frm

That GIF reminds me of someone who once called me unethical for processing email lists through a 3rd-party, whilst simultaneously taking my home IP address and manually* inserting it into Cloudflare, a different 3rd party than I used, to block access, and against the Privacy Policy agreed to (but not their ToS), blurring the lines between unethical and illegal, but I can't quite put my finger on who that person is as they are a for thinking that they didn't do the same thing, but thinking to themselves that they took the "high road". * I may be wrong about "manual" if they are using DigitalPoint's Cloudflare add on. However, the rest remains true as it's blocked at the Cloudflare level, meaning my data was still sent to a 3rd party without my consent, and I have plenty of Cloudflare Ray IDs saved to make that point, when and if the time becomes necessary.

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My own. Considered switching from my own to MyBB/phpBB. I can't recall exactly which two they were, but I believe those, as they were the only free options that I could one-click install. However, after playing around with them for far too long, I reconsidered my position on an external communications platform as I wanted engagement to remain on my text-based RPG, so members wouldn't lose focus on playing too much. vB3 vB4 XF 2

You could always just drop an emoji too, if online, of course. 🔧 can work.

It would suck if the US followed suit with the "recent" age change on smoking from 18 to 21. Your post reminded me of that. Oh, how many times would I have gotten in trouble for "underage smoking"? Got my one-off underage drinking write-up to go under the table, and "out back" instead, which was a much better punishment than losing 1/2 my paycheck for 2 months. :-P

It was. You just had to not reply.

You're still arguing the same point. Let it go. Your main counter-point is an appeal to emotion as to why some (minuscule in the scope of things) merge. But, you're arguing for the minority, stating that it's insulting not to understand that. I understand it quite well, and to be Frank, I guess I'm an arrogant fool because I don't care. I'm not invested in those communities, and I wouldn't expect anyone invested in my communities to care either. Sorry you got butt-hurt over an opinion more than just Bawse (might) hold(s). 🤷‍♂️

For a professional forum, until it breaks out and creates a sub-culture of its own, I would stick with the default titles of Administrator and Moderator. For a niche community, I would start with something unique and then ask for community input later to create engagement and to solidify the culture at that point. Same would go with the user title ladder — with the option for users to customize it on their weighed on a forum by forum basis. As for me, I'll never take donations, but that would be one example of how an admin should approach it: You need to add value to that donation (or subscription), and that's the easiest to contemplate first.

The basis of your argument here was an appeal to emotion, especially when this is a rare circumstance. It's as simple as that.

My base 1G internet is included in my cellphone plans. In total, for 3 phones, and home internet, it's about $220. But we save on home internet by doing that for about $70 to $60, I can't recall how much it is alone since it's a bundle (if we drop home internet, cellphones would go up by like $50 and if we dropped a phone, internet up by like $15 or 20 or something of the sorts).

I'm not playing around and taking this as a serious business venture. My staff will have to be 14 years of age or older, with parental consent if under 18, as they will be W-2 or 1099 employees. They will serve a broader role than just a moderator on a single forum, and contribute to the entire business, be it an idea, moderation, or contribution to any of the forums under management.

Are we earning credits by bidding? If we keep bidding, our replies will pay for it at the rate of 10 credit increments...

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But, also retired and it's a hobby.

Not a stronger connection, but I recognize people by their avatars more than their usernames. That was how I was able to spot Paul not being on XenForo's forum almost immediately. I should upload my XF one here now that I think about it.

Dang, an hour late.

The only way I see it helping is if they are in the same niche and don't have a membership base with a ven diagram like this, which has been the case with the most recent mergers that I've witnessed.

You're using an emotional argument and applying it broadly to all mergers, despite it being relevant only in uncommon cases. The fact is, mergers happening within the past 3 months have, for the most part, been all small communities, and the number of mergers that have occurred in this fashion probably outweighs the number of mergers in the scenario that you proposed by a great deal. I don't know how you can take insult to 98 mergers of small forums over 2 forums that have merged over the decades. But, I'm not going there.

It does to a great deal, especially when you're made to verify your identity because your account got locked. For personal branding, sure. Some abused it with "branding" whereas its purpose was a real name, and constantly slips. They could've easily used real names. Nobody is in a phone book anymore. You can create a parasocial relationship with a name, but I don't know how effective that will be with a nickname,

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Looks like using real names in groups (arguably their solution to "forums") isn't popular, so they introduced anonymous posting (unsure when that came about, but I know it was a few years ago)... now they're introducing nicknames. The progression from real names in groups to being able to post anonymously and then now to nicknames so that anonymous users can interact in groups seems more like a regression to how forums are. It's as if they tried to reinvent the wheel and it failed. [ATTACH type=full" size="533x502]1159[/ATTACH]