July 2014 Update - Happy Independence Day!

mclemore

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Donor 15 years: 2010-2024
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In celebration of July 4th, Independence Day, we are rolling out a number of improvements!

1. The Game Preservation Wiki -- Beta set up! Setting up a restoration Wiki has been something we have thought about for years now. One decision to be made was whether or not to 'home brew' a solution or to go with an established offering. A challenge has been finding a system we liked and then incorporating it into our existing account management system. We didn't want to have to have a separate set of usernames and passwords for the Wiki! We ended up going with MediaWiki (Wikipedia software) and have integrated it into our forum and main site. In short, permissions are based on forum permissions. Posting access on the forums is required to edit the Wiki, which means tens of thousands of our users have edit access. The ability to create a new page is currently restricted to moderators, admins, higher level donors, select invitees, and anyone who asks and is granted that power. http://wiki.arcade-museum.com/Main_Page

2. "Trading: Videogame - For Sale" has been split into two sections:
"Trading: Videogame - For Sale (Games)" and
"Trading: Videogame - For Sale (Parts)". http://forums.arcade-museum.com/showthread.php?t=316232

3. Trading sections - 'SOLD' prefixes' -- Thread originators can now change their prefix in the for sale sections to 'SOLD' for up to 120 days after a thread has been created. Edit the first post in a thread, and then click 'Go Advanced', and then you can change the prefix. If you don't see the prefix choices, likely 120 have passed and it will only let you change the title of the post, not the thread (in other words, after 120 days its pretty useless). http://forums.arcade-museum.com/showthread.php?t=316224

4. Trading sections - Locations in Thread Lists -- See location from thread view list (without having to open up each thread). This is a new feature in test. As of today, it is available to IAML donors at the $20 and greater levels (about 350 of our users). http://forums.arcade-museum.com/showthread.php?t=198309

5. VAPS - VAPS received a significant upgrade with tables on three important pages now sortable by clicking on column headers. http://forums.arcade-museum.com/showthread.php?t=316137

6. New User Signup - The thread that since March 2011 has explained the 'referral' or '$2 thread has been rewritten and is much better organized. Additionally, for the next 3 months we are experimenting with a 'referral' or '$1' system instead. I'm curious if the $1 discount will increase our join rates or not. http://forums.arcade-museum.com/showthread.php?t=176631

7. Bug Squatting - Numerous bugs have been squashed and features improved. 'Nuff said.
 
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8. Forum Stats and Reputation -> Main Site Syncing. Scripts on the main site now have full to a variety of user stats, including user status, group, posts, ban status, etc. Just as I have used forum standing to regulate access to the new Wiki, I'm also going to use it, combined with other data, for site-wide user contribution ranking charts and access levels on the game entry & photo new and edit submission systems I'm working on. This is a pretty big deal. I'm working on a 'wiki' like edit system for the main database, and using forum standing is a good way to limit and control abuse.

9. Entry and Image Submission and Voting System Planning -- I've done some work on this, and I have a lot to go. The goal is to phase pieces of this in over the coming months. Some pieces of the upgrade will require volunteers to process some existing pools of data before we can go on to the next step. I'll be asking for help on all of this...
 
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