Theymos, are you against requiring payment for signatures as the
only way to get them, or would you not be ok with offering them alongside being able to rank up naturally? Copper Membership seems to have been a small success and if you offered other memberships alongside current ranks similar to the perks of Full Members or Heroes etc I'm sure they would be even an bigger success. Let's be honest here, the vast majority of people only join this forum for signature campaigns and their only intention is to rank up in whatever capacity they can so why not give them the option just to skip the que rather than posting rubbish over x amount of time? People are either just going to lazily spam their way through ranks or just buy an account from a farmer or hacker so why not let them purchase it from the forum instead? That money could be put to good use and to finance other valuable projects that will benefit the greater community. It's win-win in my opinion and I don't see any negatives of it at all.
What are everyone's ideas for improving post quality?
I have mostly ruled out:
- Requiring payment to wear sig ads.
How about instead of requiring a payment for all signatures, you only require a payment for Member/Full time member and above. That way people may still have their basic signatures for what ever they want, but to have a more advanced and flashy signature they would have to pay. This could also be incorporated into the lesser donation ranks that have been discussed before.
Why don't we at least trial something like a better donator rank than Copper Membership? I really don't see any issue with allowing users to purchase the equivalent rank from us under a different donator name. Either there could be one or two ranks that give you the same benefits as a Full Member and Hero member or we could offer some sort of premium rank that can only be achieved by buying it or maybe it can also be given out as a reward for great contributors. What I would suggest is it gives you some really great perks that you can't get in any other way. The biggest one I can think of is having the ability to have an image/jpg banner in your signature. I think campaigns would pay a premium for this one as it would be easier to create than a signature code. Maybe also give them a changeable custom title like Global mods have with a clickable url or something. That's one more thing that can add value to their account and would be worthwhile to advertisers. Buying this premium rank could also give you benefits like the ability to have an avatar and the possibility to change your name etc.