Administrator
08-10-2008, 12:10 PM
Hello fellow tapers! Am posting as Admin for this weeks update because there have been a couple of important changes to the site.
First is Spam and spammers:
This week we had two previously dormant users come on and decide to try and spam the various forums with a bunch of garbled nonsense posts accompanied with some links to some sites that lead to who-knows-where.
TapeHeads is a site that welcomes and encourages open discussion from a variety of viewpoints and personalities. However that does not grant Carte Blanche to come in and spam the forums with links to porn, spyware, or other sites of questionable authenticity. As such, ANYONE (new or not) who comes in here and starts engaging in that behavior will be immediately removed from the site and all offending posts removed. I have already had to ban two members in two days because of this. In light of what has happened on certain other sites, I try to be as fair, patient, and open minded as possible. But there is no justification for spam type messages, none. That is an instantly bannable offense. I have tried to be as inclusive as possible for all sorts of discussions. Please see the various boards and subforums for topics. If you have a general interest or 'rant' type message you'd like to get across (within reason), there are designated forums for that. Please see "General Interest", "Cheese And Whine", and "The Mud Pit".
If you are looking to buy or sell something audio related, there are designated "Wanted to buy/sell" sections available.
So once again. Everyone who has something coherent to say is welcome here. If you are just coming in to waste everyones time with spam messages and/or with what you think are cute and artsy-fartsy "pictures" you can post consisting entirely of keyboard and punctuation symbols, I'm sorry. But you are neither needed nor welcome here. You will be banned. You have been warned.
In light of the above, I did make a change to E-mail address registration requirements.
Effective immediately, all new users *MUST* provide a valid e-mail address from a valid Internet Service Provider (such as Earthlink, AOL, etc.). "Disposable" e-mail addresses seem to spawn the majority of spammers.
So as of today, E-mail addresses with Yahoo, Hotmail, and G-mail as the domain/suffix will automatically be rejected. You will NOT be able to join TapeHeads using one of those domains.
Pretty much all of us are accessing the site either through work and/or home. We all have to get online services from SOMEBODY. And most ISP e-mail accounts do provide at no charge "dummy" or "anonymous" e-mail accounts just for the purpose of signing up at various sites (such as discussion boards, online shopping, etc.). It provides legitimacy to the user without exposing ones primary inbox to an onslaught of spam messages. But ultimately, it ties you to a legitimate service. By doing this, it should help reduce the number of spammers that come in here because they are using a hundred different disposable Yahoo accounts from some coffee house somewhere.
I realize that exosure to spam and spammers is a risk that comes along with running an online site and that short of closing the site to everyone (not a viable option given that this is an interactive message board), you are never going to eliminate spam 100%. But you can at least make it HARDER. Some would-be spammers will look at TapeHeads and its relatively small user base and see the join requirements and walk away figuring that it will be simply too much trouble. Unless of course Grumpy is behind it, because he has an axe to grind with us.
Also please note that I enacted a Grandfather clause in all of this. If you joined the site prior to today and used one of those domains for your contact information, you will NOT be banned from the site. This is only a "going forward" issue. Should any of you suddenly not be able to access the site, please send me an e-mail through the contact link at the bottom of the page along with your username and we'll get this fixed for you. It should also be emphatically stated that TapeHeads keeps all users information strictly confidential and does not disclose any information to anyone.
In the interim, yes, it's possible that there might still be some dormant 'spammers' in the wings. But it will then be a simple matter of weeding them out as they post. And everyone else will drop off when the 180 day inactivity shelf life begins to pass.
While on the subject, it has been asked of me a couple of times. And that is when am I going to add some Moderators to the site?
Well to answer that, I don't think I will be anytime soon. There really aren't enough active members or daily posts right now to justify it. And for the most part, everyone here does a pretty good job of moderating themselves. I haven't really set any sort of arbitrary membership/timeline/post counts to where I'll do it. I guess when I feel that I can no longer effectively monitor the site by myself (whether it's through growth, offline commitments, or both), then I'll post a "help wanted" for a few mods. I figure that if/when I do, I'll probably bring two or three people on to start, and go from there. I alreday have a few possible names in mind on who I'd "like" to grant that priviledge to, but when the time comes and I make the announcement, I'll see if they all come to me. In short, I will make it an "open" application process.
And lastly is site donations.
I set up TapeHeads as a place for all of us to have fun and enjoy ourselves free of the ugly hand of pointless censorship found on certain other sites. I did not do it as a moneymaking scheme.
But since some of you have offered, there is now a place you can donate if you wish. I have set up three 'tiers'.
They are:
"TapeHeads.Net Donor" ($10)
"TapeHeads.Net Subscriber" ($20)
"TapeHeads.Net Sponsor" ($100)
In the menu bar at the top left of the page go to:
UserCP----->Miscellaneous (about halfway down the page) ------>Paid subscriptions.
In there is a menu along with drop-down menus for what you'd like to contribute. It goes directly into PayPal and any donations will be treated as a non-Ebay transaction.
Now what do you get for your donation?
Well for starters. You can be assured that TapeHeads will remain up and running. Frankly, there isn't really much else I can offer except for maybe some enhanced forum permissions (such as number of attachments, post deleting ability, etc). After all, all users already enjoy most of the features that the site has to offer. But for higher level donations, I could probably work out something for you in the form of a 'free' tape from my stash as a sort of thank you.
I guess that's about it for now. Apart from the couple of bad apples we threw out this week, everything else is going great. Hope you all are still enjoying the site. And as always, if any of you think of something I can do better, please post it in the "Suggestion Box" forum.
Keep the tape rolling!
Administrator (A.K.A. Matt, "Des-Lab")
Sunday, August 10 2008
First is Spam and spammers:
This week we had two previously dormant users come on and decide to try and spam the various forums with a bunch of garbled nonsense posts accompanied with some links to some sites that lead to who-knows-where.
TapeHeads is a site that welcomes and encourages open discussion from a variety of viewpoints and personalities. However that does not grant Carte Blanche to come in and spam the forums with links to porn, spyware, or other sites of questionable authenticity. As such, ANYONE (new or not) who comes in here and starts engaging in that behavior will be immediately removed from the site and all offending posts removed. I have already had to ban two members in two days because of this. In light of what has happened on certain other sites, I try to be as fair, patient, and open minded as possible. But there is no justification for spam type messages, none. That is an instantly bannable offense. I have tried to be as inclusive as possible for all sorts of discussions. Please see the various boards and subforums for topics. If you have a general interest or 'rant' type message you'd like to get across (within reason), there are designated forums for that. Please see "General Interest", "Cheese And Whine", and "The Mud Pit".
If you are looking to buy or sell something audio related, there are designated "Wanted to buy/sell" sections available.
So once again. Everyone who has something coherent to say is welcome here. If you are just coming in to waste everyones time with spam messages and/or with what you think are cute and artsy-fartsy "pictures" you can post consisting entirely of keyboard and punctuation symbols, I'm sorry. But you are neither needed nor welcome here. You will be banned. You have been warned.
In light of the above, I did make a change to E-mail address registration requirements.
Effective immediately, all new users *MUST* provide a valid e-mail address from a valid Internet Service Provider (such as Earthlink, AOL, etc.). "Disposable" e-mail addresses seem to spawn the majority of spammers.
So as of today, E-mail addresses with Yahoo, Hotmail, and G-mail as the domain/suffix will automatically be rejected. You will NOT be able to join TapeHeads using one of those domains.
Pretty much all of us are accessing the site either through work and/or home. We all have to get online services from SOMEBODY. And most ISP e-mail accounts do provide at no charge "dummy" or "anonymous" e-mail accounts just for the purpose of signing up at various sites (such as discussion boards, online shopping, etc.). It provides legitimacy to the user without exposing ones primary inbox to an onslaught of spam messages. But ultimately, it ties you to a legitimate service. By doing this, it should help reduce the number of spammers that come in here because they are using a hundred different disposable Yahoo accounts from some coffee house somewhere.
I realize that exosure to spam and spammers is a risk that comes along with running an online site and that short of closing the site to everyone (not a viable option given that this is an interactive message board), you are never going to eliminate spam 100%. But you can at least make it HARDER. Some would-be spammers will look at TapeHeads and its relatively small user base and see the join requirements and walk away figuring that it will be simply too much trouble. Unless of course Grumpy is behind it, because he has an axe to grind with us.
Also please note that I enacted a Grandfather clause in all of this. If you joined the site prior to today and used one of those domains for your contact information, you will NOT be banned from the site. This is only a "going forward" issue. Should any of you suddenly not be able to access the site, please send me an e-mail through the contact link at the bottom of the page along with your username and we'll get this fixed for you. It should also be emphatically stated that TapeHeads keeps all users information strictly confidential and does not disclose any information to anyone.
In the interim, yes, it's possible that there might still be some dormant 'spammers' in the wings. But it will then be a simple matter of weeding them out as they post. And everyone else will drop off when the 180 day inactivity shelf life begins to pass.
While on the subject, it has been asked of me a couple of times. And that is when am I going to add some Moderators to the site?
Well to answer that, I don't think I will be anytime soon. There really aren't enough active members or daily posts right now to justify it. And for the most part, everyone here does a pretty good job of moderating themselves. I haven't really set any sort of arbitrary membership/timeline/post counts to where I'll do it. I guess when I feel that I can no longer effectively monitor the site by myself (whether it's through growth, offline commitments, or both), then I'll post a "help wanted" for a few mods. I figure that if/when I do, I'll probably bring two or three people on to start, and go from there. I alreday have a few possible names in mind on who I'd "like" to grant that priviledge to, but when the time comes and I make the announcement, I'll see if they all come to me. In short, I will make it an "open" application process.
And lastly is site donations.
I set up TapeHeads as a place for all of us to have fun and enjoy ourselves free of the ugly hand of pointless censorship found on certain other sites. I did not do it as a moneymaking scheme.
But since some of you have offered, there is now a place you can donate if you wish. I have set up three 'tiers'.
They are:
"TapeHeads.Net Donor" ($10)
"TapeHeads.Net Subscriber" ($20)
"TapeHeads.Net Sponsor" ($100)
In the menu bar at the top left of the page go to:
UserCP----->Miscellaneous (about halfway down the page) ------>Paid subscriptions.
In there is a menu along with drop-down menus for what you'd like to contribute. It goes directly into PayPal and any donations will be treated as a non-Ebay transaction.
Now what do you get for your donation?
Well for starters. You can be assured that TapeHeads will remain up and running. Frankly, there isn't really much else I can offer except for maybe some enhanced forum permissions (such as number of attachments, post deleting ability, etc). After all, all users already enjoy most of the features that the site has to offer. But for higher level donations, I could probably work out something for you in the form of a 'free' tape from my stash as a sort of thank you.
I guess that's about it for now. Apart from the couple of bad apples we threw out this week, everything else is going great. Hope you all are still enjoying the site. And as always, if any of you think of something I can do better, please post it in the "Suggestion Box" forum.
Keep the tape rolling!
Administrator (A.K.A. Matt, "Des-Lab")
Sunday, August 10 2008