Des-Lab
09-14-2008, 02:35 PM
Greetings tapers. Last weeks update was rather lengthy. But this weeks one will be a lot shorter.
For starters, I'll summarize by saying that no major changes have been done to the site since last weeks bulletin. There are however, a few follow ups I'd like to make just to keep you all current and in the loop.
For starters, I had announced the creation of a home page. That project is currently on hold pending working out some software and server issues. Upon further review, I discovered that undertaking to be a bit more complex than I had originally anticipated. It will still happen eventually. But for the short term, it has taken a bit of a back seat.
Because of that, and my previous call for anyone interested to apply for moderator position, that too has been delayed somewhat. I have received and reviewed all of the applications. I think I am ready to announce decisions, but in light of the delays, I will still accept applications at least through the upcoming week. But I don't want to hire and activate the Mods until I have that all new section of the site up and running. But once I do, the Mods will oversee much of the day to day here on the forums because I will then turn a lot of my focus and attention at further building that new section.
Moving on, some members have expressed concerns over the existence of the Cheese And Whine forum section of this site and what it's there for. And specifically, some of the topics that have been written in regards to a certain other site.
Let me state for the record that the purpose of that section is to provide a space for everyone to blow off some steam and air their side of a dispute should one arise. Topics need not be limited to dealings with other sites (which I have no control over anyway. So you are basically just going there to vent, complain, and perhaps whine. Hence the name. But at least you can get it off your chest.). You can complain about pretty much anything there-including that stuffed-to-the-gills-with-Viagra SOB driving the Corvette that cut you off on the road to dealing with the mindless dolt of a Call Center in India to the time your once favorite airline left you stranded for three days in Little Pinto, Utah.
A certain other website has been a lightning rod of attention there. No question they brought much of it on themselves. I have certainly written the lions share of discussions there with many of you adding to it and sharing your own stories.
But as I said in another discussion, the catalyst behind creating TapeHeads was NOT to be the place to endlessly bash other sites. So going forward, I am asking all TH'ers to please chill out with the AK rants. I believe we've been heard. And our points made. We know that Grumpy visits this board. When I had that two minute phone conversation with him last week, he good as told me he does.
Certainly if some substantial new development comes to light-such as a second round of mass bannings, some verifiable "dirt" on their leadership, a public addressing of TapeHeads, or anything else that has not already been visited many times over, yes. Definitely share it. But for those of us who have already been down that road such as myself and everyone from the first Great Massacre, we've all said it. Let's move on. Otherwise the more and more we begrudge those same points, the more and more [legitimate] reason they and visitors will have reason to paint us as a vindictive site. You veteran TH'ers know the truth. Let's lead by example shall we?
And finally, I just want to reiterate the new new rules re: new memberships. Unless a specific [new] username comes recommended to me from an incumbent member, ALL new memberships will go into moderator queue for review. Nominal usernames will be given 'probationary' status on the site (your user title is "New To The Board"). You can post a message, but that too goes into queue for review. During that time, access to the site and its features is extremely limited. Once I see your post and that it's "legit"; that is you do want to be an active member here, I will then approve your membership and upgrade it to full "member" status. That grants you full access to all the sites features including customizing your profile and your posts showing up in the forums in real time.
New members who post "spam" type messages (even if they never get past the moderator queue) will be immediately banned as will any existing member who does the same.
And speaking of spammers, all of them seem to have a few common traits. First is that their username is a nonsense combination of numbers/letters/symbols (such as grt547uur). Their E-mail address is one of the ones I wanted to ban (Yahoo, MSN, and GMail), and their "birthday" is always January 01, 1980.
So going forward, anyone who tries to sign up with that kind of username and e-mail address will AUTOMATICALLY be rejected from the site. You will not even be taken to probationary status. Your application will be dead-on-arrival. Just to clarify. That's not to say that I am rejecting those E-mail domains. All of them are acceptable. What will get you automatically rejected is having one of those nonsense usernames *AND* have a nonsense e-mail address. An example of this would be someone trying to register here under the name of ugger488ssr and their e-mail address is ugger488ssr "at" Gmail.com. However, if someone tries to sign up as...for example..."Marantz_Junkie", but their e-mail address is something like oogabooga "at" Yahoo.com, I'll *probably* allow it. At least to probationary status anyway. I can understand wanting to have an e-mail address that is hard for spammers to figure out.
So anyone who wants to sign up is welcome to do so. But you better pick a username that makes some kind of sense-such as "Speaker_Tweaker", "C90", "A3300SX", "DaveB", or SOMETHING coherent. And understand why you may not be able to immediately access the site. Once you get approval, make your first post. I'll try to see it and approve it within 12 hours. And once I see it's good, after that, you are home free. Unless, of course you end up doing something stupid like spamming.
I guess that's about it. By now all of you have seen the sponsor links on this page. I hope that all of you have had the chance to check out USRecording. They can certainly help you with any new tape needs you have. And since most-if not all-of us visit Ebay regularly anyway, I hope that you would all consider doing so through the link that appears right below the USR ad.
Thanks for sticking around and helping move TapeHeads towards the goal of being the Number One place on the 'Net to talk about analog audio.
Matt "Des-Lab"
Sunday, September 14, 2008
For starters, I'll summarize by saying that no major changes have been done to the site since last weeks bulletin. There are however, a few follow ups I'd like to make just to keep you all current and in the loop.
For starters, I had announced the creation of a home page. That project is currently on hold pending working out some software and server issues. Upon further review, I discovered that undertaking to be a bit more complex than I had originally anticipated. It will still happen eventually. But for the short term, it has taken a bit of a back seat.
Because of that, and my previous call for anyone interested to apply for moderator position, that too has been delayed somewhat. I have received and reviewed all of the applications. I think I am ready to announce decisions, but in light of the delays, I will still accept applications at least through the upcoming week. But I don't want to hire and activate the Mods until I have that all new section of the site up and running. But once I do, the Mods will oversee much of the day to day here on the forums because I will then turn a lot of my focus and attention at further building that new section.
Moving on, some members have expressed concerns over the existence of the Cheese And Whine forum section of this site and what it's there for. And specifically, some of the topics that have been written in regards to a certain other site.
Let me state for the record that the purpose of that section is to provide a space for everyone to blow off some steam and air their side of a dispute should one arise. Topics need not be limited to dealings with other sites (which I have no control over anyway. So you are basically just going there to vent, complain, and perhaps whine. Hence the name. But at least you can get it off your chest.). You can complain about pretty much anything there-including that stuffed-to-the-gills-with-Viagra SOB driving the Corvette that cut you off on the road to dealing with the mindless dolt of a Call Center in India to the time your once favorite airline left you stranded for three days in Little Pinto, Utah.
A certain other website has been a lightning rod of attention there. No question they brought much of it on themselves. I have certainly written the lions share of discussions there with many of you adding to it and sharing your own stories.
But as I said in another discussion, the catalyst behind creating TapeHeads was NOT to be the place to endlessly bash other sites. So going forward, I am asking all TH'ers to please chill out with the AK rants. I believe we've been heard. And our points made. We know that Grumpy visits this board. When I had that two minute phone conversation with him last week, he good as told me he does.
Certainly if some substantial new development comes to light-such as a second round of mass bannings, some verifiable "dirt" on their leadership, a public addressing of TapeHeads, or anything else that has not already been visited many times over, yes. Definitely share it. But for those of us who have already been down that road such as myself and everyone from the first Great Massacre, we've all said it. Let's move on. Otherwise the more and more we begrudge those same points, the more and more [legitimate] reason they and visitors will have reason to paint us as a vindictive site. You veteran TH'ers know the truth. Let's lead by example shall we?
And finally, I just want to reiterate the new new rules re: new memberships. Unless a specific [new] username comes recommended to me from an incumbent member, ALL new memberships will go into moderator queue for review. Nominal usernames will be given 'probationary' status on the site (your user title is "New To The Board"). You can post a message, but that too goes into queue for review. During that time, access to the site and its features is extremely limited. Once I see your post and that it's "legit"; that is you do want to be an active member here, I will then approve your membership and upgrade it to full "member" status. That grants you full access to all the sites features including customizing your profile and your posts showing up in the forums in real time.
New members who post "spam" type messages (even if they never get past the moderator queue) will be immediately banned as will any existing member who does the same.
And speaking of spammers, all of them seem to have a few common traits. First is that their username is a nonsense combination of numbers/letters/symbols (such as grt547uur). Their E-mail address is one of the ones I wanted to ban (Yahoo, MSN, and GMail), and their "birthday" is always January 01, 1980.
So going forward, anyone who tries to sign up with that kind of username and e-mail address will AUTOMATICALLY be rejected from the site. You will not even be taken to probationary status. Your application will be dead-on-arrival. Just to clarify. That's not to say that I am rejecting those E-mail domains. All of them are acceptable. What will get you automatically rejected is having one of those nonsense usernames *AND* have a nonsense e-mail address. An example of this would be someone trying to register here under the name of ugger488ssr and their e-mail address is ugger488ssr "at" Gmail.com. However, if someone tries to sign up as...for example..."Marantz_Junkie", but their e-mail address is something like oogabooga "at" Yahoo.com, I'll *probably* allow it. At least to probationary status anyway. I can understand wanting to have an e-mail address that is hard for spammers to figure out.
So anyone who wants to sign up is welcome to do so. But you better pick a username that makes some kind of sense-such as "Speaker_Tweaker", "C90", "A3300SX", "DaveB", or SOMETHING coherent. And understand why you may not be able to immediately access the site. Once you get approval, make your first post. I'll try to see it and approve it within 12 hours. And once I see it's good, after that, you are home free. Unless, of course you end up doing something stupid like spamming.
I guess that's about it. By now all of you have seen the sponsor links on this page. I hope that all of you have had the chance to check out USRecording. They can certainly help you with any new tape needs you have. And since most-if not all-of us visit Ebay regularly anyway, I hope that you would all consider doing so through the link that appears right below the USR ad.
Thanks for sticking around and helping move TapeHeads towards the goal of being the Number One place on the 'Net to talk about analog audio.
Matt "Des-Lab"
Sunday, September 14, 2008