All users are now required to have their location listed in their profile, City/State (US) or City/Country (International). All new registrations have this as a requirement.

To add this, click on User Control Panel (in the gray bar at the top of the page) > Profile.
At the bottom is:

Location: *
Your City/State or Country

Fill in your City and State (US) or City and Country (International) and click Submit. The location must be searchable on Google Maps, i.e. "Detroit MI" is acceptable; "Motor City" is not.

Note that there is another field labeled simply "Location". This is the previous location option (required only for Classified ad posting). It will be removed when the new location requirement is finalized after a transition period.

The deadline for entering your location in your profile is January 1, 2023. Any profile without a location will be deactivated at that time.

Alan, a question on this: I put my zip code in along with city/state. Is that ok or will that confuse the software?

Zip code is absolutely okay. It's not being made a requirement because some people may find it too intrusive.

Smart move, Alan

Is this change part of the effort to stem the presence of bots on the site or something else?

Seems like that would deactivate anyone not logging in between now and Jan. 1 also.
I think there are a lot of inactive people that after a few posts never came back.

Great Alan!

Thanks for this added security.

Chas

Accounts can be reactivated via the Login screen.

Greg.

Long overdue. I just updated my profile.

I have lost the ability to edit/update any of my postings older than seven days!

Greg.

I have a recollection that change was made awhile back when a user unaccountably went through and erased all the content out of his posts. That was a suboptimal thing to have happen.

You should be able to fix all your tyops in less than a week. Doesn't bother me any; I hang out in places on the net where you're not allowed to edit your posts at all, not even to fix typos.

What gives?

I can no longer insert an image from my pbase.com image hosting account, or an eBay image... or from anywhere else on the web and receive this error warning!
I have been paying for this service continuously for 19 years for mostly fourm/s image posting.

https://a4.pbase.com/o12/56/215056/1/17 ... titled.png
https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/O-kAAOSw ... s-l600.jpg

Paul wrote: I have a recollection that change was made awhile back when a user unaccountably went through and erased all the content out of his posts.

I updated and replaced the images to a 2018 post of mine a week or so back.

My profile shows 2 Location listings? I have had my location listed for years.............on the top one...............



Todd

I'm sitting in a chair in front of my computer.

Just kidding, my location has been visible for years.

Big thumbs up for doing this.

Possibly unrelated to the new location requirement.

I also saw this error message today for the first time.

test

Yeah I noticed that too - the new required field for location in the profile is separate from the original non-required field and they're both tagged Location. Fill your location into the new field with the dot next to it. I erased what was in the old location field.

So I go into user control panel to put my location in the new field, and it tells me I can't have a profile. I've been on ARF for at least 10 years, and I had to create a profile when I registered for an account here. Now it's telling me I can't have one?????