Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We can ask that registration be required, or we can just go do it. Nothing stopping anyone (except that I just tried and received a Site Administrator Error??)

This highlights one of the issues. The registration system doesn't always work correctly. People forget their passwords and usernames. They change their email address and can't get password reminders. Then they demand that we remove all of the posts linked to their username. It is often a resource challenge to manage the few registered users that we have.

This seems like a silly excuse. How much time do you spend deleting posts every day vs. the one-time investment it would take to migrate the site to a platform with a working registration system? If you change your email, just sign up for a new account. People can log in and delete their own posts if they want, just like in any other modern forum software - why would it take admin time?

Obviously you know more about this than I do so please tell me the cost, time requirement, and other ramifications of migrating the site? I've only been doing this for 10 years, so I suspect that you can teach me a lot. I'm all ears.

Oh yeah, also explain the mechanism for migrating a decade's worth of posts to the new system.

Absolutely. We can pull the content and meta data from the database and import it to the new database and set up redirects with existing threads. Generally the hardest part is migrating user passwords because they should be encrypted in a way that they cannot be migrated, but there are so few registered DCUM users that it is less of an issue.

This forum is 10 years old, doesn't have a registration system that works without errors, constantly crashes under high loads, and doesn't have a mobile version. You can do better. I estimate the time cost to be a week full time work from an experienced programmer. The cost depends on if you can find a volunteer or a friendly vendor, I guess.

How many times have you personally undertaken this sort of task? To which software would you suggest that we migrate? I sure wish things were as easy as you seem to believe. Unfortunately, your view from the outside is pretty limited. In general, when people have incentives to do things that look easy and they don't do them, you should consider that they aren't actually that easy. If I could eliminate trolls, registration problems, moderation, and all the other tasks you suggested by hiring a programmer for a week, don't you think I would have done it?

Here is one challenge: a user registers using their Yahoo email address. Posts 1,000 messages over a few years and then their hard drive goes out taking their Excel spreadsheet of passwords with it. In the meantime they've deleted their Yahoo account and use Gmail. Automatic password retrievals don't work because they get bounced by Yahoo (or even worse, Misha from Novosibirsk has opened a new Yahoo account with their old username and he gets the reminders). So, now they want me to help them login. I don't even know of the person emailing me this tale of woe is really the person with that username or someone trying to social engineer their way into the account. Therefore, I'm presented with trying to decide if this is a legitimate request and, if so, helping resolve it. This is not an extreme example but similar to things I face regularly with our limited number of registered users.

On top of that, all I have to do is be wrong once about helping reset a password and inadvertently giving someone access to someone else's account and then nobody would trust registration here again.

We have a long list of improvements that we want to make and are making less noticeable but important changes regularly. The last thing I want to do is devote our time and efforts to managing logins. That is all beside the fact that the majority of our users don't want logins.

Oh please, just because it's hard for you doesn't mean it's hard. It just means you are technologically incompetent. I will force your hand on this issue though, because I can't believe you are allowing this site to be a puppet for fake news. I would advise you start looking into a system that handles registration ASAP. I am giving you a one week head start.

You watch too much Mr. Robot

Anonymous wrote:I'll chime in as a typical dcum user. If registration had been required across the board prior to this point people could put together the following, plus more, about me:

Where I grew up
Where I live now, down to the neighborhood
My first name
My age
Ages of my children
My profession
My husband's profession
My kids' preschool, elementary and middle schools, sports and camps
Where I went on vacation last summer
What kind of dog I have, his age and where we go for training classes
The kind of cars we drive

That's just the beginning.
Identifying who I am would be an absolute breeze for those who know me, even slightly. Anything I post that I would like to keep private- family/marriage issues, depression, personal health issues, political opinions, problems with friends and neighbors, problems with teachers, EVERYTHING could lead back to me even if I use an invented username.

That's how it would be for a lot of people. There's no way dcum would be the same creature if registration were required, like it or not.

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

jsteele wrote:
How many times have you personally undertaken this sort of task? To which software would you suggest that we migrate? I sure wish things were as easy as you seem to believe. Unfortunately, your view from the outside is pretty limited. In general, when people have incentives to do things that look easy and they don't do them, you should consider that they aren't actually that easy. If I could eliminate trolls, registration problems, moderation, and all the other tasks you suggested by hiring a programmer for a week, don't you think I would have done it?

Oh please, just because it's hard for you doesn't mean it's hard. It just means you are technologically incompetent. I will force your hand on this issue though, because I can't believe you are allowing this site to be a puppet for fake news. I would advise you start looking into a system that handles registration ASAP. I am giving you a one week head start.

I noticed that you didn't answer a single one of my questions. Since you've called me technologically incompetent, I would really like to know your credentials that allow you to make such an evaluation. Again, how many systems of this sort have you personally migrated? To which software would you suggest that we migrate?

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We can ask that registration be required, or we can just go do it. Nothing stopping anyone (except that I just tried and received a Site Administrator Error??)

This highlights one of the issues. The registration system doesn't always work correctly. People forget their passwords and usernames. They change their email address and can't get password reminders. Then they demand that we remove all of the posts linked to their username. It is often a resource challenge to manage the few registered users that we have.

This seems like a silly excuse. How much time do you spend deleting posts every day vs. the one-time investment it would take to migrate the site to a platform with a working registration system? If you change your email, just sign up for a new account. People can log in and delete their own posts if they want, just like in any other modern forum software - why would it take admin time?

Obviously you know more about this than I do so please tell me the cost, time requirement, and other ramifications of migrating the site? I've only been doing this for 10 years, so I suspect that you can teach me a lot. I'm all ears.

Oh yeah, also explain the mechanism for migrating a decade's worth of posts to the new system.

Absolutely. We can pull the content and meta data from the database and import it to the new database and set up redirects with existing threads. Generally the hardest part is migrating user passwords because they should be encrypted in a way that they cannot be migrated, but there are so few registered DCUM users that it is less of an issue.

This forum is 10 years old, doesn't have a registration system that works without errors, constantly crashes under high loads, and doesn't have a mobile version. You can do better. I estimate the time cost to be a week full time work from an experienced programmer. The cost depends on if you can find a volunteer or a friendly vendor, I guess.

How many times have you personally undertaken this sort of task? To which software would you suggest that we migrate? I sure wish things were as easy as you seem to believe. Unfortunately, your view from the outside is pretty limited. In general, when people have incentives to do things that look easy and they don't do them, you should consider that they aren't actually that easy. If I could eliminate trolls, registration problems, moderation, and all the other tasks you suggested by hiring a programmer for a week, don't you think I would have done it?

Here is one challenge: a user registers using their Yahoo email address. Posts 1,000 messages over a few years and then their hard drive goes out taking their Excel spreadsheet of passwords with it. In the meantime they've deleted their Yahoo account and use Gmail. Automatic password retrievals don't work because they get bounced by Yahoo (or even worse, Misha from Novosibirsk has opened a new Yahoo account with their old username and he gets the reminders). So, now they want me to help them login. I don't even know of the person emailing me this tale of woe is really the person with that username or someone trying to social engineer their way into the account. Therefore, I'm presented with trying to decide if this is a legitimate request and, if so, helping resolve it. This is not an extreme example but similar to things I face regularly with our limited number of registered users.

On top of that, all I have to do is be wrong once about helping reset a password and inadvertently giving someone access to someone else's account and then nobody would trust registration here again.

We have a long list of improvements that we want to make and are making less noticeable but important changes regularly. The last thing I want to do is devote our time and efforts to managing logins. That is all beside the fact that the majority of our users don't want logins.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:^FFS, Jeff doesn't want to do it. Start your own website and require registration.

+1 And also, as another poster mentioned, this site is also a business. It's not Jeff's hobby. So if no registartion allows him to operate his business with with ease. That's his decision and more power to him.

I think it's amazing he lets people give him feedback like this and actually engages in a discussion on the merits. Not sure what other site admin would do this.

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We can ask that registration be required, or we can just go do it. Nothing stopping anyone (except that I just tried and received a Site Administrator Error??)

This highlights one of the issues. The registration system doesn't always work correctly. People forget their passwords and usernames. They change their email address and can't get password reminders. Then they demand that we remove all of the posts linked to their username. It is often a resource challenge to manage the few registered users that we have.

This seems like a silly excuse. How much time do you spend deleting posts every day vs. the one-time investment it would take to migrate the site to a platform with a working registration system? If you change your email, just sign up for a new account. People can log in and delete their own posts if they want, just like in any other modern forum software - why would it take admin time?

Obviously you know more about this than I do so please tell me the cost, time requirement, and other ramifications of migrating the site? I've only been doing this for 10 years, so I suspect that you can teach me a lot. I'm all ears.

Oh yeah, also explain the mechanism for migrating a decade's worth of posts to the new system.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:When enough posts are reported in a thread, Jeff will sometimes shut down the whole thread. At the end of the day it's a bunch of loser internet trolls saying dumb things. Don't get invested in the discussion.

I think this attitude really downplays the role of troll farms in propagating fake news. It's not just random idiots - it's a centralized effort to find sites like this and use it as a platform to spread their message. Sure, it might get deleted in a few hours, but labor is cheap and they keep at it because it makes the fake news seem more mainstream.

Same with the uptick of posters who have been posting links to obvious fake news site with comments like "wow, is this really true?" A ton of posters will respond and call them idiots, but they've been successful in getting people to click.

So how would registration prevent this? They'll just keep creating new usernames to post.

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We can ask that registration be required, or we can just go do it. Nothing stopping anyone (except that I just tried and received a Site Administrator Error??)

This highlights one of the issues. The registration system doesn't always work correctly. People forget their passwords and usernames. They change their email address and can't get password reminders. Then they demand that we remove all of the posts linked to their username. It is often a resource challenge to manage the few registered users that we have.

Anonymous wrote:When enough posts are reported in a thread, Jeff will sometimes shut down the whole thread. At the end of the day it's a bunch of loser internet trolls saying dumb things. Don't get invested in the discussion.

Anonymous wrote:We can ask that registration be required, or we can just go do it. Nothing stopping anyone (except that I just tried and received a Site Administrator Error??)

jsteele wrote:Please just report the troll posts. We've gone through this sort of thing before and it will blow over.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, he absolutely cheated on her. I doubt she cares. She knows he cheats, I question whether they have sex. She may have a side piece too.

I don't care about it. I didn't care what Clinton did either with his penis. I have my concerns about Trump but whether he is faithful to his wife isn't one of them

You are judging her too harshly.

She probably married him for money. But that does not mean that money is the only thing she cares about.

I think she, like many other people, assume that if someone is smart enough to make that much money, they cannot be that bad(ask my mother, a highly educated bread winner in her own family).

And this election has probably shaken that assumption for Melania.

If you look at older videos of her, she is comfortable and optimistic.

These days she seems very withdrawn. If money and fame were all she cared about, she will look even happier because her husband is now the #1 guy in the world.

It seems to me that she is just coming to terms with how bad the guy is.