SCOUTER-Terry

It is a violation of one of the few specific rules of SCOUTER Forums to register and participate in discussions under multiple screen names. It's dishonest to the discussion. TERRY HOWERTON

Thank you for the reminder, Laurie. Unfortunately a few folks ignored you (and maybe one or two simply could not grasp the concept). Others still, who genuinely contribute in thoughtful ways feel "sucked in" to the discussions just as a counter weight to diatribe (and then get frustrated or distracted from making meaningful contributions in other areas of the Forums. It's interesting how the tone of the campfire changes just by one or two loud talkers, particularly on those occassions when they have little worth actually saying.For the record, a healthy, intelligent debate where everyone tries

Over the weekend the server SCOUTER.com is hosted on experienced trouble and posting was disabled. The problem should now be resolved. TERRY HOWERTON

OK, now it works. TERRY HOWERTON

FOG - I haven't noticed any of the problems you've reported, but it is possible that some of the new firewall features we installed in front of the server are causing such problems. We've made some tweaks to it... please continue to give any feed back of issues you encounter. TERRY HOWERTON

Folks I just noticed this thread. Yes, on Friday we deployed a new firewall in front of SCOUTER, and I suspect it's causing the problems you have reported. We'll check into it right away. TERRY HOWERTON

The free web hosting provide by www.SCOUTER.com/hosting does not allow for FTP access. You must use the upload interface provided by the system after you log in. TERRY HOWERTON (This message has been edited by a staff member.)

This is area is for Order of the Arrow discussions. Any private OA discussions (materials that are "safeguarded" for members only) can be posted in the "Safeguarded OA Discussions" private sub-forum above, which requires a password to access. The password is the Admonition of the Order, and if you do not know it you may ask a fellow Arrowman. TERRY HOWERTON (This message has been edited by a staff member.)

This new section of the SCOUTER Forums has been established to encourage some of the thousands of "lurkers" who read the Forums each month without posting to take a moment and introduce yourself. Or if you really are discovering the SCOUTER Forums for the first time, join up and let us know a little about you. To jumpstart this section, existing Forum members are also encouraged to "start anew" and give us some insight into you and your Scouting life. TERRY HOWERTON

I've closed all of the discussions in the Issues and Politics Forum. If anyone feels any subject is worth reopening, you're welcome to do so by creating a new post again. Instead, how about a 48 hour break? Why doesn't everyone take the next 48 hours and spend some time posting something really helpful for Scouting in one of the other areas of the Forum? If you've been sucked into the debate of the Issues and Politics Forum recently (and it's certainly been intoxicating, if not suffocating), why not "cleanse" your ScreenName by picking one single Scouting subject that you are really

OK, the Stars took a vacation. When (if) they come back, the Slow Page Load times won't accompany them. The formula might also be tweaked some. Let me tell you all the details of the formula that was being used, then I would love to hear comments on whether the formula should be changed, or even whether or not the Stars is worth bringing back to the Forums (perhaps even with a slightly different purpose/approach). Give the user 1 point if they have ever made any posts. Give the user 2 points if they have posted 2 or more new topics in the past 60 days. Give the user 2 points i

Hmmm... are you using Internet Explorer on both? Is it the same version of IE on both? TERRY HOWERTON

The slow page loading times are still related to one of the database servers that we need to upgrade... we will be doing so next week (behind schedule). The voting problems you mention (where Member Login Page) is coming up is because you are not logged in (or because you have disabled cookies in your browser). To login, click on Site Member Login in the upper right column. If you are logged in successfully, the top of the right column will say "Logged In". TERRY HOWERTON

As a general reminder, this area of the Forums is not regulated as much as other areas. In basic terms, any topic is fair game here. But when topics have absolutely NO RELEVANCY to Scouting, are non-sensical or appear to only be an annoyance to most of the Forum members then that post is really not welcome here. The last thing I have time to do is chase off or block those who post as above... it's like herding cats. TERRY HOWERTON

The incredible shrinking stars. TERRY HOWERTON

Comments about the User Rating system are not falling on deaf ears. Before deciding that it's a system to be scrapped, though, I'm of the belief that it's just still imperfect, and overtime will evolve. Give it some time... we are making some changes to the formula to limit personal vendettas. Someone also suggested to me that the Ratings and Post Voting be deactivated in the Issues and Forums section. I'm open to all suggestions. TERRY HOWERTON

Many of you have reported noticing that the SCOUTER.com pages are loading slow for the past several days. This actually doesn't have much to do with the new features of the forums, it is a result of deactivating one of our database servers for upgrades. We'll be reactivating the database server again within 72 hours... so be please be patient. TERRY HOWERTON

Per suggestions made, we have improved the Today's Active Topics page to make it easier for you to review posts: Ability to sort active topics by clicking on a column heading Page links are added to access each page for a specific thread "Last post by" column is added "New" icon is shown if the thread is started in the past 48 hours TERRY HOWERTON

The votes are also squelched if all the voters have voted a certain way. TERRY HOWERTON

Bug in Forums that prevented posts during the past 24 hours has been resolved. TERRY HOWERTON

We're still tweaking the process... we'll be adding some logic to prevent personal vendettas from factoring into the User Ratings, and we're going to be making it easier for everyone to vote on posts. We'll continue to keep how you vote (Thumbs Up or Down) secret, only that you have voted. These User Ratings are VERY dynamic... they are very heavily weighted to the quality of posts made recently by a user. The wild swings up and down will balance out a bit within a few weeks, but there will still always be an ability for a User Rating to go up or down based on just a few recent po

That's correct... you need to log in... which you can do by clicking the Site Members Login in the box at the top of the right column of the site. If you are still having trouble logging in there, then check to make sure your computer is set to accept cookies... if you aren't accepting cookies, we can't log you in. (By default, it would be set to accept cookies, you would have had to deactivate that feature intentionally.) TERRY HOWERTON

Don't get too discouraged (or too much ego) over these User Ratings. It's a system we'll keep tweaking, as we learn. And as I said, your User Ratings will fluctuate significantly until a good history is built up. User Ratings are in fact an overall rating. So the reason you saw different ratings for yourself this morning was based on the system "learning" from votes and other criteria (and us tweaking the weighting of criteria a bit, which we'll continue to do until we find the right settings). I will tell you this much about the ratings: the most valuable criteria is the number of

Who defines "quality"? Every other registered user of the Forums who votes either thumbs up or thumbs down on a post. And yes, you can see who has voted up or down on a post by following the instructions above. We'll continue to improve the ease of use of that system, too. One thing I should state very clearly: there is not more prejudice built into the system than has already been explained. In other words, I don't have any more control over a user rating than any other user of the Forums. The formula is weighted (the wieghting we'll keep to ourselves) to favor some of the criteria over

We've now added User Ratings... represented by the "stars" under a user name. These Ratings are based on a weighted formula which only involves: the number of posts a user has made overall, and the number of recent posts they have made the number of new topics they have started the quality of the posts a user has made, based on the "rank this post" thumbs up and thumbs down system User Ratings are designed to encourage participation and the genesis of quality topics and discussion. TERRY HOWERTON (This message has been edited by a staff member.)