The staff at ThinkingWithPortals is proud to announce that we're increasing the number of ways you can follow and interact with the site. We've now got several different channels on popular social networking sites open for business. They're all on display in the sidebar just over there to the left, but I'll detail them in case you don't want to move your eyes from this riveting post. You can like us on Facebook, where news announcements, screenshots of Community Spotlight maps, and other things will be posted and integrated into your news feed. You can subscribe to our channel on YouTube; look for future announcements as to the content that will be posted. In addition, follow our feed on Twitter for, again, news announcements, Community Spotlights, and other updates.

On another note, if you're one of the strong souls who still use RSS feeds, you can add the following feeds to stay updated. Take a look at the news feed, the new downloads feed, and the new topics feed.

Look forward to another Community Roundup in the very near future. We'll be covering the time since the Summer Mapping Initiative ended, so expect more brief descriptions but more highlighted downloads.

Finally, we want to thank the entire community for their continued support and participation. You all keep this site alive and kicking and are helping it grow and improve.

EDIT
There was a minor problem with the "New Downloads Feed". If you subscribed to this feed, please adjust it so that you are using the new feed. The correct feed URL is here. This has been reflected site-wide.

DOUBLE EDIT
**A disclaimer: If you friend us on Facebook, for the time being we will have the same status as any other friends on Facebook. If your privacy settings are set to "Friends of Friends" visibility on something (status, photo, etc.), another person who has friended TWP may be able to see it. They will not be able to find you through our friends list, but on the off chance that person stumbles across your profile in another way the item may very well be visible to them. I'm still looking into whether the 'Friends list visible only to the staff' option removes the "ThinkingWithPortals Mapping is now friends with" status posts.

Also, don't feel it's absolutely necessary to friend us on Facebook. It's not like anything posted there won't be duplicated at least two times through the site itself and Twitter.**

Scratch that, it's fixed now (it's a page instead of profile).

Oh cool, now I can friend you on Twitter, and follow you on Facebook.

Actually, the only network I have is a Youtube. What do you plan to upload in the future? Reviews? highlights?

I have a google+ profile, so I can send TWP an invite if you wish me to do so.

I find it funny that you made TWP a person, not a page. Now Facebook wants me to suggest him friends.

reepblue wrote:
What do you plan to upload in the future? Reviews? highlights?

The plan is to rebroadcast videos of maps uploaded here. Me and Hober may do a coop review/playthrough video series as well.

NuclearDuckie wrote:
I find it funny that you made TWP a person, not a page. Now Facebook wants me to suggest him friends.

The whole issue with group pages that register as friends is that, now you boss only needs to figure out that TWP is a group-as-friend and add it, then see your entire profile

Hurricaaane wrote:
NuclearDuckie wrote:

I find it funny that you made TWP a person, not a page. Now Facebook wants me to suggest him friends.

The whole issue with group pages that register as friends is that, now you boss only needs to figure out that TWP is a group-as-friend and add it, then see your entire profile

Not if your privacy settings are correctly configured.

WinstonSmith wrote:
Hurricaaane wrote:

NuclearDuckie wrote:

I find it funny that you made TWP a person, not a page. Now Facebook wants me to suggest him friends.

The whole issue with group pages that register as friends is that, now you boss only needs to figure out that TWP is a group-as-friend and add it, then see your entire profile

Not if your privacy settings are correctly configured.

Then why would it be a User page in the first place? The whole point of group pages and fan pages is to remove the hassle of privacy issues.

I did set up my privacy settings, and all it did is to kill the whole point of Facebook because then for each status update you make you have to carefully choose the "list" it belongs to (which is actually what Google+ tries to address), so the whole "friends of my friends are able to see that status" doesn't work anymore.

Not only did you have to separate friends and work as different lists, but moreover, if "I may know friends of my friends" is the whole force of social networking, "friends of a group I have as a friend" is just against social networking since it's a community, and any stranger can be in the community, and the community doesn't know who is authorized to be in it.

A "user" adds friends because it knows them so we can share some of our privacy. A "community as an user" does not know who is really part of the community so it adds everyone, and shares every user's status to other user's.
This is not the way it works, the users have to declare themselves as part of a community, without the sharing part.

I think we created it as a "friend" page because we weren't sure who should be the owner of it, or something. I don't even use Facebook in the first place, I'm letting Winston run the show pretty much. If it really is a big problem then I guess we can change it.

There was a minor problem with the "New Downloads Feed". If you subscribed to this feed, please adjust it so that you are using the new feed. The correct feed URL is here. This has been reflected site-wide.

I also added a +1 on Google+ button for anyone cool enough to be on there.

Hurricaaane wrote:
Multiple things

Point taken. I've adjusted a few of the settings (the friends list can now no longer be viewed by anyone except the staff) and I'll be looking through the settings more to see if something can't be done about the issues you've brought up. Thanks for the feedback.

**So, a disclaimer: If you friend us on Facebook, for the time being we will have the same status as any other friends on Facebook. If your privacy settings are set to "Friends of Friends" visibility on something (status, photo, etc.), another person who has friended TWP may be able to see it. They will not be able to find you through our friends list, but on the off chance that person stumbles across your profile in another way the item may very well be visible to them. I'm still looking into whether the 'Friends list visible only to the staff' option removes the "ThinkingWithPortals Mapping is now friends with" status posts.

Also, don't feel it's absolutely necessary to friend us on Facebook. It's not like anything posted there won't be duplicated at least two times through the site itself and Twitter.**

This disclaimer will also be inserted into the original post. Thanks for the continuing feedback as we work out the bugs with this.

First post.... but why not make an official IRC channel too? I see it benefiting the community a lot.

Blaizer wrote:
First post.... but why not make an official IRC channel too? I see it benefiting the community a lot.

We had one, years ago. Barely anyone used it and we shut it down in like 2009.

Double-fixed the "New Downloads" feed. Anyone who is using it with a reader, just refresh/clear your current feed results and let it re-pull them.

And we're proud to announce that WinstonSmith's mistake with Facebook has been fixed.

But Winston, aren't you admitting a staff member screwed up? Which should never be done to maintain a position of authority?

Well yes. Anyway, we've now created a Facebook page that can be liked instead of friended, meaning that there won't be any issues with "my boss friended TWP too and now he can see my posts and photos" or anything of the like. The link in the sidebar has been changed as well. If you're already friends with us on Facebook, you can most likely expect some sort of suggestion to like the page soon, but don't let that hold you back if you want to go ahead and do so now. Feel free to unfriend the profile if you want; we'll probably be unfriending people soon anyway since the profile's existence is now null and void except for administrative purposes.

In addition by the time you read this the link in the original post will have been updated to reflect the new page.

The link to the the Google+ doesn't work. Is it because it's not set up yet? I wanted to add Thinking With Portals to one of my circles on there.

TWP doesn't have a user on Google+. The link there goes nowhere, it's only a link to match everything else. You can +1 it by clicking the actual +1, though.