Everyone here go wish @Lykai an amazing birthday!

I hope all of you are having a great easter! As we enter Q2 of 2018, I wanted to fill you guys in on a few changes we're making.
We've heard lots of requests from you guys, so we've decided to update some of our core principles to better suit y'all.
Please bear with this as we undergo these changes; they may take a while. Some of the most notable are:

- In order to make our system easier to use, we have created our own payment system!  At the time its fairly elementary, but don't worry, it'll be improved!
  - Currently, it accepts MasterCard cards at a small 10% fee
  - In order to keep this fee low, we require a minimum commission value of twenty dollars
- Space saving improvements!
  - We've decided to take a page out of several other site's books here and begin to compress images
    - Profile pictures will be downsized to 100x100, other images 250x250
    - Such a large size allows us to save space while still providing the best service we can to you!
- Digital activism
  - It may not be our place, but we disagree with some of the actions recently taken by companies such as Google, Mozilla, and Apple.
    - Each of these platforms have recently released updates which strongly suggest all sites use secure means of data transfer and comply with several industry standards
    - However, Microsoft's Internet Explorer allows us to be free as we wish to be, so we will require all traffic to our site be through this modern, fast browser
      - If you do not comply with this, our site may look strange.
- Mobile incompatibility
  - We also took a look at some of our predecessors, like FA, and decided to see what made them succeed.
  - In addition to the previous point with activism, our site may not work well on mobile, even on Windows Phones

- Closed source
  - Here at Catalyst we believe strongly in security by obscurity - if they don't know how it works, there's no way they can hack it
  - As such, we are hiding all of our sources across the board
- Less notifications from the community
  - Some of you were annoyed by the bug bot and its unyielding flow of messages.  We've stopped this, now our site will log out the current user so they can start back over and think about what they've done.
- Art theft
  - In order to eliminate the problem of art theft, we've done two things:
    - We no longer allow downloading images from our site until you complete a free, confidential survey from one of our sponsors.  This should only take 15 minutes at the most
    - Also, we have created an AI which will help alter art and remove signatures, ensuring that the art isn't owned by anyone - and therefore everyone.

- Patreon rewards
  - In order to help fund our platform, we've changed up patreon rewards a bit.  Becoming a $1+ patron gets you many benefits, such as:
    - The ability to create an account
    - Full moderator access to the platform, including the ability to ban users
  - $5+
    - You can register, and even upload a profile image!  How fancy!
  - $10+
    - At this stage, you can do just about anything, like:
    - Logging back in after you've logged out using a password OF YOUR CHOICE
  - $25+
    - Wow, the fact you're even reading this is amazing!  This teir lets you use some of our secret features, like creating characters
  - $50+
    - Here you can list your own commission types, however you may not upload example images
  - $100+
    - At this point you can add images to your artist profile!
  - $500+
    - At this teir you can commission others, and accept commissions of your own!  How neat!
  - $1000+
    - At this level, you'll be able to access our feature board system.  Propose new ideas and vote on other's!
      - If an oligarchy is good enough for us, its good enough for America!
  - $5000+
    - At this level, you are given full access to the database!  See e-mail addresses, other's information, and edit any page of the site!

Please let us know in what you think and if you have any more suggestions!

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCN9X9SX4MmQOASOXBGhyWIA/live we live! Come join us for an hour or two!

We are going live on the new Catalyst YouTube channel! See the stream's description for what we plan to accomplish today!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwKuY4g4T0E

Quick reminder: if you haven't signed up for our e-mail list, do so now! It only takes a few seconds: https://catalystapp.co/#email-input

soon

Come and join our stream over at https://catalystapp.co/stream ! We've got music and uh...code!
Drop in, hang out, ask questions!

There may be some downtime on both the public and beta domains as I do some DNS things. Please bear with us, and let us know if this continues more than a few hours.

Boo. Downtime 👎

Problems resolved.

Check out the amazing banners we got from @SammyTheTanuki !

We're hopping on the bandwagon and....updating (er, creating) our privacy policy! Please go check it out at https://catalystapp.co/Help/Privacy/ and let me know if you have any questions or concerns.
Registered users or members of our e-mail list should have received an email containing additional information about these changes.
We haven't changed what data we collect (as little as possible), nor any of our policies, however, this new policy helps formalize our practices.