Shipbucket

Honestly I like the member titles. I don't like people repeatedly going on about who should have one though. They're like the queens honour list, admins and moderators should note down in the private forums who stands out over the year then give them a Christmas present of it as and when they're given out.
Another reason that I like having them is it separates out the newbies so to speak from clogging up the sub forums, as such I'd like to suggest that once you've proven you can draw or be useful and not a troll to people to have a basic member colour scheme. That way the trolls and people who are still learning can stick to the requisite areas until such a time that they are able to better benefit the forums...
Thirdly I think its nice that perhaps to outsiders more than insiders people can be recognized by the level of input they've put in over the weeks/months/years/decades into SB. For instance those newish members *cough BB1987* who just appear and make a metric crap ton of progress as soon as they arrive. Gist of what I'm trying to get to is that all people that are equal are not equal.
And now the waiting game before Colosseum hits me with a stick.

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AU Projects: | Banbha et al. | New England: The Divided States
Blood and Fire

Basically Colosseum is saying: "There are no need for medals in the army!"

The ranks have always been somewhat trouplesome and too vaguetly presented. In otherhand the apparent seniority affects on some of the promoted ones, and some have been judged purely becouse of the skill.
I've always wanted the things to be that the premium members would be the class of drawers that are active and contributes the bulk of our work, and their skills as drawers are to be so that they don't need guidance and help anymore, but can make their own judgement over the artistical issues and aide newcomers and other artists still-in-learning with confidence.
Elite membership I've always considered something preserved to those who have really taken the SB style foward and created it and their example as artists has guided us to make the style what it is now. It should require some level of seniority, suberp skill and commitment to our common cause. People who are elite-members, should proudly go out elsewhere in internet and say: "we are the Shipbucket", they are the ones who's art stands all critisism and their work is what against all other work is judged and compared. Unlike many usually thinks, our elite-members are more entitled to be the core of Shipbucket, than for-example, us staff members. Some of us would be in elite-level if not in staff though, but the main reason why people are green is that they are the managers and conducters to keep this thing going on, and the blue ones are to lead everyone towards our glorius future. But without elite-members and the work of premium members we would not get there.

That said, the ranking still seems bit inadequate. We have lot of active members, that are perhaps not the most skilled artists, but yet have huge commitment to our mutual hobby, and are making their own effort with pure intentions and with full of heart, helping others and thus filling their rank and role among us. The orginal membership ranks fits poorly into todays situation and where we are and what we perhaps wanted to achieve with them.
In some ways I echo colo's thoughts, that the ranks are not that nesserical. They have always been rewards of some sort, and in couple of sadder instance, we have had to demote people when their forum conduct has clearly put the entire member group into shame.

Lately, i've been toyed with idea of replacing the ranks with some sort of "medals", to be given in properly honour-title fashion and so on, but how to actually implement it, is still something that needs more thougths. In idea it would be, that we as staff would give these medals from all sort of contributions, and we could customise them lot more suited to each special efforts and role, as well as having their own ranks and whatever assorted. Just a thougth still...but all ideas and discussion about this whole thing is indeed open.

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Shipbucket mainsite, aka "The Archive"
New AU project "Aravala"

Maybe in form of ribbon bars just under Location in avatar space.

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Nobody expects the Imperial Inquisition!

yea, or we(kim & CoA gang) could make sort of mini-medals, people could add with normal img tags to their signatures... Some forums I've been does seem to have ability add that sort of things into the members profile section, but Im not sure if its possible with this one.

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Shipbucket mainsite, aka "The Archive"
New AU project "Aravala"

Simple Machines Forums has an awards system, which is fairly easy, though time consuming, to modify. As far as phpBB, I am not familiar with this software, so any assistance I might provide there would be limited.

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World's Best Okayest Author and Artist

My preference would be to remove the colored names (except I would keep the Admin color in place), and move to a user rank system. It's already included in the current phpBB system, and would be easy to allow certain members to pick their title (more work for us on the staff, but not much). There are extensions to phpBB for such things.

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𝐌𝐀𝐓𝐇𝐍𝐄𝐓- 𝑻𝒐 𝑪𝒐𝒈𝒊𝒕𝒂𝒕𝒆 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒕𝒐 𝑺𝒐𝒍𝒗𝒆

Personally I like the system as it is now, and it's minimalistic form - simple colored names - looks to me very dignified and non-bragging (sorry, but I don't know how to express it differently) - like in "we're good, we know it about each other and don't need to childishly use fancy ranks or medals to boost our egos".

I admit, that could be indeed use for some enlargement of the current ranking system (like adding "newcomer/rookie/etc." as entry-level grade before proceeding to "regular member", for example), or maybe to add certain honorary titles given as recognition for some particular, individual services to the community (like Kim Werners work with CoA's, or Acelanceloet's with parts sheets, or like with somebody spending much time and effort on helping newbies etc.) that can't be properly expressed by standard color titles, and which could be inserted (for example) where Gollevainen and Colosseum have "Site Admin" and TimothyC have "Chief Engineer" (above avatar).

As for the ranks or medals themselves, my unenthusiastical opinion about the idea comes from two issues.
One is that if they were to be real life ranks/medals, then it would raise a question "why of this particular country/service and not some other", and if they were fictional then - as I saw it in few places - could look crappily (although I'm sure that it wouldn't be the case if KimWerner would be doing it - but that's not the point).
Second, and actually more important, is that ranks or decorations (esp. if they were to be real ones) are something for which real people in real world pay with blood - very often their own, and I would feel it somewhat disrespectful to them.

I don't mean by medals, that we should stick to too purifically into some real medals,...by shape or form, they could be anything between parrot-stamps to heraldic jibberish, just that the purpose of them would be something akin to real life medals; nice decorations from some achievements that in the end don't tell or mean much but in other side of the coin - could mean everything.
But like i said, its just a tougth slowly forming in my mind.

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Shipbucket mainsite, aka "The Archive"
New AU project "Aravala"

my toughts are much like that of Eswube.

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My Worklist
Sources and documentations are the most welcome.

-Koko Kyouwakoku (Republic of Koko)
-Koko's carrier-based aircrafts of WWII
-Koko Kaiun Yuso Kaisha - KoKaYu Line (Koko AU spinoff)
-Koko - Civil Aviation