Yes I can, but we need people's help. Here's your choices:

- We can hire someone to moderate the forums all day, reading all of the topics and moving them to the right place, deleting the bad ones, etc. But to do that, we'd have to charge money for membership cause we can't afford to do it and have the site free.

- You can help us by self-moderating the forums using the system we implemented.

- Vanchau and I can moderate the forums all day ourselves. But then there will be far fewer features developed, less people on the site because we can't work on getting more users in, etc.

After all the effort we've put into the site, I'd be surprised if the great community that we have isn't willing to pitch in a little and help by self-moderating the forums. But that's just my opinion.

Got it - it was deleted only because it was posted in the wrong forum. It's a better fit for General Discussions. I'm sure if you posted it there, it would be fine.

What post about sisters and brothers being one got deleted?

Its OK MsTeddyBear2U. I don't want my post to come across in the wrong way. We WANT to hear what you guys don't like about the site, because we always want to keep improving it.

My only frustration is that I keep hearing things about the moderation system that just aren't true. From the way some people describe it, it sounds like topics are being deleted left and right, that a gang of evil users is running around deleting everything, etc. etc. But that is absolutely not the case! VERY few topics get deleted - less than 3% on average. And we always review the deleted topics to make sure they were not deleted correctly, and we almost always agree with the deletion.

I just want people who are complaining to give me real evidence of the abuse. Because if it's going on, then we absolutely want to know about it and fix it. But if it's not going on, then I do not want other people to be getting the wrong impression about the system when the facts are clearly not backing them up.

The system isn't perfect, but it's providing a huge benefit that I think a lot of people aren't aware of, so I want to make sure everyone has the complete picture before making their opinion.

Which topics are getting deleted that shouldn't be? Because we review the topics, and don't see ANY that were deleted that shouldn't be in the past week or so. And since the system was put into place, I think I can count on one hand the number of incorrect deletions that have occured. And remember this is out of the THOUSANDS of topics that have been posted since then.

The topics that I see that were deleted were mainly:
- Spam or advertisements (bunch of stupid get out of debt ads)
- Duplicate topics
- Wrong forum (and correctly deleted as a result)
- and the worst kind of all, attacks on other users

I keep hearing about topics that supposedly get deleted that shouldn't, but I frankly am not seeing that happen at all. We can see all the topics that are deleted and who voted on them, and we have absolutely NO evidence that topics are being deleted maliciously or that there is any type of widespread abuse whatsoever.

Now, are there instances where topics are being NOMINATED incorrectly, and also VOTED on incorrectly? Yes, absolutely. But they almost never actually get DELETED incorrectly, because enough users vote to save them.

We do NOT see it as a problem that there are incorrect votes or incorrect nominations. We know that is going to happen, and the system is designed to account for that. We would see it as a problem if those topics were actually getting deleted, but that is not happening.

On the plus side, the moderation system is providing HUGE benefits to us in that bad topics are getting deleted much faster than before. There have been several times in the past year where I've been on vacation with my family and I've had to check my computer every day to make sure there weren't any bad topics on the forums. I don't think I have to tell any of you that my wife was not happy about my having to work everyday while on vacation.

And even doing that, I still wasn't fast enough to delete some topics before a huge stink had already erupted with people getting upset, leaving the site, etc. With the moderation system in place, a large percentage of those topics are being deleted immediately, long before most of you even see them or get upset.

The system is definitely not perfect, and we're always looking to improve it. But please, if you're going to complain about it, bring me some evidence of topics actually getting DELETED incorrectly, or come up with a better solution.

I think there is a lot of misinformation and false accusations being made about the moderation system, so I want to set the record straight. If you see abuse, then I want hard facts, because there is absolutely NO evidence of that happening on our end.

I think everything should be fixed now and everyone should be in the right place. If that's not right, definitely let us know.

Thanks Queene123, but please use the Report Abuse button instead of posting their username in the forums. Sometimes people mistakenly falsely accuse people of things, and by posting their username in the forums, it just escalates into more drama. If you use the Report Abuse button, we'll look into it ASAP and kick them out if appropriate.

I appreciate the help though!

If you see a spammer, please make sure to use the Report Abuse button to let us know so we can kick them out. Thanks!

Purplecat - can you tell if anyone else that you know was in British Columbia has been switched to Alberta? Or do they look like they are correctly in British Columbia?

Gypsy and purplecat - are you guys listed in the wrong area now? If so, can you tell me where you were before, and where you were after the servers came back up?

OK, we're back up. If you see any issues with the site, please let us know. Thanks for your patience!

Are you changing your email address? Every time you change your email address, you need to reverify your address.

Also, are you clicking on the link in the verification email, and answering all the questions once you get to the site?

Hi folks,

We're going to take the servers down at 8PM Pacific time for maintenance tonight. We shouldn't be offline for more than 1 hour.

Thanks for your patience. Hope you're all enjoying the site.

Mike

Every night at about 2am Pacific time that will happen. We run some maintenance scripts at that time that slow down the site temporarily. We're working on ways to eliminate that slowdown period, but it shouldn't last more than 15 minutes every night.

If you're seeing slow downs at other times during the day, let us know.

Folks -

If you see what you think is a scammer on the site, please use the "Report Abuse" button on the person's profile to let us know. Please do NOT post their name on the forums.

The reason for this request is that we've had several incidents where a person has accused someone of being a scammer and they've been wrong. By using the Report Abuse button, Vanchau and I can investigate and delete the profile if appropriate.

We highly encourage you to report scammers to us - we absolutely want to get rid of any and all scammers on the site as quickly as possible, and we put a lot of effort in to detect and eliminate them. But please just use the appropriate venue to report them to us so we can avoid any misunderstandings.

Thanks, and hope you are all enjoying the site.

When you get a message that your email address is invalid, that means that we've been attempting to send you email but our emails have been bounced back to us. This can happen for a number of reasons: you've mistyped your email address, your mailbox is full, your email server is down, etc.

If you are sure that your email address is correct and that you are receiving email properly at that address, just change your email address on JustSayHi to something else, then change it back and reverify it. Sometimes the problem is only a temporary, and by retrying it, it will work again.

Hmmm...the public/private settings are working for me. Can you give me an example of a photo that isn't working so that I can take a look for myself?

OK we're looking into this, I'll let you know what we find.

We do have some email limits but no "normal" user would ever hit them. They are only in place to prevent scammers and spammers from abusing the messaging functions on the site. If you hit them, we'll tell you - you'll know that your message was not delivered.

There are two main reasons why you can get an email notice and not have a message in your mail box when you reach the site:

- Sometimes, emails can get delayed by your email provider. For example, sometimes we'll send a message to hotmail but it won't actually get delivered for up to an hour or longer. By that time, you've already read the message on JSH, so when you receive the email, you don't see any unread messages.

The email we send you will say who sent you the message and what time it was sent at. Look in your inbox to see if there is a message that matches that time, and if there is, then you know the email delay was the issue.

- On other occasions, someone will send you a message but then gets banned or deactivates before you read it. If they're banned, we often delete all of the messages they've sent because they are a scammer trying to steal your money and we try to protect our users from contacting them.

The email notice we sent you contains the username of the user who sent you the message. You can check if that user is still active by going to:

http://www.justsayhi.com/[username]

...where you replace [username] with the actual username you are trying to find. For example, to view my profile, you can go to:

http://www.justsayhi.com/mike

Hope that helps.