Hinckley

I have removed the first picture as it is in violation of this rule: Please remove the text from that image and re–post it if you prefer that image to be in the contest.

You need to host the picture on Flickr or another photo site. We don't allow members very much space for uploads. Host it on Flickr and use the URL to post the image. It is exactly the issue. He is correct. Your account is limited to 30K of uploads. Please follow his or my instructions to post your entry. @TechnicRCRacer

When you tell someone "Good luck" that indicates that you are leaving. But you continue to come back to this thread. Why? You continuously attack the answers you are given, even taking them out of context or missing the point of the statement for the way it was stated. You will never be happy after being suspended for a day for violating one of our Site Guidelines. @Jedi-Bendu & @VaderFan2187, you both were suspended for going off–topic. That is a violation of the Site Guidelines. So, that is on you. You brought concerns here and we have tried our best to answer them. I, personally, have invested a good deal of time in trying to explain to you why we operate the way we do but you don't seem to be able to accept anything that would cause you to be introspective. Everything is someone else's fault, never your own. No matter what anyone has responded to you in this topic, you attack that person or the idea presented. VaderFan, you even admit that your "sense of humor" can come off as trolling, but act offended when it does come off that way. So, maybe your sense of humor doesn't come off online the way it does in real life, but then you need to realize when it does, that it's on you to communicate better, not on the recipient of the communication to receive it better. I am also this way. But I have never persisted on forcing my personality forward over communication. You control your actions only so it's on you to realize when your communication is coming off as aggressive or abusive and take steps to repair communication when it does. Judging by the way you have both reacted to being corrected one time and then quickly reinstated to full membership, you are not positive contributors to the site and I would have no problem banning either one of you and I don't care if other members think that is unfair. I've seen this type of behavior countless times before and I think you're going to cause our staff a lot of work and stress and it's not worth it for us to keep you here where, when you're not arguing with us, you'll take your attitude and misplaced sense of entitlement to other members. To all of our members, I understand that this might be tedious to watch staff argue with members. This is another reason we like to deal with these things in a private one–on–one setting. People who continuously cause problems and violate Site Guidelines usually thrive with an audience and public communication is not normally conducive to solving such problems. Most members, in my experience, are friendly and helpful and interested in contributing to a positive community atmosphere. As I've said countless times, we want everyone to have fun and enjoy this community. We don't like having to correct people or suspend accounts but after over 10 years of experience doing this, we have found this is the best way to handle such problems. And we are evolving all the time. That's one of the many reasons that this thread exists. And I believe you can see our interaction with members here and our willingness to listen and over the years have taken in a lot of feedback and altered the way we do things based on interaction with the community. We would not be where we are without all of you and we care a lot about listening to your concerns and about making all aspects of this site the best they can be for the people who use them and believe in this site as a positive part of the LEGO fan community. So, please, don't be afraid to voice your concerns or feedback here. If you look at this recent interaction, it is negative, yes. The negativity comes from the way an issue is approached. I want to hear everyone's concerns but if you can't have a civil conversation after days of us trying to be reasonable then it's not going to go well. We want criticism but I won't let the staff be abused. There's a difference between voicing a concern about our staff and spending days abusing us and proving you have no interest in conversing, but only bashing the staff.

Let's be 100% clear. I am not making any excuses for any staff member and I do not have to answer any of these questions. That is the point of this thread. There doesn't have to be a place to feed back to the staff about your experiences and we do not owe anybody any explanation on anything. This is a private site, it is privately owned and operated. We reserve the right to refuse membership to any person for any reason. We don't behave in that way, we don't abuse that power, but it's perfectly within our rights to do so. We have this topic and the account suspension because we care about this community and making sure that every member can enjoy the site equally and that every member has the opportunity to be heard if a problem arises or if a Site Guideline is violated. We do it because we have found, in our thousands of volunteer hours that it is the most fair way to handle it for you, our members. Going off–topic is against the Site Guidelines. It is not a style. Or, if it is, that doesn't matter as you, @VaderFan2187, agreed to the Site Guidelines when you became a member. It is also against the Site Guidelines to continue to give the staff a hard time. You went off–topic. A staff member corrected you. It is his right to do so in any style he chooses as long as he is not abusive. We do not and will not have Guidelines on how the staff interacts with people whose accounts are suspended. Staff members are here because we trust them and they've put the work in. We know they don't abuse their staff powers, that's why put them in their positions, we trust them. If they ever did abuse their powers, we have the Chamber sub–forum so that the entire staff has oversight and would know and would remove that person from staff. We won't be developing Guidelines to be nice to every member or try to please every person who feels hurt or complains. Not everyone gets a trophy for participating. When you break the Site Guidelines, this is what happens. You broke the Site Guidelines and now you want to complain because a staff member asked you questions instead of making statements? That sounds immature and ridiculous to me. I don't care what your sense of humor is, your behavior is coming off as trolling and if you continue to troll the staff regarding this topic, you've already stepped way over the line, I will personally ban you myself. We don't need ungrateful, abusive members in this community.

I don't have sunlight the last few days either, but the chemical itself did not negatively effect the transparent piece I tested.

How's this going?

No problem. Thank you for your patience.

I'm not sure what's going on. I'll run it past the rest of the staff and see if anybody else can think of anything. Never mind @VaderFan2187, I think I found the issue. Please try now and let me know if it works.

Not you, @quark12000. I know you don't. Is your Firefox up to date? I'm also using Firefox. Are you on a PC or a Mac?

So, that basically has absolutely nothing to do with what I asked, right?

Yes. The ability to start polls comes with a higher rank. Did you have the "Tags" option?

Weird... Let me check something else. I'm not sure why I (as a Knight) would be able to and you wouldn't. What browser are you using? And is it updated?

I just logged in as a Knight and tried to start a topic in the Star Wars forum. Under the "Content" tab, there is a title field and under the title field is the tags field. Underneath that is the content field but it is labeled "required." Is this what you're seeing?

Weird. Let me see if I can figure out what is missing... What forum are you starting the topic in?

Under the "Title" field of a new post form is a "Tags" field. You can separate each tag using commas. If you want to tag a member in the body of a post. you type "@" and start to type the username and a list of users will appear.

That is the style of the person who put you in there. In my opinion, it gives a certain amount of power to you, since you can start off the conversation with some introspection. And it gives us a good idea of a person's character how they choose to move forward from that point.

Right, so saying Okey without Dokey is nonsensical. What did I just say about me being petty... Oh, was it replacing it even when you were saying "Okey–Dokey?" Because I say that full phrase all the time. I got it from my Dad who used to always say "Okey–Dokey Smokey!" I don't know why I was Smokey, but hey... But yes, if it was stopping you from doing that, then I fully concur with removing it from the profanity filter. The user I did it for was only saying "Okey" with no "Dokey."

I did a 5–minute Google search and I found no evidence that "okey" is a word. No worries. Say it all you want. It's one of those things like I say to people, "Should I be doing something LEGO–related or focusing my time on something petty?"

That term was driving me nuts for a while (due to one member's use of it in the gaming forum, during a game...aka me being immature) so I added it to the swear filter. I'll remove it. Sorry about that. And for the record, I still think the term is stupid.

Does anyone know if this technique is safe for transparent pieces? I have a glued model to clean for a client and I would like to just dump it in a tub of peroxide and Oxy–Clean, but I'm unsure if it will negatively effect the trans–light blue window pieces in the model. It would not be easy to remove them before cleaning and even harder to get them back in.

I have to disagree. If you spend your life addressing and working on every critique, you'll become nothing. While I agree every criticism should be considered, I would never try to work on every criticism. The source must be considered, the frequency of the complaint and the subjectivity. I've worked in the arts and design my entire life and some criticism needs to be politely dismissed. I believe the same applies to how we run the site. If we tried to address every critique, we'd be wasting a lot of time, especially when it came to someone lashing out due to their anger, when they would never be so critical if we were discussing the issue face–to–face.

Because that moderator is the one who put you there. None of us would step in. We act as a staff and back each other up. We would say the same thing to you that he/she would so out of respect for the moderator who suspended your account, we let him/her handle the situation. We appreciate members being patient when things like that happen. You might not be able to post for a day or two but the forum is still available to read as a guest. All your questions are subjective. I find no point in answering them as you appear to be having a tantrum. Good luck to you as well.

The prize pool for the Expand the Winter Village VII contest has been announced. Check out the info here and get your entries in. You have one week from tonight!

And finally, the prize pool! There are three available prizes. First place will choose their preference. Second place will choose between the remaining two sets and third place will receive the remaining set. 10254 Holiday Train 10249 Winter Toy Shop 10245 Santa's Workshop Best of luck to everyone and keep the great entries coming in!

As I just explained, we have our method and we're sticking to it. Thank you for the advice, though. And everyone, banning is permanent. "Temporary banning" is a suspension. We don't ban people lightly. For the most part, you won't even have to worry about this if you don't give the staff a hard time. Everybody has better stuff to do with their time. Go build. Go do something with LEGO.