Because of this thread I made probably the most useless update to cm.o so far, but it might still some people's curiosity. There's a text below the list of users on the right side of the page. This used to show only the number of guests and and logged-in members. It now also bots and spammers.
Explanation of the categories:

Guests: Users that are not logged in and also don't fall into any of the below categories.

Members: Logged-in users.

Bots: Sessions reported as coming from bots. These are mostly legitimate search engine crawler bots. This includes a certain ChipMusicHeartBitsSpidy, btw.

Bot dupes: I noticed that some crawlers (especially Yandex. Edit: I mean Baidu...) created a lot requests from different IP addresses which created a lot of unused sessions, which would sometimes boost the guests numbers really high. Those are now sorted as duplicates.

Spammers: This indicates that a session has been blocked by one of the various automatic spam detection methods in place on cm.o.

A session can only be in one category at a time.

Now you know.

In the interest of preventing spam, the function that allows users to send e-mail to other users is now disabled for all users. Users who wish to be able to receive e-mail from other forum members can still enable this function by going to profile in the top menu, then settings, select "Hide your e-mail address but allow e-mail via the forum." and update profile to save the setting.

This function is different from private messages, which are not affected by this change and work just like before.

We've been thinking about limiting the number of tracks per member on CMO to something like 3 to 5 songs as oppose to unlimited.

There are 2 reasons to this change:
1. First and foremost it is a expensive model to maintain- as the number of artists and number of tracks will always be increasing- which makes it expensive and difficult to keep backups.
2. More importantly- Quality over quantity: By limiting the number of songs per artist, it gives everyone a chance to put their best foot forward and only feature what they consider their best work. Greatly limiting the total number of songs on CMO which will give everyone a longer "Feature" time on the front page.

*If* this comes into action there will be a email warning sent out to all members who have more than X number of songs, and we'll give them a 1 month grace period to choose the songs they wish to keep on the site. After the month has past we'll launch a magic mathematical robot to decide which songs to keep if they are over their limit.

Thoughts? This is a open discussion and we welcome your opinion.

The mods have added a new rule.

"13. This forum is actively inclusive, regardless of race, gender, sexual identity or preference. Insensitive use of discriminatory language is not acceptable, please conduct yourselves accordingly."

This should be fairly self explanatory but if anyone wants clarification please ask.

08/18/10

Added to the rules.
11. Please do not create threads for the sole reason of soliciting votes from this community.

Come and say hello!

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=315581669273

Server maintenance will occur durring these hours:

Start: Friday, March 30, 2012 5:00am EDT
End: Friday, March 30, 2012 7:00am EDT

We are expected to have intermittent MYSQL connection issues durring these hours while they perform a upgrade.

Thanks and have a wonderful life.

Staff has just decided to add a rule that thread titles must describe the contents of the thread. Something like "Have you seen this?" or "How would you feel if..." or "If this is any indication..." ( ) doesn't cut it anymore.  Such titles might/will be edited to something better.

Sorry for the big downtime guys. Let us know here if you run into issues... There might be a few

Our new server and services are now much faster so I hope the wait will be worth it in the long run.

No big deal, just a little group cos I like seeing the charts of groups of people...

http://www.last.fm/group/chipmusic.org

Join if you dig.

We decided long ago that a Sega forum would be added if there was a demand for it. And as it stands, up until today, 40% of the threads in "other computers" were Sega related. Now, these threads now have their own subforum.

http://chipmusic.org/forums/forum/30/sega/

Music section is about to be launched, in fact if your reading this you might see the "tab" in the header. Here are a few notes:

1. Any and all feature requests Please PLEASE PLEASE do not ask for until I post a new topic for it. The reason being is I've spent approx 120+ hours working on this and the last thing I want to hear is "Please add XYZ" before we work out all of the bugs.

2. There are improvements and or features currently missing here is a few: RSS podcast, Music Responses, Thumbs, Member profile music list, "New comments on XYZ", home page redesign, and URL Links to files. These are planned and put into a category I call "Phase 2" ... Though if there are not too many bugs I might be able to get the podcast XML done today.

3. Please report bugs and errors here in this thread. Be sure to state your Operating system, Browser, Browser version, and if its a screen related issue, your screen resolution and your selected theme (Trashbaby and Snow).

4. Please take this section seriously and do not post "FIRST" or "TESTING" or any of that nonsense.

I think that's all.  Enjoy.

#chipmusic rules

1. Be polite and courteous to your fellow users (use good netiquette)

2. No spamming, flooding, flaming or trolling

3. NO EXCESSIVE SHOUTING

4. Don’t post links to porn or illegal software

It is being run as an operator-less channel. Instead of ops, we have a bot that any staff member can use to do most of the op functions.

IRC is viewed as a dynamic way of communication since it happens in real-time and isn't stored in a public repository.  Therefore, the rules are a lot looser than the forums. We do, however, ask that you behave yourselves and not overly bother nor annoy other members on there. 

If you are being harassed by someone, please talk to any staff member.
We will be able to deal with the issue for you.

As of the last few weeks we have been focusing on getting the forums up running, looking good, and generally get the house in order.

Now since we have launched the forum, here are our long term plans for the site.

As we get closer we will try and let people know before it happens, but then again we might just add something with no fanfare just to see the happy looks of surprise on your face

Music Uploads
Image Uploads
Video Area       
Member Blogs
Tutorials & Reviews Area
Events Area

Edit: added events area

It's 100 years in the future and we switched servers.

Sorry for any issues tonight. Let us all know if your experience is any better or worse since the move.  Hopefully things will be faster now.