2018 BGL Updates and Changes
Hey everyone! Another year has been and once again. I always often think to myself of how long this website had been up—it does not feel like it been nearly 2 years, going into year 3 in September 2018. Time flies so fast. As per usual, we will not be having another thread, instead, we will continue with this one as Tadashi suggested earlier this year. Furthermore, as we started to head off to the New Year, updates and changes will most likely be slow, since I do not think I can add any more updates aside from occasional fixes. Assuming the inevitable upgrade from Mybb in the future (assuming we don’t switch to Xenoforo), I’m hoping this New Year will bring in a different perspective as we continue to build the community of BGL. I also comply all the updates that will be rolling out as of January 2018. If you have any thoughts, please expressed them. As usual, these rollouts will be added to the Progression thread.
BGL Staff Moderation Team: All members of the Staff will now be placed under a new moderation system. This means that all staff members will have the same color (blue) and received a “star image” that belongs the moderation team.
Firstly, blue is now the official color for the moderation team because of two reasons: one for users of the BGL community to distinguish a regular member from a staff member and because this shade of blue looks good on all the skins on Boogaloo Crews (Ultimate, Night Vision, and Deluxe). On
January 2nd, all staff members will have a special badge under their name. Please look forward to it!
Secondly, I’ve reduced BGL Staff has been reduced (13 to 10), since having so many staff members seem redundant with only a handful of members at the moment. Former staff members will still keep their custom ranks.
Lastly, the BGL Staff Moderation and the Moderation Forum will be facing an overhaul for a new system of moderation, banning concepts (which includes a guide of what to do) and responsibilities that do not require constant attention (though, minor participation may be a requirement). I’m hoping to release this on January 5th, 2018, so please look forward to it!
Official Competitions: Competitions on the forum had struggled quite a lot and went through massive changes over the two years. Whether because the competitions are too broad, not simple enough, lack of members or just overall not interesting enough for people to join in. However, after series of failures, we learn from our mistakes and managed a unique thing for Boogaloo, strengthening its identity. Thanks to everyone for helping the construction of this competitions—and participating to iron out the nicks for more improvement. One thing I hope for 2018 is to continue these competitions with more people joining in—and I hope we can add one more thing to the competition pool to covers all the bases for the members.
- Bob Ross Competition: A series of competition that focuses on artistic values. Monitored by LoopyPanda in the Art Garden. If you’re an artist of any medium, including graphic design, please check out this competition! You can earn awards, gain useful advice to improve your artistic abilities and more. Judges are anonymous as well! If you want to be a judge, this is an awesome way to participate in the competition!
- Pokémon Cup Series: A tournament-style competition that focuses on Pokémon Battling. Monitored by ShineCero in the Pokémon Section. If you’re a Pokémon fan who wants to battle real-life trainers, please check out this tournament!
Awards System: Throughout the latter half of 2017, I’ve been in full force adding plenty of
awards to the forum. This is an attempt to encourage activity, posting and finally, building a community where certain awards require you to check out quality forums such as Art Garden, Boogaloo Life, and the Donut or you want to earn those cool badges that can only be achieved in competitions. Backed by MyReactions and the Likes System, the Awards is the foundation of awarding users for expanding the community. If you meet the requirements for an award, check out this
thread and claim it.
As of January 1st, Custom Ranks is now earnable in competitions. Daily Post Goal and
Karma Stars is another “award-like” system towards your post count, the latter revolved around the idea that the more you post, the better the start.
BoogaVerse: It took around 1-2 years for BoogaVerse to take off, but as of now, I’m marking it as a success. This success would not be possible without the dedication, active and people hunger for RP content. It was a grueling process of staying awake nearly every day to iron out all the details and constantly bugging people about it, but I want to know that those who help construct this project into something great, this is all because of your efforts. I wished that we continue this community project in the future, strengthening new ideas, new concepts and new ways to explore our characters, world-building and the like. Thank you and hope we can continue to work together and bring in more people into the BoogaVerse world.
- Reality Vortex will receive its own section by Summer 2018, assuming we're on course with the schedule based on how fast we're posting in the initial Reality Vortex thread.
- Space Section will receive a massive overhaul of a much, simpler practice.
Small Things
- Thread prefixes are now able to be seen on the front page.
- MyReactions was overhauled for new reactions and now finalized. This gives users a range wide of reactions towards a user's post in a thread. If you receive enough of a single reaction, you might even get an award for it. Please check it out and use them with your heart's content.
- Santa Hats: From December 1st to December 31st, all users will receive Santa hats. On New Years Eve and Day, you will receive a New Years hat.
- Smilies: New smilies have been added to the forum and organized by category so it does not look scattered. Check them out! If you have an emoji/smilies/emoticon, post it here and I will add it.
- Akiba Square and Metroham TV will receive an overhaul. It should be completed in February 2018.
- BGL watches Anime Thread: A new proposal to engage the community more. This idea should be coming in February 2018 after initial after talks with Ploep.
Getting More Members
Earlier this year, I created this
thread as a way to bring in more members. As BGL continues to evolve, we should also find ways to get members to come and expand our community to avoid fatigue. Members, if you have a friend or know someone, invite them onto the forum (even if they're not interested). Give them the reason to have them join. Give them something that they won't get elsewhere. For example, LoopyPanda did something interesting that could be marked as a rather smart move: she posted chapters of her story here and only here, in order to gander people to come on and look. When they see that they can mark up discussion of such stories, it would not only encourage more members and participation but also encourage the writer to pump up more chapters as well as a sign of inspiration. Have a friend(s) that into Pokemon on another site? Invite them to the forum and introduce them the Pokemon Cup series. Of course, do not hassle them if they display no interest whatsoever.
I'm posting Loopy's critical, but very insightful post of why she posts:
LoopyPanda said:
Hm, I always thought of Boogaloo as kind of a place that was made for people to nurture their hobbies and find new ones among the other members (like RPG-- I wouldn't post in it if I knew nobody wanted to help grow their characters and writing with other people) seeing as we aren't a forum that focuses on one main topic with a few off-topic subforums. In addition to the usual chit-chatting ofc. I use BGL to grow my characters and writing in general, I'm not alone while doing it + I can interact with lots of people at once in an appropriate setting. So that's what keeps me involved in the Roleplay section.
I think the only social media sites I actively use are Tumblr and Reddit; the latter being a literal aggregate of other forums.
So I see the place as a way to nurture my hobbies, kinda like how I see reddit, in order to keep my creativity going when I can't always pick up my tablet and draw. I'd like it for others to not feel alone when they nurture theirs (provided it isn't too specific or niche, it gets a bit harder to do that). So maybe it's time to set some goals for ourselves. Maybe a new quality thread a week in a forum we like to post in? Maybe rewrite some old ones for better content and then bring it back into the open?
The way I see it though, I simply cannot expect anyone to post original content or contribute if I don't do my own part as my own principle. So that's exactly what I'll be focusing on in the coming days when I get the free time! Big Grin Though, I want to do that for not just the Art Garden, but in other places that needs some TLC.
Might we post some thread ideas in here as well to help stimulate some activity? I feel that sometimes some people wish to have certain threads to post in, but aren't sure how to make a quality opening post or feel too anxious about getting it "right" the first time.
If you have any ideas of how we can expand, you can post it in that thread I've linked above. Please share your thoughts!
Final Thoughts
This is the end of the new year, and I hope we can continue for the next year. I also wish we expand more, create more stories, spark new artists and the sort. I also like to say that if you have a problem, make sure you notified any of us. It's quite a pain to find out an issue 8 months down the line when it could have been resolved right then and there. Lastly, I want to thank everyone once again for making Boogaloo Crews such a big deal. I always love working (obviously since I always talk about it) on the forum and always like to show off my work to see if I made it comfortable for you guys. I hope I continue improving, and hope that such improvements served as a benefit for you. Thanks and happy new years everyone!
- ShineCero
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