General Announcements

Who's ready for our 2nd Bond and Beyond competition? I'll see to that personally...

Stay tuned.

* * * * *

For guests and newer members wanting to potentially enter the competition: there will be a stipulation requiring all entrants to have a minimum of 10 insightful* posts at Bond and Beyond (e.g. no one word posts/spam, etc.). Feel free to prepare yourself now (by posting) while we finalise things on our end.

*As determined by admin.

Fort Knox withholding the gold...

Have at it chaps.

Rather than dig a fresh one, I'll put it here for now.

I had a kick about the admin panel at the users. As noted before, we have 641 active users. Under the handling page, of these 641 a good 590-600 are inactive by far. Many of these have not posted at all since registering between 2011 and now. Majority of THESE, registered alone in 2011 and never posted.

I have the option, apparently, of deactivating these accounts. Not something I'm doing to be whatever, just to see who we have and who might be a spam account like we've had lately. If people want to, they have the option to sign up again.

I've sent a blanket email to all, asking politely to sign in and post but no pressure or worries otherwise. None of you chaps here of course get them.

Just figured you should know the cogs in action as such. I fear we have no more than 10 of us that post regularly, that is to say daily, and few joining and even fewer joining and becoming active.

And as Bill Murray once said, that's the fact, Jack.

EDIT- Damn forumotion! I made sure the email was sent to those with 5 messages/posts under and even I got one. So apologies chaps.

Sounds like a plan of action. I find it much easier posting here than MI6 simply for the better layout and navigation alone. I don't know why but I never seem to catch on in other Bond forums though I go through phases of posting.

I fear for me nMI6 is far too Facebooky and then some. All that white hurts the eyes.

Indeed it does. Over there and other Bond forums I usually get into discussions where I can never get much traction. It's weird but you'd think a Bond forum would be a place to wax poetic and go into nauseating details but I feel like I'm spinning my wheels. Here with our small group it's unbelievably more open.

We try to be open, there have been moments in the past, long past now, where certain teething problems with people happened.

I did try messaging on the new forum. I had someone come from there to here to ask if I could put out my Lazenby in DAF fanfic. So I went over, saw people talking about it in a good way, one said he was going to post it and I said, I'll do it (I might not own Bond but I did write the bloody thing).

Anyway, long story short, posted it and no one commented. I left the discussions alone but for a Lazenby one. Just felt too infantile a place. Plus, I think back in the day, they liked to give this forum a kicking so I didn't think I wanted to be part of it.

And scene.

Looks like a handful of our inactive users have poked their noses in, be good to see them in action but we won't force them. As for the other 630-odd who have zero and seen no light of day since 2010-15, we'll give it to new year.

This isn't laying down the law, as I say, figured I'd let the regulars know, but removing inactive (zero post) users will give us an idea of our flanks.

Worst is, these chaps re-register. There's no harm in that.

.....But why?

Why what? Pruning inactive users? Well, someone asked me about how many active users we have and I got curious, we have a good 600 or so who have not and likely never will post. We trim the inactive accounts, some of them from spam accounts like these Russian spambots and we then have an idea who's who and our true size.

Saying we only have a handful of us who ever post regularly, it doesn't make any difference whether we have 641 or 10. We had hope Fields and I that NTTD would bring a few newbies but I doubt we'll get deluged. Be nice wouldn't it?

If someone wants to return, they can. Other forums have done this, it's not censoring or anything.

As Lincoln once said, you can only please some of the people all the time and all the people some of the time.

Sir Hilary Bray OBE wrote:

Why what? Pruning inactive users? Well, someone asked me about how many active users we have and I got curious, we have a good 600 or so who have not and likely never will post. We trim the inactive accounts, some of them from spam accounts like these Russian spambots and we then have an idea who's who and our true size.

Saying we only have a handful of us who ever post regularly, it doesn't make any difference whether we have 641 or 10. We had hope Fields and I that NTTD would bring a few newbies but I doubt we'll get deluged. Be nice wouldn't it?

If someone wants to return, they can. Other forums have done this, it's not censoring or anything.

As Lincoln once said, you can only please some of the people all the time and all the people some of the time.

No, why would they bother to re-register i mean?....beats me

The internet is a strange place and stranger things hath happened on it.

Well, inactive users with no posts or had not been active since they signed up years ago (and I made sure, whilst leaving recent sign ups) were purged/wiped out/deleted. Sadly reduces us from 641 to 198 (at the time).

However, the eagle eyed will note three new users immediately sprung up in the half hour after this including one username from the pruned list.

So, as Bob Monkhouse would have said, come on down newcomers, introduce yourselves and...er, well get posting. So long as you're not flogging something stupidly expensive...hoho.

Well gang, new year new look. It'll be changing every so often this year to avoid staleness and when we reach the relevant anniversaries of DAF50 and FYEO40.

However, doing some research, it's the sixtieth anniversaries of Fleming signing over the rights to Saltzman (June) and Connery becoming Bond (soon after). Pretty sure it's also the thirty-fifth anniversary of Dalton becoming Bond too. So why not?

Furthermore, tweaked the last 'x'hrs online thing on frontpage. 99hrs is insane and 24hr is more suitable. It might make us look ludicrously thin on the ground but you never know, someone might take pity.

Thus endeth your first 2021 announcement.

(an edit is that we have the 60th of the literary Thunderball's publication in March)

I thought you fit like a glove here at BAB, silvertoe. I've enjoyed your contributions so I hope your departure isn't permanent.

Sir Hilary Bray OBE wrote:

Well gang, new year new look. It'll be changing every so often this year to avoid staleness and when we reach the relevant anniversaries of DAF50 and FYEO40.

However, doing some research, it's the sixtieth anniversaries of Fleming signing over the rights to Saltzman (June) and Connery becoming Bond (soon after). Pretty sure it's also the thirty-fifth anniversary of Dalton becoming Bond too. So why not?

Furthermore, tweaked the last 'x'hrs online thing on frontpage. 99hrs is insane and 24hr is more suitable. It might make us look ludicrously thin on the ground but you never know, someone might take pity.

Thus endeth your first 2021 announcement.

(an edit is that we have the 60th of the literary Thunderball's publication in March)

Love your work Hilly.

Thanks.

Hello to our newest members, do, show yourself as it were.

With NTTD likely to be coming out in the 22nd Century, we welcome your input.