View source for Weekly Briefing Release 17 Dec 29 - Jan 5

{{Weekly briefing}}

==The current WOTD has been extended==
The current WOTD [https://ourworldoftext.com/catcollection /catcollection] has been extended throughout the week.

==Happy new year!==
This Wednesday, we have completed our transition into the year 2025 after watching the countdown. The new year's celebration was complete with a countdown, a 2025 of publicity, and a new 2025 world to serve as a fresh start to a new year.

May this year bring good luck and prosperity to all!<gallery>
File:2025 template.png|2025 carving
File:2025 of publicity.png|2025 of publicity with various arts and text surrounding it
File:New year's countdown 2025.png|Countdown at /owot/2025countdown
</gallery>

== Permanent random IDs in chat ==
This Thursday, the topic of assigning permanent randomly-generated IDs to users in chat has generated some controversy among various people. The plan for this feature was [[Weekly Briefing Release 15 Dec 15 - Dec 22#Permanent IDs for anonymous chat users|announced]] last December with its implementation being delayed to fix a performance issue with the server.

Several users have stated that this would lead to IP address leaks. This is completely false as the numbers are randomly generated. This random ID will be attached to your IP address, but your original IP address can never be revealed no matter what. If you have accounts, your ID will be different for each account to prevent cross-identification.

Having permanent IDs is a compromise to allow anonymous users to chat without being required to register for an account to chat. This feature will be reevaluated on April 2nd to determine if it should be continued.

At the present moment, this feature is not currently out. We hope that this feature allows people to block certain toxic or spammy anonymous users without resorting to the need to filter out all anonymous users completely.

World owners will be given the option to disable this feature and instead opt to use random IDs for each individual client regardless if they originate from the same IP address -- basically how it's always been.