the 12 hour post editing limit

Re (from starlight1):
"Oh and one more thing, it would also be nice to not be automatically subscribed to threads you're just reading occasionally. I'm not sure why that keeps happening to me but I regularly have to clear our my folder of subscribed threads even if I don't recall ever subscribing -- just by virtue of clicking on it I think I get email updates."

If you click on User CP, then go down and click Edit Options, then go down to Messaging & Notification, you'll see a Default Thread Subscription Mode box. In it, you can click on a drop-down menu and click on No email notification. If you want to stop being automatically subscribed to threads, click on Do not subscribe. After you click on your preference, scroll to the bottom of the window and click on the Save Changes button. That should solve your problem. If it doesn't, message one of the mods or admins. Possibly ImaginaryIllusion.
 
...go down and click Edit Options...
Yuhey, Kevin, you've just inadvertently helped me solve the annoying issue of outgoing private messages not being saved automatically!
This forum has so many features which users possibly don't discover for years ;) I didn't know where to find the list of moderators either.
 
I'm going to address you all in one post if that's ok. :) And I'll go in chronological order of those who replied to me:

@Emm
Thanks for the advice on the mods and link VERY helpful!

Yes that's what I meant. If a mod was part of the conversation or had an issue. Obviously I've never seen this actually happen..though I vaguely recall some various dramas over the years..which is neither here nor there.

In any case, I know spamminators technically could change something but its not in our job description so I don't even on my own blog. It's an honouring the rules/unsaid things. But its good to get clarification.

Is there a particular reasons *why* the blog part of the forums was set up in that way?

Yes I am not IT enough knowledgable for how the forums work. Is there a section that explains who started this place and why ? I don't know if I've ever read an "about" page for this site...I'm not sure why its taking me this long to ask some really basic stuff...but..hey ho.

@ KDT
Thank you very much for explaining that and the process to fix it! That's probably whats happening is my replies to threads as well as starting threads :)

@Tinwin, I'm glad that this has had a roundabout help to other things.
Yes I agree the User Control Panel is very complicated. in fact I feel this is one of the more technically inclined websites I have been a part of except maybe medical ones or work related ones. But as a downtime forum, yeah...technical! Not very new person friendly. :rolleyes: or in my case, old forum user friendly too.
 
I am pretty sure that the structure of the forum is some sort of a standard "package deal" pre-existing thing...it was not coded from scratch for polyamory.com.

I say this, because if you have a look at the forums at city-data.com which is my former forum stomping grounds for years before I came here...the format looks exactly the same.

In fact, when things got nasty over at city-data.com (trolls, flame wars, general ickyness) and I went searching for a new forum to hang out at...and I found this one...I did a lot of wandering and poking around because I thought since it looked exactly the same it might somehow be connected or related to city-data.

But it's not. It just uses the exact same forum format. I'm curious what the source is, or if there is a name for it.
 
I am pretty sure that the structure of the forum is some sort of a standard "package deal" pre-existing thing...it was not coded from scratch for polyamory.com.

Yes - I have seen the same or very similar forum configurations elsewhere as well. It is a software package - perhaps a bit archaic now but it works - and it's free to the users.

But - who pays for the hosting? And for the domain name registration? Often times, free forums have advertising - after all, someone has to pay the bills. Is there a mysterious benefactor - or did I just miss something? Al
 
But it's not. It just uses the exact same forum format. I'm curious what the source is, or if there is a name for it.

I recognize it as vBulletin. I'm on a couple other forums that use the same format. I've never run a forum using this format, but I doubt major changes can be made.
 
I'm not a fan at all of the "lockdown" thing... but I see the purpose.

Back in the heyday of PMM, there was a guy (call him Wintermute) who learned a neat little trick. He cultivated a few women in the chatrooms, professing sadness & distress that there were people in the forums who picked on him for being a Neocon. Wintermute would target someone he didn't like (mostly outspoken Liberals or someone who didn't take him seriously enough), find a thread that person was very active in, then say something aggressively hateful to/about them... & wait.

As soon as Wintermute got a response, he'd change his post to something reasonable & utterly innocuous. One or more of his girlfriends would rush to his defense, sometimes turning the responder in to Management & demanding their immediate suspension; two defenders could totally derail a thread by posting rapid back-&-forth about how awful it was that Management allowed this targeted persecution to continue... & how this terrible policy was keeping away hundreds if not thousands of potential members, which is why I do NOT take that argument seriously anymore. :D Anyway, Management would arrive (always imagining themselves as The Only Reasonable Adults Here), threaten the angry responders, & lock the thread. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Wintermute & company found they could play this more subtly as well, going back days, & changing what had been a harmless exchange into something that made him appear somehow victimized, then complain elsewhere about this & point to the thread (possibly moribund) as evidence.

We didn't have a Quote function back then. When responding to him & his minions, we started copy/pasting their posts into our replies. And they demanded we be immediately banned from the site for violating their copyright & the site's TOS. :rolleyes: In a two-pronged approach, they ALSO claimed that the quoted parts were entirely imaginary, & responders should be banned for libel, or at least trolling.

Is a time limit a great solution? No; of course not. But it seems to damp down such goofiness.
 
I thought there was a way to see old versions of posts that had been edited. I might be wrong, but if there isnt such a function, it Shouldn't be hard to implement.
 
Previous versions are visible to the moderation staff (edit: "accessible" would be more accurate than "visible"), so if anyone tries to pull that trick it'd be fairly simple to check once someone points it out.

...there was a guy (call him Wintermute)
There was a Wintermute—also very conservative and loudly argumentative—on a forum I used to frequent, but as far as I recall there were no post editing shenanigans associated with him. I wonder if it was the same guy, or if people of that type just gravitate toward the name.
 
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But - who pays for the hosting? And for the domain name registration? Often times, free forums have advertising - after all, someone has to pay the bills. Is there a mysterious benefactor - or did I just miss something?

I'm curious about this, too.
Who signs your paycheck, Emm? ;)
 
Who signs your paycheck, Emm? ;)
The Australian government, until I change jobs in a just over month (20 years in uniform is long enough). Here? We're all volunteers.

The site is owned by a Belgian named Oliver. I've never had any contact with him, so I don't know what his motivation is.
 
The site is owned by a Belgian named Oliver. I've never had any contact with him, so I don't know what his motivation is.

Interesting.
thinking-023.GIF
 
This. Plus, I've seen people use editing as a form of gaslighting and trolling in other forums.

Read the post before you hit reply. Then read it right after. Then there is no need for a 12 hour window. The forums on eBay have a 5 minute window...lol.

A 5 minute window would make sense to erase any errors but not be a jerk to repliers
 
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