ipb

Because it's come up a time or two this week, we said in the guidelines (emphasis mine): This means that no, you cannot ask someone if they'd be willing to swap or decant an oil they've reviewed or talked about elsewhere (regardless of it showing up in their "have" list) unless it's already listed in their swaps. It also means that NO, you cannot approach several people one time in such a way. Stated as clearly as I can thing: If someone has a disfavorable review, you should not contact them and ask if they'd be interested in swapping (unless it shows up in the swap area). If someone has a favorable review, you should not contact them and ask them if they'd be willing to decant a bit so you can try it (unless they offer to do so in the swap area). We have been getting reports, off and on, for several instances of this kind of thing happening. We would appreciate it if you would let one of the mods know if someone does approach you, unsolicited, to swap something that you don't have up for swaps.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

In accordance to PayPal policies, we do not allow sellers to pass along paypal fees by adding a surcharge on top of an items sale price. (This includes required fees AND suggested donations.) Our price caps were already designed to have enough padding to them so that sellers could have some flexibility in deciding what expenses (initial shipping to you, decanting supplies, transaction fees, etc.) they could and could not tolerate taking on and building that into the price of the bottle and are more than generous enough to cover any burden of expense you might face by accepting PayPal as a form of payment. We allow $2.50 over the cost of the bottle. The purchase price of the most expensive bottle typically sold, at $25, therefore has an allowed markup of 10%. The purchase price of the least expensive typically sold bottle, at $15, has an allowed markup of 16.7%. With Paypal fees being no more than 2.9%, there is at least 7.1% (and up to 13.7%, since there aren't many bottles from the era of $10.50-12.50 being sold) of "wiggle room" that takes into consideration things like the $0.30 transaction fee and the initial shipping to you. Violations of the Paypal fee policy will result in the same consequences as violating the topic bumping policy. HOWEVER: If you are found requiring Paypal fees, and this requirement puts your prices over the price caps, it will *also* be treated as a price cap violation. First time: After the first time you have added additional Paypal fees, a reminder will be issued. Second time: After the second time you have added additional Paypal fees, a second reminder will be issued. Third time: After the third time you have added additional Paypal fees, a warning will be issued. Fourth time: After the fourth time you have added additional Paypal fees, a second warning will be issued. In addition, you will be banned from the swaps sections for a one month period of time. Fifth time: After the fifth time you have added additional Paypal fees, a third warning will be issued. In addition, you will be banned from the swaps sections for a six-month period of time. Six time: After the sixth time you have added additional Paypal fees, you will be permanently banned from swapping.

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!

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

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

A helpful hint for whether or not a signature is too big: find a one line post. Does the signature stretch the left hand bar? If it does, it's too big! An OK signature height will have a left hand side that looks something like this with a one line post: A signature that exceeds our height requirement may look like this with a one line post (note: click to see it full size):

After some drama blazed about her e-tail business, Atropa's Cottage, ebonykawaii created a sock puppet account, httpoo (on 17 May 2006). We were aware of its existence, but didn't do anything about it because initially, it was not being used. On 11 Sept 2009, httpoo was used to troll in a topic about the Black Butterfly Moon (August 2009) update. At this point in time, httpoo was put on the restricted duplicate account group and ebonykawaii suspended and warned that if another duplicate account was linked to her, she would be banned. On 22 Sept 2009, ebonykawaii created the raineygirl account, and was promptly banned. When we say we do not tolerate duplicate accounts, especially for sock puppet and trolling purposes, we mean it! --- In 2008, shelldoo and two other forum members collected money and goods for Beth and Ted's wedding present from the forum. Shelldoo insisted on collecting the money for the charitable donation and was supposed to donate over $1,500 of the collection to the ACLU in Beth and Ted's name. The donation was never made. While we didn't ban her for the massive swaplift that she also did around this time (spanning from approximately October 2008 - April 2009), when this problem was brought to our attention, we felt that this sort of abuse of our members' trust is intolerable and she was banned.

For clarification: it also includes requesting optional donations.

It looks like a bunch of skulls partially buried in smooth stones to me. I think your "smooth stones" are femoral heads or humeral heads -- arm/leg bones, where they attach to your shoulder/hip.

From roughly June 14-June 30, beneathglass contacted in excess of 100 members, offering to swap and/or sale. By July 3, we had received so many reports about slow swap/non communication that we restricted her access to the swaps forum. Around July 7, she was restricted from the private areas of the forum. On July 8, she created Lia and loviatorthertip to get around that restriction and was informed that another duplicate account would result in her getting banned. On August 5, she created herokitty and was banned.

Many of you have reported receiving spam in your PM box. The PMs have been deleted and the individual has been suspended. As well, I have changed it so members who have not completed the validation process (registering, validating their email, and reading & verifying that they have read our guidelines) cannot have use the PM system.

There's recently been some question about the price cap and the Wanted forum. The price caps do apply to all forum transactions, even those in the Wanted forum. We do not feel that going around the guidelines by only responding to wanted posts rather than posting the items you have available in Sales is acting in the spirit of fairness and friendship we try to encourage here. We created the price caps to discourage people's profiteering, not to simply force them to be more creative in how they accomplish it. It is true that there is nothing we can do about people violating the caps and charging people exorbitant prices by responding to posts from the "Wanted" forum if the mod staff don't hear about it. It's very much like swaplifting: we cannot do anything about it if we do not know that it is happening. (And unlike swaplifting: we've got an easily accessible master list of LE prices that can be checked against - it's pretty cut and dry. Either you adhere to the price caps or you don't. Swaplifting, at least, has the gray area of "being in the mail".) If someone proposes a swap that violates the price caps, please notify one of the swap moderators (cupide430, grrrlennyl, Scylla, Silvertree, or twistygirl), or one of the board administrators (Morrighana, quantum spice, shriekingviolet). If you see a post in the swaps area that exceeds the caps or says something along the lines of "contact me for prices", please report the topic. We have banned people from swapping for continually refusing to adhere to our price caps in their topics, and we would ban them for continually refusing to adhere to our price caps in their Wanted-related transactions if we knew about them. If you have questions about the price cap policy, don't hesitate to post your question in the price cap questions thread or contact one of the swap moderators or board administrators.

Just a note that linking to off-forum swaps to circumvent the price caps are ALSO not allowed.

In the past, there's been a lot of speculation and false assumptions made concerning the banning of member accounts on this forum. Among many there seems to be a lot of false impressions over how often and how easily it is to get banned here. This may be in part our fault, as we have never drawn attention to the banning process, nor did typically discuss member banishments after the fact. This was because we felt it unfair to speak out about someone when they're not able to return and make a counter argument in their defense, because often the person still had friends on the forum and we didn't want to put them in an awkward position, and simply because we didn't want to further the unpleasantness of the situation. It was a decision we thought sound for a time, but clearly our silence on the subject has allowed people to believe that this is something we do far more often than we actually do and that we do it for simpler or pettier reasons than is the truth. So, to try to clear up any confusion or misconceptions about this touchy subject, we've decided to be more open about it and have all past and any future bannings presented in the public record. We hope this will help demonstrate that this not something we do often or lightly. And because of the sensitive nature of the subject, we're posting this information here rather than in the announcements area of the forum. To this date, we have banned 9 individuals: Unseelie, diabolique, BlueStar, wax, AngelFireHeart (aka: RainDropAngel), Black Medicine, wichapi (aka: ShyinChi, aka: MaineEvent), MissAnthropy (aka: InanimatusConjurus, aka: paintahappylittletree, aka: SeeYouNextTuesday), and tehriaz (aka: asunderpants, aka: omgriri). Details on the events leading up to each of these decisions will be posted as I have time to go through the various records. UPDATED 6 Oct 09: We have since banned 2 more individuals: beneathglass (aka Lia, aka loviatorthertip, aka herokitty) and ebonykawai (aka httpoo, aka raineygirl)

UNSEELIE On December 12, 2004, Unseelie sent a brand new member a harassing PM and blocked her from being able to respond and received a 30% warning and a notice that further similar actions would be taken seriously. On April 17, 2005, she created a topic devoted about how "horrible and wretched" another member's signature was, and received a warning because her tone and words again violated the good manners rule. One month later, she altered her profile to verbally attack a moderator, and because she had already shown a pattern of harassment (both member and moderator), she was banned. (Incidentally, if this happened now, it would probably have been handled differently; these days, we prefer to give a suspension before banning.) WAX On May 31, 2006 after registering a new account here, wax attempted to hack our forum. As a result, he was banned. ANGELFIREHEART/ET AL On June 26, 2006, Rain Drop Angel (RDA) posted that AngelFireHeart (AFH) at committed suicide. After noticing that AFH had been logging in after her so-called death, we started doing a little investigation into her forum activity, and discovered AFH had been using the PM system after her "death," and that the person known to be behind the AFH account had made at least one account elsewhere (specifically on lost.fm) as RDA. Because of our suspicions, we did contact her local coroner's office, and was told that nobody had died at that address on or around the date we were told AFH had died, making this a case of pseudocide. As a result, on July 23, 2006, both accounts were banned for their outrageous abuse of our community. Note that if this happened today, our duplicate account tools would be able to catch any account switching and new account creating, so the extent that was gone to prove to ourselves that this really was a case of pseudocide would be unnecessary.

Since this is a FAQ and 10mL bottles are not going to come back any time soon (outside, perhaps, of eBay), I am locking this topic. Please do not bug the Lab about it -- it's been three years, they're not coming back.