Year, comon, all will end,
Year, comon, all will end, of course, I am just saying…
Hey, one got to stir up some
Hey, one got to stir up some sh*t 
Maby all of you agreed, and that was settled then, we closed for newcommers. You did not, so I’ll find something else radical.
Global warming? That’s easy; Stop breeding, people! (now)
Rock!
Competitions
Should LMR refocus on competitons / challenges and try to cut down the general chit-chat?
To enter a competition you have to build a robot, and if there is to be an entry criteria, building a robot seems to be the one that is most often mooted. A competiton also focuses the posts onto the tasks relevant to the task. Someone recently posted a question about finding balls, or was it sticks, in a box; and there was a great discussion on how this might be done.
Close the forums for new threads, and only let (most) people post robots (in construction or completed) and posts under each competition. If some new knowledge appears, someone (chosen by common consent) should write a tutorial/walkthrough to capture the knowledge and add it to LMR’s linbrary.
Mike
Let’s Make Cards
My wife makes cards. She’s on a forum similar to this. They too run “challenges.” Sometimes there are prizes and sometimes there is just glory. I find the format is very similar to what we do here. They have thousands of monthly visitors and a core of 50-60 real enthusiasts, of whom 5-10 are regular posters. Very similar breakdown. Cards are smaller, lighter and less expensive to produce than robots, but the “winner” will often receive several cards from other enthusiasts.
I’d be happy to contribue the odd bag of resistors or plugs/sockets or things I have too many of if I thought we had a culture of doing this.
I must enquire how they exchange addresses discretely. Obviously they’re not publically posted (I HOPE). My wife got HUNDREDS of hand-made birthday cards this year from people she doesn’t even know.
On a slightly seperate note, how would anyone feel about a cash competition? I was going to post the idea here, but I think it warrants a seperate blog.
After much thought…If we
After much thought…
If we closed registration I would likely go elsewhere. There could be another person who has been tinkering away for years and they havent found us yet. When they do registration is closed and we can’t reap the rewards of their time and research. By letting people join we all learn more much faster than if we were alone. What if registration was closed before you joined? I think we need to focus on a goal. Is it to create a website that serves newbies as well as advanced users? If so we are doing it! If we only want advanced users then close registration. I’m all about learning AND teaching. Yes the same basic questions keep popping up, but those people still need guidance too.
Maybe we can make a part of the forum that is only open to users that have been on for X months, or made X number of posts or made X number of robots. But dont close registrationI think that goes against what we are all here for!
Hail, I agree.Some may say
Hail, I agree.
Some may say that I am against what I was before, but that should be a quality; I am listening, understanding, changing perspective 
Now, let’s say there is some genious from Honda that would like to join, but he sees the frontpage, and it is for ever filled up with “my first robot” - do we want this?
Should we devide the frontpage into “First timers” and “Stuff from people who have entered at least one walkthrough and 2 robots”? So we would always have some advanced stuff on the frontpage, not just lists of first robot?
Please remember, it’s just thoughts
Maybe divide it up into
Maybe divide it up into three sections. The first section shows a few of robots from people who have made at least 10 robots, then the second group shows a few robots from those who have made at least 3, the last section shows my first robots or walkthroughs.
I’m in agreement with folks
I’m in agreement with folks who do not want to restrict access. As they have pointed out, we never know who might join and contribute to this great group. Think of all of the ctc’s, BOA’s, Mintvelts, riks, etc… that have yet to join. Try this. Think about if we stopped access to users go by incremement of 500(based on user id)…who’s below 500, 1000, 1500, 2000…you’ll see that great contributors have come in various times…
The bigger this site gets, the more word of mouth it gets and the more it shows up on the radar for people trying to learn and search for how to build a robot. Try doing searches on google, we’re showing up more and more…thats awesome!! Take a look at that user map…this site is global and in that reach it inspires others to build and contribute.
IF anything, this site is going through growing pains and we need to figure out how to deal with these situations.
Some thoughts are. allow users to sign up but prevent certain actions from being done untill the first 10-20 posts in the noob section.
Start a wiki (wiki.letsmakerobots.com)so as to have something more easily searchable and more of a user friendly interface for viewing topics.
certain forums are only accessible to users that have a completed bot maybe even require video.
Lets not limit users, just limit their abilities…If someone really wants to be a part of the community, they will rise up.
The front page
If crap on the front page is the concern, then divide it up as suggested.
A constant churn of robots - good or bad - coming to the top keeps the page fresh (I’m sure that encourgages the search engines) and encourages beginners.
Add a section for robot of the month/week - every bot added and modified during the week goes into a poll and every member gets a vote. Three with the most votes get show-cased until the next vote.
Mike
if it was closed before I joined…
I would RTFM for this site and send an appropriate email to the admins. I would then have worked on my bots and showed my progress. Then I would have become a memeber!
Yay! and now you know I am not a spammer! woot!
how about this idea…
Instead of limiting user accounts. Integrate user account levels. Like say beginner, intermediate, and advanced. Those who contribute a lot would be under advanced/intermediate on the front page. All the beginners would be on the 2nd page for beginner bots and such. All beginner forums would have to be approved by the mediator. Intermediate and advanced would just be good to go for everything. You could add a link up top for "start here and beginner bots" or something like that.
Just an idea for separating the site up a little.
What if someone made a quiz
What if someone made a quiz about the site that people had to go through in order to make an account? That way you could make them read important FAQs.
New idea bonus!
That is the first truly new idea in this thread. And not even a bad one. Technical possibilities aside, I think it is really helpful to have new contributors read a minimum number of LMR values or rules. The FAQ would probably do fine. Or could be morphed to fit this particular cause.
Rik
Great Idea!
I agree. Bonus for the Z! This should be easy to implement and it will be easy to pass that test. It won’t stop some lazy folks to post questions that are already answered, but it will sure make a difference.
Kick the very unactive
Kick the very unactive users…or put some small 
ads on the site and create competions with the money as price!
inactivity is not a problem
Inactivity is not a problem, all that does is keep a few kilobytes of hard disk space occupied with user details.
And unless/until TheCowGod tells us otherwise, hosting is still within budget.
Yay, I feel helpful
Yay, I feel helpful
Ooh! Ooh! Or maybe they
Ooh! Ooh! Or maybe they couldn’t start their own topics until they pass the test. They could start with a limited account until then.
VOTING SYSTEM
The voting system in LMR is WAAAAY underused. It might be an idea (just an idea) to re-order the front page by number of votes. That way, the very best stuff is on there.
But even if this never happens, the voting system is still waaay underused!!!
Wiki wiki
That’s not the first time Wiki has been mentioned. I’m just re-emphasising it.