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Members: 25,618
Threads: 221,300
Posts: 4,143,682
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Welcome to Den of Angels |
Welcome to Den of Angels!
Den of Angels is the largest international forum for Super Dollfie and Asian Ball-Jointed Dolls. In addition to being a community for discussion and sharing photos, we are also the first source for news and the hub of the BJD second-hand market.
Please note that until you become a member of our community, most of this site will be hidden to you. If you are interested in joining our community, please take the time to register (it's free). After registering, please read the General Rules and 'The Newbie FAQ'. Also, DoA has Marketplace Access requirements that all members must meet before being able to use the Marketplace subforums. Please browse the FAQ forum, and post there if you have any questions/problems.
Den of Angels is an active community of over 15,000 doll owners and enthusiasts; we also add between 30-60 new members daily. We have over 250 new threads and over 5,000 new posts daily across 50 active subforums. In an average week, we receive approximately 18,000 visitors and 300,000 pageviews daily. (Info for Advertisers)
DoA Site Map
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Reminder The Bad Behavior Needs to Stop. |
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Feb 06, 2010 - 2:31 PM - by DoA Mod Squad
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Hello DoA,
Entitlement, complaining, and bad attitudes are generally wearing down the moderators... as a result, almost all of the administrators are suffering from serious burn-out. This is a problem because without the staff, DoA closes its doors. The less dramatic results is that the staff want to spend less time on DoA, which means that we're less likely to invest the energy and money into forum improvements, contests, and events.
We're asking you all to make some positive changes in how you use DoA:
Respect the forum staff. We are not your parents, we don't have to "love you anyway" if you are being a jerk. Personal attacks, harassment, and backtalking the moderators is not acceptable. This does not mean that you can't ask for clarification or explanation of a decision that you disagree with; it means that if there are any personal attacks or name calling, you will receive an official warning, suspension, or ban. We don't have the time or energy to fight with you; we have reached a point where we will simply suspend members who openly bait or insult us.
If a staff member asks you to do something, do it the first time we ask. We will not be as friendly the second time, and a third time will result in loss of privileges. If you don't understand what is being asked of you, please let us know. We are happy to explain.
Stop complaining. DoA is a private forum, staffed by volunteers, that has been provided at no cost at all to you. We are trying to cater to an extremely large, diverse membership. We're doing our best, but we can't please everyone. If you have a suggestion, please send it by PM; if you have nothing but complaints, consider finding a forum that suits your needs better.
Be a good guest. We don't want false compliments or complete self-censorship; we want members to be tactful, polite, and civil to other members. You can say that you don't like something, but don't make it personal ("I don't like Doll X" vs. "Your Doll X is the ugliest thing I've ever seen" vs "People who like Doll X are stupid"). If someone says that they don't like something that you like, remember that having diversity in opinions is awesome and take the "well, more for me!" mindset. Give others the benefit of the doubt and don't pick a fight or reply passive-aggressively.
Put a filter between your brain and the internet. If it sounds like too much information, it probably is. Most people aren't going to be interested in posts focused on your groin, your boyfriend, or your mean parents. If you think they might be, see if there is already a thread on it by using the search. If there isn't, it is safe to assume that no one wants to hear it on DoA. This doesn't mean that there is nowhere to talk about these things... we fully advocate the use of LiveJournal and personal blogging software.
Stop trying to sell things outside of the Marketplace. The Marketplaces are already enormous; we don't need to have buying and selling happening anywhere else on DoA. It's very tacky to spam your sales elsewhere and doing so may risk Marketplace suspension or other consequences.
Use the search. If you don't know how, there is a very detailed FAQ with pictures. We are aware that 3 letter searches are not currently enabled, but that only affects a relatively small portion of the searches that can be performed.
Respect that DoA's galleries are generally archival. Be critical of your own photography and post your best! If it's blurry, dark, or otherwise a terrible photo, please consider leaving it on your harddrive. Periodically go through and check your Gallery threads for dead images, then either fix the links or report the thread for deletion by the Gallery Virtues.
We are closing registration for a few weeks to try to get our current group of newbies acclimated to the forum. It would really be wonderful if our long-time members could reach out and make an effort to help new members to feel welcome and post in the correct places.
We realize that we're probably preaching to the choir; the people who read the announcements are not usually the ones causing problems. However, if you see someone else being a dickhead, please direct them to this post.
Thank you for reading! 
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0 Replies
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Email notifications for AOL users |
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Feb 01, 2010 - 10:40 AM - by DoA Mod Squad
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DoA received a spam complaint from AOL because a user was flagging all of her PM notification emails as spam.
Two things about this...
1) If you don't want to receive email notifications from the forum for Subscriptions or PMs, you may edit your settings in your UserCP under Edit Options.
2) Because of this, AOL may block emails from DoA for a little while. Please make sure that forums@denofangels.com is on your whitelist.
We are aware of the username of the person who was doing this because it comes across in the body of the reported email. If we find that you are reporting notification emails that you elect to receive as spam, you may lose PM or subscription privileges indefinitely.
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Forum Maintenance Clean-up: Round 1! (Deletions/Purging) |
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Jan 26, 2010 - 8:50 AM - by DoA Mod Squad
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Every year, the Moderators evaluate the forum and look for ways to simplify or otherwise improve DoA.
We have a number of changes in store, but we're going to start out the year with a bit of clean-up. In this case, "clean-up" means "deletion" because we've realized that we have a lot of threads that don't have any real value because no one looks at them after a certain amount of time.
Here are the sections that will be affected by purging/pruning:
1. General Discussion. We will be deleting most threads that have not had any activity in over 6 months. Threads that are over 1,000 posts will be locked and tagged for deletion after 6 months. If a thread has historical, informational, or high sentimental value, it may be kept in the General Discussion archive for your later enjoyment.
2. The Box Opening Gallery will now follow the rest of Incoming Doll – threads that are over 6 months old without activity will be deleted.
3. The Artist Subforum has been closed for almost a year, so it is time to "remove" it. The subforum will no longer be indexed in our search and it will not be accessible from the forum index. However, if you have the URL of a thread, you will still be able to access it. At some point the moderators will make a sticky with links to useful threads from that subforum, but we recommend saving links to any thread you may want to access later. We also recommend The Joint for BJD-sculpting enthusiasts.
4. Introductions will be purged every 6 months.
5. Meetups and the Meetup Gallery will be purged every 6 months. This is partly a safety issue, but is also because these threads are rarely referenced later. Meetup Gallery threads that are of general interest to more than just the attendees (such as Dolpa, GoGaDoll, Dollism Plus, etc.) will be maintained.
We recommend saving any content that you would like to access later to your own computer.
Your post count may drop, but it will not affect your current Marketplace Access level.
UPDATE:
We're making two updates to these changes:
1. We are still purging old Box Openings. However, we will make several "My New Doll!" threads in the Box Opening subforum, one for each year (2007, 2008, 2009, 2010). These threads will be like databases for newly deboxed dolls. Please be sure to look at the instructions in the opening post for each year. These threads will hopefully be a nice reference that will preserve some of the long term usefulness of Box Opening threads while still letting us clear space for new ones.
2. If there is a thread that you think has permanent archival value from General Discussion or Meet-ups Gallery, please PM Suggestion Box with the URL. If we agree, we will mark them with a special icon for preservation ( ). Please do not ask us to archive threads from outside these two subforums.
We will give two weeks before we remove the old threads from Box Openings. We still plan to begin pruning General Discussion next week. We will purge old Meetups (not Meetups Gallery) and Introductions by date next week as well.
Thank you!
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27 Replies
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Forum Maintenance Brief Expected Downtime 1/20/10 |
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Jan 12, 2010 - 3:28 PM - by armeleia
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We've ordered more RAM for our server, which should go a long way toward fixing the table crashes that we've been having the last few days.
This will be installed at around 2am EST on 1/13/10, so we will have some brief downtime.
Thanks for your patience!
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2 Replies
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Forum Maintenance Server Move and State of the Forum |
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Dec 15, 2009 - 9:34 AM - by armeleia
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Hello guys,
I just want to give you a bit of a "State of the Forum" address and give you a headup about a server move and scheduled downtime. I'd love for you to read all of this... but it's a bit long, so I am putting the important parts in bold so you can just skim if you'd like.
As you may have noticed, we've been having really annoying server instability. Timeouts, database errors, and days when strange things just seem to happen for no real reason. We've been doing a number of things as short-term Band-Aid fixes, but the time has come for the next step!
Though our current servermaster has done some great things, our traffic has reached the point where we need a full-time management firm that can give us support 24/7 if we need it. Therefore, we'll be moving to a higher-end managed server.... with daily backups of our databases in case anything goes awry!
We will also be moving to a new server configuration. We will be bringing all of our posts, threads, PMs, and settings with us... but there may be a glitches while we get our feet back under ourselves. Moving to a new server also generally has a little bit of give and take for a few weeks... so there may be some small issues after the migration while they get our settings configured correctly. We'll be asking your patience as well as your support - we'll be frustrated too, no doubt!
There will be brief downtime on Thursday 12/17, though we're not sure what time. Our new management firm has estimated that the downtime should be less than an hour. We'll let you know as soon as they give us more information.
All in all, the changes won't really change things very much for you as community members.... things will mostly look and feel the same. Everything will still be here. These changes will hopefully just result in faster connections and other positive things. When we say a "management firm," we are only referring to the administration and care of our server. We haven't sold DoA or anything! I will still be the full owner of Den of Angels, and our fabulous Moderators and Virtues will still be the heart and soul of the forum.
Since our 5th Anniversary events in August, we've had a couple of companies approach us about doing other special events and releases for DoA. At this point, we haven't accepted any offers... but in the future, we may have other DoA exclusives or special events. This has a couple of positives - for one, you'll have an opportunity to get some cool stuff. For another, it will help to pay our higher server (and now management!) costs.
I want to restate that DoA is not a for-profit endeavor - any money that we make on advertising (or anything else, really) goes directly into our server funds. DoA is a lot of work and money to maintain... and we are doing it as a labor of love.
All we are asking in exchange is that you abide by the forum rules and treat our staff with respect.
Lately we've had a handful of abusive members and people who want to "test limits." We're not keen. This is a doll forum, not a civil rights movement. If you want to effect change, get out there and make a difference in a cause that matters; don't make a fuss over a thread being moved or a chatty News post being deleted. Push the envelope with your creativity and talent in photography and customization, not with ways around our profanity filter; it's not "edgy" to post adult content on an all-ages forum. DoA is what it is and we simply can't be everything for everyone... if you have needs that aren't being met, check out some of the other doll forums to supplement your dolly diet. Keep the drama down - nobody respects that sort of thing, even if people watch it like a train wreck. Respect yourself by conducting yourself like a person worth knowing, respect others by treating them with sensitivity and tact.
In 2009, we've seen the onset of a lot of bootlegging and modified recasts. DoA remains committed to keeping copied dolls off our forum and out of our hobby whenever we can. There is a lot of misinformation about what makes a copy. Some people incorrectly cite a "fact" that says that if you change something 10% or 30%, it is a new work. This is false; there is no actual legal document that says this. Knowingly purchasing copied dolls is supporting a dishonest, illegal practice.
Anyway, thank you for an exciting 2009... let's go into 2010 (the start of a new decade!) on the right foot! Not just with our dolls, but with every part of our lives. This year will be better for certain!
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Den of Angels