6.1 - Advertisements for the selling/buying of goods must be made in the designed Trading Post areas only, if applicable.

• 6.1.1 - Any advertisements not in designed areas will be removed, and a PM notice will be sent. Re-posting the advertisement will result in a 10% warn and re-removal.

This amendment was made in response to some issues with unrestricted trading from people advertising things in their signatures. We only allow people to trade for Neopets goods once they have made 10 forum posts and have been on the forum for a minimum of 10 days. This makes it more difficult for new members to gain information about people's active trades (and possibly identifying them on Neopets) or scam existing users.

This rule has been merged with the existing 6.1 rule, which stated the following:

6.1 - There will be no advertisements for selling/buying in the status updates area of the board. This is to be kept for personal status updates not related to trades only. Keep the trading in the Trading Post.

• 6.1.1 - Failure to follow this will result in the status update being removed and a PM notification sent. Re-offence will result in the ability for status updates to be taken away, and 10% warn.

Because status updates are considered a public area of the forum, the new rule encompasses status updates as well. This was unanimously agreed upon during the May 9th staff meeting and will be enforced immediately.

-------------

To be clear, this means no trading advertisements in your signatures, status updates, forum profile, etc. They stay in the Trading Post.

Thanks for your cooperation!

~ Neocodex Administration

We appreciate your patience while we resolve this issue.

After much deliberation between myself and the Admins, we have come to the conclusion that we shall be requiring a couple of new staff members to help out around the site.

The position(s) available currently are:

Moderator x2

'What's involved?' I hear you ask? Well here we go:

Moderators are entrusted to keep a watch over the site and deal with any issues that may arise at the time.

The responsibilities of the moderator are as follows:

• Your primary duty will be to enforce the official rules of the forum. Due to the subjective nature of some of the rules, this is often an art more than a science, which is why working together with the other staff is very important.
• You must follow the rules of the forum yourself, and be a positive role model for other members to follow.
• Because you would be a direct representative of Neocodex, it is also expected that various questions about our services and products will be sent to you by members. You would be required to be courteous and conduct yourself professionally.
• On occasion, we will hold staff meetings. We will do our best to accommodate everyone's schedules, but if you cannot make it, please keep yourself up-to-date with the meeting minutes if you cannot attend. We also hold semi-regular Pizza Parties on our private yach.... *is dragged away by Shadowlink64* That shall be enough of that...
• It's also expected that staff make an appearance on IRC every so often. Not only is it a great team-building area where you get to know other staff better, but it's an excellent place to vent your frustrations, or get advice about specific issues. We have to keep moderating fun somehow, so this is the place for that.

There are a few other things that are required of you if you are accepted into the position, but that can be discussed in your Application PM.

So without further ado, feel free to apply for a position on staff, but please be professional and serious about your application. We shall look through all of them and then contact a number of you if we feel you meet our requirements.

Please use this template below as part of your application:

Please send your applications to me no later than 1st March, 2013. These will then be sorted through by the rest of the Admin team (who will be the ones who make the final yes/no decision).

Good luck to you all.

I would like to clear up some misconceptions about our Personal Messaging (PM) system, since there has been some discussion recently about its purpose and to what degree of privacy it guarantees the sender and receiver.

Purpose, and who can access them:

The purpose of the PM system is to provide a way for users to directly message one another without having to make forum posts. The rules of the forum also apply to personal messages and are therefore enforced by the staff. Because of this, the PM system is not intended to be a secure private messaging medium between the sender and the recipient. IPS, the company behind our forum software, deliberately avoids the language "private message" because your messages can still be read by staff who can access them through the forum control panel and through the database.

Why staff can access PMs:

PM content enforcement is very important for online communities, and especially for ours when incidents of scamming are discovered or investigated. Often in rule violation reports dealing with harassment or spamming, a personal message is referenced in the report. Inevitably, personal messages that are not malicious could be read by someone in staff. There is no way for us to restrict access to only the malicious messages. The rule of thumb to follow is that a PM should be treated as if it is a forum-quality post, but directed at a specific user. Harassment, scamming, pornography, etc. will not be tolerated in PMs, much like how they are not tolerated on the forum. It boils down to the liability we have over user-generated content.

How really sensitive information (complaints about staff, personal matters) should be sent:

We understand that there are some messages (such as complaints about staff, very personal matters, etc.) that should be handled in a more discreet way or that you wish not be read by any staff. The personal messaging system is inappropriate for this purpose, and a medium like e-mail, support tickets or IRC private messages should be used instead. Administrators can always be contacted at admins@neocodex.us or through the support ticket system in IP.Nexus (only readable by admins). Otherwise, we cannot guarantee that your personal message will not be read by another member of staff. That level of restriction in the system just doesn't exist without completely blocking staff's access to PMs, and it's technically impossible to block administrators from accessing them.

What protects you from misuse of personal content:

Luckily, we have a hard rule in place (in most cases, enforceable by law) that prohibits staff members from mishandling your personal information if it does appear in a personal message. Our privacy policy prohibits us from divulging any sensitive personal information that we collect, other than to law enforcement if they request it via. a subpoena. This means that although your messages can technically be accessed by staff, this information is not to leave the level of staff (ie. be sold to third parties, be divulged to someone not staff, etc.).

Hopefully this has answered some questions. I'll leave the topic open to some discussions.

• We promoted two new administrators to actively run the place.... but then it ended up being Hydro and I returning + Pyro.
• Moved the site to Amazon's EC2 Cloud Computing service. Best decision we've made in a very long time. So long, "500 internal server error". So long, pointless restrictions.
• Promoted new moderators. Kway resigned from programming shortly after, but can still be found on IRC.
• We introduced Advanced+, a permanent form of Advanced where users can get voted in for life.
• Neocodex became a registered corporation in the USA.
• Neocodex started selling Neocash cards to players who either could not find NC cards in their country, or who wanted the convenience of an instantly delivered code.
• Hydro introduced a system where users can fill out surveys for store credit.
• Pyro and I added automatic bug reporting to the Program Manager, so that users didn't necessarily have to submit bugs manually any more. We regret to inform you all that there are thousands of bug submissions that will hopefully be dealt with soon. xD
• We gave users the ability to create blogs.
• We axed negative reputation points.
• Neocodex introduced tighter security for the store (on top of the existing security there was).
• Tooltips and speed enhancements on the database download for Abrosia -- people love tooltips and speed.
• Ended the year with a New Years release -- Neocodex RemoteControl, which allows users with an Advanced Member subscription to remotely control the Program Manager from anywhere, including from mobile devices.
• Broke some more website traffic records. Presently, Neocodex is the busiest it's ever been in history (traffic-wise).
• Reached a volume of 250 million prices submitted to our Items Database.

Spoiler

• Score Sender
• Cheat Autoplayer
• Bilge Dice Autoplayer
• SDB Pricer
• Kitchen Quest
• Cellblock Autoplayer
• Scarab 21 Autoplayer
• Neggsweeper Autoplayer
• Abrosia MSAB/Igloo/Attic AB

• $5.00 Monthly (0% discount)
• $14.25 Every 3 months (5% discount)
• $27.00 Every 6 months (10% discount)
• $38.25 Every 9 months (15% discount)
• $48.00 Every 12 months (20% discount)