vbulletin neighborhoods

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I agree, and I wish I could give the idea up completely if necessary. However, there does indeed need to be some sort of "promotion"--as you interpreted it, getting a good position.

So, yes, if there are hundreds of members posting threads in their houses, they should be able to hang threads (as I said, putting it on their front lawn) which means that they're promoting them. Then, the threads so climbing the charts. If a bunch of users who have earned rights of "firemen", or whatever, begin posting in a thread, then because of the common denominator and its frequency of showing up, the thread would obviously start climbing the charts--so it'd be a "must have" for other firemens (it would show up in the "mail" of people's houses when it comes time that it reaches a boiling point and starts promoting itself in the mail for notices or whatever).

Essentially, it becomes like a living community. Sure, it might start off slow at first, but you have to consider the fact that there are less threads at first, so newer threads would obviously be hot-topics until the forums get more threads being posted, and then things begin to "weed out"--or, in other words, sort themselves out. It's sort of like a smart forum which is formed to meet the needs of the community.

It's sort of like a window into the world of e-mail. Users have the potential to turn stupid threads like, "Hi, my name is bob" into the forums' hottest thread if for some reason everyone starts viewing it a lot, posting in it, and/or promoting it.

So, users can even promote threads that aren't their own--but, users should seriously be cautious about what they promote, because what they promote has a limit on it. They can only promote maybe five threads--descending from highest approval to least approval.

Then, threads have new listing options: Overall Promotion, Promotion by Groups (so, if the overall community promotes a thread about growing trees but lumberjacks obviously are not promoting it, users should be able to, using the neighborhoods, use the "jobs" system to find threads popular by those who promote cutting down trees). The house should be like grand central for a user--it serves them like maids with a folder on a platter.