Forum Changes

[Technocracy]

As you have noticed we are making some changes to these forums.

Some of the changes are very visible and others are more subtle.

The moderating team will use this sticky post to keep our members informed on what we are doing.


1. Anti-Spam and Anti-Offensive content measures -

Purveyors of spam and offensive content had become a significant annoyance to everyone on this forum. The main reason for this was our initial "open door" policy for account registrations. We have decided to rein this problem in and to do this we have instituted a multi-step registration process to review accounts prior to allowing a new account to post on the open forums. During the below described validation process a new account can read anything, they just cannot post until the validation process is finished

Every new account receives a verification email as the first validation step during the new registration process. When a user receives this mail it includes a link for them to click to validate their submitted email address. Some anti-virus or anti-spam software can intercept this email, if this happens contact us using the "contact us" links on these forums.

After the verification email is responded to by the new user, the account goes into the review queue. A moderator or Administrator then reviews the information submitted with the account registration. At this point the account is either approved or removed. Once approved all posting rights are granted.


2. Account cleanup -

We are also removing accounts of spammers and offensive content as a parallel action to tightening up the registration process.



3. Forum reorganization -

We have begun an extensive reorganization process for the forums. It will be phased in over time. In essence the idea is to add new forum categories and then reorganize our current threads into the new categories.

First we added the Press Releases - News Stories forum and the subforums below it. We then moved existing threads of this type into these subforums. As members add content of this type, we ask that you use the subforums to help organize these posts.

Secondly we added the In the Spotlight forum. The moderating team intends this to be the first stop for the community for items of interest to the community as a whole.


(More changes on the way, we will add posts to this thread as they are done)