eplaya enhancements to launch Feb 26th - no, really

[admin]

The long-awaited enhancements to the eplaya are going to be launched this Wed Feb 25th, sometime in the evening. We are very excited to be at this stage, and greatly appreciate the support, wisdom, and patience of this community in getting us here.

The changes will include:

-posting of Community Guidelines and Terms of Service
-upgrade to phpbb 2.0.6.
-modifications added

**Community Guidelines and Terms of Service**
The Community Guidelines were developed in conjunction with the community through the eplaya feedback threads. These will be iterated based on community experience and feedback. There will be a community review of these guidelines roughly one month after they are posted. Immediate feedback will be welcome in the feedback folder.

The Terms of Service is a legal user agreement between each user and the Burning Man Project.

The implementation of these policies are being announced both through a
batch email to all users, and as a standing announcement post in the announcement folder. Continued use of the eplaya after that announcement has been posted/emailed constitutes acceptance of the Terms of Service and a commitment to familiarize oneself with, and adhere to, the Community Guidelines. New users will agree to the Terms of Service as part of the registration process.

These policies will be globally accessible by consistent links in the footer
nav.

**Upgrade to phpbb 2.0.6**
The upgrade to phpbb 2.0.6 is complete. Features of the upgrade:
- AOL user session timeout bug fixed
- A comprehensive changelog is included with all archives.
-This edition is centered on fixing a number of potential security issues.
- It also (hopefully) addresses the majority of problems users may have
experienced with email.


**Mods - User tools**

1 - Watched Topics - replaces the hinky "New posts" link -you can mark
discussions that interest you and get an index view of only those threads
you specifically want to see
2- Topics I've started - you can track your own threads in an index view.

**Mods - Admin tools**

1 - Easy Mod - this is the mod that enables us to add and test all the other
mods. Yay Easy Mod!
2- Userlist - we can finally scan a list of users instead of having to enter
usernames in a field one at a time
3- Hierarchical subcategories - this will save you a click and a give you a view of subcategories (some of which will still remain after the folder IA reorg) from the index page
4 - Simple merge - we can easily merge threads to combine duplicates so no one's stuff is lost during the folder IA reorg.


FEEDBACK
I'll be setting up feedback threads that I'll announce when we launch. Feel
free to post your initial impressions as well as your thoughts over time. This will constitute a community review of the mods, and will go on for at least a few weeks. You need to participate in the discussion there to ensure being heard by the admins.

COMING SOON
1 - Skin - ok we've been having a little trouble getting the lightweight
skin together. Basically the phpbb skinning process is not documented, and
appears to be a bunch of find & replaces. We need some help coding a skin from scratch in PHP. A couple of folks have offered, bless their hearts, but we need a real self-starter (did I just say that?) who can research and do this on their own, then ride into town in a blaze of glory to our eternal gratitude.

If mere glory won't do it, I'm not above bribing you with schwag - one of my limited edition homemade silkscreened Webteam pint glasses (only 4 left).

2 - Future Mods - We are going to install & test a mod that will allow you
to edit for only a short amount of time after posting, a "new posts since last visit", a spellchecker, and yes, the long awaited, heavily debated plonking feature. The round after that will be a printer-friendly topic view and an author hyperlink.

If you have other things you want to see this system, do, let us know, or go to www.phpbb.com and point us to a mod you like.

3 - Condensed IA - now that we have the right tools in place, we'll be able
to reduce the folder structure to something more browse- and find-friendly.

Again, thank you all for hanging in there, and for providing enough thoughtful conversation to enable us to move in the right direction.

xoxox-

~technopatra~