United Brachial Plexus Network, Inc.

Hello everyone;

For the past few months our message boards have been subjected to spam topics some of which are highly offensive. Our moderators have been taking the spam down as soon as possible but some are opened by forum visitors before the moderator notices them. We have been reviewing our options to deal with this problem and have concluded that the only near term solution is to review and approve each new topic prior to putting it up on the message boards.

This means that new topics will not be immediately seen on the Message Boards. We will make every effort to review and post the new topic as soon as possible. Once the new topic has been approved, responses will go up immediately, without moderation, since it only the new topic that must be approved by the moderators.

Thanks for your patience and understanding for this procedure change. The spam messages have been a nuisance for us also. The necessary software changes are being prepared and will be implemented in about 48 hours.

Please e-mail me if you have any questions.

John P.
johnp@ubpn.org

Just an idea...

Why not request a security password for every posting so you folks don't have to slug through all the spam? Otherwise someone from the board still has to filter through it all.

Of course I don't know what the process is for enabling that kind of software. But if it's too much, maybe a little fund raiser here would help.

Christopher

Christopher we are always in need of fundraising so if you have any great ideas that would be amazing!
Hugs,
Amy 21 years old ROBPI from MN
BOD

I was thinking more along the lines of actively asking people here to pitch in for the website upgrades. 15-100 bucks a head should be very doable and easy with a paypal account set up.

For many, this place is indispensable and worth its weight in gold!
It has been for me and saved my butt in more ways than one!


Christopher

Hi All,

So the message boards are powered by Jive Software's Forums. It looks like some version of 3.x. The current version of Forums is 5.5.x (http://www.jivesoftware.com/products/jive-forums) Theriare tons of improvements (security, performance, feature set, etc) over forums 3.x.

Now heres the cool part. I work for Jive on one of the software engineering teams. Which means I can get Jive Products for organizations I am involved with for free or a substantial reduced rate.

Let me know if you are interested in upgrading (I'll help do that) and I'll check on the cost.

Cheers,
Joel
RTBPI/Portland OR

I also forgot to add there is a "report abuse" feature where the forums users can mark a messages abusive. After x number of people mark it as abusive (you can configure X to be what ever) the message is pulled from the site and goes into a moderation queue. Which sounds like it addresses the problem.

P.S you can email me at work to discuss (joel at jivesoftware.com)

Cheers,
Joel