A few suggestions

Hi Tom, recently I've been addicted to this place and I enjoy contributing. But I also have a few suggestions that might be taken into consideration:

The Search Function
At the moment, let's say you search for 'Blade Runner' but accidentally have 'games' selected, you get no search results. I was wondering if a sort of 'smart search' system could be employed, kind of like Amazon and Play.com use which displays the results of 'Blade Runner' from movies, books, games etc etc...

Points for votes
At the moment, voting for reviews doesn't really serve any purpose. I think it might be an idea if say, 5 points were given to the original reviewer if someone votes for their review? It makes writing reviews more rewarding! Obviously you can vote for your own reviews, so that option should be taken off or worth 0 points.

Thumbs down
You can vote positively for a review, but how about the option to pan it? To stop people who have a different opinion abusing this function, you should include a reason for why you didn't find the review helpful. e.g poor english, too long, too short, biased etc. Then reviews can be listed in how many positive votes they receive, rather than in chronological order.

The Groups section
At the moment, this area is destroying listal and genuinely decent members are leaving over it. If I had my own way, everyone with an anime avatar would be banned! How about the following suggestions?

- Have a minimum requirement before you can post in the groups. e.g you need to rate over 100 items?
- Remove points for posts, or cut it down to 1 point per post.
- The people who are ruining the groups area are easily spotted, just ban them! They are not contributing to any listing whatsoever!
- Employ some sort of moderation, not just because of the anime nerds, but because recently I've seen advertising bots spaming up the place. It's only a matter of time before the porn bots arrive!
- Look at members who have very high ranks but have very little contribution to LISTAL. They don't deserve to be ranked so highly and should be docked points.
- Put an age limit on the forums? Most of the people who spam that place are 13 years old, make the minimum age 16 or something!
- Ban role playing!

That's all I can think of right now!

Yep, that suggestion where the original review writer gets the points for writing the review was what I was making! The voter should get no points in my opinion, but I guess 1-2 wouldn't hurt. I believe an accident made it 50 points to the voter last time and that was just absurd.

Good suggestions, Uber. I don't claim to have been on this forum as long as the rest of you guys, but I have different applications and have gotten to learn what works in some online communities. Can I add some things?

The Search Function

I think it'd also be really useful if it would correct you and give you an option of what you might've meant.

All the search would need to do is save some of the criteria that just barely got filtered out, right?

Thumbs down

That's what they do at Amazon. How about just listing based on votes anyway? If it's a case where the number of reviews gets distracting, there's bound to be some votes in the mix. If not, it's our duty as Listal members to have personal biases and vote, vote, vote!

I think the report function and comments should cover criticism. That and personal messaging, where no one else will be able to see the explicit redundancy and sparse usage of lowercase.

The Groups section

Some forums have a posting cycle where you gain your worth slowly but surely... Uh, well, the poster earns the ability to make more posts a day until they're finally accepted as full-time members and pretty much have complete posting abilities. Most of the members you won't care for will be the ones that are completely turned-off by that.

- Remove points for posts, or cut it down to 1 point per post.

Just one point sounds good to me. I'd like to see a completely odd number as my point listing every now and then.

- Put an age limit on the forums? Most of the people who spam that place are 13 years old, make the minimum age 16 or something!

Maybe they shouldn't be able to use the forums. It'd be like a Parental Controls function. Tom of Listal is looking out for all his kiddies, we'll say! If you need anything or just want to talk, message Tom! Remember that there's no such thing as a stupid question - Tom will satisfy your curiosity!

That, right there, is the type of thing parents will complain about their kids digesting.

you know what i contribute where i can but its not enough for you little imature brats. yes i called yo ual brats. see whats the point of helping if you allways get shot down. ive been trying to keep the naruto people form posting things where they shouldn't be and also so what if it was naruto that got me to this site. i still have helped and ask prelude i do contribute a lot mor ehtna i used to. basically unless tom bans us then you wont be getting us off very easily. prelude tryed it thillian tryed it and also richard a booth or as he is now known anonamyse(however you spell it i dont care right now) left becuase he was trying to get rid of us way to hard basically us kids as you called us can outsmart everyone here but prelude and tom. i say prelude becuase he was able to actualy get us all to be freinds yes i am a freind of prelude i not on his buddy list but hey i still talk to him and i still make sure that we aren't causing problems like we used ot. and every time one of the naruto fans posts some thing that belongs in anime in general discussion i immeadetly go and ask tom to move it to anime and tell them to make sure they post things where they belong so i've been trying to help you guys get us out of your hair but all you do is complain. hey we keeep to ourselves and yet you still complain. yeah a few posts get put inot the wrong section but we try to fix it as soon as posible so al of you should just shut the hell up

uh...

If I had my own way, everyone with an anime avatar would be banned!

But other than that I think all the other suggestions are much needed. And it'd be neat to get points if you get voted for a review, and it'd be even more amazing if the more votes a review has the higher it's shown on a list. But then I again I can already see 500 votes for something that says "yeah. it was funny," or something of that nature.
It hurts my silly ego to see someone who have listed nothing yet have an insanely higher ranking than me.

If I could change anything tomorrow, I would remove the points for posting in the group section. I'd even delete any points gained from 4 months ago to now from posting in the groups section to even this site out again.

I really am not enjoying posting here anymore because of these morons.

I think moderation is a call. While I don't really pay much heed to points as numbers (read my About My Collection rant and you'll understand my opinion of numbering), it's important for ranking so people have those top 600 'reference' members. I don't post for points, but the points system should be adjusted for ranking and the moderation system for general unity.

Last I heard, Tom was working on a system for moderation and pondering potential alternate point values.