Do you use "Forum stars"?

[Thomasss]

For me, I use the "Forum stars" to display a group banner like the ones FP has; however I got tired of using the little stars for profiles. Moving into a more simple and sleeker miniprofile, I left the stars behind because I felt as if they were a tad tacky. Regular forum members still have them however, but for staff it's all about the rank banners.

So does anyone here use the little stars on their groups still?

 

[Teapot]

No, not really. I used to really like them a lot and stuff like using little icons for each user group but I guess my preferences just kind of changed.

 

[Ashley z]

For me, I use the "Forum stars" to display a group banner like the ones FP has; however I got tired of using the little stars for profiles. Moving into a more simple and sleeker miniprofile, I left the stars behind because I felt as if they were a tad tacky. Regular forum members still have them however, but for staff it's all about the rank banners.

So does anyone here use the little stars on their groups still?

The group banners definitely make a lot of sense. That's how ranks started, as alternatives to stars (I think that's how I remember them coming into play). It's interesting how forums adapt to modern times and we see old and iconic forum features going away. Reminds me of the old forum arcades. They were so cool because you used to have to go into town to play an arcade, but then you could finally just play on your home computer. You don't see many arcades anymore though. I miss a lot of old features, and stars are definitely one of the features that have phased out.

I think that forum stars are a good incentive for forum savvy users to be high quality and try to gain new stars. It's almost sort of an achievement, for some, to have all the stars on a forum. I think that's why we see prize systems, forum items, forum awards, and more. Just like the stars, these new systems of prizes and awards are able to incentivize the user to stay around and post more.

So, if you have an awards plugin in place, or forum achievement system, don't use the stars. If you have no good alternatives for incentives for your members, keep the stars around!

 

[SarahKik]

We use little zombie heads (

) for our stars/pips, but staff have rank images.

 

[Jerlene]

That's one of the first things that I remove when creating a forum. It's very unnecessary and it's an eyesore.

 

[ddoesmc]

Sometimes, it really depends on the forum type. Sometimes I'll create a custom pip, but I won't display regular stars.

 

[Slix]

I had created my own set of star ranks for users, but with the somewhat recent redesign of the forums, I opted for simpler user bars with the corresponding rank text below it instead. It made more sense with the new style and everything, it just seemed sleeker.

 

[Cierra]

No, everyone just has userbars. As you said, MyBB stars don't look the best.