Category: Site News and Announcements

Updates on policies or other administrative stuff.

Comment spam

Over the next few weeks, I’m going to be experimenting with some new anti-spam tactics. My existing solution, which had been working pretty well, now has some serious shortcomings following the most recent update to the content management system, so I’m going to need to try something different. (I get hundreds of obvious spam comments every day and having my email inbox flooded with spam comment notifications every few minutes is not fun!)

Since I’m going to have to resort to a certain amount of trial and error, there may be some oddities with commenting or the forms. If you have problems or encounter something strange when leaving a comment or submitting a form, please let me know. I’m very concerned that spam prevention not present an irritation or accessibility problem for my sapient readers.

Going along with this, I decided it would be prudent to clarify some of the language in the comments and contact forms sections of the Privacy Policy. The gist is unchanged (that the website may use information associated with your comment or form submission — some of which is or could potentially be personally identifiable — to confirm that you’re a human user and not some kind of bot or automated script), but I wanted to make clear that the website may conduct those tests in a variety of different ways. (At present, I’m not sure what the final method(s) may end up being.) ETA: For your convenience, the Privacy Policy now has a recent revision log, too.

A Polite Request

I want to ask again that people please not hotlink to images hosted on Ate Up With Motor. (To be clear, by “hotlinking,” I mean placing an image on an external website whose href attribute still refers back to the image location on the Ate Up With Motor site.) Ate Up With Motor runs on a shared server with finite resources; hotlinking images adds to the load on the server and makes it that much more difficult for me to keep the site running at a reasonable speed. For that reason, if I see evidence of hotlinking in the server or error logs, I may take technical steps to block it. (I’ve added a specific stipulation to the Privacy Policy to that effect.) Thanks for understanding!

ETA: I want to draw a clear distinction here between hotlinking images and simply reusing them in some other manner, stipulations for which are discussed in the Reprint/Reuse Policy. If, for example, an image is in the public domain in your jurisdiction, you’re certainly welcome to copy the image and reuse it elsewhere on the web — just don’t expect me to host it for you (which is what hotlinking entails) without asking me first!

Yet Another Policy Update

I have made several minor additions to the Privacy Policy and Terms of Use for the site. Specifically, I updated the Privacy Policy to make more explicit that this site, its host, and its analytics service are all based in the U.S. and to fix some awkward wording. (ETA: I also clarified that the conditions listed under Disclosure of Personally Identifying Information are separated by “and/or.”) I updated the Terms to add a clearer Contact Form and Email Communication Policy, which is now linked from the contact forms. Please be sure to read them and let me know if you have any questions or comments.

A Hydra-Matic Update

I have spent a lot of time over the past few weeks undertaking an extensive update of the 2010 article on the original GM Hydra-Matic transmission. The goal was to clear up various errors and points of confusion as well as trying to do a better job of explaining the operating principles of both Hydra-Matic and its precursor, the Automatic Safety Transmission.

This endeavor, which has reminded me why I’m neither a mechanic nor an engineer, was actually a good deal more work than the original draft. However, since people continue to read and refer to this article, I felt it was appropriate to try to sort out its inaccuracies and confusing points.

You can read the full article here.

Click below for two additional notes on this update.
(Read more … )

Reprint/Reuse Policy

I’ve updated the site’s Reprint/Reuse Policy (which is now linked in the Administrative Pages menu on the right for ease of reference) and I encourage everyone to read it. The policy is not significantly different than it has been, but I’ve reformatted it to make it easier to read and to clarify a few points.

As with all of the site’s policies, I’ve tried very hard to balance what I reasonably need to do to protect myself and my rights with an appropriate respect for common sense and the principles of fair use. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.

ETA (Jan. 13, 2016): I have made a further update to the policy — including reorganizing and reformatting parts of it — in the interests of clarity, avoiding inadvertent contradictions, and trying to balance a bunch of conflicting priorities. I encourage you to read the updated policy if you’re interested in excerpting an article, reusing photos, or anything like that, and to let me know if you have questions or concerns. My intent is not to be scary or unduly restrictive while covering myself and the people who are kind enough to let me use their photos and other material.

Updated Terms of Use

In addition to updating the Privacy Policy, we’ve made a few minor revisions to the Terms of Use. In particular, we wanted to point out that when people submit comments — which as you’ve probably noticed are moderated — we may occasionally respond to the comment via email before or instead of approving the comment. (For example, if the comment includes the person’s phone number or email address, we will usually contact the commenter to ask, “Are you absolutely sure you want to do that?”)

Site migration

If you’re a regular reader, you’ve probably noticed our new look: We’re now on a new and considerably updated content management system with what we’re hoping will be better functionality and better security.

This process has been not unlike swapping an engine into a car in which it was never designed to go and there are probably going to be some glitches. (There was a problem with the redirections from old URLs that we’re hoping is now fixed.) If you find technical problems, please let us know.
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