Important Changes Regarding MacInsiders - MacInsiders - Student-run McMaster University Help Forum

**Chad**

Dear MI Community,

In order to combat forum trolls and spam, and keep our forums positive and inclusive, a few changes are being put into place and will be rolled out over the next few weeks. Your feedback is welcome, and we're always looking for ways to improve and make MacInsiders the best, most inviting and helpful online community for McMaster students.

1. MacInsiders Is Now McMaster Exclusive

Effective immediately, registration of new accounts will require an official mcmaster.ca e-mail address. New members will need to enter a mcmaster.ca e-mail upon registration, and will be able to access the features of the site but will not be able to post in the forums until that McMaster e-mail has been confirmed by clicking a link that will be sent to it after registering. Once the account has been verified, you can change your e-mail in your account to a non-mcmaster e-mail in order to receive newsletters and updates.

Prospective students will be able to browse and read our forums, but will not be able to post until they confirm a mcmaster.ca e-mail. However, we have opened a new Prospective Students forum that will allow prospective students to ask questions and interact with members of the MI community without needing an account and can post as a guest.

This new implementation will help us block out forum trolls and spammers, as well as ensure that our community is exclusive and that we can ensure our standards for quality content and discussion.

2. We're Accepting New Moderator Applications Online

We are always looking for help and to grow our team. Do you think you have what it takes to be a moderator of the MacInsiders forums? Are you a daily regular to the site? Are you a long standing member with over 1000 posts? If so, we invite you to join us and you can apply online using our new Moderator Application form. *Update: The form has been fixed, for those who didn't see a confirmation message when you submitted, please re-submit. Thanks!

3. 'Power Up' Your Favourite Posts!

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The 'favourite post' feature has now been implemented onto all of the main MacInsiders forums. We were experimenting with this feature in the General Discussion forum for a while, and want to open it up to the rest of the forums. Basically what it lets you do is click the 'up' or 'down' button inside each post and if a post gets the most 'power ups' then it gets featured as the best post in the thread and a box appears at the top of every page in the thread letting users know which post is the best in that thread. This is excellent for threads that have questions from students who are looking for the best answer and you can 'power up' the post with the best answer. Or, if there is a thread asking users to post their funniest joke or video, users can 'power up' their favourite responses to the discussion.

4. The Report Button

MacInsiders heavily relies on you to help us keep the forums clean. Please report any offensive posts or posts breaking our Code Of Conduct by clicking the red report button inside the post. In order to bring attention to this feature, we've changed the report button to be larger and more clearly titled.

5. We've listened, and made some highly requested changes:

We love hearing your feedback, and some of the most popular change requests to the forum have been made. See below:

a) Time limit to edit posts has been increased from 24 hours to 4 days
b) Time limit to edit posts has been removed from the Marketplace, you can edit buy/sell threads anytime
c) Disabled the 'guest viewing block' that would require visitors to register an account to continue browsing the forums after viewing a certain number of threads. This is also to help prospective students and users that don't have a mcmaster.ca email to be able to view and enjoy our forums

6. Features that we're working on:

Here's some things we're working on that hopefully will be implemented within the upcoming weeks:

Better mobile version of MacInsiders (when viewing the site on your smart phone)
Improving the Code Of Conduct rules to be clearer and more defined
A feature allowing you to 'deactivate' your account yourself without having to e-mail us to request it

RyanC · 12-09-2011 at 10:00 AM

These are all great. Pretty much addresses most of the problems I've ever had with this site.

mc_kumar · 12-09-2011 at 10:16 AM

I think the addition of the McMaster email verification is the best part.

Good Stuff !

thedog123123 · 12-09-2011 at 10:19 AM

Everything seems top notch except #1.

I know you want to prevent spammers but needing a valid mac address? I see lots of problems with this.

**Chad** · 12-09-2011 at 10:29 AM

What problems do you see? Please elaborate.

alexithymia · 12-09-2011 at 10:31 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by thedog123123

Everything seems top notch except #1.

I know you want to prevent spammers but needing a valid mac address? I see lots of problems with this.

I think it's also good for keeping it a Mac community (creeper incident on chat *shudders at memory*) and prospective students get their own forum to ask questions without a mac e-mail.

Care to explain the problems you see with this?

qwerty91 · 12-09-2011 at 10:34 AM

i like this but dont go automatically posting those emails in our public profiles. Its a good security feature moderators should have access to but I dont want spam from random people. Plus If i wanted everyone to know my name, MacID etc, i would openly post it.

Keep up the good work!

ONE thing. Short of a direct link, the prospective students forum is very difficult to find and someone without knowledge that it exists would never find it except by chance. A more direct link on the home page would be a good idea

particle · 12-09-2011 at 10:44 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by qwerty91

i like this but dont go automatically posting those emails in our public profiles. Its a good security feature moderators should have access to but I dont want spam from random people. Plus If i wanted everyone to know my name, MacID etc, i would openly post it.

Keep up the good work!

ONE thing. Short of a direct link, the prospective students forum is very difficult to find and someone without knowledge that it exists would never find it except by chance. A more direct link on the home page would be a good idea

I was thinking the same thing about the prospective student forum. It might be useful to have a tab of its own on the homepage.

Grover · 12-09-2011 at 10:50 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by qwerty91

i like this but dont go automatically posting those emails in our public profiles. Its a good security feature moderators should have access to but I dont want spam from random people. Plus If i wanted everyone to know my name, MacID etc, i would openly post it.

When was it, in the entire duration of the post, said they would be doing such a thing?

Alternatively, you can disable email from MacInsiders by clicking "My Settings" up top and then going to "My Settings & Privacy."

thedog123123 · 12-09-2011 at 10:50 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chad

What problems do you see? Please elaborate.

-The prospective students forum, will it be just one forum or several sub forums. Before students could post in the right areas which gave better organization.

-Shuts out Alumni (which may have been attended with this move)

-people who are unfairly removed due to poor moderation cannot express their case (it can happen)

-might connect personal information to account through mcmaster email. I don't know the system and so this one is a weak argument and probably false but people must enter a valid mac address which links a certain degree of personal info (name in a round-about sort of way mainly). I realize you can change the email but is the original still maintained hidden from the public to confirm validity? Some people wish to to retain a certain level of anonymity when using the internet

-might be more. I have an exam today and he last thing on my mind is the Mi community

MacPack · 12-09-2011 at 11:01 AM

I dont know if its only me, but the rewards page has been very finky..havent gotten pionts for twitter posts

qwerty91 · 12-09-2011 at 11:11 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Grover

When was it, in the entire duration of the post, said they would be doing such a thing?

Alternatively, you can disable email from MacInsiders by clicking "My Settings" up top and then going to "My Settings & Privacy."

Im not saying I saw this. Im saying dont make it public. Sometimes websites just change their rules and dont let people know all the details. Or have it added to their info, which could then accidentally be made public depending on certain privacy settings. With implementation of a required email, there is the possibility it could be publicly posted without that person's knowledge (ie they dont look on their profile ever). There are those such as myself who would find that mildly annoying.

**Chad** · 12-09-2011 at 12:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by qwerty91

i like this but dont go automatically posting those emails in our public profiles. Its a good security feature moderators should have access to but I dont want spam from random people. Plus If i wanted everyone to know my name, MacID etc, i would openly post it.

To answer your concerns, e-mails are NEVER publically displayed on your profile. Ever. You do have the option to allow people to e-mail you through your profile (and can turn this off in your MacInsiders Privacy settings) but even if you do allow people to directly email you, it only allows the user to email from our website where they type a subject and email message, and then MacInsiders server emails the message to you on their behalf (it doesn't actually give the user your email address to contact). So your mcmaster email and macid will be hidden at all times from the public.

Quote:

Originally Posted by qwerty91

ONE thing. Short of a direct link, the prospective students forum is very difficult to find and someone without knowledge that it exists would never find it except by chance. A more direct link on the home page would be a good idea

Yes, thanks for pointing this out. The prospective forum will have a new link added to our Forums menu dropdown soon. I will also be making it more obvious on the homepage.

Right now you can find it by going to our forums page: http://www.macinsiders.com/forums.php

Chevalier · 12-09-2011 at 02:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chad

Yes, thanks for pointing this out. The prospective forum will have a new link added to our Forums menu dropdown soon. I will also be making it more obvious on the homepage.

Right now you can find it by going to our forums page: http://www.macinsiders.com/forums.php

umm when you say drop down do u mean the forums tab and then under that?
i just have 2 concerns about this

1) for some reason my forum tab doesnt drop down, i have to click on it and go to that page and then access the diff sections

2) possibly just have the prospective students forum on its own and not under the regular forum "dropdown" like have it as its own tab beside home or something so new comers easily spot it

jhan523 · 12-09-2011 at 04:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chevalier

umm when you say drop down do u mean the forums tab and then under that?
i just have 2 concerns about this

1) for some reason my forum tab doesnt drop down, i have to click on it and go to that page and then access the diff sections

2) possibly just have the prospective students forum on its own and not under the regular forum "dropdown" like have it as its own tab beside home or something so new comers easily spot it

None of the drop-downs work in chrome. I know they work in IE, not sure about other browsers.