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Nexus Re-activation Proposal

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Valura

Valura

Rising Star
The nexus feels a bit more empty than it did years ago. In my opinion the divide between new members and regular members is a bit too big, promotion is sometimes too slow. Required amount of votes is more based on the activity we used to see here years ago. Especially in the chat people enter the welcome area chat, and then it looks like the place is dead and they leave.

My proposals:

- Reestablish the welcoming committee. People part of that group get the power to promote instantly, of course responsibly if they are sure the new member is a good fit. There should be at least 2, potentially up to 4 or 5 people on this committee. Although I have periods of activity and periods of inactivity, I could volunteer to contribute for the job when I'm around. If you agree with my idea and you know a good candidate, feel free to suggest in this topic.
- Lower the vote threshold, to make it a bit easier to get promoted
- Remove quit and join messages from the welcome area in the chat. That room sees little activity but it is the only thing you can see as a new member. If you join and the entire page is full of quit and join messages, it feels very inactive and dead.

Basically I would love to see this place grow some more and become more active, while at the same time preventing deterioration of quality.
 
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There are a lot of great suggestions here, and overall I'd be in favor of most of them. However, a lot of this requires Trav to implement the coding work behind the scenes. Things like changing the vote threshold, removing the join/quit messages, and awarding new titles and abilities all fall to how much time and effort Trav is able to devote to making these changes. Before we lay all that on his already overburdened shoulders, let's see how much of this we can address on our own.

I think the chat issue can be handled with a simple shift in how we use the existing chat structure. So many times a new member pops in, asks if anyone is around, and leaves without so much as a greeting, meanwhile there are a dozen people active over in Hyperspace Chat completely ignoring the Welcome Area. It really just boils down to keeping an eye on the Welcome Area and taking the time to greet people when they come in. I'd say let's self elect as welcoming committee and demonstrate we are capable of living up to the title before requesting official recognitions.

For the promotions, how about a promotion recommendation thread? That way we can identify specific members who we think are deserving of promotion and give them a little extra community attention, while still maintaining the democratic check and balance process.

So my beloved nexians, ball's in your court... If you want to grow the community, come out of the back room, hang around the entry way, and take time to adopt a noob today! :d
 
Valura, I can see where you are coming from. As the only active member of the welcoming committee (there are a couple others who don't really frequent the forum anymore) I can tell you that I got this emblem simply by being friendly and consistently welcoming people. The emblem/badge appeared one day and now I wear it with honor and try to do my best at continuing to welcome the newcomers. A good chunk of my total posts are dedicated to this. I agree that it wouldn't be a bad idea to have a couple more members to help with that. I think as a whole, the community does a decent job of greeting new members in general. Since I don't have as much time to post these days as I used to, I usually just look through the intro posts and try to get a few that may have been overlooked.

I think a lot of new members get tripped up over the welcome guidelines and feel that they are limited in what they can post, get discouraged, and eventually stop coming here. I try to inform as many people as possible that new members are welcome to post about/reply to any topic ( besides Research chemicals ), simply by starting a welcome area thread titled Re: Original Thread title. Or something along those lines. I'd say the most genuine thing a person can do to become promoted is to post an introduction "essay" and tell the forum a little about themselves. Be kind, be real, be consistent, and be willing to do your own research while asking pertinent questions as needed. That is all it really takes. Posting about successful extractions and/or decently written trip reports can also go a long way.

I am fairly certain the votes of senior members, chemical experts, and welcoming committee people have more weight to them than regular full members but none of them currently have the power to instantly promote people. "Badge" members also have some moderator-type perks in the chat like swinging the ban hammer if people get too rowdy or can't follow the rules.

I'm not sure I agree with lowering the threshold for votes needed to be promoted. Yes, promotion can be slow at times but those who really want to be here and contribute make that apparent fairly quickly in most cases that I've seen. I think this system is what ultimately keeps out a lot of troll-ish behavior and people who seem to enjoy being disrespectful/disruptive to others. It is the Internet after all. That is why I love the Nexus so much. It is one of the few places on the net where respectful communication still exists. The focus on harm reduction is top notch here as well. I would hate for this place to degenerate into one of those mud-slinging psychedelic forums where people are bullies/trolls/bots and everyone is seemingly angry all the time. IMO, this is a community that has higher standards. Some call it elitist or whatever, but I think it is just being practical in this digital world we live in.

I think Dreamer042 has made some really good points as well. I like the idea of a promotion recommendation thread assuming it doesn't get abused or become a thread where people simply ask/beg to be promoted. And yes, we should all remember that Trav is just one guy maintaining this site for all of us. He is the bee's knees. Perhaps it is time to bump the The Traveler appreciation thread?

Anyway, these are just some thoughts I had on this matter and wanted to get them down. Thanks for bringing this up.
 
The password reset function is broken, fixing that might be a good start to letting old members back in through self servicing. (I hear there’s a tech backlog so just suggesting a prioritization here)

I had a heck of a time recently reconnecting here, but glad to be back in my happy place 😁
 
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