Technical difficulties
Posted by Richard on September 24th, 2007
I’ve received a few reports of a few bugs while signing up for new accounts and submitting stories. I’m trying to narrow down the problem and get things fixed. Should be 100% soon. Thanks for your emails.
UPDATE: I’m still working on this. Please report any problems or bugs with Sustaind.org to me through the contact form.
Sisters and Brothers
Posted by Richard on August 14th, 2007
By popular demand, the Sustain’d logo is now available as a sister as well as a brother. If you’ve added a link to Sustain’d from your blog or website, you’ll now see it alternate between the brother and the sister.
If you prefer only the brother or only the sister, please visit the link page to find specific code for each one.
If you prefer a static image of the sister, instead of a voting button, use the images below.
There are also static images of the brother.
Kudos to Connor for designing the logos and helping me get them implemented.
Passing the Torch
Posted by admin on August 1st, 2007
It’s been about a year since I first created Sustain’d, and the time has flown! I’ve learned a lot—both about the dynamics of a culture of online religious communities, and about a bunch of technical stuff.
I’m pleased to announce as of today that the More Good Foundation has acquired Sustain’d and will be responsible for future development and improvements. Richard and his team have been excellent to work with in the past and I have no doubt that they will do a great job moving Sustain’d forward and implementing new ideas and features.
Thanks for all your participation, and I look forward to seeing what happens with Sustain’d in the near future!
Connor
New user restrictions
Posted by admin on May 31st, 2007
Okay, so the spam CATPCHA didn’t work. Turns out that the spammers are real people. Some people have far too much time on their hands…
So now, the CAPTCHA has been removed and new users will not have their posts published until I approve them. So when a new user joins up, they may still enter a submission, but that submission will not appear on the site until I manually review it and give it the okay.
Once a new user has an approved post, they may post freely.
Let’s hope this clears up the garbage! Thanks to all for their patience, suggestions, and feedback. Sustain away!
Goodbye, Spam!
Posted by admin on May 28th, 2007
Some of you surely have noticed the recent spam attacks on Sustain’d. Many thanks to those of you with watchful eyes that have emailed me to notify me of these submissions so that I could delete them quickly.
As of today, Sustain’d is now using a CAPTCHA service from Recaptcha to prevent spambots from hitting the site.
This will hopefully eliminate any and all spam submissions (unless they are entered by humans, of course). Let’s all cross our fingers and hope that such trash won’t be seen on Sustain’d any more!
The Heavy Hitters
Posted by admin on November 28th, 2006
Since Sustain’d launched, the following 15 websites have been the ones to generate the most traffic (sorted by highest traffic generated)
- timesandseasons.org
- mormonstories.org
- bycommonconsent.com
- connorboyack.com
- google.com
- blog.moregoodfoundation.org
- dallas.typepad.com
- sitemeter.com
- provopulse.com
- loydo38.blogspot.com
- mormonmentality.org
- smallsimple.blogspot.com
- bloglines.com
- withinthebubble.blogspot.com
- northtemple.com
Come and Comment!
Posted by admin on October 12th, 2006
The comment activity as been removed from the “sneak/spy” page and added to its own “Recent Comments” page. Both can be accessed from the sidebar on the main site (i.e. not while viewing the blog).
Thanks to sootica for the request. I like this method better.
Thanks also to Dustin for the new “Sister Sustain’d” logo and to danithew for his help on getting the RSS feeds to work properly.
Oppose Away!
Posted by admin on September 26th, 2006
Folks, I appreciate your input and suggestions on how to implement the “oppose” method. Based on your feedback, here is how this is going to work:
- One person can either sustain or oppose a post. You cannot do both.
- An opposing vote counts as a negative sustaining vote. So if a post has 3 sustainings and gets an opposing vote, it will then have 2 sustaintings.
- If a post is on the front page, and through being opposed its number of sustainings drops below 10 (which is the magic number until further notice and more site participation), it will not be deleted, but will instead go back into the “upcoming sustainings” pool.
If you see anything that doesn’t work, feel free to let me know. Thanks!
To bury or not to bury?
Posted by admin on September 25th, 2006
Folks, there has been some discussion on this blog, as well as others, as to how (or if) to buy articles.
Since I’m hoping the community can drive this web site, I’d rather get your input on the matter instead of deciding myself. So, how would you like to see this feature implemented? Should people be able to bury posts at all? If so, should it be by three votes? Or 1/3 of votes (i.e. if there are 24 sustainings, it would need 12 buries to be buried)? Or some other method you can think of? Or perhaps people should be able to bury an article, but it never gets deleted (their names would show up on the article page showing that they buried it)?
Any other ideas?
Promoting Yourself
Posted by admin on September 22nd, 2006
Folks, Sustain’d is not a way for you to publish your own posts and get more blog traffic. This is meant to be a tool for you to submit things from other people’s blogs and web sites that you find useful and interesting.
For those of you who are familiar with digg, you’ll know that it’s somewhat taboo to promote your own things merely to get attention.
Think about it… in church, you don’t propose your own name to be sustained. Your name is proposed by somebody else (a member of the Bishopbric, for example) and then people can sustain you (and you can sustain yourself).
That being said, please don’t use Sustain’d as a tool for submitting your own stuff. Let’s build the community by proposing other people’s content as we would do in the church. Enjoy!
