Please look~

Along those sorts of lines, sort of user run official forum-wide competition could be really cool? Kind of like the Tournament thing they had back on the old forums once, where everyone choose to be part of Team Warriors or Team Seekers and competed in a bunch of rounds to see which team was the winner. We could do something like that again here - there could be rounds based on creating fanart, comics, fanfiction and all of that sort of stuff, and then maybe more general rounds that you could enter without being skilled in that sort of thing, like Warriors trivia maybe?

I don’t think the teams should be based on Warriors vs Seekers (vs Survivors vs Bravelands) again - Warriors won by a landslide last time just because it had so many more people, and if anything the Seekers/Survivors fanbases on here are smaller than they were on the old forums, proportionally to Warriors. We could do Thunderclan vs Riverclan vs Shadowclan vs Windclan, which would hopefully be more balanced. Or we could create our own teams, sort of like Hogwarts houses or Pokemon Go teams? There could even be little icons you could put in your profile to show your allegiance. The winning team could all get forum money, and users could maybe contribute prizes to give to the forumers who contributed most to their teams? Stuff like artists promising to do a commission or a writer promising you a one-shot.

Yeah, forum trivia sounds like a good idea!

One way would just be for people to choose themselves? If we could get mod permission and someone who knows their way around coding, we could get an option to choose when you edit your profile, with an accompanying little icon that displays in your mini-profile. Otherwise, we could just post the icons on whatever thread we’d announce the competition on, and people could declare their team themselves by putting an icon from one of the clans in their signature.
(I’d be happy to make the icons! I’m already getting ideas for what they could look like, and little pixel icons shouldn’t take too long to do)
We could also have some sort of randomised allocation, but that’d require potentially hundreds of allocations done by hand or the coding of some sort of randomiser to sort them, and considering that the teams should be even enough without that, I think it’d be more efficient to let people pick themselves? Plus people would be more inclined to be loyal to/contribute to a team they chose.
And yeah, we could have a thread hosting each round. Maybe one posted every one or two weeks? Although all the art/writing/comic/etc rounds could be all posted at the start of the Tournament, to give everyone time to get their submissions done.

Yeah, a treasure hunt puzzle could be a round too! We could have riddles and stuff to lead people to the secrets - maybe each riddle could lead to another hidden riddle until you finally got to the prize?
And it’d be awesome if we could do something roleplay related too, since so much of the forum’s activity is roleplay, and is it the Warrior Cats Roleplay Forums after all. Maybe some sort of create-a-clan competition, for Fan Clans Roleplay? I’m at a loss for what do for Off Topic Roleplay though.

Yeah! Little icons sound great! Whether there's an option for a code or not for profiles, I think an icon would be really cool just as an extra. Like a way to show a bit of pride or friendly rivalry. And having them in signatures shouldn't be that hard to do either.
You're right I think about picking yourself. From what I've seen of my friend groups the allocation would probably be even without a stagger. I know from a bit of experience that people like the different clans. Myself? I might like a different one on a different day, but usually default ThunderClan. A friend of mine does River and another Shadow and so forth. It would probably be an even split.
Yep, yep! That sounds like a good plan. If it gets big enough, then there could be specific clan face offs. (Like alternating clans per week or two hosted at the same time.) But that's jumping the gun a bit about size. For the sorts of competitions, I see trivia being a big thing. A combination of Warrior perhaps as well as the forums themselves. Maybe some questions that don't usually get asked about the forums, some obscurer Warriors' trivia, but also some fairly easy Warriors for the older fans who might be falling a bit behind or favor the older or bolder series. Other than trivia, is there anything else that might be incorporated? You mentioned art and fan fictions and so forth? Only thing I can think of for those is maybe having some board exclusive clan face-offs that might be sort of like 'mini' clan battles or something? Like in the Art Forum there be a Clan vs. Clan art contest or in the WFF a large writing sprint/word war between clans - whichever clan produces the most words at the end wins the round. Actually ... this is starting to sound like a fun plan. I can at least confirm that the WFF would be interested in something like that.
Warriors General would love the trivia or truly any sort of debate, I know they like to do that. I wonder if there's a way to make that some sort of activity to get them talking more ...
Warriors Fan Clans ... I'm stuck on that one. But I can see some mini clans popping up if there was something like everyone picking a clan to be 'sorted' into. XD I'll come back to that. I was just throwing out any idea I could think of. I'm not even saying the board exclusive contests would do much or be a good idea, but it's a fun brainstorming thing.

I'm trying to remember what puzzles usually did, but what I'm currently thinking for OTRP is the choose-your-own-adventure style of thing? Finding some way to make that into a puzzle game of some sort? Maybe if it involved specific RPs? Like ... okay, this might take a bit of other users getting in on it, but what if the RPs got together and created a sort of mini-page attached to their main RPs?
I'll use a handful of examples. The Paradox House (long running crossover RP featuring a House of many random rooms), that Marvel RP that's pretty large (in the MCU after Infinity War happened and everyone is taking care of the after effects), Hybrid (is that still running? it's an RP where hybrids of animals are basically trying to live a normal life last I checked), and whatever current Camp Half Blood RP is up and running.
Say all of those got under this idea. They'd all make a mini-thread individually. Then the regulars of those RPs would have a side situation where new members would come through and RP their characters finding whatever clues were placed. This actually wouldn't be that hard to incorporate into the existing theme of said RPs. The Paradox House would just have it be one of those random rooms, the MCU one would have it as anything from another planet to some side pocket of mutent city or really just any location these characters would pass through, Hybrid would have it be either the labs the Hybrids came from or something in the normal understanding of their world, and Camp Half Blood would just have it as some side quest. Each RP given a small piece of the puzzle. As new RPs enter that ring, then the riddle is finally revealed. When the riddle is solved and the RP characters return to the main thread after finding all these clues in the other RPs, then they turn the answer in for a prize. From there, a new riddle is handed out to the RPs. Rinse and repeat. This would 1) encourage new RPs to form to get in on the puzzle, 2) boost activity in the existing RPs, and 3) encourage new people to join those pre-existing RPs to get on the fun they just got a taste of.
It's an idea at any rate, and I hope it makes sense. The same could apply to Fan Clans.

I do like these ideas, but there might be an issue (or multiple) when it comes to the coding and PB sides of things. @roswell and Felix know more than I will ever know about this platform, so that part is definitely up to them. PB is also going through some changes as they want to roll out v6 in 2050 some time, but there's also limitations when it comes to this platform. Again, I don't know much if anything about how PB's coding works.
I'm also the least creative person around. I just moderate and move on.

Speaking of teams, I think it would be interesting to break it up into the four (or even five) original clans, but this would depend on how many users we have participating. To make it on a smaller board (can't find the word for what I want to explain here), it could be broken up by boards. For example, the boards would be: Warriors, General Discussions, and Creative Corner. Or there could be a vote for what clans (teams) make it to the forum-wide competition. Obviously there would need to be an equal amount of members to a team.
As for people "showing off" their team, it would work in signatures or maybe in the mini profile-- this, of course, is not something I know enough about.

I did do a trivia contest a year or two ago, if I remember correctly? It wasn't the best, but it wasn't that good either. However, having like puzzles and whatnot would be really cool-- but this, again, depends on Roswell and Felix's opinions and what can be done with PB.
In theory, if this is possible, I would probably start the art/writing/comics/etc. submissions & announcement before the other announcements (not including the team selection). Art related submissions need more time in my opinion.

I’m not going to pretend to know anything about coding! But voting which teams would make it in or having different teams for each board could be a good idea. We could maybe run a poll beforehand about how many people would participate, maybe asking them to say what team they’d choose too, to get an idea of how big the teams would be and whether we’d need to have fewer teams or have all 4 or 5.

And yeah, having other rounds that don’t require creative skill but aren’t just trivia would be good. The roleplay/choose your own adventure thing would be really fun! A puzzle/treasure hunt thing could be run another way too - there could be a riddle that lead you to someone’s old post edited to contain another riddle, which lead you to a different edited post with another riddle, and so on until you reach one with a message saying ‘hey, you found it!’. It wouldn’t have to involve anything at all in the way of coding, although potentially some sort of coded link at the end you could click that would affirm that you actually found it or count the first 20 people to find it or something would be great, but I’m not even sure if that’s possible on Proboards? Again, not exactly my area of expertise!
Anyway, both of the different puzzle types, the roleplay one and the thread search one, could potentially be held as seperate rounds.

Maybe also some kind of debate round for Warriors General? It could be held kind of like a formal debate, with each team having a day or so to pose their argument and rebuttals, maybe with a couple of days planning time after the debate topic was announced?
Going off that line of thought, there could also be a character essay competition, maybe limited to the characters in your team clan to keep everything a little more themed.

Definitely not doing the debate thing with WG. There’s been countless issues with it, so I feel that a contest would make it worse.

I like the idea of getting feedback first— that’s obviously the number 1 step here. If we don’t have feedback, it’s pointless to do this entire plan that’s sort of in the works.

I can’t answer anything based on finding the clues in like puzzle games and whatnot.

Turin’s was for March Madness, a college basketball tournament. It turned out fine, just not enough people who ended up participating in the end. We could always find an opportunity with a game in Forum Games and make it like a “main” game for this contest idea.

Word wars wouldn’t be too bad of an idea either. Obviously we need feedback and the same goes for the newsletter. It really depends on all of our users wants and needs.

I'll put a poll up today, I'm thinking just to see what the numbers of members would possibly be.

Yeah, that's true, I completely agree with you there!

Newsletters take a lot of time to put together and I definitely understand that from your explanation of exeperience and also my own. I did similar things in middle school and high school (it was like a school newspaper if I remember correctly?) and it took us quite some time to get things out. Nonetheless, it's a lot of had work and requires enoguh people to view it or participate in it.

I hope you feel better soon, Mint!

I've been thinking about making a button which can go in signatures and things off-site to advertise this site. I mean, I'm not sure if anyone would use it, but I think I would. How I'm currently doing it looks a bit messy.

I'll try and work on one today.

I'm trying to think of what the usual diameters of a signature usually is ...

Cool thanks! I'll probably want to make it a bit smaller then, just so it's a bit more accommodating for other forums.

This ends Mint's 'give me two seconds with paint.net and I'll make lazy graphics'. I can do better than this, but I wanted to show some results from my statements. ^^ Also, now I actually have something to put in my dA.

I'm almost off school and I've been thinking up formatting for some things which were suggested up there. ^^^^ So I can get to putting it down on paper soon.

Cool!

Yeah, 100x100 seems pretty classic. I also know that's the width/height of several places I'm on.

You mentioned something about pulling up a poll, Sand. Just checking up on that? ^^