Rentry Changelog 2024

28 November

Fixed a bug with modify codes not being able to edit pages that did not have any metadata
Hopefully fixed an issue with sessions not expiring quickly enough, causing an error to 0.01% of visitors when the disk filled up

26 November

Added new metadata type: SECRET
Added new metadata Options: SECRET_VERIFY, SECRET_RAW_ACCESS_CODE, SECRET_EMAIL_ADDRESS
Full Rentry Policies now available on /what
Rentry Kofi now linked on /what

29 October

Small bug fixes from 17th to now
Fixed spacing issues in preview (might still be some left, please send example URLs!)
CONTENT_LINK_BEHAVIOR was not working
ACCESS_EASY_READ did not allow certain URLs
Made edit content box bigger
Added ability to collapse metadata box

17 October

Metadata!
Claim windows have been returned to 24 hours (from 28) now that we're sure a bug reducing it by 4 hours is not present
Changing the capitalisation of a URL now no longer resets the pub date
Views now respect user sessions properly to avoid duplicate counts

17 September

Added image floats. Add #left or #right to an image URL to float it.

25 August

Updated verification guidelines to give control over how a URL should be verified and to allow people to remove visible messages to us on all of their pages.
Security: Changing an edit code now unsets the modify code

21 August

Bugfix: Appeal messages were occasionally being sent to the previous claimer if the newest claimer (third) was the same person as the first claimer.
Bugfix: The message 'Please do not use multiple emails...' was appearing too often when a user makes 4 claims, then has one of those accepted but awarded to a different person.

13 August

/code is now an available URL
Bugfix: Claim slots were not being returned if a claim was successful but the URL was awarded to someone else.

08 August

Fixed URL case change resetting pub date

07 August

Increased claims per week from 3 to 4
External links now consistently load in new tabs

29 July

Added cheatsheet entry for Youtube links using Youtube supplied image thumbnail

23 July - Multiclaims

Claim and reclaim requests have been switched from first come first serve into a multi claim system. Now when a URL is claimed (using /request-url) it will open it up for 24 hours, in which anyone may also make a claim. Once this has concluded, we will then award the URL to the user that we feel is most worthy, as determined by the message supplied.
In order to make this fair, when we handle the claims we see all messages at once, email addresses are hidden and the order is randomized.
'Most worthy' is purposely not defined, in order to prevent people trying to game this new system. Please read and consider the tip shown above the message box on /request-url, as this accurately describes what we are looking for. Remember too that the objective of the claim system is to re-allocate URLs from inactivity or hoarding into the hands of people who will make good use of them.

Additional Information:

If nobody else makes a claim in time, a claim with just one person will still be valid.
If nobody provides a sufficient message, then the claim will be rejected for all and the URL will time out for 30 days.
If all claims are cancelled, the URL will be claimable again immedately.
In order to justify a 'worthy' message, we may check the validity of a previous claim's message when you make a new one. For example, if you say you will create a page about x, we may check that at a later date. In order to take into account trades, we will have a limit on the window of time for making these checks.
We will not mark down emails for making many claims, even if they are all successful. This info does not show to us when we are making our decision.

Advantages of this system:

The claim form can no longer be gamed by those who have written code to make a claim within 100ms of the URL becoming claimable. This also fixes the multi claim bug that was present before if multiple claims were made in sub 100ms timeframes.
There is no longer a need to make claims at strange times of day or to worry about missing it.
Competition is now no longer a matter of precise timing.
Using the claim form to build hoards is now more difficult and no longer a matter of precision.

Addressing potential issues:

Someone with poor English will be disadvantaged: Please write in your own language and then Google translate it before submitting. We won't mark down on grammar.
Chat GPT will ruin this: We're awarding based on the most worthy (by our internal definitions, taking the previous 40k claim messages into account), not by how poetically the message is written, or how long it is.
Someone will copy and paste a successful message: We have created a way to detect this and will penalise it.

Future improvements:

We can add a 'runner up' system to help settle ties when many messages are of similar worthiness. Having the highest runner up score will allow a future tie break in that user's favor. This would then reset the runner up score.

Other improvements, and additions:

The message 'This URL is currently protected' has been switched in most cases to describe the reason in better detail
When a claim is rejected, the URL is protected from futher reclaims for 3 months (previously was 1 month)
If a URL is lost to a claim but then re-gained on appeal, it will be protected from re-claims for 6 months rather than the usual 3.
Added markdown comments to the 'How' tab/page. These were available all along, but not documented.
Email sending is now improved, with failed emails being re-tried by a second supplier, before being queued to be sent later. Before they were tried immediately and dropped if this failed, which led to 0.01% of emails never sending.
Email sending is now mostly done by a supplier that maintains the quality (likelihood of a successful send), but is much cheaper per 1000 emails, which should save us around $50 a month.
You can now change the URL capitalization using 'change url' on the edit page.
Added new admonition option: greentext. New admonition options are easy for us to add, so please suggest any more that you'd like to see!