phonescoop.com
Welcome to the new site!
The most major change is definitely the new forums. That's a big enough topic that I'm writing a separate welcome message just for the forums. See that for details, but to sum up: a brand-new forum system has replaced the news groups, and there are dedicated forums for each carrier, manufacturer, and phone. Plus, you can now discuss news briefs that appear on the front page.
Here are some other changes:
- User Account overhaul. User accounts now require a verified email address, and your username is now als
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You can now email other users privately, and they can email you, without exposing your email address publicly in any way. You can choose to not allow people to contact you this way, although there's really no reason to do that. The system was designed with privacy in mind from the get-go.
I have to apologize in advance for there not being any CDMA phones to win. I actually tried very hard to get a few, but it just wasn't possible. Between activation issues and carrier-exclusive models, it's just too difficult to give away a CDMA phone for something like this.
There were a lot of reasons, but mostly it just reached a point where the groups didn't seem as fun or useful anymore. Because of the way USENET works, there was nothing I could do to help, except create a new place where trolls and spam could be addressed properly.
...and also where we could finally make use of modern web technology, instead of being stuck in the dark ages of fixed-width text and top-posting vs. bottom-posting. It took me a while to realize it, but once I did it was clear as day - USENET is ancient - and it shows. It's time to move on.
I do lament that this will fragment the community in the near term, but if we can all work together, I honestly believe that...
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...but wait, there's more! ๐ There are much cooler features in the wings that I'm not quite ready to talk about yet. Stay tuned!
what were the cooler features?
Honestly, that was so long ago that I'm not sure what my to-do list looked like then. There's still a large to-do list of great new features planned, and progress is being made on it all the time, just never as quickly as I'd like.
I have been working on these things a lot lately, actually, but unfortunately it's all behind-the-scenes stuff that lays the groundwork for the cool public-facing stuff. Not very exciting (for either of us) but necessary. Trust me, progress is being made. ๐
Also, sending out an email newsletter can be risky these days. It's all too easy to run afoul of overzealous spam filters and get our servers blacklisted by major services. We wouldn't want an email newsletter read by some to prevent whole blocks of the Internet from receiving our emails for account sign-up, etc.
Your response is appreciated though.
- Saved