Forum Construction

Tresville

Tresville

TNPer
Due to Rl and mainly a lot of NS work it is taking me a lil longer than expected to post the basic info in regards to a forum move. But I wanted to see once again where we stand on this so far.
 
The benefits of a new hosted forum of IF will surely improve not only Security and feel of the forum...but most importantly it will allow the community to grow and not be held back by the limitations of Invision Free. IF forums will only take u so far, no matter how skilled an admin you have.
 
The board can be deleted by IF at whatever time if people complain. A privately owned forum will only have to worry about that. TOS would still apply since the merit of those rules are sound.

Board also gets shutdown or may lose data many times a year as has happened. They also frequently have bugs as we have seen already here. Privately owned forums with a qualified admin have much fewer issues and adding features becomes less and less problematic.
 
re: Shutdowns. True (although I think "several times a year" is an exaggeration). But, for example, the privately owned Taijitu board has shutdown far more often. The privately-owned TWP board has also gone offline, if memory serves.

As far as the deletion of the forum goes, this is a theoretical possibility, but has anyone ever heard of it happening? Certainly not in a board with active mods and admins, such as here.

During the Pixiedance wars an attempt was made to use this tactic to shut down z13. As the one who dealt with it, I learned two things: first, deletion would not happen without an investigation, and only when invision felt they were at risk of liability; second I learned that the invisionfree mods are reasonable and sensible people, who would not delete a board on the basis of bull.

IMO, a privately owned board is in far more danger. INvisionfree has to worry about it's reputation in a competitive market. It makes money from the ads, and if people started to feel that the organisation was capricious, they would not get takers.

A private individual might shut the board to avoid paying for bandwidth, or out of spite, or ennui, or as a result of an in-game dispute or argument, or as a result of a crash of their server, or any one of a thousand other reasons.

Can I just add one new benefit of invisionfree? The new spambot detection system is one of the best in the business. That is why we have rarely been spammed in the past few months.
 
I'm trying to think what issues would be fixed by another forum move; hypotheticals don't interest me on this question.

My experience with the PHPBB3 isn't as positive or as clear cut. The PHPBB3 has its problems, and I'm not sure that would do anything more than exchange onne set of problems or weaknesses for another.

Second, forum movement seems to weaken the community's cohensiveness. I'm in the middle of a lot of things, but I want to see what the current status of the Zetaboard software is. If it is out of beta, it would be worth discussing whether to implement the authority Flem and I have to move these forums to that platform once Zetaboards moves/moved out of beta.
 
flemingovia:
As far as the deletion of the forum goes, this is a theoretical possibility, but has anyone ever heard of it happening? Certainly not in a board with active mods and admins, such as here.
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Back in 2005, IF deleted everything posted since the start of the year in s1 boards. That's TEP, TSP and Wysteria (plus some others) on NS. No explanations, no apologies, just a massive purge. When they finally got around to explaining themselves, months of silence later, they claimed that a crash was responsible and the server had subsequently been 'lost in the mail'. Needless to say, this was ludicrous enough that it left a lot of us wondering what the real motives were.
 
PHPBB is awful. Let me put that out there first. I've worked with it in the past, and it's really poorly built, lacks features, and is a pain to use.

That being said, Invision Power Board 1.3 isn't much better.

Invision is a company that created Invision Power Board. Version 1.3 was free and open source. Then they closed the product since it became more popular. All subsequent versions were commercial products (at a decent price though). Further, 1.3 can't be distributed, that's why no one installs 1.3 on their own servers unless they owned a version prior to the time when it stopped being distributed (as InvisionFree did, and they capitalized on that).

Invision's latest release of their forum software is IP.Board 2.3. I've used versions within this family of releases, and I'm very impressed, especially with user and forum management and permissions.

vBulletin is another great (commercial) forum software. It's the one that was used on Jolt and is also used on some of the web's most popular forums.

On a purely technical basis I'd suggest switching to vBulletin or IP.Board.

InvisionFree has been known to give the admin the database export of their forum if they pay for it (I've heard the price is low). So we would NOT have to start all over. It would just be a process of converting the SQL export to the new format for IP.Board or vBulletin, for which there are scripts out there.
 
Good info Ator. I have to get Winni in here to add. He had many good suggestions Software wise) months ago...i did not get into doing the research as I was not sure if anyone here would want to explore this idea further.
 
9 votes. Not too promising. Bumping this in hope that more people voice their opinion.

Please do not be scared to speak or vote your mind. I would like to hear from you guys!
 
I'm sorry Tres but I'm not sure new forums is a good solution to an activity problem. It seems like a lot more hassle than it's worth.

MDH
 
I have used IF skins on IPBFree without any problem. I don't know is the IPB skin engine much more complicated than the IPBFree one, but I doubt there is a huge difference.

MDH
 
Missing Dog Head:
I'm sorry Tres but I'm not sure new forums is a good solution to an activity problem. It seems like a lot more hassle than it's worth.

MDH
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MDH...you have not read what I have been saying. This is not a "solution" to activity. This is merely a small part of that.

This will all be cut and clear by next weekend folks. I appreciate your opinions and participation.
 
Maybe a new forum could look a bit more easy going than this one. The banner is nice but there are a lot of places to click - maybe things could be condensed a little bit. Maybe your limited in the type of forum you can use.

Still thanks to everyone who works behind the scenes to keep things running.
 
Syd: Ummm...no Syd. As usual you lack patience...just like when I started the revival organization. I assure you....just like this endeavor...my intentions are not evil or meant to do harm. I will make them perfectly clear when everything is ready.

MOG:
Yes that has always been an issue. But one that can be changed with some organization. This is also something that would be quickly fixed in a new forum.....masking. Those of us that are involved in all those sections need to see them. Members like yourself that are here for very specific things really have no need to view everything.

MDH: Actually, no he isn't. I pointed out many times that a forum move requires RA approval.
 
Tresville:
Syd:  Ummm...no Syd.  As usual you lack patience...just like when I started the revival organization.  I assure you....just like this endeavor...my intentions are not evil or meant to do harm.  I will make them perfectly clear when everything is ready.
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Maybe it's just the fact you seem to be unable to do things like this without being an arse?

:shrug:
 
Easy on the flamebait, HC.

Cisco; this isn't a matter of patience, or lack thereof. This is a matter of clarification. So far the plan exists entirely in your head; I've certainly no idea what you're planning. It may be brilliant, it may be crap, but unless you tell us we'll never know.
Section 1: Delegate and Vice Delegate

1. The Delegate shall serve as TNP WA Delegate and as Head of State.
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As the Head of State, I think I've got a right to know what these plans are, what changes they are, and judge (along the rest of the region, I hope) if they are indeed beneficial or not. Like I said, they could be brilliant, but you have no accountability if they aren't and no mandate under which to act even if they are.
 
Tresville:
MDH: Actually, no he isn't. I pointed out many times that a forum move requires RA approval.
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Obviously I know it would require approval, but changing a URL in the constitution is by no means the biggest hurdle we would have to jump if we moved forum.

MDH
 
Don't worry about HC Syd. His comments never offend me and I won't be baited.
Sydia:
Easy on the flamebait, HC.

Cisco; this isn't a matter of patience, or lack thereof. This is a matter of clarification. So far the plan exists entirely in your head; I've certainly no idea what you're planning. It may be brilliant, it may be crap, but unless you tell us we'll never know.
Section 1: Delegate and Vice Delegate

1. The Delegate shall serve as TNP WA Delegate and as Head of State.
Click to expand...
As the Head of State, I think I've got a right to know what these plans are, what changes they are, and judge (along the rest of the region, I hope) if they are indeed beneficial or not. Like I said, they could be brilliant, but you have no accountability if they aren't and no mandate under which to act even if they are.
Click to expand...

I am not in your cabinet and I have already given you the opportunity to fully serve your roll and head the Gov Revival. You cannot say you have. You keep bringing up accountability as if I have ever broken my oath or have ever not held myself accountable. You also cannot say that I have acted beyond my right as a member of the community or as an RA member. I also always put everything up for vote and inform everyone.

I have already stated that I will divulge my intentions when they are finalized. They are not.

until then. I believe u still have some time as Delegate..perhaps you should concentrate on that.
 
Not good enough, Tresville. What I do is irrelevant to this discussion. . My point was, you have no authority. We're taking an awful lot of what you say on trust. Can you say if a new member came in and told us he'd got a load of things planned for the region, but we weren't allowed to know about it, we wouldn't question them?

Put simply, you have no authority to make changes to the region. "You cannot say that you have?" I wasn't aware that blindly following orders was a new requirement of my office. Demanding I play part of your scheme is ridiculous; I don't work for you nor can I commit myself to mysterious plans based on faith.

I askagain; please state your intentions.

Edited to remove excessive snark.
 
Woot! 6 for 6 against and 6 undecided. means I can now start to post the argument that should convince the undecided. We just have to make sure the 6 are RA. Lil trickier...but we have time.

Syd I believe I answered by pm your question about my intentions. Even though I stated them a few times already.

I will open the Forum Construction Thread, minus the Poll, in a day or two. That discussion will hopefully convince people to vote for the proposal to build us a spankin new Forum. It will be presented to the RA. Supermajority should do the trick.

***************
THL: That has already been tried on more than one occasion. When I post the argument it will show this and much more that you do not know about.

Thanks for posting...it is good to see new people involved.
 
We do have to realize this will also cost money. A web host costs about $5-10/month, and if we went with a premium forum software (the whole point of this move?), then that would cost $150 (one time), and then if we purchased the exported IPB data, that would probably cost us about $50.

Not that I'm completely against it, I just wanted to point out that it's a commitment.
 
Heh. Only Tresville could interpret a one third vote in favour as an occasion for "woot"ing.

Anyone else would see that as a crash-and-burn.
 
Right...because you are an expert on what everyone thinks Flem. The day you send a mass pm or contact all the RA members in regards to anything...then speak for the masses.

I am rather positive about this and have spoken to enough people to know that those numbers are not accurate.

So...Woot!!! :yes:
 
Nope. I am just very good at counting up to 6. I am not speaking for the masses, I am speaking for the numbers.

That was the point in having a poll, wasn't it, to discover what people think? Or does the result not count because you do not like the result so we now count on your conversations with "enough people"?
 
Tres, my concern has been and remains that you haven't really set forth a coherent argument that supports a forum move, or that such a move would make any real difference. It's hard to tell if this is a subterranean political move (power grab, what have you), or that there is a real problem that only a forum move can resolve.

I read the 6-6-6 spilt as an indication that the case for a forum move really hasn't been made. And it's quite possible, based upon the folks who have particularly commented one way or the other that some do see it as a way of attacking others because of their own game-related political desires and that makes an argument for moving much hard to assess.

When we moved here from s2,("Old Blue", it wasn't spontaneous, it was the last step of a conflict between twoslit and everyone else over every techincal aspect of the forum and how it impacted the community. A few months before the community votes to remain at s2, as part of the process created by the Constitutional COnvention, but IIRC, the discussions were that the a final effort would be made to clear the air with regrd to the problems that surrounded twoslit. We don't have that scenario in this instance. And I don't think 18 people reflects the community as a whole; if anything, it shows a lack of consensus.

:2c:
 
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