points he won in the first bonus challenge more than made up the difference in game posts.

Congrats everyone! Hope you enjoyed it. Might not have been quite like last year but hey, the forums are certainly more active than they were a month ago and that's what really matters.

For the winners, special titles will be up momentarily, and prize images will be done later this week. Each of you will also need to let me know which prize you want (check the list under your prize catagory in the first post of this thread).

Post by **Voltaggia** » Mon Mar 17, 2008 2:58 pm

Gratz Silver, Marley and Doodle :D