Meso

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Everything posted by Meso

  1. Meso
    Hey guys, We've been telling you all for a while about the new changes we've been working on for Dropzone.com, creating a more mobile friendly site, with additional functionality and a new look. A change that is required in order for us to move the site forward, instead of sitting on decades old software. We've scheduled the switch for tomorrow, 10 January soon and as such, we expect that the site will be down for much of the day. We're going to ensure the transition is as quick and painless and possible, however we also do not want to rush the process. I would like to, in advance just highlight the fact that moving to a new content management system is no small task, and we've been working on this for a couple years now. Due to the nature of these changes, we acknowledge that there may be bugs / site issues after going live. We've ensured that we'll be online for support for much of the day over the following days. We ask that you report all bugs and issues to support@dropzone.com should you encounter any problems once the new site is live. I'd also like to note that some of the functionality we will be bringing online over the days and weeks following the release. So if you have any queries about functionality and where we are in its process, you can email the above address. We look forward to being able to share our hard work with you guys, and also thank you for your patience as we go through this process. If you have any concerns or questions, drop me a DM. Thanks for all understanding and support. - Meso
  2. Meso
    Just an update to this. I wasn't able to find exactly what was causing it, but I've adjusted the logic slightly, and it seems to work now. Just shout if you encounter any issues.
  3. Meso
    Sorry, I completely missed this thread. This wasn't an intentional change, and looks to be a bug of some sort. I've taken a look at all the settings and it is set to still allow the attachments, so I'm going to have to try and dig in and find out how and where this problem is occurring. Will hopefully have a fix soon!
  4. Meso
    Thanks for your feedback. This isn't something we've experienced before, and shouldn't occur. Our ads are also single loading (most pages have 3 or 4 ads which don't rotate automatically), which means the load shouldn't be that high, especially given that it's not uncommon for sites to run 8-10 ads on a page. Could you let us know your PC specs? RAM, Browser & Browser Version. So that we can see where the problem is stemming from.
  5. Meso
    Regina from CYPRES shares information about the CYPRES unit, 'WSC' designed for the wingsuit community. Images by Randy Connell If you’ve never attended the Parachute Industry Association Symposium, you may not know what to expect. Maybe, you aren’t even sure what PIA is or why you even need to make the trip. If you’re afraid of sitting in stuffy rooms with an atmosphere as uncomfortable as a timeshare tourist trap, you can relax. PIA is nothing like that. The PIA Symposium is a time when the different branches of our particular segment of aviation all come together under one roof. Rather than draw things out, let’s get to it. Here are 5 things you didn’t know about the PIA Symposium. Just How Big the Skydiving Circle Is When you arrive at the PIA Symposium, get ready for a warm welcome: there is an entire booth set up to greet you. Get your swag bag, name tag, and seminar schedule, and be ready for a great time. Like a drop zone on a sunny steady summer Saturday, the air is nearly buzzing with energy. In one space, jumpers current and retired, drop zone owners and managers, and military personnel and skydiving teams are all gathered together. You’ll see people from around the world. We know our circle is a somewhat isolated one, but boy, it sure doesn’t seem like it at the PIA Symposium. It’s also not just jumpers and drop zone owners from the United States that are present. You’ll walk past groups speaking languages from around the globe: military teams from Poland chatting, fun jumpers from South Africa mingling by the complimentary refreshments. Nearly every continent and country is represented. Exponential Business Connections At the PIA Symposium, you have the chance to establish meaningful industry contacts. Top gear manufacturers both military and civilian, set up impressive interactive displays and booths to give PIA Symposium attendees the chance to see the most cutting-edge innovations in the skydiving industry. Whether you are looking for training equipment or student gear, you will find what you need here. The EXPO Hall isn’t just for managers and drop zone owners either, there is gear on display that is perfect for weekend warrior skydivers too. 85 Year Old British Skydiver, Dilys Price was the Keynote Speaker at the 2017 PIA Symposium. Ways to Improve your home Drop Zone They say a ‘smarter skydiver is a safer skydiver.’ Well, the PIA Symposium is the perfect place to learn. The PIA Symposium facilitates knowledge sharing through seminars which are teeming with information. During the symposium, you have daily opportunities to sit in on seminars dealing with rigging, skydiving, management, government and skydiving interaction, and BASE. If you want to run a better, safer drop zone, attending PIA is a great first step. However, fostering safe drop zones isn’t just a job for managers and drop zone owners: the community as a whole is responsible. Whether sport jumper, manager, or drop zone owner, when you leave PIA, you leave armed with a noggin full of knowledge to take back home to your drop zone and improve everyone’s experience. Everyone Feels Like a Potential Friend You wouldn’t assume that you would leave any sort of symposium with some lifelong friends, would you? Well, you might just leave PIA with a few more telephone numbers programmed in your cell and a long list of drop zones to visit. No matter the level, ethnicity, or country of origin, it seems skydivers click. The PIA Symposium is basically a melting pot of like-minded people all connected by a love of skydiving and a passion for the sport and industry. Sandy Reid of Rigging Innovations stands with his team. At the 2019 Symposium, RI introduces their new Mojo MARD. Opportunities to Explore New Places You don’t have to sit in seminars from sun up until sun down. Throughout the day, there are plenty of breaks and opportunities to explore. The PIA Symposium each year is held in charming cities with their own little secret niches and neat places to tour. This year is no different. The 2019 PIA symposium will be held in Dallas, Texas. So, grab a group of your new friends and do some sightseeing. They say everything is bigger in Texas, and we bet this PIA symposium will be one of the best yet!
  6. Meso
    Sorry about this guys, we're in talks with the advertisers and while they are as annoyed by it as we are, they are having trouble pinning down where in their inventory its coming from. Can anyone experiencing the ad issues perhaps let us know what state you're in, so we can see if the ads are being state targeted. We've been unable to replicate the ads, despite using American proxies/VPNs. We're going to keep trying to locate where these ads are coming from and blocking the source, we never want these intrusive ads on dropzone. For those experiencing them please let me know if you are: 1) Experiencing them on desktop or mobile, or both? 2) In which state you're seeing them.
  7. Meso
    Thanks for letting us know, this is unusual... Our network advertiser is usually very strict about what they allow on the network and ensure us that we won't be delivered any popups or redirects. But naturally this doesn't mean it can't happen. It's also possible that the ad network slipped up and some were active for a while before getting pulled from the network. We've done some testing now with a US VPN on an iphone device, and we are unable to replicate the situation. Have you had it occur since?
  8. Meso

    Events

    Meso replied to cjwilt's topic in Error and Bug Reports

    Thanks for alerting us to this. Will be removing the spam now and banning the accounts associated.
  9. Meso
    The following scam has been reported: Click here to read more about these kind of scams. Remember: DO NOT do business with anyone who offers to send you payment for a higher amount than your selling price with the understanding that you'll send back the balance. Be suspicious of anyone claiming to be acting on behalf of a "client" or another "customer". Be suspicious of anyone claiming to be from Nigeria or West Africa If you agree to accept a check payment, then do not send anything, gear or "change" before the check cleared. And be careful, if you manage to clear a fraudulent check then you may be liable for the damages if the bank finds out later. Make sure your bank authenticates the check. If it sounds to good to be true, then it probably is.This username has been disabled.
  10. Meso
    Yup, the new site will have all the old content (that's actually what has made this such a long process, having to migrate millions of pieces of content from one content management system to another).
  11. Meso
    Hey guys/girls, Firstly, an apology. I realize we (our admin team) have been a little scarce around the site in recent months, but with fair reason. We've been hammering away at creating a modern version of dropzone.com that caters to the way our online behaviours have changed. Our primary goal was to move DZ.com to a responsive layout that will work seamlessly on mobile devices, something that the site hasn't been able to cater to in the past. About half of our visitors are using mobile devices, and we apologize for the fact that we haven't been able to cater to your experience sooner. With that said, the new site will bring with it full responsive layout, improved forums and forum functionality, and improvements to all the sections on the website. From classifieds and articles, to the way you upload media and reviews. Attached is a screenshot of the new classifieds section, it gives a glimpse into what you can expect in the coming months (or possibly even weeks). We're going to be focusing heavily on the removal of scammers and the prevention of them, while the latter is tough to do without forcing paid ads only -- we are going to work hard on ensuring that the site is a pleasure to use, and not one where one feels threatened by scammers. The new website will include a feedback system to allow for users to easily decide whether another member is trust-worthy enough for them to complete a deal with. This is just one small aspect of the new website, but wanted to share it with you all to at least give some insight into what is going on behind the curtain. Change can be scary... And we realize that. That's why we're going to have developers on standby during our release, to ensure that we are able to walk through the release with you guys. There are bound to be some bugs hidden in the floorboards, but we're dedicated to getting it under control, with your help. We will release another statement closer to launch, but know that we're excited and ready to provide you guys with the website you deserve. Thank you for the patience in the development process, it's been a long one, but we can't wait to get back to focusing on content and making dropzone.com a site where you feel at home.
  12. Meso
    Hey, Just wanted to say that we are aware of the Google map issues. Google recently made changes to their API that requires changes to our account. This is something we will be doing with the new website (I know, we've been talking about it for a while). But we're really close to being done, and would rather wait the few weeks and put the time into getting the new site live (which will resolve this problem). Thanks for the feedback!
  13. Meso
    The following scam has been reported: Click here to read more about these kind of scams. Remember: DO NOT do business with anyone who offers to send you payment for a higher amount than your selling price with the understanding that you'll send back the balance. Be suspicious of anyone claiming to be acting on behalf of a "client" or another "customer". Be suspicious of anyone claiming to be from Nigeria or West Africa If you agree to accept a check payment, then do not send anything, gear or "change" before the check cleared. And be careful, if you manage to clear a fraudulent check then you may be liable for the damages if the bank finds out later. Make sure your bank authenticates the check. If it sounds to good to be true, then it probably is.This username has been disabled.
  14. Meso
    The following scam has been reported: Click here to read more about these kind of scams. Remember: DO NOT do business with anyone who offers to send you payment for a higher amount than your selling price with the understanding that you'll send back the balance. Be suspicious of anyone claiming to be acting on behalf of a "client" or another "customer". Be suspicious of anyone claiming to be from Nigeria or West Africa If you agree to accept a check payment, then do not send anything, gear or "change" before the check cleared. And be careful, if you manage to clear a fraudulent check then you may be liable for the damages if the bank finds out later. Make sure your bank authenticates the check. If it sounds to good to be true, then it probably is.This username has been disabled.
  15. Meso
    The following scam has been reported: Click here to read more about these kind of scams. Remember: DO NOT do business with anyone who offers to send you payment for a higher amount than your selling price with the understanding that you'll send back the balance. Be suspicious of anyone claiming to be acting on behalf of a "client" or another "customer". Be suspicious of anyone claiming to be from Nigeria or West Africa If you agree to accept a check payment, then do not send anything, gear or "change" before the check cleared. And be careful, if you manage to clear a fraudulent check then you may be liable for the damages if the bank finds out later. Make sure your bank authenticates the check. If it sounds to good to be true, then it probably is.This username has been disabled.
  16. Meso
    Thanks for your post. The topic of trolling is often very difficult to tackle, and also difficult to draw rules for as well. Trolling is a rather relative term, for example I may say something I believe, but person B may see that as so outrageous that it is a troll, meanwhile the intent of provocation may not exist. Speakers Corner is particularly tricky to moderate, as our human nature is often to ignore information and select that which aligns with our beliefs. A person refusing to see other view points may be more of a hard-headed and stubborn personality trait than a troll, which needs to also be considered. It is however clear to us that we need to take a look at how moderation in the Speakers Corner works going forward, and perhaps even if it's worth the effort to retain the forum at all. Forum noise is something we've always been aware of and has been on our to-do list for a while. But is something we'll focus more on when the new site is up and we have better tools to address. With regards to the ignoring user function. We are testing this functionality on our new site to see if we can use it in a way that allows users to filter out what they consider noise. It certainly needs to be user specific I believe, because what person A sees as noise, person B could see as reaffirmation of their bias and consider it sound. In the case that you see posts which you consider clear trolling or a user you deem to be generating a lot of noise and negatively impacting the usability of the forum, don't hesitate to PM me with screenshots or links so that we can evaluate and take the required steps. We certainly do want to keep the idea that anyone can share their opinions and thoughts, but also want to ensure that they are not making the forum a mess in the process, we never want to feel like we're censoring anyone, while also wanting to ensure that we can provide a platform that is conducive to discussions for everyone.
  17. Meso
    The following scam has been reported: Click here to read more about these kind of scams. Remember: DO NOT do business with anyone who offers to send you payment for a higher amount than your selling price with the understanding that you'll send back the balance. Be suspicious of anyone claiming to be acting on behalf of a "client" or another "customer". Be suspicious of anyone claiming to be from Nigeria or West Africa If you agree to accept a check payment, then do not send anything, gear or "change" before the check cleared. And be careful, if you manage to clear a fraudulent check then you may be liable for the damages if the bank finds out later. Make sure your bank authenticates the check. If it sounds to good to be true, then it probably is.This username has been disabled.
  18. Meso
    Thanks for alerting me to this. I've cleared up the posts. This seems to be due to no one actively moderating that forum. So the best option will probably look into finding a regular of that forum to act as a moderator to help with the spam that comes through.
  19. Meso
    Thanks for the comment! Appreciate the insight. Our issues with scammers and spammers is part of the reason for the upgrade. We're moving to an entirely new content management system that will make it a lot easier for us to keep spammers out. That is one of our primary concerns at this point, reducing spammers and scammers. Once the new site is up, we will definitely be focusing more on elements like advertising, and also making the site more useful to skydivers. We realize that social media has given all community sites a knock over recent years, and we know that we need to offer something special to keep this community going on this site. There's a lot of plans in the pipeline, especially increasing content and adding additional useful features. This will all come once we're up and running on the new site :D
  20. Meso
    There's no official ETA just yet, but we've got some internal goals which let's just say, are in the pretty near future. But we've still got a few tasks that need to be completed before we roll it out. We're nearly there though :)
  21. Meso
    This is definitely something that will change, when we original put these limits in place, a 500kb file was quite a large one. However, we realize that times have changed and the new site will definitely take this into account. 500kb is definitely way too small of a limit.
  22. Meso
    The following scam has been reported: Click here to read more about these kind of scams. Remember: DO NOT do business with anyone who offers to send you payment for a higher amount than your selling price with the understanding that you'll send back the balance. Be suspicious of anyone claiming to be acting on behalf of a "client" or another "customer". Be suspicious of anyone claiming to be from Nigeria or West Africa If you agree to accept a check payment, then do not send anything, gear or "change" before the check cleared. And be careful, if you manage to clear a fraudulent check then you may be liable for the damages if the bank finds out later. Make sure your bank authenticates the check. If it sounds to good to be true, then it probably is.This username has been disabled.
  23. Meso
    The following scam has been reported: Click here to read more about these kind of scams. Remember: DO NOT do business with anyone who offers to send you payment for a higher amount than your selling price with the understanding that you'll send back the balance. Be suspicious of anyone claiming to be acting on behalf of a "client" or another "customer". Be suspicious of anyone claiming to be from Nigeria or West Africa If you agree to accept a check payment, then do not send anything, gear or "change" before the check cleared. And be careful, if you manage to clear a fraudulent check then you may be liable for the damages if the bank finds out later. Make sure your bank authenticates the check. If it sounds to good to be true, then it probably is.This username has been disabled.
  24. Meso
    The following scam has been reported: Click here to read more about these kind of scams. Remember: DO NOT do business with anyone who offers to send you payment for a higher amount than your selling price with the understanding that you'll send back the balance. Be suspicious of anyone claiming to be acting on behalf of a "client" or another "customer". Be suspicious of anyone claiming to be from Nigeria or West Africa If you agree to accept a check payment, then do not send anything, gear or "change" before the check cleared. And be careful, if you manage to clear a fraudulent check then you may be liable for the damages if the bank finds out later. Make sure your bank authenticates the check. If it sounds to good to be true, then it probably is.This username has been disabled.
  25. Meso
    This user's account was accidentally left unbanned after the warning. I've made sure to ban the account from the site.