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News Entry Date: 1/28/2002 8:34pm

Hello everyone. I wanted to give you an update on things. I am still here, still alive, and still trying desperately to find time to do the next step in the upgrade process. The past 2 weeks have been the prime example of "The road to hell is paved with good intentions." --In other words I believe I said to my wife EVERY night for the past 2 weeks... "I'm going to work on The Poetic Link tonight." She says "OK Hon" and somehow it never works out. -SIGH :( I know what the problem is. I'm stuck at a spot where I sit down and start to look at the code. I realize that the next step is HUGE and decide to NOT to start unraveling that next big ball of yarn due to the fact that I only have a few hours at my disposal that evening. I think I'm going to have to take a 2 week vacation (and I'm not kidding here) to do this right. When my wife and I talked about that idea, I said... "Yeah but I tried that over Christmas and look what happened! I got part way through the update and my vacation ran out." But she proceeded to remind me that we had one HELL of a lot going on over that Vacation. --You know what... she was right. So I am going to be taking another 2 week vacation to do this right. Christmas is over, New Years is over and now my Birthday is over. Nothing else stands in my way right now ...I think :) So for all of you patient and dedicated individuals. Thank you so very much. The update is coming. I have been promising that for about 40 days now :( The good thing is I know what I need to do... I just need the time to do it. Funds right now are hovering at $500.00 so we're OK financially. I am not complaining as long as TPL is paying it's own bills. --I know that funds will rise dramatically once the update is in. I feel like the company that advertised it's better mousetrap before it was ready. -They went bankrupt because everyone stopped buying their current design, choosing to wait for the better one. --Well, I'm not in the marketing business, so I choose honesty. The better mousetrap is coming guys! I'm not afraid to say it... in fact I'm very happy to say it. As long as TPL can survive on its shoe-string budget, I'm not going to say a single word. -Besides, if I'm not churning out code for you guys... I don't deserve to be making money right now anyway! What other webmaster will bear his/her soul like that? -eh! *Laugh* Well I have said it before and I'll say it again. I have nothing to hide. I do this for you guys and that's the bottom line. Notice how all of the people who at one time were trying to pick on TPL for one reason or another... They're gone :) -I firmly believe they are gone because there is no conspiracy to find. There is nothing hidden to dig up. The cold plain truth is ...it's me ...1 person running this place, 1 person who has honorable intentions and goals for his site and beyond that there is nothing. Yes perhaps someday once I find the "perfect" system (or close to it); this place could bring in a nice monthly income. But for now, I'm focusing on simply trying to make this place the best it can be. Bottom line once more. Thank you all for sticking with my dream. Thank you for sticking with each other and with TPL. You will not be sorry once things are done. Hell, you're probably not sorry now :) -Where else can you find poetry and entertainment like this? -Laugh!

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News Entry Date: 1/21/2002 9:34pm

Hello everyone, just a quick update for you all. Tonight I ran the purge routines in order to prepare the database for the updates coming very soon. So if you notice a LOT of your older critiques missing... that would be due to the purge. Everything older than 100 days old is now gone. As stated in many past newsletters and on the forum. Please save ANY critiques that you want to keep ...onto your computer's hard drive. We have to purge the old critiques here since we do not have unlimited space. I also realized that I had not run the December Award letters until just now. I am sorry that I forgot to do that. I'm about 12 days late :( -No harm done however, the prize award letters were generated and the credits have been applied now. Thank you for the support and encouragement that you have all shown over the past few weeks. I am getting excited about the new updates and I hope that they are well worth the wait. I think you will all be very happy with them. -Chris

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News Entry Date: 1/20/2002 10:19pm

Hello Everyone. I wanted to write to you all just to give a quick update on where things stand. By the way. I just turned 30 on Thursday the 17th, so I am feeling quite old and depressed by the whole age thing at the moment. -Yes it sucked, but I feel that somehow, 40 will be even worse :( The updates are still being written and tested here on my home version of The Poetic Link. I have almost removed 100% of the blind critique stuff and I will likely install that portion of the update as soon as I am confident there will be no bad things happening from that. Additionally, I am still removing all of the stuff for SCORING of poems. Yes it will ALL be gone after this update. In place of the scoring will be a month end voting process, whereby the best critics for each month will carry the most weight in the voting process. I will be doing a LOT of other small things, but those are the 2 main things that are changing. I have quite a bit of work done already, even though it's over 2 weeks late :( -I still have quite a bit more to do though. I just want you all to know that it is progressing and that the promised update will be installed as soon as I am able to do so with confidence. I don't want to blow anything up :) Everyone keeps e-mailing me and giving their support and encouragement. I thank you ALL for everything you are doing and for the amazing "Understanding" that you guys have. I know there are some problem people on the site right now ...giving bad critiques and trying to sabotage scores. But just think of them as Bees. -You know how bees go nuts at the end of fall just before they die. :) Well this update will effectively kill those people who are trying to sabotage scores and hurt people with slander. This should deal a huge blow to any and all sabotage activities with regard to poem scoring or ranking. If you are feeling frustrated by these type of people, take comfort in the fact that "Good things come to those who wait!" I will be installing the update soon, and it will definitely be worth the wait :) Please keep purchasing credits guys... it is something that you can all do to help support this site. We made it through a very bad year end and we are surviving now with about 500 dollars in the "coffers" as JoMo likes to put it. Things should be OK ...but I would like to raise the reserve funds a bit so that I'm not living a worried life. If you can afford to buy some credits please do it. If you can't ...I understand. I will sign off for now, but I just want to once more say a great big "Thank YOU!" ...to everyone who has helped this site survive; with both monetary support and written encouragement. Here are some links you may find helpful: Donations: http://ThePoeticLink.com/sales/donations Anthology Purchases: http://ThePoeticLink.com/sales/anthologies Submission Credit Purchases: http://ThePoeticLink.com/pl/buy_credits.php3 Take Care! -Chris

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News Entry Date: 1/3/2002 1:06pm

Hey guys. I was in the neighborhood and decided to drop a quick newsletter to everyone. I hope that your holiday was restful and FUN! -I am still trying to figure out if I skipped mine or not? -It went by so damn fast. The site upgrades were a LOT more complicated then I thought that they would be. I have written a TON of programs for the site over the last 2 years I must now be very careful when doing any large changes. I have a test database at home to run all of my updates on and to debug. It is a nice feature but very time consuming. I have to reload the entire database whenever anything messes it up. But it's best to find the problems there rather than on the live database. :) I have quite a few updates done already. Small things and lots of nice cosmetic improvements as well as procedural improvements. The big thing I am doing now is removing the FREE Submissions and getting rid of the Blind Critiquing. Removing the Blind Critiques has proven to be a larger challenge than I had anticipated. TONS of code has been interwoven to prevent viewing names and seeing new poems in numerous places. All of this has to be re-written and re-worked. I almost considered jumping back about 16 months or so in time and starting with the files from that time-period. The problem with doing that would be that I would then have to go through and manually add the other improvements that I have made since that time. The lesser of the two evils was to simply remove the Blind Critique code since I have added soooooo many new features since then. After that hurdle is complete, and tested, I will begin working on the second part. The removal of all of the poetry scoring routines. Man I could have saved hundreds of programming hours if I had known in the beginning, what I know now. All of that code I wrote... now obsolete :( -Oh well, onto bigger and hopefully much better things. December will definitely finish on the old code as the 7th is quickly approaching. January may see the new voting routines installed but I can not promise. I still have to work out exactly how they are going to be used and what will be involved. The last part will probably happen after the voting routines have been online for a month or so. That will be the Poem Categories that I have so long talked about installing. --As of this very moment, I am still not sure they can be added and properly used, but I'm open to ideas and suggestions. Please use the FORUM ( http://ThePoeticLink.com/forum )to discuss the categories idea. The problems are going to be: 1. Assume we have 5 poem categories... How do we handle voting in these categories? -Can everyone vote or only those who have critiqued poems in these categories? 2. How do we handle prizes? Do we split the top prize up 5 ways and offer measly little prizes to the top winners in each category? 3. How do I now list the winners? -Logically how would it be laid out? This appears to be a simple question, but when you dig into it... it becomes a bit of a problem... HOW DO you properly show the winners and categories, how are they organized and linked to each other logically? In closing, I was just trying to let you all know that the new upgrades are well on their way to completion :) -They are just taking a lot longer than I had figured, so I apologize for the delay but I think it will be worth the wait. -Chris

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News Entry Date: 12/29/2001 9:34pm

Merry Christmas and Happy New year everyone! I was just dropping you all a quick note to say that I am upgrading things on the site. I hope to have some of the new upgrades online in a few days. I am testing and tweaking them now on my system here at home. It is an exact copy of TPL, but only accessible to me :) There are so many things to take into account and to consider. I have to also be careful not to introduce any bugs! But I am slowly pecking away at the list and adding the new features. I hope that you all like the new changes. I also hope that they give you more of what you were looking for from TPL. -I guess we'll soon find out! I hope that you all had a wonderful holiday and have a great New Year! I will be doing my best to uphold my end of the bargain with the site upgrades and improvements that I promised! -Chris

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News Entry Date: 12/10/2001 5:53pm

Happy Holidays from The Poetic Link! Guys I wanted to apologize to everyone for an error I had on my system. For about 2 weeks now, the Anthologies, T-Shirts & Donations pages have been messed up. If you tried to place an order or make a donation with these pages, it would not go through. Thanks to a very persistent little "Holiday Elf" -Carole Mennie... things are back and running perfectly. I updated the main credit purchase spot but I had forgotten those other ones. -So that little bit of grief is resolved. Thank you Carole! The Anthologies are in their final stages at the Bookbinder. I am hoping to get the phone call in the next day or so, to pick them up! -This way you can all have them by Christmas if you have placed an order! Christmas Break is going to mean big things for The Poetic Link. I have targeted that timeframe for the system wide upgrade that I spoke of on the forum several weeks back. I have decided to do it over my break since it involved some very large changes. I would like to be here to handle the problems if any should arise. The changes are listed for you at the bottom of this newsletter. That's about all for now guys! Happy Holidays! -Chris --------------------------------------------------------- 1. I will add a poem Category dropdown box to the submission screen. I will get list ideas from you guys later (NOT NOW). 2. Scoring will be removed from critiquing functions. You will merely critique a poem and not score it. 3. At the end of each month, during the 7 day window... the Critiquers will vote on the best poems in each of the categories above. 4. ONLY Critiquers with a rating above X.XX will be allowed to vote on the winning poems. This will be a fairly high number. 5 ONLY Critiquers who have done X number of critiques by month end will be allowed to vote. This will be a fairly low number. 6. No more blind critiques. Not sure about blind critiquer grading? 7. Critics will need to be graded still, but descriptions removed. Now just a simple 1 - 10 scale will be there. 8. Poem Submissions will now have a checkbox for Finished Work or Work in Progress to help the critiquers know how to critique. 9. Critiquers will still be graded and compete with each other, but the Rating alone, will be the deciding factor for prizes, not the R x Q (Rating x Quantity, as it is now). 10. Only Critiquers who have done X number of critiques each month will be eligible for prizes. 11. Every critique you do will give more weight toward the votes that you cast at month end. This is important as we need an incentive for people to do MORE critiques if they have the time. 12. No more free submissions granted. Given as prizes, yes but not granted on any daily or weekly basis.

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News Entry Date: 11/13/2001 8:28pm

Hi Guys, I wanted you all to know that I am still working on the "smart" removal of the FREE Submission Credit code. I could have taken the easy way out and just used versions of code from several months back, but I didn't want to negate some nice bug fixes and algorithms that I had since coded into the new programs. So, the short and sweet version... I am still working on removing that code and testing it here on my local copy of The Poetic Link. Once I am sure that it is working properly, I will release it to the public version that you guys use. ANTHOLOGIES :) -They are still being bound at the Bookbinder. I have been informed that they should be finished mid December or earlier. This means you will have them by Christmas! -Woohoo. I have printed up 5 extra copies of each anthology, so if you want one ...order it now. There are only 5 extra copies of each volume available. Once these are gone, it could be a very long time before I will have reprints of these earlier volumes 1 - 4. Our money situation is slowly improving. I had been worried for these past 2 months, but you guys have helped a lot. The anthology bill of about 500 dollars will be coming due this month, and the September Award prizes are going out tomorrow (400 dollars worth of prizes). These 2 items together will basically clean out the 922 dollars in our bank account right now, but the good news is we can pay them. I have reduced the prize awards for October so that bill will be only 100 dollars. So the finances are much better, but we are not out of the woods yet. I much prefer a ZERO balance (breaking even) to being in debt for about $1,000, so I want to extend my heart felt thanks to all of you for your support and help. -Chris

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News Entry Date: 11/5/2001 5:58pm

Hello Everyone, I hope that you all had a wonderful Halloween! Next stop Christmas -woohoo! I wanted to give you an update on some issues. Many people have been requesting that I remove the FREE Submission Credits. I had decided to try it as a test to see if we could generate more activity on the site. It instead caused a lot of problems with the wonderful "one line critiques." So I am currently removing the FREE Submission code from the system. Once I have verified that it is Bug FREE on the test system, I will update our live system. This was a big change to add, so it's a big change to remove. I hope that this change will once again, improve things here. You can't blame me for trying... I can't be right about every idea or thing that I test (grin). I think that the free submissions could work but it would require a lot of "policing" and we don't have the man-power for that at this point. We are still in need of your financial support with regard to buying submission credits. If you care to help support our efforts here, please do not be shy about buying submission credits. It's the only way that we can survive. Other than that, everything here is going well. The Forum is back in FULL FORCE... my God, you guys write a lot on there?!?! -I could never hope to read it all. Oh, I almost forgot. I am in need of 2 things. I will copy the text that I posted on the forum here for you below. If you can help, please e-mail me. -Chris ---------------------------------------------------------- Hi guys. Many of you may know this, but many more may not :) -The Poetic Link owns and runs the LARGEST Poetry Banner Exchange on the Internet. It is 100% FREE and 100% Poetry. The problem with being big is that I never have time to manage it properly. It is a huge source of advertising for the main site TPL, but it does take time to run and administrate the exchange. What I could really use, since you are all in the giving mood, is volunteers. Of those volunteers I will select those people who I feel can properly address the issues I need help with. Those issues are as follows: 1. PERL Programmer. Someone with a strong background in PERL. We need several scripts written for the Banner Exchange, and I do not have the time to do this. Total time involved should be only a few hours for a good programmer. The reward I can offer for this would be FREE Advertisement for your programming services on the script page that you write. It will be viewed by THOUSANDS of people every month. I am not kidding when I say THOUSANDS. 2. An approval manager for the Banner Exchange. Because we run a 100% FREE 100% Poetry exchange, someone (that's been me up to now) has to approve all of the banner exchange applicants. This process would require someone who could check the exchange site nearly every day and approve the new applicants. You would check their site to be sure they have the required banner, then you would validate that they are in fact a POETRY site. Once you do this, you could click the little box to approve them for the exchange. It would require just several minutes each day, once you get used to doing it... but it needs to be done every day. The reward for this individual will be knowledge and exposure to new talent :) -Sounds goofy but you should see all of the wonderful and beautiful little sites that apply for the exchange every day. It would give you a first hand look at all of those new sites, and provide a wonderful enjoyable task for someone who likes that sort of thing. -NO PROGRAMMING skills required here, but a knowledge of Computers and the Internet is preferred. It would be preferred that you have had experience with adding banners to your own personal web pages in the past. Some newcomers have questions regarding adding the HTML Tag to their sites. So if you have experience with this sort of thing, it will be of great benefit. If you are interested in applying for either of these positions, please e-mail me. Oh yeah, if you have no idea what our banner exchange is. Go to http://ThePoeticLink.com/exchange

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News Entry Date: 10/31/2001 6:14pm

Hello Everyone, Well we are coming to the end of October here and I wanted to wish everyone a Happy Halloween! I'm on candy duty tonight as the little wife is out with our daughter scurrying around town :) I may switch roles shortly but I'm not sure. I know that October was a bit bumpy with regard to the server problems but they all appear to be smoothed out now. The forum also took some damage, but a simple wipe of the slate and it's back in operation again. I am going to attempt to at least put the old forum content into a searchable form so that the information there is not lost forever. I wanted to thank everyone for the kind letters and wonderfully encouraging responses that I have received this past month. The support of you all is amazing and to this day it astounds me. -So from the bottom of my heart... THANK YOU ALL! ok... now for some bad news. I thought that September was a bad month, and I imagine that every business was hit hard. But believe it or not, October was even worse. The Poetic Link only needs about $150 per month to run, plus whatever is paid out in prizes. Most all of the prize pay-outs up to and including September were exceeding $450 in cash checks. Some months I even gave out $650 in cash prizes. This means that if The Poetic Link takes in over $600 dollars per month in submission credit purchases... then it survives. Well, that did not happen in September, and again, that did not happen in October. As of this very moment, I have just enough money in the account to send out the September prizes (which I will be doing here shortly). After that, we're on Gods good grace as to whether or not this place will continue. I still plan on getting ALL of the Anthologies out to EACH of you who ordered them. I will take that money out of my own pocket if need be, so please do not worry... the Anthologies will all be coming to you Before Christmas! I was never one for fluff, I was never one for lying or exaggerating. Everything here is fine... accept for cash. Unfortunately, that's the deciding factor in any business, so we'll play out November and see what happens. The days of TPL having a nice little surplus of cash are gone for now. I will remain hopeful for November, so if you can help buy buying submission credits or if you care to make a donation to help... Please do so with any of the links below. Donations: http://ThePoeticLink.com/sales/donations Anthology Purchases: http://ThePoeticLink.com/sales/anthologies Submission Credit Purchases: http://ThePoeticLink.com/pl/buy_credits.php3 Thank you All! Happy Halloween Guys :) -I think I'll go scare some little kids now ...Just kidding *heh*

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News Entry Date: 10/5/2001 3:16pm

Hi guys! I wanted to let you know that several requests came in over the past few months, to un-delete "Hidden Poems." Since I got this request from several different individuals, I have decided to un-delete ALL of the Hidden Poems on the system. It took some time, but every poem should be back, if you had previously hidden some. They will still remain hidden from viewing but at least you will have access to them now, should you want to view one of your hidden poems for any reason. This past month was perhaps the worst financial month for The Poetic Link. In an effort to keep things running and not cause any severe problems, I have been forced to reduce the prize money. You will notice that September will only be paying a top prize of $50.00 ...for this I apologize, but it was either that or shut down the site. I hope that things will pick up over the next few months and we can return the prizes to the higher amounts. The Anthologies 2, 3 & 4 are all printed. I am going to ask that you please get your orders in immediately if you are going to want one of these anthologies. I do not want to come up short on any ...so please help me out by ordering now, so that we have an accurate number to turn in to the bookbinder this week. You will have these Anthologies by Christmas! -They make wonderful gifts. You can order yours today at: http://ThePoeticLink.com/sales/antholgoies That's about all for now... Take care of yourselves! -Chris

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