Mix Challenge - Community Update Q2/2023 (final update: 05-OCT-2023)

[Mister Fox]

Hello everyone,


it's been a while that we had a big community update post. There is a lot happening behind the scenes right now, and I'm excited to share more information with you. Please invest a moment of your time to catch up on the following.





COMMUNITY UPDATES


Forum Cleanup Operation - 2023 Reboot

After many months of frustration with the forum engine, I can finally restart the "Forum Cleanup Operation". This is still the same procedure as talked about in in September 2021. However, while I had to run this manually last time (June 2022), it is now fully automated. The only thing I need to do, is flip a switch.

Before I do that, some additional information.

A lot of users solely signed up for the purpose of receiving a newsletter (this is a separate topic for further down below), others are currently idling, and there are plenty of users that "signed up" yet never even visited the forum. The main purpose of this cleanup, is to trim the fat of the database. The automated engine will send out "reminders" on regular intervals. To check if certain email addresses are even still valid and active, or if users are still interested in our community.

I already activated one module of this engine, focusing on the so called "Sleepers". I will turn on the rest of the engine for "Idle Users" (those that haven't been around for a while) on Sunday, 14th May.

EDIT 08-MAY-2023: Due to a miss-click on my end, the module to inform the "Zeroposters" (those that have an activated account, yet haven't posted anything) is now active as well.


The engine will check the following:

• Sleepers:
  • General Info: These users have signed up for an account, yet never activated it and therefore also never visited the forum. From now on, these accounts will get one reminder email to please check in with your account. If there is no response within a certain time frame, the accounts are being automatically deleted
  • Timeframe (as of 07-MAY-2023): reminder email sent after 45 days of being inactive, auto deletion after no response within 21 days
• Zero Posters:
  • General Info: These users have an activated account, but haven't participated in any game or any conversation. While this is okay, especially for the purpose of getting the newsletter, your account is still being at risk for not "checking in" ever so often.
  • Timeframe (as of 07-MAY-2023): reminder email sent after 90 days of being inactive, a second reminder email will be sent after 15 days, auto deletion of account after 10 days of no response to the second reminder
• Idle Users:
  • General Info: These are accounts from users, that have participated in a game or a conversation, but haven't visited the forum in quite a while. This is the "regular check in", if one is still interested in the community.
  • Timeframe (as of 07-MAY-2023): reminder email sent after 90 days of being inactive, a second reminder email will be sent after 15 days, auto deletion of account after 10 days of no response to the second reminder
• the time frames will be adjusted on 01-JUN-2023 to:
  • Sleepers -- set to 15 days (single reminder, auto deletion after 10 days)
• to prevent your account from being automatically deleted, you merely only have to log into the forum. Then your account is safe until the next reminder is sent out. The engine will explain this in the reminder emails as well.
• posts from deleted accounts will remain (unless it was a spam account), deleted accounts can not be recovered!
• you can sign up to the forum again at a later stage

You can always request an account deletion or temporary suspension of course. In this case, please reach out through the official contact page. As a security measure, I do not allow "account deletion" by users themselves. My policy is to ask for a confirmation first to get the account disabled and deleted (removed user accounts can not be recovered).

If you are using a so called "throwaway email address", I highly encourage you to update your account - else you're at the risk of loosing it.




Server Move and Engine Updates

The whole page will move to a new server in the coming weeks. I plan to get this scheduled around Sunday, the 14th May 2023. I do not expect any severe problems with the move. However, there might be rare instances where you will not able to access the community page for a couple of hours.

Reason for this move, is getting access to a more modern server. Which in turn offers access to new features and add-ons for the community.

On that behalf, I also plan to upgrade the forum engine once the move has finished. Unfortunately, this will definitely result in an access issue of the forum. Something I can't prevent. There is however no way I can schedule this any better outside of any running game. I apologize in advance for the inconvenience.

I will post an update for the planned forum engine update time frame in the green announcement bar above. I strongly recommend that you prepare your posts in a TXT editor before posting them to the forum, especially during that time.

EDIT 10-MAY-2023 3:15 UTC+2/CEST: The server upgrade has been moved up in schedule to 10-MAY-2023. The relocation went without any severe issues. Thank you for your patience.




Community Add-Ons (Part 1: Newsletter)

The HTML Newsletter is coming! I am aware that I have been announcing this for quite a while now. I tried to handle this service through the phpbb forum engine. But it just doesn't work without a lot of hoop-jumping and getting errors that I can't find solutions for. So I will be using a dedicated engine for that particular purpose.

The "Newsletter" through the phpbb engine will then only be used to inform game participants, if they made it to Round 2 (Mix Challenge) or once the Voting Process has started (Songwriting Competition). Despite that fact, I will also use this engine to send out (rare) important reminders for administrative purposes.

I am still testing what might be the most suitable engine that can run "on-premise" (Mix Challenge server). However, once everything is set up properly, everyone that is signed up the forum will also be "ported over" to the newsletter engine. Future users will be added/ported as well on a regular basis (ideally before the next newsletter is sent).

Important for you to know:
Your contact data (email address) will not(!) be shared with any third party service like MailChimp, Google or similar. Everything will remain "in house" (Mix Challenge servers).

I will make this engine change/addition more clear in the community privacy policy prior to June 2023, and hope to have the first HTML email out in time for the 9th Anniversary.




GAME RELATED UPDATES


Songwriting Competition

A major update to the Rule Book is long overdue, which will also cover recently overhauled game mechanics (the voting process). Unfortunately, time has been very tight on my end, and I can't guarantee that the update will be ready by June 2023.

I apologize for the scattered information. Until this revamp has been sorted out, I will still posts suitable reminders / references in the game threads directly.




This is but the start of bigger updates / changes for our community.
I hope to provide you with more information soon.


Thanks for reading






Updated: 10-MAY-2023 03:15 UTC+2/CEST -- "Server Move and Engine Updates" section
Updated: 08-MAY-2023 02:35 UTC+2/CEST -- "Forum Cleanup Operation - 2023 Reboot" section
Updated: 05-OCT-2023 06:15 UTC+2/CEST -- "Forum Cleanup Operation" - final adjustments announced

[MikkiJA]

I am new to the the group and have yet to post, so this breaks the ice. Looking forward to being part of this communiyt ]

[Mister Fox]

A quick update on the forum cleanup process

I've been running into severe server issues and have been informed, that the engine is sending out multiple emails to the same users.

I will monitor this for the rest of the evening (Saturday, German time) with slightly changed server settings. If this problem seems to persist, I unfortunately have to choose one of the following two options:

1. Either turn off the automated reminder engine completely (which seems to have been broken for the so called "Idle Users" that haven't logged in for quite a while)
2. Shut down the whole engine, clear everything, then start from scratch towards the end of the month of May

I apologize for this inconvenience (and understandably massive annoyance). I've been trying to use this engine multiple times now. And every time, there seems to be a new issue I can't seem to fix.

I will keep everyone updated.

[45Garage]

Just replying to stay on the good side of the forum cleanup.

[luke]

I am Just replying to stay on the safe side of the forum cleanup. Hope this is oké, because I am on holiday.

Regards Luke

[Mister Fox]

A quick update on the forum cleanup process

I have started to send out the second and final reminders. As of the moment of this post, all so called "Zeroposters" have been messaged. Should you not interact with this email and log into your account at least once, your account will be marked for deletion within 10 days.

These "Zeroposters" accounts will be gone by 15th July.


The remaining "forum regulars" will get a reminder as well, starting tomorrow (Friday, 07-JUL-2023). These users with the same timeframe for reaction (10 days).

I still have to handle these reminders manually to not overload the engine. However, once everyone in the queue got their second reminder, I can fully activate the automatic engine. This will happen early next week.


Please do not put your account at risk of deletion!

Thanks for reading

[Mister Fox]

The "Forum User Account Cleanup Process" has been fully restarted.


As mentioned in the Newsletter from CW34, I temporarily halted the engine from automatically truncating user accounts that haven't been in use for more than 90 days.

Starting today, those accounts that haven't been in use for more than 120 days (threshold has been changed), and all reminders have been ignored so far, will now be subjected to automatic truncation again. I will once more instruct the forum engine to delete unused user accounts in chunks, rather than all at once up until a certain point.

This will happen towards the end of each corresponding day. (e.g. around 23:59 UTC+2/CEST or around 23:59 UTC+1/CET)



The timeline will be as following:

"Regulars" (users that have posted on the forum):
Monday, 28th August -- all users that haven't been online since January 2022 until July 2022

Starting with each 01st of the month, I will instruct the engine to truncate users in monthly chunks.
Friday, 01st September -- all users that haven't been online since July 2022 until September 2022
Sunday, 01st October -- all users that haven't been online since September 2022 until October 2022
Wednesday, 01st November - all users that haven't been online since October 2022 until November 2022
Friday, 01st December - all users that haven't been online since November 2022 until December 2022
...etc.

This database section handling will not be automated for the time being. Cleaning up these accounts will be checked manually and will always stay behind a certain amount of months.

I am considering "flushing" the engine in late Q3/2023 (late September 2023), then restart the reminder process (including new reminder emails) with users that haven't been online for more than 6 months, or over 180 days, maybe even longer. I am fully aware that "time is not always available", and this will give you the chance to still "check in" again.


"Zero Posters" (users that logged in, but never posted anything)
Monday, 28th August -- all users that haven't been online since 2022
Sunday, 01st October -- all users that haven't been online since 2023

...until this database section has been cleared out. The engine will then run fully automated (auto deletion).

If you don't want to participate in a game, or a conversation for that matter, that is fine. However, if you want to keep your account to use later down the line, you are requested to log in ever so often.



VERY IMPORTANT TO NOTE:

Once your account has been deleted from the system, it can not be recovered. Please do not put your account at risk. You do not need to respond to any thread. Just log into your account at least once to reset the timer.

If your account has timed out and got deleted, your only chance to participate with the games again, is to sign up for a new account. Please also keep an eye on your spam folder.

Apologies for the inconvenience.

[Mister Fox]

A final update to the "Forum User Account Cleanup Process"


The forum maintenance on 01-OCT-2023 focused on the "user account reminder" engine, which is in charge of checking for idling or abandoned user accounts. I decided to once more adjust the parameters, and stretch them out so that this gives users the chance to "step away for a bit" (because of <reasons>), yet you won't be at risk of immediately loosing access to an old account.

You will notice in the following paragraphs, that they all list the words "auto deletion". The engine runs fully "hands off" now. And since this engine adjustment was quite a significant change, I also reset every reminder notes that have been sent out so far. So those that haven't been online in "over half a year" (more than 180 days) are not at risk anymore. And those that have been idling/"sleeping", have gotten another grace period.

The new reminders have been sent out on 01-OCT-2023.
72 users were over the new threshold and got a request to check in with the account. 3 of them did so far.



The system is currently set up as following:

"Regulars" (users that have posted on the forum)

• the first reminder email will be sent after 360 days of being inactive
• a second reminder email will be sent after 20 days
• auto deletion of account after 10 days of no response to the second reminder

"Zero Posters" (users that logged in ever so often, but never posted anything)

• the first reminder email will be sent after 180 days of being inactive
• a second reminder email will be sent after 20 days
• auto deletion of account after 10 days of no response to the second reminder

"Sleepers" (users have signed up for an account, yet never activated it and therefore also never visited the forum)

• there will only be one reminder sent after 15 days of being inactive
• auto deletion of account after 10 days of no response

IT IS STILL VERY IMPORTANT TO NOTE:

Once your account has been deleted from the system, it can not be recovered. Please do not put your account at risk. You do not need to respond to any thread. Just log into your account at least once to reset the timer.

If your account has timed out and got deleted, your only chance to participate with the games again, is to sign up for a new account. Please also keep an eye on your email spam folder.




With this post, there will be no more reminders given.

Thank you for your time and being part of this community.