Apollo.rip News

[bsaambl]

The staff here at Apollo are amazed by the outpouring of love and support given to us from our dedicated community. Yes, the going has been slow lately, we are aware. Though we can't divulge all of our secrets, we certainly can tell you that our overall goals are still being met and we very much plan on being here for the long-haul. Throughout the past two months, several of you have expressed concern for our behind-the-scenes activities - and this is awesome! A user's vested interest is not only appreciated but necessary and conducive towards healthy, long-term growth. Your questions and especially your concerns are valid and we as staff ask that you continue to air them appropriately and openly.

So, why the lack of updates/features/etc?

For better or worse, the real-world caught up with a few quintessential members of our staff team and their temporary absence has made it tough to forge ahead. Apollo's key developer, solely in charge of feature implementation, has been stuck on an extended trip with little opportunity to push updates or contact staff. Our sysops were burdened with picking up the slack, yet can only accomplish so much without the help of said developer. This bottleneck of unique responsibility, initially developed for security reasons and easily corrected once all are again present, was an unfortunate oversight early-on. A few other circumstances, our sole admin having an untimely computer hardware issue and the coincidental overlapping of various staff vacations, have assisted in slowing our forward progress.

In truth, none of these issues are permanent and Apollo is undoubtedly here to stay - and to flourish! We would like to consider any events, positive or negative, to be important aspects of our overall journey and absolutely do not consider them to spell the end of what we as a community have accomplished in the wake of our predecessor's untimely demise.

We live and we learn, all of us, together - enlightened by our many mistakes and humbled by our collective victories. It is our privilege to continue sharing in these experiences with all of you, and we hope you feel the same.

Above all else, we understand our efforts to communicate have been brief and infrequent and for that we sincerely apologize. It is tough to go alone, so please enjoy the rest of this announcement as well as a slew of freeleech picks from members of our First-Line Support squad and our Interview team.

Update on our Logchecker

Our development team have been hard at work on a select few exclusive features and improvements, but the implementation of these ideas is for naught without an updated logchecker in place. Fortunately, this project is nearly complete and is undergoing the final stages of development prior to launch. If you happen to be interested in this process of testing our updated logchecker, please PM itismadness. Don't worry, he is not as shy as he looks.

Once work on the logchecker and various Gazelle riff-raff is complete, we will have several updates, features and prizes in store for all of you! Your continued patience is incredible - trust we won't forget it.

Client Whitelist

Good news! It was a long time coming but we have officially enacted a bitorrent client whitelist. You can view the current list of approved clients within our rules page. If you prefer using a client not yet represented on the official list, please go to this thread in our Suggestions Forum and request it.

We will not be whitelisting any alpha or beta versions of any clients and certain clients will continue to be banned.

Polishing the Forums

As it was for our predecessors, private-tracker forums are the proverbial windows to the soul of our members and our website as a whole. Over time, we wish to honor those that came before us by championing the quality of our own forums and giving users powerful incentives and tools to see these hallowed threads flourish and mature.

Forum moderation is an area we have admittedly been lackadaisical on for too long. Staff are in the process of assigning specific community members to moderate individual forums with an overall goal of increased quality of content and efficient handling of requests/reports/concerns. You can expect to see a heavier staff presence in all areas, with special attention being given to Serious Discussion. Also, updates to our forum-specific rules sections will be implemented immediately and we urge you all to take a moment to read those prior to posting.

If you are interested in being a forum moderator, please send a staff-wide PM with the title "Forum Moderator Application". Make sure you include the specific forum you are interested in moderating as well as any qualifications that may pertain to such a position. We would be happy to hear from you!