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Answered How on earth does this forum work

Discussion in 'Empty Closets Help and Feedback' started by AnAtypicalGuy, Oct 28, 2018.

  1. AnAtypicalGuy

    Full Member

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    I'm not new (clearly) but I figured I might as well post this here since this is where non-newbies come to greet and help newbies. And right now I feel very much like a newbie. I've been out of this place for well over a year and during that time... Well there have been a heck of a lot of changes. First off this website is now very... white??? The whole coding mess is... cleared up? And the emojis are actually... semi-HD?!!

    But to get to the point. I can't navigate around this forum. This thread might even be on the complete wrong section because what do you know, the forum categories have changed as well. Or at least I think they have. A moderator can move this to the correct place I suppose.

    As for my questions:

    1) How do I change my profile picture

    2) What is this "likes" thing you can apparently do now, is it just like youtube comments

    3) Why is there a "Watched Tags" link and is it what I think it is

    4) Do you have to ask us about our birth genders in our profile info... like, why, what good does it do exactly

    Anyways that's it for now. Thanks...

    - S
     
  2. weary

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    Same here... but I had to create a new username because I forgot my old info. Yes, it has changed a lot.

    profile pic - go to you name then go to avatar.

    likes is just that tracks what posts/responses you like and how many like yours

    watched tags is for the posts you have responded to or created, but you can also select ones you want to be notified for updates.

    the birth gender ? is for those who are born one gender but identify as different.
     
  3. Hawk

    Admin Team Full Member

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    To add on to the above post, if you're wondering why your profile picture isn't showing up is because they now have to be approved by a moderator.

    Likes are a new thing that was added only on specific sub-forums. The main reason why likes were added was to give credit for a good or helpful post. They are not meant to be taken as a "status symbol" or a "popularity contest".

    No one can see another person's assigned gender at birth besides the staff.
     
  4. Chip

    Board Member Admin Team Advisor Full Member

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    It's been an experiment. We wanted to explore a way for people to show appreciation for comments that speak to them, but we were also concerned that people would become obsessed about how many 'likes' they got (as some do on FB and Youtube and such), which would basically be against the sort of values we're after.

    So far, 'likes' are enabled only in certain forums, and seem to be working well there. So for now, at least, they'll probably stick around. If they start getting abused, or people start obsessing over them, then we'll have to disable them. Hopefully that doesn't happen.

    I believe that's so that when people tag a given post with a keyword others can search out posts with those keywords to keep track of them.

    That is entirely internal, visible only to staff, and only used in the occasional circumstances where providing an accurate and effective answer to a member's question might be influenced by knowing the member's birth gender.
     
  5. AnAtypicalGuy

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    Thanks you all. Not going to lie, I'm not a fan of the whole birth sex thing, as I don't see why it's necessary to force someone to admit that kind of thing when they're not at all comfortable, but hey. Maybe reconsider having that during your next round of updates.

    As for the likes being an experiment, I think a good way to prevent any possible "obsessions" from developing would be to remove that from the descriptions that come under usernames on posts. While it makes sense to show the number of likes on a specific post to show someone's appreciation of said post, putting it on someone's public profile makes it more like a judgement of the person as a whole, something other people can compare themselves with and either feel more "liked" than everyone (literally) or feel inadequate. This goes against your whole idea to prevent popularity contests, so maybe those kinds of stats should only be visible to the users themselves. Much like how only the mods of a Tumblr account can see that account's number of followers... or at least I think that's how it works.
     
  6. BothWaysSecret

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    Only mods, admins, and EC staff can see birth sex. It helps them when providing advice and guidance. No one else can see birth sex, if your that concerned.