Moderators, modders and community reps. Plus some handy new site features.

Hello everyone. No Mutants Allowed has seen some changes over the past couple of months and I thought it would be good to let people know what's changed so far. First up, I wanted to talk about Moderators, Modders and Community Reps. Secondly, I would like to highlight some of the new features available on the site which give you several more options about how you use NMA.

Moderators, Modders and Community Reps:

No Mutants Allowed is an old site that's seen quite a few seasons in the gaming community. As with any place that ages, people have come and people have gone. Over time, moderators have disappeared or steadily become less frequent a presence within the community. This is especially true in what you might call the "dry season" of Fallout content. As people have disappeared, they have not been replaced. That is changing however. We have plenty of 'young blood' and a large number of active contributing members within the site. We would like to promote and revitalize the community by offering site roles to people who are interested in getting a little more involved with No Mutants Allowed. We would also like to distinguish contributing members (modders) from regular users, so that people will know at a glance what their involvement with NMA is. To that effect, we have added three new user groups with unique name colours, two of which are now open for application.

Community Reps:

A community rep is an ambassador of No Mutants Allowed. A level-headed and mature individual with an inherent propensity for saying hello and answering questions out of the goodness of their heart, for no other reason than they just want too. They are most likely a pretty nice person, on and off the internet. If we saw you on another forum, it's unlikely that we would find you telling people to eat dicks by the bag full. Community rep is a title and blue colour that says "You are a trusted person within this community" and conveys to other users that you can be trusted, could answer a question if they're lost or are otherwise just a swell individual. When someone logs into No Mutants Allowed to talk about how Fallout 3 was their favourite game ever and they are being burned at the stake by every other user, they are the ones that will offer a bucket of water and whisper gently in their fire singed ears that everything will be alright.

What are the responsibilities of the community rep?:
If the above wasn't descriptive enough, it's essentially just to be helpful and positive and likely what you're already doing if you want to be a rep. A community rep does not receive any special powers, other than the distinguishing colour. There is no requirement to be here all the time, though it is preferred if you log in or participate at least once or twice a week. People should probably already know who you are.

People that do well as community reps and who show interest in taking it to the next level have the opportunity to be moderators of the forums. This is a possible and optional role for people with a good track record who are interested in being more involved.

Modders:

There are a ton of modders here and people actively and frequently mod a number of the Fallout games on NMA. For the first time ever, we would like to offer modders the option of being distinguished from regular users for their modding contributions. This will let other users know that you are involved in modding and perhaps lead people to inquire further about the kind of work you do or what mods you've made available. This is an optional group and many modders may simply not want to be known as a modder for one reason or another. If you do wish to be a part of the modding group, we shall 'make it so'.

Moderators:

Nothing has really changed here except we've endowed moderators with distinguishing name colours. Now you can actually know who the moderators are instead of just guessing.


New Site Features:

We've added a host of new features to No Mutants Allowed to help you get the most out of your NMA experience.

User tagging:

It's not just for Facebook and Twitter anymore. No Mutants Allowed allows you to tag other users with the '@' symbol which will send them an inbox notification and let them know they were mentioned in a thread. This is helpful for drawing someone's attention to a post that they otherwise may not be watching. It is straight forward and easy to use:



Increased avatar sizes:

No longer are you shackled to the 100x125 avatar restriction of old. Avatar limits have been bumped up to 180x225:



"Thank you" buttons for help forums:

Want to thank someone for helping you out but don't want to write a post just to do it? You can now thank individuals with the Facebook-esque 'thank you' button. Available in the modding and game help forums:



Sign in to NMA using your Facebook or Steam account:

Logging into a hundred different places sucks, especially if you use a different password everywhere. We've added the ability to tie your forum account to an existing logon with Steam or Facebook and will potentially be adding additional platforms for authentication. To date, just under 500 users have started to make use of this feature! Very handy if you've always got Facebook open anyway.



User created groups:

One of the cooler features available now is the ability to create 'groups' that are either public, private or moderated. Groups are your own isolated section of the site where you can host discussions, discuss projects or basically do whatever you want as you'll be administrator of any group you create. Groups can be found under the 'community' menu:



And here's what they look like:



Inside the group:

 

We'll always have those! They just won't be community reps. It wouldn't be NMA without a bunch of hate filled mongrels roaming the threads.

 

My general philosophy has just been to fling new ideas at the site and see which ones stick and which ones don't. Trial and error. Kind of fun though.

If @alec was interested then sure.