Ability for Team Leader to:

1. delete posts.
2. mail all members once a month max.

And perhaps:

Ability for Team Leader to award 2 new "generic" team mini-badges to his/her team members as he/she sees fit. So team leaders can create contests, reward players for participating, etc etc.

I will also implement code to prevent "team jumping" where players leap from team to team in a short period of time.

Hmmm... would it be possible that those team minis could also have the graphics designed/submitted by the team leader much as we have it for the banners?

This way, teams could personalize them and make them more special. (Of course teams can always use the generic design by not submitting anything)

If this could get implemented, these two minis should also be lost when changing teams.

(By the way - how would a team leader get these without an abuse chance? Should in this case a different team member request them through a message to a "team moderator" - a handful of staff who could award them to members of any team? That would also make it possible for teams without a functional leader to host competitions and get them)

I think the "team moderator" is a good idea Wesley. The Team Leader can't really award him/herself a badge, just wouldn't be right. If it was kept to awarding it to team leaders on request from a team member, and anyone in a team on request from a member where there isn't a functional leader, then hopefully it wouldn't cause too much work for the moderator(s) after the initial rush.

On the design of the badglets, presumably these would have to be submitted for approval as the banners had to be?

That's exciting news! Great ideas. As a team leader, I would like to thank you for that. Nice mix of both useful and fun stuff. I love the idea of not being able to jump from team to team. You spend so much time writing personal invitations to people and then welcome letters explaining everything to them in detail to make everything as simple as possible, and then you never see them again. Not even as much as a note to let you know they have decided to leave. Looking forward to the new stuff. Thanks again.

Of course they would have to be approved - we can't allow any images not clearly tied to an individual member to go online unmoderated and there would also have to be a bit of a style guide (e.g. no photos, single colored or soft 2-color gradient background) to ensure they are instantly recognizable as badgelets.

The "badgelet" idea is still just in the idea phase. I will be doing the other items first.

There are a number of issues to consider for the badgelet. I also don't want it to be overdesigned (uploading/accepting images, etc etc) since it will be such a minor detail.

I'd be happy with just a generic design if the badgelet comes into being.

I think it's fabulous if the team leader (or designate) has the ability to delete notes from message boards (assuming they are at member request). It would of course be great if we could edit the ones we posted ourselves, but "team leader delete" would be a wonderful first step : )

Excellent idea, Terry! Two thumbs up from me!

Great additions! Thanks, Terry.

Looking forward to these additions.

Yes, appreciated. The majority of us are mature enough to avoid upsetting our own apple carts.

Thanks, Terry. Much appreciated

This would be fantastic. It will be nice to find things on our message boards.

One question I have concerning the editing the message boards. Would it be limited to just individual posts, or could a person eliminate an entire thread? The problem with my team's message board is the number of zero shelf life threads we have.

Thanks, Terry - sounds wonderful!

I think all of these new additions would be great.

Here is something I don't see addressed. I absolutely agree that "team jumpers" are annoying, at best. They just take up time and energy without adding anything to the team before they leap to a new one.

However, what about team leaders who let just anyone in, and then toss new players out at will or on a whim, or whatever their criteria is to make that "tossing" decision? I have seen wide open teams where a great many of the newer team members are already gone, and generally now "teamless." Maybe they left on their own in just one or a few days of play, or maybe they were tossed out by the team leader who decided, in that short amount of time, that they just didn't meet their requirements for team play.

I do think tossing new team members is a problem, especially for new FT members. Being dumped on the side of the e-road can't be fun, and it's definitely not nice. Is this also something that might be addressed, along with the "team jumper" problem?

Thanks. I do look forward to input on this.

~Elle

Oh dear. It might be difficult to try to come up with a "formula" (aka how many times a player is "allowed" to change teams over a certain time period before they're considered to be a "jumper").

Sometimes people aren't really "up to no good". Perhaps they're just trying to find a "good fit".

My ladie's soccer team is a case in point. Some of the "founding members" (ie those that were "there" when the league was inaugurated) got very upset when people left for various reasons. Some people joined other teams because a) they wanted more emphasis on skills b)training c) upper echelon d) more social interaction e) more drinking lol f) their husbands didn't think they should be having so much fun without them or g) switched to ladies ice hockey instead. My attitude always was "live and let live". People join for different reasons and they leave for different reasons as well.

I'm not (personally) aware of team leaders kicking folks out for "non performance", but if that really happens, that's quite sad. However, I'm not sure there's an equitable/definable/enforcable "solution" there either. I'd like to think that when folks first form a team, they'd just like some decent, friendly folks to join. I'd hate to punish folks for joining and subsequently leaving teams that DIDN'T actively practice that attitude/acceptance.

If it really is a "problem" (in either direction) then that is unsettling. I have no idea what a practical "fix" might be, but hey, there are many better minds than mine around here LOL

I may be one of those team leaders that you guys are referring to. I am the fourth leader of my team and when I took it over we had close to 350 members, and I now have 127. There were members who had not participated in a year and I removed them. If a player just plays games and quizzes but never chats, I'm fine with that or if they don't play much but they are active on the message board then that's fine too, but if they don't do either, I cannot see the point in keeping them on the team. I can never understand why someone would even bother joining a team if they aren't going to participate in any matter at all.

I don't kick off new members unless they have been on for a long time and never participated, but I do have it stated in writing that players who do not contribute in one way or another will be removed, so at least they are fully aware of it, rather than just tossing them with no explanation, as that would be unfair.

I am careful about it to the point where I have a spreadsheet going to keep track. Unfortunately, when you look a player up, the last date seen will always be today's date if they never log off, so on my sheet, I have a column for points/ team points, so if that number hasn't changed in say six months, then I know they aren't participating. I have had people join play one day and never come back again, so I can't see a point in keeping them around. I always thought other teams removed nonparticipating members, but now that I have read the posts, I'm wondering if I'm the only one who does it. I know the leader before me didn't do it, but the leader before her had a 3 month rule.

I'm curious now to see what other team leaders do. Hopefully there will be some more input on this subject, so maybe I can learn something.

Good heavens, nycdmc. As per your reasons/stated expectations at time of joining, I personally don't think anyone would accuse you of being a bad/mean/empire-building-at-all-costs type of leader. If folks really aren't playing for extended periods of time and have never sent you a message along the lines of "I'm on sabbatical in a foreign country" or "I just had a baby" or "I just had major surgery" or "a family member is ill or has died" (or whatever), then you shouldn't feel the slightest bit guilty : )

I think you probably deserve respect instead. I can't even imagine trying to juggle 350 players!

I presume (not that that is ever a good thing lol) that Blackdresss was perhaps referring to leaders who might appear to be expelling players who've only "just joined" if they didn't (immediately) meet (non-pre-stated) criteria. Her mileage may vary, of course : )

Thank you Jakeroo, I appreciate the reply, and you're quite funny. I love funny people. Yes 350 people was a bit much. I realize different leaders look for different things and have different goals for their team. The team leader before me had more of an emphasis on the size of the team, whereas I don't care about having a large team. I think I prefer smaller numbers and hopefully more productive players. We have now 127 members with 80 active players, whereas before it was 350 members with 145 active players.

Thanks again for putting my mind at ease and not let me think I was some type of ruthless dictator.

I have a very small and new team. It is actually the second one I started. With the first, I gave inactive folks a bit more than a month before I removed them. I posted and asked for signs of life in the short time I had that team, to no avail. I had one player who consistently played. I got disgusted and instead of kicking folks out, I disbanded the team. I thought of asking if someone wanted it, but judging from previous attempts at posts, I decided to just disband. My new team is small also, but are active enough that I know they are not hooked up a life support system. After reading your thoughts, I think I lean towards Attila the Hun mixed with Dr. Mordeau.

That sounds like a good balance to me. I have posted on our message board that members will be removed after 3 months of no participation. I feel that's fair. I also let them know that if they know in advance that they won't be around for an extended period of time to please drop me a note, so I make a notation on my spreadsheet, and they will not be removed. Reading back over my posts, and my spreadsheet action, it seems I may have a wee bit too much time on my hands.

Imagine that! This is wonderful news and will be a good thing for all.

What happens with some new members is that they join the site, leap in to join a team but haven't validated their email address when registering so are unable to post on the team board or to respond to any Direct Messages sent to them.

Then you get people who join a team then stop coming to the site although are still members.

That's interesting Sue, I didn't know that. Thanks for the information. Are they able to read the message board and not able to post, or can they not access the board at all?

They can see the message board but if they attempt to post a reply they will get...

"Please Validate your Email Address
In order to ensure that we are able to contact you and to reduce the problem of users creating many accounts, we require that all users verify their email address the first time that they post a message, create a quiz, or create a blog on FunTrivia.

We will immediately send a confirmation email to the address you specify below. In that email will be a link. As soon as you click on the link your account will have access to post messages and quizzes on the FunTrivia.com website.

** Please check in your BULK or SPAM directory if an email does not arrive within 15 minutes."

Then they will see the registered email address and there is a link which will send an email to that email address in case they had deleted the one sent on registration.

Oh OK, I was asking so that if necessary I would have created a post to let people know to validate their email, but obviously that won't be necessary since they get the message. It's been so long since I joined I didn't remember any of that. Thanks for the refresher

I don't think it was necessary to validate your email address before being able to post back when you joined. It is something introduced a few years ago.

Most users who really mean it validate immediately without thinking anyway. In fact, if a team leader could see whether a user is validated, it would probably help decide whether to delete them on regular purges. (I deleted over 600 members over time - anyone who has not logged in for a year and isn't at least level 10 is being removed. More than half the members fell into that group - of course most of that was from the time the Cat People were still a generic "public group".)