HouseFans.Net

Boards are back up, plus new post widgets here on the main site.

Wow, we had a great turnout at our “House” party at FenCon over the weekend. We served our “special” Jell-O shots: And we had our own board for people to doodle on: (Click each image for a larger version)

We ran out of shots and beer way too soon, but everyone had a grand time.  I’ll have a couple of party shots to post later on. They’re in my husband’s phone and he’s on the road.

We now have the spam problem under control. In order to keep things running smoothly, we’ve instituted a few new policies. We would still like to keep the self-activation process in place, eve though it encourages fake accounts as we don’t want to stifle conversation. Here’s the cunning plan. And you know what happens with cunning plans – even if they paint themselves blue, dance nekkid on top of House’s piano, and sing “Cunning Plans Are Here Again.”

The number one rule: Validate your account within one week and make a post somewhere. Your first post is moderated. If your post isn’t approved by the next business day, send a DM to one of the mod team. You’ll find instructions in the Announcements forum. If you have problems activating your account, let us know so we can help you.

Your account will get deleted after one week if it is not activated.

Your active account will get deleted immediately if one or more of the following is present:

• A username or e-mail address with a drug in the name.
• A username or e-mail address that shows up in a database of spammers, particularly if the username or e-mail address appears to consist of random characters.
• A profile link that points to an online pharmacy, porn, or anything we consider “spam,” plus zero posts or one spam post.
• Your first post is clearly spam. (What’s spam? Links to pharmacy sites, warez, porn, that sort of thing. Also, a post asking where you can find that sort of stuff. 99.99% of those are automated spam.)
• You’ve posted an offensive avatar and have zero posts or one spam post.

If you are a long-time active user and we see a red flag, we’ll work it out with you rather than delete your account. However, we reserve the right to remove offensive material at any time. (Hey, if someone hijacks your account and posts a porn avatar, you’d probably want it gone.)

Thanks for your help. We’re trying hard to keep the spam under control, yet promote conversation. It’s a bit of a balance, and we expect we may have to tweak things as we go along.

I thought I had a month to go on the domain. Just now I got a note telling me it expires. Today.

The registrar’s renewal server is down.

We’re not planning to go anywhere. I can’t lose the domain unless I don’t register in the next 30 days or so, which means I won’t lose it.

Thanks for your patience.

UPDATE: The geeky explanation is that the domain registrar did a DNS swap. That means their server was up, but my computer was having none of that. After much wailing and gnashing of teeth and a sacrifice to ICANN, I got through. We’re good for another year, folks.

Now I need a HOUSE call. Seriously.

Katt (known as Katt_25 on our forum) is making her debut today as a site editor. Please give her a big welcome!