Forum All Clan Groups are going to be Deleted.

So here's the deal. The social groups plugin sucks (it's generally broken, alert wise and it has other problems) so it's going to be removed. It is instead going to be replaced with it's own forum (basically a section called Clans much like Server Directory, Class and Mechanics, General Discussion and so on). Any old forum fag will probably remember that this is how it was originally, but it got replaced with social groups because it had been thought it would work better since each clan would be able to moderate itself. In the end, the social groups plugin hasn't really worked out all that much for clans, so it's going to be removed.

Issues with the plugin:

• Doesn't work all that well
• Hard for clans to advertise their current state
• Hard to tell active clans from dead ones
• New people to the forums generally don't even know clan groups exisit
• People constantly make new groups just for the sake of it

So me and the mods had a talk about this, and here was my suggestion on how to fix it. It was decided to go through unanimously, so it's unlikely to be undone, unless there is a huge consensus that it shouldn't be done. So here's what's going to go down:

1. A new section of the forum will be made called "KAG Clans", which will be above the Classic subforum
2. There will be 4 subforums within this new section:
   1. "Upstart/New" - This section will be the only section people can create new threads. Threads in this section will stay in this section until at least 4 people are in the clan total. Any clan with less people with that is not a clan in any way, shape or forum. If a "clan" only has 2-3 people, they can just use a conversation anyways.
   2. "Social/Casual" - This is a section will be for Clans that have met the minimum requirements for creating a clan. In general, clans that decide to join this section are mainly there to hang out and play together occasionally. Focus is "fun" and don't really care too much about competition (doesn't not mean they won't do clan wars or anything).
   3. "Competitive/Serious" - This is also another section for Clans that have met the minimum requirements for creating a clan. As the name implies, this section will be for clans that decide to be in this section. They'll probably want to focus on getting better, doing clan wars and so on.
   4. "Dead/Inactive" - Any clan that decides to go inactive, or hasn't had any activity in over 2 months, will be moved here. This is mainly going to be here so that if someone wants to revive it, they can, and the thread will be moved back to upstart (unless they have enough active members to go into the other 2 sections)
3. Rules for this section will be different than the rules for the other sections of the forum.
   1. You will be allowed to make only ONE thread in this entire forum. There is no need for one person to make a bunch of different clan threads. If you want to make a new thread, you'll have to ask for a moderator to delete your old one first.
   2. You will be allowed to edit your own thread's prefix. Prefixes are those icons before a thread, the most common one being "Read This First" in all sections and the other being "Dev Blog" in announcements. For the clan section, there will be 2 new ones, "Recruiting/Open" and "Not Recruiting/Closed". This will make it easy for any new person looking to join a clan to view at a glance which ones they can join. (Exception to this will be the Upstart section since they will be in recruit mode the whole time so it'd be unnecessary"
   3. Standard posting rules will not apply. This does not mean this section will not be unmoderated though. Posting rules:
      1. No Flaming (obviously). This only applies to personal attacks on a single person's character. However, the clan in it's entirety is free game. This means you can talk shit about another clan. You can say that a clan sucks (even in their own thread) long as it does not lead to a flame war where a moderator has to step in.
      2. No massive amounts of spam. Spam in this case will only be defined as several frequent posts by the same people over and over again (bumping) and actual spam (same posts again and again). You will be allowed to single word posts like +1, <reaction image>, #swag and so on.
      3. Posting illegal stuff is still banned. Porn, links to hacks, and other illegal activities all fall under this. Fairly simple rule.
      4. Off-topic will not be moderated. You can go as off-topic as you want.
   4. Since posting rules in this section are different (way more freedom), Post counts and likes will not increase in this forum just like in Spamcan.
   5. All thread titles will need to follow the following format:[Open/Closed Prefix as talked about above] {Clan_Tag} - Clan Name/Clan description
      • Example: {JPEG} - Jealous People Enjoy Gagging
      • Example2: {PNG} - Clan for people who can not compress
      • Basically, just put your clan tag inside curly braces and then something after it that gives it a name
   6. Threads themselves should have at least a members list and rules/requirements on how to apply. The rest can be whatever you want as long is doesn't break any of the other rules.

The biggest difference between this and social groups is that it will be more visible to new users and lets people find what they want at quick glance. Clans that are shown first will also instead be the most active ones in general, rather by being the first in the alphabetical order.

This will happen at the end of the month (in America. Stating this because Aussies and Europeans can be 1 day ahead sometimes, so this is to avoid any confusion). The redirect link in General Discussion to here will disappear on that date too.

This information is being given to you now, so that you can copy anything you feel important now, before your group gets deleted.

The general social groups section are possibly going to stay, However, it is going to be pruned. If there isn't a new post of some sort in your general group by the end of the month, the group will be deleted as it will be considered unneeded and a waste of space.

 

@Kouji- So you can't have a separate forum page for recruiting?
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Sounds Pre' sick, like the old days.

 

@101i, no. Defeats the purpose of the whole section.

@Sir_Walter, yes anyone can view it.

 

Oh wait then we wont be able to show our clan page below our avatar
like how yagger has it for shark

 

You have your sig and can link to a thread that way

 

1 thread? To be honest I can't see that going to well, i use multiple threads for the clan and use them quite often.

Also with votes will you be able to make it clan only?

 

1 thread is what we used to have in the past and it worked more than fine. In fact, lots of people got disappointed that that section had been removed. For other intercommunication (like stuff that's supposed to be really secret or somehing) conversations were used. If you view some of the longer server threads, it works out the same way.

I did post that the general groups are going to stay, but that I'll be deleting any general group that doesn't have a new post by the time that section opens up; mainly for reducing clutter.