Author Topic: Site updates  (Read 52189 times)

Offline Kylar

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Re: Site updates
« Reply #30 on: 2020-01-22 21:37:05 »
Upgraded the forum, borked it up, reverted, upgraded again, now it seems to work?
Might do some more mucking around on the server while I'm in the mood... expect some outages.

Offline Kylar

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Re: Site updates
« Reply #31 on: 2020-01-22 22:17:48 »
Done with the upgrade too.  Back to slumber for another year :P

Offline Kylar

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Re: Site updates
« Reply #32 on: 2020-05-01 18:32:45 »
I'm cleaning up users who have never posted and also messing around with board permissions; don't worry about things going missing for a while, nothing is gone!
« Last Edit: 2020-05-01 18:57:51 by Kylar »

Offline Kylar

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Re: Site updates
« Reply #33 on: 2020-05-02 16:51:28 »
The line was drawn at "not logged in for ­at least one month" for those who have never posted.  I wasn't paying attention for how long the user's been around and if it's otherwise a regular visitor (the forum engine doesn't easily allow such filtering).

Similarly, those who have never logged in, they were deleted if the registration was roughly a month ago or more.

Either way, 2500 users went down to around 900, and nothing of value was lost without losing any content ;D  To be quite honest, I wouldn't really mind weeding out users not seen for years who had just a handful of otherwise unimportant posts either.  Nothing personal, but they obviously wouldn't care, it wouldn't matter for the forum, and it'd make it easier for me to juggle the userbase.

I started attaching some permissions to people after revoking default access to certain features (namely Gallery, viewing attachments, and the frenulum board), but I'm not done with it yet.  It'll get done eventually.

"Nothing is gone" was a bit of a lie, I removed the completely unused non-English part.
« Last Edit: 2020-05-03 01:11:14 by Kylar »

Offline Lrtd5

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Re: Site updates
« Reply #34 on: 2020-05-02 20:50:25 »
Hi,

I take it you’re not done yet as many sections and functions are not available. 🙃

Offline Kylar

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Re: Site updates
« Reply #35 on: 2020-05-03 01:36:07 »
I started attaching some permissions to people after revoking default access to certain features (namely Gallery, viewing attachments, and the frenulum board), but I'm not done with it yet.  It'll get done eventually.

Let me expand on this before I get more questions in PM or comments or wherever.

Access to NSFW stuff (photos) shouldn't have ever been public, automatic, or a combination thereof.

Reasons being:
  • It's your pictures, and any random person (or web crawler) could see them.
  • People not yet 18 could wander in and see people's junk.

Access to the Frenulum fixing board also shouldn't have ever been public, automatic, or a combination thereof.

The reasons are similar.  It's a niche that I don't feel comfortable advertising, people should absolutely only do it on their own volition and responsibility.  It started out as something that would help people fix their frenulums if it's hindering them at retraction, and I have a feeling it grew into something much more than that.  I never intended the site to be a jumping pad for any "next step" in body modification (and neither was the old Yahoo Group intended that way) and I don't think the site should be advertising it as such.  The site is first and foremost a place for people interested in keeping their foreskins retracted, to talk about their experiences and help each other.  Frenulum tying is not an integral part of this, though it admittedly does help some people achieve their goal of uncoveredness, and I see and understand that.

Incidentally, random underage netizens can literally not do it on their own responsibility.  Access should not be default and automatic.

What this means further down the road

If you had access, and now you don't (yet) have, it could mean that I'm not yet done assigning roles (you're 900 people, it takes time!).  It could mean that you're underage and you won't get access back until you're older.  It could mean we know nothing about you and there's no reason to believe you to be old enough.

Just don't treat the site as your daily dick fix and it'll be fine ;D

Offline skinfores

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Re: Site updates
« Reply #36 on: 2020-05-04 09:15:54 »
Dear Admin,

Honestly as a newly registered member, who's been in a few forum communities in his life, I think you might just be overstretching your admin powers to control the people. Do you really want to manually screen permissions for each member?

I for example joined - bad timing - to try and see a picture as an attachment on a thread. It's not because I am looking for a 'dick fix', but I have a tight ridged band, I've been unable to stretch it, and apparently this one guy who keeps it retracted has stretched past the tightness and documented the process. I wanted to see the pictures to see if there's some hope in it for me, as an alternative to minor surgery, full surgery, or just giving up and living with it.

I have tried flesh tunnels, Glansie, network54 place, weird glue and devices I bought in Japan, bathmate, vacutech pulsar, phallosan forte, everything - I'm 27 and I tied my frenulum through the Yahoo group when I was 16 or something, when I discovered I had an issue. I do understand why you have done away with the tying part of the forum as people can get a bit obssesive.

Anyway, I digress. My point is, I think your actions in controlling the forum and community are going to have a detrimental effect on it. Point is I have a lot to contribute, a lot to gain, and I'm a perfect member. Not only did I have to wait for my account to be manually approved, but now my account can't do much anyway. You tell people to look in this thread, and they have to go to the last page to figure out what's up with the site.

In my case, I certainly don't have the patience to wait around, I came back to check if my account was activated and I can't see what I wanted to see anyway. What's the point? I am the perfect target market, the ideal community member. And instantly I'm confused, unwelcome, and can't get any benefit out of being here.

Just let it go. Keep the bots out, keep the underage out, and keep the horny bastards in check. But let it be, don't be a helicopter parent.


Offline Kylar

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Re: Site updates
« Reply #37 on: 2020-05-04 12:18:25 »
Just let it go. Keep the bots out, keep the underage out, and keep the horny bastards in check. But let it be, don't be a helicopter parent.

That's exactly what I'm doing.  And I'm trying to not let these particular entities get access to the dick pics.  I don't think that in particular is overstretching by any means.

It's not possible to both allow everyone access as before and not allow everyone access.  But, let's go back a little and address the other parts of your comment.

Do you really want to manually screen permissions for each member?

I already do, due to the bot spam.  Every year the security questions leak and then random spam bots wreck the place until I change the security questions.  So I do some minimal checking on the registering users, and approve them, nowadays within 24 hours even.  These days it seems like it's about 99% legitimate users (most of whom never return the next day to post or even to read, even before the permission rework, oh well).

Some users are obvious (either way), they are easy to sort.  Some aren't so much, and I'll gladly admit I'm not absolutely sure how I'll deal with them.  The change, which has been sitting on the back burner for a few years (and as I said, things probably should always have been opt in), was in part triggered by an influx of young users, some with an apparent penchant for self-harm, and I don't want to feel responsible (or anyone to feel responsible) if they do anything stupid despite a handful of people telling them otherwise.

I for example joined - bad timing - to try and see a picture as an attachment on a thread. It's not because I am looking for a 'dick fix', but I have a tight ridged band, I've been unable to stretch it, and apparently this one guy who keeps it retracted has stretched past the tightness and documented the process. I wanted to see the pictures to see if there's some hope in it for me, as an alternative to minor surgery, full surgery, or just giving up and living with it.

You're right, it's bad timing.  You hit a transitional period, and this not being my job or even a super important hobby, I'm not spending hours upon hours working on it.  I hope it'll clear up soon enough though.

The dick fix comment was meant to be in jest really, maybe I shouldn't have put it there.  But hey, there was at least a smiley :P  I'm sure there are at least some people who feel robbed and not because of a lack of information or educational material.

I tied my frenulum through the Yahoo group when I was 16 or something, when I discovered I had an issue. I do understand why you have done away with the tying part of the forum as people can get a bit obssesive.

While I'm glad it worked (and it indeed goes without complications for most people), your age at the time is also exactly the reason why I don't want to give access to the body mod board to randoms.

Anyway, I digress. My point is, I think your actions in controlling the forum and community are going to have a detrimental effect on it. Point is I have a lot to contribute, a lot to gain, and I'm a perfect member. Not only did I have to wait for my account to be manually approved, but now my account can't do much anyway. You tell people to look in this thread, and they have to go to the last page to figure out what's up with the site.

In my case, I certainly don't have the patience to wait around, I came back to check if my account was activated and I can't see what I wanted to see anyway. What's the point? I am the perfect target market, the ideal community member. And instantly I'm confused, unwelcome, and can't get any benefit out of being here.

I approved you well within a day, and all my links lead to the exact post (which in turn links back to the previous post it is a reply to), it's not really hard to go to the right place.

Your account can do quite a lot: you can post an introduction, you can post in the general discussion or in polls, both comments and new posts.  You can ask questions and get answers.  Were it not for the change being very recent, you wouldn't even know you're missing out on anything.

This change cannot be made without a backlash, no matter how mildly I do it (I could have just hidden images, I could have just hidden the board — I could still go on separate permission groups for those two things, but that doubles the load with barely any perceivable improvement for the users).  Do you perhaps have any suggestions that serve the purposes I laid out?

Offline Kylar

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Re: Site updates
« Reply #38 on: 2020-05-05 12:08:14 »
Roughly half of the current userbase handed over to the sorting hat and likely sorted.  After the previous weeding out silent accounts, this half makes up people who have signed in at all in the last month.

Offline skinfores

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Re: Site updates
« Reply #39 on: 2020-05-08 12:06:10 »
Thanks for all the hard work anyhow. I do appreciate that moderating is unpaid work that isn't easy.

Offline Boy0414

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Re: Site updates
« Reply #40 on: 2020-06-09 00:05:00 »
I got the same problem as well. As I’m newly register, I can’t see any of the members sharing their journey as I wanted to know how their progress going on and consider the process..  :'(

Offline soundsgreat87

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Re: Site updates
« Reply #41 on: 2020-06-09 03:05:29 »
Then you should introduce yourself!

Offline Kylar

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Re: Site updates
« Reply #42 on: 2020-06-11 17:08:09 »
Roughly half of the current userbase handed over to the sorting hat and likely sorted.  After the previous weeding out silent accounts, this half makes up people who have signed in at all in the last month.

To make this clear — not like anyone ever reads what I write here —, I've gone through everyone that I wanted to sort, if they haven't really signed in for a long long time, they probably won't care about missing out on features either.

If you are a pre-existing user and feel like you should have access, please tell me in PM.

If you are a new user, don't make it your first comment out of the blue that you demand access, because, you know, the point of this was so that random, completely unknown visitors don't get to see all the dicks.  So maybe go and write some sort of introduction that can convince us.

Offline Kylar

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Re: Site updates
« Reply #43 on: 2020-06-27 19:20:38 »
Quick server upgrade done.

Offline Kylar

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Re: Site updates
« Reply #44 on: 2020-12-06 17:20:38 »
SMF 2.1 is starting to get to the finish line so I'm thinking about upgrading to it someday soon.  I'll make a complete backup, shut down the forum, and hope for the best for the upgrade process.  Parts of the forum are modified due to bugs in the 2.0.x series, and some of the extra modules (eg. the Gallery) might cease to function (at least temporarily or entirely.

The Gallery in particular is a bit of a thorn in my side because they refuse to support anything but MySQL and I had to patch out the MySQLisms in their database code multiple times.  Also it appears they don't really support the free version of it anymore, just the pay-for one ("SMF Gallery Pro" that's a 49 USD licence for one year of updates).  I'll be on the lookout for alternatives, and if you can find any, please tell me.  If the new version of the forum has better post attachment support than this one, we might just ditch the entire Gallery and create a gallery subforum where people can post stuff.  We'll see, I'll have to install the new SMF somewhere and play with it.

In the meantime, I recommend people to get a Discord account (it's free, you can use any email or username you want, if you want to avoid association with your normal accounts or whatever) and hang out on our Discord server — it's also a good idea for the annual "Kylar forgot to renew his Domain Name and now there's a stupid placeholder instead of the forum" event that you can enjoy every November.

When I get the courage to dunk the forum into the holy waters of SMF 2.1, I'll make a new post about it.  For now, there's nothing to worry about.