The Archive

This release introduces The Archive, moving all the posts from before "the collapse" to a separate section of the site. Posts in The Archive are locked: no voting, no editing, no commenting. Posts can be recovered from The Archive by crossposting them to other sectors.

The Archive also introduces linkFilter's first NPC: Cando 99-30. Cando manages The Archive and will soon start offering bounties for activities involving all those old posts.

Crossposting

This release also introduces crossposting. Any post can be crossposted to another sector. The original post creator gets awarded XP as well as the person crossposting. You can crosspost your own posts too, but you won't get double XP.

Release Notes

• Posts can now be cross posted to other sectors
• Crossposting results in XP rewards for original post as well as cross post
• Posts and Sectors prior to the 2011 shutdown are now contained in The Archive
• The Archive can be browsed by year and month, by sector, or searched
• Posts in The Archive cannot be edited, voted on, or commented on
• Significant improvements to search
• Significant improvements to site performance
• Fixes for avatar selection
• Fixes for mobile site
• Fixes for site sluggishness for users with space in username
• Fixes for search not being updated on new posts
• All users are subscribed to new sectors (for now)
• Fixes for posts that are associated to a hard deleted user
• Support for filtering by date moving forward from linkFilter launch
• Bookmarks will work deleted and archived links
• Fixes for sectors containing "all" in the token
• Purging caches on user preference update
• Recent posts in archived sectors moved to limbo

I wanted to share my thoughts on the next release for linkFilter, because they may be controversial.

Post Reset / The Archive

I'm going to be moving all posts and sectors except for the very latest ones into a new section of the site titled The Archive. A new heading at the top will allow you to delve into the sectors and visit the heyday of the site. Search will return results from the both areas.

This will allow us to start building a series of sectors that are user moderated and focused on whatever you're interested in. When more of the game mechanics start to come into play there will be reasons to visit The Archive and pull posts into the main area.

User Reset

Once I've introduced some more game mechanics I'll be doing a user reset, pulling everyone back to level 1 and 0 XP. I want to give everyone a reason to start posting again since most users who were here back in the day have already unlocked everything. There will be new things to unlock and new mechanics to allow active users to progress quickly. All posts and sectors between now and the reset will remain active.

Thoughts?

Share them here, in the chat, or on the Discord.

Now with Markdown

Out today, Markdown editing across the site.

I don't know about you, but I always found the editing on linkFilter lacking. My wonky CR/LF to html break conversion never worked right. It also made the text edit fields terrible to look at.

I've removed support for editing HTML directly, and now we just use markdown. All the old rules for where images are allowed and aren't still apply.

Refactored posting

I refactored the posting of links, journals and comments to use as much of the same code as possible. Moving forward this should make making changes easier and more uniform. As with all refactors, you will probably find a bug or two, just let me know.

Other stuff / Bug fixes

• Fixed a bug with comments creating new threads when they weren't supposed to
• Fixed mobile mode so you can post again
• Removed support for legacy skins
• Turned off all post-per-day cost multipliers
• Added support for mod deleting and undeleting
• Removed support for mod editing
• Comments use proper user/title/body after post
• Added notification on new sector creation

Now that the first new features for linkFilter have been released in ages, I wanted to share with you some of direction I'd like to take the site.

I want to double down on the gaming aspects of the site. I'll be introducing a parallel alternate universe narrative where the internet is almost entirely a handful of walled gardens. LinkFilter is one of the last refuges of the open internet, and your character comes to share, curate and defend content there.

I'll be introducing character classes, each with its own role on the site. The "mod" class for example, is a curator on the site. They have specialized tools for managing lots of content. All classes will be able to perform all functions, just some functions will be better/easier for your class. I'll also be introducing inventory. Stuff you can add to your characters to enhance their functions even more. Eventually I'd like to introduce NPCs into the mix.

Before I get to any of that, we'll need one more round of bug fixes and quality of life improvements. I'm going to move all the editors to use simple markdown, for example. I'll also be adding in an invite system, so we can welcome other members into the community.

I'm excited to announce some new features to the linkFilter community.

Sectors

Sectors replace categories and can be created by anyone. Journals and Polls are now posted into sectors as well. Anything posted into your sectors can be moderated by you.

CP becomes glimmer

I've renamed CP into glimmer. The function is exactly the same, except instead of getting reset every night you will get additional glimmer on the first visit of each day. You can accumulate up to 1000. I've also tweaked the amount you get each day slightly.

New level up screen

You'll notice a progress bar in the upper right which shows your progress to the next level. Reaching a new level will show a new animated level up display.