Release Notes for April 27, 2012

[Mike]

If you received a message indicating some posts were deleted, this was an accident. Thousands of posts were removed that have been soft deleted. Soft deleted posts are posts that still exist in our database, but typically can only be seen by moderators. We keep all deleted messages in our database for a certain duration of time, in the unlikely event of an accidental deletion or data loss. As part of our maintenance program, we have removed all deleted data from Windows 7 Forums and Windows 8 Forums.

I have developed a script for the forum that deletes private messages and visitor messages. Not only was this a chance to clean up the database some more, but those annoying private messages you had gotten were removed as well.

Guess where those private messages come from? Any time a moderator action is taken, you get notified with Auto-Moderation PM's.

Registration (register.php) is running on SSL to deter spam registrations. Additional criteria for registration such as additional image and Q&A human verification were turned back on for Windows 7 Forums, as it is clear reCAPTCHA has been defeated.

Moderators can now see some interesting stats about their actions as we broaden the use of some features exclusive to vBulletin 4.2 Alpha. As part of the vBulletin Pre-Release Development Team, we are among the few live forums running it, if any.

The ability to disable advertising is now offered on registration, as well.

We are aware of outstanding issues with the Facebook versions of the page that run through the application programming language (API). This is a known issue.

While not officially announced to customers, we have been told that Uniblue RegistryBooster is being discontinued. We have been asked to sell a different program. Mitchell Anthony, the head of public relations, tested the SpeedUpMyPC 2012 app, and we are no longer advertising it on our pages as much. Thus, some ads were moved around as a contingency. If you have problems with RegistryBooster, you should definitely contact Uniblue Systems, Ltd.

As a result of the above notes, we are looking into an affiliation to offer Piriform CCleaner Professional on Windows 7 Forums. These plans can and will change.

We are evaluating Kontera in-line text ads on Windows 7 Forums to help finance the website.

In making daily changes, we are working to be as transparent as possible, issuing release notes to tell you what we are doing precisely.

A notable infraction warning was issued for all of Dell India for spamming Windows 7 Forums (seriously, I can't make this stuff up).

The notification about blogs and album publication requiring 10 posts has been removed from the blog area for members, in order to facilitate more streamlined browsing. The information remains in Frequently Asked Questions.

The admin team will be looking into organizing another meeting, as the last one was cancelled earlier in the year.

The head of public relations has asked me to consider making the use of Skype mandatory for our volunteer staff. This will go into consideration with the admin team.

We are looking for new moderators on Windows 7 Forums and Windows 8 Forums and will accept requests from qualified individuals - either those with forum moderation experience or experience in IT and computers. Please do not misrepresent anything critical about yourself when applying and take the idea seriously (but have fun).

We are considering consolidating some of the forums on Windows 8 Forums - many of which are going unused - but we would like additional feedback.

URL injection for the command-line hard deletion of posts was saved as a future method for permanently removing information from the database. 187 soft deleted threads have been permanently removed. 1,138 soft deleted posts have been permanently deleted (from within threads). These are posts that escaped pruning because they existed in open, valid threads. An additional 800 spam threads were pruned from Windows 8 Forums as we close the gap. Less than 1% of these spam posts ever passed through our anti-spam moderation system. The amount of junk deleted from the database is unprecented and should give us a small speed boost.

I would like to thank Ross Cameron, former Windows 7 Forums administrator for several years and Microsoft MVP, for contributing as a specialist and consultant, again, last night on key issues.

The hard deletion of soft deleted posts from valid threads has helped to eliminate some additional, mostly inconsequential, issues with expired attachments on Windows 7 Forums.

We have noticed a resurgance of free system resources since re-activating Sphinx as the internal search engine on both websites.

I will continue to update you as significant changes, news, and events are available for publication.

Many other changes from earlier in the month can be found in Forum Announcements on Windows7Forums.com.

[davehc]

Good, informative post, Mike. I have commented on this "We are considering consolidating some of the forums on Windows 8 Forums - many of which are going unused - but we would like additional feedback." - far too many. It tends to dilute the active side of providing Windows 8 help.
I did get one of those messages about deleting posts. Couldn't understand why it was deleted, but it wasn't important enough to comment on.

[Mike]

The main issue is that once Windows 8 is RTM, there is a chance those forums will become heavily used, and are only under-used now because the OS is still in a state of development. However, the current strategy contradicts how we would normally add forums, yes. Traditionally, it has been considered wise to start with only a handful of forums and move outwards. Unfortunately, we have quite a few redundancies. If you have more detailed suggestions, let me know, otherwise I think we will start soon to repair the problem, before it becomes an issue with broken canonical URLs and 301/302 redirects. Even if I am right about how many people use the site, that will actually make the problem more complex if most people don't want so many forums.

[davehc]

This would be my lineup.

Windows 8 Support

Installation, Setup and Upgrades - Not sure on this one -it could equally be in Support?

Hardware and drivers
(Hardware and components discussion and help)

Networking
( inc sharing and homegroups.)

BSODs and Debugging crashes

Gaming

Software

Security

Customization help and tips

Off-Topic Discussion
(Off-Topic chat about anything not related to Windows 8 )

Introductions

Windows 8 Tutorials (Strictly monitored and tested - no mistakes wanted here!)

Forum Announcements, Suggestions and Feedback

Mods Loung