Welcome to the Crowdgather Network

[eramus]

I have made a change to the Fashion-Forums environment. Fashion-forums.com is now officially part of the CrowdGather Forum Network.

We have implemented a few new features that I would like to briefly explain:
User authentication -- We have updated our login mechanism. From now on, all members must use their email address to login. We are allowing members to login with their username one time. This will be helpful for members that do not remember their email address. You will have the chance to update or confirm your email address during your first login. This is a very important piece to the Crowdgather Network. This allows your user account to be used on all of our network forums. As we increase the number of network forums, you will be able to instantly jump into the different discussions without the need for registration or login.

Anonymous posting -- We are now allowing members to post anonymously. After your first login, you will be asked to choose an anonymous username. When you post anonymously, all member details, links, etc will be removed. Only your anonymous username will be displayed. You may opt out of selecting an anonymous username.

Network icon -- You will now have the option to upload a network icon. This can be thought of as your Crowdgather network avatar. This will be displayed next to your username each time you post. We implemented this because we are now allowing for non-unique usernames. This should help to alleviate any confusion between members that have the same username. Your network icon will not be displayed if you are posting anonymously.

Private messaging -- I have made a few tweaks to the private messaging system. For now, to send a private message to a user, you must select 'Send a private message to ..' from the member's profile. This does limit the private messaging functionality a bit, but it is a needed adjustment to be able to transition all users and forums into our new forum network. I will be readding all missing private messaging functionality in the near future. Please be patient.

Because of this new functionality, we have merged a lot of user accounts. Users that have registered multiple times on our forums with the same email address have been merged into a single user account. If you are having trouble logging in, please try using your email address. This may occur because two or more user accounts were merged during the migration. If this is the case and your username has been changed (carried over from your first user account), please notify me, and I will update your username. If you are still having trouble logging in with your username and/or email address, please notify me, and I will look into having your issue resolved. If you are having issues with your user, please include: email address, username(s) and user id (if you know it). Please title your email as '[your_username]: Unable to log into Crowdgather Network', and please include in the body a quick description of why you are having trouble.

I am also looking for feedback on the new functionality. If you have questions, concerns, compliments, insults, flames, etc, please do not hesitate to let me have them. I still have a couple of tweaks to make until we are completely settled into the new home. So, please hang in there; I will get us running at 100% very soon. :)

louis [at] crowdgather.com

[Sirk]

Thanks for all the hard work. <3

[Daisy]

The site looks much better than it did when I joined the fashion forums.
I have to be honest and say thet I'm not so crazy about the non-unique usernames, this just confuses everyone.I'm a member of many fashion related forums and it's great when you get to know other members and can easily identify them. I know that we can upload our own unique avatars but if a member chages it they will loose their identity. I hope more member's feel this way.

[eramus]

The site looks much better than it did when I joined the fashion forums.
I have to be honest and say thet I'm not so crazy about the non-unique usernames, this just confuses everyone,I'm a member of many fashion related forums and it's great when you get to know other members and can easily identify them. I know that we can upload our own unique avatars but if a member chages it, they will loose their identity. I hope more member's feel this way.
I understand your concern about non-unique usernames. We had a difficult time when it came to consolidating user accounts for the new network, and we knew usernames were going to cross at some point. Our first solution that we tried was to append a short string to duplicate usernames. So, for instance, your username would have become Daisy_ff, but that is no good. Another solution would have been to force the user with the duplicate username to pick another name. That would have been even worse. I would rather not change someones identity. So we settled on non-unique usernames and login based on email address.

As we merge more and more forums into the network, we are hoping to start seeing some crossover from other network forums, and this is where your concern will probably be at the highest, but I believe the network icon is going to help lower that confusion. The network icon will always follow you around the network. It will display next to your username for every post, on any network forum. My hope is that other members will still be able to identify you just as easily. It will be a bit of an adjustment to keep track of icons instead of usernames in those cases, but I think if everyone just hangs in there that we will all start to feel more comfortable with this change and the remaining additions that we have planned.

[FashionPassion]

As a moderator I would have liked to receive an e-mail letting me know of these changes. I see basically I am no longer a mod even though I have been here forever and am one of the last long term members that have not left. I was one of the last mods helping answer questions and clear up the mess so I guess it just adds insult to injury.
I think not having the ability to load a personal User avatar and having to be an anonymous user pretty much kills off identities on this board. This makes it impersonal and people are less likely to reach out or have personal topics.
Positives:
I love the look on the board and think that the streamlining really was positive. Love the new title bar at the top. It's lovely. Lack of spam is a blessing!

[Sirk]

As a moderator I would have liked to receive an e-mail letting me know of these changes. I see basically I am no longer a mod even though I have been here forever and am one of the last long term members that have not left. I was one of the last mods helping answer questions and clear up the mess so I guess it just adds insult to injury.
oh, nonono... we're having a problem with mod permissions. You were 1 of 2 people I definatly wanted kept on as mods. Please don't feel hurt. We're working on the problem right now.

I can totally see your point about being notified. We did talk about it but decided by the time people got around to seeing it, it would already be done.
I'll talk to The Big Guy about giving people notice about future changes.

[eramus]

I think not having the ability to load a personal User avatar and having to be an anonymous user pretty much kills off identities on this board. This makes it impersonal and people are less likely to reach out or have personal topics.
The last thing we want is for these changes to cause people to feel left out or without their personal identity. We had to implement these changes, because fashion-forums members are no longer just a part of fashion-forums. FF is now part of a network of forums that will allow your user to seamlessly move around our different forums. Unfortunately, FF is only the third forum we have imported, and we are still in the infant stages of the network. So, a lot of the above doesnt sound useful or helpful at all, but we have 50+ more forums that will be added to the network during the next month or so. I think once the number of imported forums increases these changes will feel a bit more useful.

Anonymous posting is something that a user can opt out of. If you dont want an anonymous username: click the checkbox, submit the page, and we wont ask you about it agian. We wanted to add this because we have noticed on one our more busy forums that some users sometimes feel reluctant to post honestly in public either our of fear of being made fun of or they are comfortable talking about some issues with others. This allows those users to post confidently and honestly.

[finch]

This is just an awful idea and begs to question why? Honestly if nobody has noticed you can be away from FF for days and only come back to 10-15 new posts, an active community we're not, not yet at least. Now we want to do away with associating names with members posts? How does that create a community or kinship between members, post, threads? You may as well slap large ads and banners everywhere and make the site completely faceless...
Anonymous posting -- We are now allowing members to post anonymously. After your first login, you will be asked to choose an anonymous username. When you post anonymously, all member details, links, etc will be removed. Only your anonymous username will be displayed. You may opt out of selecting an anonymous username.