I can easily replace the like buttons with an upvote/downvote reputation system, which would more or less achieve what you're looking for. However, we had this on 3DS Buzz back when I was still an admin there, and I spent 80% of my time moderating votes. It was a nuisance for moderators every time someone complained that their post was unfairly disliked and prompted an investigation, and I removed the system entirely because it proved to be such a waste of the staff's time. I don't want to put myself or my moderators through that ever again.

The Like system is nice and simple - it allows you to express your approval for a post when you don't have much to say about it in response, and people don't get butthurt over a positive point like they do over a negative one.

Really i didn't know the site existed until now. So really i never joined. I prefer the wii u go anyways.

Wii 2 Blog is Wii U Go. The site had a name change when the Wii U was announced in June 2011, but it had existed as Wii 2 Blog since September 2010.

It's kind of awesome how Wii U Go and this forum are about 1.5 years old already, even though the Wii U is still many months away.

Facebook reads every page that a like button is displayed on. There is a like button on every topic page, so Facebook reads the topic every time anyone opens it. Nothing to be concerned about, really.

There was a server-wide DDoS attack today. I've been monitoring it all morning long, but it appears to have subsided now. I deployed what protection I could, but there's little that can really be done about such attacks effectively short of moving to a DDoS-protected network - and that's simply not possible from a financial perspective.

I have a tool set up here that's supposed to run every registration past a massive database of known spammers, but it seemed to have been acting up. Fixed now, though, and I ran through the member list and banned every spam account I could find which had been registered in the meantime. This shouldn't be an issue anymore.

 

If, perchance, you happen to find any spam or spammers around the forums still, please report them using the report button on their posts.

Neither MLP Forums nor TheWiiU.com is even near the ballpark of being profitable enough to justify separate hosting, or being placed on a DDoS-protected network. The dedicated box they currently share is already expensive enough as it is, and is powerful enough to absorb smaller attacks to some degree without going down completely. When it's not under attack (which, let's be honest, is almost all the time - attacks don't happen all that often), it's an incredibly fast server that can take thousands of users simultaneously.

DDoS attacks can happen to anyone; and considering how many Nintendo haters are out there, I would not rule out the possibility of a direct attack on TheWiiU.com at some point in the future. Separating the sites wouldn't do anything to make us DDoS-proof.

I can't see this happening, realistically. Apart from the fact that it isn't technically possible with IP.Chat, the ability to "like" chat messages sounds like it will bring a lot more bad behaviour than good.

I put together a countdown timer to Nintendo's press conference at E3, where (among other things) we expect to finally get a look at some real Wii U games.

Here are the embed codes, ready for copypasta!

BBCode (for forum posts and signatures)

[url=http://wiiugo.com/][img]http://wiiugo.com/countdown/e3.png[/img][/url]

HTML (for websites and blogs)

<a href="http://wiiugo.com/" title="Wii U News"><img src="http://wiiugo.com/countdown/e3.png" title="Wii U E3 Countdown" /></a>

It would be really cool to see it spread around all over this forum and even on other sites, so feel free to use it anywhere you like! Don't worry about sparing my bandwidth - I've got a dedicated server with oodles of it.

An arcade would necessitate an additional staff commitment to maintain properly, and to top off, isn't something I really see being all that beneficial to the goal of TheWiiU.com to be a discussion forum. In a time when the staff power around here seems to be going missing in action, it's not a terribly smart idea to add additional burdens when the existing responsibilities aren't being attended to properly.

I agree with you, Auzzie, that vague topic titles don't help anyone. They're not good for SEO, either, as search engines will be just as clueless over the meaning of "more news" as a member browsing the place.

The good news is, renaming topics is very easy. If you feel a topic's title should be modified, please file a report (and try to include a suggested replacement title with your report) and a mod will take a look.

Plus, people are now using the general discussion more for gaming topics even more.

People shouldn't be posting gaming topics in the general discussion section to begin with. Please report any such topics you see and they'll be moved to their proper place pronto.

IP.Chat isn't exactly known for being reliable. If you get kicked out for inactivity, just hop back in. Unfortunately, there isn't much more that can be done about it because it doesn't run on servers I control.

Most people are too lazy/disorganised/dumb to access that, Nollog. It's a win for people like us who do use it, but you can't expect every forum goer to do the same.

That said, I agree with the TC. But we should only do it when it starts to really show.

Is it really that difficult to click the big "View New Content" button at the top of every page on the site?

I don't want to increase the number of topics shown in the sidebar hook in the interest of keeping the board index nice and clean. MLP Forums is about 25 times more active than TheWiiU.com, and having 5 topics in the sidebar hasn't been a problem for anyone.

Creating a good-looking custom theme isn't as simple as waving a stick. Back when David and I first agreed to share this forum between our blogs, we discussed hiring a professional designer and splitting the cost of getting a custom theme made. I haven't heard back on him on the matter since, however, so I've been considering designing a new theme myself. That's gonna take some time, however.

I don't really want to use a pre-made theme because I see them a lot on other sites and I want TheWiiU.com to look unique once we do get around to putting a fresh coat of paint on it. I'm financially able to purchase one, however, and it would be a much faster way to remodel the place than me making a theme myself.

...Aren't illegal. They have a huge community surrounding them with many people that would gladly be active members on this site. I really don't understand the reasoning behind not allowing people to talk about these subjects - many equivalent websites dedicated to particular consoles allow this. This ban on talking about modding is turning people away from this site, and making it a less interesting place. I'm fine with us not being allowed to talk about things that are illegal (for example drugs, hacking) but please consider lifting this ban - or at least talk to us about it.

The reason for the ban on such subjects is because Nintendo and their third-party developers generally frown upon hacking/modding/homebrew in general, and openly allowing such discussion might give the site negative points in their books and scare off potential advertisers.

I'm willing to make a few concessions, though, because of our high search engine rankings and position as the world's largest Wii U community. I'll lift that rule for now, and we'll see what kinds of discussions crop up as a result. Any discussion of ROM's/images or piracy would still be a strict taboo - you'll have to keep it exclusively to homebrew.

For the time being, I agree. But once the Wii U comes out it will probably be the same as the 3DS Forums. Full of trolls and unfunny jokers wanting to get some likes by putting down the respected console.

(Not pointing any fingers or hating on the forums, mind you readers of this post)

Just saying, trolling and putting down a console would get you suspended or banned here.

so why not add more moderator's to keep a strict control over the conversation of grey area modding. i honestly beleive some things are worth discuss but eh i joined knowing what the rule's were so its understandable if they never change.

Only having one moderator on a forum with almost 1,500 people is pretty crazy to me though.

Of those 1500+ members, somewhere between 100-150 or so are actually active. With 100-200 posts per day, moderating this place should not require a large staff team.

This change was intentional. That list wasn't all too useful, so I killed it. It looks like most of the feedback on this has been positive, so it's not coming back in the foreseeable future.

This isn't technically possible to accomplish with IP.Board in its current state, but it looks like what's needed to request the feature has been done. It's up to IPS to make the change now, which will require a fundamental refactoring of the notifications system.

I believe I got this fixed. The original CSS for the header turned out to be a little funky, and had to be approached a different way to achieve the same visual effect without creating that horizontal scrolling on occasion.

Is MLPF moving with us?

MLP Forums was moved to the new server Sunday morning. It was the "guinea pig" of the migration, so to speak.

I know you hate the idea of sharing server space with a pony forum, Nollog; but TheWiiU.com would be on a cheap shared hosting package if it wasn't for MLP Forums (and you may remember how well that worked the last time we had 400+ users online at once). It's because of MLPF that all my other sites enjoy the luxury of a high-end dedicated server.

The migration was completed without a hitch and the search engine has been reconfigured on the new server. Enjoy!

Heads up! I'll be moving TheWiiU.com to a shiny new server in a little less than 15 hours. It has identical specs to the current one, but is running the latest versions of CentOS, Sphinx, and PHP; the latter two boast some pretty incredible improvements in performance and resource efficiency.

This is already a pretty fast site, but the new server will make even faster.

Maintenance will begin at 11:00 PM Pacific Time (GMT-8) and is expected to take approximately 30 minutes.

There is an add-on available for IP.Board that adds "social groups" managed by members, but I really don't see the point of adding them. In my experience, such groups never get any significant amount of activity; and will do more to segregate and split apart the site's community than bring it together.

One creative group was the founding fathers on the 3DS forums. It was an invite only group that only allowed members that joined before a specific date, I think September 2010. Maybe we could have a group similar to that? Just a different time frame?

It's exactly things like these that I want to avoid. Being forever ineligible to be part of a group will inevitably cause members to feel excluded, as if they'll never have a chance of being part of "the club". It's difficult enough as it is to convince new members to an established forum that their contributions matter; social groups and cliques aren't going to help at all.

Thanks feld0, just wondering if this will change the apperance of the site at all?

No. I'm just moving the site to a new server - nothing is being changed. Everything will look and work exactly as it does now.

The only visible change this may bring is faster response times, as the new server is running newer and better versions of just about everything.

Threads usually evolve from the OP's idea into a communal discussion. Giving the OP the power to end or remove a discussion they happened to start at any time doesn't serve any useful purpose. In the event that a discussion gets out of hand and needs to be moderated, anyone (including the OP) can and is encouraged to use the report system to let a moderator know about it. They can then lock or remove the thread as needed.

 

 

 

However I was very surprised when i first joined this forum and found out you couldnt delete your own posts or your own threads. I've been a member of several forums over the past couple of years and almost all of them allowed you to delete your own content. And all those forums have been successful. I'm not sure why this forum doesnt allow you to do this.

 

Every community is different. If you have a legitimate reason to have a post or thread removed, report it with the report system and make your case in the report form. Users previously had the ability to remove their own posts here, and all I saw the privilege being used for was removing perfectly legitimate content for no discernible reason.

the only way to measure to truly prove which is powerful over another is a game looks better over each console for exacption Batman: Arkham City/ Armored Edition,

Even that isn't an accurate assessment of a console's power. Some developers are more experienced with one console than another and will thus be able to make a better-looking game on it.

The "Console A is X times more powerful than Console B" statement is a fallacy. While it is clearly possible to peg the Xbox 360 as more powerful than, say, the Nintendo 64, it is impossible to accurately quantify the actual difference in power in a single statement like that. There are far too many variables and differences both large and minute between most hardware systems to make such a comparison reliable.

There are times when such a comparison is possible - for instance, you can get a pretty good idea of just how much more powerful an Intel E5 processor is over an Intel E3 - but it gets increasingly more difficult to do so as the complexity of the hardware in question increases (comparing two CPU's is very different from comparing two complete consoles).

This is pretty exciting. Although we likely won't see the Linux version of the Steam client for a while, it's great to hear that Valve are actively working on porting it and the Source engine over. I have been considering a switch to Linux for some time; and although I'm aware that the vast majority of Steam's library won't be playable at launch, having the framework in place for Linux software delivery opens the door for developers to port their efforts over as well.