Update...

[mclemore]

Today's Update.
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Chad's Thread: Yes, Hudson(Mark) helped junk the thread. He was by no means the only one. 'Mark H' brought up the 'China Story' first, so the two worked as kind of a volleyball Team. And of course other people responded, some non-gracefully. Board Policy #1: Don't attack other users and don't poison threads.

I thought about a one to three day ban for one or more participants, but it brought up other issues. The magic question is what is the best response to thread poisoning in general to serve the primary purpose, which isn't to extract punishment, but to discourage repeat non-desirable behavior. There is of course the well known temporary ban. There are also 'infraction points' built into this forum system. Infraction points can be temporary or permanent. Get enough at one time and you have a ban. We have given out a few already, but they have all been temporary--that is, they expire and disappear after some time period. If we started issuing permanent ones, we almost need to declare what they really mean, so people understand whether or not they have any meaning...any teeth (Does x amount of them equal a long term temporary or permanent ban?).

Another factor with infraction points is whether to make them or any other action public or private. There are some advantages of making them private, though if private some other people might think that so and so got away with some unnecessarily bad behavior...

So some of these issues have slowed down my response to the thread. The thread has been pruned. I also asked both Mark S. and Chad what Mark H's role is in all this but got no real answer (as such, I just asked Mark H.).

So this matter is still pending. People involved will hear from me again. The rest of the board may or may not.

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Lost Password/Signup Email Problems: SBCGlobal, ATT, Charter?

Non-board demands have prevented me from dealing with a whole lot of board issues. What time I have had has been pretty much dedicated to what I'll call customer service issues, most of which have been lost password issues.

We just moved the www.klov.com and www.arcade-museum.com web site to a new server 2 weeks ago (+/-). We soon discovered that aol.com was blocking our mail, including signup validation email and lost password email. It turns out that AOL is now automatically blocking email from ANY ip address that doesn't have a history of sending to AOL. Figuring this out took a while. AOL removed the block and one problem was fixed.

The last few days we have had a lot of people with tech support issues from essentially the AT&T network (att, sbcglobal.net, prodigy, etc.). It turns out AT&T was doing the same thing. We asked AT&T WTF and they said tonight that 'We will fix it in the next 24 to 48 hours'.

If you or anyone else you know is having password problems on the site and they are on the ATT/sgcglobal network they have two options (1) wait 2 days and see if the problem is fixed), or (2) sign up or lost password on www.webmagic.com/accounts/ to bypass the problem.

There are intermittent reports that the same thing is happening with comcast customers but we are definitely getting different data points here...

With all these problem ISPs, the symptons are the same. KLOV/IAM/VAPS/WebMagic sends an email, and you don't get it (and it doesn't show up in your spam box).

Welcome to the Internet 2009.

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Additional Game Entries in KLOV/IAM/VAPS

I'm getting requests to add such and such a game to VAPS. Instead of taking time to manually add single game entries in, I'd prefer to focus on upgrades to the entire KLOV/IAM/VAPS system that would make all types of updates easier. That work continues.

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Scripts/PHP/MySQL/Volunteers

Speaking of site upgrades. I've got one volunteer who is willing to help with some PHP scripts (but has not started). Are there any other volunteers out there able and interested in helping with PHP/MySQL work? projects include all areas of KLOV/IAM/VAPS, including manual management, game records and submissions (a biggie), and some knew special projects (ie: matching up klov records to mame records and comparing data).

If anyone wants to help, please send me a PM.

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EM Gun Game Parts.

At least three people have PMed me about trouble with getting in touch with Jack G. regarding EM gun game parts. You should all expect a PM from me in the next 3 days. If you don't get one, email me.

That pretty much covers it tonight.

Greg

 

[mclemore]

One other thing... usernames.

As everyone knows or should know, members are only allowed to have one username.

People have asked about Hudson...(Mark S...)'s name change). He switched IDs and did not use the first one after creating the second one. Numerous people here have done that (Chad, etc. etc. etc.).

We don't have a policy against changing a name and discontinuing the first at the moment, just against running on two usernames and picking offensive usernames or usernames meant to harass or copy another user.

It does create a number of questions though: (1) what kind of disclosure requirements should be made with name changes, and (2) what limits should be made on name changes via new signups vs. what help we should provide users with name change requests.

One of the best solutions is probably to actually make name changes for people to existing accounts upon requests. I get these requests on a regular basis, most recently from a user in the past week. I've been loath to do them in the past or a variety reasons, mostly because of the time and coordination it takes with the users and having to manually edit database fields in multiple databases (username changes don't just effect the forums...). It would not be a big deal if change requests where done in batches. I know some users on the lymphoma forums also want some username changes (usually to move from their real name to a more anonymous username since they don't want their lymphoma message threads to show up in Google searches on their real name).

Manually making name changes upon request seems a lot better than people creating a new account and abandoning the old one.

So what does this all mean?

1) Yet more policies added to upcoming rules and guidelines (though probably only a paragraph more).
2) We will probably process username requests once every 6-12 weeks, with the first time being in mid-September.

 

[mclemore]

Forums upgraded again last night, 2nd time in a month.

Early in the month, we upgraded to the forum software version 3.8.3. Last night we upgraded to version 3.8.4 (another bug fix). This involved shutting down the board for a few minutes, installing the new version, and then inserting and checking our customizations (ie: VAPS links, logo at the top of the page, links to the other forums at the bottom of the page, and our overrides of the software's profile, signup, lost password, and similar account issues.).

There are actually a good 1,000 lines of php custom code I've written and added to the forums (mostly dealing with user account issues) though when we moved to the new software in February, I designed it to be easy to upgrade the forums. Thankfully this has proven to be the case.

I've upgraded forum software three times now since February, and it is a fairly painless process. When we we running UBBThreads, are customizations were much less module. Upgrades happened every few years and took as little as a few days of work but usually more like a week+ of solid 10+ hour days.

So back to the point. This site and forums are continuing to head in the right direction, and we will continue to make small upgrades to the forums on a regular basis (some of which you probably won't even notice).

Greg