Showing results for tags 'announcement'.

Hello everyone, This is my first ever announcement, and I wish it was under better circumstances. A few things need to be said about the future of EcchiDreams moving forwards especially after recent events. As many of you have noticed, @Tema has stepped down as a Community Administrator. Originally he stepped back into a more developmental role however he has since taken a break due to the ongoing problems, which included deactivating his account for a few days. I cannot promise that he will return to being a “Community Administrator” anytime soon. He has not made up his mind on that, however he will be taking a break from the site and focusing on himself and his own wellbeing. For those concerned for him, rest assured. I will make sure that he gets rest. He loves this site, and has poured over half of his life into it as @Casey brought up the other day. Also let me assure those who saw the status; @Illogically Logical will not be coming back in, in an administrative role. Not while I am here. Tema made a conscious decision to leave out a lot of details from his status, and even though it was well intended, it doesn’t seem to have had the effect he hoped for. The reasons; he told me that he kept it light and didn’t make a further statement was because: Out of respect to the staff who’d have to deal with the fallout of what he had to say. Out of kindness to the community. Out of a desire to not want fingers being pointed at any one person or cause. Out of concern that it’d start a witch-hunt. Out of a want to move through this transition period peacefully. Out of a need to convey how much he is disappointed with all of this. Out of a “self-respect” to not sound like a “whiny victim”. Out of worry that someone will end up bullying and abusing other people on his behalf. While Tema is concentrating on his health and wellbeing, I will be doing my best in his stead until he makes his decision. As such, I will outline a few things to come in the future. Staff EcchiDreams has grown into a large community with 200+ active Dreamers a day. Currently, there are only four active staff. This is unfeasible as it stands. The staff are stretched quite thin, and we all have real life obligations that often take priority. The staff here on EcchiDreams are volunteers who do their job because they’re passionate about the community and want to try and help foster a good roleplaying space. We have attempted to recruit more staff in the past however that has fallen through. Part of the problem is that it can be hard to find people to fill the roles. Admittedly, due to the fact that I have a personal passion for the site, it can be hard to entrust it to others to care for as well as uphold the high level of standards that we have for our staff. However I trust our current staff wholeheartedly. I could not ask for better colleagues and friends and I hope to expand the current roster to not only make the job of the staff easier, but to also continue helping make EcchiDreams a better place. I cannot give a timeframe at this moment, but when the applications go up, I will let everyone know. Harassment on EcchiDreams Let’s address the proverbial elephant in the room, shall we? Because there has been a lot of talk about the subject as of late and I wish to say a few things, as well as clear up some misconceptions. The first thing I want to say; is that there is one group of Dreamers that are the largest target of harassment and that is the staff, with Tema taking the biggest brunt of it. This is not backed up by feelings, but backed up by data. This is what has led to him stepping down and taking a break from the site. I will not divulge any details, but he has been subjected to insults, slights, accusations and even vile abusive messages as well as death threats, and for a long time he’s just put up with it and dealt with it quietly. Let me make this clear; Harassment of anyone is intolerable. As such, I will now be far more firm when it comes to the harassment of staff as in the past the staff have often merely tolerated it out of a sense of duty. The staff are volunteers and do not deserve the level of abuse that they receive. It is against the ToS and I will be firmly cracking down on this especially as we are looking at bringing on more staff. As for harassment of Dreamers, we have continuously refined and updated our policies in an attempt to better protect those that have been the target of harassment. After one particular case, Tema spent forty eight hours awake adapting the EcchiMates feature to the site to work with the other applications we have. This allowed Dreamers to lock their profiles to be viewable to friends only which would prevent harassers from being able to see their profile, as well as limit their view on who that person interacts with. The No Contact Order was created to be somewhat like a restraining order, with both sides being told not to talk to one another. If the harasser violated the order, then action would be swift against them. The last change that has occurred is that new Dreamers cannot immediately send an EcchiText upon registering. This prevents new accounts from being able to send spam to other Dreamers but it has the secondary effect of preventing Dreamers from making new accounts with the sole purpose to harass others. This is because whilst you’re a virgin dreamer, you can delete your account, whereas afterwards you can just deactivate your account, which are two different things. A lot of the abuse received is from people who register an account, send the abuse in EcchiTexts and then delete their accounts. His first concern was that of everyone else - not him. He asked me, “If they can so easily do this to me, then what is stopping them from doing it to anyone else? I really don’t want that. No one should have to put up with that and some people here are very big targets for it.” So we both thought of a way to get around the problem that would be fair, and yet something that doesn’t punish everyone else. Despite what people think, we take every case of harassment seriously. But what we can do is often hampered by people's unwillingness to cooperate with us. If you are being harassed, report it. We cannot do anything about a situation that we know nothing about and it frustrates me that people accuse us of doing nothing, while not working with us on the matter. I understand that people might not like how we categorise harassment, but that is to protect people from false accusations which make up over half of the reports that we receive. For those cases that are absolutely harassment, punishment has been swift and utterly without mercy. Every single one has been banned without hesitation. Another problem that seems to crop up often, is that people meet other Dreamers on the site and then take their communication off site before they return and report that they are being harassed. However, because the incidents happen off of EcchiDreams, it is out of our jurisdiction. We are not here to moderate what goes on, on other sites and platforms and it is unfair to expect us to do so. You take any communication off site, at your own risk. We outline very clearly in the ToS that we do not recommend doing so. Instead of attempting to deal with it through us, report it to the site or platform that it occurred on. They can do something about it, as it is their jurisdiction. Discord As I have outlined in one of my recent statuses, the EcchiDreams Discord has been locked down to be Read Only. Dreamers are able to view it for site updates as well as updates on site outages. For the time being, it will remain that way. But I have come to the decision that if I were to bring it back in the future, then I will be looking for dedicated Discord Moderators who will moderate it, instead of asking the site staff to fill that role in addition to their site duties. I will revisit this decision once things have calmed down and Tema has reached his decision regarding his position with us. Final Thoughts It has been a rough year for all of us. I sincerely hope that things get better, and that life gets easier. I am extremely disappointed that it has gotten this far, and I am even more disappointed by the fact that people assume they know what goes on in the background when it comes to reports and such and start spinning off their own narratives as a result of it and throw around unfounded accusation that question our dedication to the community and diligence in upholding the Terms of Service. You don’t and you shouldn’t even pretend that you do. We read every report sent to us; not just once, or twice, but as many times as each staff looks at it and we deal with it on a case-by-case basis, but if it's not reported in the first place then we can’t be expected to know what goes on in your EcchiTexts, and the like. We have better things to do than to read the many thousands of messages sent per day, and in fact as per internal policy we’re not allowed to read without ‘just cause’ which is a report or the consent of at least one of the parties involved in said EcchiText. After seeing the torrent of abuse that Tema has been receiving, it’s left me heartbroken and furious. It’s absolutely appalling, and I expected better. No one deserves that, not even my own worst enemy… if I had one. As for those who expect every single word he says to be perfect and without fault; ask yourselves this - is every word you say perfect and without fault? Have you never said anything off-colour at the wrong time? I doubt it. On top of that he has social interaction issues, communicating his ideas or thoughts especially around abstract concepts with great difficulty, but at least he tries. Every single day. For those who have been understanding of this whole mess: I would like to give a heartfelt thanks to those that have shown their support. I deeply appreciate it, and I will pass along your kind words to Tema. I know he didn’t want a fuss about this, but knew he was going to be somewhat unavoidable. I will make sure he gets the break he needs and hopefully he’ll return one day to work alongside us once again. Right now he’s getting a break from it all and just working on other projects that he’s got going on in his life. I have rejected his resignation and I will hold open the door for him when he decides to return, and when I think he’s well enough to return. People have come out of the wood-work to express their dismay and sadness about the whole thing, even people who have never interacted with him. To them; I say thank you. Due to these issues; the End of Year update has been postponed. I believe that people seem to forget; the site is paid for out of his own pocket. He foots the bill, so that you don’t have to, we don’t and won’t ask or beg for your hard earned money. He is also the technical man, the one who knows how to install the software properly and how the server is strung together without him; I feel that this site would crumble from the inside out. Please be kind to others. Things are rough enough, so please don’t pile onto it. Be kind, and look after yourselves and each other. I hope the upcoming holidays are good for you, and that the next year is better for everyone. Image Credit: nwzt I love how this image encapsulates the chill beauty of a winter landscape. It is perfectly blurred, giving the impression that you are standing in heavy snowfall. It’s just so aesthetically pleasing that I find it rather relaxing to look at.

Hello fellow Dreamers, I know I said this in the last announcement, but it bears repeating as I have made the same mistake… again. I am so very sorry that the last announcement was way back in April of 2020 (over two years ago!) I assure you - again - that this wasn’t intentional, at least mostly. We’ve still not gone anywhere either, so there is a plus. We’re still busy as ever. The only thing that I have done a better job of compared to the last announcement is trying harder to keep everyone in the loop, which I’ve done via Status updates. This announcement will cover: A message from our Community Administrators Terms of Service Changes Correcting the Record Previously Announced New Features So what new features are there? Achievements System Live EcchiTexts The EcchiDreams App! The Future of EcchiDreams Fixes A message from our Community Administrators In 2020 we stated that we understood the community’s concern regarding the COVID-19 pandemic, and we even shared those concerns. We were going through some truly unprecedented times which we’re still feeling the effects of, and are only just starting to feel the consequences and the ramifications of. Two years ago, we said “It is extremely important right now, in a time where we must remain apart, that we must come together in spirit. Now more than ever, we need to bring comfort and love to help and support each other.“ As a whole, on the most part you all did! We had a few bumps in the road… More than a few. But we all worked past it and made it through. Neptune and I want to thank you all for this, sincerely. Keep being awesome. We hope that this announcement, or newsletter, finds you all well (considering the circumstances right now) and we will try to make these more common. Regretfully, some of you lost family members during the recent events, and it wasn’t necessarily from COVID-19, but the pandemic still affected those of us who lost friends, close-friends, lovers and family. For you; we offer our sincerest condolences and we are terribly sorry for your loss. We know all too well how this could affect your life, as we were also affected by it. In addition; It's with heavy heart to announce, that I have been made aware of two Dreamer’s who have passed away. One of them has requested privacy and for us to just quietly deactivate that account. We will respect their wishes. But the other Dreamer was @Xander, who passed away on the 26th of January 2021 because of COVID-19. He was someone who wasn’t quite as public, but still engaged and interacted with his close circle of friends via EcchiTexts. I have spoken to his sister over the phone and she has allowed me to memorialise his profile. We are saddened by their losses and our thoughts go out to the families of the two individuals who were a part of this community in very different ways. I’m sure I speak for the entire community when I say: May you both rest in peace. Terms of Service Changes You may already be aware of this, but we've pretty much completely overhauled our Terms of Service. However I've covered this in a separate article that you can view here: This includes a new feature under our Terms of Service called 'No Contact Orders' (NCO's) which helps victims of harassment from a specific form of unwanted contact, and it's well worth a read, even if it's a little boring. Correcting the Record On the topic of the Terms of Service, I can’t speak for the other staff members, but I have had some insane interactions with people on EcchiDreams in regards to the Terms of Service. Worse yet, I have had people melting down and going into a fit of utter hysterics (for lack of lack a better term) in EcchiTexts and even in the EcchiDreams Discord over a perceived notion that they will be outright banned for the slightest of infractions. Many take this as a zero sum game and then start going absolutely ballistic; thinking if they’re going to get banned for their comment anyway, they might as well go all out. I have no idea where this is coming from and frankly it’s patently absurd behaviour that I wouldn't expect from adolescents, let alone adults. We have a solid and refined Terms of Service and we can only take action against your account under those Terms of Service. The Terms of Service are deliberately written to be as unambiguous as possible, a lot of sites make their rules extremely vague and open to interpretation - we do not. Also I’d directly challenge any notion that we’d ban your account for simply telling me something like “I don’t like the way X works” or “I think your site sucks” or for breaking a minor rule. This is not how we work. Every action we take against another account is open and transparent to all staff, and we all know that all actions have to actually be actionable under the Terms of Service. There’s even precedents set so we know what is heavy handed and what is lenient. Under my administration; no staff has ever banned or even warned someone just because we don’t like them. The idea that we do is utterly absurd and unfounded. There has to be a ToS violation and evidence of that ToS violation and even then, there are avenues of appeal and redress. No staff member is above the minimum standards required for evidence: not even me. All ban reasons are a matter of public record within their profile under “Ban Reason” in the sidebar. They point to the specific Terms of Service violation, as well as a brief summary of the rules violated. Another problem that’s become quite commonplace is people who are very angry at us for enforcing our Terms of Service on the people that they’re role playing with. I don’t see how this is our fault, and I suggest that people take a step back and strongly reconsider their actions. We don’t ban for no reason. We’re not allowed under our Staff Policy Agreement to ban for arbitrary reasons. Each ban can be scrutinised by any of the staff, it doesn’t matter who made the ban and what their rank is. Even then, for some things we opt for a more informative approach rather than punitive. Take for example Section 18 violations; when someone posts loli or shota in the gallery, we delete the content and then send them a message to tell them that this kind of content isn’t acceptable here, and help them avoid getting in trouble with it in the future. There are many who can attest to this. We also paradoxically have the opposite problem. Dreamers who aren’t violating the Terms of Service that everyone else wants to see banned. Again; unless they violate the Terms of Service - we will not do anything of the sort. We do not ban people we dislike, and we certainly don't ban unpopular people - just because they're unpopular and maybe because they're an asshole. Even if they make a single minor infraction, we won't take that as an excuse to ban them into the ground. It's heavy handed and goes against our core principles for moderation. I hope this puts this to bed. I quite frankly find this situation, as I have said many times already, utterly absurd, completely baseless and frankly ridiculous. I have my EcchiTexts open to anyone who has questions, I listen to feedback, I help people, I do everything I can to be there and open to all Dreamers. I think all the staff do. We will happily listen to rational, calmly put feedback. None of our staff - including myself - however, should be expected to take hysterical abuse spammed over and over again, just because you don’t like the way things are done here. If you are that upset with the Terms of Service that you can’t agree to them, you’re well within your rights to deactivate your account and leave. We’re not going to force you to stay, and we’re not going to sit here and take rabid abuse either. In these situations we will just simply ignore you or tell you that the conversation is over. If it - like it has done in the past - enters the region of violating ToS (Such as Section 20, Sub-Section 2: Abuse Towards Staff Members or Section 10: Harassment) then it will be dealt with accordingly as if it was any other Dreamer. Previously Announced New Features Unfortunately in the last update announcement made back in 2020, I detailed three upcoming features that still have not been implemented. These were “Profile Items”, “Profile Enhancements” and “Roll the Dice!”. The reasons are: Profile Items: Image Licensing; I want to use images that I would need to purchase a licence for and I would like the images to be uniform (as in not radically different from one image to the next). The system is installed, it is in place and ready to be used. But unfortunately I don’t have any suitable images that I can use, and places that allow me to easily purchase a licence for these images don’t really have anything that I’d make full use of here on EcchiDreams. So whilst this project has been put on hold for now; it’s something that can be done here. It’s also incredibly basic. Profile Enhancements: I still haven’t been able to find a way of doing this in a format that I am happy with, and anything I’ve been able to draw up doesn’t work under the limitations of the IPS Framework. Roll the Dice!: Never worked as intended, the RNG system was utterly broken. Let me explain. I did these tests using the same conditions for each. Ten tests of 1,000,000 (one million) rolls of a D20 dice over five days for a ten million rolls total. I was expecting an average of 10.5; I know I wasn’t going to get exactly 10.5 but I knew it had to be as close to 10.5 as possible. Both tests were done on the exact same computer, under a Linux Operating System. The EcchiDreams version rolled an average of 7.8999148 which is a massive deviation of -2.6000852 from the expected average of 10.50. It also took a very long while to simulate these rolls on an Intel Core i7 8700K processor. The other project that I’m working on which rolled an average of 10.4999328 which is -0.0000672 deviation from the expected average of 10.50, under the exact same conditions. It took next to no time to simulate these rolls on an Intel Core i7 8700K Processor. So use that then, job done! Right?! Well, no. Our server is not set up to run C#. EcchiDreams uses PHP the other project will be in C#. I’ve shelved it for EcchiDreams and I will be implementing it on the other project that I am working on; that I will talk about at the end of this newsletter (See EcchiDreams in the Future). So what new features are there? We did however release some new features over the last two years, and let's talk a little about them shall we? Achievements System The Achievements System was introduced last year in an IPS Update and it didn’t exactly launch without an incident. It also required everything to be re-indexed and rescanned so that the achievements could be retroactively applied which took days. But it’s been working away ever since and has really become part of the community. We’re looking at expanding it in future, with more things to get achievements over so be on the lookout for that. We have tried to implement this before back in 2015, they were called “Awards” and “Badges” but the system never worked properly, and was developed by a third-party developer who has since gone on to other projects and so it was never updated nor maintained and never worked properly for us after the Invision Update. This is a core IPS feature, meaning you’ve probably seen it on other forums running Invision Power Software. In the interests of being completely open and transparent about this system; here is the list of achievements as of this update: Great Support: No set goal, yet (Manually Awarded) Helpful: No set goal, yet (Manually Awarded) Superstar: No set goal, yet (Manually Awarded) Great Content: Given out to people who's content is so good that it ends up on the homepage (under Our Picks, Manually Awarded) First Post: Made your first post on EcchiDreams Conversation Starter: Made your first topic on EcchiDreams Collaborator: Made ten posts on EcchiDreams Reacting Well: You have received five reactions Problem Solver: You have provided ten answers which were selected as the best Well Followed: You have at least ten followers Dedicated: You have signed in (or been on the forums) for seven consecutive days Week One Done: You have been registered for at least a week One Month Later: You have been registered for at least a month One Year In: You have been registered for at least a year Very Popular: You have received one hundred reactions Posting Machine: You have posted five hundred replies to any given topic. A badge is "Rare" if less than 5% of the community has that badge. There is a level up mechanic with ranks as well, but at this time I'm not going to go into that other than you can't earn more than 50 points per day. I might consider adding more to this later down the line, as a possibility. I might not, but the option is there and this is an IPS core feature, so it'll be interesting to see if this matures over time into a bigger feature or if that's it and the rest is left up to us. There is some customisability to it, but not a lot, which is a shame. Live EcchiTexts As mentioned here (Status) Implemented on Desktop versions of the site by default, Live EcchiTexts replaces the EcchiChat System. If you've been around long enough to remember EcchiChat, a live instant messenger at the bottom right hand corner of the site then you'll be delighted to know that this will hopefully be replacing it going forward. In 2020 we removed EcchiChat from the site because of how heavy it was on server resources, often causing problems for everyone because it'd stop people from using the site when the server inevitably shat itself. If you also remember we had record breaking numbers of people online everyday (250 at one point, if I remember correctly) so it was hardly surprising. Over a million messages were sent back and forth between people in a single month and I had two options - hide it off the page and let people go to a specific link for it, or fork out hundreds of dollars per month just to keep it running and upgrade the server to prevent it from shitting itself. It was a tough decision but considering the site was - and still is - completely non-profit, not even donations, it had to go. Earlier this year it was quietly retired completely, and I attempted to replace it with this back on the 28th May 2022. People were... How do I say it nicely? Less than amused by how buggy it was, and how it invades the navbar at the bottom of the site on mobiles. Which was totally fair feedback, and completely warranted. If you're one of them and you're reading this I can safely say you are not the only ones who complained, people did it on Discord, on the statuses here on EcchiDreams and even in my EcchiText inbox. The feedback was universal and loud and clear. "Give us the option to enable/disable it on mobile!" Well. Now you have that option. Mobile users won't see it by default, unless you go to Account Settings > Live EcchiTexts and enable it there. Desktop users can choose to disable it there too, and it will remember these details for your account. The third party-developer and I have also fixed the bugs that plagued the original. And I am happy to say that it is now in a releasable format. Play around with it, if you don't want it, disable it. If you do want it, enable it. If you find any problems let me know and I will listen to feedback. EcchiChat was never perfect, it was never part of the system, as such if you blocked someone on it, it didn't block them from sending you EcchiTexts. Likewise, if you ignored someone on EcchiDreams, it didn't block them on EcchiChat. It looked out of place and didn't fit with the core features, theme or really - anything - with the site. This however; does. It's properly and tightly integrated. It also gives you a feature that you don't get in the EcchiTexts. Indications if your message was delivered, read or not read, and if it doesn't have a tick; then you were not the last sender of the message. The EcchiDreams App! As mentioned here (Status) A number of you wanted EcchiDreams as an app, and on the 29th of September 2021 it became a thing! Well, sort of. Only under Windows, Android and maybe Linux. You may have been told by your browser already (Especially if you're on Google Chrome) that you can install EcchiDreams as an app. It's essentially still your web browser; but otherwise it's what it is. I believe the technical name for it is Progressive Web Application (PWA). Anyway, once installed as an app, you can go to your notification settings (Here: https://ecchidreams.com/notifications/options/) where at the bottom you will see "Push" (If your browser supports it) a setting to enable push notifications. This means notifications will be pushed to your device as and when you get them. This will not work on Apple devices because... Well, Apple. Take it up with them, as it's 100% their problem. I am told that this might change soon, but I’m not sure. I have an iPhone as a developer phone so I will be able to check, with some luck. The Future of EcchiDreams I can’t really talk about the future of EcchiDreams; without first painting a picture of the current situation. Please bear with me here. EcchiDreams currently runs on a piece of software called Invision Power Suite (IPS) from the folks over at Invision. Despite my many complaints, the software is extremely good at doing what it does, and it’s a fairly modern looking suite that is quite feature rich and relatively very secure. However… In order to get the software to do what we want it to do, to do what we need it to do, we have to customise and modify it in ways it simply wasn’t designed for. In the past being able to modify things to add features and functionality to the site was fairly easy, and the needs of our dreamers were met as best as possible by using third-party modifications available through their marketplace that we’d sink shit loads of money into, and then take those modifications and often times customise them even further, again, often using these things for things that they were not designed for. Over the last few years it’s gotten harder and harder to do this, and the costs to make it happen are starting to get to the point where they’re spiralling radically out of control. For example: Someone wanted $250 (USD) an hour to modernise and make our Roleplayer Preferences better, surpassing the quality and functionality of quite a few of our competing sites, and there was no telling how many hours they’d need to sink into it. I get that these people have families to provide for -- and I don’t begrudge them that at all! But then to have the cheek to want to sell it to others on the market place where IPS take a percentage and they get the rest, instead of developing it exclusively for the person who paid for it, was a very bitter pill to swallow. I kindly rejected that offer, of course. In addition updates from IPS seem to - at least at one point, seem to absolutely break everything, and how long will it be until the developer can develop and update to that modification? If they even do it all. And how much will that cost me? If that didn’t look bad enough; there has been in the last few years an exodus of good third-party developers from IPS, a few of them who have done modifications that we use, that get taken over by other third party developers (if we’re lucky), or are completely abandoned. One third-party developer, who, bless him, took over a good chunk of modifications that another developer sold him already had like 80 or 90 different modifications of his own that he had been either making on his own, or took over from other people. Updates from this developer are understandably slow, and this slows down our update processes. Again, I’m not trying to bad mouth anyone here. I think this situation that we are all in, is not optimal, to say the least and we’re making do with it. I love the IPS software, I really like a lot of the third-party developers and I am extremely appreciative of their hard work. The time they put into their apps, the speed that a few of them respond to bug issues, it’s downright first class. But I have other issues and concerns that for professionalism's sake, I won’t go into in this announcement. What a lot of people, I feel, tend to forget is that EcchiDreams is run on a shoestring budget. It’s free for everyone - we take no money from our users, we don’t even beg for donations and we don't plaster every little space with adverts. Premium Memberships are earnt with EcchiCredits. Money made through advertising immediately gets spent on advertising our site. On the most part I’m okay with this, but I have licensing fees, domain costs, server costs, and now on top of that, over 40 modifications that require renewal fees if I want updates for them. It’s becoming a problem. Those issues aside, I now come to the meat and potatoes of the issue. What we want to use this software for isn’t what the software is designed to do. We are hitting limits in what we can modify more and more frequently. Bitch-basic features like an actual blocking system that has some goddamn teeth for example. If I sound frustrated at this, it’s because I am. I have been using this system for well over a decade now. I know how it works, to quite a considerable degree. I am comfortable with it, I don’t want to change it… But I’m being pushed into a situation where I have to. Which is why on March 26th 2021, I softly announced that I was teamed up with a developer outside of the IPS Ecosystem to write a completely custom job that is built and developed by us so that we can cease our dependence on IPS and their third-party developers and become self-reliant. I stated: This was then followed up on April, 29th 2021 with: Well, since October, my brother-in-law and I have been working hard in making the third Alpha release. I’m going to be very cautious about what will and won’t be possible, at this time because I don’t want to build a ridiculous amount of hype so I will say right now to keep expectations grounded. Most of this software is being coded by two people from the ground up. We’re usually extremely busy working away at it every weekend (our spare time). Alpha 3 of this will see some significant changes. We’ve already implemented a basic messaging system for it, as well as implementing a lot of the Account Settings functionality. It also already supports 40 different languages (Although user content isn’t translated, obviously) which is far more than EcchiDreams supports right now… Although the translations used Google’s API - so it’s a work in progress. The site will be built for both mobile phones and computers, as well as everything in between. We know that there are a niché amount of people who use certain modern games consoles to access EcchiDreams; and I’m not sure if we’ll be able to support that, but we’ll try. (No promises). We’ve worked on a number of core features already such as character profiles. Character’s can have their own profiles that will look like typical user profiles but be marked with “Character Profile” in their actual profiles. This is somewhat what we wanted to do here on EcchiDreams but it never worked properly. This will allow you to enter out information specific to that character. All roleplays would be created through the specially crafted roleplay manager; including private roleplays that would traditionally be done over EcchiTexts here. The messenger system is not really going to be designed or built for this, it would be built and designed for discussing plots and what nots, and then taking it to a private roleplay in the manager where you can invite as many or as few people as you like. The Roleplay Management suite is a lot like the clubs featured here on EcchiDreams. You can essentially create your own universe and have different collections of stories in them and if you don’t want to put some time in hand-crafting your own roleplay section there will be an option to create a lite roleplay. The more fuller feature should in the end allow roleplay owners (Gamemasters) to make their own user groups and assign roles and permissions and then assign users to those roles. Basically a fully customisable permission set. With some sensible defaults, so if you’re happy with those defaults you won’t need to worry about it at all. We’re both working on image handling at the moment for avatars, profile banners, and so on. It’s being worked on in C# and of course our plans have only gotten bigger. As for if EcchiDreams will run on it or become it; at the moment it’s still too early to say, but it could go either way. But at the moment it’s looking very much like it’s happening. We do want a tighter integration of Roleplayer Preferences with the user’s profile, in that your preferences will be displayed on your profile for all (who have permissions) to see. Later down the line we hope to make this completely searchable, so you can find the roleplayer you want rather than have to search through each preference sheet one by one to figure out if that person is right for you or not. Progress is happening and again, if you’re a Gold Member or Platinum Member and you’re interested in being a part of a very early build of the future for EcchiDreams please send me an EcchiText, and I will surely consider you. I appreciate that it might not be as well polished as EcchiDreams is (It’s still in early Alpha) and it may not be after release. But over time we hope to continually polish it, refine it and update it. Fixes Finally solved the resetting premium membership problem Whichever bugs have been fixed in IPS updates (spoiler: lots) Theme Issues (CSS/JS not loading sometimes) Server Configuration related Issues (Such as EcchiDreams wasn't serving pages on the H2 protocol, and just defaulting to HTTP1.1) iPhone specific page rendering issues Misspellings in the Mood System Unable to change avatar from profile (UI overlapped the buttons) Various other minor bugs that would fill this list out excessively Additional Bulletins: Problems with Microsoft Based Email and EcchiDreams EcchiDreams now requires signin with Email Address, instead of Username The death knell for the EcchiChat Bar (The old one) Image Source: ハリケーン (Hurricane) When I started writing this it was spring, and when it was posted, it was summer. This picture reminded me of both. The artist makes excellent use of colour, the water looks and feels like it should be cold, yet the surrounding areas look and feel warm, and it summed up the first sentence for me very nicely. The amazing use of light and shadow gives the picture a surprising amount of depth and you can almost feel that this is not just a ‘thing’ that they do, but a labour of love. They seem to specialise in background illustrations and say that they aim for a “background that conveys the actual atmosphere” and I’d say they do the job well done here. I personally think that they are underrated. Why not give them a follow on Pixiv?

Mega Announcement: The Big Update! Article Image Credit: 米倉ちき。 This announcement contains a brief overview of the information about the big update; including revealing to you all what our secret updates were. There are a lot of areas and sub-areas to cover, so much in fact that I will include a list and get straight to it. We would love to hear what you think, your feedback, any comments and questions, there is no such thing as a stupid question, seriously. This topic is very picture heavy, so it might take a while to load on slower connections. I can confirm that Project: EcchiDreams 2014 - was the intermediary between the much older version of EcchiDreams and the Big Update, we've collected all the data from our open beta’s and put it to good use. All screenshots shown, show things that might not look the same in the final version as they're from the Beta. Without further ado; let’s begin. Forum Software Changes EcchiDreams will be using Invision Power Suite 4 (IPS4); which is by far the best software Invision Power Services have released to date. Although we're still waiting on an third party theme (Which I then have to edit) and a third party modification (iCredits) which again I have to modify for use as EcchiCredits. This is an update on Invision Power Board 3.4 that we’re currently using that introduces a lot of modernised and new features. I will attempt to cover the monumental list of changes that affect EcchiDreamers. We have to give Invision Power Services credit here; they did a fantastic job in IPS4. If I quote them here you can find their quote by searching the internet for the entire quote, as a source. Fully Mobile Compatible and Responsive Previously we could only do partial support for Mobile devices, this was in part due to limitations with the Invision software. Now, however it’s built into the core and operates just as well on a desktop or laptop as it does on a mobile (and even some handheld gaming consoles!). Anything we add in will be as close to mobile compatible as the software will allow us to make it. With more and more mobile devices browsing the web this is a most welcome feature indeed. Our site should seamlessly switch from portrait to landscape, redesign and shuffle itself to fit your browser window (responsive design) which you can test on a desktop PC by simply resizing the window. The interface is designed for both tap/touch and mouses. Profile Overhaul Thanks to the guys over at IPS, the Profile Section has been overhauled so much that it’ll be virtually unrecognisable when you first go on it, and yet it’ll be so easy to use and intuitive I’m sure many of you will love it. Your profile is "a powerful tool", and it’s become a lot more useful. First I will go through IPS changes; then changes that we’ve made to the profile, on top of that. Header Images In our current version of EcchiDreams the Header Image is something we introduced to replace the monstrous background image, which was implemented by IPS in 3.x, even by their own admission this “didn’t work well when the software was integrated into an existing website design” and no, it really didn’t. This and the Avatar (Which is circular now) was something we covered in an informal announcement back in February to show how easy it was to upload images from a desktop or laptop, of which I did a 39 second video demonstrating how easy and quick it was. Reputation The reputation of the user is shown in the profile like before; but now it’s shown across the community too. Comments, EcchiTexts, Reviews, Posts, you name it - your reputation is open and transparent across the community, it serves more of a purpose. You can earn Reputation by making posts that people will press the “Like” button for. In the roleplay section as a "good habit" and a form of acknowledgement between the people you're roleplaying with it's used the most. To say "I read the post, I liked it and you should do more like this." Not everyone does this, of course. But it's one example of many that it's used for, at the end of the day it's still (and should always be) up to whomever taps/clicks that like button. We have made the conscious decision not to revert back to the Negative/Positive reputation buttons that we had in 2009, that said if there’s a post you like - press or tap the like button. Both you and the person who gets their content liked should (at least currently, anyway) get EcchiCredits for it. Warnings Your infraction sheet is visible to you; in the interests of transparency. Without leaving your profile you can look at your warnings and see why you got them, who by and such. Currently the warning system is semi-transparent; meaning in most circumstances we will not make issued warnings public or allow Dreamers to see each other’s warning points and/or reasons. You’ll be able to see when the warning expires, how much points were applied to your account and what punishments if any were applied as well. Warnings can (finally) be revoked by Senior Staff and/or Community Administrators, as you can see in the image below, it’s short, sweet and tidy. Followers Invision Power have replaced “Friends” with Followers, but they’re not the same - which is why everyone is starting with 0 followers. Both IPS and EcchiDreams understand that some people might not want to be followed for any given reason, and this can be turned off and back on again from your profile. When you follow someone you’re notified of content they make. A knock on effect from this, is that it affects the EcchiChat Bar. As the button that read “Chat (?)” with “?” being a number only displaying how many of your friends are currently online, will now display all users that are online, including staff. So asking a question to a member of staff has never been easier, and hopefully this will improve response times providing we’re actually online and/or not idling. Again this too can be turned off for whatever reason. If you don’t wish to appear online, you can of course turn this off. “About Me” Your “About Me” is still in the profile, but instead of it being displayed as the first thing inside the profile it’s moved to it’s own tab within the page. If you haven’t filled it out; it won’t appear. Thus keeping your profile tidy. Recent Visitors Shows your most recent profile visitors; which you can enable/disable at will. You either click “Enable” to enable it or the “X” in the corner of the block to disable it. Follow/Message Dreamer Buttons You can send an EcchiText other Dreamers from the profile without leaving their profile page, as well as follow a Dreamer by clicking the follow button; if they have these features enabled. Your Content In addition to the activity stream which shows content any given user has posted recently, you can also view every single piece of content they've ever done (If you’re able to see it publicly, IE If you have the permissions for it in the first place). It is done within the profile; again and transitions smoothly and easily. You can even view all the albums and images the given Dreamer has posted to the gallery, again if you have the permissions for it. Status Feed As I had already somewhat informally announced; you are now able to make your statuses coloured, bolded, underlined, etc. I don’t know if anyone remembers but once; a long time ago you could like Statuses, but we lost that ability in EDC 5.0; about three years ago because of severe bugs and compatibility issues. It is now apart of the Core software and counts towards reputation, so it’s actually a returning feature for us. A great request by the community and something I wanted to see done, there is (finally) no longer a limit on comment replies. Although I am working on a way that will only load a few lines and have a “READ MORE” if it’s over - say... Six lines, I will make a follow up if I can indeed make this possible. Staff Directory As a replacement for the Moderator Team page which is quite unintuitive we have a Staff Directory which allows you easy access the list of all staff members on EcchiDreams, their roles and contact information. General Changes Announcement Changes The traditional way in which we deliver announcements is changing, back in July/August 2013 we started trialing a new system of delivering news and announcement updates to the EcchiDreams Community as a whole. Granted we haven’t made an announcement (in an official sense) for over a year, mainly because all of the development energy has been directed towards the Big Update with exception to bug fixes, minor changes and security updates. Instead of posting in a forum (The Announcement Forum) all senior staff, and community administrators will be able to post articles which can be commented on, and rated (through a simplistic five star rating). The Announcement Forum will be removed completely and all registered Dreamers will be able comment on said announcements. We hope to keep people up-to-date more often, but sometimes there might literally be nothing to report. Although we have got plans from some new things to roll out over the course of 2015 and 2016; where we will shift our focus on to content creation rather than development; as announced in “Updates 3: Staff Applications System, One on One Roleplaying and Project: EcchiDreams 2014 Announcement”. All old announcement articles will be removed due to incompatibilities, and all other articles will be messaged back to their respective authors to repost in the new system as I will explain later in the announcement. Radical Staff “Reforms” The Staff Structure will be changing, before we had staff separated by sections this worked well at first, however the effectiveness didn’t last long for the Gallery Section at all, then the Forum Section started suffering and although it took longer for this structure to fall through it stopped working for the Roleplay Section, it also never worked for EcchiSocial either. The new system is simpler; easier to understand for all parties involved and has flexibility to expand as we expand. This is how it looked before hand: Site Administrators Site Moderators (Global Moderators; with more power than sectional Administrators) Forum Administrator Forum Moderator Roleplay Administrator Roleplay Moderator Gallery Administrator Gallery Moderator EcchiSocial Administrator EcchiSocial Staff How the new system will look: Community Administrators Senior Staff Staff EcchiSocial Staff Under the previous system; no one had power over certain sections of the site over than the sectional staff that were assigned to it. This left quite a number of us paralyzed in their responsibilities and unable to do anything about it, although we are more than aware that there are certain individuals (previous staff) who were just never active; at all. This will be changing under tough new rules for all staff present and future, and all staff will be retrained again until it is gotten right. Being a member of staff here is voluntary but it’s also a responsibility; one that hasn’t been taken seriously in the past. That is going to change. Performance Enhancements On top of IPS’s performance enhancements, we’ve also done some major improvements, for example the homepage is more controlled in terms of what images are displayed on there and how, which means download times are decreased which means quicker page loading times. The huge image slider is gone and replaced with a much smaller, much lighter version that just displays less images, and gives you just about as much information. It also contains a clear and visible warning; that this site is for adults only. Above tests are the before and afters which was ran on the homepages. Performance has been a strong concern from some Dreamers in the past; and it had been a concern of mine for a very long time, you see... EcchiDreams has a Bandwidth Addiction problem, and we're putting it into rehab. Each update with EcchiDreams since has been to speeding it up without compromising security, the Big Update is no exception. Whilst there’s plenty of room to improve - this will be done in subsequent updates. What the above mentioned tests didn’t tell you was the total page size after the first image of the image slider. Size of first image on the image slider in the first test: 150 KB (153,688 bytes) In total the images on the image slider in the first test total: 1.34 MB (1,410,544 bytes) Corrected fully loaded “Total Page Size” of first test: 2.48MB (2,600,469 bytes) Size of first image on the image slider in the second test: 95.8 KB (98,172 bytes) In total the images on the image slider in the second test total: 179 KB (183,557 bytes) Corrected fully loaded “Total Page Size” of second test: 620.2KB (635,085 bytes) Total reduction: 1.87MB (75.57%) - the kick to this is; this is going on the data provided by the Beta, which is subject to change on the live version. My point stands; it’s an improvement and it is something I want to keep that way. Full Emoji Support on Desktop and Mobile Devices We’re replacing our Emoticons completely in favour of Emoji; and to assist with cross compatibility between mobile devices and desktop/laptop devices. Yes there are over 800 to choose from and they’re all uniform across all devices (which means they’ll all be the same drawings no matter what you’re using) supplied by EmojiOne (Open Source). SSL now uses Modern Cryptography EcchiDreams now uses “Modern Cryptography” rather than “Obsolete Cryptography” for the SSL security of our website, at the expense of supporting older browsers that wouldn’t be able to render our site anyway. This was applied before the Big Update for security reasons. We still have no interest, and now no incentive to revert back to the unsecured “HTTP” system that we were on before, as most of the system is now built around the fact that we use “HTTPS”. On the 7th May 2015 we had to make an emergency change to the Terms of Service surrounding images served from non-HTTPS sites. To quote: “All external images posted to EcchiDreams in (but not limited to) signatures, profile, comments, must be served over “HTTPS”. If this isn’t possible then please download the image to your PC and upload it to one of your albums on the Gallery, and post the image that way. Posts that contain external images served over "HTTP" will be removed.” Broken SSL is a bad thing. In the Big Update this will no longer matter, as it has the ability to detect if the image you’re posting has a HTTPS accessible version, if it doesn’t it’ll serve the image through a SSL proxy, which means it won’t break your secure connection to our site. TL;DR:- HTTP is insecure. HTTPS is secure. This is a great thing. Roleplayer Preferences Section - This was already announced 21 April 2015 - 06:00hrs (GMT) although we’re somewhat stumped at the response it’s gotten and has ultimately bolstered our cynicism on if this announcement will even get a response. Custom Roleplay Owners and Custom Roleplay Players will have badges in their Preferences Section. The new system is by no means perfect; but it’s much better than before and we hope to improve it as time goes on. Yes we will monitor it and assess how it’s being used and what we can do to improve it; but of course we rely on your feedback too. Notification of Planned Updates (Informally Announced) We will be notifying all logged in Dreamers whenever EcchiDreams goes down for scheduled updates or maintenance, with at least 6 days notice, from now on we will always book these scheduled downtimes with at least a week in advance. You’ll be able to see these on the Calendar. They should appear prominently on the Forums. Mood System Changes The mood system has been overhauled and contains a more simplified array of faces, which display in various areas throughout the site like so: As you can see in “Hovercard (2)” and “Profile (3)” you can set a piece of custom text you can also see it on desktops when hovering over the icon in “Postbit (1)”. The custom text is limited to 48 characters; so be creative. xP This is where you’d set it: Ability to *poke* other Dreamers No I'm not kidding. I’d be interested in seeing how this plays out on our community. Roleplay Changes The big update has a lot of changes to the Roleplay Suite. Things have been added, changed and removed. The aim was to give Dreamers a Roleplaying experience that suits their needs, and tastes while also giving them a challenge. Before, there was simply the Roleplay Suite with the Scenario Roleplays that Dreamers could enter. Then there came the One on One Roleplaying, which allowed Dreamers to advertise to other Roleplayers about their desire for more private roleplaying. Now the roleplay section is getting a complete and total overhaul. The list of changes is long, but well worth the read; Suite Wide Changes Previously the “Roleplay Suite” was just the Scenario Roleplay section; everything else was external to it. Not anymore. The Roleplay Suite is all the Roleplay Sections on EcchiDreams tied into one. There will be four sections of the Roleplay Suite; EcchiText Roleplays, Independent Roleplays, Scenario Roleplays and Custom Roleplays. Posted Guides for all roleplaying sections. EcchiText Rolelaying and You Independent Roleplaying and You Scenario Roleplaying and You Custom Roleplaying and You Defined Difficulties A set of difficulties have been defined for the new Roleplay Suite. “Casual”, “Beginner”, “Advanced”, “Expert”, “Hardcore” and “Overkill”. Each EcchiText, Independent and Custom Roleplay must be tagged and set as prefixed (So it appears next to the title listing). Below is an example of what I am talking about - the ones that have red “X” next to them are examples of not how to do it. Old example taken from Guide (it was updated since this screenshot, but it gives you a rough idea). EcchiCredits for Roleplay Advert If you have an EcchiText, Independent or Custom RP* you can advertise your roleplay with the Community Roleplay Adverts. This will be available to all EcchiDreamers for 1,000 EcchiCredits**; however there are few restrictions. One Advert per Roleplay, if you have two roleplays you can advertise both of them, but one advert per roleplay. There’s no preference; for example Premium Dreamers won’t have their ad four times more likely to show, and active members won’t either. You have to come up with a 280x280 image, (I guess there could be an EcchiCredit market for people to make adverts for you if they so wish). The advert can only point to your Roleplay on EcchiDreams; if it’s hosted anywhere else - the ad will be rejected (Hey, you’re not paying real money for it). Adverts cannot break Terms of Service, or the Terms and Conditions of the Advert. We’re actually quite excited by this; and we look forward to seeing what our clever and awesome community can do with this new feature. * Custom Roleplay must be public. Invite and Private Custom Roleplays cannot be advertised. ** Price locked until January 2016. Feature’s Introductory Price - Only. EcchiText Roleplays One on One Roleplaying has been renamed to “EcchiText Roleplaying”. Independent Roleplays Now; this was our secret. The New Independent Roleplaying Forum are for those who wish to make their own roleplays without making it private. It comes complete with an OOC Discussion area, Side Story, Character ID and Extra Information subforums. This will allow you to create your own Roleplay, although there are stark differences between an Independant Roleplay and a Custom Roleplay. Scenario Roleplays Changes to the Scenario Roleplay Rules (These rules only apply to the Scenario Roleplays only) Removed Character Limit. Roleplayers are now allowed to make as many characters as they wish. Stricter rules on post length. Posts are now required to at least be a paragraph long. Tougher rules on those that do not respect Location thread restrictions. Side story inactivity closure time has been extended from one month, to six months. No single character will be removed for inactivity. As long as you are active with at least one of your characters, all characters will be considered active. The Roleplaying Guide has been moved to the Scenario Roleplaying section of the site, and has been re-written and renamed “Scenario Roleplaying and You”. This contains the rules, and Character IDs. Changes to the Scenario Roleplay Character ID. It now has several more fields, however they are optional. The Religion field has also been made optional. Opening posts of the Scenario main threads had been improved. Blackberry Falls Blackberry Falls is no longer a co-owned island between the UK and the USA. It is now its own country, with its own currency, the Blackberrian Dollar which is similar in value to the GBP. The Thorndown University Information Pamphlet has been re-written. It has also been changed to Thorndown University Brief Prospectus. Craethiel Kingdom There are no specific changes to the Craethiel Kingdom Roleplay Utopian Curse Utopian Curse will now be free and available for all Dreamers, not just Gold and Platinum Dreamers. Utopian Curse has a new Overview thread, containing information of the Roleplaying Environment including a new map. Andromeda Galaxy Andromeda Galaxy will now be free and available for all Dreamers, not just Gold and Platinum Dreamers. Andromeda Station has a new Information thread detailing about the Station, inhabitants and the environment. OOC - Out of Character Threads Re-written and changed the OOC (Out of Character) threads for the Scenario Roleplays. Each now reflect the Roleplay that they are tied in with. Renamed OOC Discussion (Blackberry Falls) to “Blackberry Café”. Renamed OOC Discussion (Craethiel Kingdom) to “The Creaky Tavern” Renamed OOC Discussion (Utopian Curse) to “Palm Beach” Renamed OOC Discussion (Andromeda Galaxy) to “The Red Velvet Club” Custom Roleplays If your Custom Roleplay has News, Events and special conditionals you can request an Article Section; based on “Community Articles” what categories and such you want will be created for you by a Community Administrator. These Articles will fit the same restrictions as your Custom Roleplay. Removed Features I suppose I should get around to this too… This is the list of currently confirmed dropped/removed features or dropped support. Arcade The list of reasons I’m dropping this is extensive, I have nothing against the developers and their works has been exceptional. Unfortunately they seem to cling on to a relic of the past and that is Shockwave Flash (SWF) instead of more modern HTML5 games, something I won’t support on our servers. Secondly their code is completely encrypted (Ioncube) which means I cannot edit it, I cannot manually fix any code which might be broken, I can’t verify that it’s secure-as-possible and I certainly can’t vouch for it in anyway shape or form, the server also requires me to have Ioncube Loader installed on it just for that one application. The last big reason is that it is not mobile friendly, or compatible, in most cases. Link Exchange Program As I said previously and this is my official statement on the matter: “Our Link Exchange program was done in good faith. For a time back in 2007/2008 - Kari’s Administration, 2009 - Illogically Logical’s Administration on EcchiDreams it was a good thing. It had good intentions and it was all free. However during NekoLust’s Administration (2010 - 2011) there were heavy problems in that some of them were becoming virus/malware infected sites, or they removed our link in violation to the agreements that we had. This meant that anyone approaching us for Link Exchange had to do so through his contract; one I honoured in Good Faith. However… As of 1st May 2015; all the websites that were tested for compliance - failed. Three of them contained malware and viruses which automatically downloaded onto people’s machines. This was wholly unacceptable to me and I pulled the plug on the whole thing immediately. There has been no interest since our last signup in 2011 (Before I was granted control over EcchiDreams). There has been no interest since. We'd rather not take that risk ever again, so we're not doing it anymore. Simple as that. I don’t see why I should have to spend the time that I don’t have, chasing these people up for compliance; and to be honest when something sweet is abused like it has been; it becomes very bitter. It was something that was with us since 2007, and on May 1st 2015 it died and became history.” Personalised Font Settings (Customised Fonts) This was the setting in the User Control Panel where you could go to, to set up your “default” font across EcchiDreams; as in when you make a post or reply it allowed you to do so without customising your font colour, text and size every single time you made a post as it did it all for you. Currently only one or two people use it. Therefore an update has not been developed for the Big Update, and it’s likely to be a canned feature all together. Support for Internet Explorer EcchiDreams should still work on Internet Explorer; but if you have problems with it and EcchiDreams well… If I can fix it not that the expense of other users then I will try. I’d advise a different yet more up-to-date browser, there are plenty out there. It does seem to work in IE11 though. So yay? Just because I am dropping official support for it - doesn't mean it won’t work and will never work. Chances are it’ll always work if you keep it relatively up-to-date. Support for Old Browsers If you can’t get on and can’t find the site at all - you’re using an old browser and the server refuses to communicate with it because (most likely) your SSL capabilities are outdated and pre-historic. I doubt it’d even display the page if we weren't on HTTPS because of all the new HTML5 content we use. Friend System See “Followers” (up at the top there) YouTube and MP3 in Profile As stated previously in the announcement you will no longer allow you to attach an MP3 to your profile; because of legal complications and we no longer have a dedicated block for YouTube Videos - instead you can put them into your About Me section, as we support YouTube (and various other video site) embedding. We also support Soundcloud Embedding which you can do in the About Me to. You can actually do this right now if you liked. Character ID Shop (Character ID for EcchiCredits) due to lack of interest. Rainbow Links Might be back in a future update; we’ll see if there is any demand for it and what it would look like implemented on there now. Although it does seem to work best on the Dark EcchiTheme, so it might be something for that, or site wide again. - We’ll see what the demand is like for it. In Closing This is just a brief overview of the new features and exciting times ahead for EcchiDreams and the Big Update. It’s been in the works for a long time and soon, when we wrote this in Google Drive it was just shy of twenty pages long, and we tried skimming it down a little and breaking it up to make it easier to read. There’s plenty to come and we would love to hear your thoughts and feedback on this. Of course if you have any questions; then don’t hesitate to ask!

My statement regarding recent events on EcchiDreams... This probably isn't going to age well, because I think with what's going on in the world right now, we're experiencing some very frayed mental states after being locked down for so long and having lives changed because of pandemic. Now; I realise that this is an extreme minority of people that is causing the majority of the problems, so if you're just trying to do your thing, then please carry on, and I am sorry that this post was necessary. Who knows, this post might have absolutely no meaning in a years time and we'll all look back on it and say "Ah yes, that was a bit of an embarrassing period, oh how we've gotten better since then. I don't even know why I hated X." Ha. One can hope. I know that Aura has put up a status in regards to some of the recent firestorm that's been going on here over the last few days, yesterday. It's honestly quite well worth the read, because he's right on quite a lot of points, especially when it comes to issues of what's being posted on here. There are other statues made by other dreamers on the various subjects that I will be covering in this, and people who have posted replies to those statuses that I want to address directly as well. But this has been building up, and there's a few things I've noticed over the last month or so. Firstly; we are all supposed to be adults, but we are also all human, and all make mistakes. Not a single one of us can claim that we're perfect, unless it's perfectly imperfect. It is a shame that no one has apparently read my recent news article where I said: Read more: EcchiDreams Newsletter (April 2020) Political Activism on EcchiDreams EcchiDreams should not a place where you do your political activism. Should doesn't mean that it's against the rules, and absolutely not allowed by the way. Politics has become so highly charged and polarised over the last decade and it's not showing signs of stopping this trend any time soon. If you are one side of the political spectrum and you're doing your political activism here, you can expect someone on the other-side to do their political activism on here too, and this is where things are going to go tits up very quickly, because seldom can one side respect another sides personal or political views and not get branded every buzzword under the sun, "Racist, Sexist, Cuck, Simp, Facist, Commie" etc, etc... Even what might seem like a politically neutral or a politically universal statement can be twisted into proof that you're an X, Y and Z. Which is extemely unfortunate, because everyone is going to have different opinions or view points. Just because it doesn't match up to yours or your purity tests, doesn't mean that, that person is sub-human or not even worth talking to. Just agree to disagree and move on. As I keep saying: We're not going to stop you from discussing politics here on EcchiDreams, however my advice is to do so in EcchiTexts or something. Whilst political opinions are allowed to be discussed openly by nature of Section 15 (Freedom of Speech; so long as it doesn't violate the universal rights of another person) just be aware of what you're getting yourself into by sharing your political views, and that other people on the site might not want to hear them, for one reason or another, or have opposing views that they're going to share... If you can't take it, don't dish it out, but ultimately that is your choice to make, not ours to make it for you. And I stand by that. I do not think it's feasible to outright ban political discussion on EcchiDreams even if I "personally" wanted to, which I don't despite how divisive it is and how it's causing more problems than it's worth because just about everything can be turned into a political matter. Political activism that bullies others no matter which side of the political spectrum you're on isn't really against the rules on the face of it, but don't expect it to be tolerated (on a social level) here. Free Speech does indeed have social consequences, yes, but to start an harassment campaign on the other hand is against the Terms of Service. If you can't handle it, ignore the Dreamer in question and move on. Stay ignoring them and don't use it as a shield to hurl abuse and harassment at them, we will be working on the Terms of Service to cover this in future. Note to those who have been a victim to this: Due to the nature of our Terms of Service, we can't retroactively punish people for a rule that didn't exist when the offence was committed. Which is why we are trying to work on this as quickly as possible. I will also say that we've had a number of reports about political stuff being posted in statues, but we're not going to do anything about it. At the end of the say what people post in their statuses, is their business, and it's allowed so long as they're not actively calling for the violation of someone or a groups universal rights, we won't do anything about it. Free Speech on EcchiDreams We prided ourselves that we've had free speech on this platform for a long time, and that people have been able to say what they want (So long as it isn't a violation of someone elses universal rights) and they've chosen to use this to spread positivism and happiness without being compelled to. Compelled speech is not free speech, that is you being forced to say something that you don't think is true, as if you don't have a free-thinking mind, and that to me, can be just as bad as censorship, because you're not allowed your own opinion, and you have to say what the other person wants to hear because of their sensibilities and apparently yours can go fuck itself. You're not going to agree with everything you read on here, hell I don't agree with half of the things that goes on here, especially when it comes to roleplaying certain subjects, or certain political opinions that are spouted as gospel, and if you stray from that path you're a heretic that must be struck down. Free Speech doesn't mean freedom to post what you want without social consequences, even if it doesn't violate the rules. But there's a fine line between voicing your disagreement (Which you have a right to do) and harassing that person for it (Which you don't have the right to do). There are options if you don't like what you're reading and you don't want to cast your opinion: Roll your eyes, stop reading and move on. Literally ignore them. Ignore them through the ignore system (https://ecchidreams.com/ignore) Although I am aware that it doesn't block their statuses from appearing in the activity feed. The mitigation for that is to make your own activity feed that you have a bit more control over what is on it and what isn't, you can block statuses from appearing on it for example full stop (https://ecchidreams.com/discover/?do=create) or create an activity feed containing content of people you follow only. If you want to post your opinions, then again be aware of what you might be getting yourself into, and feel free. If you're respectful and courteous and the other person descends into insults and chaos, everyone will see that and it will say more about that person than it does about you. Or set up a blanket policy for yourself that you won't talk about certain subjects, I do, and I try to stick by it nowerdays. For example, I am religious, yet I don't feel the need to constantly bring it up and tell everything to seek the path of the divines and all that jazz. However you want to deal with it, is ultimately up to you, but please recognise when the right time to pull away is. Roleplays in Statuses The same thing I said about political posts applies here too: we've had a number of reports about people roleplaying in statues, but we're not going to do anything about it. At the end of the say what people post in their statuses, is their business, and it's allowed so long as... you get the point. I don't personally like it, but my feelings on the matter doesn't matter, because it's not against the Terms of Service, and just because I'm one of the Community Administrators, and I don't like it, it doesn't mean I'm going to stop it. I would *personally* prefer that roleplays were done in the designated areas, but that's not going to be enforced. If you prefer roleplaying in your statuses then be my guest, I guess. However don't rail topics on the forums with it, especially where it's not called for - such an example is the Lets be Honest about Sex topic where I actually moved a lot of that and other off topic posts to Ecchia's Collection of Off-Topic posts. To which I issued a polite notice and have been happy that it's not happened again. Now; I completely understand the argument of not wanting to read scat stuff. Personally I think it's absolutely fucking nasty, but I rather think that when someone says (And I am literally quoting here): That it really doesn't take a big brained genius to figure out where that's going. If you're uncomfortable with it, then it's probably best to just leave them to it, and ignore it. Individual replies as far as I am aware don't appear in the activity feed, unless it's under the direct status and even then it's only the last few replies, so I really don't see the problem here. We did once have a system before the clubs where roleplays took place in forums where if you were doing a side story you had to tag the subjects that would be touched upon such as (For example) Rape, Drugged, BDSM, etc. Or if it had particularly extreme content to state it in the opening post "This topic contains: Scat - if you don't want to read it, don't.", for example. This is a little difficult with statuses, granted, but not impossible, and again - not enforced. I would also ask for some consistency, if you're going to bemoan someone from doing X, and yet when its your friends that are doing it, you don't utter a single word... That, that comes off as extremely hypocritical and therefore it shouldn't come off as a surprise when you're called out on that. I've seen this happen about four or five times in different areas this year and I figured it was right to put this in here. Inconsolable Disagreements with Other Dreamers We are not always going to see eye to eye, we're a wide range of people from a very wide range of different backgrounds, we have everything from people who are unemployed to people who work in professional careers on here. I know of Dreamers who in their day jobs they're solicitors, programmers, doctors, police and security, fire fighters, business owners and so on, I also know that there are a few who work retail like supermarkets, fast-food chains, and so on as well as people who are unemployed and both looking and not looking for work, disabled and otherwise. I've found that some of you are on some kind of autistic spectrum, or have some other mental issue that affects you, but none of this... Not any single difference I've pointed out is an excuse to act like an absolute narcissistic arsehole and cause other people, trouble. But at the same time I would ask that everyone is mindful of this. It's therefore not difficult to realise that a number of people here are going to have wildly different political views, and some even polar opposite. It's my experience here that most people are either Centrist in their views, or more right-learning, but there are also more left-leaning people and (I say this from a very centrist point of view), outright far-left and far-right views, although the latter two are very fringe on here. There is also going to be a wild difference of opinion on what is and isn't acceptable. What is and isn't acceptable is largely laid out in the Terms of Service, it's not perfect - because it was created by humans who aren't perfect. But we work on it, and update it as and when it's absolutely required, and we generally inform the users when it's been updated and what sections have been updated. What I don't like seeing is when these differences pop up and people start getting blocked is to then go out of ones way to contact that person that's been blocked to start shit with them and then use the blocking as a shield to prevent them from saying "Excuse me, could you not contact me anymore, please?" We're going to be tweaking or putting into policy ways of dealing with this abuse as I stated earlier, but it's going to take us a little time. If you don't like another Dreamer to such an extent, then ignore them (Either literally or by the systems in place) and put them out of your mind. Otherwise they're living rent-free in your head, which is not good for you or your mental health. We are all here because we have something in common. Just because we don't agree to everything doesn't mean we can't have fun in the one thing that we have in common. I wish we could just leave our differences with each other at the proverbial door, and just get on like adults, but increasingly it's becoming apparent that not everyone seems to be capable of this which is why these systems are in place. Miscellaneous Some other things that I wanted to point out that don't need entire paragraphs: You are not allowed to ban specific people from posting on your topics, and I don't know where the idea that you could do this has come from. Even if you've told the person to stop contacting you, and they post on your topic to take part in the topic without addressing you, that's perfectly allowed under the Terms of Service. Pictures of real life minors are not accepted on this site, or it's discord server. There is literally no excuse why you should be posting up pictures of real life children/teenagers under 18, on this site. Please read Section 18 of the Terms of Service. The Tag System is not supposed to be abused to put in your hate towards other people, or enforcing authoritarian standards. The tag system is used to describe the content of which is tagged so that it can be easily searchable, tags that fail to do this will be removed at a staff members discretion. You are not allowed duplicate accounts on here, if we're absolutely sure you're duplicate accounting, we will take action. If we suspect we will be keeping a very close eye on your account(s) and collect evidence. We make this very clear on the registration page, and we also make this very clear in the Terms of Service. The excuse of "I wanted multiple personas and accounts to reflect my different characters" isn't going to wash. Although we do have a feature coming up that will satisfy the apparent demand for this. GIFs are not allowed on the Gallery (/gallery/) This is something that is clearly stated in the categories of the gallery. Just because other sites and platforms allow you to do X, doesn't mean we should, could, or do. You should read the Terms of Service. I bet we do things that other platforms and sites don't do. It's not their responsibility to make their platform like ours, and it's not our responsibility to make ours like theirs. Different sites have different rules, and procedures, don't like it? Well, we're a private entity and we can do what we like (Within the bounds of the law) including dictate our own polices, so... yeah. You're free to make suggestions by all means, but when you're caught out on bad behaviour; the excuse, that's been used time and time again of "I'm allowed to do this on (Some other website)." Is not going to wash, has never washed, and frankly it's immaterial. Closing Thoughts/TL;DR Look. I would like you guys to make more of an effort to get on with each other. If you can't do that you should just ignore (or literally ignore) the other Dreamer in question and just move on, don't keep making things hostile after doing so because that's not ignoring them. I'm not going to force you all to play nice, but the time has come where I have to put my open my mouth (Or in this case move my fingers and press a few buttons) to say 'Stop. Enough is enough. Act your age.' We've had a lot of people over the last month deactivate their accounts, and I can see why from the reasons that they've left, and can't blame them. Because it's becoming a very hostile environment, where your not allowed to even voice your opinions on anything without the bullying. Because that is what it comes down to: Bullying. You can disagree with peoples opinions and that's fine, and social consequences and all of that, but at the same time there needs to be line drawn somewhere. If you disagree with me to the point that you want to close your account then by all means do so. But this is not what EcchiDreams is supposed to be, granted it's not supposed to be a safe-space echo chamber either, but why can't we have disagreements and still act like adults? I want to hope that you can do this, but over the last month or so, I'm not so sure that some of you really can, and ultimately... That's disappointing. I want things to change. I want things to get better. But importantly, I want you all to stay safe and take care. Lots of love (Because, yes, I am capable of that), Temaelrin P.s. Feel free to comment on this article, comments are open below as always.

Article Update (26th June 2019): There has been some more news that has come out in the last week or so that suggests that the law has been delayed (For a third time), and thus will no longer be implemented on July 15th 2019. Multiple sources have suggested that it's been delayed for 6 months, others say indefinitely and a few of them are saying it's been withdrawn. I will be leaving this article up however for prosperity, and in case it does come back. As usual, I will keep you all updated. - @Temaelrin on 26th June 2019 @ 22:00hrs Article Update (17th October 2019): After repeated delays to implement this; the UK government has decided to scrap this stupid idea after all. What it will be replaced with, we don't know. But for now, this is a big win for us, and a big win for online privacy. There will be no age verification and this whole article is now moot and pointless. - @Temaelrin on 17th October 2019 @ 15:25hrs (UTC) Hello everyone; I've been trying to put this off for quite some time now, however I've recently had it made clear to me under no and uncertain terms that I cannot put it off. This is something I didn't want to talk about, and I had hoped that citizens subjects in the United Kingdom would have raised their voices and told the Government to go fuck themselves, but apparently that's not going to happen and now we (as an industry) have to deal with it. I am of course talking about the UK's Porn Pass - A.K.A: Government Permission to Wank. If I am going to be forced to implement this - which is looking increasingly likely at this point, then I will be speak very fucking candidly about it at the end of the serious thing, I will deliver my thoughts – open, raw and uncensored. On July 15th 2019; the United Kingdom’s age verification law for pornography sites, will go into effect. The aim is: The UK Government want its citizens subjects to prove that they are over 18 to access adult content, and apparently putting in your Date of Birth will no longer suffice anymore. To prove that you’re over 18, you’ll either need to enter your credit card, passport number, mobile phone number or by an age verification pass from one of your local newsagents/shops. This is part of the 2017 Digital Economy Act. This law surrounds adult content, I believe it also applies to gambling sites, and tobacco/alcohol, but I’m not sure on that. In the adult site category, it applies to media (Pictures, videos and so on), cartoon porn (Hentai), and text (Roleplays for example. Sex Stories, etc). Sites that do not comply with law will face fines of up to £250,000 (At the time of writing this works out to be around $318,000 USD) and/or getting their website(s) blocked in that country. I want to make this clear that I do not like this, and I find this is to be an obviously unacceptable overreach by the UK Government, and as I’ve said previously, I’ve been told that I cannot ignore it. I also want to make this clear: This isn’t a Brexit issue. This isn’t a left/right issue. It seems that all mainstream political parties are in favour of this because of the age-old pearl-clutching trope of “Won’t somebody think of the children?!” That and the UK seems more fixated on being first in the world to do something like this, and that somehow makes it good, which is a logical fallacy in-on-itself. This announcement isn’t to talk about how we can resist it or block it. But what will happen and what I am looking into going forward. I will be speaking candidly after this to share my thoughts and concerns on the matter. But for now, I will share with you what my choices and options are. I will say that I have no intention on purging EcchiDreams of all smut-content and confine it to EcchiTexts, so I am not going to start deleting all images, public sex side stories, sex stories, etc. This isn’t an option. I could refuse to comply, in which case I think EcchiDreams might just end up getting blocked in the UK, but let’s face it, if I do comply the UK Government will probably find a way of doing that within the decade or so, at current course. I could also be fined a quarter of a million GBP, that is not a small amount. Realistically if I want to keep EcchiDreams accessible from the UK, I will need to comply and believe me – I don’t want to for reasons I will share at the end of this. There are a lot of concerns that I have; such as: Privacy Concerns – Will the details of porn users be held on some kind of database? With cybercrime so bloody rife nowadays… Do we really want to support something like that? Liberty Concerns – They came for X but it didn’t affect me, so I didn’t say anything. They came for Y but it didn’t affect me, so I didn’t say anything. They came for Z but it didn’t affect me, so I didn’t say anything. They came for me, and there was no one left to say anything, kind of thing. Let’s not delude ourselves that this is for protecting children – this is straight up nanny-state bullshit. This is Government Overreach – There is a reason that this is being dubbed as the “Wank Permit”, “Permission to Wank”, and so on. This is the Government telling us what to do because apparently parents in this country aren’t responsible, or the current block system isn’t working. It is draconian – I’d expect this in ‘The Peoples Republic’ of China or North Korea; not in a liberal democracy, and certainly not in the United Kingdom. Boomerville – This is obviously created by boomers who have no idea how the internet works. What next? Will VPN’s become illegal? Or TOR? What about proxy buying cards? Will this really stop those that are dedicated enough from accessing porn? I think not. And that’s just to name a few… What I’m looking at is a company called AVSecure who have AgePass - https://avsecure.com/ which apparently secures age verification by using blockchain (Based on Ethereum Chain). They say: The AgePass Platform uses a zero knowledge proof system in combination with our customized version of the Quorum Blockchain (an Ethereum-based chain with added privacy features) which is capable of processing thousands of attestations per second. Our core concept delineates 'creating trusted statements about a known person' and 'the use of those statements'. Users go through a one-time initial validation process to produce their credentials which they can onward use in a way that will only be known to them. The user’s credential then generates ‘one-time’ use tokens when they visit websites in the future. These tokens are passed to the website providers which enable them to demonstrate compliance with the Law whilst also ensuring that their consumers leave no additional traceable information. I am considering using this as we won’t be holding your personal data in that regard, and UK Subjects can buy anonymous cards for £10 which from what I can tell will give you a one time use code or something that you can use for an anonymous account on any AgePass wall. They have other age verification means too, so it’s really up to you how you’d go about it. If you don’t care about your privacy, they can do credit/debit card verification, mobile, and various others. I think this is best thing we can do given the circumstances… I don’t think this will trigger for anyone outside of the UK, so if you’re an American for example, you won’t get ID’ed on the landing page for EcchiDreams, and you won’t be affected. But if you’re from the UK you will see something similar to this: When you come to EcchiDreams, if I can get it coded in time. If not then we might be forced to close our Digital Doors to people from the UK until such a time that it is coded and properly integrated. If this does happen you might want to seriously consider our other option: Get a VPN I personally use Private Internet Access as a VPN, and I’ve found it to be quite reliable and fast, I am not affiliated to PIA (Private Internet Access), nor am I receiving money from them, but I personally like the fact that PIA lets you tune the data encryption, authentication and handshake protocols of your connection, and does a damn good job of anonymising your browsing. I’ve been using it for a year and I’ve never had any problems with them. This can also be used on smartphones (Apple and Android alike), although the only criticism I have of it, at least from my perspective and experience is that on mobiles it can be a little temperamental especially when switching between WiFi and Mobile Data, has a habit of disconnecting every now and then, and finally the battery is drains quicker. But that might not be a problem for you. I’m not shilling for PIA; there are other solutions out there such as; NordVPN, ExpressVPN, CyberGhostVPN, IPVanish, SurfShark, Hotspot Shield, and so on, I’ve not used them so I can’t attest to them. So I ask that you please do your research and find one that suits your needs. EcchiDreams doesn’t block VPN’s, and we never will. This has other benefits, that you might want to consider this as a viable option. Please take a look at: https://thatoneprivacysite.net/ to find the VPN of your choice. I highly encourage everyone to do this. You can also use TOR, but EcchiDreams does actually block TOR registrations (But you can easily use TOR after you register). I just wanted to give you all a heads up, and UK Dreamers will receive an email in June letting them know about this as well. ---- Now… My personal thoughts on it? The gloves are coming off, and this is going to get quite political. You’ve just got to love the sheer hypocrisy, ladies and gentlemen! The politicians tell us what to do and say 'you must live a wholesome puritanical life, that's rude, you can't look at that, citizen’ like they have the power to run and control our personal lives, telling us what do, what to say, what to feel and what to think. Nanny-State doesn’t even cut it anymore… At the same time as them trying to act like our moral superiors, they are misusing their expenses, having affairs with their staffers and other high ups... Orgies and kinky sex parties that include some of the richest in any given industry who are doms and high-class escorts, who have a LOT of clients who are top police chiefs, politicians, judges, lawyers, officials and so on. It’s nothing short of Hypocrisy at its best. Welcome to Brave New World. I highly doubt that the main reason for this has anything to do with protecting children online, and everything to do with Government control over its citizens. They have forgotten that they work for us, not the other way around. I say this because it seems to be part of a wider problem with the Government which seems to be trying to take control over the internet. You only need to take a look at the UK’s white paper on “Online Harms” released last month. http://archive.is/3MuDH Or the Investigatory Powers Bill; in where ISPs are forced to keep a full list of ICR’s (Internet Connection Records) for a year and make them available to the Government if asked. These ICR’s in effect serve as a full list of every website people have visited. Articles appeared about it in 2015/2016 – and there was silence. Hardly anyone spoke up about it. The full list of agencies that can now ask for any UK citizens browsing history (As laid out in Section 4 of the bill) Is as follows: Metropolitan Police Service City of London Police Police forces maintained under section 2 of the Police Act 1996 Police Service of Scotland Police Service of Northern Ireland British Transport Police Ministry of Defence Police Royal Navy Police Royal Military Police Royal Air Force Police Security Service Secret Intelligence Service GCHQ Ministry of Defence Department of Health Home Office Ministry of Justice National Crime Agency HM Revenue & Customs Department for Transport Department for Work and Pensions NHS trusts and foundation trusts in England that provide ambulance services Common Services Agency for the Scottish Health Service Competition and Markets Authority Criminal Cases Review Commission Department for Communities in Northern Ireland Department for the Economy in Northern Ireland Department of Justice in Northern Ireland Financial Conduct Authority Fire and rescue authorities under the Fire and Rescue Services Act 2004 Food Standards Agency Food Standards Scotland Gambling Commission Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority Health and Safety Executive Independent Police Complaints Commissioner Information Commissioner NHS Business Services Authority Northern Ireland Ambulance Service Health and Social Care Trust Northern Ireland Fire and Rescue Service Board Northern Ireland Health and Social Care Regional Business Services Organisation Office of Communications Office of the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland Police Investigations and Review Commissioner Scottish Ambulance Service Board Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission Serious Fraud Office Welsh Ambulance Services National Health Service Trust Or even the UK Digital Economy Bill of 2017. I am rather cynical. At the risk of sounding conspiratorial; I think Brexit is a convenient smoke screen for all of this, a nice little distraction, including all of the current PM’s blundering and fuck ups. So a little history shall we? We’ve always had some kind of national webfilter and I didn’t have a problem with that because it targeted Child Pornography and stopped people from accidentally wandering in on a site back in a time where it was a very easy thing to do, and be exposed to it. I have no problem with that to a degree. It drove child pornography underground, and never wiped it out, but I don’t think that was the intention. I firmly and fervidly agree that we should eradicate child porn, and prevent its access. It is a noble goal. Even if it’s not totally achievable. But things started changing after 2010 at the hands of the Conservative/Liberal Democrat Government. At first David Cameron wanted ISP's to implement a child safety web filter at an ISP level that would be an opt-in thing, so that parents could use it could use it to block adult content for their children, and promote applications that could protect devices. This is good because it affirmed that it was the parents responsibility to protect their children, it was more of an order to ISP’s to make tools available for parents to protect their children. I have no problem with that. However it very quickly morphed into “Oh no; this will be an ‘Opt-Out’ thing. So people had to make an ‘Unavoidable decision’ to protect children.” Well I wasn’t happy about this… But I told my ISP that I wasn’t interested and they respected my wishes. Clearly - this hasn't worked either because apparently lots of people have either opted out or bypassed it. Now they're introducing this Age Verification thing. The UK has had a firewall of Great Britain installed almost a decade ago now. There was an uproar, but we were told that it will only be used to block sites like Pirate Bay, torrent sites. Originally we were told that this would be an open and transparent thing (As far as I can recall) that would have to be done by a court order… By the following year (2013) hundreds of sites were on it, including non-torrent sites - like TV Streaming sites, MP3 Download sites, etc. By two years after that it encompassed a metric fuck tonne of sites, oh and good luck getting a list of sites that has been blocked. That’s kept secret now as well. So we have no idea what’s censored or not. Some sites that are blocked have an ISP blocking screen that says that this site isn’t available because it’s been blocked by court order. Some sites however don’t show this and show an error message in the browser, but are magically there and online if you use a VPN. Now they're threatening to start blocking sites that aren't in violation of copyright. I’m sorry but it is not the Government’s job to implement these draconian actions it’s the damn parents of these children be the ones who are responsible for their children. And we're already seeing what else they're doing in terms of the online space. People getting arrested for jokes, sex stories that they've written, lyrics that they've posted online, expressing opinions on Twitter will apparently get you a visit from the local police (Such as there are only two genders) and so on. I’m not going to lie. I am quite worried about this increasing encroachment on our rights online. There seems to be an increasing curtailment of our rights online, and I honestly think it’s only going to get worse. As they justify the reasons to censor sites, it seems to be getting increasing easier for them to keep doing it which is exactly what I said would happen in 2009 on the Coroners and Justice Act 2009. I don’t think this is going to get better and with the Online Harm’s white paper, I think it’s going to get much worse. I won’t even go into how AgeID is owned by MindGeek which also owns several of the largest porn sites and porn companies so yeah… We’re not using them. No conflict of interest there… EcchiDreams has always upheld one of its oldest rules: Section 8 Paragraph 1, we have a zero tolerance towards members who are underaged, and upon discovery they get banned extremely quickly. We don’t want people who are under 18 on this site. We’ve always been responsible about this, and it honestly seems like we’re being punished for doing so, because “It’s not good enough.” I suspect that it will never be good enough for the industry at all. I think we need a digital bill of rights. Urgently. Who knows I could be overreacting, but as someone who’s been using the internet since the 90s, I don’t like the direction it’s gone in, and I don’t like the Government’s increasingly draconian laws to attempt to regulate something that they clearly have no idea of how it works.

Hello fellow EcchiDreamers! We've just completed an update, so our site now uses Invision Power Suite 4.2, which has added a lot of new features and improved already existing features such as the like system. I've also updated quite a number of EcchiDreams Specific Modifications (with some big ones still to come) as well as the applications and plugins we use to provide our service. Over the next few weeks I hope to have the bugs ironed out, but if you do find any please, let me know! Even if you're not sure, I can let you know and it doesn't bother me in the slightest, because it allows me to help you out. You can contact me via the contact form, EcchiTexts, or if I'm online, over the chatbar. There is no bug tracker anymore, that was referenced in the Halloween Update (2016) because it was a feature only enabled during the Beta of the big update, but the same bounties apply. To highlight some of the changes made to EcchiDreams: Clubs (Coming Soon) Complete Your Profile! Device Management Gallery Improvements Leaderboard Enhancements Richer Embeds "Our Picks" Reactions Clubs The clubs application (New in IPS4.2) is a way of supporting sub-communities within our site, it's a kind of social group function. However EcchiDreams being EcchiDreams; this could be used to replace the public roleplaying suite because it's exceptionally powerful at what it does and lets club leaders control what goes on in their clubs or roleplays. But it could also be used for the intended purpose, such as a Tech-Geeks club or Steam Gamers club, or even Pokémon Fan Club or Bible Black Fan Club (You get the point). We're currently not entirely sure how to implement it for our site because there are a load of options and not much in the way of clear answers (So we'd appreciate your feedback!) There are four types of clubs: Public - Anyone can see it, and post in it without even joining the club. Open - Anyone can see, and join but they can't post unless they're a member of the club. Closed - Clubs that anyone can see in the directory but joining must be approved by a Club Leader or a Club Moderator. Non-Club Members who view the club will only see the member list - not the recent activity or content areas. Private - Clubs that do not show in public and users must be invited by a Club Leader or a Club Moderator. (Staff can still see them, obviously) For closed clubs there is an approval process, that is exceptionally simple and straightforward "Accept" (Tick) or "Reject" (Cross). Leaders (And I think Moderators) get a notification when a Dreamer requests to join and the Dreamer gets a notification if they've been accepted or rejected. Club Users: Each club has three levels of user, this is why we think it is exceptionally powerful for the roleplay suites, because it allows the Club Leader to moderate the content, and the roleplays they'd run under this system, as well as appoint a single or a few club moderator(s) to do the same. However I do not believe that you can have more than one leader, the "Club Administrator" if you will. Leader - A leader has all of the permissions of a moderator, and can add other moderators. They can also add content areas, which I'll get into shortly. The club owner is automatically the leader of it. Moderators - As the name implies, Club Moderators have the ability to moderate content posted within the club. The actual permissions of the moderator is currently not set at this time, and can only be done from a Site Administrator level (Read below). Users - Anyone else that joins the clubs. The Moderator permissions feature would be perfect for large roleplays as this is currently not possible with the current format of doing it on the forums (As the topic starter is required to send an EcchiText to a staff member to deal with problem Dreamers) This why we're going to have to think about how this is implemented because what we set has to be universal across all clubs for (as far as I can tell) Club Administrators and Club Moderators. A follow up announcement will be posted explaining in detail (In the interests of transparency) what the permission sets are for Club Moderation. The current permission settings are as follows: None of these permissions are currently active, but this is what we have to work with, so any feedback is appreciated, as a Club Leader cannot pick and choose, as I said it's universal across all clubs. If you'd like more information please ask in the comments below, I will endevour to answer them. I will add my personal recommendations, and explain why I think this way. Club Leaders should be extremely careful about picking Club Moderators, if it's someone you can't trust - they shouldn't be a moderator, at this time there is no way of distinguishing permissions between the two as far as I am aware. The only difference is the Leader can appoint and fire moderators of their club, not the other way around, and a moderator can't do that to other moderators of the same club. Pin Content - This makes a topic within the club appear at the top of the topic listings, much like how pinning content works on the Forums. Perfect for rules and such. Unpin Content - Self explanatory. Edit Content - Ability to edit other people's posts. I wholly recommend that this is left off for obvious reasons. Hide Content - Hiding something doesn't mean deleting, it's more of a shadowban of that post. Hidden posts would flag the Community's Senior Staff Member, if asked or required to delete said content. Unhide Content - Unhiding hidden content. View Hidden Content - This allows the moderator to see content they've hidden. I think this should be turned on, it will allow the Club Leaders and Moderators to view the hidden content inline (As it appears, and it should obvious when it's hidden). Set Future Publishing Dates - Content that will remain hidden until a set time/date. I'm not sure at all what this should be set to, because I cannot currently think of a reason why this is needed - at all. Perhaps for special events? Even then I'd assume that the club leader should be responsible for that. View Content with a Future Publish Date - Basically it'll be visible to the Club Leader, and Moderator if enabled. If you can do the above, I think you should be able to see it otherwise it'll vanish until the date set, thus not giving you time to re-proofread your content. Move Content - To move something from one area of the club to somewhere else within the club. I personally don't think this should be enabled, because it can be quite destructive, but this is why I want to hear your feedback. Lock Content - The ability to lock a topic within the Club. I think this should be enabled. Unlock Content - The ability to unlock a locked topic. Likewise I think this should be enabled. Reply to Locked Content - So you can lock immediately, and worry about adding a reply later. Perfect for situations where it's so heated that there is a new post every second or something. Or to add rules, or something. I wish we could separate the two permissions of Club Leader and Club Moderator, because I think that should be up to the Club Leader but I'd love to hear feedback. Delete Content - To make content within the club disappear, forever. I do not believe this should be enabled because in a "Rogue Moderator" scenario they would be able to effectively destroy your club. Hiding content, is in my opinion the best way to go, that and if it's something serious (ToS violating, such as someone posting someone else's dox) then Community Staff need to see that for evidence to take appropriate action, as we do not accept screenshots due to the fact that tech savvy individuals can alter things on a page using a browser console, which can be used to frame someone. We act on hard evidence. Split and Merge Content - If someone double posts, or makes a similar topic then it allows one to merge them together. I do not believe this should be enabled because it is destructive if used by a Club Moderator who's gone rogue, this is why I recommended hide content rather than deleting content because I don't think Moderators should have access to potentially destructive tools, Community Moderators don't even have this ability. Hidden content can be made visible again, merged content on the other hand -- not so much. What is "Club Content" and why do you keep saying it?! Club Leaders can add a varity of content areas to their club(s). Forums, Calendars and Images (Exactly like the Gallery). They will appear in search results and activity streams*, users can follow them, embed links to them and so on. If a user has permission to see a forum (For example) within a club it will behave exactly like other forums they see, and the same for all kinds of content. Each content area a leader adds can have a custom title and will appear in the club's navigation menu. This means you can have multiple forums within a club and give each a different name. * Depending on type of club. I believe we can indeed do both Social Clubs and Roleplay Clubs, and have them searchable/filterable, and the club owner can select what kind of club it is. For example "General Club" for Social Clubs, "Fan Club" for well, fan clubs and "Roleplay Clubs" for Roleplays. I think this is the best way of doing it, honestly. But I am very interested in hearing ideas, and if you have a different kind of club in mind - then by all means talk to us, lets see what we can do. Complete Your Profile! In an effort to make registration quicker and easier, we now offer a stripped down registration form that only asks for required information. You can either sign in with Google+, Facebook or Twitter which is exceptionally quick and should be painless. Or fill out: Display Name Email Address Password (And Confirm Password) Birthday (Because you have to be over 18). Then check a box that says "I'm not a robot", and that you agree to the Terms of Service, then that's it. You're in*. What it will then do is allow you to use EcchiDreams as normal, and you'll be asked to make a signature, upload a profile cover and avatar which you can do whenever you like. Simple! You even get a little progress bar in your Account Settings control panel. *Email Validation Required. Depending on SpamScore, Administrator Verification may be required. Terms of Service apply. Device Management When you sign in to EcchiDreams for the first time a special "Key", a Cookie (Not the editable kind, sadly), is created to recognise your browser on subsequent logins. Which allows you to say logged into EcchiDreams without having to put in your username and password every single time you come to EcchiDreams (because that would be annoying as fuck). This then stores said information for you to see in your "Recently Used Devices" under your account settings that allows you to do a few things. Firstly you can disable automatic login from the device you're on or - say if you've left your phone somewhere, you can use your computer to sign out. It also allows you to see if your account has been compromised, if strange devices from strange locations start appearing you can sign them out. -> Then change your password, and set up Two-Factor Authorisation, which we provide through Google's Authenticator application. If someone does log into your account with an unknown device (or in an unknown location) then you'll get an be notified via Email - immediately. Please note: "Disable Automatic Login" does not disable the device from using the account, it merely means you have to log back in when you're logged out. Gallery Improvements The gallery has had some major improvements that should make using it much clearer to understand, such as picking an already existing album of yours to add images to. As is adding information to the images rather than copy and pasting information to every image, in a specific batch. To quote IPS directly, In addition to this a number of features have been added to the actual albums rather than per image, such as: Commenting Reviews Reactions Messages Featuring (Mod feature) Hiding (Mod feature) Locking (Mod feature) Reporting Searching Also - if someone uploads (for example) 50+ images to the same album rather than getting 50+ different entries in the Activity Feed they'll all be grouped into one entry, reducing the clutter. Leaderboard Enhancements Our Leaderboard just got a lot more powerful, it's well worth checking out. There are daily, weekly, monthly, yearly and even all time leaderboards, and for different sections. Getting on this leaderboard gives you a trophy in your profile that all logged in Dreamers can see. Yep we're competitive now, deal with it. You can easily search through the different categories and such within the system to see who's the top Dreamer. Richer Embeds I'll just show with some examples, because it's amazing! Time for some shilling. (Might not show if you're not logged in): A Gallery Image: A Gallery Album: A Topic: A specific post: Rules: News: YouTube (Not me, just a random video): Twitter: Facebook: And you get the point, although at the time of posting this, I do not know why there are black boxes around it. That's a bug and it'll be fixed, if you don't see that then it's been fixed already. Moving on: Our Picks This is another useful and new feature with IPS4 that can be found in the menu under "Explore", Our Picks. It is content we've hand picked by the Community Administrators. It allows us to promote content, which is consistent, an advantage that community platforms like EcchiDreams have over social media platforms. The content on our community is generally speaking, going to always be here where as a social network is all about the right here and right now, if you blink you miss it and miss out. This will mean content put in Our Picks is posted on our Facebook Fanpage and Twitter as well (I will be testing it with this article). Reactions Gone are the days of simply "Liking" posts, now you can react to them, we've always had requests such as "I wish I could love this" (I got that earlier before the update actually), and with this system you'll be able to do that. We hope to expand it but keep it manageable (IE: Not a million different reactions). It is also touch friendly (For our Mobile Dreamers). There are currently five reactions that play a part in reputation scores, they are: Standard Like - Adds 1 point to the receiver's reputation. Thanks - Adds 1 point to the receiver's reputation. Haha - Adds 1 point to the receiver's reputation. Confused - Doesn't add reputation. Sad - Doesn't add reputation. I am thinking about changing the standard like to a thumbs up, and making the like icon to "Love" which will add 2 points to the receiver's reputation. There is some talk amongst @Neptune and I about adding negative reputation but we've not used this since 2010/2011 when it was abused to bully other Dreamers by a particularly nasty piece of work that racked up hundreds of fake accounts, as well as mass down-rep'ing a lot of people's posts using bot/scripts, and pretty much successfully managed to give nearly everyone that ever posted negative reputation for no reason. So I'd love to hear your feedback on that especially. And that's it, there are many fixes and tweaks all over the place, and probably many new bugs (Because this update went way too smoothly) so be sure to check them out and let us know what you think in the comments below. I do read all of them and if it warrants it I will reply or at least leave a reaction, to show I've read it. ------------------ Article Image Artist: qbspdl (Yes, really) Links: Pixiv I chose this image because it's an artist we've never covered before and they have some very good art. You should, if you like this picture, check out their other work on the above Pixiv link. It's got great attention to detail and makes a good use of the colours, with it being quite vivid and bright, and yet it's not over saturated. It also has a very 'picture' look, as if someone was taking a picture with a camera, as it's nicely framed by the foliage of the trees and flowers. Despite some details looking simplistic (such as the birds) it's still quite nicely done, and the use of multi-toned colours for the ocean is, in my opinion perfect for this picture. Thank you for reading. We're EcchiDreams, wishing you a very Ecchi Summer.

Hello fellow EcchiDreamers! As promised I'm making another announcement although it's probably going to be a small one, to keep you up-to-date on the changes we've been making to EcchiDreams over the last few weeks. There's been no major changes that's going to require re-learning of everything, just little changes here and there to look and be "More Presentable". In the last update I spoke of a few things that I knew needed to be fixed or changed in someway in "plans for the future" so what I will do is report on these fronts first before getting into the other cool changes. Not that much has been changed here; the forms are still the same format and so on, but we have included a few things that I personally think is good to have on the page in that section for both mobile and desktop users alike. I've put some stuff into the sidebar of the Roleplayer Preferences that are relevant to what roleplayers are looking for as well as a roleplaying advert (Link requires being logged in), as well as the latest roleplays from our Public Roleplaying Section, and latest BBS posts from our Private Roleplayers Bulletin Board and finally a Dashboard button for easier navigation. Of course I should point out in being completely honest: When I spoke of the changes in the last announcement, I spoke of bigger changes that meant an easier time actually filling out the form; and viewing other preference sheets. This is still being designed, worked out, and there is still no date. Similarly the Private Roleplayers BBS has had a few changes done to it too, specifically in the sidebar. This is still being worked on, and I'll be working through November to get this done by the promised deadline. I will say this however - we've scrapped the bug tracker system. So, this is obviously a big thing that I will need to discuss next, but before that... We have a lot of avenues for getting the support you need, as quickly as possible. You can: Use the "Contact Us" link at the bottom left of our page. Send an EcchiText to any of the staff members. Ask a question in the Community Questions forum; this is where anyone from the community, or staff can answer you. Popular questions will even make it to our FAQ's. Try and find a tutorial. Or even make one. Read our FAQ's. This is complete but it also has been pretty much scrapped all together. "Pretty much" being the operative words there. I have decided to do away with the bug tracker (at least from the public point of view) because it either made more confusion for everyone involved, and because most people sent Manni, Neptune or even me an EcchiText saying they 'think' they've found a bug. That seems like a pretty simpler solution to me, and boy do we need simpler solutions for things. With that said I will still be handing out 'rewards' or 'bounties' in the form of EcchiCredits to those that tell us these things and we deeply appreciate it too. The bounties are as follows, for non-security related bugs: Badly worded/Grammatical/Spelling Mistakes - Variable Low Severity - 100 EcchiCredits Medium Severity - 250 EcchiCredits High Severity - 500 EcchiCredits Severe Severity - Upto 1,500 EcchiCredits Critical Severity - Upto 2,500 EcchiCredits The bounties are as follows for security related (which are extremely rare) bugs: Minor Security Flaw/Bug - 2,500 EcchiCredits Major Security Flaw/Bug - 5,000 EcchiCredits Critical Security Flaw/Bug - 10,000 EcchiCredits + Bonus To report a bug; just send any of the staff an EcchiText, you'll be credited in the bug report. The first person to report a specific bug is the person who will get the EcchiCredits; as a result anyone who reports a pre-existing bug will be told that we know about it, but thank you. I think this system is very fair. IMPORTANT REMINDER! When you tell us of a bug, any screenshots, the page URL and your browser name (and version if you can help it) would be valuable information to us for tracking it down. Steps you took to get to the bug is very important to us; as it allows us to try and reproduce the bug. Thanks! This system is now up! Test for yourself with this link:- https://google.com/ you should get something like this: Maybe I can apply a little humour to it? Like you are now probably leaving the dark corners of the internet. Lol. There is no updates to the Awards and EcchiCredit systems; other than we updated the EcchiCredit one to fix some bugs that staff picked up on. Now we get down to what I didn't announce would be changing but has in fact changed other than the myaid of tweaks and fixes no one wants me to bore them with. Homepage Changes On our homepage (when you're logged in of course) I've made a number of changes that has radically altered the layout of the page. Such as latest news articles has a prominent feature under the userbar. The sidebar has also been re-ordered, so that the Roleplay Adverts appear above the fold. Profile Changes The profile cover is now slightly larger! @Neptune pointed out that the profile covers were too small, and as such it sucked as to what images you could put in there and how much of the image would be displayed. This has now been increased so you can make more out of your image of choice to make your profile, your own. Site-wide/Non-specific or Misc Changes We, proudly, use a "Skin" from IPSFocus, called Shift, which I've heavily modified for use on our website, who have made a number of improvements since the last update, such as tweaks for mobile users with the colour picker and general optimisations as well as minor tweaks. You may have noticed axes, spiders and bats around - this is because (built into what you get from IPSFocus) seasonal things during Halloween, Christmas and Valentines Day. We've always (except for last year) done something over Christmas and this year we'll be doing something beyond flicking a switch. The Roleplayer Advert Terms and Conditions have also been changed to increase the amount of days you get with an advert post from 14 days to 28 days at the same cost. Post Counts A lot of you will have noticed that your post count has plummeted (including mine which was at 9,200 odd and now is down to 4,600 or so...) This is because of a cleanup that removed topics that haven't even been visible for a better half of this year (such as when we did the roleplaying changes). Of course I've also cleaned out my old development suite which had lots of posts and such that were made during the Beta period, which was never (and never intended to be) public. This is more of a correction to the record, rather than just us arbitrarily going on a deleting spree. News Articles Our news section has had massive changes. Previously our articles were in the same format as much of the site, and it wasn't that great... Now they actually look like articles rather than in the exact same format as the tutorial section. Obviously we'll be making tweaks over the coming weeks but this is an example, which you can see as you read this too: Because of the changes to the news articles and their altered the formatting: Limits that were originally placed, such as the fact that we only used JPGs that were 200x200 (doesn't look good on the new format) have been lifted. I plan on rolling this out to the community articles section by next year as well, so we can see better quality things coming out a lot more frequently in future. And that's pretty much it, in the spirit of keeping to our facebook stuff I will be doing something else different at the end of each News Article, depending on if its wanted or not (Leave a comment). I use images that I pick up from places like Pixiv, Yande.re and so on, as such these images have copyrights which absolutely belong to the respected artists. In the keeping with our tradition though, I'll be giving more than just an image credit by saying what I personally like about the image, why I chose it and where you can go to find more of their art. This - I hope - will be seen as a sign of respect rather than "OUR IMAGE NAOW!!!" which is not what it is at all. I want more artists, and I want the artists that have done a good job on something to get the credit they're due, and to funnel people who genuinely like their art to seek them out. That said if you're an artist and you're not happy with this - please get in touch with me and I will add you to a DNP (Do not post) list that will apply here on EcchiDreams, and on Facebook (or wherever else we do this service). Image Credit: Artist: RedEyeHare Links: ArtStation | Pixiv | Deviant Art Other than the fact that it was relevant I used this picture because it's exactly what I was looking for when I thought 'Ecchi, Halloween, Good Quality and Potentially Triggering' and I really like it. I think the level of detail and yet not looking complicated, is something that seems to be a dying art. I think it's perfectly balanced and absolutely reasonable. The colours work well together, and of course the rather devilishly attractive lady is very fitting for the picture. It's very well drawn, indeed! It's certainly something I appreciated looking at and I hope you do too. I highly recommend checking out their art - I've had a look myself and I've found a few other pictures I really liked the looks of too. Thank you for reading. We're EcchiDreams, wishing you a very Ecchi Halloween.

Hello fellow EcchiDreamers! In July of last year, we started the process called ‘The Big Update’ Open-beta, where we set out to finish our major update to the community now that it was on the IPS4 software made by Invision Power Services. Today, 6th September 2016, we come out of Beta into “Full Release”. I want to thank members of the community who did come out and give us feedback, as well as the other members of staff who’ve all been working hard during the past year in this heavy developmental process. We expect that updates will continue; however, the main bulk of this big update is now over, and we can actually start getting back to what we love more. Other Features and Updates There have been so many changes, some of which didn’t stay for long during the beta period, and I apologise for not getting announcements on those during this time; I’ve also been quiet on the announcement front, so I hope to correct this and cover as many new features as possible in this announcement. There are changes that did get their own announcements as planned, however: Leave of Absence Improvements - This is where we discussed the evolution of our LoA system; where we turned what was once a “post as a topic” thing into an account setting option. Help Section and more Updates - In this announcement, we talk about the new community help section, as well as information on our EcchiTheme Update, Chatbar (EcchiChat), Activity Feed, Account Deactivation and so on. New Feature: Community Dashboard - A still somewhat new idea to improve on with feedback. A friendly GUI navigation menu, that is mobile and desktop compatible. Roleplay Suite Updates - Major changes to the scenario roleplay area, and grand overhaul of the entire section. Roleplay Suite Updates (Part 2) - Did I mention… Grand overhaul? This announcement focused on the Private Roleplayers Bulletin Board, as well as a new ‘EcchiApp’ called a Sandbox. Community Help and Support Area Updates https://ecchidreams.com/help/ The Community Help and Support area has been radically updated since this announcement, and it’s become the one stop place for everything involving help and support on EcchiDreams. There is a new feature as well as an old feature that have now been blended into these sections. FAQ Section https://ecchidreams.com/faq/ The Frequently Asked Questions section is something we had tried to do before, back in 2011-2013. We’ve tied this into the Community Help Area to help those that might be confused a little when they first sign up, as well as veterans to EcchiDreams who might not have been on in a while alike. Bug Tracker https://ecchidreams.com/help/bugs/ The bug tracker is somewhere that Dreamers can post bugs they’ve found. Usually there is a bounty in the form of EcchiCredits for each one found. We are always vigilant for bugs, and attempt to correct them as quickly as possible. We thank everyone who reports them and we welcome these mistakes being pointed out to us with open arms. Bugs are classified in a number of ways: Spelling/Grammatical Mistakes - If something is spelt incorrectly or words don’t flow correctly, then we welcome this and will update them as quickly as possible. Permission Error Bugs - Something that you should have access to, but don’t. Or something you shouldn’t, but do. Application Faults - An App that has gone wrong or doesn’t function in the way it should. Security Flaws/Faults - Something that allows you to do something you’re really not supposed to do, which causes security issues. Things such as being able to hijack other accounts and read other people's EcchiTexts for example (These are exceptionally rare - and offer the biggest bounty) A link (that isn’t in a post) that doesn’t work correctly. And so on... Major ToS Updates https://ecchidreams.com/rules/terms-of-service-r1/ The Terms of Service on EcchiDreams have been radically updated, and now goes in the complete opposite direction to a number of sites online today; specifically one of our major changes, Section 15 under Offensive or Inappropriate Posting:- This protection doesn’t rely on the First Amendment of the United States Constitution; instead we are going to call upon Article 19 of Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We don’t expect to be perfect; we expect mistakes to be made, but we will try to minimise these mistakes and correct any that are made as soon as possible. We also outlined some of the new features and updated the roleplay section. Lastly, from now going forwards, all documents in ecchidreams.com/rules will have the document’s last updated date in an effort to be more open and transparaent about changes. The last updated signature will be located at the top of the document: EcchiCredits https://ecchidreams.com/ecchicredits/ EcchiCredits has made a come back, although it’s not yet up to the same level of features as the previous one. With the above link you should be able to see the transactions of the entire community (as this is an open and transparent system). We aim to slowly improve on this over time, making the EcchiCredit system more useful as an internal contribution-based economy within EcchiDreams. So far, the only thing you can really use EcchiCredits for on this site is the Roleplayer Adverts, or if someone is selling their on site services for EcchiCredits. https://ecchidreams.com/help/tutorials/roleplay/more-information-public-roleplaying-r26/ Homepage Improvements https://ecchidreams.com/ The Homepage has had some very major changes since we opened back up a year ago into Beta. For a start, we’ve made the homepage for guests more informative, and much quicker to load. We’ve explained as best as we could, whilst keeping it concise, what goes on on EcchiDreams, as well as what we do and why. For people who are logged in, the homepage is useful for another purpose, although this is still experimental, and we hope to improve it with feedback as time goes on. When you’re logged in you will be welcomed by site depending on what time of day/night it is; we hope to eventually make this change on an hourly basis. At the moment it contains everything that used to be on the community index page. Such as: Personalised Greetings Message What staff are online right now. A userbar that shows a piece of your profile cover, avatar, “dreams” count (posts on the Forums/Roleplays and images in the Gallery), as well as reputation. Dreamer of the Month widget. RP Advert Latest public and custom posts and topics (With Private ones coming soon) Dashboard buttons Latest Gallery Uploads Recent Status Updates (with the ‘Read More’ option that I touched on in the first announcement) Who’s been online in the last 24 hours. Who’s online right now. We have also made sure to make it as mobile and desktop friendly as possible. Further Roleplay Section Enhancements https://ecchidreams.com/community/forum/68-roleplay-suite/ There have been a number of updates to our Roleplay Suite, as we’ve now finished the bulk of it and even most minor tweaks. The section has fundamentally changed since EcchiDreams first started, and even since we first went into Beta last year because of the Big Update. As such, we’ve written a handful of guides to help you get started, as well as made some enhancements. Roleplay Adverts Enhancements https://ecchidreams.com/dashboard/roleplayers/adverts Last year, we introduced Roleplay Adverts; the idea was that people who wanted to advertise their roleplays on EcchiDreams could do so. You might be thinking “I bet I have to pay for this…”, and you’d be right… though we only accept EcchiCredits. We’ve made this system better, so you can keep a track of all roleplay adverts running on our site: Each one also contains a log including things such as when it was last active, when it last ended, how many times it’s been run, and an advert status, as seen below: The statuses are: Awaiting Approval - Each advert is manually approved before being put into the advertising system, which then goes live on EcchiDreams. This is the default setting when submitting an advert. Awaiting More Information - It was manually checked; however, there are pieces of information missing or unclear. We’ll send you an EcchiText in these circumstances. Rejected - The advert in question violated our advertising policy, and will be hidden from all members but you and the staff. You’ll either get an EcchiText explaining why it was rejected, or a comment will be left. Approved - The advert is accepted and is currently running on EcchiDreams. Approved, Not Started Yet - The advert is accepted, and will begin running on EcchiDreams on the date you specified. Expired - The Advert was accepted, and ran for the duration of the advertising period without problems. Campaign Suspended - This could be for a myriad of reasons. If the advert is reported for false advertising for example, and it’s been confirmed by staff, then the advert will be suspended. If the roleplay goes under construction, or the dreamer has been banned or they’ve had to leave on an emergency Leave of Absence. It’s not necessarily wrong doing. If you didn’t literally ask us to suspend the campaign we’ll tell you that it has been. In the future we’ll inform you how many views and clicks your advert got during its runtime. Public Roleplay Tags https://ecchidreams.com/community/forum/78-public-roleplaying/ During the Roleplay Overhaul, we changed the tags of the public roleplay section, so that they mentioned their Difficulty Rating. However, a Dreamer brought up an issue we hadn’t considered while doing it. We’ve since changed these, and have updated the guides to reflect the changes. The new prefixes that go near the topic title are as follows: Open - Open to everyone. You would require your roleplayers to fill out a Character ID. This doesn’t stop you from putting in your own restrictions though. For example you could only want human characters or something, it just means that people can make a Character ID and start roleplaying with no troubles. Invite Only - If you're setting up an RP for a group of your friends, or you'll be inviting others to the roleplay, then this is the option for you. Dreamers might still ask if they can join; and should take no for an answer, if that's your choice. If you want you can choose to put “I will ask you, don’t ask me.” Or something to that effect in your opening page, under the rules. Apply to RP (Open) - You want people to apply before roleplaying. Great for higher difficulty roleplays, where you want to screen roleplayers, for quality reasons first, there’s no reason why you can’t even ask to see a Roleplayer Preferences sheet as in theory, if filled out correctly this should contain a lot of information you’ll want to read in order to decide if that person is good enough to roleplay with. You'll need to put the detailed application instructions in your OOC or Extra Information Topic, wherever you feel it's appropriate really and link it from your opening post. You can take applications over EcchiTexts or the OOC, which ever you are more comfortable with. Apply to RP (Full) - You wouldn't and really shouldn’t start with this. When you have everyone you need to start the roleplay, you can edit your first post and turn it from open to full. No CID Required - This is rare; outside of casual and cannot be used with Intermediate Roleplays or higher... Usually. If in doubt message a staff member first. Game Masters Corner https://ecchidreams.com/community/forum/118-game-masters-corner/ The Game Master’s Corner is a brand new feature to the Public Roleplaying Section. The idea behind this is to be a place where you can talk with fellow Dreamers when setting up a roleplay, to bounce ideas, and even get people who are willing to join the roleplay. Sandbox https://ecchidreams.com/community/forum/9-sandbox/ If you are trying to design your page for the roleplay section, write a guide, store a note, or maybe get to grips with how our editor works, and so on, and you’d like somewhere to test or build it before making it live, this is the forum for you. Only you and staff members can see your topics here. We highly recommend against using the sandbox to store passwords, accounts, and personal (considered) private notes for two simple reasons: as mentioned before, staff can see this forum and all topics within it, and it's just not a very smart idea in general. Roleplay Guides https://ecchidreams.com/help/tutorials/roleplay/ We’ve added a fair few roleplay guides to get you started with our Roleplay Suite; they are extensive, fully detailed guides, written by roleplayers for roleplayers. Of course, you are free to make a guide if you want to as well; you’ll be credited as it’s author and shown automatically as the poster of the guide. The guides we’ve included so far are: Public Roleplay: The Game Master’s Guide - This is an extremely large guide that is great when you might be stuck for ideas, or what to do, when making your own public roleplay. We talk about the things you should consider here, such as what the guide covers, stuff to think about before you start making your roleplay, what the premise, plots and storylines will be, how your universe works, the characters and NPC’s within the story, opening post formats, tips, tricks, and protips. It’s an all encompassing guide that will help you get started making your own roleplays. Introductions: Crash Course in Roleplaying - If you’re new to roleplaying, or new to EcchiDreams, and would like a ‘crash course’ where we explain what roleplaying is, what it’s about, define what the abbreviations, terminology and roleplaying jargon is on the site, start here. We talk about the ground rules, and what most people expect, or don’t like or want in their roleplays, how to join a roleplay on EcchiDreams, and even briefly touch on how to create a roleplay on EcchiDreams. Private Roleplaying and You - This brief guide tells you, in a simple enough way, how to create a Private Roleplay. It also outlines some baseline rules in regards to the section. Premium Roleplaying and You - Same as the previous, except for the fact that it’s for Premium Roleplays. Public Roleplaying and You - Same as the previous two, except it’s for the Public Roleplays. Roleplaying Etiquette - A guide that helps you with the etiquette when roleplaying, and interacting other roleplayers like making sure to read posts properly, and to not have your character suddenly interrupt the interaction between characters when it is unwelcomed and not discussed before hand. This is especially handy for newer roleplayers, who want to know how to treat other roleplayers. How to make a roleplay character - A guide that helps you with the process of creating a character. It goes through a step by step process of creating a character that shows you some tips and tricks to make a good, detailed character. More Information: Public Roleplaying - Something that is linked to the homepage under this topic. It’s a basic informational page that goes into more information about Public Roleplaying. More Information: Private Roleplaying - The same as the previous; except it goes into more information about Private Roleplaying. More Information: Premium Roleplaying - The same as the previous two, except it pertains to the Premium Roleplays. EcchiDreams Standard Character ID - This is adapted from the Character IDs from the old Scenario roleplays. Its purpose is to be a default that Game Masters can use for their own roleplay. It’s not a rule to have to use this, but it’s a good point to start from. Add or take away from it as much as you like; you’re free to use it. EcchiDreams Standard Roleplaying Rules - Again, this is adapted from the Rules of the old Scenario Roleplays. Like with the Character ID, its intended purpose is to be a default set of rules that a Game Master can apply to their own roleplay. Rules can be removed, or added depending on what the Game Master wants. It’s not a rule to have to use this, but it’s a good starting point. Please note that, regardless of the rules you use for your roleplay, you are still bound by the standard rules of EcchiDreams. Roleplay Difficulty Guide - This outlines the difficulties found within the Public Roleplays. It also gives you an idea of what to expect from a roleplay of that difficulty, such as detailed character IDs and extra information for an Expert Roleplay. General Navigational Tweaks Site Wide We’ve made navigation slightly easier on EcchiDreams; for example, clicking ‘Explore’ will no longer take you to a page, as this was frustrating for many EcchiDreamers. In addition, we’ve made the navigational menu follow a certain, logically set behaviour, to make it less of a nightmare. In the most recent beta update we also gave each menu its own icon, as well as turned ‘+Create’ into a pencil, and gave everything under that its own icon too. A little while ago, we also enhanced the search button to make it easier to search for things on EcchiDreams. As you start typing in what you’re looking for, it will scan the indexes and find the thing you’re looking for based on what you type in. The more you type the more accurate it becomes. In a way, it predicts what you might be looking for in a similar way to autocomplete. We listened to the numerous complaints about how navigating EcchiDreams was like ‘trying to navigate around a Kraken’ and, well, we hope that this helps you tell the tentacles from the tits. Activity Stream https://ecchidreams.com/discover/ A feature of IPS that we simply love. Discover the latest and newest dreamers, posts, topics, images, and other content (or ‘Dreams’) with our Activity Stream. It is an evolution and enhancement of our VNC (View New Content) system from before the update. If you, for example, have an RSS feed on your phone or computer, then you can stay up-to-date with everything EcchiDreams through this feed. All the lists update automatically, and can easily be expanded and condensed. There are several streams you can choose from such as: Site Wide Activity Only Unread Content Content you Started Content you Follow Content from Dreamers you Follow And so on. And if you think we were done there, then boy, do we have a surprise for you. In addition to our default streams, you can also customise and make your own streams to better discover the content you want, which you can even share with other Dreamers; for example, if you want a stream when someone posts a new roleplayer preferences sheet, or if there have been any updates in the news and announcements area, or even if someone posts a private roleplayers bulletin notice - you can totally do that, and all of them have their own RSS feeds too. Our Activity Streams is extremely customisable and powerful. EcchiText Security https://ecchidreams.com/ecchitexts/ If you’re sent an EcchiText by a member of staff on this community, you are treated to this verification badge that allows you to easily check and verify that the person who sent you the message is indeed a member of staff. Gallery Updates https://ecchidreams.com/gallery/ The gallery has had some new categories put in, such as Character IDs and Extra Informations. The idea is that you can create albums in there as appropriate, so you can easily find them later. The gallery has also been somewhat opened up again. Unlike previously; you can have a practically infinite number of albums to upload your images to, rather than just three like you used to have. Languages Site Wide One of the major criticisms we had was the classic American/British English divide, where the site would spell things like ‘Color’ as ‘Colour’. Obviously this made the American Grammar Police shit their bed; likewise, when we changed it to American English, we had problems from the British Grammar Police. Well, in order to settle this once and for all, there are now two languages you can chose from: English (USA) and English (UK), although it doesn’t change spelling within Dreamers posts or anything like that. What it does change is the date format (MM/DD/YYYY > DD/MM/YYYY), which can be quite confusing for some, especially on a day like 05/06/1990 which could be either the sixth of May, or the fifth of June, and 06/05/1990 which has the same problem. If you’re from the UK or used to UK Formats, then selecting English (UK) will get rid of this headache for you. Likewise if you’re from the USA, set it to English (USA) Dreamer of the Month https://ecchidreams.com/dotm/ Dreamer of the Month is something new we wanted to try out. Dreamers are elected by others in the community to become the Dreamer of the Month for the next month, and the person with the most votes becomes Dreamer of the Month. We plan on introducing awards (profile trophies) to be given to Dreamers who win this. Plans for the Future Despite all of this, there are many plans of the future, some of which we will share with you today. It’s largely dependent on feedback we get (if any), and we look forward to further empowering this community to do more. Some of the improvements we’re prepared to talk about today are... Improvements to Roleplayer Preferences We have some ideas penned out for an update to our EcchiApp: Roleplayer Preferences. At the moment, this is rather basic, albeit very functional; however, we want to bring more information, settings, and customisability to it, while keeping the interface easy to use and intuitive. The basic idea is that you’ll want to spend ten or fifteen or so minutes filling it all out, and yet only take a fraction of that time actually reading it, because while you might not be editing it everyday, it could be read everyday. We are currently working on an update to this, although we don’t have any time scales or release deadlines, as the improvements are in the very early stages. Community Help and Support Unification Hopefully before Christmas 2016, we’ll have made an update to the Community Help and Support Section, to help Dreamers better get the help they need. By this time, we hope to have more FAQs in our new FAQ system, as well bring in the bug tracker to be a part of the section. By January 2017, getting help and support should be a lot easier and more intuitive, as well as being mobile and guest compatible. Bug Bounties We aim to be more open as to how many EcchiCredits people will earn through reporting bugs, in the interests of openness and transparency. This should be more clear in the bug tracker section before the end of October. External Site Link Information Hopefully, by next week, we should have a new system in place that alerts you that you’re leaving EcchiDreams when clicking a link that takes you away from this site. This will also host our disclaimer that we’re not responsible for the content of the site you’re being linked to, nor is it to be considered an endorsement, yadda yadda yadda… You know, all that ‘legal’ stuff, and information that should basically say something along the lines of ‘If you believe this link to be malicious, spam, or otherwise in violation of our ToS, please go back and report the post so that it can be reviewed by staff.’ Award System To gain little profile trophies for doing tasks on EcchiDreams; like ‘Achievement Get’ things. This is in very, very early stages of development, and isn’t likely to come about until after EcchiCredits are a lot more useful. And finally… EcchiCredits We realise there isn’t a lot you can do with the EcchiCredits at the moment. This is something we’re looking at further working with a third-party developer to make better. The current system is primarily in place so you can earn EcchiCredits for when the system does get its own major overhaul. We fully intend on making this worth it in the end, and will happily take suggestions on what to do with them. There is no roadmap for this, or any fixed timelines, but I promise I will keep you up-to-date as things develop, with full announcements even if it’s not good news. Article Image Credit: Wolfy-Nail

Greetings everyone! One of the common complaints we've had from one to one communication with our fellow Dreamers is about how hard it is to navigate EcchiDreams, and finding the things you want to find. Ease of browsing (As well as Dreamer interaction) is something we're still working on, but we hope this will help immensely; so without further ado, I'd like to introduce you to the Community Dashboard. We wanted to make something that was clean, responsive, and will work on all devices that are compatible with EcchiDreams. We went for a minimalist, and rather clutter free design for ease of access. The buttons are unique to the thing you're looking at, and hopefully over the next few days I will give each dashboard it's own colour theme, for the icons (Like the Community Dashboard has except for buttons going to another). They're also quite big, but not too much so, for people who use touch screens. The Staff here really do listen; so as usual if you find any bugs, spelling mistakes or complete cockup's please direct your complaints here. Likewise if you have any Suggestions, Comments or Feedback about this please post in this thread. It'd be very much appreciated, thank you. If you made it this far; it's a short announcement. To fill it up some more, we'll level with you all, about another feature we're working on bringing back. EcchiDreams, before the Big Update had an achievements/awards system for doing things on this site. We're bringing this back in, with much overhauled system, like it's done properly. It'll also pave the way for future events, and competitions, which we're fairly excited about and starting to somewhat plan out already. We thank you all for being part of EcchiDreams. Sweet Dreams, EcchiDreams Staff PS. The following button will only work, if you're logged in. Community Dashboard

Article Image Cover Credit: Kantoku (カントク) With hundreds if not thousands of changes since we updated in July, the EcchiDreams Beta is going very well (Despite the one or two hiccups, I will get to them later). We did not stop updating in July, although I did stop reporting on it after the 15th of July when I released the Leave of Absence Improvements announcement. Whilst this wasn't intentional this has left many people in the dark about what's going on, save unhelpful or insightful statuses I've randomly posted. The truth is I've been very busy working on EcchiDreams since the update and this announcement will hopefully catch everyone up and inform you of new features released today. The reason is that our change log almost changes daily during a Beta cycle as we're hot on the trail of bugs, and what not. Big Changes from The Last Announcement: This is a summarised list of changes from the last announcement. It is not the complete list as most of the changes have been little tweaks and edits to pave paths for the bigger updates. We have a new default EcchiTheme EcchiDreams a long time ago once had eight or nine themes, with our main theme being dark, over the years however this is been proven to be unnecessary. After NekoLust became the site administrator for EcchiDreams we had a very blue theme, a dark theme, a mobile theme and a lite theme. I kept these maintained because it was ours. Now that we no longer require a mobile theme (Because our site should now be fully responsive) we have just two themes. The "Default" EcchiTheme, and the "Lite" EcchiTheme. So why have we limited choices? You might be asking, and that's a fair question. From the outside it does look like we've reduced the options. But let me explain about the key features of our new theme. The new theme has a user controlled colour pallet, twelve (12) options for primary colours, twelve (12) for secondary colours, this makes one hundred and forty-four (144) different combinations which is by far more options than we've ever had combined. Once more everyone gets a uniform theme, and you have full control on what colours it uses for you. New Chatbar Software Previously we used ArrowChat for our Chatbar needs, however with all the incompatibilities that cropped up and quite frankly shoddy, poor security coding, which just never got fixed. We've switched to an alternative method. Whilst the features are pretty much the same; the look and feel of the chatbar isn't and there's one or two features you might be interested in, such as handwritten messages, deleting messages, view chat history, saving conversations to your device, reporting conversations and even blocking individual people who you don't want talking to you. We'll be constantly updating this to make sure it brings you the best service possible. EcchiChat Page Again, will only work for logged in members, it's a large version of the chatbar, check it out. - https://ecchidreams.com/ecchichat/ Activity Feed You may have noticed that at some point we lost the "View New Content" system. This isn't actually the case; it's been replaced with the Activity Streams section, which allows you to create and share your own activity feed and control what you want to keep an eye on. We have several defaults at the moment, so please check it out when you have time. Some of the default streams are (All Activity), (Unread Content) and so on. Community Help and Tutorial Section - Brand New! Opening today is our new Help and Tutorials Section, something based off a suggestion that @Whoreo had for EcchiDreams and something we've done in the past, kind of merged together. Introducing our Community Help and Tutorial Section (Only available for logged in dreamers) - https://ecchidreams.com/help If there is a feature you're not sure about on the site or you're finding it hard to get started please checkout this new section. If there's no tutorial of it, ask in our Community Questions Forum! If you know your way around the site, you can help those that don't if you so wish to. All fellow dreamers can respond. All staff can respond to, this is a community driven project. You can finally deactivate your account - Brand New! We have changed the system involved in the deactivation of ones account. Previously you had to ask a staff member to deactivate your account and it wasn't the best system to have in place. Ultimately it led to users having no real control over their account, and had to rely on staff to do the whole process, which was difficult because only Community Administrators have that level of ability. We now have an automated, staff reviewed system in place, that allows you to deactivate and re-activate your account at any time! Please read our Tutorial on it which shows you how it works and how to do it. Sure it'd be sad to see anyone leave but now people actually have the choice, rather than having to do it the long and horrible way -- it puts you back in control of your account. Current Known Problems: As you may have noticed not all of this has gone swimmingly; there are a number of problems that are still being addressed. EcchiText Security Problem There is a known fault with the EcchiText system that allows an attacker to remotely execute javascript on to a target (victim) computer(s) via EcchiTexts. This message when sent to other people, and if they have notifications enabled, triggers a remote piece of javascript on the targets (the victims) machine. This XSS (Cross Site Script) exploit has been noticed by us before it was used on EcchiDreams, so thankfully no one has been affected by this on EcchiDreams. After testing I confirmed that we maybe vulnerable to this attack, and as a precaution I have disabled the EcchiTexts system until the problem is patched. I want to make it clear - there's no need to panic, there's no need to change your passwords and dump all your files and nuke your computers, we've not been hacked or anything like that. We'll have this problem solved soon and it'll be secure and online again. Emojis We've had a bit of a problem with the Emoji's and emoticons on EcchiDreams lately, and as such the whole feature has been removed until we can work out what's going on. Unlike the previous fault this is not a security problem, although the coding that the third-party developer did was simply shocking and wrong, and the whole thing has to be re-done from scratch. Something I've not been happy about to say the very least. We'll keep you informed. Missing Features The EcchiCash/EcchiCredits and Awards/Achievements systems are still not complete; and way behind schedule. There are a number of reasons for this, on our end we're waiting for third party developers, and on their end they're waiting for proper documentation, and so on. I will keep you up-to-date on this, however I anticipate release early/mid 2016 (I am not promising this). Of course once the actual applications are released by the third party developers, I can then start working on them to adapt them to EcchiDreams. I have been Beta testing them for the third party developers in a closed beta, and I can confirm it is definitely being worked on, but I cannot talk more specifically about it. Upcoming "Things": There are a few things we've currently got in the works, and are being developed such as; Resources Navigation We're making page menus that have icons on them to take you to the relevant places on EcchiDreams, like RP Adverts, RP Preferences, etc, etc. These will consist of simple pages with 300x150 images on them as well as a title that will take you to the section when you click/tap on it. Sounds uncomplicated, and it really is. It'll be easily maintained and allow members something that might make their navigational experience easier. We will announce when this is done and we will welcome all feedback on it, as usual. Rules, rules, rules... More sodding rules Er- no actually. We plan relaxing the rules even further! Not only that but our Terms of Service will be tweaked and bettered and our Community Guidelines will be getting a complete re-write because of how out of date they are, and they're supposed to be the layman's version of the Terms of Service. In addition our Privacy Policy will feature a "Laymans" version as well as a technical version, which will also be brought into the year 2016. In closing... I am not very good at these announcements. But as always if you have any questions leave them in the comments below, and I will try to answer them. Also feedback and constructive criticism is invited.