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Upgrade 2018 changes

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Forum and User Group Permissions

These have all been totally rebuilt from the ground up, every forum and group. As I get to adding the features, additional groups will be added automatically to accounts giving additional permissions / access to features.

This was required due to the significant restructure in how the software handles permissions.
 
Reporting Content

When you reported content previously, it went privately to a staff only system. If we decided to send any notification to you, we would, but otherwise you had no further say in reported content.

Now, your reports go into the contact us system. We will see the report there, action it and likely still say nothing, however, if we require further information or you wish to add more information, you can do so, all still within a private context between you and staff.

Only you, and staff, can see your contact us discussions.
 
Contact Us

Using the contact us system, any link within the site, now goes into the new contact us member only system. Yes, member only. The only way for guests to contact MyPTSD is by email, which they will find in the contact tab with a special sticky that only guests see.

This allows us to better handle spam and nonsense from guests at our Google mail system, where before we could not filter nonsense because everything came via the sites contact form. Now, a person must use their email to contact us as a guest, thus we can filter them if required from wasting our time.
 
Registration Processing / Anti-Spam Control

New members now go through a more stringent anti-spam process for the first 25 posts, yet at the same time have more freedom to post and share things without link restrictions we had before. For instance, someone who wanted to post their study couldn't link to it because our system rejected all links, where now they can, providing their post doesn't resemble spam within our heuristic checks.

A lot has changed in this area, and further posts with specific elements will outline each aspect. Once a user reaches 25 posts, without issue, their account will be less restrictive. We're going to try and handle spam differently, which will be some trial and error, but the overall idea is to be less restrictive with those who are here for the right reasons.

Our new system learns from user history, progressively getting better at blocking spammers, whilst catching the majority for human review before they get a chance to post anything, and doing so without having to put users through captcha security or such nonsense.
 
Logging

I have changed our standard logging / caching from short periods to a year. This is the logging of changes made to content, all user interaction with the site, linked images, things users do that get recorded, which better serves staff to find patterns from user data that require action / need attention at later dates. It also helps improve anti-spam solutions implemented and repeat offenders.
 
Thread Titles

Thread titles can now be written as you desire, no automatic changes. Staff may correct them if they feel warranted, but otherwise, as you choose as the author.
 
Archive & Administration Forum

These forums have been hidden in the forum tree, and placed into the footer menu, available on every page. When an admin creates a new administration thread that requires attention, it will be input within a site wide notice for x period so members know it exists. It has likely outlived its usefulness after this time, thus dying without need to be visible at all times.

The FAQ will pickup essential reading, and build with content we deem essential, now its linked in the navigation.
 
Node Restructure
  • News, Studies & Research - combines existing |news, politics and debates | studies and research | PTSD polls.
  • Trauma & Stressor Discussion - combines all prior trauma category forums, now using prefixes, sortable.
  • Supporter Discussion - supporter relationships is combined, now using prefixes, sortable.
 
Trauma Diaries (Member Private)

A new private categorisation, member private, opening the existing premium private diary forum to everyone. You will only see your diary, nobody else. If you do not have a diary in that forum, you will see a blank forum -- hence private to you. Admins only can see all diaries, not staff.

Everyone can have a private diary in that forum, no restrictions. It is very rare an admin reads an entry in that forum, so its pretty much you, talking to yourself, to help you work through stuff.
 
Emoji Enabled

Smilies (emoticons) are now replaced by emoji support. Smilies are an image representative of a keyboard shortcut. Emoji's are textual representations alone, no image. That means you can use them anywhere. You can copy an emoji from elsewhere on the web that we do not have, and paste it into your content and it will render correctly as a standalone textual element.

Now -- staff reserve the right to edit stupid use in titles or other areas.
 
Default Registered Member

By default, a member with 25 or less posts will be a registered member by user group permissions. They will be subject to slower posting, as each post is sent through various anti-spam systems.
  • Post editing is set to 5 minutes.
  • Basic posting, reply and profile submission only.
  • No ability to upload attachments (embeds are not uploaded content).
 
Forced Policy Acceptance

All existing members will have now experienced the new forced policy system for our legal and privacy policies, GDPR compliant. When we change these policies we can force everyone to review and accept the changes. This is a deviation from all other system logging, in that it keeps the acceptance logs for a user account unless that user account is deleted, so that in the event any registered member claims they did not accept these policies, we can evidence that they did.
 
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