To redirect a message to a different category:

1. Go to the message in question
2. Click the "edit' option that appears beside the title
3. Near the top of the edit page, there is a field that reads "MaplePrimes Forums" followed by a drop down box containing a list of all of the forum topics in MaplePrimes.   Select the appropriate forum.
4. Click the "submit" option at the bottom of the edit screen.

To promote content to the front page:

1. Go to the message in question
2. Click the "edit' option that appears beside the title
3. Just above the submit/delete buttons at the bottom of the page is a subheader labelled "publishing options".  Click that subheader to open up a group of options.
4. Check the box that appears beside "promoted to front page".
5. Click the "submit" option to accept the changes.

Let me know if you have further questions, or if these options aren't appearing in your edit page.

Bryon

Patrick -- I completely agree that editing someone's post can be a tricky situation, which is why we have typically avoided it.   The only times that we've ever considered it is when there is a spelling or grammatical error that we feel has a significant negative effect on the comprehension of what the poster is trying to communicate.  Regardless, always make sure to send the original poster a note indicating the change(s) that you made and offer to make further edits if that user requests it.  In the four+ years that we've been running Primes, we have edited only a small handful of messages, and most are for technical problems with formatting.

In terms of "correcting" cultural terms (like math to maths, or vice versa), I strongly discourage those types of edits.

The new version of MaplePrimes handles 'deletes' better than the current version.  Once the new version comes live, content will never actually get deleted.  Instead, it will get "deactivated".  What this means is that if you ever accidentally remove something, you can let us know and we can immediately reactivate it.  With Drupal, the content is completely removed once deleted.

In the meantime, I'd like to leave the current version as-is so that we can keep our resources forging ahead with the new site instead of updating this one.

Bryon

Not to worry... it takes two distinct clicks to actually remove content.  One click on the first "delete" and a second to confirm. 

Bryon

The best way to send millions of spam messages without getting caught is to have an army of people do it for you.  The "best" (i.e., the sneakiest) way to do this is to write a virus that gets installed onto someone's computer (usually via a trojan) and then it will work in the background to send the spam.  So while I don't have any specifics about this particular instance, I'm fairly confident about how the attack is being carried out.

As for changing the rules to prevent automatic registration or to prevent new users from posting a message, it's a good idea but I'm hesitant to roll that out, even if just for a few days.  If I were a new Maple user that was having trouble in a particular area, I'd find it very frustrating if I couldn't post a message to our help forum.

The best way to send millions of spam messages without getting caught is to have an army of people do it for you.  The "best" (i.e., the sneakiest) way to do this is to write a virus that gets installed onto someone's computer (usually via a trojan) and then it will work in the background to send the spam.  So while I don't have any specifics about this particular instance, I'm fairly confident about how the attack is being carried out.

As for changing the rules to prevent automatic registration or to prevent new users from posting a message, it's a good idea but I'm hesitant to roll that out, even if just for a few days.  If I were a new Maple user that was having trouble in a particular area, I'd find it very frustrating if I couldn't post a message to our help forum.

It appears that Primes has been targetted by an automated spambot that is configured for the particular version of Drupal that we are running.  The messages are coming from unique IP addresses distributed all over the world, so it's most likely the result of a trojan application running quietly on people's machines, unbeknownst to the individual users.  So unfortunately, we cannot just block an IP address to stop the problem.

The timing (over the Christmas holidays) is particularly unfortunate, as our staff resources are minimal.  This is a top priority for us, however, and we will be looking at a fix starting on Monday, Jan 5.  In the meantime, we will be doing our best to keep on top of the problem, but with New Year's day tomorrow, followed by the weekend, it's likely that the messages will continue to build up over that time.

The new version of Primes that we are working on will have measures to prevent this type of thing from happening.

Bryon

It appears that Primes has been targetted by an automated spambot that is configured for the particular version of Drupal that we are running.  The messages are coming from unique IP addresses distributed all over the world, so it's most likely the result of a trojan application running quietly on people's machines, unbeknownst to the individual users.  So unfortunately, we cannot just block an IP address to stop the problem.

The timing (over the Christmas holidays) is particularly unfortunate, as our staff resources are minimal.  This is a top priority for us, however, and we will be looking at a fix starting on Monday, Jan 5.  In the meantime, we will be doing our best to keep on top of the problem, but with New Year's day tomorrow, followed by the weekend, it's likely that the messages will continue to build up over that time.

The new version of Primes that we are working on will have measures to prevent this type of thing from happening.

Bryon

Complementing the resources above, Samir Khan, one of the regular bloggers at Maplesoft.com, has posted a couple of popular Mandelbrot-related articles.

• Mandelbrot Mania with Maple
  http://www.maplesoft.com/blog/view.aspx?sid=6851
   
• The Remarkable Story Behind the Mandelbrot Monk
  http://www.maplesoft.com/blog/view.aspx?sid=19322

Bryon

In our research for the new features being discussed here, we noticed that thumbs-up and thumbs-down symbols are extremely common, and that is what we are currently planning to use to symbolize "good" and "bad" content on MaplePrimes.

Bryon

MaplePrimes is a diverse community -- in the last 30 days, for example, we have hosted visitors from over 200 countries -- and all are welcome.  Over the years, there are many examples of members posting in languages other than English, as well as many English posts written by people who's native language is obviously something aside from English.  Our expectations are simply that any discussions are respectful of these differences, and do not descend into arguments about who is right or wrong or about who's culture should take precendence.

That said, I find discussions like this interesting and valuable. I have certainly used the term "America" in the same way that Alec used it, had no idea that it has such a different meaning in other parts of the world.

Bryon

Thanks for the comment, Jacques.  We have been paying close attention to the server since launch and haven't noticed anything out of the ordinary.  In fact, the general concensus around thse parts is that the site is quite a bit faster than it was previously, although admittedly most of that is conjecture -- I don't have any hard comparative data to validate those comments.  But so far, everything seems quite positive from the server migration.

Regardless, we will continue to watch the site/server for any problems.  And of course, we certainly appreciate you letting us know when you find something that requires our attention.

Bryon

Thanks to both of you (Doug & Alec) for identifying issues with the help notation.  We'll address it shortly and publish a fix.

Bryon

Yes, you are correct.   The purpose of this update was to address stability & reliability, which (knock on wood) so far appears to have been successful.   With that out of the way, we are now able to start working on the new features that we have been discussing here.

Bryon

Thanks for your work on getting this done, Will.  Hopefully this server upgrade will correct the stability issues we've been dealing with.  We were not able to crash the server during testing, so that's certainly a positive sign!

Now that this upgrade has been completed, our development priority turns to the the MaplePrimes re-development project.  We will provide more details and status updates about this in the near future.

Bryon