Last fund drive, I posted
a thread asking DUers to donate so DU could afford to hire me full-time. I explained how I had been working for free, and then for a very small monthly check, for over 2 years, because I believe in what DU is doing (I wasn't involved in the founding of DU, I joined a month later as a regular poster and volunteered when a programming project came up). I encourage everyone to go back and read that thread (linked above).
Now, we're at the next fund drive. DUers came through last time, and DU reached its goal and Skinner was able to hire me full-time. Since that time, I've been able to implement a slew of features that had been sitting on the "TO DO sometime later when I have time" pile. We've been able to upgrade our servers to a much more powerful setup (although we're experiencing some minor technical issues that we're still working out, that is to be expected with such a major upgrade) which has virtually eliminated the mid-afternoon till mid-evening daily slowdowns we used to experience Monday - Friday, and has enabled us to handle the massive increase in traffic to the website during primary season.
Although my main job, as the techie admin, is adding new features to the discussion board software and fixing bugs, etc, I do many other things that benefit you as a DU member in direct and indirect ways. For example, I'm also responsible for making sure our servers are running properly and as well as they can be. Most of you probably remember DU was the victim of a DOS attack in January. Because I was working for DU full-time, I was able to address that situation as soon as it began and work with our ISP on shutting down the junk traffic, monitor the servers, and record, track, and compile information that will help us in finding out who was responsible. Had I been working at my dayjob on my normal schedule in January, rather than working for DU, I would have been at work when that happened. Skinner would have had to call my cell phone, and possibly wait hours before I could get home and check out the situation.
Another thing having me on full-time allows me to do is cover the administrative work for Skinner and EarlG when they're unavailable. Believe it or not, running a discussion forum such as DU is a very stressful job a lot of the time, and even admins need vacations sometimes. Skinner and EarlG took some time off around the Holiday season this year, and because I was on staff full-time, I was able to cover the administrative work and allow them some rare time off without having to worry much about DU. Consequently, you have an admin staff that came back much more refreshed and ready to deal with the stressful and nasty primary season in January/February than you would have had if I had been unable to do that because I was working at my dayjob full-time.
Now, to give you an idea of the programming work that's been completed since December when I came on full-time, I've compiled a list of new features, bug fixes, and other changes I've finished since December.
This list is by no means a complete list, but gives you a good idea of what work has been accomplished, which in turn makes DU a better place for you, the member. The pace at which I was able to add new features before December was easily less than a third of this pace, due to time contraints since I had to work my dayjob full-time. So think about if all these new features are worth a few bucks to you in a donation to DU:
Changes for everyone:
- Hide Threads feature added
- Spam guard was added to prevent spammers on the boards
- Bug was fixed which allowed people to post after a thread was locked
- I was able to identify 3 major bottlenecks in the database and reduce the slowdowns caused by them by over 65%
- Voting in polls was modified with several changes to eliminate some freeping tactics
- Spellchecker was added
- My Recent Posts was added
- Setup the old database server as an image server to reduce stress on the two front-end servers
- You're automatically redirected to the proper URL after posting now, so hitting 'Refresh' works correctly
- Sent folder for private messages
- You can alert on a private message now
- Ignore link added to private messages
- A major security hole was found and fixed in the private
message system
- Links are now automatically shortened to prevent posts from scrolling sideways off the screen and messing up formatting
- The archives are now browseable
- The basic search was improved
- Advanced search was added which enormously improves your searching ability
- When you make a one-time donation online via credit card your donor star is now automatically assigned
- Liberal radio links were added to the Lobby/Latest pages
- The "Latest Polls" feature was added
- The option to remove Lounge threads from the Latest page
- Mystery Upgrade #4
- Mystery Upgrade #5
A few of these features you may recognize as features added off of our DU Holidays Wishlist, which we ran this year. This was something we did to give our members a real say in the improvements they wanted to see added to DU. I posted
a thread asking everyone to make suggestions about what they would like to see done on DU. The admins then picked the finalists, and everyone
got to vote on which ones they liked the best. As you can see from the list above, we've added five of the finalists already (the ones receiving the most votes were added first), and as you'll see below, two more are finished and waiting to be revealed.
In addition to those improvements for everyone, I've been able to program many features which are available to the moderators and admins to make our jobs easier and improve the manner in which we moderate the discussion board. This benefits you, as members, because as more work for the moderators/admins becomes automated, that reduces stress on the moderators and admins as well as creating more time for us to deal with issues that come up. The less stressed/busy we are, the better the service we can provide to you guys becomes.
Changes made to improve moderating
- The post as "Moderator" feature was added
- The way in which the admins can search the database for IP matches for returning disruptors was improved
- Locked threads are now automatically removed from the Latest page
- The warning system was added
- The appeals system was added so members can more easily appeal a warning
- The "Type of Violation" was added to the warning system to better explain to members why they got a warning
- We now have an automatic IP check function to better spot returning disruptors before they have a chance to disrupt the message board
- I've almost completed a new system for Alerts which will eliminate duplicate work for the moderators, improve the speed with which they receive alerts, and hopefully reduce the time spent dealing with alerts
Finally, there are five new features that I've programmed especially for the fund drive. When we reach certain goals for the fund drive, these features will be revealed. Every 200 donations, we'll reveal a new feature - and I can promise you there are some really good ones in there (the one for reaching 1,000 donations is especially cool), including two from the DU Holidays Wishlist (see above).
In closing, I would like to say that there are many, many projects that I want to do for DU over the coming months that I hope I'm able to do. The only thing stopping me is whether or not I'll have the time available to continue to improve DU for you guys at the same rate I have been over the past few months. No matter what you think about anything on DU currently, the fact is that these software improvements benefit everyone, and make DU a better place for all of you.
So I hope you'll donate to DU this week and help us reach our goal, so I can continue to work for this great website full-time, and continue to bring you new features, bug fixes, and a more improved experience at DU. We all know DU is one-of-a-kind, no place else on the internet gives you what DU does, and with the election coming this year, you're going to need DU to be at the top of its game.
Can you even begin to imagine going into November without DU? How horrible would that be, with the media how it is, just stop and imagine how much you're going to depend on DU in October/November of this year - and then consider if that's something you would pay for. You pay for so many things everyday with hardly giving it a thought that provide so much less, why not support a website that is offering you so much?
Any amount of donation helps, you can give as little or as much as you can afford, so please take a moment to
donate.
Thanks
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