What a fantabulous title I know. I'm sure you're confused so let's get right to it shall we? Back in November we were suffering at the hands of those that would plague our notes with spam and as a result I sat down with IT and came up with measures to help prevent that. Having being foiled by our team of bright hamsters, the spammers then took their spammage to deviation and user pages and it was a whole new war.

In order to help prevent this, two new measures were implemented. A report spam button (similar to notes) and a velocity filter. Mistakenly, some of you have been lead to believe that this 'report spam' button is causing people to get banned because others are abusing it but I assure you that's not the case.

Just like the 'report spam' button on notes, when the button is pushed it goes into a little holding area. Everytime that person is reported it's counted and logged in a database that our administration then looks at, goes to the 'spam comments' checks them out and determines if someone should be banned. This isn't automated, if you accidentally hit the button (I've done it a million times on notes) it will not get someone banned. People can't abuse it and report someone a ton of times to get them banned. In fact, if you've tried doing that.. we obviously know. I suggest you stop.

The velocity filter is the one that needs tweaking because it's more an automated thing that appears to be messing with some of you.

If you're an account that sends a lot of messages in a short amount of time that contain the same thing.. you've probably been affected. People who respond to all of their comments with a probably got a temporary slow down at some point. Large amounts of messages in a short period of time cause a flag and some of you have experienced this. Does this mean you're spammers? No, it means that we don't fully have the right parameters set but that seems logical for any new system and certainly one that's automated. This filter doesn't cause permanent bans, just a 'whoa nelly' moment for reflection which I appreciate can be frustrating.


We're trying to understand what 'normal' is in terms of our community and if you're part of a club or a welcome committee or something that can give me some insight on the sheer volume of messages you post in a time period, we will try and tweak this to interfere a bit less with your everyday community activity. The trick is to find a way to irritate you less but still protect you from the true spammers and the answer is going to be some minor tweaking in our numbers and some compromise on your part to maybe not post a bajillion messages that are all the same in a short period of time I'll keep you updated, in the meantime, if you are one of these 'large comment quantity' people, send me a note - I could use your help!





*dAPagan had a contest and then out of nowhere it was canceled. Rumors started floating around that the people that ran the club didn't feel the entries were 'good enough' but I refused to believe that was true. I have a deep admiration for this club, after all, I am a member. After some investigation I found out that the organizer up and bailed on them and left such confusion they didn't know how else to explain and being the kind and gentle bunch they are, they didn't want to ruin anyone's reputation. However, I'm all for karma and the truth needs to come out because the people at *dAPagan don't deserve to bear the weight of responsibility for one persons disgraceful actions.

I have donated 1yr subs to all of the winners of the contest announced here and ask that we now move past the ugliness and embrace a new future for the renewed *dAPagan



- I've been a REALLY good girl!




Calculations: Subtract 1 point for negatives and Add 1 for positives




Tally
January - 414 points
February - 484 points

March 1-2 - +3(tons of community activities launching!!)
- +1(bigger red bull w00t)
=488 points

March 3 - +1(supportive note received)
+1(had dinner with some of my favorite people)
+1(rob mail!)
=501 points

March 4 +2 (Rob mail X2!!!)
+1 (got my nails done)
-1 (Gary Gygax dies)
=503 points

March 5 - 9 +5 (5 rob letters)
+2 (quality time with grandpa)
-2 (read paper and watched news)
-1 (Robs time away extended again)
+1 (found a path)
+1 (dinner and movie with mom)
=509 points

March 10 -1 (generally blue)
-2 (just not a great day all around)
+1 (Rob letter)
+1 (hung out with mom)
=508 points


March 11-19 +10 (Rob is home)
+5 (golden egg)
-1 (computer issues)
+5 (attitude change)
=527 points


March 20 +1 (worked through a difficult situation)
-1 (popular ignorance)
=527 points

March 21-24 +3 - (weekend with family)
+1 (successful turkey cooking!)
=531 points

March 25 +1 (completed something under the wire)
-1 (minor disappointment but over it)
=531 points

March 26