PUBLIC-NOTICES: Forum Changes/Fixes. Any Questions?

[TheCotMan]

Since we occasionally purge zero postcount users that have been inactive for over 2 years, it makes sense the measure of an active user as a user who has been active within the past 2 years,

A feature has been enabled to show "active users" at the bottom.

Members: 9,997, Active Members: 8,996

About 90% of all users have been active within the past 2 years, while only 10% have been inactive for more than 2 years. (Not too bad when you think about it.)
Users with postcount greater than 100: 72 (less than 1% of all users.)
Users with postcount greater than 50: 139 (a bit over 1% of all users.)
Users with postcount greater than 25: 228 (a bit over 2% of all users.)
Users with postcount greater than 10: 442 (around 4.5% of all users.)
Users with postcount greater than 5: 757 (around 7.6% of all users.)
User with a postcount of 0: 7540 (around 75% of all users)
And of those 7540 users with zero postcount, only 520 of them have zero postcount as a result of having all of their posts put into /dev/null or Fucktard Hall.
This means we have MANY lurkers and occasional periodic users. (7020 user who have never posted, but who have been active within the past 2 years.)

[Deviant Ollam]

i have to say that vBulletin really impresses me, what with all the fancy data mapping that it can do... or perhaps this is just our team of mods who possess sql-fu. either way, statistics are sexy.

[TheCotMan]

Other people seemed to like the stats too, so here are some more in graphical form:
This one is a not really useful. When the forums are really slow, one user's /dev/null content can cause a jump in the /dev/null percent, while busy forums can have a higher total quantity of /dev/null posts while maintaining a low percent.
http://forum.defcon.org/custom/image...l-vs-total.png

This one is more useful. It separates /dev/null content from non-/dev/null content to show total posts, and really tell us something more about the volume and percent:
http://forum.defcon.org/custom/image...on-devnull.png

[TheCotMan]

Forum Maintenance scheduled March 6 @9:00-10:00pm, Pacific Time.

Though the window is for a full hour, it is possible the downtime will be much less.

[The Dark Tangent]

Forums now supports a "real" ssl cert.. use it!

OK, I forked over the dollars to buy a "real" ssl cert for forum.defcon.org and www.defcon.org. I've loaded them up, so now we are good to go.

Please start using the SSL features for the web site and the forums!

Thanks,

DT

[noid]

worked like a charm. no browser bitching, just sweet SSL goodness

[Deviant Ollam]

nice work! i was surprised just now when i sat down... i fired up the forums and was poised for the extra whack of [enter] that has become second nature to me when a new browser session goes to the forums and the warning message pops up. when that message didn't appear i started looking around like "did i leave an instance of mozilla running somewhere all day when i was gone?"

splendid work, thanks for all you do with the forums. they're a terrific extension of the community.

[TheCotMan]

nice work!

Yes. Those signed certs are not cheap. Thanks DT!

splendid work, thanks for all you do with the forums. they're a terrific extension of the community.

I might be biased, but all of the other mods do great work here, keeping the place looking good. :-)

(What is more amazing, is that they tolerate my bad puns, and what they might call my, "attempts," at humor. O:-)

Now that we have a cert signed by a trusted authority, this, "programming of forum members," to press that extra "whack" (enter) needs to be seriously reconsidered (especially if you plan to log into the forums from the con, or any hostile network.)

As humans, repetition can cause us to make assumptions in order to save time, and certain kinds of attacks on https could end up working (to steal your usernames/password) when we are conditioned to blindly press return.

Eventually, we should treat any web browser dialog about the forums ssl cert as an indication of potential risk of your data being intercepted by a 3rd party. (There may be a period of testing of how the ssl cert is delivered to web clients, so don't assume that "someone is 'hacking' you" if you get a dialog box from the forums when using https over the next week or so.)

[klepto]

good stuff on the cert

[TheCotMan]

Forum Maintenance scheduled March 6 @9:00-10:00pm, Pacific Time.

Testing, 1 2 3?

Looks like they work again.

Please report any problems.

Thanks!

[TheCotMan]

The "Priavte" calendar is at risk for deletion. If for some crazy reason, you have been using the forums' private calendar as a calendar system for your own events, you have 5 days to copy them somewhere else.

[TheCotMan]

PUBLIC-NOTICES: Forum Changes/Fixes. Any Questions?

The private calendar has been deleted.

In the welcome e-mail that is sent to new users, we explain how they are not able to immediately post messages, are encouraged to lurk & read the rules, and explain when they will be able to post.

We will be adding text to state that the last automated "promotion" will include access to post moderated events to the forum events calendar. (None of the regular users will have access to edit events, or delete them.)

Leaders/Organizers and Goons can post new events without moderation, and can edit any events that they have created. Deletion of event will not be available. (An event may be edited and "cancelled" and the date/time moved to some other time/place so it "disappears" from current view, but we want to avoid deleting events.)

(Above usergroups may not edit each others' posted events.)

Moderators can (but shouldn't) delete events. Moderators can also create and edit events. Additionally, they can edit any users' event.

The new text of the welcome e-mail is as follows:

Dear <user's-username>,

You are now at level of Registered User "Lurker" on the Defcon Forums.

You are encouraged to read and follow the rules:
http://forum.defcon.org/showthread.php?t=2855

* You can't yet Post messages, polls, or use Forum PM:

For the next 7 days, your account is limited* and you are encouraged to lurk in order to understand the social rules and forum rules. As a "Lurking User" you now have access to a long history of posts not visible to non-registered users, and can use the forum search to help you locate posts.

After 7 but less than 14 days, you are granted: limited use to PM (Private Messages on the forums-- a kind of "Forum mail"), access to reply to EXISTING threads (on topic), vote in existing polls, and upload a custom avatar.

After 14 but less than 21 days, you are allowed to start new threads, and set a custom description in your UserCP. (The default is now "Registered User."

After 21 days and some non-negative forum contributions, a slightly larger Forum PM MailBox is made available and you will be able to post new, public events to the event calendar-- pending moderator approval of the event.

Once an event is created, you won't be able to edit it or delete it. If the time or description of the event needs to be changed, ask a moderator for help.

There are no other automated promotions.

[klepto]

If there is a waiting period after people register till they can post.....It will turn away lots of people.

[TheCotMan]

If there is a waiting period after people register till they can post.....It will turn away lots of people.

The welcome message and policy (11-14-2005, 12:18) were added several months ago. Certainly there are fewer people joining that there could be, but we still have a growing active member list that is getting larger, faster than it is shrinking. Effectively, we have a sliding window of active user count, where unused accounts are destroyed while new ones are created.

You may or may not know it, but it has been about 2 months since I've seen spam here. The number of /dev/null posts has been dropping, and we get fewer questions that could be answered by google, and fewer rule violations. Multi-level banning of users, IP addresses, intelligent subnet blocks, and changes like these have started to improve the quality of content on the forums.

Even with the above, forum population is growing faster than it is shrinking. (Maybe I should start tracking this for graphing.)

The busiest peaks on the forums were when Politics and Religion were actively discussed, but these periods were short and intense. When P&R went away, the brief spikes of activity declined. Even though there were fewer "peaks" activity spanned longer periods. Then last year, we had traffic that approached previous peaks, and was also longer lasting-- We are quickly approaching a, "year round forum."

So far, it seems to be "working." If it becomes a problem, and starts to "kill" the forums, we can easily remove it.

Allowing the forums to become more central to planning with DefCon will probably draw even more people to join--especially those looking to compete in contests or participate in events. If the forums contain a downloadable calendar of events, then I sense more people will look to start and add their own events, and hopefully share here.

[TheCotMan]

Welcome to user "numbertwo" as forum "leader/organizer" to the new contest "Buzzword Survivor" subforum. I think there is another announcement coming soon, too.