Article 13 Update, Addition of Translator Support, and Main Site Update

Forum News
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Hello everyone! I wanted to do a quick update of some things that will be happening this weekend or near future. First though we need to start with some bad news.

Article 13

Unfortunately, the new EU copyright directive passed final deliberations with Article 13 intact. Now, I will be honest I have not had time to look over the law again to see if it changed, but to my understanding it has not much if at all. This means it will be going for the final round of voting in the EU parliament some time this March.

This means we have to start taking this law seriously. Right now our best bet for compliance is still blacklisting all EU ip addresses. If this law does pass we will be blacklisting all EU ips to block their access to Weight Gaming. Luckily, it seems the law is loosing more and more support by the day so their is still some hope, but we do need to prepare for the worse. So if you are one of our EU users I urge you to let your representatives know how bad Article 13 is.

Adding in a Google Translator Plugin

I recently came across a really nice translator plugin for discourse that I want to add to the site. This plugin will add a new icon to all posts that will allow you to translate it into your set language at a click of a button. It is my hope that inclusion of a feature like this will help lower the barrier to entry to both devs and users from non-English speaking countries.

We plan on adding this plugin in as early as some time tomorrow. Doing so though will require us to tear down the site to install it so expect a possible site outage some time this weekend. As usual we will give an hour notice through the forum, our twitter, and discord before we begin the update.

If you want to check it out, you can find the plugin here:

Main Site Design Update

Finally, we are almost done with the first draft of the concept document that outlines what we have planned for the new main site! I plan to have it done here very soon and posted some time this weekend for everyone to review and add their input too. This review period is planned to go for about 2 months as we save up money to purchase the systems and tools we will require.

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We will be updating the site to bring in the translator plugin in about 1 hour (~6:30pm Mountain Time). As usual the site will be down during this period. The outage is expected to last about 15 to 30mins and no longer than an hour. Updates on the status of the site will be released through our twitter and discord during that time. Thank you all for your understanding.

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Why do you have to block the EU IP adresses though? (I only know basic concept of Article 13) Does that mean if I’m from EU I’ll have to use VPN or I won’t be able to use the site?

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Yes, we would be blocking all access to IPs that look like they are coming from the EU. So in general if you are from the EU you will not be able to view this site. Now if a user was to spoof their IP using a VPN or other method to make it look like they are not from the EU, there is nothing we can do about that.