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eXpletive Archive Shutting Down Due to Resources and Low Conversion

eXpletiveArchive — Sun, 15 Jan 2023 15:56:03 -08:00

eXpletive Archive is shutting down due to high resource usage and conversion rates too low to justify purchasing additional resources. eXpletive Archive detected use of expletives, ethnic slurs, homophobic remarks, and accusations on social media before archiving the results. Unfortunately, most content aggregated by eXpletive Archive saw little engagement largely due to it being left out of search engines and most people just not caring if they got caught using the words. Categories that saw more engagement have been migrated to a different site focused more on content known for better engagement instead of simply taking broad collections of data based on broad keywords. eXpletive Archive consumed large amounts of storage space due to images. We frequently found ourselves having to run plugins designed to compress images or remove unused images in bulk but even that couldn't make up for the fact that expletives are used so often that most of the content we ended up with was low quality Tweets that just happened to use the f-word or one of George Carlin's other 7 dirty words you can't say on television. Our newer site looks more for statements of substance indicating allegations of wrongdoing. Ethnic Slurs and Homophobic Remarks Often Not Used Hatefully The biggest surprise of eXpletive Archive was how hard it was to find homophobic and racist remarks based on use of homophobic terms and ethnic slurs. Those words seemed to be used often by those they've typically been used against. Gay men often use the word "fag" in reference to themselves, the same is true with the ethnic slur "beaner" regarding Latinos, and the n-word with blacks. We got more complaints from gay men angry over being caught calling themselves "fags", Latinos calling themselves "beaners", and blacks calling themselves the n-word than we did straight people caught calling homosexuals "fags" or racist people calling Latinos and blacks their ethnic slurs. People caught using ethnic slurs historically directed at them often demanded removals on the grounds of their race or sexual orientation as if a computer incapable of knowing what race someone was were somehow racist for treating everyone who used the same words the same way regardless of their race. They didn't seem to understand that the computer doesn't understand context and that any policy which would give people preferences based on their race would be racist. It would mean that people of certain races could get anything removed simply by claiming membership of the historically marginalized group in question. On top of that we don't hire staff to review complaints beyond pasting directions in response to emails normally. We were not in the position to hire anyone to review content for any type of context, so our policy options were limited to only things that wouldn't increase the need to manually do things. Accusations Migrated Accusations seemed to convert the best, so those have been migrated for the most part to a new site which focuses more on accusations. People seem to engage most with accusations against businesses followed by accusations against people. Accusations against businesses typically involve scams or ripoffs while allegations against people typically involve being unfaithful to intimate partners or engaging in other taboo activity. Associates Migrated eXpletive Archive began monitoring people mentioning associates of theirs. That section was one of the first to be migrated last year. That section focused primarily on people talking about their exes or employers. Be careful what you say about your ex or your boss online. Conclusion eXpletive Archive was an interesting project which swept far too broadly to be feasible long term. We hope to further build upon what we began with eXpletive Archive build better archives with more interesting information.
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How to Use Your New RSS Feed on Post Almost Anything

PostAlmostAnything.com — Mon, 15 Aug 2022 13:17:34 -07:00

PostAlmostAnything.com now features really simple syndication (RSS) feeds for all category listings and user accounts. This allows for the syndication of our content on other platforms. Post Almost Anything users can now automatically share their posts on social networks if they know what they're doing. To find your RSS feeds simply visit your profile, right click before selecting view source (in most browsers), look for the URLs in the head section that end with "/feed" and click on them. You should see two feed links in the source code. One for your 10 most recent posts and one for 10 random posts. The most recent posts is great for any user wanting their new items to be auto-shared on social media to keep their followers up to date. The random posts feed is great for users with a lot of old content they want to refresh by sharing it like new again. We recommend using third party services to connect RSS feeds to your social media accounts. We often use Dlvrit.com but if you want a free alternative you can try Zapier.com or IFTTT.com. Zapier has a free trial that allows up to 1,000 posts for free. IFTTT is always free. In the future, we will add links to your profile as well as category listing pages directing users to the unique feeds. Until then, just use the source code to find them.
Learn more: How to Use Your New RSS Feed on Post Almost Anything

Announcing the Oh My God! Its Back! Website Revival Project

OMGBack — Fri, 05 Nov 2021 01:08:48 -07:00

Today we are proud to announce the Oh My God! Its Back! project where we will be reviving long dead but certainly not forgotten websites. We will focus primarily on sites renowned for their unique and in some cases revolutionary embrace of free speech. The sites are being revived using the Internet Archive at Archive.org. These will only be partial revivals of course since Archive.org doesn't have compete copies of the sites we are targeting, but they have enough to make their users feel nostalgic. The first two sites on our list are Blipdar and Cheaterville. Blipdar also known as College ACB (Anonymous Confession Board) was an academic gossip website founded under the name JHU Confessions in 2008 that operated until 2011. Cheaterville was the original website for scorned lovers to report their ex for cheating on them. It launched in 2011 and operated until 2015 when the site was redirected to an anti-bullying site. The download of Blipdar is almost finished, so it will be revived first. We are expected to finish the restore in a week or two, but we've never done this before so we don't know what to expect. As long as importing HTML files into our Wordpress database goes as it should it shouldn't take too long. We are reviving these sites to let the users of today comment on the users of yesteryear. We will also use the OMGBack.com site to market new free speech friendly platforms to users that miss being able to post almost anything online.
Learn more: Announcing the Oh My God! Its Back! Website Revival Project

5 Star Rating System, Messaging, and Notifications Added to PAA

PostAlmostAnything.com — Sat, 21 Aug 2021 19:26:54 -07:00

Post Almost Anything now features direct messaging, a 5 star rating system, and notifications. We hope that this will increase engagement by allowing people to communicate with one another, know when someone has commented on or rated their work, and make it easier for readers to gauge user sentiment. Logged in members can now send messages directly to other members by visiting any profile and clicking the link that says "Message" followed by the recipient's user name. You will then be taken to a page featuring inputs for subject line and message body. Click send and the recipient will receive a notification that you sent them a message with a link to where they can view the message. If they respond to the message then you will receive a notification of the reply. If you no longer wish to receive these notifications you can disable them in your account settings under "Notifications." You can also check to see if you have any new messages simply by clicking on your user name in the site navigation and you will see a red number next to the word "Messages" indicating how many new messages you have. For the sake of efficiency each message and all replies directed to you are marked as read whenever you load any message you received. Logged in users can now include a rating between one and five stars when posting comments. Each rating requires a comment because we want people to explain the reasoning behind their rating. Users can only rate a post once, so if you want to change your rating you will need to deactivate the previous comment used to rate the post. You can do that by logging in, viewing your profile, and selecting the option to edit your comment. We hope that adding this will make Post Almost Anything a preferred alternative to Craigslist for classified ads because people can now see what other users think of each listing. We also think it makes the Rants and Raves section a great place for rating people, businesses, and government agencies. Whenever someone comments on your posts you will receive an email informing you that someone commented on your post if you checked the little box that says, "Email me when someone comments on, rates, or likes my post" when your post was created. You can toggle notifications on and off on a post by post basis simply by viewing your post while logged in clicking the link towards the top that says "CLICK HERE to Edit." You can also check to see if you have any new notifications simply by clicking on your user name in the site navigation and you will see a red number next to the word "Notifications" indicating how many new messages you have. For efficiencies sake each notification is considered old whenever the notifications page is checked. What's Next? Next we will focus on adding the ability to like any post or comment. Unlike ratings, likes will not require you to include a comment. That way people can easily say they like something without doing any work beyond clicking the Like button. After that we will focus on recoding parts of the site to make our database queries faster and then we will enable profile editing followed by the ability to post status updates.
Learn more: 5 Star Rating System, Messaging, and Notifications Added to PAA

Bug Fix: ASP.Net Core with Entity Framework Data Annotation Validators

PostAlmostAnything.com — Fri, 15 Jan 2021 18:02:44 -08:00

Today we fixed a problem that was causing users to create broken posts in the Rants and Raves category on this site. The problem was that we failed to add a line of code needed for validation to function properly. Without that line of code users were able to submit the form without selecting a required value. The bug was easy to identify and fix in a matter of minutes once we tested the form ourselves and noticed that we were not being given an error when we failed to select a value for Sentiment. We simply looked at the annotation we already had for the corresponding field in our Entity Framework model and compared it to other fields in other models that were also bound to select lists for other categories. When we did that we noticed that the Sentiment field in the Rants and Raves model was missing a required line of code. This led to two problem. The first problem was that we had failed to add a range annotation that required the integer value submitted to be greater than 1. This is the value that ASP.Net Core uses to generate the code needed for the jQuery Unobtrusive Validation Plugin to know that the value submitted for that field must be greater than 1. Without that no error will be given to the user if the value they submit is 0. That was the case when users submitted the form without selecting a value for Sentiment because in addition to values from the Sentiment table the select list used to allow the user to select a value has a default option that does not correspond to anything in the database. It has a value of 0 and displays text which says "Select Sentiment." Since the default selected option technically had a numeric value of 0 it would pass the required field validation check because that simply checks to see if the value is null. The second problem was that our database does not permit records to be created if they violate SQL Server referential integrity rules. Those rules are fairly simple in that they require a match between the value in the Rants and Raves table if it has a relationship with a value in a different table. This is called a primary and foreign key relationship. The primary key is typically the row id number in one table and the foreign key is typically a value in a second table related to that row id. In this case the primary key in the Sentiment table can be an integer of 1 or 2 because there are two rows in that table (1 for negative and 2 for positive). If someone tries to insert an integer in the Rants and Raves table column that has a relationship with the Sentiment table it must be 1 or 2 because a different number will not match any row id number in the Sentiment table. That is the case when the record submitted to the database has an integer value of 0 for Sentiment. SQL Server will not allow a record to be created in the Rants and Raves table that has a value of 0 for sentiment because it violates the referential integrity constraint. When that happens a records is created in the Posts table but not the Rants and Raves table. Since every entry in the Posts table must also have a corresponding entry in one of the category tables in order to render a valid result on a page the end results were pages displaying nothing but error messages. Solution Adding a range validation annotation is the best way to solve this problem. It prevents the form from submitting without a value of 1 or greater in the Sentiment field of the Rants and Raves table. Some might wonder why we would permit a record to be added to the Posts table but not the Rants and Raves table. The reason is that there is value in the Rants and Raves table that requires the Post ID number from the new row in the Posts table. A row must first be created in the Posts table before it can be added to the Rants and Raves table. That is necessary so that the database knows which record from the Rants and Raves table to retrieve for each specific entry in the Posts table.
Learn more: Bug Fix: ASP.Net Core with Entity Framework Data Annotation Validators