Showing results for tags 'ecchidreams'.

Hello fellow Dreamers, In a previous announcement, we addressed some of the most common misconceptions about our gallery. If you haven't already, I highly recommend giving it a read. Subsequently, we introduced a new definition under Section 18 of our Terms of Service: As you may have noticed, we have been diligently working on enhancing our gallery policies, striving to make them more robust and less prone to misinterpretation (I will delve into the reasons behind avoiding vague rules later on). With that in mind, we are ready to unveil our most significant gallery policy change since the introduction of the "Character Only" gallery in 2021, which was changed, initially implemented as a measure to conserve disk space. One of the pieces of feedback I received was that this last major change was not properly communicated; which is fair and is why I am going to the length and effort that I am going to now. I believe in treating our community with honesty and respect, so I want to lay out the situation and the problem on the table and share our proposed solution. We understand that not everyone will be in favour of these changes, but we genuinely value your feedback, criticism, and suggestions. We are committed to listening to you, even if we may not always agree - your voices will be heard. Currently, in addition to Section 18 of the Terms of Service, the gallery has several rules in place: Do not upload GIFs - They are massive and take a lot of bandwidth to serve, something that our mobile users will not appreciate. Standard Gallery Rules Apply - See Section 18 of the Terms of Service. Do not upload images directly to the category - When uploading images please put them into an album to keep the EcchiDreams Gallery tidy. Character Pictures Only - Do not upload image dumps here, as they will be deleted without warning. Under these rules, you were allowed to upload any character-related content for roleplays. However, this also led to users posting numerous images for potential roleplay partners to choose from. For instance, Dreamer A could upload 120 random character images and "face claims" for Dreamers B, C, D, E, and F to select as their roleplay characters or for Dreamer A to portray as other characters. Some of you expressed frustration when we removed an album without warning, considering it as an "Image Dump," even if it might not have been the case. I'm not saying you're right or wrong to feel upset, as we understand we're all caught in a difficult situation. Whilst we’ve gotten good at identifying what is and isn’t an image dump: Our success rate is around 85%, meaning around 15% of what we catch are false positives. I think I speak for all the staff here when I say that the false positives rate is unacceptable and that we have to do something about this. In addition to this issue there has also been a lot of reluctance and hesitation with removing many such albums that have been in violation of the rules, as the last thing we want to do is cause unnecessary drama and animosity with the false positives. So you might be wondering, what exactly constitutes an "Image Dump"? That's an excellent question. The Terms of Service and the site itself don't provide a clear explanation of what an "Image Dump" is. Technically speaking, a collection of characters dumped into an album could be considered an "Image Dump," even if it doesn't violate any rules. To be frank, there is no definitive answer to this question, or at least I can't provide one based on anything other than our subjective perception. When @Aura highlighted this issue with the other staff and myself, we (The Community Administrators) very quickly saw the inconsistency. This kind of vagueness is not acceptable under my administration, and today, with the support of my colleagues, we are taking steps to address this issue. My administration strives to minimise ambiguity in the rules for the following reasons: Vague rules make it difficult for Dreamers to understand what is expected of them, which can lead to confusion and frustration. This can result in Dreamers unknowingly violating rules and being potentially unfairly punished or reprimanded. Vague rules have a greater chance of being applied inconsistently, which can create a sense of unfairness or favouritism. Users may feel like they are being targeted for enforcement while others are seemingly getting away with the same behaviour. Vague rules can be used as a justification for staff to abuse their power. Without clear guidelines, staff members may interpret rules in their own way, and use their interpretations to punish Dreamers for things that are not explicitly prohibited. While this hasn't happened under my administration and I don't believe any of our current staff would do such a thing. This being possible to the point where it could create reasonable doubt in the community, under any circumstance, is an issue. Vague rules can make it difficult for Dreamers to appeal their punishments. If the rules are not clear, users may have a hard time arguing against their punishment, as it is unclear where the boundary is for breaking the rules. The only advice that can be offered at that point is "don't push the boundaries" which is counterproductive to say the very least. Clear rules help establish trust between the community and the staff. When the rules are clearly stated and consistently enforced, Dreamers can have confidence that they are being treated fairly and that the staff is acting in the best interest of the community. I can't stress this point enough. Clear rules also make it easier for users to self-regulate their behaviour. When the rules are well defined, users are more likely to follow them, as they know exactly what is expected of them. Without clear rules, the community may become more toxic or hostile. If Dreamers feel like there are no clear boundaries, they may push the limits of acceptable behaviour, which can create a negative and unwelcoming environment. I firmly believe that having clear and specific rules that are consistently enforced is of utmost importance in maintaining a fair and thriving community. The term "Image Dump" itself presents a problem because it lacks a defined definition, guideline, or any specific information beyond our subjective perception of what constitutes an image dump. We needed to ask ourselves: "Is this level of ambiguity acceptable?" And the answer was a resounding no. Furthermore, we have witnessed repeated instances of this term being abused, either by malicious individuals or those who are unaware of its implications. Therefore, we are implementing a new policy change. Starting from June 24th 2023, we will start to enforce a new rule in Section 18 Sub-Section 1 of the Terms of Service which reads as follows: The above example has not currently been passed by staff and is being tweaked and voted on. It's subject to change and modification based on feedback, on the date. The final version will be in the first comment below this article. What does this mean? This change in our gallery policy entails a significant shift in how the system operates. We have made the rules explicitly clear, and we are now transitioning to a model where each character has its own dedicated album. This means that each album should be created exclusively for one character. If you have multiple characters, you will be required to create separate albums for each of them. It is crucial that each album explicitly states the name of the character it represents. In addition, we will be implementing limitations on the number of albums that can be created site-wide. The allocation of albums between clubs and private roleplay characters will be largely up to you. If you primarily engage in private roleplaying, you can potentially use all your albums for your private roleplay characters. On the other hand, if you are focused on club activities, you have the flexibility to allocate your albums accordingly. We understand that preferences and character dynamics may change over time, and to provide you with greater control, we will be introducing tools that allow you to delete albums for characters you no longer wish to keep. However, please note that the number of albums you can create will be determined by your premium level. Normal Dreamers will have the capacity for up to 32 albums, Gold Dreamers can have up to 66 albums, and Platinum Dreamers can have up to 120 albums. Based on our observations, it is unlikely that many, if any, of you will reach these limits in the near future. However, we remain open to revisiting these limits in the future if necessary, taking into consideration user feedback and usage patterns, to ensure a smooth and enjoyable experience for everyone. It's important to highlight that the premium levels and associated album limits are not intended as a means for financial gain. Premium levels are obtained through the use of EcchiCredits, a contribution-based currency exclusive to our site. We want to assure you that no real-money transactions are involved, making it a fair and inclusive system for all our users. We strive to provide you with the necessary tools and resources to fully express your creativity and immerse yourself in the world of roleplaying. Should you have any questions or concerns regarding album limits or premium levels, please do not hesitate to reach out to our support team. We value your feedback and will consider adjustments to these limits if needed, always with the goal of enhancing your roleplaying experience. But I have multiple images to let people pick from! I understand that you may have multiple images for others to choose from, and we acknowledge that. We suggest using an external image hosting site for this purpose. While we do not have a specific recommendation, some users have utilised platforms like Imgur (which may no longer allow NSFW images) or Imgbox (which does). According to our Terms of Service, you are allowed to link these image collections or folders in your roleplayer preferences sheet's description, status, about me section, etc. However, it is essential to ensure that the hosting site you choose and the content you link comply with both our Terms of Service and the hosting site's rules (as stated in Section 14, Sub-Section 1 of our Terms of Service: You cannot link to sites that violate any sections of our Terms of Service). Some individuals have created private Discord servers to host their images, which they then embed the images directly into their posts. I cannot provide an official stance on whether this is condoned or condemned, as I am unsure of Discord's rules regarding linking to other sites. The key point is that it is still possible to share multiple images, but you must utilise an external image hosting site designed for this purpose. We will now categorise such posts in our gallery as violations of Section 18, Sub-Section 1. You don't want to limit creativity, yet you're going to limit albums. Why? You may be wondering why we have chosen to implement limitations on albums if our goal is to foster creativity and provide a free-to-use service. We want to assure you that we are committed to maintaining a vibrant and unrestricted creative environment. However, there are a few reasons behind this decision: Firstly, the album limitations are in place to prevent potential abuse by malicious individuals who might exploit the creation of infinite albums as a means to circumvent the new policy. By setting reasonable limits, we can ensure a fair and secure platform for all users. Secondly, as a largely independent platform without the support of external funding or monetisation options, we rely on our available resources to sustain and expand our services. While we strive to grow and improve, we also need to manage our disk space effectively to accommodate the growing community. At present, we operate on a modest budget, and the revenue generated from advertisements is primarily utilized to cover the costs associated with hosting the website. We want to be transparent in letting you know that we do not profit from these advertisements, as any earnings are promptly reinvested to sustain the platform. We value your contributions and want to continue providing you with the best possible experience while maintaining the integrity of the community. Our commitment to keeping the platform completely free from data sales, intrusive advertisements, and monetary transactions sets us apart from many other websites. We take pride in upholding these principles and offering a platform where creativity can thrive without compromise. When does this take effect? The policy will take effect one month after this announcement to allow time for community feedback and addressing any concerns. During this period, a top comment below the article will serve as an FAQ to address common questions. Once the policy is implemented and the Terms of Service change takes effect, a transitionary period will begin. The old category, "Private Roleplay Characters (Depreciated)," will be locked in read-only mode, and a new category will be created to replace it. The old category will remain visible for six months to facilitate the transition. During this time, you can move your images to new albums that comply with the new rules. Any albums in the new category that do not meet the rules will be deleted, and the uploader will receive an alert to review the rules and this announcement. I have insisted to the staff that: No punishments, warning points, or infractions relating to this policy change will be issued during the transitionary period. Albums that comply with the new rules on the effective date of the policy will be transferred to the new category, ensuring a seamless service. After six months of implementation, the old category will be removed, and enforcement of Section 18, Subsection 1 will begin. Infraction guidelines for Section 18 violations will likely apply, starting with a minor infraction for the first offence, which results in the removal of the content and an alert to the violator. Further offences will receive a zero-point infraction, and repeated violations may lead to minor warning points (usually 10 or fewer) with a cooldown period of six months or less. If, for any reason, you missed these changes and are within one year of implementation, you can contact us, and we will consider your situation. After one year of implementation, the old category with its images and albums will be deleted, potentially triggering a recount of content, reputation, and site experience points. Why is this a good thing? There are several reasons why we believe this policy change is beneficial for all parties involved: Clarity and Avoidance of Vague Rules: This administration aims to provide clear and specific rules that are easier to enforce. Vague rules can lead to confusion and inconsistent enforcement. By implementing explicit guidelines for the gallery, we ensure everyone understands the expectations and can adhere to them. More Efficient Moderation: The current gallery setup poses significant challenges for moderation. The new policy allows our staff to more effectively moderate the gallery, saving valuable time and resources. This enables them to focus on other important tasks and provide a better overall experience for the community. Enhanced Profile and Character Visibility: The new system brings benefits to the community as a whole. With the one album per character model, people can visit your profile and easily access your characters under the "Albums" tab. This improves visibility and makes it convenient for others to search for specific characters or explore characters in general. It fosters greater connections and engagement within the roleplaying community. Preparation for Future Development: This policy change aligns with our long-term vision. We plan to transition from the current platform to a new system, built for purpose, from the ground up. In the future system, each character will have its own profile page linked to your account, making searching and cataloguing characters even more seamless. By implementing the one album per character model now, we pave the way for smoother integration and improved functionality in the future. These reasons demonstrate the overall benefits of the new policy, including increased clarity, efficient moderation, improved character visibility, and preparation for future advancements. We believe this change will lead to a fairer, healthier, and more connected community. What motivates us to make these kinds of policy changes? In our commitment to transparency, we believe it's important to address this question that we have been asked before. As staff members, we have a core guideline that encapsulates our thought processes behind these decisions. We understand that the ramifications of policy changes can impact hundreds, if not thousands of people and have a significant influence on the overall dynamics of the site. Therefore, undertaking substantial policy changes is not a decision taken lightly. It's crucial to highlight that all policy changes and terms of service amendments go through a rigorous process. They are subject to voting and require a large majority agreement from all staff members. If a consensus cannot be reached, the proposal is either abandoned or revisited to ensure it is workable and aligns with our principles. We want to assure you that we do not make policy changes frequently. However, there are circumstances where change becomes necessary. This can be due to advancements in technology and evolving landscapes that we need to adapt to, or it could arise from a previous policy that, while well-intentioned on paper, proves to be impractical or detrimental in practice. Occasionally, we may relax certain policies if the existing tools are sufficient to handle potential issues, or we may strengthen measures to combat malicious actors. Often, it's a combination of various factors. When deliberating policy changes, we consider several key aspects, including but not limited to: Community's best interest: We assess the impact of changes on the overall health and well-being of the community. This encompasses considerations such as disk space, site speed, user interface, and functionality. While these aspects may affect individuals, our aim is to create an environment that benefits the community as a whole. Individuals within the community: We strive to avoid creating policies that create a labyrinth of rules where a single misstep could result in a complete ban from the site. That's why we make our Terms of Service as clear and specific as possible, outlining our zero-tolerance rules. Additionally, we prioritise education over punishment for minor infractions. When implementing changes like the one being introduced, we strive to make them as simple and understandable as possible for everyone. Community feedback and evolving needs: We actively listen to the feedback and suggestions from our community members. As the needs and preferences of our users evolve, we make adjustments to our policies to better serve the community and address emerging concerns. Your input plays a vital role in shaping the direction of our platform. Enforceability: We endeavour to establish policies that are enforceable and easy to moderate. Our goal is to provide our staff members with clear guidelines that enable them to determine whether an action violates the Terms of Service or not. While we greatly appreciate the reports submitted by vigilant Dreamers, our staff members also actively patrol the site, identifying potential issues and ensuring a safe environment for all. Logical sense and community protection: We carefully evaluate whether a rule or policy makes logical sense and genuinely protects the community and its Dreamers from harm. For instance, implementing a ban on users with @gmail addresses simply out of personal dislike would serve no purpose, harm the community, and lack any logical reasoning. Evolving legal and regulatory landscape: Policy changes may be necessary to ensure compliance with new laws, regulations, or legal requirements. We continuously monitor and assess the legal landscape to ensure our policies align with the evolving standards and provide a safe and secure platform for our users. Learnings from past experiences: A very important one. We value the lessons learned from past experiences and aim to continuously improve our policies based on those insights. If we identify areas where previous policies fell short or if certain policies have unintentional consequences, we make changes to rectify those shortcomings and provide a better user experience. As the saying goes, 'those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat their mistakes.' Rest assured, we are dedicated to learning, adapting, and evolving to create a better platform for all. Is it true to this community's core values: This is of utmost importance to us. In a diverse community where a wide range of roleplays and interactions take place, we firmly believe in upholding our core values. We strive to ensure that any policy changes align with the fundamental principles that define our community. While we embrace creative freedom and accommodate various roleplaying genres, we remain steadfast in promoting a safe and respectful environment for all Dreamers and yet allowing for free speech and expression. By staying true to our core values, we uphold the integrity of our community and foster a space where everyone can thrive. We will support you! We are committed to supporting you during this transition period. If you need assistance in moving your images to the appropriate albums, we are here to help. You can simply provide us with the links to the images you want to move and specify the destination album(s), and we will take care of the task for you. Don't hesitate to reach out for assistance! We want to make this transition as smooth as possible for everyone, and helping you with the process is the least we can do. Your requests will not be seen as bothersome; we are here to support you throughout this change. Further Recommendations Here are some additional recommendations to enhance your experience and engagement with the community: Utilise tags: Tagging your images with relevant keywords, such as character attributes or traits, can greatly improve the searchability of your content. For example, if your character has blonde hair, tag it with "blonde hair." Leverage album descriptions: Make use of the album description feature to provide additional information about your character, their backstory, preferences, or any other relevant details. This helps others understand your character better. Use external image hosting sites: If there are supporting materials related to your character that cannot be directly posted on the site, consider using an image hosting site to showcase them. You can include links to these materials in the album description. Link to your roleplay preferences: Provide a link to your roleplay preferences in your profile or album description. This helps interested roleplayers understand your preferred playstyle and potential plot ideas. Connect with private roleplay bulletins: If your character is available for specific private roleplay scenarios, include links to relevant bulletins or advertisements in your album description. Provide detailed information: Share additional information about your character, such as their likes, dislikes, age, and other relevant details. This helps potential roleplay partners get a better sense of your character's personality and compatibility. Showcase character collections: If you have a collection of characters available for others to choose from, consider adding a link to your roleplay preferences' description box or incorporating it into your signature. This makes it easier for others to explore your character options. Engage in the community: Actively participate in the community by posting and interacting with others, especially during quieter periods. Engaging in friendly conversations and being approachable increases the likelihood of attracting potential roleplay partners. Make your preferences appealing: Ensure that your roleplay preferences are easy to read, friendly, and inviting. Your preferences serve as a gateway for others to gauge compatibility and determine if they would like to roleplay with you. Set boundaries: Don't hesitate to clearly communicate your boundaries and preferences. Being firm on what you are not comfortable with helps avoid misunderstandings and ensures a more enjoyable roleplay experience. By following these recommendations, you can enhance your visibility, attract like-minded roleplayers, and facilitate meaningful connections within the community. Thank you once again for being a part of our vibrant roleplaying community. We truly appreciate your understanding and support as we implement these changes to enhance our gallery system. Together, we can make this transition a success! We encourage all users to actively participate in the transition process. Take a moment to familiarise yourself with the updated guidelines and ensure your albums adhere to the new policy. By updating your albums and utilising the available resources, you'll not only comply with the rules but also contribute to a more organised and immersive roleplaying experience for everyone. Engagement is at the heart of our community. We invite you to engage with fellow roleplayers, spark new connections, and explore exciting collaborations. Share your experiences, seek inspiration, and provide valuable feedback as the new policy takes effect. Your input is invaluable in shaping the future of our community. At our core, we believe in the power of collaboration, creativity, and respectful engagement. Together, we can maintain a vibrant and thriving roleplaying community that inspires and captivates. Remember, our support is here for you every step of the way. If you have any questions, need assistance with transitioning your albums, or simply want to share your thoughts, our dedicated team is ready to help. Reach out to us, and let's embark on this exciting journey together. Once again, we extend our heartfelt gratitude for your ongoing commitment and enthusiasm. With your active participation, we are confident that our roleplaying community will flourish and reach new heights. Keep being awesome! Tema Image Source: 迪迪卡卡 I will admit, it wasn't my first choice, because I hadn't seen this image. My first choice was a glorious city scape that was very colourful, but it was used in a video game and plastered with copyrights all over the image. So that couldn't be used. But when I found this image, I thought 'Oh this is looking amazing'! The artist has made a good use of colours, and reflections in the water, and it's a really nice image that feels appropriate in the spring time, especially this unusually warm spring. The artist themselves seem to do impressive landscape/city scape images that if you're into, you should check out!

Hello fellow Dreamers, This article aims to dispel some misunderstandings and myths surrounding our gallery feature and our guidelines for posting images and media on our site. In this comprehensive yet concise piece, we will address three common misconceptions that we have come across: the acceptability of Safe for Work Images of Drawn or Rendered Minors (Lolicon/Shotacon), the assumption that any images complying with our Terms of Service can be posted, and the permissibility of AI-generated porn as it involves non-real people. Our goal in publishing this article is to promote transparency and clarity among our community members. We want to explain the reasoning behind our policies and give insight into the thought processes that our staff members employ when moderating content. To this end, we are presenting a new and updated version of the flowchart that we use. This modified flowchart includes a few clarifications and changes to the tags we use to identify questionable content, as some sites use different references. We hope that this updated chart will help users to avoid posting problematic content, and stay within our guidelines. The new flowchart will be effective starting today. In addition to the aforementioned policies, we also reserve the right to delete albums and images under certain circumstances, typically at set periods of time. Specifically, we will delete content in the following scenarios: If you are banned during our check If you are deactivated during our check If you have been inactive for more than six months during our check If your album is set to "Hidden" (i.e., soft deleted) during our check Our checks occur approximately every six months and are performed manually. The purpose of these checks is to free up space for active users on EcchiDreams. It is important to note that EcchiDreams is not an image hosting website, hence why we have this policy in place. MYTH: Safe for Work Images of Drawn or Rendered Minors (Lolicon/Shotacon) are not allowed. FALSE Contrary to popular belief, Safe for Work Images of drawn or rendered minors (commonly referred to as Lolicon/Shotacon) are not prohibited on this site. As long as the images do not depict actual minors or AI-generated minors that are indistinguishable from real children, we allow such content because it contains no nudity or sexual situations. When we receive reports of potentially problematic content in our gallery, we follow the flowchart outlined above, treating the content as if we were the ones posting it. If the flowchart leads us to the conclusion that the content can be posted, we consider it non-violating and close the report. Conversely, if the flowchart leads us to the conclusion that the content cannot be posted, we treat it as a violating piece of content and take appropriate action. This is a necessary measure, as NSFW images in this category may be considered child pornography in many jurisdictions. However, Safe for Work images of minors pass the first challenge of the flowchart, meaning that they are allowed to be processed. This means that if you have an image that depicts a minor, but is Safe for Work, it is allowed on our site. An example of a Safe for Work image that appears to depict a minor: There's nothing sexual here. It's just a cute Neko, who likes headpats and cookies. MYTH: I can upload any images to the gallery so long as it adheres to the Terms of Service. FALSE While you can post images on EcchiDreams, it must adhere to the specific gallery-related rules outlined in Section 18 of the Terms of Service. The gallery is intended for character reference pictures or roleplay-related media only, and does not allow image dumps or animated GIFs. Violating these rules will result in the content being deleted without notice. Currently, the only category available in the gallery is "Private Roleplaying Characters"; which means that only roleplay character images can be uploaded. It's important to note that uploading numerous images of the same character is not acceptable; we recommend no more than ten images, and at most twenty images per character. Albums that have an extreme amount of images in them are often checked by staff for compliance, and if it starts to look like an image dump, it will be removed. We determine whether images in an album are characters or not based on various factors, including whether it's clear that the album is for characters or if it appears to be an image dump. While we are not required to provide notice, we typically send alerts informing you of any deleted content and why it was removed. We recommend considering other options for hosting, such as setting up a Discord channel or using an external image host that allows for NSFW images and hotlinking to other places. I understand that with the recent policy changes at Imgur, we've seen an increase in image dumps being posted here. Which is strange, because we're not an image hosting platform, have never claimed to be one, nor are we likely to start in the future. If you happen to be a Dreamer who has had your album deleted for this reason; I understand your frustration, I respect and admire your passion, but the rules are the rules. We ask and expect that you respect them. MYTH: AI-Generated Porn is allowed because it's not real people FALSE Let me be unequivocally clear: the idea that AI-generated pornography (that appears to depict real people) is permitted on this site is absolutely, one hundred percent, categorically untrue. Our administration remains completely impartial on the subject of AI-generated art and is not aligned with any particular position. Our administration remains neutral on AI-generated art, but our Terms of Service has never allowed for it since May 22, 2018, even before the proliferation of AI art. Under Section 18 of our Terms of Service: any image that depicts (or appears to depict, in the case of AI-generated art) real people, either nude or in a sexual situation, is prohibited. It's important to note that AI art is typically trained on actual images, meaning it uses bits and pieces of human-created content to generate the final image. So with this in mind it stands to reason: if we come across any AI-generated images that appear to depict actual children in nude or sexual situations, we will treat it as such under Section 8, Sub-Section 2 of our Terms of Service, which covers "content that actually contains (or appears to contain) child pornography". We have a zero-tolerance policy for this offence, and any accounts found posting such images will be banned without warning. Even if the AI wasn’t trained on this data, it is still not allowed on EcchiDreams, under any circumstances. We are never going to allow it. We will always enthusiastically assist law enforcement in these cases as well, as we have done in the past. We may provide further clarification in our Terms of Service's definition section in the near future, but all images, including AI-generated art, are bound by our existing rules; no changes to them are necessary. I trust that the information provided has given you a better understanding of our policies. If you have any further questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to leave a comment below and we will do our best to address them. Thank you for taking the time to read and familiarise yourself with our guidelines. In summary, we have clarified that posting images in our gallery is subject to certain rules and restrictions, and AI-generated porn (appearing to depict real people) is not allowed on our platform. We take these policies seriously, and enforce them to ensure the safety and well-being of our community. If you have any general questions about our policies or rules, please don't hesitate to leave a comment below. Thank you for your understanding. Image Source: Vanasonic (AI-Generated Image, Stable Diffusion) I wanted a nice landscape, and as someone who likes mountains to some degree, I felt this image was appropriate. It's an interesting, almost over worldly image that makes excellent use of vibrant orange colours for the grass. Anyway there isn't much else to say, I think this image is capable of speaking for itself. What messages it brings? Well that's in the AI eye of the beholder, isn't it?

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, Quite a few updates have been made since our last announcement from just over two weeks ago, that we wanted to go over here. Table of Contents: A message from our Community Administrators Events in the United Kingdom More changes to the Terms of Service Section 14 Changes Section 18 Changes Section 19 Changes EcchiMates Loading Bar/Client-Server Comms Bar Roleplay Advertising Changes Roleplayer Preference Changes Discord Server Changes Other Small Changes A message from our Community Administrators It has been an extraordinary few weeks, and a very busy few weeks. I’ve been enjoying my evening sitting in the voice chat on our Discord server, speaking to and interacting with people of the community, and Neptune has made an appearance a few times too. We’ve worked pretty hard the last couple of weeks, even as our nation enters a period of mourning. There are likely to be more improvements over the coming months as we enter 2023. Events in the United Kingdom This might seem weird on some “Random Roleplay Smut Site”, but both of us Community Administrators are British. We were born in England, and will likely die in England. We’re British through and through, and we make no apologies for it. So on the 8th of September 2022, we were saddened to learn of the passing of our Queen; Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. Many of us felt like she was timeless, present throughout our entire lives; at least the majority of the lives of most people in this country. Our thoughts and condolences are with the Royal Family, as we mourn the loss of our longest-serving British monarch. We are indebted to her dedicated service to this country. She truly was a magnificent woman who endured much with dignity and decorum. It truly is the end of an era. More changes to the Terms of Service Do you know when you proofread something, and then you get other people to proofread it, and you all independently think that it's good so you send it up to go live for potentially hundreds if not thousands of people to read, and then - and only then - you find grammatical mistakes in it, despite going over it with a fine tooth comb? Yeah. That happened. We’ve corrected the ones we’ve noticed and we’ve actually made changes to Sections 14, 18, and 19, to clarify our stance on monetary transactions on EcchiDreams. We've also added "Not to add the other party as an EcchiMate" when it comes to NCO's, which makes sense with the new system in place. We've also changed a lot of grammatically incorrect sentences and changed most, if not all mentions of the word "User" to "Dreamer". This will not require reacceptance as most of it is stuff that was already against the rules before the update, and the NCO sub-section is agreed to upon taking out said NCO. So this announcement will suffice. Section 14 Changes We have added personal donations to the list of things that aren’t allowed, this includes - but is not limited to - things like GoFundMe links, Ko-fi or Cryptocurrency Addresses. We’ve also stated that the rule of thumb is if it asks for the money and the context is that dreamers should buy it, give to it, or donate to it, it’s not allowed. Section 18 Changes Very minor changes here. We added “Any kind of QRCode, Datamatrix, Barcode and other such things that contains anything that violates any Section of the Terms of Service.” Section 19 Changes We’ve changed this from “Commissions on Art” to “Monetary Transactions” which covers ‘Commissions on Art’ anyway. We have reaffirmed that all transactions on EcchiDreams are restricted to EcchiCredit transactions only. Content posted on any part of this site such as, but not limited to; commissions on art as well as donation services, and cryptocurrency are not allowed on this site. EcchiMates Some of you might have noticed; we’ve re-released a new system which we lost in 2015. First let's get the rumours out of the way: Yes, this is a friends system. No, it is independent of the followers system. With this comes a basic profile feature that allows you to set some new privacy settings. You can have a maximum of 300 EcchiMates. There is no difference between normal, gold, platinum members, or even staff, everyone gets 300, and that’s your lot. This number may change later down the line, but for the foreseeable future it’s capped at 300, universally. There were a few hiccups along the way such as the fact that it was sending out emails, despite being told not to, but this has since been fixed and we’ll be making improvements to it, with any luck as the feature matures and comes out of Beta. Why EcchiMates? Because in England, a friend is a mate. But “Mate” has other meanings depending on context. So it’s a bit of an innuendo too. I know, cheeky, isn’t it? But at its core it’s a friend system. Loading Bar/Client-Server Comms Bar Noticed that pink bar running across the top of the page? It’s been with us since around 2011 or so, in one form or another. It used to be a bouncing ball in the top corner but it slowly changed into the pink line that is seen today. Basically it’s your indicator when everything on the page is loaded when you navigate to a new page, or if you haven’t it shows communication between your device (Client) and EcchiDreams (Server). For a long time it’s been a pink bar regardless of which EcchiTheme you’re using but I’ve recently changed it to make it more noticeable, and have a bit more variation of colour, be a little bit thicker and to be a little bit smoother. Otherwise it still uses the same library and not much else about it has actually changed. Roleplay Advertising Changes In October 2013; we brought a little fun feature that essentially turned every link on the site into a rainbow link when you hovered over it with a mouse over it. One person (out of many) who really appreciated the Rainbow Links was Xander. This was back when >75% of our users were using laptops and desktops now it's on average less than 30%. However in 2015 with one of our biggest updates to date, we unfortunately removed it because it didn't work too well with the new system, and the fact is, today most people won't see it on their phones unless it was active all of the time... Which, yeah - no. But in that very same announcement it was also where the roleplay advertising thing started, here is how it looked back then: This obviously morphed and evolved as Roleplay Clubs became a thing. Now it's for roleplay club owners who want to advertise their club. As such it will now show an embed showing that club, which is a bit more rich than just a picture. It also means that people looking to advertise don't have to do as much work to make an image that fit our rigid specifications. All you need now is a club (That complies to the advertising Terms and Conditions) and more EcchiCredits than you know what to do with, and you can apply for it. In memory of @Xander this link is now a rainbow link, and you don't need to hover over it to get it to flash. It will just do it, with any luck (I've not tested this outside of Chrome). Roleplayer Preference Changes There have been a few minor updates to the roleplayer preferences section. Such as: People are now physically limited to one roleplay preference. If you try to submit more than one; you will get an error. There is now the option of a “Might”/”Maybe” field, which shows up as a yellow-ish orange in the preferences. (Thanks @Sinful Vampire, for this suggestion.) A rainbow link of your preferences, if you have one put on your profile, will appear next to your posts across the forums of the site. Discord Server Changes We’ve made a few tweaks to the Discord Server which is a place to socialise and talk in real time to other Dreamers from the site. Please note that it is not a roleplay server. Despite the fact that our Discord Server is protected by the same Terms of Service as the site, Discord has a few extra rules that we don’t have. Which meant that our server was technically in violation of Discords Terms of Service/Community Guidelines. This has been rectified. As such we’ve made a new channel called “#important-information” which outlines the extra rules on that server. We’ve also added a channel to counter “#memes-and-shitposting”. The new channel is for wholesome (completely SFW/SFW-ish) memes and stuff. A brief snap poll was announced on the server for the name of the channel and @Neptune's suggestion won by an absolute landslide. The new channel is called “#wholesome-shit”. No, I’m not kidding. We’ve added icons to the channel names. EcchiVoice Text Channel (The voice channels, text channel) has been removed as voice channels now have this built in. If you can’t see it - update your app. Our server, at the time of writing, is currently Level 2, thanks to the generosity of our Discord Boosters: @Mini Magi, @Azalyn, @Sinful Vampire and @Moon Hound Hati. Please note that of course we appreciate those that donate their boosts to the server, it’s not mandatory, and we don’t see a penny of it. It’s purely a Discord thing, but it still means a lot to us that you'd donate your boosts for the betterment of our Discord Server for others to enjoy. Thank you to those who have boosted the server! We might be holding a competition to come up with a server banner and invite page images at a later date. The prize pool is sitting at 20,000 EcchiCredits; this could go up (but won’t go down) when the actual competition is announced. Other Small Changes There have been a number of small changes too: We’ve added an Achievement/Award for people who have boosted our Discord Server. As a trial run, we’ve set out the default theme to the Dark EcchiTheme, and renamed the previous default to “Light EcchiTheme.” 86% of Dreamers who have logged in over the last six months have switched to the dark theme. I’d say that message was loud and clear. People prefer the dark theme. If you don't, the option is there to switch back to the light theme. The search box has changed a bit now. It now includes a drop down of the area you want to search in, within the box itself. Image Source: はちお (hachio81) This article wasn't really planned and for this one I was just looking at landscapes on Pixiv for something unrelated and I found this, and thought that it looked extremely beautiful, especially with the summer we've just had. It's a very beautiful and colourful image, it conveys a sernie, tranquil peace that is both neutral and unoffensive. It's very detailed too, and it kind of makes me wonder if it's a real place and the artist took inspiration and if I can visit there. Looks like it'd make a lovely holiday spot and the water looks inviting enough to lounge around in. I think the artist did every well with this picture, and I like some of their other artwork too and it's also as incredible as this one. I highly recommend checking them out!

We have made wide-sweeping changes of the Terms of Service, to the point that you may have been asked to re-accept the new Terms of Service when coming onto the site today. The majority of these changes have been to clarify certain things, to change some of the language to be less vague or fixed nonsensical, grammatically incorrect sentences. But there have been a number of substantive changes as well that take effect as of today. In an effort to be transparent about the changes that have taken place; I will lay down what they are here and explain about why these changes have been made. If something you posted in the past is in violation of the Terms of Service in the present; you will not be punished for it. The reason being is that we do not retroactively punish people for something that does become a rule that wasn’t when it was posted. We find this expressly unfair and instead will hide it, let the person who posted it know what’s happened and then ask if they’d like us to delete it, or send it back to them. These changes to the Terms of Service are some of the biggest since the start of my Administration back in 2011, over a decade ago. For a start, officially, sub-sections are now no longer going to be called "Paragraphs", they're sub-sections. Here are the full list of changes: Sections with Minimal Changes Sections with Substantial Changes Section 10 - Harassment Section 12 - Member Conduct Section 14 - Spam Section 18 - Gallery and Media Uploaded or Posted to EcchiDreams NCO (No Contact Orders) Sections with Minimal Changes There has been minimal changes here to fix the grammar and spelling across the entire Terms of Service, the following contain minimal changes, such as what has already been discussed and more, if there is no additional information, then it was just a spelling/grammar thing: Section 1 - Acceptance of Terms Sub-Section 1 - Disclaimer Section 2 - Content Notice Section 3 - Registration Requirements, which also contains updates to the ways in which we allow registrations via Single Sign On options. We’ve dropped Facebook and Twitter, kept Google and added Steam. Sub-Section 1 - Date of Birth Sub-Section 2 - Email Address, reaffirmed that we don’t accept Disposable Emails anymore. Sub-Section 3 - Display Name, we have also added “impersonating staff to socially engineer or phish other Dreamers will result in a ban.” Section 4 - Privacy and Disclosure of Information Section 7 - Premium Membership. Clarifications have been made that basically reaffirms that even premium members are bound by the Terms of Service. Section 9 - Duplicate Accounting. Makes it clear that we have an automatic system in place. Section 11 - Bugs and Exploits of the Fortums and its Applications, literally had the same section repeated directly under it. We decided two paragraphs that say the exact thing is perhaps a bit much and have just decided to keep one paragraph. Section 13 - Plagiarism Section 17 - EcchiDreams Roleplay Sub-Section 1 - Club Roleplays Sub-Section 2 - Private Roleplays Sub-Section 3 - Roleplayer Preferences Section 19 - Commissions on Art, has been also strengthened and clarified. Section 20 - Other Sub-Section 1 - EcchiCredits Sub-Section 3 - Unverified and Inactive Accounts Section 21 - Account Termination, clarifications done across the board. Section 22 Sub-Section 1 - Infraction Appeals Sections with Substantial Changes These are the following sections of the Terms of Service that contain a lot of changes, or changes that need to be explained in further detail. Section 10 - Harassment Harassment is one of our more serious rules in the Terms of Service. Despite the fact that it is extremely rare for someone to be reported for harassment, when it does happen the majority of the reports are generally unfounded or don’t even come anywhere near close to our definition of harassment. Balancing this section of the Terms of Service was extremely important from the beginning, and we have received strong criticism for this in the past. I am personally not prepared to cede any ground, however. It is important that we continue striking a balance between protecting Dreamers from genuine harassment and protecting Dreamers from false accusations. To be clear here; I am not saying that harassment is acceptable, of course it isn’t. To this end we’ve added the word “Deliberately” to the definition, which was implied from the beginning, but it is now stated categorically. We’ve also fundamentally re-written the section for clarification, and injected a clause in the evidence policy that specifies what we’ve strengthened in Section 12, spoken about below. We have reaffirmed that we will not treat evidence as evidence if we can’t verify that it’s evidence to begin with. This is not to make the bar of what is and isn’t harassment higher, but so we can have actual verifiable proof in our hands. We have also introduced a new paragraph to Section 10 (Sub-Section 5) which should protect both parties in a case as well. It’s called NCO, or “No Contact Order” which will be spoken about in the next part. Section 12 - Member Conduct We have strengthened this section to include the following line: The reason we’ve added this there is to emphasise the point, really. We’ve had a few reports over the years where people have added other people to Discord and the like, where these conversations have devolved into something nasty that would most certainly break Terms of Service here. These people would report these conversations that happened outside of EcchiDreams to us, either to let us know it happened, or to ask for them to be banned. We obviously can’t do that, so this reaffirms that, and basically says “We don’t recommend it, but if you do it, it’s at your own risk, not ours.” Kind of thing. We have also removed “EcchiChat” references as this is no longer a service or feature we provide. Section 14 - Spam Whilst the changes here have been minimal, the kind of changes that have happened here are substantial. Under the old Terms of Service posting a link to your F-List preferences which to be fair, is better than what we have, was prohibited, and landed people in hot water. Instead, now, context matters. This has been added: We’ve changed it so that the reason this rule was put in can still be protected, but those that aren’t doing that, will also be protected. This rule has been around since the beginning, and I know why it exists, and we have had people who have come to EcchiDreams, give out their link to roleplay somewhere else and never come back to the site, effectively using this site to advertise on. To that end this has been added: So this kind of behaviour (Register and immediately post something like “Hey! Come and roleplay with me here [Link to Another Site or Discord]”) will be treated as spam in the future. We’re all up for giving a little leniency, to give an inch as it were, we’d ask that this doesn’t get abused. To be clear. If you want to include your F-List preferences in your preferences here on EcchiDreams to show a better list, you can. What isn’t okay, is coming here solely to find roleplayers to roleplay with on other platforms. Find them on that platform, this isn’t the place for it. Section 18 - Gallery and Media Uploaded or Posted to EcchiDreams For many of you, Section 18 of the Terms of Service is the absolute bane of your existence, and it rightfully has this reputation. But the problem is that we have to obey the law, and this, coupled with genuine enforcement of it, keeps us within the confines of the law where the servers are located. It is a legal issue, not an us being anal - issue. We’ve reaffirmed what the purpose of the gallery (https://ecchidreams.com/gallery) is for, as well as enshrined into the Terms of Service that GIFs are not allowed within that section of the site and this may apply to clubs later down the line. We have also defined what we consider to be “Nudity”, “Minors” and “Sexual Situations” for clarity purposes. Definitions: Nudity: Not wearing clothing, or sensitive areas (female nipples and/or male or female genitalia) being visible through or around any clothing being worn. Sexual Situation: A character is considered as being in a "sexual situation" if they are clearly having sexual intercourse or are exposed to it in some way either directly or indirectly, or that there is some kind of sexual activity being performed. A Minor: Someone who is under 18 years of age (IE; is not an adult). Please keep in mind that a 1000 year-old woman who looks like a child still appears to depict a minor and a character who is canonically underage but is "aged up" in the image is still treated as a minor, neither of which are permissible under the Terms of Service. This would mean that you also can’t use a picture that is of a sexual nature, or has any nudity in it for a character who is under the age of 18, as per your character profile. NCO (No Contact Orders) An NCO, or “No Contact Order” is a new part of our suite of tools to primarily help people who might be starting to receive harassment or are receiving harassment but are currently being “Block Shielded” which is blocking the user and then harassing them from behind the block. This is still a new thing, and I have no doubt that the bugs of it aren't completely ironed out, but it is something we’re committed to work on as hard as we can to make it work. An NCO is a directive to not contact or communicate with another Dreamer on the site that can only be issued and enforced by a member of staff, under specific circumstances. These are typically between two parties (Two people) and would require the consent of at least one of the people involved. However, once a ‘No Contact’ issue is ordered it applies to both parties equally. An NCO cannot be issued towards a member of Staff, as there are other internal policies that deal with exactly this, not that I actually anticipate that ever happening. They also cannot be issued towards someone of whom you’ve never had any communication, or had any communication with recently (Within a month), just because “You don’t like them”. If you feel “extremely uncomfortable” to the point that you’re feeling “distressed” by another Dreamer, which you have already told to cease contacting you, you can talk to a member of staff or file a report (Which needs to follow the evidence policy, under Section 10). After this point, an NCO could be issued, to both parties requiring only the consent of one party to issue that NCO. An NCO issued by a member of staff has the same power as a typical Section 10 in which further contact will be treated as a Section 10 Violation. To prevent ‘shield-bullying’ and ‘entrapment’ the person requesting the NCO is also bound by the very same NCO to not contact the accused. It is generally recommended to just completely avoid each other, entirely, and make use of the blocking/ignore features on the site in addition to it. So how does this work? Well let's say “Dreamer A” is receiving undue messages from “Dreamer B”. Dreamer B has been asked once already by Dreamer A to stop messaging them, but Dreamer B is continuing, but the stuff they’re saying is disturbing Dreamer A causing great anxiety or distress. Or Dreamer A has been blocked by Dreamer B and Dreamer B is abusing the block/ignore system and are harassing them from behind the block, (Block Shielding*) so that Dreamer A can’t ask them to stop and thus they’re unable to proceed with the route of reporting a Section 10 violation. Dreamer A can report this as harassment and staff will contact them to talk about implementing an NCO. If agreed; the NCO will be applied, and both parties will be messaged separately about this. If Dreamer B continues immediately, another report can be filed and they will be suspended for a week. If they sign up for another account to continue the harassment, they will have bigger problems to worry about. If they continue the harassment after the suspension, another report can be sent off and this time the ban will be permanent. If there is a long length of time between the communication, for example; the NCO is applied today, and six months time, or a years time, that person contacts Dreamer A again, Dreamer A just sends a report to us, and we’ll remind them that they have an active NCO between the two parties. If the contact doesn’t stop, we will resume down the path of the previous paragraph. If however Dreamer A starts harassing Dreamer B, they will find themselves on that path as well. Same if they try to goad Dreamer B into violating the NCO. It’s not a perfect system, no system is. But under the limitations of the Block/Ignore system and the restrictions of what Section 10 actually is; this is the best we can think of. Currently there is only one NCO that is active right now. Both parties are bound by this ‘contract’ if you will, to not contact each other. Now someone might ask; “What if Dreamer B comments on something posted by Dreamer A? Does that violate the No Contact Order?” And the short answer is; “It depends.” For example; Let's say Dreamer A puts up a topic, “Which is your favourite Pokémon?” and Dreamer B replies to it like everyone else does, with “Magikarp because he’s so cute and …” then this isn’t a violation of the NCO, nor is it even harassment, it’s someone, a “Dreamer of the Public” if you will who is replying to a public topic. However… If they say “Magikarp because like you Dreamer A, it’s completely useless” then this would be a violation of the NCO as that is contact with the Dreamer. * Block Shielding is defined as; using the ignore system to prevent another Dreamer from sending you an EcchiText. This is done by sending them an EcchiText then blocking them via the Ignore system, so that they can’t reply then removing the block to send them an EcchiText before reblocking them again, usually by having the ignore interface open in another tab that can allow for quick selection. This would prevent the person receiving it from telling them to stop contacting them, or make it extremely difficult to do so. This is known as blockshielding, and yes, this has actually happened. I’m not sure if this is an EcchiDreams unique phenomenon or if it's something that happens elsewhere. Image Source: ハンカチ (Handkerchief) I needed a relatively suitable image for this article and originally looked at stock images, but decided - nah. I found this image on Pixiv and at first I thought it was a photo of a real library. But upon closer look - I don't think it is. The level of detail, the lighting and reflections is absolutely stunning! I think it might be a 3D Render, or some kind of hybrid, I don't actually know. It is exceptionally well done and looking at their other artwork, I highly recommend giving them a look and a follow!

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!

Hello fellow Dreamers, Every now and again, I release some statistics for EcchiDreams. For 2020, I got a bit of a large one. If you'd like to see more of these every year or so, please let me know in the comments below. If any of the pictures are too small, and you can't see the text, please try opening them in a new tab. You might be able to see them better. I will improve on the graphs next time. But before I get into it, there is a few things I wanted to mention. There is an article I am planning in relation to a rising phenomenon that we've seen on EcchiDreams called "Ghosting" of which I am neutral on the subject (as in I either have no opinion on it, or I have mutual opinions). However I'd like a spot of help for research if you wouldn't mind answering some questions. Please send me an EcchiText with the subject "Ghosting": If you've ever ghosted someone If you've ever been ghosted If you have ever ghosted and been ghosted The deadline is March 1st 2021. I promise that this data will be used for research for the purposes of the article, information provided will be stripped of anything personally identifiable, and certainly stripped of names and specific situations. It'll be treated as confidential. Another thing I wanted to bring up before getting into this; is that the EoY (End of Year) update is scheduled to take place on the 16th of December 2020 during the hours of 09:00hrs to around 13:00hrs, with any luck. I will keep everyone up-to-date and informed on it as we get closer, but this will be quite a large update, with lots going on, and lots of fixes, with perhaps a new feature or two. Lastly; as some of you may have noticed... Sunstone is no longer a member of staff anymore. On October the 24th; after a long discussion he informed me that: "I think it is in my best interest to step down and walk away, so that I can better focus on other things in my life - possibly starting a new course in college, maybe preparing to travel abroad in a few years down the line, maybe starting an indie career in game design or music design or some other creative interest. I'm looking forward to new horizons. My time on EcchiDreams has formed a staple in my life and constituted many of my experiences as a young adult which I am sure I will look back on with blissful nostalgia in the years ahead. But for now, I think it's time for me to spread my wings and fly away." I had permission to quote this. I'm sure I speak for everyone when I say that he has our full support and best wishes for the future. Table of Contents Introduction Table of Contents (You are here) Methodology and Caveats (Correct Term?) EcchiDreamers and Profile Information Devices Demographics Age Sex and Sexuality Location On Site Usage EcchiTexts Registrations Reactions Roleplayer Preferences Private Roleplays Preferred Lengths Grammar and Spelling Sexual Content: Liked and Disliked Fetishes Preferred Types of Roleplay Character Type Preferences Methodology and Caveats The method of which this information is collected depends largely on what information was collected, as I will break down below. This largely depends on user generated input, so I cannot vouch for their complete accuracy, but there is enough data to start painting a bigger picture. All information collected from EcchiDreams was anonymised. Meaning it was downloaded onto my computer with usernames, user ID's, emails, and everything personally identifiable - removed. The only things I had access to was the specific information I was looking for; for example: Retrieving a list of Dreamer's selected Gender's and Sexual Preferences only. Which would give me a CSV file that I could put into Excel that had two columns; "Sex" (Male/Female/Prefer not to Say) and "S_Pref" (Heterosexual, Homosexual, Bi-Sexual, etc). That's it, nothing further. For the Roleplayer Preferences - to build a picture of what people are looking for on EcchiDreams, what the most commonly liked things are, etc... I just downloaded that section of the database containing all of that information and stripped out the personal stuff such as Usernames, IP Address, User IDs, etc, and this would literally just give me lists, which I then broke down so that for every time something was selected, it'd put it in the list. For example "EcchiText Roleplays" would be a column of which would be populated with "Yes, Yes, Yes, No, Conditional, Yes, No, No, No, etc." Because of this I am unable at this time to correlate the difference between preferences and sex's as well as preferences and sexual preferences. Maybe next time? For the some of them, I correlated it against Google Analytics, and the information that held on it. I only took a screenshot of the information I required. But again, this is based on User Input, as far as I am aware. It also - again, as far as I am aware, doesn't collect information from those that have opted out, or from those that use analytical blocking. Most importantly: Google Analytics information comes from ALL visitors to the site (Apart from the above mentioned exceptions), and not just the registered Dreamers. So whilst it's not a complete picture, or 100% accurate, it does show trends, or at the very least "Paint most of the picture". I am aware that there are some people who would rather not listen or be informed of some of the information I'm going to share. I've brought it up in the past when people (Mostly Men) have demanded "Girl Only RPers" or "Girls Only Respond" that most of the EcchiDreamers are in fact Males; and those that say they are female - are more than likely male, as well. They'd get very defensive, and close up immediately. If you're one of those; please click off this article because - spoiler alert - this data may very well upset you. All the information from EcchiDreams is based on currently registered Dreamers: Including: Deactivated Accounts Inactive Accounts Active Accounts Suspended Accounts (Temp Banned) Restricted Accounts Premium Accounts Staff Excluding: Banned Accounts (Perma Banned) @Ecchia (Bot) Diagnostic Accounts from third parties (IPS, for example) Accounts belonging to the deceased (That we've been made aware of) EcchiDreamers and Profile Information This information contains things about the Dreamers registered to the site. Devices Data Source: Google Analytics (Between 20th October 2019 and 20th October 2020) Over the years many sites on the internet have seen an increasing trend of visitors using mobile phones to access the site and EcchiDreams is no exception. This is why we modernised the site in 2015 so that it was more friendly towards mobile users, but still look somewhat sleek and modern on Desktops as well. This has since matured, thanks - in large - to IPS (Invision Power Suite, the base software for the site), as well as theme decisions. As we can see from the graph 59.4% of visitors to our site use mobiles, 39.0% use desktops/laptops and 1.6% use tablets. Whilst the trends for mobiles and desktops are on the increase; tablets are on the decrease from the previous year (if I am understanding the numbers correctly). I remember reading a bunch of articles online declaring boldly, that "Desktop Computing is Dead!" Well; the data doesn't back that up, for EcchiDreamers at least. Whilst it hasn't increased with the same share as Mobiles, it still is increasing overall and not by an insignificant amount. There is likely to be overlap as people use both devices to access and use EcchiDreams (I know I do). *Graph has been edited for those who are Tone/Shade Colourblind. The 10 most popular mobile devices are as follows: Apple iPhone (38.49%) Samsung SM-N986U "Galaxy Note 20 Ultra 5G" (3.12%) OPPO CPH1909 A5s (2.73%) Apple iPad (1.82%) OnePlus IN20205 8 Pro (1.82%) Google Pixel 3 (1.43%) Motorola Moto G5 Plus (1.43%) Samsung SM-G960U Galaxy S9 (1.43%) Unknown (1.30%) Samsung SM-A015T1 Galaxy A01 However it starts telling a different story when you look at operating systems that use the site, and this is quite interesting. The 10 most popular operating systems: Android (39.39%) Windows (26.65%) iOS (21.88%) Linux (4.84%) Macintosh (3.62%) Chrome OS (2.23%) Unknown (1.18%) Xbox (0.08%) Playstation 4 (0.08%) OS/2 (0.03%) Ever wondered why we stopped supporting Internet Explorer and certain consoles such as the Nintendo 3DS with technical issues? Aside from being mostly outdated and not really compatible with the websites of today, hardly anyone use it. 77 People in this time period used Internet Explorer, and only 4 used Nintendo 3DS consoles. The 10 most common browsers: Chrome (66.76%) Safari (20.16%) Samsung Internet (4.96%) Firefox (3.01%) Edge (1.43%) "Mozilla" (0.97%) Opera (0.95%) Android Webview (0.70%) Safari (In App) (0.21%) Amazon Silk (0.18%) EcchiDreams does report on this as well, but the results don't exactly correlate. Google's data had a much larger sample size, as this reporting is a new feature for EcchiDreams in the back end, and it's not exactly clear what it considers a "Visitor". For example: Are search engine bots considered "Visitors" to EcchiDreams? If so does a server get counted as a "Desktop" device? Demographics Data Source: Google Analytics (Between 20th October 2019 and 20th October 2020) and EcchiDreams User Profile Polling (From start until 20th October 2020) There are several sections to this that I want to cover and cross cover. We have not got any data on 'Race' or 'Ethnicity', and quite frankly, I wouldn't personally care to have that kind of information anyway. But we do have countries (Which could be skewed because of VPNs). There is a lot to kind of take in here. Age First. Let's talk about age. It's clear that the majority of people, according to the Google Data, who visit EcchiDreams are in the 18-24 years old, age range category. The breakdown is as follows: This could be representative of our member base, I don't see any reason why it shouldn't be. It seems that those in the 45-54 age group are more likely to see the site and immediately leave, far higher than any other age group. The least likely to leave the moment they see the site is 35-44 year olds. Sex and Sexuality Next, with Sex and Gender. I am well aware that there is a clash between people on the internet on the very definition of "Gender" which I am not going to go too much into. This assumes that Gender/Sex is binary because: Gender is what Google seem to use, and Sex is what EcchiDreams uses. Google Analytics only has "Male" and Female" and neglect "Other". EcchiDreams uses, "Male", "Female" and "Prefer not to say". Dreamers who haven't filled out this field aren't reported in the data, however those that have filled it out with "Prefer not to say" are marked as "Undisclosed." The Data that EcchiDreams reports, is vastly different to what Google says, and proves my point that I made earlier. See for yourselves. EcchiDreams Data: Google's Data: So uh... Let's talk about this, shall we? To clarify: The EcchiDreams Data is what Dreamers have set their sex on their profile on the site. What the Google Data is showing us is, I assume, what they set on their Google Accounts, or what Google have determined them to be. If the Google one is treated as more accurate than the EcchiDreams one, then we're looking at something pretty interesting here. Now, remember that the Google Dataset is showing us all visitors, registered and unregistered, where as the EcchiDreams Data is only showing us the registered. Either this is saying that: Women are more likely, than men to register to the site (Which I honestly see no evidence of that) or, More likely, there is a large body of men on the site that are pretending to be women (Which I think, given my personal experience) is way more likely. For this kind of site, the Google Analytics data seems to be more accurate. But this is largely anecdotal. Assuming that this is 100% accurate, I don't think it's feasible to expect that all 26.9% of our female visitors to have registered, just like I wouldn't expect all 73.1% of the males to have registered. Therefore I have to conclude that over half of the people who claim to be female on this site; are in fact male. So please bare this in mind. There are genuine females on this site, and this site welcomes both sexes, or "All" genders. Personally, I don't care what's between the legs of someone I roleplay with, but perhaps that's a minority of people. I don't know. Perhaps I or someone, should make a poll on that. If you have any thoughts, or opinions on the matter, please share them below. In regards to Sexuality there are some interesting things to consider. This data purely comes from form information filled out by Dreamers in their profiles, which I think is kind of unreliable. Regardless; the data was collected and this is what I found. Overall, when you combine the both sexes together you get the following graph: However when you break it down between the two sexes you get the following: Which is very interesting. However, because of the above mentioned problems with the Sex Criteria, this information is almost completely pointless. But it's included to cover bases. Location Lastly, under demographics, I'm going to look at location; which country are our Dreamers from. This information was taken from Google Analytics again, and shows that by an overwhelming majority- people from the United States of America are more likely to visit the site, and this is somewhat reflected in the registration information as well. The top 20 countries are as follows: United States of America (57.74%) Germany (5.31%) United Kingdom (4.03%) Canada (3.86%) Brazil (3.58%) Indonesia (2.58%) Singapore (2.07%) Philippines (1.79%) India (1.67%) Austria (1.59%) Australia (1.19%) Lithuania (1.14%) Italy (1.07%) Mexico (0.99%) Netherlands (0.78%) France (0.75%) Ukraine (0.46%) Russia (0.46%) Jordan (0.44%) Japan (0.37%) More Stats: We've only seen one visitor in this time period from the following countries: Andorra, Afghanistan, Antigua & Barbuda, Azerbaijan, Belize, Cuba, French Guiana, Guernsey, Guadeloupe, Haiti, Montenegro, Madagascar, Northern Mariana Islands, Namibia, Papua New Guinea, Réunion, Somalia, South Sudan, Tanzania, Temen and Zimbabwe. EcchiDreams is completely blocked in one country; and that's China. Incidentally Microsoft, is the only email service provider to completely ban all "@ecchidreams.com" emails from their service, for trumped up, disproven reasons. The real reason is currently unknown as they seem unwilling to even contact us back anymore. On Site Usage This section covers everything on site, the information here is collected purely from EcchiDreams, via the Administrator Control Panel, thanks to the built in IPS statistics tables. By in large, a lot of statistics are actually live and public for logged in dreamers to see, whenever they want to (Here). EcchiTexts Compared between the date ranges of 20th October 2018 to 20th October 2019 and 20th October 2019 to 20th October 2020; the EcchiText usage went up by 122%. From 143,750 to 319.452 EcchiTexts sent back and forth between people on the site. Registrations Compared between the date ranges of 20th October 2018 to 20th October 2019 and 20th October 2019 to 20th October 2020; the amount of registrations we had shot up by 374%. From 519 to 2,461. I believe that the pandemic had something to do with this. Reactions Between the date range, the most popular reactions are as follows: Love: 20,508 (51.4%) Like: 10,202 (25.6%) Haha: 3,536 (8.9%) Woohoo: 3,208 (8%) Thanks: 1,349 (3.4%) Sad: 945 (2.4%) Top 5 Reaction Givers are as follows: @aLittleCrow - 5,021 @Eros Angel - 4,289 @JennyDK - 4,029 @Neptune - 3,980 @Buio - 3,054 Top 5 Reaction Receivers are as follows: @JennyDK - 11,805 @Elena Ichinomiya - 4,859 @Eros Angel - 2,527 @Tsuki - 2,506 @Kendra Love - 2,028 Roleplayer Preferences Source: EcchiDreams (From when Roleplayer Preferences started, to 20th October 2020) We have finally got enough data in the roleplayer preferences to get a pulse on the community's most picked preferences. Private Roleplaying It seems that the overwhelming majority of EcchiDreamers either prefer to only do private roleplaying (In EcchiText's or on EcchiChat) or are at least willing to do them (>95%). It is the extreme minority that will not do private roleplaying (1.1%). Preferred Lengths This concerns data in the Preferred Roleplay Length and the Preferred Roleplay Post Length fields, which means the length of time the roleplay goes on for and the length of each post within that roleplay, respectively. Grammar and Spelling This is an English speaking forum so it was interesting to see the results of this one. Unsurprisingly, it seems the overwhelming majority of people prefer those that are fairly competent with their spelling and grammar. It seems that Grammar matters more than spelling to people though, if anything matters. But the next largest presence is those who have no preference to spelling or grammar competence. Sexual Content: Liked and Disliked Fetishes Being an adult website and coupled with the fact that a lot of roleplays have sexual content, it makes sense for the roleplayer preferences to include this section, and the information that we've collected on what things people will and won't do on this site has been very interesting to say the very least. It seems that there are things that people generally - will not roleplay, and they're very clear in the data. Now; I wasn't able to correlate this with announced Sex or Sexuality due to my very strict privacy limitations. Top 5 Liked Fetishes: Blowjobs (1,369) Consensual Sex (1,347) Breasts (1,225) Handjobs (1,199) First Times (1,183) Bottom 5 Liked Fetishes: Scat (62) Adult Baby (89) Amputation (115) Shaving (191) Enema (196) Top 5 Disliked Fetishes Scat (1,169) Adult Baby (1,141) Amputees (939) Emema (619) Beastiality (564) Bottom 5 Disliked Fetishes Masturbation (17) Swimwear (18) Consensual Sex (21) Handjobs (21) Uniforms (21) So it is fair to say that both Scat and Adult Baby for this community are considered pretty fringe. With it being very low down on the liked as well as being very high up on things that people won't roleplay. That is not surprising to me. What is surprising is the amount of people who like Consensual Sex (1,347) in their roleplays over Rape (902) and how this correlates on the 'Disliked' which has Consensual Sex (21) and Rape (374). Preferred types of Roleplay This concerns the setting, or the theme of the roleplay that people like or don't like to do. This is fairly evenly spread out with no clear winners, until you look at the types that people don't like to do. As you can see, Horror and Fan Faction Roleplays are not exactly the favourites of people on this community. Preferred types of Characters When asked what types of characters people prefer to interact with, within a roleplay. As in what type of characters you'd prefer your partner to play as; and what you wouldn't prefer, the results were as follows: So there you have it. What are your thoughts and feelings on these? Please be sure to let me know in the comments! Image Credit: エイチス Given the situation we find ourselves in this year, I wanted a nice relaxing image for this article. This piece by Eichiss or Eichisu and I felt that it fit the needs that I wanted it for. It; in my opinion is a very good picture with excellent attention to detail. If you want to check out more of their work, feel free to check the link above.

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.

Hello fellow Dreamers, Before I get stuck into this, there's an apology in order. I'm sorry that the last update news was way back in March of last year. I assure you that this isn't intentional, and we've not really gone anywhere either. We're still as busy as ever. But I'm going to try harder to keep everyone in the loop about everything that is going on here. I've decided to present these as newsletters, that I want to start releasing more frequently perhaps, I don't know. It's a new format I'm trying out. This announcement will cover: A message from the Community Administrators to everyone about the current pandemic The recent EcchiDreams Folding@Home Event against COVID-19 The situation with Politics on EcchiDreams and it's Discord UK's Draconian Age Verification on Indefinite Hold Changes to Section 18 violation enforcement Removal of Politics from EcchiDreams Promotion of Dreamer Content under "Our Picks" Welcome Pack Staff Applications Feature Updates Mood System Overhaul Upcoming Features Profile Items Profile Enhancements Roll the Dice! A message from the Community Administrators We understand the community’s current concern regarding the COVID-19 situation, and even share those concerns. Whatever the outcome, come the end of the year, few of us are going to be the same again. It is going to test each and every single one of us in ways we never thought possible, if it has not done so already. Like yourselves, we are worried about our families, our friends, neighbours as well as all of you, the Dreamers of this awesome community. Some of the stories we've heard from Dreamers (some public, some privately via EcchiTexts/DMs on Discord, and so on) has been truly heartbreaking, and our thoughts are with you and your families during this difficult time. It is extremely important right now, in a time were 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. EcchiDreams is absolutely here to escape from what's going on in the real world, and to try and keep you preoccupied during the lockdown that has been instituted by various countries. We are staying absolutely free of charge to use, and are going out of our way to make sure that our virtual doors remain literally open. We, as a community need to be understanding to those who may be affected by the isolation and the lockdown, as it is likely to start driving people stir crazy. To that end: as of the 21st April 2020, Neptune and I have asked the staff to relax a little on the enforcement of punishments when it comes to violation of minor rules on the site. This does not mean a consequence free free-for-all, but for minor offences content will likely be removed, offenders served a polite notice and no further action taken. This doesn't apply to repeat violations of the same offence, Section 8 or various serious violations. We ask that you remain understanding if you get such a notice, and to not take advantage of this. We are not giving up, and neither should you. We hope none of you catch this virus, obviously. Your first priority is to stay healthy and follow your Government's advice, guidelines, apply some common sense if you get crazy advice, and of course laws. Just know that we're here for you, as a community. The recent EcchiDreams Folding@Home Event against COVID-19 As many of you might be aware, EcchiDreams recently hosted a Folding@Home event in which: @Peculiarity, @Manni, @Alexander Bodide, @Neptune, @Rucio, @Sunstone, @Kerzin Kalamond, @Elena Ichinomiya, @Avengalyne, @Mr.X, @nicjomo, @Lawless Lawyer, and I all pulled together with our computers to sacrifice our CPU and GPU cycles, to help the Folding@Home project in their fight against COVID-19. This also means that everyone sacrificed their comfort when their computers started getting warm, their sanity, because playing games on them was out of the question, all during a lockdown with nothing else to do for 14 straight days. Some of them couldn't even use their computers, full stop. For that I can only say thank you! As a Team we contributed 29,481,528 points worth of credit and 1337 work units to the project. Woo! Go Team EcchiDreams! Nearly 400,000 EcchiCredits were dished out as reward and, because of the success during this event, the 'Rave Blob' reaction and mood was introduced to EcchiDreams. I am extremely touched that there was such a response to this event, and I salute you all for taking part. Each and every single one of you. This brings me to my point that when we work together - we can achieve something. This is exactly why we should all stick together as a community, despite our differences. We all have things in common, and it takes guts to celebrate those similarities, and tolerate the differences. UK's Draconian Age Verification on Indefinite Hold In the last article, I spoke about the UK Government's ill-thought out desire to make it so that every porn/adult themed website on the internet. Most of the article is moot and invalid now, but there are still some highly critical pieces of what I think about the UK's direction when it comes to personal freedoms and liberties, especially online, which is why I have not taken down the article. You'll be pleased to know that as of October 2019 - the UK Government decided to scrap the idea, after repeated delays to implement it, and good. I think it should never see the light of day, ever again, certainly not in its current incarnation. I don't want to get too political so I'll leave it there as an update to the saga. Changes to Section 18 violation enforcement Some of you may have noticed that over the last few months we've been trailing out a new system to inform people of Section 18 Violating Content. This system replaced the previous which issued out first time warnings to people who posted this type of content on EcchiDreams. The feedback we got was that despite the fact that it was a 0 point "First Time Offence" that it was heavy handed. So we tried out a new system, a new method of dealing with it: When someone posts offending content up, we delete it, and send them a notice saying what was deleted, why it was deleted and how to avoid making the same mistake in future, with the flowchart. The first time is not a warnable offence, it's merely a "This is the situation, this isn't allowed, we've deleted, please follow these guidelines to help prevent this in future". The second time it happens, is when the first time warning starts becoming a thing. Although really we've seen a drastic drop in these kinds of offences after the polite notice, to near zero. As in we've hardly warned anyone for it since. It's not perfect. This seems - on the most part - to be better received. Although there is no unifying template that all the staff use for these messages, it's something that we're still working on. Each of the staff have their own templates based on circumstances which are modified to fit the situation. We're working on perfecting it, and we're going to set this new way of dealing with it - as official policy. Therefore it's no longer in the trial stages, it's going to become the way in which we deal with it. Removal of Politics from EcchiDreams In response to demand from quite a number of Dreamers, the Politics Channel has been removed from the Discord server, and the forum has been removed from EcchiDreams all together. This decision wasn't mine alone, but it has received an overwhelmingly positive response. Because it causes more problems than it's worth, and with how polarising it is, the amount of drama it has caused and so on... We're not going to stop you from discussing politics, but my advice is to do so in EcchiText's 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 in the chat might not want to hear them... That is your choice to make, not ours to make it for you. On the forums we recommend using the Random Chat Chat, and use the tags to tag it as political, that way people can decide whether or not they want to view that content or not. Really, one could argue whether EcchiDreams is really the place to get an informed political debate. Probably not. Promotion of Dreamer Content under "Our Picks" You may have noticed that I have started promoting content written by other Dreamers to the "Our Picks" section on EcchiDreams, which is also shown on the homepage. It serves as a promotion of good quality content that is on our site, reviews, news articles and so on. Dreamers who write something that appears under "Our Picks" will get an EcchiCredit award, and later down the line an actual trophy for their profile. So if you write good content, it could be a good way to expose it to the rest of the site and be recognised for it at the same time. We could expand this over time to allow other Dreamers to vote for the content that they want to see promoted. What counts as content that is eligible to promotion in this system? Well this isn't concrete or set in stone. Perhaps we're going to want a clear set of standards as to what gets promoted, in the future such as "no txt spk lyk dis" or somewhat passable grammar or what have you. Anyway, I'm putting it you guys to see what you think on the subject matter, and I'd be fascinated to read your comments. Welcome Pack If you had noticed that under every welcome topic, I was practically replying with the same template after saying my personalised bit, then you weren't alone. We noticed this and it came off as a bit impersonal, and repetitive. The welcome guide passes on a lot more information that what I was doing before, and gives people a very good run down of the community as a whole. All in all we see this as quite successful, although we can make improvements to it over time. You can view the guide yourself here: And if you have any suggestions, comments, or feedback for it, we'd be interested in hearing them. Staff Applications EcchiDreams has not looked into bringing in new staff since 2018, but in just two short years we've grown pretty wildly, with over a hundred active people per day. It has been crazy how far this site has come in a very short time. We would like to bring two more people into the moderating mix, to help us serve the community better. Of course, this position is completely voluntary (not even the Community Administrators are being paid for their roles), any money generated by the adverts are put straight back into keeping the site up and supplementing for server and licencing costs; the rest comes out of the Community Administrators pocket. Other staff aren't asked to help with the upkeep at all, either. It's not something we could ever, in good faith, request. This application will close on July 1st 2020, those that are picked will be asked to read and accept the Staff Policy Agreement by the 6th July 2020. It is important that you read below in its entirety. You have to have: A content count of at least 100 A reputation count of at least 150 Have been registered for more than 60 days Be 21 years old or older Be in the Dreamer, Gold Dreamer and/or Platinum Dreamer user group. Don't be offended if the application gets rejected, as it goes up to a staff vote later down the line. If we've not had enough suitable applicants, chances are it could be extended past the deadline. Primarily we'd want someone to tick as many - or better yet all - of the requirements as possible, and secondarily we would want English speakers, who can type English fluently and be somewhat competent in their grammar. Feature Updates We've kept various applications and modules up-to-date a per our responsibility to keep in line with bug fixes as well as security flaw patching. I accept that there are some quirks of EcchiDreams that don't always work right, but usually we get these bugs fixed depending on severity. There is still a bug bounty program in effect, and we welcome all reports, it lets us know that there is a problem and you get EcchiCredits for it. It's win, win. Mood System Overhaul We previously had 18 mood icons to express your mood to the world. Sure you could write whatever custom text you wanted in it, but there was a bit of a lack of choice. We've had a few suggestions over the years asking us to add more to it, and back in December we brought it up at a staff meeting, and agreed that we could totally do that, and upgrade the icons whilst we were at it. During the process, I kind of teased it, and we were asked to leave "Waffle Time" in there. We did. You can thank @SMFoxy for that one. Now you can express yourself even better than ever before with the mood system overhaul. We went from 18 icons to over 110. You can still write in what you want, but you have more range to pick the icons that better reflect your mood. Since the Folding@Home event, we also put in the Raving Blob. It is the biggest overhaul of the system since it first appeared on EcchiDreams a few years ago, and we're quite proud of it. Upcoming Features We don't normally like talking about upcoming features because there is a chance that things might not be implemented due to technical reasons, or implementation sucks, and what have you. But I wanted to share some upcoming features this time that I hope to have implemented by the end of the year. Profile Items To help you spend your EcchiCredits, we're looking at greatly increasing the range of items you can buy in the EcchiStore. These are 'Profile Items' that you can buy for yourself, or gift to other Dreamers. The feature works, and it works very well, however... The only problem I have with it right now is that I don't have any idea what kind of items to include, what kind of icons to use, or anything of the sort. It's something I'm going to be working with the staff on over the next few weeks/months but any help from the community, any ideas, would be extremely welcome. We will most likely have to licence the images that we use, which is not a problem. The forum icons, and the icons used in the dashboard are such icons that we've purchased a licence to use. Profile Enhancements Everyone on EcchiDreams is looking for different things. For example, some of you are only here for ERP's, some of you are only here for deep, long term storytelling roleplays, some don't want to roleplay - you want to take part in the community as a whole, and some just want to lurk. Well, what I'm hoping to do is allow the Dreamer to set this preference as part of their profile, as well as a few other things that might be helpful, such as a "Am I taking on new roleplays right now?" kind of thing, perhaps. The idea is that you'd be able to search this using our search system, to find someone who is after the same thing you're after. Although there is a debate going on about if we should allow the searching by Gender/Sexuality as well. I personally don't think it should matter what gender or sexuality the actual roleplayer is, if a male is happy to roleplay a female, or a straight person is happy to roleplay Yaoi/Yuri, why does it matter? But as we've seen, there are quite a few roleplayers who actually seem to care a great deal about these kinds of things. This can be implemented quite quickly, but not in a format that I'm too happy with, and it's something I'm trying to work on and finalise. I'd rather have it looked polished and working, than for it to look like it's working and barely functional. Roll the Dice! We're thinking about introducing a feature that will allow roleplayers to make dice based roles for a more D&D like roleplaying experience. These dice would be "Thrown" upon posting in a topic. Right now the code is largely untested, and very much in alpha stages, pending tests, so we don't actually know if it works or not. Or if it even works for the clubs or not. It is likely that the first iteration of this will be extremely basic, and therefore something that we can build and improve on later down the line. Lets us know what you think about that one! Image Source: 士由(シユ) (Pixiv Account Deleted) This was just the kind of neutral picture that I wanted for the announcement. It screamed "It's Spring Time" and "It's going to be a warm one!" to me, which spring here in the UK started off with a spring time heatwave. So it felt appropriate. It's got a vibrant picture, and I think that right now people could use a little vibrancey to brighten up their lives. The artist is quite talented at doing landscape art and I want to promote their work for more people to seem unfortunately they appear to have deleted their Pixiv account. If anyone knows if the artist is operating under a different name or alt Pixiv account let me know, and I'll happily link it. It's a very well done picture and I for one would love to see more of their work.

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 Dreamers, It's that time of the year again, and this update has been focused on fixing as many bugs as possible, rather than adding new features or changing things. Some of you may already be aware of some of these changes, as I softly announcement them via my statuses, and this acts a sort of "This is what we did this season." This is not as big as the previous "2018: Spring Updates", but there have been a number of changes. This announcement will cover: New Staff Site Changes EcchiCredits Club Changes Chatbar (EcchiChat) Changes Official Discord Server Two-Factor Authentication Reminders Semi-Technical: Bug Fixes Known Bugs that Still Exist New Staff EcchiDreams is continuing to grow beyond our expectation, and as such, we took on new staff earlier in the season. It's with joy that I'd like to formally welcome both @Aura and @Sunstone to our site staff. Furthermore, I'd like to welcome @Kalvoras Vertal (AKA: Shuya) as our official Discord moderator. Site Changes We've made a number of updates both in the background and in the foreground this season. One of the main changes in the background is the transition over to HTTP2: this should now speed up the loading of site resources, as well as improve on security a little too, although the site is backwards compatible with the previous protocol. Most browsers happily accept HTTP1.1; although there is a bug for people who use BitDefender, where these browsers will not use HTTP2. This isn't a problem with EcchiDreams at all, as BitDefender does this to every HTTP2 site, thanks to it's "Scan SSL" or "Encrypted Web Scan" feature - which they say is more secure, but ironically they make things less secure when enabled because it disables HTTP2. Geniuses. To find out more information on HTTP2 and what it means, click here to see this infographic. In addition to this we've also tried to improve the speed and loading times of EcchiDreams, which has been getting to be a noticeable problem - especially if there are 20-30 people online at the same time - due to how resource heavy the site is, especially with the likes of EcchiChat. However these teething problems have been resolved for the most part, and everything is starting to run more smoothly again. EcchiCredits In the last update, I touched on an exploit with reactions for EcchiCredits, which you can click on and see in the article posted next to this text titled "2018: Spring Updates". But to basically summarise the problem: this exploit would essentially break the EcchiCredit economy, by allowing a group of friends to like and dislike each other's statuses. This would add the EcchiCredits to the accounts each time it was done, and not take them back if the content was unliked again. The developer of the original application had gone AWOL with there being a massive exploit that had been known about for quite some time; some people on the developers site had pointed this out way back in February, with some pointing it out in December of last year, and the developer had done absolutely nothing about it since then. When the exploit was independently found on here; I was able to find out who abused it, and to what extent, and deducted the ill-gotten gains manually. The feature was also disabled due to this. However, this has now changed. Another third-party developer (the one who made the background software behind the EcchiStore, which was originally two different applications made by two different people) has basically stepped in and introduced the features of the first developer to his application, which is properly supported and a well trusted source of our advanced development needs. He realised this problem and had already taken steps to preventing it, after he realised that telling the first developer was going nowhere. So TL;DR, what does that mean for us? Well I'm happy to announce that FINALLY reputation for EcchiCredits is back online, working, and not exploitable. The new developer is reliable, so should a problem like this crop up in future, and I cannot fix it, we can be confident that the developer actually will. Club Changes There has been a minor change to the amount of clubs that dreamers can open. Previously it was set to four universally; however after receiving feedback from certain Dreamers, we've changed this up very slightly. Now it is dependant on what user group you're in, so it gives yet another (albeit small) incentive to our premium dreamers. Currently it is set to the following: Dreamers: Six clubs. Gold Premium Dreamers: Eight clubs Platinum Dreamers: Ten clubs. This can increase universally (like +2 on each one), or in part (like +2 on just Gold and Platinum), later on, depending on how the clubs continue to evolve. To clear up yet another misconception: no, you cannot pay for premium membership with real life money; you pay for it via Ecchi Credits in the EcchiStore, which you get as a contribution credits. The reason there are limits is pretty self evident: we would rather have quality over quantity and, if for whatever reason a club owner falls inactive completely, then the "damage" is rather contained. Chatbar (EcchiChat) Changes As you would have been aware, we've recently changed our chatbar software (EcchiChat) from Cometchat, a company that I can no longer recommend to anyone. As I announced here; we were in the middle of an active licence with them that entitled us to receive updates for their software, which we were also allowed to host on our server. This privilege cost us around $64 a year; reasonable eough in my opinion. Rather unexpectedly, this company suddenly changed their pricing and ceased to support the software on hosted solutions. It gets worse... Cometchat now wants $299 a month ($3,588 a year) for the same functionality we had before at $64 a year, and we were no longer allowed to host their latest software. They "have to host it", which means all messages sent are stored on their servers and not protected by the EcchiDreams Privacy Policy; this is absolutely unacceptable. Considering the software was extremely buggy and practically non-functional 'out of the box', and required lots of intense and heavy modification just to get it to integrate properly with the forums, most of the testimonials on their site at the time of writing were written way before this change happened, and they're claiming big name sites use their software - of which there is no evidence when you look up their sites. You can see why we dropped this like a hot potato... Sketchy business practices aside, I realise that "They're a private company and can do what they like" in regards to pricing; so I will say that "And I can choose not to accept it and move on to a better provider", which is what I did. Instead we're now using a US based solution that allows us to host it on our own servers, and unlike Cometchat; it actually works. Official Discord Server EcchiDreams now has an official Discord Server, which you can only join by linking your Discord Account up with EcchiDreams via this link here. In the past we had an unofficial one set up by @Kalvoras Vertal (AKA Shuya); however, it became very apparent that a closer integration with EcchiDreams and the Terms of Service was required. You don't have to come and join us, but you are welcome to. It's still very much a work in progress; but it's mostly up, and we're happy to take suggestions. Two-Factor Authentication Reminders Currently only one Dreamer who isn't staff has activated Two-Factor Authentication; this isn't good. You can find out how to do it here. We've added little reminders to sensitive areas of the site (for now), that will nag remind you to set it up when you enter it for the first time. This includes: Managing Authorised Devices Changing your Password Changing your Email Address You can absolutely choose to opt-out, but we'll try one last time to advise against it with the following warning message. If you click on OK, the site won't mention it again to you: Semi-Technical: Bug Fixes We have made the following bug fixes since the previous release: Changed: Moved the signout button towards the bottom of the navigation menu on mobile devices, due to the amount of times people were voicing their completely valid feedback that it was too close to the notifications/EcchiText buttons. This was a design oversight on the UI menu, and whilst it's not perfect right now, we'll look at continually improving it. Thank you. Fixed: All Cometchat related/caused bugs - Fixed by ditching Cometchat completely. Fixed: A MySQL Table limit bug when entering a description for a Gallery Image, which prevented roleplayers from entering more than 65,535 bytes (including formatting), which either presented a strange error message, or simply cut off the text. We also told IPS about this bug and they've included it as a standard fix in their latest IPS Suite release. Fixed: Rare bug with Avatar Upload that would cause a (ERR_NO_CONTENT) failure when uploading. Fixed and Improved: Performance of the Activity Stream has been enhanced. Fixed: Registration is now scrollable on mobiles. Known Bugs that Still Exist Sometimes there is a menu overlap with the new position of the Logout button and some menu elements on mobiles. We're working on getting this fixed and has become a top priority for us. When buying a lottery ticket, or really doing anything in the EcchiStore, it seems to automatically redirect you to the homepage. Which is annoying. Premium Memberships brought from the EcchiStore still don't appear to be working properly. Whilst they're actually usable this time, they're expiring, even though they shouldn't be. We can still manually promote people to Premium Membership status upon the purchase of a Premium Membership, so it's not so much a problem as an annoying bug. We hope to have these fixed by the Winter Updates (2018), and we apologise for the inconvenience. Source: けこちゃ For many of us in the northern hemisphere it's been way too hot to be cooped up indoors roleplaying and the like, so I thought a nice picture of a cat girl with a water gun might cool some of us down a little.

Hello fellow Dreamers, As some of you might remember, EcchiDreams had a number of updates around the end of April and the beginning of May. However, due to my ill health, I was unable to make an announcement on the number of changes that had happened. Firstly, I want to thank absolutely everyone who came out in support of me during my run of bad health and encouraged me to get better, these messages warmed my heart and I am happy to say I am much better today. Although there are some long term (and potentially lifelong) secondary things that were picked up on during my hospital visit, these are not life threatening, and are absolutely manageable; as the saying goes - "I'll live." This is why this announcement is a little delayed compared to previous ones; but that just means I have a few more things to talk about. This is a fairly large announcement, but quite a lot of it is stuffed with pictures, so thanks in advance for reading. Before I begin, I want correct two common misconceptions: EcchiDreams is not just a roleplaying community; it's actually a lot more than that. Roleplaying is one of the many things that we focus on, of course, but it's not the only thing it is. We welcome both roleplayers and non-roleplayers, the latter of which take part on the forums, or just come for the generally friendly atmosphere. I'm not happy about the harassment that they've been getting from (the extreme minority of) people who do roleplay, essentially telling them to get off this website because they don't belong here. One even went as far as to tell the original creator of the website that she shouldn't be here because it was just for roleplaying. EcchiDreams isn't solely about sex, nor does the name imply that. Ecchi doesn't mean sex; it means perverted. Yes, that might be sexual, but not necessarily. Roleplayers that do not want to roleplay sex and only sex are just as welcome here as those that do. EcchiDreams is not a sex website, and we've never, ever - not ever - said that it was. We say it's an adult website. By category alone, any adult is allowed to join. There are a number of non-sexual topics here as well, and I encourage you to have a look around and get a deeper understanding of what our site is about. If you are getting messages like "You shouldn't be on this site" and so on, please feel free to quote the above and link to this article... and laugh it off. In no particular order. This announcement will cover: Important URL Changes Profile Improvements Expandable Profile Covers Reputation Activity Premium Feature: Video in Profiles Premium Feature: Customisable Background in Profiles Roleplayer Preferences and Private Roleplay Status in Profiles Better/Improved Emoji's EcchiMeta Ease of Use Updates Staff Wanted! Dreamer Protips Complete Your Profile Choose Your Own Forum Index Layout GDPR Compliance Terms of Service Clarifications Coming Soon: EcchiCredit Lottery Semi-Technical: Bug Fixes Known Bugs that Exist Important URL Changes There have been two major URL changes in regards to the Private Roleplayer's Bulletin Board and the Roleplayer Preferences areas of EcchiDreams; you will need to update any links you have going to your postings in these areas to reflect the new URLs. I have updated the guides to reflect this, but if you find a link that hasn't been fixed, please report it to us and we'll issue you some EcchiCredits for your troubles. The two new URLs are as follows: Private Roleplayers Bulletin - https://ecchidreams.com/roleplayer-services/private-roleplayers-bulletin/ Roleplayer Preferences - https://ecchidreams.com/roleplayer-services/preferences/ The reason why I have changed this is because it was erroneously under the 'Dashboard' URL which it shouldn't have been, this was only highlighted on the dashboard updates (see Ease of Use for more details), as it was in the Roleplay Dashboard which has been merged with the Community Dashboard. Profile Improvements There have been some minor changes to the profiles on EcchiDreams that you should probably be made aware of, although I have alluded to it in some statues already. Expandable Profile Covers For desktop users: if you click on a person's profile cover, you can enlarge it to see the full picture; as demonstrated below. This will work on mobiles, if you're in Desktop Mode and your screen resolution supports it; due to the animations and the limited nature of mobile processors and graphics processors, it might be laggy. However, on the desktops we've tried it on, it's fluid and fast. It's not really anything to scream from the mountaintop over, but it's a neat little feature that came with our recent update to IPS 4.3. This is compatible with most, if not, all desktop resolutions too (tested on 1080p and 4K displays). Reputation Activity Reputation Activity is a good way of keeping track of the total amount of reputation given and received. It is accessible in your profile, as well as other Dreamers profiles. Under "Community Reputation" click "See Reputation Activity" and the profile interface will change to show you your or their reputation activity; it's pretty simple and straightforward, which is the best way to keep things. Premium Feature: Video in Profiles As you can see with the above screenshots, in their profiles, premium members will have a new button next to "Edit Profile" called "Profile Video", where they can embed either a YouTube video, their Twitch Stream, or a Vimeo video. The following URLs are accepted with "UniqueID" being the Unique ID of the video; for example for YouTube a Unique ID can look like this '_Qe9O90cD80'. https://www.youtube.com/embed/UniqueID https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/UniqueID http://player.twitch.tv/?UniqueID https://player.vimeo.com/video/UniqueID It will then embed the video above the "Community Reputation" and, if you have any, your most liked content ribbon. Premium Feature: Customisable Background in Profiles Similarly to the Video in Profile above, this is another feature for premium members. This allows you to customise your profile background. Halfway through writing this announcement we got this feature fixed, by making the profiles which have a custom background have a slightly transparent appearance, somewhat like EcchiDreams during the beginnings of my Administration here, where we had a very "Glass" like theme. Roleplayer Preferences and Private Roleplay Status in Profiles Thanks to one of the many suggestions written by @Aurafox1, as part of our Ease of Use updates there is now a location within the Edit Profile where you can attach your Roleplayer Preferences directly to your profile, where a link will then appear. If others have filled out this information, it will appear on their profiles, where, if you're logged in at least, it will be visible when you visit their profiles. It is a great idea that allows people to easily find your link. Better/Improved Emoji's Remember when clicking on that little smiley face in the text editor would take 10 to 20 seconds to load the Emoji's...? Or up to 30 seconds on a bad day? Then, in the last update, where we reduced this to 4-6 seconds? Well, I'm happy to report that the time it takes to load them today at least was... Drum roll please... 0.76 seconds. Furthermore, you can skip the whole button entirely and just opt to call up the emoji you want by pressing ":", minus the quotes, which changes and updates depending on what you type in; and yes, you can click/tap on them to auto complete it and insert the Emoji. Tap? Oh yes; this works on both desktop and mobiles, as seen below: Desktop: Mobiles: EcchiMeta *shameless self plugging time* EcchiMeta is a new club to discuss everything relating to EcchiDreams. It was already privately in the works (under a different name) when @Whoreo suggested it, but he's got the credit of the title. I believe there was going to be a discussion that talked about the statistical odds of the 'Small Mystery Box' in the EcchiStore, which is now available to everyone. EcchiMeta is also now where the Suggestions, Comments and Feedback topic is. Ease of Use Updates There have been a number of changes across the site as per the suggestions brought up by @Aurafox1, who was a major help in identifying the problems that he had when he first joined the site, and that we think a number of people might have had too. We absolutely want to help make it easy to browse, use, and to understand. So we listened, and we've made quite a number of changes. Dashboard The Dashboard is a Navigational Helper that puts the most common links to the most common areas of EcchiDreams on to a desktop/mobile friendly page with icons, similar to a desktop or app screen. It's designed to be an almost foolproof navigational tool, which was created in response to the navigational nightmare that EcchiDreams can be, was released on the 24th January 2016 (two years ago), and had never been updated ever since then. It used to be separated into two categories: the Community Dashboard and the Roleplayers Dashboard. I am happy to announce that this has been overhauled greatly, and that the community and roleplayer dashboards have been merged into one. There are also a number of new icons that reflect some of the new features EcchiDreams has to offer. Oh, and the broken links have been repaired. Homepage These were relatively small tweaks in the grand scheme of things, really. Things like including links to the forum index and club roleplays under personal, the welcome header, and moving our picks down to make room for forum topic lists, with links in the block headers as well to ease the navigational pains. A lot of people don't realise that there is more to EcchiDreams than what it appears. We've also added the latest images uploaded to the gallery block too. Staff Wanted! We are currently looking for staff (as of writing), and if you're a pretty well established member of the community then you can apply below. It is of course completely voluntary, so if you're not big on having more responsibilities and no pay, then this is not for you. But I want to explain the process and will attempt to do so, as we don't often ask for new staff. What happens after you fill in the form is: The current staff look at it, discuss where the strengths and weakness would lie, and how we can apply that to the team. We set it aside; and will do the same for the next one and the next one and so on. On the first of July, we (the current staff) will then discuss and vote. The ones that make it will then have to read through the Staff Policy Agreement; a set of rules that apply just to the staff members in addition to the Terms of Service (that extra responsibility I mentioned earlier). If they agree, they'll go on to a staff meeting where we can teach them about the tools they will have, and to essentially train in how to use them, and so hopefully they'll get a feel of how we work as a team, and how to work independently if no other staff member is online. After that they become a provisional staff member for six months, before becoming a full staff member. The ones that are 'rejected' (to lack a better word) will be informed. Please don't be offended if you are rejected. Chances are you'll be considered later, or if we run an application process again you'll be informed in advance. Lastly, and there's no better way of saying this, but there is a chance that some applications will be rejected almost immediately. Silly applications, or ones that aren't filled out seriously, or even ones where the current staff believe that this is definitely not for you, or if you have previous experience with us that ended... shall I say... in a less than stellar manner. Dreamer Protips We have introduced Dreamer Protips, which can be viewed at the top of the homepage and the bottom of the sidebar of the club directory. We're looking at introducing it in other places, perhaps at a later date. We, at the time of writing, are currently asking the veterans in the community (or even someone with an interesting protip to bring up) to post up their ideas in return for EcchiCredits (if your suggestion is used) over in EcchiMeta. It doesn't have to be roleplay pro-tips, but quick, brief tidbits; for example, something that you didn't know about the site, that you found out through exploration and discovery or what have you, and you think it's of value to other Dreamers, or people who are new, then by all means - share it. A Protip that has been suggested by a member of the community will have a small 'flag' and a star within it that you can hover over with your mouse, to pull up a 'Hover Card' of their profile. Furthermore, you can click or tap on it to open up their profile. Complete Your Profile Complete Your Profile is not a brand new feature; it's something we've had for a month or so now, but it's been reworked slightly into six easy steps. The idea of this feature is to say after registration; "Hey! There's a few more steps to complete that you might want to fill out!". After all, no one wants to fill out a long complex form when they're registering. To register, you have to complete a sheer basic form that includes what username you want, password, and date of birth, unless you use Facebook/Google Connect, or Steam Login (also new). The steps are: Date of Birth:- Mandatory. All Dreamers must be over 18, if you're discovered to be under 18 you will be banned instantly with no chance of appeal, as per Section 8 Paragraph 1 of the Terms of Service. Be sure to fill out this information carefully. Upload an Avatar:- Avatars are personalised images that appear next to each post that you make on the forum. You can use an avatar image to make your posts stand out more from other members that have posted in a topic. Upload a Profile Cover:- Make your profile your own, and customise it with a profile cover. Your Roleplayer Preferences:- You will need to create a Roleplayer Preferences form; you can then attach the URL here. This will then appear in your profile allowing people to easily find your Roleplayer Preferences sheet! Complete a Signature:- This appears at the bottom of your posts in the forums. Consider putting in a link to your Roleplayer Preferences or something, as every time you post on the forums, this will appear: free advertising for your Roleplayer Preferences! Complete "About Me":- Give something for visitors of your profile to read. You can even embed your favorite music from YouTube in here if you want, and link to your Preferences, Clubs, and other such areas. It is your space to write about you. You can skip the whole thing; or skip steps 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 individually, if you so choose. Choose Your Own Forum Index Layout This is just a quick one, but we've introduced a new mode when it comes to displaying the forum index: there's the traditional "table" mode, and a new "grid" mode. At this moment in time we have no intention of forcing the decision one way or the other. At the top of the forum index next to "Start New Topic" there are two buttons; one is four lines (this represents table mode), and one with four squares (which represents the grid mode). See the underlined green section for the button location to get an idea of what each mode looks like below. Table mode: Grid mode: GDPR Compliance EcchiDreams was pretty much compliant with this new directive before it even became a thing; go figure. But, my personal and political opinions aside, we're implementing more measures to make us even more compliant to the new GDPR monstrosity. Our Privacy Policy already outlines the cookies we use, and cookies are sent securely. You have no doubt gotten many emails saying "you've no doubt gotten many emails about this already from other websites...". Yeah... we're not doing that, and from conversations I've had with the ICO about this, we're not required to, because we've always asked for your consent for this. Here are the ways we are compliant: You can change the frequency of emails you get from EcchiDreams. If you're getting way too many emails from EcchiDreams you can tone this down via your Notification settings; you can opt to receive them on a daily or weekly digest. You can even fine tune what goes into the email, or what you get notified for, as well as sign up for, and opt out of, community news and information easily. You can learn more about this here. We've updated our privacy policy to include more information about third party cookies. It is already against Staff Policy (and always has been) to tell Dreamers about another Dreamer's account, email address, and/or other personal information not publicly available on the forums from that Dreamer themselves. Dreamers who are not validated (those that have not confirmed their email address) are automatically deleted after three days. Being signed up to the newsletter has been turned from Opt-Out (tick box on registration) to Opt-In. Not that we send out these emails often. And so on... We might have more information on this at a later date, but until then we are taking steps to ensure compliance, which means you're probably going to see a consent cookie bar soon... Which is something I've been trying to resist for the last few years; but I promised to keep my opinions, political or otherwise, quiet in this announcement. Terms of Service Clarifications We have made some clarifications and modifications to the Terms of Service; specifically in regards to Section 8, Section (, Section 11, and Section 21. We have also greatly updated Section 18. Please familiarise yourself with these sections, if you've not done so already. Coming Soon: EcchiCredit Lottery We will be introducing an EcchiCredit Lottery in the next few months. This will allow you to gamble away small amounts of your EcchiCredits in the hopes of winning a larger amount of EcchiCredits. There will be a reward for matching 3 balls, 4 balls and 5 balls (and of course the Jackpot). Currently it's in development (Testing Phase), and we've found a few problems that we're trying to iron out. We hope to bring this system out by August/September. You can pick your own numbers (6 balls) or do what's called a "Lucky Dip". As par the course it'll be called, perhaps no surprise to anyone: EcchiLotto. Yes I know; our Marketing Department is absolutely genius. I wonder how they come up with all these innovative names? We should double their funding from zero. Semi-Technical: Bug Fixes This is a new section that I will add to the end of the update announcements if there is anything worth mentioning. It's a list of bugs that have either been fixed, or that we know about and have been "worked around", waiting for a fix (see known bugs that still exist). Fixed: There was a search bug that was found when searching for keywords in the Roleplay Preferences area, that would cause any link you click on to say that it didn't exist. Fixed: There was a security flaw, which on rare occasions, sent out emails that were leaking the URL of the Administrator Control Panel for the forums; this prompted a major security alert when a Dreamer tried to log into it with their username and password - which obviously won't work. Nothing was breached, and the ACP was moved. With no help from the dreamer who tried to log in with their credentials, we were able to track down exactly what happened, and why, and reported it to IPS, as the flaw originated from them. We're going to take further action on protecting the ACP Folder from unauthorised access, but obviously those actions are are classified. Obviously. Fixed: The Roleplayer Preferences Link on the forums index and on the footer, for some inexplicable reason, went to my personal Roleplayer Preferences location. Why? I have no idea. I have a feeling my browsers Autocomplete Form was responsible, but I've been unable to reproduce it. Instead it's just been fixed. Fixed: The Roleplayer Preferences Link on the Homepage in the Welcome Header was fixed, as it went to the old one. Fixed: For some inexplicable reason (again), there was a hilarious limit set on EcchiTexts: 10 per day, 60 per minute... If the maths doesn't follow for you, don't worry; it didn't follow for us either. We were very confused. This just goes to prove that some bugs, even outside of games, are funny. Fixed: A bug in the EcchiText Security feature that scans for malicious code prevented certain EcchiTexts from being sent out. This system was broken during the server move, and was subsequently repaired. Fixed: The profile field of Roleplayer Preferences appeared on the Registration Page; which it shouldn't have done, for obvious reasons. This has been removed, and is editable after registration when it should be. Known Bugs that Still Exist There was an exploit identified by @Casey, who tested it with @Sunstone in a small scale test, regarding reactions and EcchiCredits. As a result, the EcchiCredits for Reactions has been removed until further notice, as the developer of the system has gone AWOL and we're not sure where he is. What happened was if you gave someone a "Love" reaction for example, the person who got it would get a hundred EcchiCredits. That's fine. That's how it should be. However, if you took that love react back (removed it), they'd retain that one hundred EcchiCredits. That's not quite how it's supposed to work. What's worse is if you gave then a love react again on the same post, they'd get another one hundred EcchiCredits, totalling it up to two hundred. That's definitely not how it's supposed to work. Take that back, and give it to them again - three hundred total. And so on and so forth. This is not good, so the system has been disabled for now. Instead we've doubled the amount of points you get for posting, and soon (although not yet at the time of writing) this will apply to the Clubs too. Source: つくし - Tsukushi Akihito I picked this because it had a very spring feel to it. I love the colours and it uses quite a wide range of them too. When I was picking out images, @Neptune commented on how cute it was; so I decided to go for it. I believe it's based on, or from "Made in Abyss" and it's drawn by Tsukushi Akihito, whose work you can view more of through the above link.

Hello fellow Dreamers, This year has barely begun and already we're working hard to improve the service for everyone here at EcchiDreams. Firstly we all hope you had a wonderful Christmas (Or holidays) and a Happy New Year. This update was focused mainly in the back end, which would affect the stuff you see, although there isn't that many feature changes... That's coming in the Spring Update. I also want to address the new influx of Dreamers that have found themselves making an online home here at EcchiDreams; Welcome to EcchiDreams! Thanks to you all, and some of our veteran members alike; we achieved 50 online Dreamers in the space of 24 hours; and for a small site like ours with next to no advertising budget, this is a big deal. We hope EcchiDreams continues to grow, and that you stick around. EcchiDreams has come a long way, and we hope that it continues attracting like minded roleplayers who want to RP and have fun. This announcement will cover: Server Side Updates EcchiStore and EcchiCredits (¢) EcchiChat Server Side Updates As part of our effort to increase the site's snappiness (speed) and decreasing response times (time you wait for a page to load, or even change when you click on something) we've made, what we feel to be a major breakthrough. This is why we wanted to go offline for 2 days, to get this done and to cover any possibility of the server completely crapping out. Not only did the server not "crap out", even once, but the updates went uncharacteristically and disconcertingly smoothly! I might be biased, but I've noticed an immediate speed improvement already. Take for example the Emoticons (Emoji) when making a post; when you click on that smiley face in the text editor, it used to take 10-20 seconds for it to load when hardly anyone else was on the site, 30 seconds to a minute on a busy day. This was untenable, and no doubt others had noticed this too. But since the update, it took between 4 to 6 seconds. It's not perfect - yet, but that's a massive improvement. Pages seem to load much faster, although we have no official metrics yet (because the sites we use to monitor those things can't see our site whilst it's offline), so when the site is online again I will be posting some information down in the comments, comparing the before and after. We very much hope that this makes everyone happy, including Dreamers who use mobiles, which has been especially noticeable on. I won't get too technical about it, but this should help with the influx of new Dreamers we've been having, so please let me know what you think - does the site feel faster to you? Do pages seem to load quicker, does it respond better? EcchiStore and EcchiCredits (¢) Before the Big Update on EcchiDreams, we had a feature called EcchiCredits and EcchiCash. EcchiCredits was the currency you earnt by contributing on the site (making posts, etc), and EcchiCash was where you could spend your EcchiCredits to change your display name (your username), your title, get premium membership, and items for your profile (like 'Dolls', or 'Cookies'). However, after the Big Update we pretty much lost most of this, due to the fact that the applications we used were no longer being updated by their third-party developers. And for a long time (nearly three years), EcchiCredits has been stuck in limbo, not useful for anything and barely collectable. Crippled, essentially. [The Currency Symbol for an EcchiCredit is: ¢ ] Not anymore. I am happy to announce that it's coming back, it's not quite at the glory it was in the olden days, but we're a massive step closer today than we were a few weeks ago, at the very least. Last week, I put out a sneak-peek update (slipped it under the radar, whilst no one was looking) and made a major improvement to the EcchiCredit system, that allowed you to bank EcchiCredits and earn them again, which people are starting to notice. Some have already asked me: "How do you get EcchiCredits?", "How much do you get?" and so on... Well, I'll tell you here. Of course, these costs might be subject to change but at the moment, they are: All Dreamers start out with ¢1,500 as a welcome to EcchiDreams gift. You get EcchiCredits just for logging in; you get an amount daily. At the moment it is ¢20 a day. Which if you're on every day, that's ¢7,300 a year - just by visiting once a day. In addition to this you also get ¢20 every week as long as you log in at least once; adding ¢1,040. In addition to this you also get ¢100 every month, as long as you login at least once; adding ¢1,200. So in total, if you're on every day you can earn ¢9,540 a year, by pretty much doing bugger all other than logging in. You can get EcchiCredits (10% a Year) by storing your monies in your bank account. You get ¢10 for making a Status You get ¢5 for replying to one (With exception to the Sandbox Forums ) you get ¢10 for making a topic on the forums You get ¢5 for replying to a topic on the forums (with exception to welcoming new Dreamers in the introduction forums; which is ¢10) If you're the topic poster, and someone replies to your topic, you also get ¢5 (on the forums) Commenting/Reviewing Images posted using the Gallery, either by the Gallery or Clubs - ¢5 (At this time you do not get EcchiCredits for posting images.) You get EcchiCredits for reporting bugs! Depending on Severity (decided by the technician responding to the ticket) - please note the last three are so rare, there has only been one report of a major security-flaw caught by a Dreamer, and that was before my Administration (and I've been here 5/6 years). Low Severity: ¢100 Medium Severity: ¢250 High Severity: ¢500 Severe Severity: ¢750 Critical Severity: ¢1,000 Minor Security-Flaw: ¢2,500 Major Security-Flaw: ¢5,000 Critical Security-Flaw: ¢10,000 Reviewing/Commenting on Roleplayers via Preferences, Private Roleplaying and even the News Articles - ¢5 When someone reacts to your post: : ¢50 : ¢100 : ¢75 : ¢75 : ¢10 : ¢10 And so on... Making EcchiCredits is really not that hard; check out these fine Dreamers who've earnt a fair amount. Can you overtake them? As for the EcchiCash Shop - we've brought a basic version of it back with a different name; The EcchiStore. It doesn't have much in it right now: as I said, it was going to be a starting point that I hoped we could actually work on and expand over the year or so. Right now it has two things for sale: Change Dreamer Title - That little title that is usually under your display name. Yep! You can change that. ¢1,750 Change your Name - Change your display name at any given time. ¢2,500 The staff are already going through some ideas of what to include with the store when we can, so we're open to taking suggestions and such. We decided against most of the items that come with the shop, such as "Steal another Dreamers Reputation", because that's likely to start arguments that frankly none of us want. There were other things that were a problem too, such as "Reset Warning Points", which is understandable from a "Paying a Fine" point of view, but at this time none of our 'Non-Bannable' warning points are permanent; they self expire after time anyway. But we would have liked to have done some kind of profile items, stuff that is just stuff and has no meaning or effects other than it's just stuff. EcchiChat Just quickly here... The EcchiChat system has been updated: it's had a number of bug fixes and layout tweaks, yet it still somewhat looks the same. It should also be slightly better in terms of performance. And that's pretty much it. Please leave a comment below as I will read them. ------- Source: Ensemble Stars! I don't believe this was done by any artist in particular, but by the company itself as CG. I wanted a character of some description sitting on a pile of Gold, to celebrate the EcchiCredits coming back as well as the EcchiStore and my Image-Board Lurks didn't fail to please. Apparently this image is from Ensemble Stars; which I believe is a mobile trading card game (That you can download from Google Play / Apple App Store) and has had a novel and manga made for it and has an Anime show in production for it. I'm not paid to sell it, so if you like the sounds of it, by all means check it out, if not, don't. It's your choice.

Hello fellow Dreamers, This year is coming to a close, and there have been some pretty major updates on EcchiDreams that have been aimed at making things easier and giving roleplayers more control over their roleplays. This update has been focused on overhauling the guide section and bringing it up to date, and doing the same for the homepage. This announcement will cover all of that, but at the end of the announcement we have something that's pretty serious that we need to put out there; I don't think it's going to be well received, but it is what it is. This announcement will cover: New Guides Section Refreshed Homepage for both Guests and Logged in Dreamers Dropping Twitter Sign In and the effective closing of our Twitter Account Club Permissions Finalised Depictions of Minors in Nude or Sexual Situations (A rather serious topic) New Guides Section We are pleased to announce the opening of our new guides section, which replaces our old "Community Tutorials and Guides", and brings in our new "EcchiDreams Guides". This has a vastly updated interface, and splits guides down into sections that are more relevant for reading, cutting the larger guides down into smaller pieces which will be less daunting to read. The Community Tutorials and Guides was brought in early September 2016, and was announced in this update: We have updated and re-written most of the guides in the section, so that they're accurately representing the new format of EcchiDreams. For example: Roleplay Clubs rather than "Public Roleplays", and so on. We've also updated the Account and Profile settings guides, so that you can get a hands on manual for basic account settings management, setting up your profiles, and securing your account. This is a vast improvement over the old section, and over time we hope to be able to keep it up-to-date, and add more guides to it. Check it out, and let us know what you think: https://ecchidreams.com/help/guides/ Refreshed Homepage for both Guests and Logged in Dreamers The EcchiDreams Homepage (https://ecchidreams.com) has been updated. The guest viewing of the page now has the correct information relating to the roleplays, and provides an accurate summary of what you can do in terms of the Club Roleplays, as well as linking to our current guides section. There have also been a number of fixes and optimisations site wide; all little things that kind of add up. The logged in page is objectively more useful too. We've included a handy little Dreamer Widget that displays personalised information such as your posts and reputation count, as well as a welcome message (plus something light hearted under it that changes every hour), and quick links to various places around EcchiDreams. We've added some touch ups here and there, and done away with the news taking up most of the screen; instead putting up "Our Picks" alongside the seven most recently active clubs on EcchiDreams. "Who Was Online" and "Who's Currently Dreaming" have been added to homepage too. On a side note: The Roleplayer Preferences has been updated to include something that a Dreamer had suggested (Grammar and Spelling Competence Preference), and has had the out of date fields removed completely. We might be looking at expanding the fetish list in the Roleplayer Preferences at some point in 2018. We're also trying to acquire the funds to completely overhaul the section, so that it looks better and is easier to read and fill out - this doesn't have a date on it as of yet. Terms of Service has been updated, to clarify that Clubs are included in areas of enforcement. We'd like to state clearly, on the record, that even if you set your club to Private, Staff can still see it for Terms of Service Enforcement. Dropping Twitter Sign In and the effective closing of our Twitter Account I don't want to make a long statement about this, or a big song and dance; but it does affect EcchiDreams. As of last week, we've locked our Twitter account (set it to private), effectively closing it down; we have also removed Twitter as a Sign in Option from EcchiDreams. This partly has something to do with their most recent policy change, for our own reasons, and the way Twitter is being managed in general. They can run their site the way they choose to. We can choose not to be associated with them anymore. We've also never really used the account either, and its only parroted postings to our Facebook page. That was its one and only job, and it couldn't even do that properly... So we ended it. It has nothing to do with anything else. We're not planning on becoming a voice of inciting violence or hatred against... well... Anyone. Even Twitter. Club Permissions Finalised We've finally finalised the club permissions for people you make staff of your club(s). I would like to stress again that Community Staff can see all Clubs on EcchiDreams - even Private Clubs. We've made a pretty simple table below, that displays clearly what the permissions are. Permissions Club Moderators Club Administrators Club Owners 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. Unpin Content This demotes a topic within the club from appearing at the top of the topic listings. The topic will be listed normally when unpinned. Hide Content Hiding content hides a post, image, or topic (for example) from appearing to other club members. View Hidden Content Allows your club staff to see hidden content. To help stand out to club staff, the hidden content will appear highlighted in red. Lock Content Locked content cannot be replied to by your club members, which is great for setting rules and such. It also allows topics that are finished to be locked, as an archiving tool. Unlock Content The ability to unlock content that was previously locked. Not usually needed, unless (for example) there is an event that opens on specific days. Reply to Locked Content Allows your club staff to reply to content that is already locked. Useful because it means you don't have to unlock it, reply to it, and then lock it again. Add Features to Club Adding features to the club such as a calendar, topics page, gallery, and so on. Edit Categories/Features Editing already existing features on the club like a Gallery Page, Topics Page, and so on. Can Promote Members to Administrators/Moderators Self explanatory; this is the permission that sets who can make people staff. Invite Dreamers to Club (Closed/Private) Usually for Closed and Private Clubs; allows your staff to invite Dreamers from the community to your club and/or roleplay. Remove Members From Club The ability to remove members from the club; this could be for a whole host of reasons. But, if your club is open (not Private or Closed), nothing stops the Dreamer from rejoining. Edit Content *Potentially Destructive* Editing other people's posts, images, and so on, that have been posted. If you edit a post, it will come up at the end of the post that it was edited by you. Move Content *Potentially Destructive* The ability to move content within clubs they are a moderator, administrator, or owner of. This is disabled across the board. Unhide Content This is disabled due to technical limitations. Please consult a member of the Community staff to have content unhidden for you, and please be clear as to what you want unhiding (by posting a link to it). Delete Content *Destructive* The ability to permanently delete people's content. This is disabled across the board. If you want something deleted, please speak to a member of the Community staff. Split and Merge Content *Potentially Destructive* If you have posts, for example, that are posted one after the other by the same person in the same topic, you can merge them; this requires the ability to edit content. For the meantime, this is disabled. These permissions are for in the clubs which the Dreamer is staff of, and do not extend out of the clubs to the rest of the community. To date, if you have a club that you want to delete, you still have to contact a member of the community administration to do it for you. Depictions of Minors in Nude or Sexual Situations Lastly... Lolicon, Shotacon and the like, has not been allowed on EcchiDreams for a very long time. in fact, around this time in 2013 I made a topic about it, explaining why it wasn't allowed on EcchiDreams. I don't want to be too negative or harsh, and I want to keep my personal biases out of it, so I will just stick as closely to the facts of the matter as possible. The Facts Computer Images, Drawn, Generated or otherwise (Depictions) of those that are under 18 (Minors), Nude or in Sexual Situations, are in fact illegal in the following countries: Australia, Brazil, Canada, Finland, France, Italy, Japan (somewhat, I'm not sure), Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, South Africa, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States. [UK Law]:- Coroners and Justice Act 2009 - Sections 62 to 68 - It's classed as a "Pseudo Photograph" which is "an image, whether made by computer-graphics or otherwise howsoever, which appears to be a photograph". [US Law]:- 18 USC 1466A - (Source 2) - Where it is stated as clear as day: "In General - Any person who, in a circumstance described in subsection (d), knowingly produces, distributes, receives, or possesses with intent to distribute, a visual depiction of any kind, including a drawing, cartoon, sculpture, or painting, that—(1)(A) depicts a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct; and (B) is obscene; or (2)(A) depicts an image that is, or appears to be, of a minor engaging in graphic bestiality, sadistic or masochistic abuse, or sexual intercourse, including genital-genital, oral-genital, anal-genital, or oral-anal, whether between persons of the same or opposite sex; and (B) lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value; or attempts or conspires to do so, shall be subject to the penalties provided in section 2252A(b)(1), including the penalties provided for cases involving a prior conviction." Just for Information and Reference, as it might tell you which laws they are in the other listed countries, I am not holding this as reliable source, but the above mentioned are linked to reliable sources (The horse's mouth as it were). Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_status_of_drawn_pornography_depicting_minors Our Stance on it Historically EcchiDreams was originally set up by KC (@Casey's Administration); she was the original owner of the site back then, and was certainly more well funded than I am. Originally, she let everything except Gore (and I think also Vore) to be posted up, because she absolutely allowed all things artistic. This was in 2006/2007, back when I was just someone who helped out and helped with development/coding, those kind of things. After just a few months, she ran her original Terms of Service past a legal expert in the United States (as she was an American Citizen) and, after talking about it, there was some changes made; very quickly that kind of content was also banned, before the site even launched. I had vocally protested the stupidity of it at the time, but I wasn't an actual member (I couldn't register until 2008 - when I was 18), so it didn't really matter. The rule was kept in during the Second Administration (near the end of 2008) under Illogically Logical, despite her incompetency and lack of enforcing any rules (she was barely online), she kept this in the Terms of Service. (Those that have been around that long know that I don't have many nice things to say about the Second Administration). Things very quickly changed in 2010 on a relaunch of the site under a third administrator: The NekoLust Administration. It became a Zero Tolerance Offence and anyone posting it was banned immediately, no ifs, ands, or buts. The Terms of Service were draconian, to say the very least. Under my Administration (sometime after 2011 to the present day), I've relaxed the ToS a lot, and scrapped all but three Zero Tolerance Rules. Despite this, it is still a Major Infraction (like a Felony), and carries 50-75 Points that expire after a year; also coming with some restrictions, such as all posts made by the offending account will be placed on a Mod Queue. This is something that adds work for us, so as you can imagine we don't want to do that on a whim. Despite this, I also have an unwritten clause; that is that First Time Offenders do have some leniency given to them for certain offences, and this is one of them. But repeat offenders could face heavy warnings, and eventual ban. I think this is firm, but fair. Today, it is a violation of sections: 8.2 (the last part), 15.1 (because it is Illegal), and 18 (general Gallery rules) of our Terms of Service. So with this in mind... In the past few months we've had a fair few Dreamers that have posted such content, and we've upheld our Terms of Service, dealing with it appropriately under the credo "Firm but Fair". In all recent cases we've shown leniency (0-10 infraction points for ones that aren't so obvious, 25 for obvious depictions of minors in nude or sexual situations, all of which expire in six months from the warning, but have no restrictive actions) because all of them are first time offenders. However... All of them this year, with exceptions to just one or two of them, have responded to these infraction points by going completely nuts! I mean completely off the deep end, like a child throwing a temper tantrum. A number of them start acting with either passive-aggression (which is what it is) or, even less acceptable, extreme hostility towards our staff, just for enforcing the very same Terms of Service that we all agreed to when we registered, and it's something that seems to be getting objectively worse. On the past five occasions since September, some have even gotten down right abusive towards our staff (Violation of Section 20.2). It's a disproportionate response to that kind of infraction. It's like like going nuclear just for getting a parking ticket, and it's become a bit of a concerning pattern. Let me make this absolutely crystal clear; If it looks like a child or someone under 18, or is tagged on popular imageboards as being Lolicon/Shotacon or similar, or if canonically the person is under 18 and they are nude or in a sexual situation, then err on the side of caution and do not post it here. It's really not that hard. We understand that "looks like" is subjective, which is partly why there is leniency for First Time Offenders. If you can't talk to us about it like a rational adult upon getting infraction points on your account (IE: melting down like a child not getting their way), then consider going somewhere else. I have enough to deal with; and as I said in 2013, I don't want the drama. I am certainly not willing to risk my freedom by allowing that content here, either. We don't "Hate anyone" who posts it, we don't "Hate it" and we're not trying to be "A Bitch" or (my personal favourite) "Anti-Loli Nazis" about it, but the Law is the Law, and I can't just decide to allow it. It's regarded in our country as being practically the same as Child Pornography. That's a heavy prison sentence right there, and far reaching consequences for the rest of my adult life. Why is it fair that I should be demanded to take that kind of risk, exactly? If you don't like the fact that's illegal in your country, you're going to have to take that up with your legislators. Until it's no longer illegal in the US and the UK, it's not allowed on this site. I am not risking EcchiDreams or my freedom over this. If the legality of it doesn't bother you, or you're somewhat unconvinced of the actual laws I've literally cited, then consider this: We pay the server fees and licence fees, so we get to decide what is and isn't allowed on our site... And depictions of minors nude or in sexual situations isn't allowed. We totally have that right, just like you have the right to go somewhere else if it bothers you that much. Lolicons and Shotacons that aren't sexualised, in a sexual situation, or naked (no genitals on display) are allowed here. That's not banned at all. Roleplaying it, as far as I am aware, is legal, as it comes under free speech/expression. We as Staff aren't trying to get everyone restricted, suspended, or banned, but we do have to enforce our Terms of Service; no one is exempt from them. We don't give out special favours, not even to friends or ourselves. Accept it and move on, or go to another site. We'd be happy to Section 21 your account for you (Terminate/Deactivate it upon request), just shoot us a message in the contact form, or by EcchiTexts to any of the Community Administrators, tell us you want your account to be closed, and we'll close it. No fuss, no hassle, no begging for you to stay, no questions asked! And just to correct a commonly touted fallacy: Just because we're a Hentai friendly site doesn't mean we have to accept depictions of minors nude or in sexual situations at all. For example: Konachan is an Anime/Hentai Image Board that doesn't allow Yaoi (last time I checked). It sucks but that's their prerogative, just like this is our prerogative. They pay their server fees and they get to decide what is and isn't allowed there, just like we pay ours and we get to decide what is and isn't allowed here. I'm seriously not trying to be an "Anti-Loli Nazi" about it, but I am fed up of seeing my staff, who work here voluntarily (completely free) on a website that is completely free of charge, getting abused by those that can't take the smallest of infractions, who can't accept responsibility or accept when they're in the wrong; it's always someone else's fault. I don't want to make it a Zero Tolerance Offence again; I hope that people can start being more adult about it. By all means come and talk to me about it calmly. I will explain myself calmly in return. But as the law stands: It is what it is. I hope this issue can be put to rest once and for all. I don't want any more repeat incidents of categorical abuse being leveled against any of my staff from now on. That's out of line, and I will not accept it; they don't deserve that. ------- Source: Dao Dao I had picked this image because the UK (where I live) is going through a cold snap at the moment, and it kind of just felt right. It's got no one in it, and it's a very neutral picture. It's quite dark and yet it feels cold too. I think it is a very well drawn piece of artwork, and I might just check out Dao Dao's page to see what their other art pieces are like. Also welcome back to @Casey who was the very original EcchiDreams Administrator, it's good to see you again.

Hello fellow Dreamers, As I softly announced in my status; this announcement will be focused on some areas such as: Revision to Club Information: specifically in relation to Owners, Administrators, Moderators and Members of Clubs. A reveal of a new reaction. Information New Help and Support section (Already live here: https://ecchidreams.com/help/) Information on a staff shuffle and a new member of staff. Plans for our Facebook Fanpage. Clubs I spoke at length about the clubs however since then we’ve made some changes and such that will need a correction article (This one) to explain them in more detail, as well as correct the information that was previous stated as updates have happened since the launch of Clubs. The types of users in Clubs was previously mentioned as “Leader, Moderators, Users” this is no longer the case; as it’s “Owners, Administrators, Moderators, Members and Guests” which with their own low-level (The same across all clubs) set permissions, depending on that permissions they are in any given club. Owner - The owner is obviously the person who owns the club, they have pretty much sole authority over their club and have extensive permissions. They should be able to edit, hide and make posts appear, change the layout of the club or even collapse the club completely. Administrator - Be warned: I think they have the exact same powers as the Owner does, but they can also make other people Administrators! Do not arbitrarily set people to be your club administrator especially if you don’t trust them 100%. They are essentially, co-owners of the club, the only thing they can’t do is oust you, but in the wrong hands they can do some serious damage. Moderator - Moderators are bound by permissions that give them the ability to moderate content posted within the club. Usually these are non-destructive and easily reversible by both Administrators and Owners. Members - Members are people who have joined the club but have no permissions to moderate the area. Guests/Visitors - People who have not joined the club, in question. Private clubs are completely invisible to these people, and closed clubs show up on the clubs directory but the pages are not visible until they become members. Open clubs are visible but not postable in and public clubs don’t require joining to post in. Does this mean an Owner or Administrator of Club A, are an Owner or Administrator in your Club, Club B? No. They would be whatever you set them to be, if they’re even in your club at all. I think Administrators and Moderators might have the same powers; except Administrators can add other Administrators/Moderators. Or they could have the same power as the owners. The documentation wasn’t clear and I’m not able to test it as I have “Owner” abilities on all clubs as a Community Administrator. So please exercise caution. If anyone does find out, please let me know in the comments section, I will happily correct this article. Things to look for: Can Owners or Administrators edit content, unhide content, move content, delete content and split/merge content. New Reaction I am pleased to announce that on Thursday night, I was able to modify the reactions so that like would be represented by a thumbs up button. I also added a new reaction: Love. When you like a post/comment/status/image so much that a mere like just won’t do. The like button now looks like this: The love button looks like this: A love doesn’t add two points; in contrary to my previous article, you cannot do ‘+2’ rep, you can only have ‘+1’, ‘0’ or ‘-1’. As we don’t use ‘-1’, the current reactions will add the following points to the receivers reputation: Like: +1 Love: +1 Thanks: +1 Haha: +1 Confused: 0 Sad: 0 Help and Support We have replaced the Community Help Centre (Center, if you don’t use British-English) with a more universal Help and Support Centre (Again, center if you’re not using British-English). There will be a status indicator on there in the near future that will tell you the expected waiting time for replies; but if you follow your topics there you can be notified instantly when replies are made. The section is a private one-to-one help and support area available to all Dreamers. Only you and staff will see your own posts, much like in the same way that the Sandbox Area works. Currently the three sections in there are: Help and Support - Do you have a question about something related to EcchiDreams or need to ask how some features work? Or perhaps you've run into something you're not sure about? Then that would be the place to put such a request for help or support. Bug Report - If you are having technical issues with EcchiDreams, or perhaps you've found a bug that you'd like to report, even if it's a spelling mistake, please log it here so that we know about it and can fix it quicker. Please include the steps you took to reproduce the error, will help us confirm the bug quicker. Infraction Appeal - Did you get an infraction or warning that you want to appeal against, or discuss, with staff? Then that would be the place to discuss it. You have to fill out very minimal amounts of information and we can do the rest, so setting off a bug report, or help request has never been simpler. Also we now have a central location for Infraction Appeals; where Dreamers can ask the staff more about their infraction, or even getting it appealed if they believed they were warned unfairly (Never happens, but just incase, right?) Although a little warning in advance: if we get “I didn’t know it was against ToS” when it’s clearly stated in the ToS, your appeal will be rejected. It doesn’t matter if you’ve read the Terms of Service or not, they are enforced here, and ignorance of the Terms of Service is not valid grounds for appeal; please make sure that you have read the ToS so you don’t end up in that situation. Instantly Banned members (Usually from Zero Tolerance Offences) can use the contact form, but successful appeal chances in these cases is currently 0%. We don’t give out warnings/infractions lightly and when we do, we’re usually 100% sure about it. May seem pointless, but you never know what could happen. To check it out, go here: https://ecchidreams.com/help/ Staff Shuffle It is with sadness that we’ve had to let @ArdillaVerde93 go from being a member of staff here on EcchiDreams, for private reasons of a personal nature. ArdillaVerde93 posted up sometimes on our Facebook Fanpage, and has put in many years of good work with us, and we deeply appreciate all the hard work they have done. ArdillaVerde93; we hope that you stay and continue dreaming with us dreamers, and that we have many years of good times ahead. I’d also like to congratulate @SMFoxy, who has been around for quite some time now on gaining a promotion to Senior Staff as our Social Media Operations Administrator, and of course, EcchiDreams Moderator. Finally; I’d like to welcome @Whoreo, who is bringing his usual vibrant energy into EcchiDreams, as an EcchiDreams Moderator, for both the site and our Facebook Fanpage. He will start posting, I’m told: "Daily at 18:00hrs (6PM) BST/GMT starting tomorrow." Apparently, he will only be posting high-resolution art work when posting, to promote artists far and wide. He wants to bring some engaging discussions to the page, and we look forward to seeing what he has in store. Such as it is: we’ll be looking at more frequent postings from EcchiDreams on our Facebook Fanpage, and if you have Facebook already (because not many don’t), then why not become a fan of the page and take a look around? We currently have 145 people who like our page, and 150 followers;m which isn’t bad, considering we don’t usually advertise anywhere. So a big thanks to our fans and followers thus far! As always: please leave comments, suggestions, and feedback relating to this article below; I read every single comment posted, and it's my pleasure to. Article Image Artist: Cait Links: Pivix, Twitter, Patreon What can I say: I really like this piece, and I think Cait is an amazingly talented artist. It's Kashiwazaki Sena, from Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai (Haganai: I don't have many friends). That's all I have to really say on it, aside from that, she looks very warm, inviting, and friendly; hopefully a lot like EcchiDreams is. If you like to the picture, I would recommend checking out some of Cait's other work.

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

Image Artist Credit: Liru by 春夏冬工. Greetings, fellow Dreamers! Following up from our massive update, we’ve been working hard behind the scenes during this Beta period to bring most of our functionality back online. In many ways, EcchiDreams has evolved considerably during this phase. Now we’re starting to look at bringing certain sections up-to-date. These past few months now, we’ve been working on the The Roleplaying Suite but this is finally coming to an end as the Roleplay Suite Overhaul is nearing completion. We’ve made changes to how the Private Roleplay topics are displayed; as such we will message everyone with their Private Roleplay adverts and encourage them to repost them on our new Private Roleplayer Bulletin Board system, which allows people to search for the roleplay they want - effortlessly. We’ve also released a number of guides to help you get started on EcchiDreams as a roleplayer, and we’ll continue releasing guides, although you too can take part if you want, and release your own guides. We’ve also created an area called the Sandbox. This doesn’t just have to be used for Roleplaying. The Sandbox is the place in where you can design your topics before you post them publicly to get the formatting you want, and to make it look perfect. Only you and staff can see your own posts, so if you do need any assistance, we can help you out (Just ask!). In addition to roleplay updates, we’ve made changes to the homepage for both logged in and logged out dreamers. Logged in dreamers will see several of the features that used to be around on the forum index, whereas logged out dreamers will get a more modern homepage which informs them of what our site is about and what we do. We’ve also made large scale changes to the Terms of Service; which basically re-affirms our stance towards Free Speech. Lastly; EcchiDreams will be coming out of Beta on the 6th September 2016. We look forward to your comments, feedback and criticisms in the section below. Sweet Dreams~!

Greetings, fellow Dreamers! Following up from our massive update, we’ve been working hard behind the scenes during this Beta period to bring most of our functionality back online. In many ways, EcchiDreams has evolved considerably during this phase. Now we’re starting to look at bringing certain sections up-to-date. These past few weeks we’ve been working on the The Roleplaying Suite. Over the years, our Roleplay section has expanded and changed to update itself to the demands of the Roleplayers on EcchiDreams. It started as a single small, pre-determined scenario driven roleplay. Thorndown University; which went on to include other roleplays that eventually came together to become Blackberry Falls, which is supposed to be a slightly more technologically advanced modern city. After that, Blackberry was joined by Craethiel Kingdom; a medieval roleplay, Utopian Curse; a tropical island that seems like paradise on the surface but is a deep survival based plot, and Andromeda; a purely Sci-Fi driven scenario. Then, with the suggestions that came forth from Dreamers in the community, the Independent Roleplays came into existence. This was a feature that intended on allowing EcchiDreamers the chance to make their own roleplay scenario, rather than be forced to conform to specific settings. This allowed people to create their own roleplays, and set their own balance of control and quality. But, during the Beta Phase I talked about at the beginning, we have found that with the Independent Roleplay section, we no longer really need the Scenario Roleplays. And thus, we have decided to move them into the Independent Roleplays as their own, Independent RPs. As she was the one that worked on them for all these years, they will be under the ownership of Neptune. Unfortunately this means those roleplays will be restarted when they’re moved, as some of you will have found out when you received an EcchiText on the subject. There will also be a name change from here on out; EcchiText Roleplays will become Private Roleplays, and what that means for the section is that nothing changes. You go there to announce Private Roleplays on EcchiDreams (This can be over the Chatbar or through EcchiTexts). Independant Roleplays will become Public Roleplays, and what this means for the section is that almost nothing really changes. It’s where you make your own roleplay or join one you want to be apart of. Custom Roleplays will become Premium Roleplays, and will remain something only Platinum members can create (which allows you to set your own permissions; either Private, Invite Only or Public). Contrary to popular belief, we have no intention of monetising this (with real money). This is purely paid for with EcchiCredits (Contribution based currency; which is still offline at the moment). This encompasses most if not all forms of roleplayers. The Public Roleplays will have difficulty ratings which will allow people to find their level of roleplaying easily, of course these will be easily searchable too. So Joining and Making your own roleplay has never been easier, and the rules are pretty simple and easy to follow. Over the coming weeks we will be adding guides to our Guides section for Roleplaying. If you click on the “Follow” button in there you’ll be notified as guides are posted. As always we’re welcome and open to feedback.

~ Leave of Absence Improvements ~ EcchiDreams Update Hello EcchiDreamers! Over the next coming months we’re going to be slowly start rolling out further updates to return our site back to feature full. As time goes on we’ll be returning old features and announcing new and changing features, here in the new announcements suite. Every aspect of EcchiDreams has been modernised, thanks to Invision Power Suite 4 and we’re excited to use this to better our second homes. :P The Leave of Absence has had a complete overhaul, it was once a forum on the site that people could post their Leave of Absence topics, usually roleplayers telling other roleplayers that they’ll be gone for X period because of Y reason. This was quite confusing sometimes, especially for people who didn’t know about Leave of Absence, and wasn’t very well implemented. Although it worked there was always room for improvement; and now, we’re able to implement this more coherently. Starting Wednesday 15th July 2015 the Leave of Absence forum will be read only, and will be removed by Saturday 1st August 2015. Instead; Dreamers can go to this link, and set this and disable it themselves. Unlike previously you made an LoA thread and people had to have looked in that thread to know you were on LoA. This is more subtle well… Kinda. Because it’s also more obvious. You fill out a short reason or something as to why you’re going away. You can enable/disable the status whenever you like. When you’ve activated and saved it; it will show up in multiple places: Posts: Prominently in your profile: And a subtle link will sit on the top of all your pages reminding you that it’s set, so you can unset it.

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.