Here’s an update on FSM communications:

Comments
Referring to the comments you can leave at the end of posts like this one. These are not moderated or censored in any way. We get thousands of spam comments a day, so there’s always some sort of automated spam filter running to fight that. I’ve been hearing that a lot of comments are being wrongly marked as spam and that some users are being full-out banned. I’ve switched back to the old spam-filter, but this one has it’s flaws, too. A few hundred comments a week are held in a “maybe-spam” folder – and I don’t have the time to check it every day.

Comments are more likely to be held if they contain a lot of links, or if you’re making many comments a day. I know a lot of people here like to use the comment system as a type of discussion forum, and that’s fine, but the spam-filter will target you and there’s not a lot I can do about it. Without an automated-spam-filter, the comment system would be unusable.

Discussion Forums
The discussion forums are moderated by a very hard working group. Anything written in the forums is subject to the moderators discretion, but they are very fair. Anyone who feels targeted by the comment-spam-filter here is welcome to move their conversations over there. The discussion forums are built on a user registration system, so spam is not as much of an issue.

Chat
We had a live-chat system up for a couple weeks. It was popular but the server couldn’t handle it. I’d like to have a remote chat system set up. The one I’m looking at is around $50-$100/month. I’m looking for an advertiser to step up and sponsor it.

Emails
I get a lot of emails. I read as many as I can. But I’m still way behind. If you *really* need to get a hold of me, put something like **important** in the subject field and I’ll probably find it quicker.