I want to agree with the beginning where we could transform the showcase into a board but I just feel that the media centre becomes useless and can become a lot of work to approve/disapprove posts. And, I thought of an alternative that may help, what if we made a category in the
media centre for feedback so that the community can request feedback on their projects by uploading a picture of something you built. And, perhaps if you wanted to show off the code, you could create a thread with the code inside and link to the media item. I think that would be cool. This is a coding forum, and should remain as one; we don't want to become a place where people pretend to 'showcase' their work to help them promote it.
Now, what I mentioned above doesn't really help with the prevention of promoting websites. So perhaps we can write a new rule where if you are posting a community or website you should include a thread of how you created or show what you did with the code to reach that point, what do you think?
I would say that right now, the Media Centre is useless as it's not being used. Nobody has Posted anything in months now and it's just sitting on it's hands. I think it's maybe because of the fact that people are too busy browsing the Forum-Boards and not other parts of the Site.
If you were to create a Board, you'd have even more to Moderate and Approve, thus' the whole thing about getting more Staff in(
Which I'll move onto later). Maybe you could further explain what you mean by a new 'Category' in the Media Centre. Would this link to a Board that isn't on the Homepage or....? Please explain that.
As for the Websites, what you said, doesn't really help at all. At least a Rule should help with it as I do not want a Media Centre filled to the brim with Websites. I want a Media Centre that contains Projects, Software, Video Games all built in Code.
I like this and I want you to remind me in the future. But as of right now it's not something that I should put my energy into. My focus needs to be shifted a bit from growing to sustaining the current membership of the community we have. Such as more What is posts etc. But, perhaps we as the community can work on a new light them together in the near future. Now, I do believe we still have our old-light theme available, are you able to tell me if it's available to you?
As I stated in my Post, it's not necessarily high-priority. I can wait forever just for a Light-Theme and I'd be extremely happy once it's released. Maybe if you Open-Sourced the Code to the default, Dark-Theme(
If possible) and then on GitHub, the Community can work together on this new Theme. Or of course, you can maybe just give the Task to somebody else. But, to test a Light-Theme, you'll need a secret Page that is not accessible by the Community if you want to test a new Theme.
The reason I say that we should have a Test-Page is because, when modifying CSS, there are thousands of Lines of Code and just one mistake can break a part of the Site and it's Look. And if this new Theme is available to the public when it shouldn't be, somebody may end-up criticizing you for a broken Theme. Maybe look into and think about having a Test-Page. It could also come in handy in the future.
As for if there is still a Light-Theme, yes there are two actually. The IO-Theme and Uniform. I'm currently using Uniform right now as I find it much better for my eyes. While I do like and use Light-Themes(
Which are bright), the IO-Theme is just blinding for my taste.
I do apologize for this; some of my 150 member points I made were not kept due to my busy schedule and I think it's time to rethink some things that are more sustainable for our community. With that said, I think official projects should be pushed off to when the site has more traffic. But, I would definitely agree to allow members to start their own projects (not affiliated with CF) and encourage others to join them.
I also do apologize for the lack of coding challenges; I'll be sure to raise the priority because I don't see why we shouldn't have them.
That is completely fine. I can understand that. As long as the excuse is valid and is a good one. And being busy is one of them.
I would nonetheless agree with you on that one. I think we should wait until we have more Traffic and more Members around. As for Traffic and Activity, we do need to find ways to keep people more active first before Projects are initiated. As for Member-Count, I'm looking at 375 - 450 Members. By then, maybe we'll have more Activity which can then lead us onto doing Projects.
Coding-Challenges, I'm not necessarily too bothered about. As long as we can get them first, then that's good enough.
I agree I believe @Ghost and I have talked about this previously. And, don't think we came up with a solution yet. I do think we should have different roles to help balance the workload. Instead, of use just focusing on everything. The only thing is that I have been dealing with staff as a if-needed basis, so for example; if we get a spike in reports and we can't manage then I'll bring on another staff member. Because I don't want it to feel like we have more staff online than actual community members. Do you get what I mean?
That's great to hear that you're considering more Staff-Roles and Staff in general. As for the solution, take time with it. It will come eventually.
As I said, different Staff-Roles means that you can split-up Site-Development and Content-Moderation. It helps balance everything and gives you a break and other Staff-Members a break as well. But, I do get how you don't want too many Staff. That just makes it unbalanced and God knows what effect it could have on the Users. Maybe it could cause Users to force themselves to be nice just to avoid getting Reports or maybe too much Staff can encourage an Attack on the Site, to see how the Staff will respond.
As for the Solution, again, take your time with it.
I really appreciate the feedback, and I hope we discuss more on this!

seem like we have a higher staff ratio online than community members, do you get what I mean?
You're welcome for the Feedback. I'm also looking to see what else we can discuss about any of the things I mentioned and things that others have mentioned too.
And the Staff:Member Ratio....In the past month(
Around September and/or October), the Staff seemed to be more active. But something tells me the Members have been more active this past week.