Post by VS Admin on Apr 3, 2013 15:27:26 GMT -8
Hi everyone,
Recently there's been a lot of talk about access to email addresses in ProBoards Version 5. Early on we had decided to take a more proactive approach to member privacy and security by restricting this information. Since ProBoards v5 allows you to link all of your accounts to a single email address (that you can login with), we felt it was better to restrict this information. Further, there has been a large privacy movement in the online space -- we felt we were at the forefront of "doing what's right" for our members with this decision. We worked hard to ensure that ProBoards v5 had all the functionality you needed related to email addresses (including new features such as the ability to email a specific member through the forum admin panel).
However, there has been some backlash from forum admins with that decision. Some members provided examples of valid reasons they would want to have access to the email addresses, most notably of which would be checking StopForumSpam against the email address in question. There have been other good reasons as well that I won't go into here.
We always want to do right by our members. With the decision to hide email addresses in v5, we felt that we were in fact doing right by all ProBoards members. But it has become clear to us that this is not what the community wants from us.
So, with that, we will be working to make email addresses visible again to staff members on ProBoards v5 forums. All accounts that have already upgraded to ProBoards v5 will have their privacy preference for emails automatically set to be viewed by "staff only." If you want other members to be able to view your email address, you can update your privacy preference under Edit Profile > Privacy once this feature goes live. This will be a bit of an undertaking for us, so please allow us approximately a week (perhaps more) to get these changes live.
I want to thank all of the ProBoards members who have weighed in on this issue, we always appreciate and value your feedback.
Patrick Clinger
Recently there's been a lot of talk about access to email addresses in ProBoards Version 5. Early on we had decided to take a more proactive approach to member privacy and security by restricting this information. Since ProBoards v5 allows you to link all of your accounts to a single email address (that you can login with), we felt it was better to restrict this information. Further, there has been a large privacy movement in the online space -- we felt we were at the forefront of "doing what's right" for our members with this decision. We worked hard to ensure that ProBoards v5 had all the functionality you needed related to email addresses (including new features such as the ability to email a specific member through the forum admin panel).
However, there has been some backlash from forum admins with that decision. Some members provided examples of valid reasons they would want to have access to the email addresses, most notably of which would be checking StopForumSpam against the email address in question. There have been other good reasons as well that I won't go into here.
We always want to do right by our members. With the decision to hide email addresses in v5, we felt that we were in fact doing right by all ProBoards members. But it has become clear to us that this is not what the community wants from us.
So, with that, we will be working to make email addresses visible again to staff members on ProBoards v5 forums. All accounts that have already upgraded to ProBoards v5 will have their privacy preference for emails automatically set to be viewed by "staff only." If you want other members to be able to view your email address, you can update your privacy preference under Edit Profile > Privacy once this feature goes live. This will be a bit of an undertaking for us, so please allow us approximately a week (perhaps more) to get these changes live.
I want to thank all of the ProBoards members who have weighed in on this issue, we always appreciate and value your feedback.
Patrick Clinger
