grin_king

Post something useful or don't post at all, thanks. Spam=Spam+1

Think i'll save you a few flames here Raven, and lock this thread for you... it's obviously going nowhere... Please, in future, keep this kind of thing in the rants section (yes, it's more rant than observation).

Doomster, "most forums" also don't have the kind of traffic we do... and those that DO have that amount of traffic more than likely have a considerably different hardware setup than we do... Easy enough to run a forum for 500 users with no performance problems at all ;) Perhaps have another look at the stats which Alby posted up earlier in the thread for examples on why this comment of yours is kind of redundant :)

Interesting discussion indeed... been watching from a distance for a while now... got a couple of questions for those who are all for keeping the post counts... One thing i've noticed is that most of you that want to keep post-count have been arguing that it's a good way of helping judge how to handle the content of a post, combined with a couple of other pieces of information like join date, etc. That's been the primary argument against, as far as I can tell. How would moving post-count from the main forums into the individuals' Profile stop you from doing that ?? Yes, it's an extra click or two when you do want to check post-count of a user... but seriously, how often do you need to "investigate" a post that's made in order to respond to it ? For those of us who use FireFox or any other tab-based browser, it's simple enough to open it in a new window in the background and continue reading, and deal with the new window as you please... With regard to other "points" systems... anything that is "user run" is never going to work, for what I think are very obvious reasons. A couple also mentioned setting the minimum number of characters required either for a post to count, or for it to be able to be submitted... all that's going to do is make the spammers type more... more smilie spam, more "zomg wthbbq!?!?!one1!?morespameheretomakethislongenough". So no, that's not really an option ;) It's a little disappointing that so many are obviously not thinking outside the square a little, and going straight for the "keep it" option in the poll, when it's quite obvious from their posts that having it kept in the profile would quite easily satisfy most if not all of their arguments... Oh well... looking forward to reading further debate on this. There ARE some good points coming out... I just hope that some of you are able to reason through your thoughts and make an informed, rather than knee-jerk, decision... in other words, before clicking on one of the options... be sure to think "What would this *really* mean to myself and the forums if this particular option happened ?" - something that should be done for ANY poll or other voting-type thing. All options should be considered fully before voting ;) Mandatory disclaimer : All comments, suggestions, ideas and ham sandwiches are mine and mine alone, and do not reflect anything other than my own thoughts and ideas as a user of Tip.it

ineedequip - just with small, med and large pouch, you get 43 runes per trip, as opposed to a max of 28 without. That makes a VERY big difference over the course of time ;) Getting the pouches is a little bit of a pain. Going through that as I type this, after having been PKed while doing abby runs. Can quite gleefully say, however, that I went back and fried that little bastards [wagon]... mwahahaha... DAMN that felt good, and well worth the time it's taking me to get my pouches back lol...

My my - didn't we have fun with the thesaurus ? Ok... "my dear friend"... the answer to your question "Why is it Jagex fault" is an easy one, and one that I have already stated twice : They did not make him do it !! He CHOSE to do it. And by making that choice, he put himself in the wrong, plain and simple. You go to the ATM, get an extra $100 note you shouldn't have been given, take it without reporting it and have the police turn up on the doorstep. You think they're going to accept your answer of "It was THEIR fault !! They gave it to me !" ?? No. That has to be THE biggest load of... waffle... I have ever heard on these forums! Encourages attacks upon the system ? Has Bob started roaming the countryside, saying "Psst !! See that person over there ? Go kill them - you can do it without getting skulled ! Try it ! It's a blast !!" Mate - it's "hypocrite". If you're going to try and use big words - get them right, eh ? And for the record, considering the only insult that i've thrown at you is to say that part of one of your posts is rubbish, and to ask if your ENTER key has a problem... might wanna grab that dictionary yourself ;) Now who's not reading who's posts ? Hmmm ?? Refer to my previous post for an answer to your query regarding bug-fixing, etc. Now as much as i'd love to continue this little play of words with you, i'm off away for the long weekend. So... play nice now, kids !

... and at what point did I say you did ? Perhaps it is not I that is failing to read posts... Ok... first of all i'll try to ignore the ridiculously childish part in the middle of THIS post, "diddums" - unlike what I did with your previous one, which was extremely hard to read. Is there a problem with your ENTER key, perchance ? I read your entire post, as I read the entirety of the other posts in this thread - I never comment on a thread without having done so. The reason I chose to answer in your post what I did, is that the rest of it was complete and utter rubbish and completely unworthy of a response. Do you have *any* idea on what is involved in firstly developing something as complex as Construction, and secondly bug-testing it ? Have you considered the number of *years* that POH has been discussed, talked about, etc. by us ? Where do you think the concept of that came from ? Hmmm ? It came from Jagex, whoch have been thinking of, and planning for, this release for *years*. What... you think all of those items, the designs etc. were done since last weeks' update ?? As has already been posted by Paul (I think it was Paul, or was it Andrew or a Mod ? Oh well, nevermind - it was a Jagex staff member anyways), the sheer size and complexity of the update made it nigh in impossible for them to test every single possibility, every single action that could be done within the scheme of the whole Construction skill. They have apologised for this bug, and have used it as a learning experience and are working on improving their development and testing phases in order to help try and ensure this kind of thing doesn't happen again. Now... in the mean-time... throw whatever "factors" out there that you like. My initial point, however, remains : Jagex did not force Duriel to do any of what he did - in fact, there were Mods running around trying to stop him, yet he persisted until he was forcibly removed... yes... yes once again I can see how Jagex are completely to blame for that... :roll: Now... before you pull out your lovely red bold font and your pen of immaturity and insults, I suggest you read MY post in entirety (notice how much easier it is to read with punctuation and line breaks and stuff ?), and consider the fact that perhaps yes, indeed, I DID read all of your post... but that perhaps some of your points were off the mark... (OK, so I failed to entirely ignore your immaturity. So sue me)

I'd just like to clarify this - we did not publish this, per se, as much as we removed it from the forums, which were rapidly grinding to a halt due to the unexpected load that was put on them, onto the web-site, as a static page, which could handle considerably more connections at a time than the forums could... it's almost made quite obvious that this was done, and why, and that it was, by no means, something that we agreed with. ... just thought I should clarify that, as you make it sound as if we posted it up as a Tip.it Times article :P

Yup - i'll give you full marks for that one :) This is what ANY half-decent player would have done... and what Duriel *should* have done - which would have saved him from a ban. Now this... this I disagree with entirely. Please - explain to me how we are "Promoting bug abuse" ?? Have we come out and said "Check this out ! Here's how you do it, go for broke !" ? If we did, I most certainly missed that one, and would have removed it in a heart-beat if i'd seen it... Allowing a report on what the result of someone abusing a bug to be posted - with no details on how to replicate it, etc. is hardly promoting it. I can tell you now, each and every member of the Admin team condemn Duriels' actions and are absolutely appalled at the chaos he caused - totally selfish, careless and irresponsible, and my heart goes out to those innocents caught up in the middle of this and suffering losses which they should not have suffered. Yes, this is only a game... however, the millions of GP, items, etc. which were lost, have all taken time and effort to earn, or have sentimental value in some cases, and that has all been unfairly taken from numerous people by those who broke the rules. Now, the only exception that HAS been made here, is the whole naming of names things - and that's purely due to exceptional circumstances. It was so widely-known, and so entirely proven beyond doubt, that there was no "possible innocent" to be spared. Yes... yes I see how Jagex forced Duriel to go out and kill those people. Made him go out and actively click on all those people innocently walking along in town, cutting them down without a thought for them. Yes - Jagex most certainly are evil people, with those Jedi mind-control techniques of theirs... :roll: Duriel made a concious decision to do what he did. He knew the rules (and even if he didn't, he signed a thing to say the he DID, so he has no recourse there), he broke them, and has been suitably punished. Those who support what Duriel did... well, they need to sit back, look around, and think "Hmmm - what if that was ME, with my blue phat and full dharoks and g maul, and 2 mill gp on me that was killed ? How would I feel about it THEN ?". Pull your head out of the sand, kids, and think about the big picture, rather than just yourselves for a change...

As Duke mentioned in his post, he has been removed from Tip.it staff and will not be re-joining, due to Tip.its' zero-tolerance policy to the breaking of Jagex rules. It's a shame that such a high-profile, and until now well-respected person, allowed himself to be sucked into temptation like that. Personally, I congratulate both Duke and Jagex. Duke, for at least having the strength of character to explain his wrongdoings, and Jagex for catching the infraction and taking the appropriate action. Time to put this one to rest. This thread was allowed in order for Duke to give his explanation to the Community which he has, regretfully, let down. This has been done, and enough discussion on the Topic has been had. Time to move on...

Quick clarification on a few things : First of all, it turned out that the "request" was not an "official" one, even though it came from a J-mod. More than 1 site was requested not to publish, or to remove if they had already published, their guide. We were the only one to comply with the request to not publish - although I believe the RV guys may have gotten word of the request a little late... and they were, to my knowledge, the only other site to not publish (or remove after publishing) their guide. After discussing the issue with Andrew, it was decided it was a waste of time having only 2 sites withholding the guide, so the day after these discussions took place, the Guide was released on Tip.it. RV were contacted via PM on their forums to advise them of this so they, too, could release their guide. As previously mentioned by one of the posters, Tip.it used to have a policy of delaying guides for at least 24 hours after a quest was released. This policy was stopped at the time that too many opposing fan-sites were starting up and releasing their guides immediately - making Tip.it one of the later ones to have a Guide (even if they WERE better Guides, IMO heh). Now, even though Tip.it is essentially non-profit, it still needs to make cash in order to pay for the servers it uses to run the website and forums... and if things continued the way they were, too many users would choose to use sites other than Tip.it purely for the fact that the guides weren't out fast enough on Tip.it for the users' liking. So - the choice to remove our 24hour+ policy for releasing guides was purely one of survival. Now, for my own personal opinion (which The Editors' article also was, btw... a personal opinion). Personally, I think that Jagex have a right to ask the fan-sites to delay a guide. However, if the sites DO comply, the ones that do should get some form of recognition - be it better direct communication or something... i'm not sure. But they (Jagex) need to remember that, as much as we're here for our users, and for the game... we still have bills to pay. I would quite like to be able to go back to delaying the Guides for a day or two... but I can pretty guarantee it will never happen, purely for economical reasons. There are far too many fan-sites out there now which couldn't give a toss about what Jagex think, and will release the guides ASAP. If the major sites all carried on delaying their Guides, their userbase would slowly drift away to the smaller, lesser-known ones... until the major sites *became* the smaller, lesser-known ones. In regards to The Editors' article... personally I think it *was* a little over the top - however, i'll admit, when I first heard the request, my reaction was considerably stronger than that of the Editor, until I had time to sit down and think it over. My initial reaction was "Stuff them, i'll go whip up a guide now and post it right away"... However, fortunately, I remembered why it is we're here, and what we're about. Yes - a large part of it is you guys, our community members. But, right at the core - it's about the game itself. Communication between Jagex and its' fan-based communities has been mentioned a number of times here, and I have to say that I agree that something really DOES need to be done by Jagex to try and improve this. We used to have direct communication with Jagex... but as they have grown, that communication has become less and less useable... and has now become nigh on inexistent. Too many times in the recent past, I have seen/heard of "official" directives, requests, comments, rule-makings being done through non-official channels. It's these occurrences that make the request that has prompted this entire thread considerable more plausible/believable. If Jagex had a more structured official contact system in place for its' users (which it currently kinda has with the contact centre) and its' fan-sites (which it doesn't have, at all, aside from in-game communication which isn't acceptable), then things like the request that has caused this entire uproar wouldn't happen... or at least wouldn't be taken as official "Jagex" business. It is my own personal belief that, without the major fansites that have been here for years, Jagex, and certainly RuneScape wouldn't be anywhere near as large as they are today. Oh, and one quick note before I finish off this post - someone mentioned something about Copyright issues with fan-sites using images from RuneScape, and that Jagex could get nasty about it... I think you'll find that the words "non-profit" and "educational" should cover that use under International Copyright laws rather nicely... although Tip.it has actually requested (and been granted) permission from Jagex in the past to be able to use their images. In summary : The request to delay wasn't an official Jagex request (although we didn't realise this at first, given it was from a J-mod) The request was honoured by only (to my knowledge) 2 sites. The delay was shortened after discussion with Andrew, who also personally thought the delay was a good thing. I personally think that Jagex need to spend a little time/effort on their community relations. Help those who help you...

Ok... don't normally need to do this... but for this one, I think it could be needed. PLEASE keep the discussion on this thread reasonable and curse-free :)

I agree.

Nah - i'd just re-program the numeric keypad keys for stuff like that, as I never use those ;)

Hmmm... generally, when you ask a person for help, and they come back asking for more info... it's a good idea to provide that info ;) Anyways... i'll start with the obvious things. Have you disconnected the video cable from your PC and monitor, and reconnected it ? That's the main cause of discolouration on monitors - pins not connecting properly on the cable connections. As Chris said, knowing what video card and monitor we are dealing with here would help (make and model). Also, you said it's a flat-screen. I'm assuming you mean an LCD, rather than a flat-screen CRT ?

New server was for the website, which was being held back by the CPU. We are, however, slowly working on the forum server to try and make it more efficient... but these things take time, and yes, money. Not satisfied with the service you're getting ?? Oh well, i'll see if I can arrange for your money to be refunded... oh, hang on... sorry... I forgot for a sec there that this service we're providing is free for our users... so I guess there's no opportunity for a refund... oh well... One thing you people need to understand, is that these web-pages you view are served up by a server. This server, and the bandwidth it uses, needs to be paid for. The bigger the server, the faster the pages can be served, the more bandwidth is used. This then adds to the cost. Also, the faster performance entices more people to use it, causing more pages to be loaded, and so the circle begins again. In the mean-time, these servers and bandwidth need to be paid for. Now, I notice you're a relatively new poster, so won't know the history of these forums, and won't know how far they've come over the past years... so I guess i'll use a couple of hard and fast facts here... These forums have over 81k registered users. Over 1.3 million posts, which would be considerably higher (quite likely over double) if we didn't delete the Market threads regularly. Same goes for the "Posts per day" number, which shows as over 2800, but is actually considerably higher, again due to the Market posts being removed. In other words - this server is darn busy... and getting busier by the day. Which is why we're constantly doing things to try and improve the performance of it... the staff use these forums, too, ya know... lol. For what it's worth, the times that the server isn't busy doing CPU-intensive things like log-analysis (which will soon be removed from this server), the forums are positively flying along.

No spoilers are to be posted on this thread !!

FYI, the male Admins are outnumbered by the female ones... so wanna watch yourself there... lol. You're welcome :) Needless to say, Topics like this get brought to our attention eventually... I don't always reply on them, but there's not many of them that we don't see ;) Oh, and as for the things that I cleared up, I take it that the fact Wyrm isn't human was one of them ?? *grin* EDIT: Oh, and something I forgot to mention earlier - the author of this thread said "Watch them lock this one...". Consider yourself lucky that mad4u689 saved the thread with her post, else yes, it would have been locked as it was purely spam until her post, which actually turned an absolute rubbish post into a topical discussion. If you don't want a thread locked... don't post crap... pretty simple really ;)

Ever consider the fact that we don't get to see your PMs ? Consider passing it onto an Admin ? No ? Then why the heck are you surprised nothing happened !? Sheesh... No justice for those who decline to report the crime to the police in the first damn place... :wall: I believe you'll find this already explained 1 post and 1 hour prior to you making this post. Now for a bit of explaining... First of all - i'd just like to remind everyone that our staff (yes, including the Admin) do all of the work they do on these forums on a voluntary basis... so please - next time you feel like complaining about them, keep that in mind... they're spending THEIR spare time to try and make sure that you can spend YOUR spare time spam- and problem-user free. As far as i'm concerned, they do a bloody fantastic job. Now, in regards to Topics which have been locked... as a general rule, most that I see locked are locked with good reason. There are occasions when I see something locked, and have a chat with the Mod responsible and ask why, and find that they've seen the thread from a different perspective than I did. Sometimes that perspective is more correct than the one I had. That's another thing you guys need to remember - the staff are human (except for Wyrm, but we won't go there), and as such, they have feelings/emotions/opinions, etc. which have just as much chance of being of an opposing nature to yours as anyone you meet in the street, at school, work, etc. People have, often, wildly varying opinions on the same things. This also means that a Topic which, in your opinion, should not have been locked, is. And vice-versa. However - IF you feel a thread was locked for an invalid reason... ask the Mod about it. Send them a polite PM asking them about it nicely - if you approach one of them in a way which is non-confrontational, then you'll find they will either explain why, or possibly even see where you are coming from and reverse their decision. Come at them with an attitude, or worse, and you'll get nothing but a slap on the wrist or a boot in the rear. One thing I, personally, will not tolerate, is people abusing our staff (read back up to my first point for an explanation on that one), and deal with the abusers rather harshly. And Blink, just as an aside... if you want a forum with few to no rules... there's plenty around... feel free to go find them. You won't be getting it here. Our forums and website are geared towards a particular goal, and our rules are set accordingly. But you see, the Net is a wonderful thing. If you go to a place, and it's not giving you what you want... you move on and find a new place. It's just like club-hopping... you walk into one and don't like the music ?? You don't go and complain to the barman that the music sucks - you move on and find another which *does* play music you like. Sure, feel free to tell him the toilet is out of paper or some other small thing... but expecting them to change one of their core "things" to suit you is... well, aside from "not gonna happen"... ridiculous.

Erm... nicely-worded, well-though-out response, backed up with some very strong evidence there... I don't know HOW we can justify arguing against someone with such a strong case... :roll: Come on... if you're going to say something... back it up, as have the people before you...

Or, there is considerable other evidence already around, that a find of that kind is not a very long stretch at all from what is currently known... as opposed to that which was written, many years ago... by... someone. I've always found it rather incredible, that so many people are so willing to believe in something of which there is no tangible proof... aside from a book, which was written by a human, or even a number of humans... but human all the same. I have a very hard time believing that there's some dude up "there" looking down, with a finger poised over a big red button, waiting to "smite" those who don't behave, with his off-sider standing to one side, with his finger on the gate buzzer, only letting in those who have been to church to "confess" to having had lewd thoughts about their next-door neighbour... sounds more like some kind of Mario game to me... Don't get me wrong - I have a relatively open mind, and some of the arguments here have raised things which i've not previously considered, in regards to what STARTED evolution... but I will say in answer to that, that nature is an amazing thing/force, and it continues to change and adapt things - as I believe it has done for time uncountable... I have a much easier time, mentally, bridging the gap between what is and what possibly/probably was from a scientific point of view, than I do from the Mario point of view...

No thanks ;) Rather than doing that, i'd prefer you just click on an ad every now and then... :) Anyways... in regards to the Topic on hand... firstly - thank you for thinking of us... it's nice to see that not everyone just clicks on what they want without a thought for what goes on in the background... I guess events on one or more of our "competition" sites lately has kind of brought to light the more unsavoury sides of running a fan-site... paying the bills :P In regards to the comment of forums separate from the website - both servers are paid for by the advertising/donations collected from both areas, into a pooled fund. So, donating through the link on the site IS donating to the forums ;) As has already been mentioned, we have, for quite some time, been bandying around the idea of donation-oriented "extra's" for the forums. It's not going to happen for a while (if it *does* happen at all), as we are more concentrating on getting things running better/more efficiently first. There've been a few performance problems of late on the forum server, which will hopefully be resolved soon. It's possible that, some-time in the relatively near future, we may need to look at a day or two of down-time, to do some rather more drastic maintenance in order to improve performance. I guess we'll see if/when it comes to that ;) In regards to some of those other sites people have been mentioning, i'll say one thing, as it also relates to comments we've had back regarding some of the work our Crew do, and why some things aren't as detailed as other sites... it's all pretty well summed up in one deceptively simple word : Bandwidth. Unfortunately, it's the major drawback for all fan-sites... games use graphics (as a general rule). Therefore, the Guides that are written for those games also require graphics. Those graphics, when viewed, on average, more than 100k times per DAY (for tip.it), generate quite a bit of bandwidth. There's a rather fine line between "enough", and "too much" when it comes to providing information in certain formats. You'll find that those asking for money have, most likely, staggered over into the "too much" area, which is why they are asking for money. The Tip.it Crew do their work with the goal of ensuring we don't walk, or step over, that line, and thus far have done a fantastic job of it :) Sorry - got a little O/T there, but it IS kind of relevant, as a background explanation as to why you've not seen us "begging" ;) One other side-note... we seem to be getting closer to a point where we can start doing something about the dodgy ads that some of you have been reporting... which should free up some more ads for you all to click to bump up that advertising revenue ;) Oh, jsut spotted Wises' post before I hit submit... just thought i'd mention that the rank thing was merely a suggestion... ;) Unique user colours, like the Mods and Admins have are another option. Also, a unique second avatar is also a possibility. Like I said - this HAS been looked into over time, and comes back to be discussed on a semi-regular basis. Will be keeping an eye on this thread occasionally to see what other ideas/comments/opinions come up on it... always been a sucker for a good, helpful conversation ;)

Well... as much as I would love to swear at you right now, I will refrain, and instead explain, once again, what the situation is. Maybe I should write a macro for this... Anyways... Yes, the ads are a pain. Yes, if you don't have the appropriate protection on your PC (which you *should* have, regardless of what sites you visit), some of the ads that the companies we currently use for advertising will attempt to get you to install spyware on your PC. Yes, we deal with ads on an adividual basis as and when we can - as a stop-gap measure. Yes, we advise people to use FireFox and other bits and pieces, as a stop-gap measure. We currently have a number of new advertising companies which we have investigated and found to be acceptable, and who have also found us, and our visit-rate, acceptable. The person able to act on these companies is still currently unavailable (presently moving house), without internet access. Yes, the ads have been an issue for a long time, and yes we continue to say it will be sorted. And yes, it *will* be sorted, jsut as soon as it can be. Be aware, however, that we have to work with real-life constraints, and that not everything we want, we get when we want it. Same goes for you guys... Now then jukkie... in regards to your comments... if we didn't give a **** (yes, I, too, can use *'s to censor a word manually... just be advised you'll still get a warning from staff, so I suggest you don't do it again), then why the heck would we BE here in the first place ? Do you think I would waste hours of my time each and every day, voluntarily keeping a site and forums running for people I couldn't give a toss about !? That also goes for the rest of our staff. None of us are paid to be here... yet you'll find each and every one of us here pretty much every day, spending our own free time doing our best to ensure this place is the best it can be for selfish stuck-up little punks like you... plus the rest of our users. Too true. However, *some* sites not only don't care about their security, but they deliberately attempt to corrupt the PC of those that visit their site... and there are more and more of these sites popping up all over the place, and there's no knowing just which one of those Google links you click will be the next one. So, relying on the sites you visit to be safe, and look after you and hold your hand to make sure you don't get a tracking cookie on your PC, is the real-life equivalent of sending a 10 year-old through a major city park at midnight, and expect the police to have made sure that the kid won't be harrassed. So yes - you are correct in your statement. The responsibility of the security of a site *is* that of those that run the site. However, the responsibility of the security of your own PC is yours and yours alone. So, everyone... have a think about it... which are you ? The one that sends the kid off on his own, expecting him to make it through the park and back on his own... or do you send his Dad with him with a baseball bat, just to be sure ?? The disappointing thing is, that those in the first category are always the first to pipe up and blame the police, and ask for the Government to replace/fire/upgrade them... or call them morons... :roll:

Yeah - quite odd, isn't it ??? It happens to me often as well - but somehow it doesn't ALWAYS do it... quite strange, really. As a work-around, I found that typing the text into a Notepad window works fine, then I copy and paste it into FF ;)

Glad you didn't run into trouble, runesmithie ;) DaN - I don't want to hear about illegal software on these boards thanks mate. And don't expect any support for PC problems with an illegal, unpatched OS... Elite - you're walking a thin line...