Safe Surf..

[mdshunk]

Hey, I think that the safe surf thing is cool and all, but do we really need the big banner cluttering up the top of the page?

[Kode VioL8R]

Agreed. That kind of thing SHOULD be on the page, but much much smaller and at the bottom of the page.

[dkerr]

I have reduced it but it stays at the top.

2nd. We are being spamed and I will deal with this soon, I will likely look at this in the next day or so, and try to figure out what approach to take with with. The current spam will be deleted.

Don

[dkerr]

Have deleted threads / posts that had the sales pitch, phone # posted was from UK.

Will try to come up with a long term policy and how to deal with this kind of thing.

Don

[mdshunk]

Don, do we really need registered users from the UK? We can't really advise them anyhow. Can you block users with other than North American IP's from registering?

[Piper]

I like the diversity of being worldwide. It is interesting to read and understand the world beyond the U.S.A. Of course some people don't fill in their profile so you have no idea where they are coming from.

[dkerr]

banning entire nations, I don't believe is the solution. Yes we cannot always properly advice people living in foreign nations questions on code. But things like switch wiring should hold true no matter where you are, appliances are another area that is usually the same, you may have a different transformer, etc., in it due to a different power standard, but regardless is it is a slightly different version of the same part, it is usually still the same part that is faulty in a problem regardless is it in the US or anywhere else.

I am going to tackle this and will come out with a policy or angle of atatck, but it will take a few days to do it.

Don

[Mr T]

Since there arent many outside of North America on here.. cant you require manual validation of people signing up from outside... THey only need to sign up to post. It wouldnt restrict any legit people from on here.

On the safe surf crap thats taking up space. How many <13 year olds use this site? I havent seen too many kids intersted in the field of plumbing either. The rating things are a start of a solution. But they are absolutly worthless unless software is installed and maintained on the viewer's computer....and the viewer does not know how to bypass or disable it. (sites like www.buzzsurf.com/surfatwork, or www.siteallow.com do this for you.. and yes kids know about this stuff).

One of the bigger things for kids and cell phones now is a ringtone that is about 16Khz..which is out of the audable range of most older adults....aka teachers. Kids are sending messages to each other in class now, mabye even test answers. They can hear their phones beep from their pocket or backpack, but a teacher 10 feet away cant.

Did i jsut violate the safesurf rules with all this by telling of ways to bypass firewalls and proxy filters and how to cheat on tests? Will safesurf catch this?

my response... :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

and if we are a safe site... why do we have these:
smileyruno sex_1 sniper_1 ladyman_1 crash_! :twisted: :evil: bow_1
*don, if you take these icons away i'm leaving this site....we worked hard for these*

[dkerr]

good news, smilies stay !

icra / safesurf classifications will be on the main sites too, it is being built into the new site I am making, most of the code for it however is hidden, including the forums site, but browsers, search engines and the like can see the code. The icons displayed is just gives a visual appearance that the site is rated. The code itself from icra and safesurf is in the hidden section of the header code of the page.

I thought about email verification for registrations, but emails are free by the dozen, anyone can get an email from hundreds of different places, so that in itself may not solve anything.

trying to get more moderators to cover more of the forums may help also, which can be given certain powers yet to be determined. Having a forum that only moderators and administrators can see may be benificial also, because diccusing certain aspects of policy may not be needed to be viewed openly.

And the internet can also be sumed up as everything you ever wanted and dreamed about together with everything you ever hated and dispised.

The cell phone thing is a new thing, surprised the phone makers would put an option ring in that only the young can hear.

[Mr T]

its a ringtone that you can download to any modern cell phone.

i got a app like that on my PDA called 'scare the dog' it is a electronic dog whistle that i use to mess with my cats. Luckily the local Humane Society hasnt ticked me off yet, so I havent been tempted to fire it off while doing a service call there. (even though a Beagle got loose the last time I was there and was heading my way but they got him in time.... i hate Beagles)

[Mr T]

But my point is on the ratings is that if someone doesnt want their kid viewing home fix it sites, and sets the filters to do so, the kid will find a way around sooner or later... even if going to someone elses house in order to learn how to reverse the garbage disposal motor on you. I just dont see something like that taking up even more realestate on EVERY page on this site... The necessity to scroll around just to navigate on here is bad enough already. (5 lines of this reply box are visbile without scrolling on a 1280x1024 resolution.) Not all of us have scroll wheels on our mice/trackballs.

[dkerr]

The ratings announcent icons are now moved near the top of the side bar that appear on the forum home page only.

Don