Editorial Team

Hi everyone,

PoetBay's server has been experiencing difficulties in the last few days, so you may have felt the consequences recently.  We apologize for this.  We are in communication with the webhost to determine what the problem is and we hope to resolve this very soon.

Thanks for your patience,

Hi everyone,

We would like to remind our members of the Terms of Membership concerning having a secondary account on PoetBay.

It is allowed, but anyone wishing a second account must contact the Editorial Team beforehand to let us know.  And on the profile of that second account it must be clear that you are an already existing member of PoetBay to avoid confusion and misunderstandings between members of the community of PoetBay.

We do not like to disable unannounced secondary accounts, so please let us know and the rest of the PoetBay community upfront that you have a second account on PoetBay.

Thanks for understanding,

Hi everyone,

For the next month (and at all times, really), we welcome your personal picks as to the texts you would like to see featured on the Home page of PoetBay. 

They can be recent or older texts that were posted on the site (2005 to 2015) - you decide! To nominate a favorite you can either let us know in the comments below or send us a PM and we will make our pick from your nominations!

Sincerely,

Isabelle & Anna & Tanya

Hi everyone,

This is to inform you of our decision that, as of today, all members with a free membership on PoetBay will be able to save a maximum of 125 texts in their account instead of 50 texts.

Sincerely,

Isabelle

(on behalf of the Editorial Team)

June 30 2013 :

Please note that comments which were received before the end of 2010 could not be recovered because before we made the change to preserve comments from authors who have deleted their account, the code was written in a way to destroy those records.

=======================

June 09 2013 :

Hi everyone,

This is to inform you of the work we performed on the site's code last night.

You will notice that there are comments on some poems that do not have an author's name attached to them.  This is not due to a glitch, it is because we fixed the display of comments by authors who have deleted their account as per the PoetBay community's expressed wish to not have the comments received on their poetry deleted when an author deletes their account.  

Many of you who have 'lost' comments on your poetry by authors having deleted their account will now be able to see them.

Sincerely,

Isabelle

Issue resolved Jan 10 2013.  Thank you to all members who provided information!

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Hi everyone,

It has come to our attention that a few of you have been experiencing problems sending private messages on the website whereby the recipients of your messages received them with no words.

In order to help us narrow down the possible source of what the problem may be, we need the following information from those who have been experiencing this difficulty:

1.  Web browser name (ex.: Internet Explorer, Firefox, etc.)

2.  Web browser version number (ex.:  Internet Explorer 9, etc.)

3.  Operating system (ex.:  Windows, Mac, etc.)

4.  Device used (ex.: Computer, iPad, cell phone, etc.)

If you are a sender whose private messages have been affected, please send this information by email to :  poetbay@poetbay.com (Subject line :  Private messages).

If you are a recipient of such a private message, please let us know the PoetBay author name of the sender below in the comment section of this post. 

Thanks very much.

Sincerely,

Isabelle

Hi everyone,

Many thanks for letting us know your thoughts and concerns about having the Share toolbar available on PoetBay - all of them were taken into consideration for our decision. Many good points raised and suggestions offered, so here’s the break down :-)

The majority of participants to the present poll disagree and/or do not feel comfortable with this technology having any part in our poetry community. The concerns that were expressed range from :

Worries about the copyright implications; confidentiality issues that were personally experienced within those social networking websites; unwillingness to add to the profits those websites make for their use; uneasiness as to whether it is polite to share someone else’s works; discomfort at finding works spread over the Internet without knowing or having had a say in it; the possibility of turning PoetBay into a distracting, gimmicky website which gets too big to retain its character, purpose and sense of community.

Some of the participants who would like to see the share toolbar implemented have not expressed a preference for it to be for the authors’ private use or for the whole public’s use. And some would prefer it was made available to the author privately.

THE OUTCOME

Going by the good points raised and the concerns expressed, and because some of them cannot be found a suitable compromise, we understand and agree that implementing the share toolbar could not achieve serving most of the members’ expectations. Therefore, we will NOT be implementing the share toolbar on PoetBay.

The alternative suggestions that were put forward were good (thanks!), but unfortunately not possible without a massive remodelling of PoetBay’s present code. Considering the majority’s response is not in favor of it, we also feel it would not be productive use of the little resources we have to run PoetBay to undertake this coding project.

We thank again all who have participated. We hope this result is satisfactory, and not too deeply disappointing for those who were keen to have this new feature.

Sincerely,

Isabelle

Community Poll / Update by Technical Team
Editors' News / Tech / Announcements & Surveys
Posted on 2010-11-01 at 05:51 CET

===========================

This is to inform you that the poll is still ongoing. We have extended it until the end of the month.  

Community Poll by Technical Team
Editors' News / Tech / Announcements & Surveys
Posted on 2010-10-15 at 9:34 CET

===========================

With the advent of social networking and bookmarking technologies now available on the web, we would like to offer to our members who use these technologies the possibility of an easy access to them on PoetBay by the Share toolbar (pictured above) which would be placed at the bottom of texts, before the comments listed.

But we also realize that these technologies are not necessarily everyone's cup of tea, and since we don't want to intrude or cause discomfort to anyone's experience on PoetBay, we are turning to you for your thoughts :-)

Question

1.  Should the Share toolbar be made available privately?

This would mean only the PoetBay author of the texts would see the toolbar on his/her own texts and could decide to share them or not through social networking sites.

OR

2.  Should the Share toolbar be made available publicly?

This would mean that everyone who views a text on PoetBay would see the toolbar and could decide to share it through social networking sites.

NB:  The toolbar facilitates the sharing of a link which would lead to a text,  it does not facilitate the sharing of a text's integral words.

(modified Sept 3 2010)

Community Poll by Technical Team
Editors' News / Tech / Announcements & Surveys
Posted on 2010-09-01 at 11:27 CET

Hi everyone,

You probably noticed what I'm about to announce ;)

The beta version of PoetBay is now available. If you encounter any problems, please do not hesitate to contact us to let us know.

Questions, comments & suggestions are always welcome!

Sincerely,

Isabelle

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Hi everyone,

Thank you to all who have submitted their thoughts on this 2nd poll. We value and appreciate your input immensely :-)

The majority of participants have expressed that the comments should not be deleted when a member (author) decides to remove their account from PoetBay. We’ve taken every participant’s input into consideration and we hope you will find our solution meets a satisfactory conclusion.

THE OUTCOME :

When a member (author) decides to delete their account from PoetBay, the comments they have written on other authors’ texts will not be deleted by default.

What will be deleted is the account

- author name (the name which appears on the author profile, posts and comments)

- texts (all)

- pictures (all)

- private messages (all)

The comments from the leaving author will not be deleted and they will not display any of his/her author information because it will no longer exist on PoetBay once s/he has deleted his/her account. Only the words of the comments will be kept on others’ texts.

We believe by taking this approach that

it respects the privacy and decision of the leaving author because the comments won’t have his/her name for the public to associate him/her with the comment (if privacy on their departure is important to them) ;

it alleviates the technical workload for us to adopt a general policy because a two-choice deletion process would create inconsistencies and require our monitoring on a case-by-case basis which would be very impractical and time-consuming ;

it eliminates the disappointment that is felt by the authors who remain on the website when they lose comments they’ve received on their texts.

We will be making it clear at Sign up, in the Membership terms, in the FAQ, as well as in the account Options to remove an account that the comments will not be deleted, but that everything else will be.

THE NEAR FUTURE :

The next Community Poll is coming up after this update. 

Many suggestions for additional features on comments have been put forward by some of you – as always, many thanks for them :-)  We’re happy to confirm that additional features for comments are currently being coded. We will present them as soon as they are completed.

The new & improved (we hope) PoetBay’s testing area is currently online and being tried out by volunteers. It will soon be made available to the whole community.

Sincerely,

Isabelle

Community Poll UPDATE by Technical Team
Editors' choice / Tech / Announcements & Surveys
Posted on 2010-09-01 at 11:26 CET

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Currently, all of the material (texts, pictures, private messages & comments) which is posted on the site by a member is deleted when the account is removed. Many members who remain on the site have raised the question that the removal of the comments left against their work is a shame.

Some of you may have noticed that this causes the comment total to be different than the actual comments which you can view for a text.

Question :

We would like to know your thoughts :-)

When a member removes their account, should the comments that they wrote on other members' texts be kept or deleted ?

That member's account, including their name and all other material (texts, pictures & private messages) they have posted on the site would still get deleted.


Community Poll by Technical Team
Editors' choice / Tech / Announcements & Surveys
Posted on 2010-07-30 at 06:45 CET

 
Hi everyone,

First, thank you to all who have submitted their thoughts on this poll. It’s been really helpful :-)

THE OUTCOME :

A compatibility issue with the browser Safari & PoetBay’s website has been discovered thanks to jim reporting the problem he was experiencing and his solution (thank you!).

In its current inherited state, we can confirm that PoetBay is Internet Explorer & Firefox compatible, meaning in those browsers, all of the pages on the site are displayed as they are supposed to be. The incompatibility issue for the browser Safari evidently will need to be corrected.

Also submitted was a request for a chat feature suggested by Magnus Ericsson (thank you!).

We currently have work in progress for the site which needs to be completed first. So, it is not something we can do right now.  It’s a good idea, so we’ll probably have a poll in the future.

As for being directed to the Inbox or My Page at login, every participant’s poll input has been taken into consideration, and seeing as though most like either one of the 2 options, and some have a distinct preference between the two, I’m happy to announce that I was able to go with the suggestion that was put forward by Poetic Prince (thank you!) whereby each member gets the option to decide for themselves.

THE NEW FEATURE & WHERE IT IS :

The choice to select a preference between the 2 options is now available to everyone on PoetBay through the account Options – under the “Do not show my bookmarks” checkbox, there is a new checkbox “Show my Inbox at login”.

For those who want to sign in and be directed to their Inbox, you will need to check that box in the Options page and then save the new settings.

For those who want to sign in and be directed to their My Page, you don’t need to save any new settings because it is now the default account startup page at login.

THE NEAR FUTURE :

The next Community Poll is coming up after this update.  We really appreciate your input and hope you will keep on letting us know what you prefer :-)

A REMINDER :

If you need to contact us by email, remember to add our email address into your email contacts (or safe list) in order to avoid the possibility of having our response to your email sent to your junk/spam folder.

Sincerely,

Isabelle

Community Poll / Update by Technical Team
Editors' choice / Tech / Announcements & Surveys
Posted on 2010-07-30 at 04:16 CET

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When you sign in to your PoetBay account, would you prefer :

1.  to be directed to your Inbox (as it is now)

OR

2.  to be directed to your My Page ?


Community Poll by Technical Team
Editors' choice / Tech / Announcements & Surveys
Posted on 2010-07-08 at 16:18 CET