fallenmystic
Tribune
Now I'm in a position in which I can understand better why you thought it that way in the first place. In fact, it's not a hidden rule but one included in the public welcome message for new members:
The site will keep a tally of the number of messages you post, and the number of likes you receive. As you post messages and receive likes you will receive ‘Trophy Points’, and your title will progress from ‘Condemned’, through ‘Onlooker’, ‘Spectator’, ‘Guard’, ‘Assistant Executioner’ and ‘Executioner’. After you have posted around 1000 messages and you are an active member, you may be asked to choose your own title.
Probably it's because I'm relatively new to this forum that the specific clause is still fresh in my mind. I don't know why Madiosi told you it was a secret rule, but I can conjecture that he may have meant it's not very well known among the members.
At any rate, it's been an established rule for quite a while, publicly announced to all members to see. As such, I had to wonder why you seem to regard it as a sort of a hidden rule that can be arbitrarily applied by moderators, sometimes unfairly to certain members.
I do agree with what has been said that such little things are actually of no importance. I also don't believe that after a handful of posts I deserve a privilege given to long-time active forum members. But my one and only interaction with a moderator has also made it very clear to me that this forum just may not be a place where original creations, poems, stories images, you name it, are particularly valued over any other type of post. This is a management decision, but it is not one that works for me.
While I respect your personal preference that puts such an importance to forum titles, I have to disagree that people don't value original contributions on CF, just because they don't put particular weight to original contents when calculating the number of posts required to earn a custom forum title. It could very well be just that not too many people have compained about it so far, or that it'd be quite cumbersome to devise a new system which potentially could annoy more people than it could appease.
Many of the people who have posted a reply in this thread, for instance, have been known for their original contributions more than anything else. When there are so many who have been accumulating enormous numbers of 'likes' over their original works, I feel it to be unfair to accuse the community of not valueing original authors enough, just because none of them have complained about the forum title rules as you did.
I think this comment speaks for the big shortcoming of cruxforums that @crumera has rightly pointed out: cruxforums has an achive, it has a section dedicated to original stories but it does not have a place to gather original image contributions by various artists and allow for interaction.
For example, I did not know about @algabal's artwork, and I would not have known where to look for it amongst literally dozens of threads that are more review-type of a particular subject matter or artist (which is fine and inspiring, too). What I would like to be able to is to easily identify the works of fellow artists and leave my comment there.
You can search for "montycrusto" and you'll see that it's not just for the stories that the archive exists. Of course, it's undeniable that it's mainly used to store stories but it does not mean the community has any bias against artworks in favour of stories. The forum doesn't provide any more interactive features for archived stories than for archived artworks.
And while I agree that it'd be great to have a more convenient way to easily track original artists, lack of such features is hardly a proof that CF doesn't value original artists. CF is running on a stock forum application called "XenForo" which isn't particularly designed to support a websites like Deviantart, for example. Considering we haven't even been able to implement HTTPS, which is considered almost mandatory for such a website like CF, and that we are still suffering from the bandwidth outage, I doubt that we have enough resources to turn CF into something similar to Devianart anytime soon.
The bottom line is, it's unreasonable to read any hidden motives in the lack of such features, as it can simply mean that we don't have sufficient resources to implement them.
And honestly, it's pretty easy to search all threads started by an arbitrary forum member. And considering most of our original authors keep dedicated threads to keep their works, it's not that difficult to find such contents as it is, and you can even subscribe to them if you like.
As a final note, I admit that it's entirely your call to leave or not leave CF for whatever reason. And if you find being unable to change the forum title, or the lack of certain features to be a sufficient reason to leave, I must respect your decision.
That being said, if you value interactions with your followers so highly, I can't help but feeling it odd that you would wish to abandon them over such a cause. As we can see from many of the posts in this thread, there are not a few people (including myself) who would miss your work in case you decide to leave. On the other hand, I don't think we have too many people who think too much of what forum title another member has, compared to what original contents he may have contributed so far.
So, I can't help but feeling it a bit contradictory to abandon the opportunity to interact with those who actually love your work because of something few (if any) of them would really care or even notice.
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