Oh man...I worked soooo hard to get my 500th post and have my own custom avatar...But noooo....I have to wait until January when I've been here for 6 months, lol. NOT FAIR!....I got my 500 posts, why do I need to be a member for 6 months? I made one that's really cool too....darnit.

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You worked hard, but it was the wrong kind of work that we encourage on this site. The whole thing is to a) encourage moderate participation on this site (quality, not quantity), and b) to encourage sticking around.

Also, if you were around from the start... it used to be 10,000 posts, then we lowered it to 3,000. We then lowered it to 1500/1 year, then it became 1000/6 months, then 500/6 months.

[quote=the FAQ]
In order to upload your own custom avatar, you need to meet both of the following minimums:[LIST][*]Have at least 500 posts (posting in the news stories, park/ride database entries, SpeedZone (2 posts for uploading a file, 1 post for commenting on a file), and the forums)[*]Be a member of this site for six (6) months.[/LIST][/quote]
The keyword in there is both, not "at least one". The policy is not negotiable, meaning we can't make exceptions for members.

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ThrillNetwork Webmaster/Systems Administrator -- My Official Fansite -- Get Firefox!
Everytime I ride a coaster, it valleys. I've never been on a stalled coaster or had one roll back (except Wicked Twister and what was Superman: Ultimate Escape, which does that by design).

I've never understood why avatars are such a big deal. I don’t think it's that important of a thing; in fact I almost never look at them.

I can understand your desire to express yourself through an avatar (or maybe you just don't like the stock avatars). If you want to use your avatar to express yourself or make a statement then I encourage you to do it through your posts or signature instead of an avatar. If you just don’t like the stock avatars that we provide then unfortunately you’re out of luck.


[QUOTE]
why do I need to be a member for 6 months?
[/QUOTE]

To get 500 posts in 6 months would mean you post at a rate of roughly 2-3 posts a day. What we don't want is to encourage people to post 500 posts full of crap in order to get their avatar. The six months is there to deter people from spamming for that reason and because we use custom avatars as a privilege for those who have been loyal to the site contributed to it (in other words we feel that if you have stuck around for six months then you are probably devoted to the site and in turn we don’t mind using extra disk space and bandwidth for your avatar).

January isn't that far away... just hang in there and before you know it you'll be able to have a custom avatar.

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Like Graham said, January really isn't that far waya, and if you have waited since July, you can wait a couple more months. You did have about 300 posts from mid-September to now. Lol.

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New York Yankees - 2009 WORLD SERIES CHAMPS!

The point is not to get to 500 posts as fast as you can. If that was the case, there would be a rediculous amount of spam on the site. Stick around and contribute to the site. Don't spam just to get to a certain amount of posts. No one really cares how many posts you have.

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I wasn't doing it as fast as I can, I was just doing it, and I thought once I got 500, I'd have my own avatar. I looked this morning after my 500th and saw that I needed to have 6 months under my belt too...It's alright, but by the time I have my own avatar, I'll have like...1,000 posts at this rate.

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That really should be a wakeup call then to make sure it's worth posting then. Some days I don't post at all, but others I could do about 5-6 posts. I also tend to hit edit a lot, and sometimes even deleted my own posts because I ralized it didn't really contribute.

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ThrillNetwork Webmaster/Systems Administrator -- My Official Fansite -- Get Firefox!
Everytime I ride a coaster, it valleys. I've never been on a stalled coaster or had one roll back (except Wicked Twister and what was Superman: Ultimate Escape, which does that by design).

[QUOTE=Steven]from the start... it used to be 10,000 posts[/QUOTE]
Wait....it was 10,000 posts in the beginning??? Who the he** makes 10,000 posts on a forum? I was acutally surprised that it was lowered to 500, i was counting down.

And, avatars DO matter since that makes it easy to recognize members. You can easily look at the avatar and you (automatically) know which member is connected with it. With only standard avatars, that becomes harder because many people share the same avatar. I can now easily find my posts by quicly scrolling through a page, and when you find that nearly-completely-blue avatar with Goliath on it, then you know it's me.

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SpeedZone Editor
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Yay!...I got a kilopost! (1,000 posts)

Mind you too... until 2002/2003, you couldn't even select what kind of avatar you had... period... they were linked directly to your post count at the time (jr. poster had the jr. avatar track (0-25 posts), minetrain poster (26-100 posts) wooden poster (101-250 posts), and so on).

After much discussion, we detached the avatars from the rank (which determined your avatar) and even added a few more tracks (B&M sitdown/floorless, B&M Dive, Arrow Mad Mouse, Giovanola along with our "geek" avatars). Then, we lowered the minimum post count to get custom avatars. We did that right around the time the first members started to reach 3000.

Believe it or not, the concern was if we lowered it, it'd increase spamming in an attempt to get post counts up, but thanks to vBulletin's nifty promotion system, we added the time limit and started to lower the minimum post count.

One of the other reasons the requirement is there is an abuse prevention measure. Say you get a newbie, and we allowed custom avatars at 0 posts/0 months. They can sign up for their account, and just go nuts with an offensive avatar and go spam crazy. It creates additional headache for us because in addition to cleaning up and removing the posts, we also have to remove the avatar. This way, we know members are serious about being on this site, and in my entire time here, we've only had to deal with 2 problem avatars, which were resolved without having to resort to a ban.

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ThrillNetwork Webmaster/Systems Administrator -- My Official Fansite -- Get Firefox!
Everytime I ride a coaster, it valleys. I've never been on a stalled coaster or had one roll back (except Wicked Twister and what was Superman: Ultimate Escape, which does that by design).

Ive been here for a while and I'd rather have a non-custom avatar. I liked the original way more.

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Dirty Tramp

i still wish it was 1000 post and 6 months.

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▌------0-120mph------▌4sec ↑420ft ↓420ft

The custom avatar/title issue has been brought up time and again. As I close this thread, I'll point out a couple of past discussions on this issue.

Here was one of the earlier discussions during a higher requirement. [url]http://www.thrillnetwork.com/boards/showthread.php?t=34148[/url]

The last one explains the current policy. [url]http://www.thrillnetwork.com/boards/showthread.php?t=35429[/url]

Some of us -- myself included -- have waited over four years to get a custom avatar on TN and yet still would not have happened if the requirements have not been degraded to the current rule. I think you can wait a few more months.

Also siestakey, it's great that you are actively taking part in the discussions, but a lot of your posts have been very close to pushing the SPAM button. You have started a lot of threads since you joined....some of which are decent topics. I would advise that you slow down your rate of posting a little and reduce the number of needless posts. Again as Steven had mentioned -- quality over quantity.

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