Young Writers Society

Eight reviews in just the first hour! Keep it up!

So, the "And the top two reviewers will earn YWS Swag" in the header is actually a mistake, but I'm just going to roll with it.

So, the top two reviewers will earn YWS Swag!

I feel very lucky to live where I do as my normal, routine 6-mile run means I get to run by the US Capitol Building, the Smithsonian, and around the Washington Monument. But on some days, I feel luckier than others.


Cherry blossoms on the Tidal Basin with the Washington Monument in the background

Gifted by Tokyo in 1912, the cherry blossoms in Washington, DC reach peak bloom around this time of year. Despite the throngs of people, I highly recommend going to see them if you ever get the chance. It's something else to be able to walk past all these incredible monuments under a canopy of cherry blossoms. This morning, actually drove to the Tidal Basin (the Jefferson Memorial, FDR Memorial, and MLK Jr. Memorial are all located along it) with a couple of friends to do a short run as it would've otherwise been an 8 mile run, which none of us felt much like doing. In between picture taking and navigating the surprisingly large crowd, we went slowly, but it was well worth it.

In terms of pageviews, March '23 has been YWS' most active month since March '22. If activity were to continue like it has over the past week, then March of this year will be more active than March of last year.

I've made a few simple edits to hopefully improve the user experience when accessing YWS via a mobile device. Mainly, when clicking on a text area, the phone should zoom in just enough to match the width of the main content area.

I'm testing this out only on my iPhone, so please let me know how it works on other mobile devices.

Spam

Every day, YWS blocks a minimum of 500 attempted registrations. Some days are worse than others though, and yesterday YWS blocked 1500+. This doesn't even count the spambots that are blocked by Cloudflare before they even get the site.

The primary way spambots are blocked is via Google reCaptcha. That gets about 75% of all attempts, but many still make their way past that. After reCaptcha, the second most effective is a hidden password confirm field in the registration form. When you register, you don't need to confirm your password. But, spambots don't realize that field is hidden and try it anyways. Anyone (anything) that does that is blocked. The third most effective is a hidden website field that does the same thing.

Beyond that, YWS also checks the validity of the email address. This method unfortunately does block a few legitimate registrations every week, but it's unlikely those people would've been able to activate their account anyways. Most of the false positives are school accounts, and nearly all school accounts heavily restrict sources of email.

Last but not least, if the IP address of the registration request has had recent spam activity as listed in stopforumspam.org, then that attempt is blocked.

Despite all this, some occasionally get through! I think these are mostly actual people though who are paid to post spam.

In less than a week, the clock on my oven will finally be correct again.

Back when I was designing the current template of YWS way back in 2011, I was designing it around the idea that tablets would be the main way people would access the Internet. I thought tablets are much more portable than laptops, so people would naturally gravitate to them for any sort of casual activity. And I thought it'd be ridiculous for people to regularly access the Internet on a smartphone because the screen is so tiny. I mean, it's just so much easier to browse stuff on either a desktop or a tablet.

Well, out of 7,000 plus unique users in the past three weeks, just 121 people accessed YWS on a tablet. Honestly, I'm not sure why tablets never took off. I have one, and I like it, but I almost never use it. Instead I'm like the rest of y'all and use either a smartphone or my laptop for accessing YWS. I guess the problem with tablets is that they're portable, but also kind of heavy. Of course they're lighter than a laptop, but a laptop you can place in your lap. A tablet has to be held (mine is actually a Surface Go, so it comes with a kickstand, but that kickstand can hurt if placed on the lap for too long).

Eventually, I'll probably redesign YWS to be more mobile friendly, but that's dependent on a number of factors, and the thought of re-doing all the template files scares me.

YWS is currently running 25 reviews behind February. So, we need to catch up!

I haven't done any reviews yet this month, but I will do at least one today.

The peak for Break the Chat was 25! That's more than I was expecting, but the chatroom never broke!

At the moment, YWS has between 120-140 daily active users (that rises to about 500 for monthly active users). If/when that number rises to 300 daily active users, we'll try this again. Personally, I'm curious at what point the chat actually will break

Will YWS crash on ? Hopefully not, but if enough people flood the chat...

New feature. The Boba smiley is now the Mandolorian smiley.

Code: Select all

:mando

Not every feature needs to take hours of work...

It's cold outside, and it's raining, and it's windy. I also went running in that, so now I just feel like hunkering down. I'm caught up on work, don't feel much like reading, and there's really nothing I want to watch on TV either. Which leaves one thing... working on YWS.

There's quite a few things in a very unfinished state, but I'm going to start with the Publishing Center and then move on from there. If the site breaks in the next several hours, I blame @freakforchrist.

February is currently six reviews ahead of January despite having three fewer days! That's 537 so far for the month. Great job everyone!

I think a good goal for March will be 600 reviews, and I'm going to do at least ten. In fact, 600 might be too low of a goal as just keeping up February's pace will mean we'll hit 575.