LOL, uh oh Spaghetti-Os... *looks away and whistles* In my defense, I was an active poster who couldn't keep my mouth shut before this contest started. LOL.

I think I won. If you click on the Experience tab I'm the highest non-staff member. I haven't heard anything though.

troll on "bud" \m/

and with this im done,counter with whatever drivel you see fit,the fact that I tried to say in the end who cares was an effort to neutralize this ongoing pissing match,no more,the fact that you counter every one of my posts with as much bravado as you do speaks volumes,carry on,and in your case on and on and on...

Look dude, You know me. I've been on this site before the site even looked like this. We were in this forum together before the contest.

With that being said, you have your right to say what you want but please respect the nature of this contest, the forum and it's members.

We can sit here and debate the effect of this contest on the forum but if you are really that upset then consider moving to another forum.

The Toyark staff works VERY hard to make this forum a very enjoyable experience and to create a community for a group of collectors that may not have a lot of connections in their area to work with. And I think accosting their programs, offerings and it's members is disrespecting their effort to bring us this experience.

Nevermind. I just read that it was the last 30 days only. I could've swore that part wasn't in there from the beginning, but I could be wrong.

14. No mouthing off at staff.

and

1. No trolling, or flaming.

-TOYARK STAFF.

Please stop with the negative but true connotations. What your saying may be true but keep it to yourself! If you dont like it go to one of the other sites!!!!

LOL. Oh man, this is whack, dawgs. No offense to Toyark, but seriously, I think the prize system is pretty flawed in how the winners are chosen. Might want to rework it for the next contest. I don't want to come across as an ingrate, but you know, it's kind of a slap in the face for some people who have been on here a long time. I know prizes are expensive, but maybe a raffle for the veterans for month one would've been a nice gesture or maybe a way to have given the vets a bonus chance to win? I don't know, man. Be creative. LOL. I don't think any of the newbies would've complained and if they did, they're just as lame as the bozos on DCUO who thought it was unfair that the people who bought the pre-order beta package for DCUO getting a special thank-you emblem was somehow "unfair". Just my thoughts. Don't hate on me. :p

Hey Tarq,

I respect what you have to say. I'm by no means trying to kiss ass here (not my style), I've just been the guy who was there at the beginning only to have some people who were just in it to win it come along and win it. It can be very frustrating. For example, at work, we had some annual poker tournaments and almost every year, a guest who didn't even work there would win. Or the Christmas prize raffle, when someone who didn't work at our company would win, we'd be pretty pissed.

Something along this line might have been better. But at the same time who or what qualifies someone as a veteran on the site? Anyone who was here before the contest? The year they joined? seems a little hard to pick and choose between the two. I mean I joined up before omega. But he was clearly way more active then I was. I think for them to sit there and sort through all of that would have been to much work for them

I understand what all of you guys have said. In fact everyone who just posted in actuality are veterans of Toyark and arguably only veterans are upset about this new format. We know the how old Toyark was and how new Toyark is.

And I stated earlier that I'm not a fan of this system for the same reasons that you've all stated. Spamming, stupid comments, needless threads etc etc.

Fact of the matter is is that no matter how crazy it is we should still organize our thoughts and concerns with respect towards the community and the members. And I'm only really talking about a handful of people not everyone in this regard.

Constructive criticism not hateful criticism. Yes, the way they may have organized it may have been weird and somewhat subjected to bias but remember its the first month of this happening. I'd like to wait and see a few more monthes to see if the kinks can get worked out.

In a perfect forum, I think we'd all agree that this reward is a very constructive and even fun thing to have. It just needs some modifications.

My final thought: Toyark is a great site. I'm die hard loyal to this forum and it's members, Snow, Tiberius, Do, Omega, Chris, Symbiote, Lud, Shin, Op Vader and many many many more. Lets not get into too big of a fuss over something so trivial as this.

I don't know, man. There isn't a lot of manual sorting to do though, you just run a simple query from the forum database to pull the people who signed up at least say, 1 year ago, then filter it so it only displays users who have more than 240 results before 1 year ago but after 2 years ago. An average of 20 posts per month should be achievable by any regular. THEN, one last filter to make sure that they're still active by filtering the users who had new posts (or a certain number of new posts) this month, last month and the month prior to last. It may sound complicated, but it's actually not that hard. I have to write queries like these almost daily and I know this forum is PHP driven with a MySQL database. I'd be happy to help with something like this if it was needed.

I do get that part of this is in an attempt to get NEW blood to this forum. That's all cool. It's just, I dunno. Maybe rather than doing an indescriminate 3 place prize tier, do a Veteran's Prize Draw (A nice grand prize like the Sentinel we got), A General Prize Draw (A cool toy that anyone would appreciate), and A Newbies Prize Draw (Relatively inexpensive prize that's still cool). Or the 3 tier with less expensive prizes and a Veteran's prize. We ALL know that regulars post on here regularly anyway, prize or not. It's not hard to qualify and when you put a minimum post to qualify to weed out the one post wonders and make it random, you get a hell of a lot less spam.

In for fear of sounding arrogant, before we even started the contest, myself, omega, bmorr, Optimus Vader, Tiberius, Do Boy, etc, were already in the running. Some of us got medals by default based on our past contributions. Once you get a certain number of posts in, you do a random draw, you get a lot less spam. Honestly, I don't care who wins, but I can tell who's here just to put in two words to drive their count up and I'd rather those guys just shut their damn pie holes. It's beyond annoying when you see people who obviously didn't read the thread at all and ask questions that were already asked or stuff that's IN the damn title, it's painful and annoying to see.

Same here. On here all of time with, one it's ok, log on the next for the same amount of time and it dropped by 30 percent. That has to be being adjusted by someone, there's no way its accurate. One day 99.6 percent the very next, 73. Not to mention to break the 99.5 mark was ridiculous. Not sure what the deal is but, something isn't right. This is the first time I've posted in the 2 or 3 days because of the points "bug", if it's an incentive to post more and your are supposed to be rewarded for it, why doesn't that happen?

Even though this was a way to increase traffic, the boards still move at a snails pace. How can you post in threads/forums you enjoy when no one else does so your posts don't come off as spam or post padding to keep it active? And I think your right, that "rule" was implemented after the contest began. And is just me or do have the boards been slower in the last few weeks?

I agree 100% with this^
I am fairly new and I give 2 shits about a prize,honestly,I post alot because I enjoy the site and MOST of its members,but the constant complaining by some of "spam posts" and what not is tiresome,so this contest has become a catch 22,you got more traffic yet the traffic ie new "arkers" are ripped as spammers.

I dunno, I've just been posting on the threads I'm actually interested in so primarily Marvel Universe, DC Universe Classics, some MOTUC and a few of the general topics. Some threads are just more popular than others. I don't think they're going too slow. I think people just get turned off when they open a thread with a new post to something with a really exciting title only to see someone say "cool." It's like a real thread killer. For me, anyway. I get so disconnected by that, I just don't even bother saying anything. Don't get me wrong, I expect to see a bit of that sometimes. Especially if it's a WIP of a new custom or something. It's just when I see twenty old posts bumped and I think they're new, and it's just some guy bumping old threads, yeah... That's just not "cool.".

Holy Wow, I am 4th! Hahaha oh well, I guess it's nice to have to show the new guys you are a "vet" to the site I guess.

Also

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYLsyNBnE5M

Well hopefully with this initial contest mania out of the way, things will get back to normal. :) To be fair, this was supposed to be a positive thing and I still appreciate the work put into making this a great forum to discuss toy news on and as long as the people that made this place great continue to post, so will.

Yea man, I agree with that. My complaints are based off of other forums that I see having so much traffic with non-relevant posts that quality posts/threads are ignored and I did not want that to happen to such a great forum like this. That was where my posts in this thread initially came from and after seeing what happened to the forum after this contest started is when what I thought would happen was happening. At the end of the day I just want this place to stay a friendly community where all members gladly help each other out in providing helpful information and hooking each other up with hard to find stuff.

Its weird, because when I first learned about the Toyark Experience shortly after I joined, the first thing I thought was that the Toyark staff created it to prevent Toyark from becoming like those other forums you described.

Explain that please, Im not sure how a contest would make this site different than other sites that have a lot more traffic. Isnt the goal of the contest to bring more traffic thus making it more like the others?

Yeah I'm going to have to agree with omega145 on this one. I'm sure they weren't trying to open the floodgates to people who are in it to win it, but when you do things like that, things go bad before they go good. You EXPECT things to suck a bit. Also, I have to think that you sacrifice a little bit of quality to turn on the quantity. For example, DCUO is going free to play this month, so there are going to be a lot of people trying it for free and I'm guessing (purely guessing here) that at least 50% of those people are going to make the game more sucky for the rest of us, but hopefully, in the wake of the web apocalypse, we'll see some positives. It's funny because it's almost like two of my favourite web communities are going to be going through a major population shift.

Hell, this even mirrors my city, actually. Our city grew tremendously in the last 10 years, but at the same time, all these rig pigs started moving into our city and buying up property and wreaking drunken havoc during their downtime. There was growth, but then there was chaos. Mr. Rogers neighbourhood became... I dunno, that neighbourhood Tony Danza came from before becoming Angela's housekeeper. LOL. The Bronx. No offense to people from the Bronx. Bottom line is that if you increase traffic with promises of wealth and prizes, you'll attract anyone and everyone and their mommy. :)

Are you asking me to explain why I thought that?

I'll try...

When I first registered I was given a warning that spam would not be tolerated and that I should report all spam posts using the report post icon in the corner.

Shortly after I started posting I noticed people accusing me of starting an inordinate amount of threads and making non sensical posts and I didn't understand why.

A little bit after that, another Arker who had been here longer than I clued me into what the Toyark Experience (the game) was all about.

After that I connected the dots that the Toyark Experience was designed to keep posters on topic and weed out spam posts by giving regulars a reason to report them.

That said, I could be wrong. Maybe you're right. Maybe they Toyark staff did create the Toyark Experience to derail threads, encourage spammers to join the forum, and ruin the place.

How the hell should I know, I just got here?

I think you'd be better suited addressing this question with one of the site's admins.

No need to be an a-hole, my question was sincere and I was wondering why you had that point of view. Why would I ask a mod when you had your own separate opinion on something that differed from mine and I was curious on why you felt that way?

Going to keep posting this until you all can do as the song says.

Are you serious dude?

You're all like pointing out how my posts are worthless, and that I'm trying to keep my post count up, and now you're calling me an ass hole?

You're complaining about how the Toyark Experience has brought all this traffic to the site, and how all these new Arkers are just creating bogus threads in order to get points, and people are spam bombing the site just to win and I'm telling you that I got the opposite impression when I started.

If you want to know why they created the Toyark Experience than asked them.

I've posted on those other sites, and I'll tell you this; this one is way different, and I just got here.

Dude, I was trying to chill on this and had a question about what you said and then you had a sarcastic comment which was unnecessary.
Let's just drop it and ill keep my opinions to myself on this contest and each individuals comments.