Programming Language Community Forums Update 1/19/12

[David B]

Hello users of the PLCF! Before I get into the news of today, I would like to take a moment to discuss the SOPA/PIPA bills that are currently being considered in the United States Congress that, if passed, could give the United States the ability to censor the internet. I don't want to spend tons of time discussing this because you can read about it my going to this forum's home page, which has been replaced with a message protesting the SOPA/PIPA bills. (To get to the actual forums, go to www.programminglanguageforums.com/forum, or click on the button in the navigation bar.)

As part of our protest against SOPA/PIPA, we have released a limited edition of our logo.:

Spoiler:

This special-edition logo features our original logo with a big "CENSORED" stamp covering it up, obviously implying that the PLCF is being censored.

And now for an update on LGChat, the provider of our free hovering chat button: just recently, LGChat released an update to the chat which features a new smiley menu which appears in an I-Frame instead of in a pop-up. This is an excellent edition to the chat, however it has one weakness: only smiles in the "PLCFSmile" category are available for you to choose from (although I am working on convincing them to change that). In terms of visual looks, the background needs changed to match this forum's theme. For administrators, there is a new button that works just like the new simile button that makes the /banlist command obsolete. This command would originally load a pop-up which showed a list of users who have been banned from the chat box, and would give you the option of unbanning them. This new button loads an I-Frame (much like the smiley faces [and with the same background color]) which lists all of the users. As of right now, this button is only visible to administrators, but will soon be available for moderators as well. This new version, of course, also has some script optimization to decrease loading time as much as possible. Unfortunately, these features are only available when using the actual chat button, and will not work when using the chat which is available in the navigation bar.

TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES ALERT!

Over the past few days, those who have tried to access the Programming Language Community Forums Official Facebook Page over the past few days, you may have noticed that you can't find it when searching for it, that the link in the navigation bar does not work, and that the Facebook plugin on our Wibiya toolbar does not work. This is because of an issue on Facebook's end of the system which, for some reason, is causing our Facebook page to be unpublished. When we try to re-publish it for the public to view again, it remains visible to the public for one hour, and then is unpublished. Tomorrow, the PLCF will be crafting a letter to Facebook explaining these technical difficulties, and until the problem is resolved, the PLCF Facebook page will be out of service. The letter which we send to Facebook will released to the general public 24 hours after the letter is sent.