It might shock you to know you're not the worst one. At Comicboards there was a huge outcry from a very vocal minority to "change it back". And I'm not talking about weeks later, the outcry lasted for the entire year - any time I made some small change, I heard from them crying "I hate it, change it back...and while you're at it, put everything else back too". I actually create a new layout called "Nostalgia" (you can choose it as a view from the top of the PVB too) in their honor.

That said, though, the more middle-of-the-road techno luddites are the ones who keep this software grounded, and ironically, compatible with newer things like mobile devices. They don't always support all the latest dynamic HTML and Javascript standards.





Another irony - I purposely created user profiles to require as little information as possible. You can create one with just a name (doesn't even have to be your real one), an email address (the same one you post with), and a password. No address, or zip code, or real name, or any of the other stuff many other message boards require for registration.

You're about as much a phantom *with* a user profile as without one. The only difference is you don't have to type in your posting name, email, and password every time you post, as long as you're logged in. I designed it that way on purpose, to keep people from being afraid of using it.





That's also why the software isn't branded heavily. It's very hard to block access to it wholesale (except on a domain-by-domain basis) because it has no real signature. I can't do much about blocking forms, however.

Actually that whole corporate attitude annoys me. Sure they have the right to tell the employees what they can or can't do on company time and company computers, but just because you *can* do something doesn't mean you *should*. It's lazy management- why not just chain employees to their desk to make sure they have no choice but to stay put and work?

It might seem like a farfetched comparison, but it's not. The point is that managers, rather than actually check and see if their employees are actually producing something, want automated means to measure and ensure it without even looking at the employees. That's why progress in companies is now measured in "hours". You can do nothing but wander the building for 50 hours a week and be more valuable than someone who actually works 30 hours a week and produces.





I think I've done that as much as technically possible. Hopefully.





E-Mail is troublesome, because it's prone to delivery problems. That's why I generally try to avoid it for "critical" communication. Mostly e-mail is used for notifications and such that aren't really important if you miss it.

I've been resisting using posting "tags" that posters enter to categorize posts because it depends too much on things like spelling errors, and people intentionally using the wrong tag. Happens all the time at Livejournal.





Mostly what I was concerned with is giving people the ability to follow the board without actually visiting it. So if all they do is leave Twitter open all day and reload it like a crack addict, they'll also potentially be following the PVB's posts too.