A change to the Classifieds / Commercial area

So will the forums automatically track the total posts to thirty? If so, how will it determine if they meet quality standards to be considered "meaningful" posts? Because even the Staff won't be able to account for the posts of the total number of newcomers that arise daily to filter whats spam and what isn't.


Is it possible for replies to be handled the same way threads are? (Where a user must have the thread authenticated and accepted by staff. Mayhaps that would be way too much work...)

And that's a good riddance to the spammers. Personally, I've never used class fields, and never plan to. However, I am glad to know that mods are doing something against spam.

I think a lot of people who are looking to post a job offer, don't have time to be an active part of the community.


I guess it makes sense to stop spammers or if you want to make it exclusive to active members though.

@lawina there is no perfect solution - someone always looses out. As said above the current solution was implemented after several other ideas failed.

If you are wanting to offer your services to this community, then you SHOULD take the time to be an active member. It's good practice. It builds rapport. It builds your name. It lets people know you, know your skills, know what sort of person you are. If you're a face in the community I guarantee you will get more business. Your name will be on people's minds. They'll know easily if you are a person who has a strong reputation for completing jobs.


And the opposite is true too! You as the seller can know the people you are dealing with. It's a heck of a lot easier to, say, make character designs for someone's game when you know what sort of thing they are receptive too.  Even just a little.


Here or anywhere, it's important to be personable and take some time and effort to let people know who you are. It's going to land you jobs you like better and match you better. If you are not actively letting people know you exist, then why should they know of you and come to you for a job?


You need a voice to be heard.

Re the 'meaningful posts' question ... the forum will automatically give you access to those areas when you hit 30 posts, but your new threads will still be hidden until viewed and approved by a moderator.  I will look at your posts and determine whether they are 'meaningful' or not.  I will determine this by the content of your posts, what forums/threads you post in, and whether it seems that you're just making 'filler' posts to get to the magic number.  If I believe that's what's happening, I will not approve the post.


And yes, it's a bit of a let-down that people who only come here to hire won't be able to advertise, but again, Classifieds is for the benefit of forum members.  If you want to hire our members, we want to know more about you and the game you're making.

I understand that and respect the decision. I've run multiple forums with hundreds of thousands of members, and I know that sometimes drastic measures have to be implemented to prevent abuse.

Not a big fan of this decision.. Why not make it read-only for people with less than 30 posts? Most of my clients were people with not many posts, some of them became active members after but some never did. I've noticed a decline of inquiries ever after inforcing this rule. :(  

Thank my kittens that I have my regular customers nowadays. It's like I am scripting whole games, so I can't notice any change, at least not yet.


I have mixed feelings about the decision itself, but I can live with it. I just hope it will fill it's purpose in the end.


I have been asked about it thou, because one of my past customers couldn't enter the Classifieds section. At that time, I had no idea why, because I could see it fine.


In my opinion, this topic explaining the decision should have been pinned at the top of the forum (like the MV freebies/update topic now, for example) for a while, so that the users could actually see it everywhere. It can still be done, of course.


I rarely walk this section of the forum (really, like once or twice in a year maybe), and I bet many others are the same in this regard. 


This would save moderators and users alike from answering or asking questions about it, and to be fair, this decision is just as important to many of us like the other topics pinned up there.


I don't remember seeing this topic pinned, hence my suggestion, but if it was pinned, I seem to forgot about it, in which case, excuse my bad memory. *-*

I feel the classifieds should be as read-only to everyone and only people who want to reply or contact the OP should have a 30posts limit to unlock the options. Most people coming to classifieds are or will either be commercial developers looking for people to commission or artists/scripters/music composers looking for potential clients, By this, I mean that most of the people lurking on this part will be the ones talking about business and most of the new users won't be bothered posting 30 posts before getting access to this part of the forums. People offering their services will be the most penalized since many 'new' developers will miss this part of the forum thinking that it does not simply exist on the official Rpg Maker forums!


Also the 'scam' thing is a common thing on the web if you are not careful enough - shielding users here won't really help them and it may have the opposite effect where they (especially newbies) will take everything for granted. As we say, we live and learn things through experiences.


If you take a look at the largest forums out there like Conceptart, Game Creators, Deviantart, Game Maker or Indiegamer, we don't have this type of limit for forums. I believe we are all grown ups and no kids or teens will go on a commercial business with rpg maker. If you think about some of the people who are artists/music composers here, at first, they didn't even write 2 posts before advertising their services and it was only after their popularity rose that they took care about mixing with the mass and participate with events here. We learn to 'love' a forum through the people who are interested by what we do or if we have a common interest in a particular field.


I really believe that this is a bad idea restricting the Classifieds - do have another thought please. Personally, I don't read the Classifieds much but limiting this part feels quite 'childish' for people looking for business, does anyone think so? Rpg Maker is not meant for kids/teens anymore like during the 95/2000/2003 versions several years ago, it has grown into a very powerful commercial game engine where adults can also get a living by selling games as well as talented people who can increase their monthly income by advertising their talents. Because of this, I also think that the mentality should follow with the engine and not restrict anything here.

There's a bit of a disconnect here on what some of you think is the point of this forum and what the actual point is.  I want you to think about this for a second.  Why would Degica want to help freelancers get business?  Please keep in mind that it's not uncommon for the freelancers to not own any version of RPG Maker.

Eh.. Most of us aren't "freelancers who do not own RPG Maker". All I've been asking for is to make it read-only for people who do not have the amount of posts needed. In all due respect, without me being freelance and earning some money I never would've been able to buy RPG Maker MV on it's launchday, nor had to money to buy some of the graphic/music packs. So the money flows back into your pocket indirectly?

It has been like this for a while and it is unlikely to change now that the system is in place.

Come on now BCj, don't argue here that we're somehow losing out on people making profit on our forum.


If you lost some amount of business due to this rule, then that's the way it's going to be. We are not a platform to run your business, and it's one of the main reasons we implemented the rule - because strangers saw a way to advertise their portfolio and get business using our forum. We are the official forums of RPG Maker, we are not an indie game making forum where people can request or accept commissions like it's a free market. That's not what this forum is for, and the Classifieds part is only a small benefit to our members wishing to seek (paid) materials for their game and letting other members fulfill this need.


It was never intended to be a platform for any person to run their own business.