Idea to improve voting
 

I was going to suggest this privately to staff, but I decided to post it publicly instead and get the community involved mulling it over or picking it apart. Why don't we make access to the forums and all of its features, including the chat box, conditional to voting?

I understand the logic of removing the chat box because it can be a distraction. But part of the reason why it has the power to even be a distraction is because it is popular. So why not make it an incentive to voting rather than getting rid of it altogether and hoping people vote more as a result?

The LB pages (battles, tournamnents, tracks, etc.) and the vBulletin pages (forums, chat box, etc.) are like two different systems which share the same user database. So in theory, a user can have access to one without necessarily having access to the other.

We could make it where people have access to the LB pages first and foremost, and they must vote on x amount of battles in order to have access to the forums and all of its features for a limited time. For example, we can say people must drop 10 votes in order to have access to the forums for a week, and after that week their access expires and they must drop another 10 votes in order to regain access.

I think we would see votes skyrocket as a result.

At this point, I don't think it could hurt and is more likely to only make things better. If you guys want to see how this not having any chat box thing pans out, then we can wait a while. But I'm pretty sure I tried it before and the forums were even more dead than they were prior to removing the chat box and votes didn't necessarily get any better and a couple of people even deleted their accounts if I remember correctly.

Anyways, this is just my humble suggestion. Feel free to discuss and good luck on everything.

Just to piggy back off of NOBLE, getting rid of the chat was a bad idea. And here’s why.. everyone will simply relocate off the site. And by off the site, I mean to discord. It’s already happening and it hasn’t even been 24 hours. It’s better to have people distracted on site, than to be completely away from the site distracted if that makes sense. But I agree with NOBLE on a lot of this. You could try to have a voting minimum to access the chat box on here.

"I've decided to post it publicly to get the community involved" - The guy who asked to demod me for posting things publicly to get the community involved.

While the idea is alright, I'll give you my personal perspective. I was really active in voting last month. Work has taken over a bit this month so I've been posting a little bit. The forums have got me interested in tournaments and Illmania 5. I'm excited about battling. If you took that away, I genuinely wouldn't give a fuck about the site. Right now I can post some shit during work and submit a verse when I have time. I can't sit down, read and comment a vote. Its too much work during working hours. It would essentially make someone like me simply not be involved on the site.

These are all great ideas and facts as to what’s gonna happen. Example: there’s already an off-site chat lmao

Making people vote before they have access will work, but also make it FEEL like work, we will see random votes from people that just want to get the shit over with. Kinda like waiting for the skip button on adds before a YouTube video.


Have y’all tried having only mods vote?
Or voting on a set of battles before you can battle.
Like 2 or something?

I'm gonna Co-Sign this.

My only hiccup is this, will required voting for forum access inevitably cause lower quality voting?
I think there's a possibility of members throwing out quick votes just to gain their access back rather than actually taking time to vote and leave meaningful feedback.

I agree that the forums/chatbox make the site more exciting and help to set up battle events, but this isn't suggesting to get rid of them period so much as to make a minimal prerequisite one must pass before continuing to the forum part of the site. It'll be like this: you log into LB and a message pops up saying x amount of votes is required to access the forum features of the site, but you can still battle, vote or drop tracks with no problem in the meantime. It can be a minimal amount of votes (like 5) so its not too much of a burden, and the access can last for a few days. You can still check the forums, just after dropping a few votes and you won't have to do so again for a few days. If everyone who logs in was required to do that, i can almost guarantee that will get rid of the voting problem. As far as people dropping shitty votes, people drop shitty votes now even without having this idea in place. There's always a probability that there will be Some shitty votes. Would you rather have more votes total with the probability that some will be shitty, or would you rather have less votes also with the probability that some will be shitty?

Well first, I mean the attitude "or would you rather less votes" is a bit rich from someone who hasn't voted in 4 years.

Anyways, today I've spent time running lines with Lock for a major tournament battle, writing lines for said battle, posted on the forums a few times, all during downtimes at work. I wouldn't be able to vote in those times, so I wouldn't have been able to do anything that I did.

While I understand the premise and at the moment I do not have an idea of my own. I actually completely disagree with this idea.

For one as already stated, quality of voting will 100% go down. Maybe not the first day or first week, but 100% guaranteed voting quality will get even worse and tbh, from experience in the past, its probably only the same handful of people that actually leave quality votes as it is.

Second this is just a parenting method that almost always backfires and never works anyways. "Son, if you don't do your homework then you can't play with your friends". Many of us here are adults. Taking a privilege away isn't an incentive, it's a punishment. All of us here should feel lucky that any of these battle sites exist so we have a community to express ourselves and have fun with this hobby, which it is for majority of us as well.

Time is also a factor. Some people may not always have the time to give votes on multiple battles either. Some people may only have time to write that battle or two they were obligated to write. Voting isn't always quick for people that actually read the verses and leave feedback either.

One of the issues I find honestly, after being on forums for the last several years is there is just too many garbage battles. Like on forum even if it's a new member, you have call them out, go through the process of setting a battle up. I mean a lot of these open battles I see are bullshit battles. Some people may have limited time and not want to read garbage. There is too many factors and voting issues have always been there since day one. Even way back when in the big eras of LB there was always voting issues there has always been voting issues on every single site that battles.

On a personal note, If I am forced to vote to use other aspects of the site I am out and those that know me from a long time ago can attest that I have always contributed in the voting area, so it isn't even the fact of not wanting to do it. I am 100% positive that this method of forcing people to do it will not work over the mid-long term. Maybe short term you can enough people pulling together to do it, but long term it will make things slowly die off. Plus the comment about the discord will happen regardless, this is a new technology age. People want to be able to talk actively and multiple of the other forums have their own discord because you can literally just chit chat with everyone from anywhere on earth. It's a pain in the ass to use LB on the phone. Just saying.

Another issue is lets say we go way back to some of the legends. Like Jason or UA show up. They are supposed to go vote on a certain number of battles to pop in and say whats up, or see how things are going. There are too many issues with this idea.

As far as the chatbox goes, I also 100% agree with removing it though even with what I said about the discord. From the short amount of time I have been back that chatbox was infested with bullshit.

I want to hear what X has say to about the voting perks and icons he had thought of.

@NOBLE I think this idea has merit, but unfortunately as a one-size-fits-all approach it would cut out people like EtH. I personally tend to follow an activity pattern of spending most of the week just cruising the forums and writing a few lines, then going on a voting spree one day and dropping 20 odd votes. I think that instead of this system, you could instead transfer the credits system over to the forums/chatbox (and bring the chatbox back). In order to make a forum post/number of shouts in the box you would need a certain number of credits, and the only way to get credits would be by voting. That way, people like me could stockpile credits in the weekend for instance, then be able to post in the forums through the week if we were too busy to put in the time and effort necessary for proper voting. Just my thoughts.

Let's keep the ideas coming.

Tagging everyone online right now.
@Enfinite @Guts @Earthlink @Squammy @MadVerbs @JustWellin @lyricthegreatest @BizzyOne @Rieper

Reset credit amount every couple of months or less. Provide us with meth

No meth.

1st idea is cool.[COLOR="Silver"]


@Mrs Omnific
@UnknownSuspect
@REZN

I don't think the idea of blocking off the chatbox/forums to people who don't vote is a good idea. However, I might pitch in that having events for voters only is not a bad idea. Something along the lines of a "If you voted this many times last month you can enter this tourney" or some sort of exclusive reward to active voters so that old members aren't denied access to things they already had. Just a thought.

@Noir
@Dysfunctional
@Bone Daddy
Tagging those online.

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@Proff

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@OSKAR

Number of votes needed to enter tourneys would certainly work. But only during tourney time.

if ya'll rapped better I would vote more LOL... im playing naww the tourney idea is cool though but bring back the chatbox

I think we can stay posting the same shit we have been posting on the chat, here. TBH

Bump.

Here’s an idea

1) stop giving out 5s on above average verses
2) if you don’t understand something, don’t vote. Just because these guys I.m you doesn’t mean you have too.
3) stop putting anybody in the fvc. It’s 3 guys that shouldn’t be in there. Having a legend drop a verse doesn’t mean he deserves a 6+, if you aren’t going to do the same to the other users.
4) stop criticizing concepts you never heard before. If you never heard it before it’s fresh.
5) stop voting just because of the name. Read the verses and vote accordingly

I was one of many who thought that deleting the chatbox would provide incentive on promoting site activity. It appears that we're all retaliating by branching off to Discord servers. Currently Gut's text channel is his server is blowing up with activity and it's basically Lets Beef's new chat box. Ultimately I feel like the problem is that if people truly wanted to vote & rap more then they just would. But it's like almost no one wants to vote unless they have more of a reason to voting then simply for the sake of it. Whether it's because of a tournament or whatever. But no one wants to be forced to vote on shit they truly give no fucks about just so they can battle so we got rid of that aspect and just let people make battles for free. As a result this has generated more battles yet less voting. I feel like locking out the forums in favor of only those who vote on battles would be worth giving a shot as clearly we're social people here but at the same time wouldn't that be totally unfair to those of us who already used the forums in the past and have zero access to it unless we vote?

Bann Rican from self voting with his multi accounts

Dude, stop with the bullshit lies.

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Honestly, making the server won't help either.

I like the idea of using vote tallies as an entrance fee to tournaments. I think its worth a shot.

I like this idea.:pimp:

Right... Ultimately my two cents is make an exclusive chatbox for dudes who make 5 or 10 votes per week & have the forums still open to the public regardless of votes. Because we have voting guides within the forums anyways and how stupid would it be to lock out those guides to noobs who are looking to improve their votes?

:high:

In my opinion the chatbox is one of the most important tools through which to communicate with new people on the site and get them involved in things. Forums can be daunting and inaccessible when you know no-one on the site, and IMs are the same because you don't know who to get in contact with. The shoutbox enables others to help with troubleshooting and give advice instantly.

I think that making tournament entry dependent on votes would be a dope idea, also making voting competitive and having some form of icon/badge/title type rewards would be a great motivator.

This is why the Website Greeter title is extremely important. We should have a club of just a few members (really we don't need anymore than like three) dedicated to this and they would just take turns greeting all the newbies of this website on a daily basis. I was going just this by myself and stopped after the last time I was banned.

Kind of building off of the voting tally to enter a tournament.

Why not start from the beginning. I am not entirely sure how the credits work anymore, but I know battles use to cost 3/6. Why not reset everyone's credits to 3/6 and make that the starting point for new members as well.

Battles still cost 3 to create. Then do the regular way of entering a tournament based by rank, or sign up. Then from there that person has to spend a certain amount of credit to enter the tournament, if they can't pay it moves to the next person. Obviously, the details would have to be worked out like the amount of time they have to get voting credits before you move on to the next person up to enter the tournament.

Also as far as incentives, I know there really isn't a whole lot to give. But maybe top 3 voters a month, get an Emcee item. Have like head of FVC or someone in charge of checking the votes for quality of the top 3 so you know they just didn't give out a bunch of trash. Not sure if this is a thing or not, but just throwing it out there if it isn't.