FYI - Posts, Deletions, etc.

[ricki]

We're a community and we have discussions, no surprise there. Unlike face to face discussions you can write things here and then take them back, sort of. To preserve the community you want to use this "take back" feature sparingly as harm might still be done regardless.

To "take back" something you've written, it is easily done (excepting those that have already read it), you can either:

a. Edit it and replace it with something benign like "edited;"
b. Delete it.

No one viewing the post after that will read anything other than what you left if you do "a".

btw, three moderators in this forum, (BigR, C. Moore and myself) can see what you deleted (the "b" option), IF we take the trouble to hit a button on the screen. As a rule, I have no time to bother assuming I see the deletion in the first place which I often don't. I believe the other two folks are pretty busy too and hopefully will ignore the deleted post as well. Moderators have an obligation to respect privacy under normal circumstances and I trust the three of us will do so.

Last point, if in doubt, don't hit enter to make your post for a while. Restraint and balance in all things, right? Sounds awkward, it's not, been doing it for years since the days of email lists. There, there is NO taking anything back. Can still remember some embarrassing moments, e.g. intending to email one person but sending it to 3000 plus instead.

Happy posting!

[C. Moore]

Thanks Rick.. I'm glad to see the other moderator account has been deleted "Eagles". He has been gone to long from this forum. Anyone know where Eagle is?

Thanks for making it clear that an additional moderator account existed and was recently deleted, Chris.
I had heard rumors that Eagle's account had been compromised, and unfortunately seen some evidence to back it up.
If it's not obvious, that was my concern, never yourself or Raul.

The last time I talked to Eagle was about 6 months ago. He was training for paramedic/fire rescue type stuff and seemed very focused and serious.
I haven't been able to get hold of him since.

[ricki]

Rumors can sometimes be nothing more than that. When in doubt get in touch and we'll try to figure things out.

Anyway, I hope this episode has passed. The hackers are still busy working up more grief of the rest of us so issues may be back someday.

Repeating some of the precautions we've put in place to try to minimize future hassles like this ...

Aside from major software upgrades, I am now manually screening all new members. A large quantity of accounts that have been inactive for a considerable period of time with no posts have been disabled to where they can neither post or send PMs hopefully removing the long term "sleeper spambots" from the scene. Also, PM privileges won't kick in until after 20 posts into the foreseeable future.


Enough about spam and bots, what else is going on out there?