A idea involing the Admiral's Lounge

[Illidan Stormrage]

So recently i thought about the Admiral's Lounge. Its nice how it works and all. I like that the more dedicated fans get access to behind the scenes stuff.
But i have notice some problems with it:
1. People have been exploting the Lounge for the soul reason of getting access to stuff like the Beta tests. This somewhat bothers me.
2. All it serves as is a access pass to stuff behind the scenes.

 I personally think it should be expanded so we can have a personnel chat for the Admirals and beyond to discuss stuff in a more hardcore fasion. For Example in this chat people like Lord Xizer, Dave, Mr.Puerto, and me who are hardcore fans can discuss things in a more hardcore manor and maybe we could make it where the admirals can have a version of the chat box that only they can access. This would give the idea of being member of the Admiral's Lounge a much more fun and interesting idea.


Alternatively we could have a Grand Admiral's Lounge with all the same stuff except the testing stuff(unless Corey wants to change how internal testing is done.)

[Slornie]

So recently i thought about the Admiral's Lounge. Its nice how it works and all. I like that the more dedicated fans get access to behind the scenes stuff.
But i have notice some problems with it:
1. People have been exploting the Lounge for the soul reason of getting access to stuff like the Beta tests. This somewhat bothers me.
2. All it serves as is a access pass to stuff behind the scenes.

People always try to cheat past controls like post-gates, and honestly this week hasn't even been that bad.  And on such a small and generally quiet forum (there's normally never more than a handful of discussions going on at a time) it can be hard to genuinely build up a high post count.  That's partly why the AL has such a low barrier of entry anyway (originally Admiral rank required 125 posts).  We also don't want to overly punish those infrequent posters who are equally invested in the mod (particularly now there are such diverse ways to engage, e.g. ModDB, Discord, Corey's Youtube channel).

When I joined (in the mists of time now) it took me a month to reach the current threshold for the Admiral's Lounge, and three months to reach the actual threshold.  And looking at the forum stats the forum was almost twice as busy that year as it has been in any year since (including last year and so far this).  EDIT: Even after 11+ years of the forum there are only about 60 people who would have access to the original post-rank required for the AL, let alone going higher.

I personally think it should be expanded so we can have a personnel chat for the Admirals and beyond to discuss stuff in a more hardcore fasion. For Example in this chat people like Lord Xizer, Dave, Mr.Puerto, and me who are hardcore fans can discuss things in a more hardcore manor

I don't think the post-gated MO and AL subforums are the place for this.  Just because someone hasn't posted much doesn't mean they aren't a "hardcore" fan or would be interested in reading, or contributing to, lore discussions.

and maybe we could make it where the admirals can have a version of the chat box that only they can access.

No can do.  Pretty sure the plugin only supports one global chatbox on the forum.

[Grand Admiral Rufaan Tigellinus]

I don't post on this forum nearly as much as some people, and I'm pretty far from the rank of a Grand Admiral, but I hardly see how it makes me less of a fan.

[Pali]

I don't post on this forum nearly as much as some people, and I'm pretty far from the rank of a Grand Admiral, but I hardly see how it makes me less of a fan.

It doesn't - I may hold the rank, but I don't at all think that I am a more valuable contributor to this forum than you are, and someone like kucsidave has quite literally gone from being a brand new forum personality to a vital team member just in the time period covering me being counted as an "admiral"-level or better poster - he's contributed to the mod a significantly, massively greater degree than I have in a fraction of the time that I've been a regular participant on these forums (which has been what, 5 years or so now?  Longer?).  Simple post counts have never been how the team here have judged community contributions, at least not from my perspective.  At best I give semi-regular feedback, and that's somehow enough that I was offered the position of an official beta tester, and I'm not going to even try to pretend that I've lived up to that title as well as I'd have liked to... so I can promise that simply being labeled a grand admiral, or a tester, by the forum software is NOT how one should judge the quality of their contributions to discussions here.

It may not mean much, Tierce, but as far as I'm concerned you and I are of equal rank.

I don't think a separate chat for admiral's lounge-rated members is needed, nor do I think it would bring much in the way of benefits.  As someone who is not on Discord, and whose primary interactions with the Thrawn's Revenge community occur here on this forum, I certainly have a bias toward supporting community activity based around this forum and its chatbox and other social amenities (private messages, levels of forum access, etc.)... but, cognizant of that bias as I am trying to be, I fail to see how a separate chat/forum would benefit the mod in any significant way.  What would it add that cannot already be supported by the current forum?