Your Thoughts: New Muppet Central Forum

...not to mention those who will WANT to access this forum only to find they CAN'T...

...not to mention those who will WANT to access this forum only to find they CAN'T...

I like it alright I guess, but i find it harder to read. Also there's no stats... no post count for each member. These are little perks, I think that members like.

Well i think that we could do one of two things to see the changes we want here at MC.

1. We could start a potiin or a each one of us write a letter saying that we would like changes to be made and where.

2. We could boycot the forum! I really don't want to do that because I really do want to see the site grow, but at what cost.
I honestly feel that if our voice gets louder (meaning more people join) things will have to change. I mean it would not be the first time fans have been able to get more for of what they wanted. So let me know.

Final Forum Fury From Frogboy

Wow! I did not expect my words to carry quite so much weight. It was not my intention to sound so harsh or disturb anyone. I'm not really angry as much as disappointed for everybody here.

I just see so many talented people who have been silenced on the website and it's sad. I'd love to see some fan art, cards, reviews, articles and whatnot all over the website and that could have been happening for several years now, but hasn't because the webmaster was reluctant to relinquish the minimal amount of control that would require.

All this time people have been submitting articles, asking about the cards section and other neglected sections of the site. Instead of sufficiently addressing any of these items, I was asked to completely redraw all of the already pixel-perfect smiley faces because they were two pixels too large. I was also asked to remake many of the the little radio icons because they the character arrangements weren't ideal. I finally snapped and haven't snapped back since.

I'll still be posting around the forum and this is (hopefully) my final word on the subject (thank frog). I commend the 1998 team of people who started Muppet Central and Phillip for at least keeping the forum running. I'm just disappointed by what I find to be a profound lack of integrity that has affected all of us for quite some time. I hope it improves around here, but I can't be a graphic design contributor anymore. There's not one person who used to work for Muppet Central who doesn't know exactly what I'm talking about.

Wrapping it up. I've said my peace. I plan to stop discussing MC's easily avoidable shortcomings and focus on the great things about MC - the fantastic people here. I actually do like everybody here. Yes, everybody.

I'm trying to upload an animated avatar and it doesn't seem to work Does anyone know the fourm can use animated gifs?

meh...now that I know what to do to log in its not as bad, but a mobile format would still be nice. I will eventually try to upload an avatar from my phone as it appears I may be able to...personally I'd rather not see animated avatars. People tend to not know what is acceptable animation and animation that makes you want to gouge your eyes out.

anyway I cant give a valid opinion about the forum until I see it on a computer, and my computer and its dial up is extremely unreliable.

If anyone really needs me, you can send a message on deviantart. dont comment, send a message, I dont want people knowing my buisness.

GOOD JOB GUYS! you really did a great job on this, and I like this new look A LOT BETTER!

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There. A LINE that separates posts. Those of us with poor eyesight (and quite a few others, I'm betting) HATE the crowded, post-on-top-of-post look.

I encourage anyone else who is as irritated with that as I am to do this as well...
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My turn to vent:
Phil...I've NEVER complained about how MC was made. So this is my first time. I was posting something in Muppet Games (in Hensonville to be exact) It normally takes me 5 minutes to post something in there. But I had mess with the italics ,bold & underline for over 15 minutes. Also what's with the numbers with the colors?
Also the "follow" thing is back,but I deleted the people who seemed to be following me.
Other than that it looks OK.

Kathy, I think the "follow" thing is actually what usto be our old buddy list, because I noticed that the people I apparently follow are the people who were on my buddy list, so I assume those who follow you are people who have put you on their buddy lists.

I think I figured out what this new forum reminds me of...the editing portion of wordpress/tumblr/blogspot. I at least love how we can FINALLY post pictures, for a decade that annoyed me that that was turned off. But I'd really hate if anyone left or stopped coming as often because of the format

i agree with what someone said that i miss the post counts and little bits like that...maybe updrage want it says under our names , the poster ranks,to some sorta of Muppet quirks

example from the Anime Boston Forums:
Forum Rankings wrote:

-0 posts: I'm New!

-5 posts: Getting the Hang of This...

- 25 posts: Experienced Poster

- 50 posts: Expert Poster

- 100 posts: Veteran Poster

- 200 posts: Determined Poster

- 300 posts: Dedicated Poster

- 400 posts: Obsessed Poster

- 500 posts: Committed Poster

- 750 posts: I'm Special!

- 1000 posts: Show-Off

- 1500 posts: Tom Selleck Fan Club Member

- 2000 posts: Probably should be on AB staff

- 2500 posts: Needs a purpose in life

- 3000 posts: There's life outside the forums?

- 3500 posts: I'm a panda!

- 4000 posts: ????

- 4500 posts: I got blisters on me fingers!

- 5000 posts: ????

I think people are posting less regardless because of the user-unfriendliness so that kind of takes care of itself. I don't think a boycott is the answer because when one considers such an action they have to weight what they want to acheive and want a boycott will end up doing - it's the community and the people that make the site what it is (thus it should be our say as to what bulletin board should be used, not one person who made a disastrous decision that affects the thousands of us).

What action can one take to express displeasure and a quasi-demand to get vBulletin back (which could implement its own upgrades and changes while being accessable to all and much easier to use than this XenZero garbage) I offer one possible suggestion:

What's the #1 thing we always get pounded into our heads about how to support MC? Purchase Muppet products through the Amazon portels here. Thus if you are disgusted with the change and their discriminatory impacts, refuse to use the MC Amazon portels - instead go to Amazon direct without an MC filter or pathway (actually i reccomend avoiding Amazon when possible anyway as they're really quite evil as a company but that's another matter altogether) But if you must use Amazon, don't use them via Muppetcentral until and unless we get vBulletin back.

DW: friendly advice... take a chill pill.

What's done is done... we can whine, rant, complain, balk at, riot against the new forum all we want, but that's not going to switch MC back to vBulletin... just like strikes didn't change YouTube's mind about forcing users to switch to new profiles two years ago, and so on and so forth.

YouTube (and most of the other major websites that made unpopular changes not supported by their users) is a major corporate enterprise with millions of faceless customers to the people who run it.

MC Forum is a relatively small user-led community where we all pretty much know each other and who the webmaster knows - we're not anonymous sheep. In concept (if not necessairily in practice), MC is very-much user-led. The forum can be changed back if the webmaster decides to based on feedback that it doesn't best serve the people it's supposed to be "for".

XenZero is essentially Muppet Fandom's New Coke: a ridiculous and wildly unsuccessful to improve something that didn't need fixing by a company trying to tell its customers what they wanted when the customers themselves already loved the established product and did not like the change. Eventually Coke did the right thing and switched back to Classic.

I think that can be fixed if they use another style that allows each post and the one that follows it to be slightly different colours?

D'Snowth! Get that giant poster sized picture outta your signature! I used to love that pictures couldn't be posted on this site because it was never messy. BoolerangFish's picture isn't too big, so not very annoying, but if Snowthers were to post ten times in a page it would be very frustrating to navigate.

Speaking of that picture Snowth. Who is that man in it if you don't mind me asking please?

Perhaps Beauregard does have a point. Could you maybe reduce it in size a little my friend?

Marty, the fellow in the pic is Abe Vigoda; he was best remembered for being in Goodfellas, but however in recent years (more like decades), he's fallen into obscurity, and he's pretty much famous now simply because he's still alive: it's become sort of a joke that because he's so old, you would think he'd be dead long before now, but he's still alive.