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Review
Topic Started: Jul 18 2009, 04:53 PM (313 Views)
Bluezone777
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This was done by James of Style District

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Rapture
Reviewed by James for Style District.

All marks are out of 10:

Quality of Administration & Staff: 9
First Impression: 7
Appearance: 5
Activity: 9
Layout: 6
Other: 8
Overall: 7

In-Depth:
Upon first impressions, Rapture certainly comes across as a very active community with a dedicated user base. While the basic appearance of the board could be much better, it's nice to know that appearance isn't everything when it comes to appealing to an audience of people. The shoutbox certainly gives people a faster way to communicate, and while in most cases this would take the focus off the forum itself, Rapture seems to have found a way to implement a shoutbox without completely removing the activity from the board. However, it remains an unavoidable fact that since without a shoutbox, users would have no other way to communicate with each other than posts or private messages, activity would always be at a somewhat higher state without one.

Your staff team appears to cope well with the community, as small as it is. They all seem fairly fluent in English, and cover varying timezones for when other staff aren't online. All in all, they appear to know what they're doing and manage their respective moderation/administration jobs particularly well, and for that reason there's not a whole lot else for me to say in this paragraph. If I had to suggest one downside to the team, it would simply be that it's a pretty small team for managing such a large community, and the member base outnumbers it by a lot. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing - as I stated earlier, the team seems to cope and generally functions well.

In terms of appearance, Rapture doesn't make the greatest first impression. The skin is dark and in some places unclean or repetitive, which presents a poor general appearance and might put certain people (the kind who are pleased by skins or themes that are very aesthetic and nice to look at, or prefer lighter skins to dark). Most of the graphics are appealing and match the colour scheme of the skin, but some of them are mismatched, such as the folder icons. The banner in particular seems to have no significance to the board itself, but obviously contains one or two in-jokes amongst the community, which might make newer users feel unwelcome and seperated from the current tight-knit members.

The layout is very small, and suitably so. As the board has no specific subject and puts its community first, the layout you currently have is well-balanced and suited to the purpose. If I had to suggest an improvement, I would put forth the idea of adding a seperate category and moving some of the forums from "The Fun Stuff" into it, to make it seem that there is a wider variety of options for users. I do, however, retain the thought that the current layout works perfectly for the board's purpose and wouldn't really change anything.

Overall, Rapture appears to be an active and close community of people who post because they enjoy it rather than they have to. Though the shoutbox may take some attention away from the main forum, you have no problem maintaining your activity and posts and threads are active all over the forums. You offer a wide option for members to post, interactive and generally have fun, and it shows in how the community still shines to this date. For a board that has been around for over a year, Rapture is doing extraordinarily well and I wouldn't recommend any significant changes in case you ward off or offend the members who consider this forum their own home away from home.

I wish you the best of luck with your forum from here on out, and thank you for choosing Style District for your review.
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Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
 
"Rarely do we find men who willingly engage in hard, solid thinking. There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions. Nothing pains some people more than having to think."


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Xarina
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<3 Jason

Great review. Reminds me of the fact I forgot to make new folders, which I'll make as soon as I have more time. I'm also thinking about making a new maintitle but that might also take a while.
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Bluezone777
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I did find it a little funny that they think we need more staff. No one honestly realizes there is so little to do moderation wise that really is no need for it and most people here have enough sense and decency so it doesn't require it. XD

I was planning on getting a low score for the skin and a lot of focus on it since it's a resource board at all but the parts outside of that were rated high which makes me happy. :D
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Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
 
"Rarely do we find men who willingly engage in hard, solid thinking. There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions. Nothing pains some people more than having to think."


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Xarina
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<3 Jason

Are you saying you don't like my skins XD
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Bluezone777
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Urd
Jul 18 2009, 08:54 PM
Are you saying you don't like my skins XD

lol I am not saying that. I think they are great but I expected the people on those resource boards to not like them but oh well we do and that's what counts. XD

I just know I don't have any control over that aspect so I don't look at as a grading of what I did here if that makes any sense.

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Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
 
"Rarely do we find men who willingly engage in hard, solid thinking. There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions. Nothing pains some people more than having to think."


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Xarina
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<3 Jason

lol it's 3AM don't take my posts serious.

Besides they have to complain about something XD
As long as we have some green and a chicken we'll live.
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Wolverine
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As long as he thinks the community is good, that's all that matters.
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