why have other artists in your siggie?

[Webmaster]

This is a just a question, not trying to call anybody on it or be rude but why would a fan register on say, this board, then use their siggie or pic or personal text to big-up someone else? This forum is private so anything you do here is only seen here. Quotes from other people, little graphx promoting other artists. Why would you want to do that when this is a board for Ritchie? You may have some other artist you like more but I wouldn't think this would be the place to tell everyone how much you like someone else, do you? Just curious.

[Junie]

If it's for some other band/artist entirely, then that's just blatant promoting and I don't see the point in that. Might as well just stamp 'Spammer' on their head and get it over with, lol.

The other five lads were allowed tho, weren't they. Ritchie banners are allowed on Abs board, for example, so I'd have thought Abs ones should be allowed on here if that's what someone wants. That's the only ones i've seen at least lol. Being five fans originally, they're still here to chat about Ritchie, that's the main thing.

[WastedAussie]

i don't think WM said anything about stuff being 'allowed' it was just curiosity - yeah?

[Mrs J.Brown]

Well some people are using Abs icons and signatures so if other artists aren't allowed then Abs shouldn't either. J, Sean and Scott don't really have anything to "spam" yet so having them isn't really advertising anything. Some just register out of curiousity or they are not HUGE fans like some and don't feel like having Ritchie as thei icons/siggies. No-one should be blamed for not being a huge fan but some feel they just want something different.
I'm in 2 minds about having/not having other people in icons and siggies.
But my strongest view is: I think it's great for an outsider to come to Ritchies board and see nothing but Ritchie. It shows dedication by the fans and keeps the board free of other artists and we as fans should be proud to support Ritchie no matter what (even with our icons/siggies). Want an icon of someone else then go to their board if your that much of a fan and plaster their face all over their message board and leave ours for Ritchie only. If Ritchie came to this board he'd see nothing but support for himself in the way we post and show our love for him, yes with siggies and icon.

[WastedAussie]

you've got a good point and of course not every fan has to be a mad fan its not like its an all or nothing thing, you know its good to have as many fans as we can no matter what level of dedication it is. If its not a link then its probably fine yeah?

[Scorpion]

Most people cannot do siggys/avatars so they ask someone to make them one. If this person is a XYZ fan and asks a siggymaker to make a personalized XYZ sig with her/his fav quote, she/he'll use that one on every board she/he is the part of. Most of these XYZ liker people were Five or Ritchie fans before - that's the main reason why they register here- but they missed so much of him in the past 3 years because of him being out of the limelight that they don't know a lot of things about him so they don't feel like such a fan of him anymore especially comparing to those people who are here now ... They feel like an outsider here. Also, as they feel much more like a XYZ fan so as XYZ is closer to their heart and know much more about XYZ than about Ritchie + they don't have anyone to ask for a Rich signature - there are people on other boards who offer to make a personalized siggy for anyone who asks for one and they ususally have a separate forum on the board for these requests - they use their XYZ siggy. NOT because they want to promote the artist, as usually this XYZ is a worldwidely very famous band/singer who doesn't need his name put in the signature of a fan on a Ritchie Neville board to get more attention drawn on him/her/them as he/she/they is/are on the cover of a magazine every week in different countries of the world.

I'm the part of about 10 other (famous and not so famous) aritsts' official forums. None of them have so strict rules as this one and the Absessive board and they usually have a lot more members because of it even if that band/artist is less popular than Ritchie has been ever in his life... or at least since he became famous.

I'm sure that in Abs' case there would be a lot more members registered on his forum AND posting too, if some of those rules weren't there and the board wouldn't seem like a private community for the outsiders who may be as big Abs fans as those on the board.
(The not exact quote from Skulls, the movie: Nothing can be good that's private and elit)

I agree with Angel about not having Abs in the signatures/avatars. If you do not allow any other artists in the sigs/avatars be CONSISTENT and don't allow Abs either. For an outsider it'd seem like a paradox to see Abs in sigs/avatars while he/she can't use his/her XYZ avatar/sig here. If you do allow Abs here, then do it with Ritchie's personal permission as it is his board. And if you ask him whether he'd allow Abs in the sigs/avatars him you must ask him about Blue, Justin etc too and I'm not sure about that he wouldn't allow any of them (ok maybe as Five didn't like N'sync he wouldn't allow Justin lol)

Of course these kind of problems occure if we talk about teenager fans who find things like avatars/sigs very important and as most fans of Ritchie at the moment - whether they are registered here or not - are teenagers we should make our rules acceptable for them too.

[Webmaster]

You think we'd have more members if we got rid of the rules? Maybe. But they probably wouldn't be very good members. I've belonged to loads of boards and 9/10ths the posts are just rubbish, personal crap and spam. Many people join boards for no reason than just to belong to another "thing" and have a place to post messages to their friends, be naughty, swear, diss whoever they want freely, post links to their personal websites and chat.

A lot of boards have 1000's of members and ONE general topic on their board, where everything goes. It's total chaos and if anything is even slightly interesting to read or reply to, you will never find it again because it'll be buried in rubbish within hours. Allowing members to use, say, a BLUE icon will only make other Blue fans post messages about Blue, such as, "OMG another Blue fan! I'm one too!" and etc etc. Yeah, we'd get more posts but we don't exactly want those.

Are there rules that some of you dislike? Which ones and why? Why should we change 'em or get rid of 'em? I'll ask the mods, Ritchie, and his management if we should ban all refs to other artists (including ex-Fivers) in siggies, icons etc or just open it up, dump the rules and let the rubbish rip.

Also, if anyone can show us a board that's better than this one, please post it here so we can look at it and see what makes it so great. We can learn from good examples too!

[Ritchie's_baby_girl]

Well WM i think that your right and not 'coz some of the members write short replies or posts or threads whatever coz they don't know english well and they try to say something in short phrases...

[Foxy]

I dont want to get into a huge debate on the rights and wrongs of having alternative siggies/ava's. The question is a fair one but things arent always black and white. For example.. yes this is a forum for Ritchie fans. But there may also be members who's favourite band/artist might not be ritche but they are on this board because we are just one big friendly bunch and its fun to post in here. I dont think of it as spamming or promoting other artists.

Avatars are about self expression. Just like one of us might visit or even join another board and keep our ritchie sig

EDIT: ......... if I had a sig

[Ritchie's_baby_girl]

I think you're right : I think they don't try to promote other artists!

[Foxy]

Webmaster said:

Also, if anyone can show us a board that's better than this one, please post it here so we can look at it and see what makes it so great. We can learn from good examples too!

www.go-gaia.com not quite the same thing but I live on this board. (it needs more rules though)

[littlecaty]

i think the rools are good and the weby has a good point this is a ritchie board do you wan't to talk about ritchie here you do it do you wanna talk about blue ore others you do iton there sites so whit the icons and other stuff.
I don't realy care for the icons actualy they culd be what ever but i alsow think that if every bodey has ritchie as there icons and other stuf then it's more a ritchie forum.

and in the other side i understand what scorpion wants to say and im actualy thorn apart in this question.
it's a topic that needs diskusing.

[Junie]

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the rules. They’re good and it’s a good board here. Organised etc. I haven’t seen anyone have any other artists either, they’re not allowed to anyway, so I thought.

As for the Abs gripes, I did ask in the beginning if it was alright to have ex-fivers in the avatars or whatever and I was told yes that’s fine, so why change it. It’s ok on the Absessive board to have your Ritchie banners, Scott icons etc. so it wasn’t to be a problem here either. Ok you might prefer one over the other but you're still on they're board to support them aren't you. Besides which, the Abs sigs that I’ve seen on here are not exactly over running the place, a lot of people came from the Abs board in the first place too so I don’t know what else you were expecting really. Most were Five fans, they’re still here to TALK about Ritchie, and find out what’s going on with him! They're not waffling on about Blue or whoever else they like are they. Or did I miss summat lol

I suppose if they stamp out the ex-fivers here, they should really review what happens at Absessive then, eh.

[Scorpion]

"Avatars are about self expression."

That was the sentence I wanted to write in my post but forgot. Having some1 else in your siggy/avatar is like wearing a cross in your necklace...
And as I said, avatars and siggys are NOT about spamming. Writing up to the board that XYZ's single is coming out today IS. These are 2 different things.
Of course drawing the line is sometimes hard between spamming and self expressing I understand....

I've never said we should remove all of our rules. I was talking about particularly this one. Or at least I tried to. I guess I could reason things much better in Hungarian and I have no chance to reason in English as others can easily misundarstand them and make them mean something else that I didn't want to say.

SO to make things clear. Dissing others, swearing and direct self-promoting, spamming is not a thing that I'd gladly see here either. If these are the rules then those who do something against them should be removed. I guess these people were those that you meant under the term BAD MEMBERS.

However I wouldn't call bad members those ppl who have another artist in their sig/avatar but talk about Ritchie without mentioning the artists in their sig/avatar too many times a year or mentioning it at all. If they can be here, they can get lot more exclusive infos and things on Rich - i.e.: Special goodies forum - if they can't be here they cannot. Bit a big price just because they wanted to express themselves....

I'm not exactly sure about your Blue example. If someone see that another member on the board has a Blue avatar then she/he can PM that member and ask "are u a blue fan too?" instead writing on the board.. if she DOES, i. e-. in a thread called " Ritchie has blue eyes" the post can be reasonably removed as it's nothing to do with the subject.

I know I said "some of those rules" when I was talkin about Abs' board, but I just quoted others who didn't join because of that. I cannot decide whether they would become a bad members there or wouldnt if they joined.

Of course I can't say ONE board that is better than ours, because you can find both good and bad things there and say there are more things that are bad in YOUR opinion so our board is better. I do think however that we should make our board better by incorporating the good things from other boards not copying their system exactly.

Everytime I said GOOD or BAD in my post I didn't really mean it. I don't like to use these words anyway in life at all. These are so relative and their meaning depend on the person who say it so that they cannot prove any point.

[Scorpion]

My recommendation what rule to change....
IF we are allowed to use Abs/Five in our sig/avatar than why isnt it in the rule too so people who are strangers and come here can think that doing against the rule is allowed here when its not.?


"You can't advertise or promote other musical artists or celebs." this should be changed to

"You can't advertise or promote other musical artists or celebs except Five or ex-members of Five" or
"You can't advertise or promote other musical artists or celebs except people who are closely related to Ritchie"