ipb

Swap feedback has returned!

 

Some notes about feedback:

+ Old feedback can be imported, and will be - no ETA.

+ I haven't yet added a button in Profiles to link to feedback. This will be coming in the next month or so.

+ You can search feedback by appending the name of the person whose feedback you're interested to this link: http://www.bpal.org/page/swaps/feedback.php?search_value=

+ A consolidated page that shows all of that individual's feedback and incomplete swaps is coming. This page will also contain statistics about that user. This is waiting for a major forum software update to be finished.

 

 

 

Additionally, because swaps have grown over the years from only 3 sections to 9, the category has been relocated under Idle Chatter category.

With the feedback we have gotten, we have decided to add a sub-forum to The Runway, exclusively for topics about cosmetics and hair style.

If you would like to discuss (good or bad) this, please post in this topic!

For many years, the Retail Therapy forum has become a place for e-tailers to further their own means. Before we had rules in place, e-tailers used to come on the forum to promote their products, provide customer service, or use the forum in some way that only benefited themselves and not the BPAL community at large. We've had issues of e-tailers using RT for research and development, as well as cases of e-tailers using the Lab's aesthetic and ideas to produce products very similar to the Lab and to some extent, duplicate the Lab's more popular scents. On top of this, we've had e-tailers who were untruthful about some aspect of their business, whether it was misrepresentation of their products, disregard for others' intellectual property, or just really poor customer service. Every time one of these issues cropped up, it resulted in all sorts of drama. Additionally we discovered that the vast majority of these problematic topics, as well as the companies that were represented in said topics, tended to be competitors to the Lab.

 

This past month, the moderating team started brainstorming to see what we can do to prevent this problem from reoccurring. We considered only allowing selective topics and companies in RT and even at one point considered removing the forum altogether. However, at the end of the day, we all agreed that RT is an extremely popular and useful forum, and even though it had its share of drama, we all love it and want it to be a place where we can talk about ways to fuel our shopping habits

 

In our discussions, it dawned on us that Retail Therapy has been growing with two different basic types of topics: product-based topics and company-based topics. These two different conversations have completely different ways about them. Product-based topics, like the nail polish topic, talked about all sorts of brands, from high-end boutique brands to indie brands coming out on Etsy. The majority of the conversation is about our love (or hate) for the products.

 

On the flip side, every single one of the problems we have been having with e-tailers in Retail Therapy have emerged in the company-based topics. In these topics, the issues we've encountered include people re-posting announcement/updates, sharing coupon codes or discounts, and occasionally breaking our rules by arranging group orders outside of swaps forum.

 

So we are going to try an experiment: we are changing the direction of the RT forum by shifting focus from company-specific topics in favor of product-specific topics. We believe it will solve two things:

1. It'll be easier for you to find a particular product (e.g., soap for dry skin);

2. It'll minimize the drama that keeps cropping up every few months

 

We are also doing a small reorganization of Retail Therapy's sub-sections to reflect these new changes:

=> Soap-cetera will be a forum dedicated to all things bath and body product related: soaps, shampoos, bath goodies, facial products, lotions, and more. Whether it comes from Etsy or Nordstrom's, we don't care. Does it work? Do you love it? Talk about it there!

=> The Runway will be a forum dedicated to all things style related - fashion, accessories, shoes, and more.

===> Backstage will be a sub-forum of The Runway, dedicated to all things cosmetics & hair style related.

=> Veni, Vidi, Visa will be a read-only forum that contains archives of the company-based topics from what's currently Bed, Bath, and Beyond.

 

Soap-cetera will only have topics about products -- no company topics!

 

The Runway and the main forum will continue to run as we have had it during the experimental period. Once we have seen how the product-based topics works in practice, we will reassess the state of the forums. As of right now, we intend to convert the rest of Retail Therapy to be product based. After all, when you are looking to buy an e-book reader, it makes more sense to read one topic all about e-book readers, rather than 4 different topics for each e-reader brand that's out on the market.

 

During the early phases of this transition, any new topics created in Soap-cetera will be queued until it has been reviewed by a moderator. Any topic that bridges multiple forums (such as clothing and bath products) will have the existing topic archived.

 

Additionally, moving forward, there will no longer any topics about perfume in the Retail Therapy forum. Please refer to the following threads where you can discuss perfume (even non-BPAL):

* What did you wear before BPAL?

* What do you smell like today?

 

This decision was not made lightly; at the end of the day, there are too many companies ripping off of BPAL that get highlighted here for us to continue to allow them free space in RT, especially since the Lab is one of our major donors in keeping the forum's server online. We will continue to monitor the progress of the forums during this time. If this experiment does not work out, we will go back to the drawing board.

You can use the search engine linked at the Lab, though it only has currently purchasable scents available.

 

You can browse the price cap database, but it's not really ready for that sort of use yet (you need to know the category).

 

You can use the search function on the forum and limit it to the reviews forums, but you will get a fair number of false positives.

 

 

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I actually came here to say that the Lab's search engine has switched over to a new database and now features purchase links and prices for all active perfumes, and a description mismatch with multiple words was fixed It also will have any active limited editions in there, for the time being.

We've created a new price cap database! I know many people had problems finding things in the old one, and we had problems maintaining it (because only one person could edit it). Now we've got it searchable, up-to-date, and all of the mods can edit it, so it's all sorts of win

 

It's a work in progress -- we're still missing a handful of oils and there will be some small changes in the coming week that will make it easier to search, but you can use it now to look up the price caps.

 

It will (eventually) be hooked into the reviews forum, so you'll see not only the description, but also the price and have a link to purchase it directly from the Lab, and vice versa (so you'll see the reviews in the detailed scent views). This weekend, I plan on moving the BPAL search engine and the Facebook application to this database, so the search results will give the price and a purchase link.

 

 

A big thanks to my moderators, evanesce, and furygrrl for helping us put in over 2,000 items!

I've fixed some lingering database issues.

For those of you who love to cook and share recipes, we now have a cookbook. Please, use it! You may add recipes, rate/discuss recipes, save them, print them, and more!

 

 

For those of you who have ever had a swap/sale/etc gone bad, we have a swaplift, failed swap, and incomplete swap reporting center. Please report any swap, sale, custom purchase, group order, or decant circle that went wrong -- we let you decide who's at fault (and that can be nobody). The only reports that count against the person you're reporting are the ones where they are at fault. If you have been reported for swaplifting, please feel free to use the comments to speak up! Only you and the person reporting you can post (not even the mods can post a comment!).

 

 

For those of you who miss the feedback system: I hope to get something up on Sunday. I'll bump this when it's up & update the forum-wide announcement.

There's so much new stuff that I haven't known where to begin! This post is only going to talk about the new features that IPB has added (and we'll touch on other changes in another post).

 

 

I think the best place to start is PMs. The private messaging system was completely overhauled to be more of a conversation than an exchange of messages. You can readily add people to the messages (but once you add them, only they can take themselves out). You can organize your posts as you used to have them organized, but the conversion didn't preserve the folder structure you may have set up. You can archive posts in-post (and it's a good idea to archive them before you delete them, especially where swaps are concerned!). You can also report messages from a PM for moderator review. Be advised that doing so will add any moderator who reads the post to your entire message - that's not much different from you forwarding to a moderator (who may forward to myself or repost in the mod area if they need advice), only the other person WILL be aware that moderators were invited in via reporting or invitation. Your PM limit is based on conversations, not replies to conversations. If you haven't noticed, you cannot reply to old PMs (which is why I had recommended archiving and deleting any that aren't relevant).

 

 

There are lots of changes to profiles as well. Not every option is currently allowed, but we can now allow you to make personalizations to your profile (background image or color). You may have noticed on the front page that there is a section for the most recent status updates -- profiles have statuses the way facebook and twitter do, and you can comment on them. Some of the old profile information has been reorganized a bit. You may have noticed that the links to feedback are presently gone, but they will be returning.

 

 

You can now synchronize with your Twitter account by logging in with it and connecting your accounts. People with twitter and no forum account can use twitter to join the forum. If you add twitter, you'll be able to import tweets into your forum status, and export your forum status into tweets (automatically) - and eventually, we might extend the scent of the day FB application to work with twitter. You can import your twitter background and avatar as your avatar or personal photo (but it's not required). Something similar is planned for Facebook, but I haven't yet configured it.

 

 

Notifications were added, and you can (and should) go and configure them to your convenience! They will tell you anything from who friended you to who's quoted you. I find them interesting (especially the quotes ). You can read more about them here.

 

 

There's all sorts of skin stuff, though it's mostly on the back end. The biggest thing is the forum now recognizes mobile devices and will provide a simplified skin with a larger font. I am told there were issues with PMs with the iPhone, but that may have been resolved (as we are using a different version than the test forum). We lost all of our skins, and will be having a skinning contest for new ones! We will also be purchasing some, and will have a donation drive. Details for both will come when things are settled down. Things are rearranged (such as the filters are mostly hidden by default), there were some things added (like the number of people in chat is at the top of the page, and the collaspable sidebar that has all sorts of good things, like status updates, new topics, and watched topics).

 

 

The chat room was completely redone! Please use it - we are allowed up to 50 people at a time! Please use it - it's something we pay for on an annual basis.

 

 

Search was overhauled. You can read all the details about it here.

I don't know if it'll be Thursday night (15-16) or Friday night (16-17) yet, but I am going to be upgrading the forum's software this weekend.

 

Please archive your messages by 5:00 pm (PST/"Lab time") Thursday, especially if you have ongoing swaps. The new PM function makes the email imports all weird.

 

 

 

Feedback will become locked when the new feedback goes live. It will NOT be ported into the new system, as they are incompatible (meaning: big changes have happened to feedback). I will probably replicate the old feedback in a separate (locked) database, so it will be easily viewed.

 

That said: the applications won't be going live immediately.

There are some "pay it forward" swaps in circular swaps, but we are talking about starting a new forum for things like contests and pay it forward. Pretty much, as soon as it's got a name, we'll do it & I'll mod the close-own-swap so those don't archive (coz they're fun to read through!)

 

Anyone with a good name suggestion for that forum, hit the report button for this post and offer it! If I pick your suggestion, I'll give you a bigger PM box. If multiple people suggest the winner, I'll give all of those that suggested it a bigger PM boxes There's already all sorts of great ideas - and most of them are waaaaaaaaaaay better than what I was thinking!

 

NOTE #1: PMs with suggestions will simply be deleted.

 

NOTE #2: One report per person, please! You can have multiple suggestions in one report.

 

 

I think we're gonna close this up on Friday

Just to give you guys a heads up, we have an as-of-yet unscheduled hardware upgrade being discussed. The date is rather up in the air at this point -- it could happen next week, it could happen next month... we have to coordinate schedules on our end and decide if we will just do the software update at that point or not. We'll try to miss a Lab update this time

Oh, and the nightly slow down should be gone now. The problem with that was we were running out of RAM and mysql was running out of temporary storage -- both issues we had to fix to repair the database

 

We did just change our caching engine, so it might come back -- we're running a little higher on RAM right now than I'd like. If it does, we'll probably add more RAM or revert the caching engine.

Around 9 AM (PST) on 9 June, our database crashed due to widespread corruption in the tables.

 

After discussing the options with our host, we decided we would rather be down longer and fix the tables than revert. This is for several reasons, but the biggest reason was a technical one: we believed that it was quite likely (due to how corrupt the database was) that the backups were also corrupted.

 

As the repairs were on going, it was determined that we had insufficient memory to fix the tables. This was not entirely unexpected, as we've been having memory issues during the nightly backup. So we authorized an increase in RAM, and more tables were repaired.

 

Last night, it was determined that the partition the directory that mysql uses to store temporary data was too small to complete the repair, which is why it had taken more than 2 days to repair the posts table and it still wasn't done. So we had them stop the repair, reconfigure mysql, and start the repair again, and when I woke up, it was done.

 

We optimized the tables before opening up, to reduce overhead and speed things up a bit.

I was using our web interface to do some database queries and apparently the one I wanted was too big and crashed the servr hard ... and I don't have direct access to the server at the moment. Fixed now!

We have decided to make reminders alter the warn level by 5%. I have to update the warning decay software yet (which will happen some time tomorrow - there shouldn't be any warnings decaying tonight), but once that is done, I'm going to update the current warn levels accordingly.

 

Most people will see their warn level jump by 10-15%, but a few people will see it jump over 30%.

If you use a duplicate account while on restricted access (say, a ban from swaps due to breaking the price cap rules or swaplifting) to access those areas, and you're caught, you will be suspended from the entire forum for 30 days.

 

If you use a duplicate account while suspended from the forum, you will be banned.

Just a rules clarification:

 

There are no "pre-sales" or early sign-ups for decant circles and group orders, especially for conventions and special events. This includes pick up offers (which are considered by us to be group orders).

 

We don't know what will or will not come, how much will come, how much it will cost, if it will be come in imps, or how much will be unavailable, which means that we cannot tell if it meets the criteria for our decant circles or group orders.

 

You cannot start a wanted topic, decant circle or group orders, or allow sign-ups, for one that you are planning to do here, until it is LIVE (meaning, can be purchased at the time you start the circle's thread). All decant circles/group orders will be denied until the start of the events and all wanted topics will be made invisible.

 

You cannot answer a wanted topic until it is LIVE. I know, it's frustrating, but there is no guarantee that your picker upper can get the number of bottles they promise.

 

You cannot request that your swap/sale partners pay for part of your travel expenses, including admissions to the event. Requesting these expenses outside of an approved group order or decant circle is a violation of our group order/decant circle policies, as well as a violation of our price caps.

 

 

Please let any moderator know if you are contacted by anyone who is not following our rules regarding event purchasing.

I have not yet tried my bar, as I got sick right after my bar arrived, and I'll edit this to update in a few hours - I'll be trying it out in the shower later today. But that said: oh my god, now that I can smell again, it smells so good in the package, even better than the perfume (which I didn't really care for the scent of). I can't wait to try it!


After I tried it? It's definitely a manly scent - one I think my fiancé (who is more a bar soap user than I am) will adore. As with the Embalming Fluid, it's very typical of Villainess' soaps - good lather, wonderful scent cloud. Some of the salt came off onto the washrag and made it a little more exfoliating, which was good for me (but if you're not into that, you can slice off the salt or be more careful in how you lather the soap), and washing clean. The only real note is that the dark soap did leave a dark residue on the shower shelf, but it quickly washed off (no staining).

Moisturizing is typical of the Villainess line, too - for a bar soap, fairly moisturizing. I have dry skin and used my normal moisturizing routine (in shower lotion and a thin layer afterwards) and haven't had problems.

I like it a lot, but the scent in the shower isn't one I really don't see myself using much. It does smell fabulous, but I prefer not smelling so manly in the shower.

I was lucky enough to try an early preview of several of the Villainess soaps, and have by dying for them to be released! I don't know if the formula changed between this preview and now -- my preview sample bar was several months ago, and not cut to the normal size.

That said, it has all the hallmarks of a Villainess bar: great suds, perfect amount of scent so you enjoy it in the bath, and it lightly lingers for a little bit (but not too long). The scent is a perfect match for what I was expecting for Embalming Fluid. It's a great light 'clean' scent, and I'm looking forward to buying a bar for the summer.


On the issue of dryness: my skin is very sensitive as far as dryness goes. There aren't many bar soaps (and even a good amount of bath gels) that don't make it even drier , and outside of the tropics, I tend to use an extra moisturizing bath gel with an in-shower rinse off lotion (and in arid climates, I often need a post-shower shea butter lotion application as well). Villainess is one of the better soaps I've found - my skin doesn't get all white and flakey the way it does for cheap soap. That said, I still needed to lotion up, either in the shower or afterwards, with this soap. I *was* living in the desert when I tried this, so my normal routine was a double lotion, so only needing the post-shower lotion was an improvement

From about 1:00-1:30 EST, our server is undergoing its nightly backup. This eats up the memory and causes time out problems when loading pages. HOWEVER, if you post at this time, it DOES (usually) go through.

 

Instead of reloading the page over and over, wait 10 minutes, open a new tab, and go to the topic you were posting to to see if your post posted. If it did not, reload the original tab.

 

Do NOT reload the window you posted from multiple times, as this usually results in double/triple/more posts.

 

If you do get a double/more post, only report ONE of the duplicates. We will take care of all of them.

Clarification: Sellers requiring/requesting that buyers must send the money as a gift or personal payment (which forces the fees on the buyer) is equivalent to requiring/requesting a surcharge. If buyers wish to do so, it is their option, though it will eliminate their ability to seek their money back from Paypal should the sale go poorly.

SV has been away for a few weeks and probably won't return for another week or two.

 

I am going on vacation abroad for the next month and have internet there, but I don't know how good it is .. and I won't be checking in more than once every few days.

 

 

In our absence, please contact Morrighana for your adminsitrative needs. Morrighana is abroad and has sketchy internet, so it will probably be a few days before she can take care of it. If it needs to be done immediately or requires further use than just the built in control panel, contact any of the moderators - they have my cell phone number and can text me.

 

Thanks!

Today's the last day for signups! Already signed up? Coax a friend! We still have about ten openings.

The new season of the forum game is quickly beginning!

 

Writer signups are here, by Wednesday (though those that want to join in after the game starts are welcome to!)

 

Player signups are here, by Friday, and the game will begin on Saturday (first set of deaths on Monday).

 

 

New to the game? The premise is this:

* There are two (or more) teams, generally thought of as "good" and "bad".

* The majority of the players are on the "good" team, and are trying to eliminate the "bad" elements. They win when all of the bad elements are gone.

* The bad elements can be teams (such as mafia, werewolves, vampires, cults). They can be single players (serial killers, gunslingers). They win when their team is in the majority, or when they are one of two players left.

* There are special players on both sides that may give their team additional information or otherwise help them out. Past special players include investigators, forensic specialists, mad scientists, hookers, psychics, mediums, and more.

* Every day, the "good" team votes on who to kill, to find out if they are good or bad (hopefully bad!). Every night, the "bad" players also vote on who to kill.

* Many players get into a character and role play (saloon girl, carnie barker, etc). It's not necessary, but it sure is fun!

 

 

You can see the previous seasons here:

• Season 1: Bpalvilleforshire Parish
• Season 2: The Agency
• Season 2.5: Dead Man's Gulch
• Season 3: Carnaval Pécheur
• Season 4: The Untouchables