Welcome... FAQ About The Community

Peter_Viscarola_(OSR)

Welcome to the New OSR Developer Community Site

We're pretty excited to be here, after months of planning. We really hope you like it.
 

What Happened?

In short, we moved from our old, outdated, site on www.osronline.com -- Now we're here. Yay! If you'd like to read the backstory, check out the OSR Developer's Blog.
 

Why Don't I Get Email Anymore?

You may recall that we've had to limit, at least for the time being, who gets email when a posting occurs. Please see this explanation. Users who are in the "All Email Users" group can set their preferences by going to "Edit Profile" and then "Notification Preferences" -- There, they can indicate the categories they want to receive email about.
 

I Get Email, But Why from Just from NTDEV and A&A Category

We had a choice: We set some folks to get email by default, and we selected the NTDEV and "Administration and Announcements" categories for you. You can change the categories you get email from in your profile. Just go to "Edit Profile" for your profile and select "Notification Preferences" and select what you want. If you JUST see "Notification Preferences" and you do not see "Category Notifications" when you try to change your Notification Preferences, you're not in the "All Email Users" group. Or, you are and something's broken.
 

I'm Not Getting ANY Email from the Community... Not Even Password Reset

First, know that emails form the Community originate from the domain "@vanillacommunity.email" -- We know that the IT department at one major US corporation was blocking this domain by default as "mass marketing spam." We also know that sending email from the Community does work. So, if you're not getting emails from the Community, it's because the email is getting blocked somewhere. And that somewhere is either your email program (check your spam folder), your desktop End Point Protection suite (gxd, I hate that term... so very trendy), or your IT departments mega-tronic-super-power spam scanner (that's arbitrarily decided that .email TLDs are evil and Must Be Stopped). Bottom line: If you're not getting any email from us... it's not likely to be us.
 

I'm Not Getting The Daily Digest! What Happened?!

Yeah... sorry. There's no more Daily Digest available. We apologize for that, and we hope that there will be one available in the medium term future (like, sometime in calendar 2019). But, right now... all we have for you is an apology and the hope of a better world in the future.
 

Why Does My Display Name Have a Number After It?

When we moved users over to our new Community, we had to make some changes. We changed spaces in username to "_" and every username has to be unique (for a variety of reasons, but for one it let's you @ mention people). Some of you had the same username as other people on the list. Others have had the same username (your first and last names, typically) but have had several accounts over the years with different email addresses. Those OLD accounts were still "active" as far as the old List Server was concerned, even if you weren't actively getting email anymore.
 
Anyhow... if you don't like the number after your name, email [email protected] and we'll try to get your old accounts deleted, and your name set to something prettier. Without the number. Or, perhaps with a number you like. Like 42. Or 5. Or 7.
 
Update 26 September: We have manually sorted-through the names of the first few hundred folks to "move" from the old lists here to the new community, and we have changed names with numeric suffixes to remove those suffixes where it seemed to be reasonable. Recall, back at OSR Online it effectively wasn't possible to change your email address... so when you changed jobs, the most common thing people did was create a new account, with their new email address and the same user name.
 

Why Is My Display Username Something Silly Like OSR_Community_User-xxxx

Where "xxxx" above is a number. This is because you didn't HAVE a username on the old list server. Everyone has to have a username here on the new Community. So we made one up for you. Because all the really good usernames were already taken, we used "OSR_Community_User" and a number. We never claimed to be super creative.
 

Can you post questions via email?

If you're a member, yes... you can. The addresses are:

• [email protected]
• [email protected]
• [email protected]
   

Can I join the Community via email (like I could sign-up to the lists entirely via email)

No. You have to sign-up interactively, and confirm your email address.
 

Is There an RSS Feed?

Absolutely! The URLs are:

• https://community.osr.com/categories/ntdev/feed.rss
• https://community.osr.com/categories/ntfsd/feed.rss
• https://community.osr.com/categories/windbg/feed.rss
• https://community.osr.com/categories/announcements-and-administration/feed.rss
   

The RSS Feeds Have an Invalid Token in Them (the <language> token appears twice, which isn't allowed)

Update 26 October: Not anymore! The problem has been fixed.
 

Can I Get Copies of My Own Posts/Replies Via Email

Nope. We asked. No can do. Maybe someday.
 

How Do I Setup Outlook Rules to Sort Incoming Email?

The subject line will start with the name of the category in square brackets. So, emails to NTDEV start with [NTDEV], those to NTFSD start with [NTFSD] and the like. Note that this wasn't working at first, and we initially sent out a bunch of emails with [OSR] in square brackets... and this problem has been corrected. The tags that appear in square brackets in the email subject are the literal names of the categories. So, if we add new categories, you may start seeing new tags in the subject line of emails from this group.
 

What is the SENDING address of email from the Community? I need to setup my spam filters.

Email from the Community comes from "vanillacommunity.email" (yes, "email" is a real TLD). Password reset email comes from "[email protected]" -- Forum posts comes from an arbitrary sender name (formed by the characters "OSR+" and a thread identifier) in the "vanillacommunity.email" domain.
 

My Old Formatting "Tricks" (like the <quote>) Don't Work Anymore! What Can I Do!?

You can glory in arriving in the 21st Century at long last. When you post from the web interface, use MARKDOWN to format your posts. We're still getting used to it ourselves. But we're confident that you'll get used to it, maybe even love it, in time.
 

My SMIME Signed Email Gets Posted to the Community... But as an Empty Message

Yes, thanks. This problem has been reported to the devs.
 

I Never Like What some-user Posts!

I know how you feel. Sigh. You can choose to ignore posts from users that consistently annoy you. When you do this, you need to "click" to expand any posts that they make (as long as you're logged in). To put a user on your ignore list, click on their name, and when you get to their profile, click the little down-arrow thingy and select "ignore."
 

I Posted Something... And It Didn't Show Up!

Yeah... it probably got marked as spam. There's a pretty sophisticated set of spam filters, but sometimes they get it wrong: Sometimes spam gets through and sometimes real posts get marked as spam. As the community evolves, the spam blocking will get better. If you post something and it disappears, you can let the mods know and we'll get your post fixed.
 

I EDITED an Existing Post I Made... And It DISAPPEARED!

It's magic! No, not really: It either (a) got marked as spam, or (b) if you repeatedly edited your post (like 3 or 4 times in rapid succession) the "flood control" blocker might have been triggered. Again, let the mods know... we'll get it fixed so that this never happens to you again.
 

How Do I ... ?

It's going to take us a while to figure things out. Post your questions here in the Announcements and Administration (AKA the "A&A") forum. We'll try to get you answers.
 
 
The OSR Engineering Team