Gerard

I used to play drums and piano (fairly well), now I play bass and guitar (just learning).

Everyone can see that the forum is less active. This really happened over summer when everyone was away for various reasons, more people being away than usual, and not coming back fully. A lot of TGTAP's membership will have gone to university over the past year or two, and the new members just aren't ingrained into the old TGTAP culture (and 'spirit'), not to mention them being younger than the remaining active members. I think the success of other sites (eg twitter) and more people having blogs etc is taking away a lot of the reason to visit here. We can rant in public, and everyone can see it, rather than coming here to socialise. Even I can talk to people from TGTAP who I'm friends with elsewhere (eg msn, twitter, fb) and I don't have to come here for anything. So how to fix? People need a reason to visit TGTAP that they can't get from other sites. Any ideas?

Whilst it might be a cool game, this isn't GTA. You're describing a city-building simulator, which after 6 weeks of effort building your city, you use it to play GTA in (which wouldnt be tailored to your city). Thats two separate games, and most people wouldn't want to have to sit through the building before they could just play. And it would cost shitloads to build a decent city, most people don't want that. Now flipping it around, so being able to edit the city in a normal GTA game would be awesome. I'd hit that in a second.

ohi chris - youre a few years late on the myspace photo fad, but if you hurry I think pokemon and mullets are still in fashion...

*cough* Funny how nobody thinks of asking the guy who works at MSFT....

Still being a bit of a dick really though. I bet he can speak English better than you can speak Romanian or Urdu or whatever. Chances are he's used a translator, so fair enough. If he's done it himself, then good effort but it's not easy to read. Okay sure it doesn't make sense, and the fruit stuff is silly, but its not "ahahahhahahahhahahhahahhahhahhahahhahhahhaa" funny Although obviously he's crap with computers, doesn't understand system requirements, and doesn't know the difference between a CD and DVD drive. THATs the funny part.

That's just what your browser is set to do. It will download it to either a downloads folder or a temp file, and the temp file one will disappear eventually. Check other places where it might be, and change your browser's settings to change the location. To avoid this problem, right click on the download link, and choose "save as" - this will let you save it to the desktop (or somewhere) where you can extract it and use it.

Maybe you were bullied because you can't speak English? imjustsayin I was bullied through Primary school, teachers never helped, and it got pretty bad at one point. But I just lived through it, learned to stand all kinds of abuse, and came out the other side with a few bruises and a dented ego, but alive. Sure it's hell at the time, and it can cause all kinds of social anxiety problems etc in later life, but you gotta live through it. My regret is not fighting back. Although I was always the one who got in trouble (since the teachers had already given up on the naughty kids), I think I had good reason to stand up for myself and beat them down instead of just sitting there and taking it. But oh well, maybe next time.

That's one person down, Spaz is the only one left to post pics Spaz has posted pics loads of times :S This is me being late for work:

Bosses are not there to moderate or approve posts - they don't need to be there all the time. They are there to make decisions on the sort of thing that goes on in that forum. They don't need to be there 24/7 to enforce that. Think of them as "tweaking" the forum and nudging it in the right direction, rather than having to write the content themselves or approve everyone else's posts. We've coped alright without bosses for the past few years, so if one goes away for a week or so, it won't be a problem. If a boss leaves the forum or becomes inactive, then we may seek to replace them, but there's no rush. Also, two people won't have exactly the same ideas. Too many cooks spoil the broth. If it was just moderating, then sure the more the better. But since they are making personal judgements and decisions (rather than just enforcing the rules), we can't have two at a time.

Section Moderators don't exist anymore. This is the replacement, which is why they took over the colour. They are similar to section moderators (in that they have mod abilities in a small number of subforums), however their focus is on quality of content, rather than just the forum rules.

Okay selection time The following members have been selected to become Forum Bosses. This means they are responsible for maintaining and directing their selected forum. These appointments can be revoked at any time, and these bosses may also be assigned to different forums at some point. Bosses do not 'outrank' other members, they're just in charge of their section; and staff still outrank them. GTA IV Gameplay Discussion & Ballad of Gay Tony - Noru GTA VC Discussion - Thomas General Gaming - Mpilk901 Graphics & Writers' Pad - TM Vehicles - WRX22B1998 More bosses will be assigned in the future, but this is our first group. Congratulations.

That's four days a week, and you're probably able to do a lot on a weekend. So that's fine. Like I said, it doesn't have to be all-day every-day, you just have to be around enough to manage your forum and keep an eye on what's going on there. Sure, when you first start you'll need to spend a while sorting it out, but if you keep up that'll only need to be done once.

You need to be able to be active. There's no point being a Boss if you're not around to do anything. However, that doesn't mean being on for 5 hours every day, but if you're only going be on for a couple of days a month, this role probably isn't for you . If you think you're capable of doing it, then let us know. If not, no bad feelings.

Are you trying to solder a replacement USB end on your existing charger? Or are you trying to make a completely new cable with a random car charger at one end, and a mini USB at the other? I understand USBs to be all standard cabling and pinouts, including the colours, so the first one would be easy as any other cable splicing. This should help. The second option would be tricky, as I'm not sure whether the car charger end would have a transformer or any other manipuation to make it compatible with the standard USB format. The above link gives you the voltage you need, so you could test that on your car charger end before you hotwire it.

I can understand not wanting to call yourself "gay" or open yourself up to more offensive labels. But if you are attracted exclusively to same-sex people, then you are (by definition) homosexual. As for bisexual, Spaz explained it really well a while ago. It's not fancying both males and females, its fancying either. It's not about liking an equal number of either gender, it's about liking people, regardless whether they're male or female. Gender isn't the important thing, whether you like them or not is. Get short hair again and you got a deal...

I didn't say you had the job yet

If you judge they need to be removed, then yes remove them. If you judge they need to be sorted into one topic, then you should arrange for that to be done (whether or not you do it yourself). But of course the staff are still here as always.

Nah we can both do it. 2 heads are better than one

It's not necessarily about changing the quality and culture, it's about being responsible for maintaining it. By doing that, you'll naturally influence it towards how you feel it should be. For example, you would tolerate different things to (say) Thomas. You might tolerate short posts and swearing, whilst he might insist on good grammar and long posts. I don't mean to sound like you'll be making up rules, but it's just tidying up your part of the forum (in your own way), and encouraging/starting the right sort of discussions. You'll notice how the more experienced staff are able to stop arguments without having to close the topic and suspend the users. Imagine that principle applied to encouraging positive things as well.

Actually your explanation is pretty good - nice examples. I'll add that it's not just a case of enforcing the rules or doing what Chris thinks is right. We want different Bosses for different subforums because they'll treat it differently. You get to decide what is acceptable, and what people should avoid. You get to determine the culture of the subforum. It's not as simple as making a rule and forcing people to stick to it, but as Llama says there are a million ways you can do it.

Your second guess is right. You would absolutely be responsible for the direction and flow of the content in that forum. However it shouldn't be treated as "full control". It's not like people can't post without your permission or something. The staff sometimes already do this a bit (closing crap topics, pinning good ones, starting discussions), but we don't get much time to each subforum because we have to watch the entire forum. This is where Bosses can really make a difference. Glad to see people interested in this - we'll be in touch. If anyone else is interested, please keep replying here.

Unfortunately it's unlikely that we'd be able to give this position to a new member. We need all the bosses to be active (for a long period of time), and they need to really understand this forum. Being an accepted and well-liked member of the community is equally important, as people might not listen to you if you're not well-known or you have a bad reputation. As Ivan says - stick around, get involved in loads of things, and hopefully you'll eventually be at the point where you can be useful as a Forum Boss.

For me, I definitely want to be able to do crazy shit like break into army bases and steal gunships and stuff. I want the chance drive a cop car or blow up a dam. This is stuff I wish I could do IRL, but can't because of the difficulty and consequences. As for the atmosphere, I LOVE Vice City. However, it might be nice to balance out the crazy fun with some realism, creating more opportunity to go up and down. And I'd like to start in the middle, and make the decisions that affect whether I enter the criminal underworld (drugs, prostituion) or work my way up the ranks into the criminal elite (the mafia, diamonds, bank heists, traffiking).

What should the atmosphere of the next GTA be like? Vote now, comment below.