Speaking of images... why is there no attachment feature in posts? Is it to reduce bandwidth consumption of the server or did you just see no need for it?
Probably both. It's not really a necessary strain to put on our already heavy boards. It's already bearing the load of a bunch of mods, plus the whole of BrawlVault, after all. And using image hosts really isn't that complicated, and probably easier to manage than uploading from here.
URLs were easy to copy and paste into the address bar and undo the word filter's changes if we were familiar with what was filtered and changed into what.
I am certain that all the newbies on that forum loved dealing with that feature on every single deformed link.
Another thing I've noticed is that the hacks are predominantly uploaded to mediafire, which seems to lose lots of files linked from the site. Couldn't we find a site (if the Kitty Corp site server isn't a good choice to preserve uploads) that is reliable enough to keep these hacks on the internet? I would suggest ModDB, but I'm not sure how well that would work out.
Hosting them ourselves isn't much of an option in the current situation. And I have never heard of a "perfect" hosting website with no ads, immediate access to downloads, and that never deleted any files ever, so I'm pretty sure MF will have to do for now. Maybe MEGA is better? I'll need to give it a try.
Also, I'm pretty sure ModDB is more about full games or full "mods" like Brawl+. Individual add-on characters/Stages/BRSTMs doesn't seem like their thing. But I dunno, it sounds like we aren't talking about the same website.
I understand and agree with that fix, but not everyone is willing to type and text differently, and that poses a problem. And I actually HAVE seen plenty of forums that provide a spell check function, but even that won't always work for someone who chooses to spend little time to make sure his or her message is legible. It's probably just easier if others just learn how to understand such badly written comments, which, unfortunately, is a hassle for users who type in a proper manner.
As a matter of fact, people who currently don't re-read their posts and didn't bother intalling a spell checker themselves will generally not bother re-reading through it with the help of our own spell-checker.
I don't really see why a forum would bother imposing a spell-check on their whole userbase, unless they actually use it as an excuse to be more severe against poor spelling (which is quite justifiable). But considering the rather young and (pardon my harshness) "internetly incultured" population that mostly lurks around KCMM, it seems like such a policy would be an insane crusade.
Okay, so... Say everyone on the site has lost 1-3 every 2 years. How many users is that? How many hacks per person (excluding Megaupload hacks)? I'd say at least 1/8 of all hacks are lost to Mediafire and aren't reuploaded (more than 4,000 hack submissions). Many of those hacks are at least decent in terms of quality.
Which is why:
1) You should always keep backups.
2) We have the BV Community Support.
Not to mention, your calculus is really wrong on the parameters. It's not a question of how many each user loses (since a user with only two hacks has little chances of losing both), but the rate per user. And so far, we've got ... what? A 2% chance? That's pretty negligible, and really far from that gross 1/8 estimation.
And it's heavily mitigated by the #1 and #2 I just mentionned above.
So yeah, I think MF is just simpler for the way we make and publish hacks, here.
