Should We Move? - Forum Transfer Discussion

[gp2.eXe]

Goodbye all who leave, wish I could say I will miss most of you but I won't!

So you staying? You know, you can cloak yourself in there too.

 

[(naw)mcx]

Wait, who changed the title?

 

[Vimacs]

I did,
this clearly isn't a official post from gp32x but advertising for a new unrelated forum.
Also theres no need to spam it over all sections.

 

[DisgruntleElf]

Wow this is really inappropriate. The OP team really does not have the authority to rally a move on someone else's board.

Uh..
I don't think you quite understand this.

yeah re-read the original post, it lays out that every attempt to work/contact with hando was made. If we have another attack that brought the forums down like last time, it probably isnt coming back.
Time to end that gamble and fold and take what we can with us.

No I'm not misunderstanding. I know this board is falling apart and for all anyone knows maybe Hando does want it to die a sudden death. The point I'm making is without Hando's permission Chip does not have the authority post News and Stickys everywhere announcing an official move. The board does not belong to him or the OP team. As I stated before let the OP team get their forum done first and then announce it in an appropriate way. I don't believe that the OP team when they set up their forum would appreciate someone posting News and Stickys all over their forum coaxing members to leave. The whole discussion is pointless because as everyone knows Craig will set up the forum to his liking disregarding any input anyways.

 

[atomicthumbs]

We need to save the original thread(s) about the Pandora.

Perhaps somebody could try to contact Hando once more and ask for a database dump?

 

[Pickle]

Wow this is really inappropriate. The OP team really does not have the authority to rally a move on someone else's board.

Uh..
I don't think you quite understand this.

yeah re-read the original post, it lays out that every attempt to work/contact with hando was made. If we have another attack that brought the forums down like last time, it probably isnt coming back.
Time to end that gamble and fold and take what we can with us.

No I'm not misunderstanding. I know this board is falling apart and for all anyone knows maybe Hando does want it to die a sudden death. The point I'm making is without Hando's permission Chip does not have the authority post News and Stickys everywhere announcing an official move. The board does not belong to him or the OP team. As I stated before let the OP team get their forum done first and then announce it in an appropriate way. I don't believe that the OP team when they set up their forum would appreciate someone posting News and Stickys all over their forum coaxing members to leave. The whole discussion is pointless because as everyone knows Craig will set up the forum to his liking disregarding any input anyways.

I think the reason the move is valid, and I think i agree with you that there should have a been a discussion with all the mods involved. If all of them were on board it probably would be a less controversy than its going to be.

 

[lippy]

Besides the usual nostalgia (that unfortunately started to die in recent times), the only drawback I see to the new forums is the overwhelming number of platforms the forum will cover. GP32, GP2X, Wiz, and Pandora were a given, and perhaps A320 too, but now you also have IPhone, Android, PSP, DS, GBA, Nokia, and UMPC sections!...

The forums will lose their focus, this will no longer be a tight community which was what made it such a nice place. There are plenty of already established DS, PSP, and I bet even IPhone forums, why make another one? I thought this was a community for fully open handhelds, why should this change?

I`m sympathetic to the idea of starting a new clean forum with a clearer future, but the things I mentioned above could change it for the worse.

Indeed, I vote for only open-source Consoles. The other consoles already have their own well established communities.

Think about it like this: moving from gp32x.de will be hard for most people, even though there are SO many broken features on this board. Why would anyone move from a fully functional forum to a new forum with far less users, without being forced to?

 

[MWeston]

Besides the usual nostalgia (that unfortunately started to die in recent times), the only drawback I see to the new forums is the overwhelming number of platforms the forum will cover. GP32, GP2X, Wiz, and Pandora were a given, and perhaps A320 too, but now you also have IPhone, Android, PSP, DS, GBA, Nokia, and UMPC sections!...

The forums will lose their focus, this will no longer be a tight community which was what made it such a nice place. There are plenty of already established DS, PSP, and I bet even IPhone forums, why make another one? I thought this was a community for fully open handhelds, why should this change?

I`m sympathetic to the idea of starting a new clean forum with a clearer future, but the things I mentioned above could change it for the worse.

I agree with this completely.

I also think a new forum is a good idea because when Pandora/Wiz/A320 are all out there in the wild, this forum is just going to keep crashing. It can't handle the traffic.

Props to Hando for maintaining the site but since he may not want to bother making changes, it's apparent that this isn't what he signed on for so many years ago when he started all of this. He has a life and probably a busy one and it's not worth his effort. I hope he is on board with moving the entire database sometime soon and not reading all of this in anger.

Personally, I'd like to see the forum move to a new server and look exactly as it does now (maybe with the exception of a new separate A320 section). Maybe it could even stay gp32x.de and just route to the new server? I thought that was the plan months ago but I don't think it worked out for those involved in doing it. Maybe Hando will have some free time over the weekend to offer his advice. It seems a bit rude to not get him on board but only if he chooses to reply and get his opinions heard.

 

[PoisonedV]

Results of trying to make a static mirror gp32x:
Wget is ill equipped for the task
Black Widow and WinHTTrack had troubles with the linking, even in lofo, and the size would have been astronomical (think in dozens of GB)

 

[skeezix]

Strikes me wget should be able to suck it down a thread at a time, and then somke clover perl and lynx --post trickery to get it into a new forum (as long as the posting-throttle is disabled.)

Is there an RSS option for the board here? IT'd be trivial to convert XML to post in a new forum.

jeff

 

[banjeed]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KL0miSM7Bug

Time to move on...let's make this quick and painless.

 

[renegadechic]

I've not been aware of this community for a very long time now but it has been an interesting time and interesting to observe the shifts in attitudes on here with, shall we say, the Rise of the Pandora.

It seems to me that when the community was dealing with the GPH consoles only, there was very much a sense of Us and Them with the community making the most of the hardware. Since the conception of the Pandora however there has been several knock-on effects, but to point out just two:

1) The opportunity to create something along some kind of ideal has arisen. No longer are there the limitations of what GPH was interested in creating but the community would have something created by top end enthusiasts. Now whilst this is obviously a good thing for quality, it is damaging as it is impossible to please everyone. Rather than taking what you are given, community input at times can fall on deaf ears if they do not fit in with the strategy of the main team.

2) Going from a community with all members on an equal footing, to a community containing a company in itself is frustrating. It shifts the balance and the hierarchy and to a certain extend blurs the line between open source and potentially free, and closed source and profiteering.

It is this second point that I think causes a lot of the friction at the moment, and certainly in terms of this potential forum switch. Now of course the Open Pandora team has strong ties to this community, but over the past year or two it has grown to be quite a big focus for the developers and community. Just because it has this focus however does not mean it *is* the community. It seems that the forum users that pre-date the Pandora feel strongly about that fact and that it is not all about the Pandora and thus should not be under the say of that new company which is understandable.

For what it is worth however, I think it is too easy to separate the Open Pandora team and the community into an Us and Them scenario. The intentions behind the move look to be in the justified interest of the community, with a desire to still maintain the community outside of the Pandora project and to still keep the community in control of itself. Without the community the Pandora would fall apart so despite the way it seems that they could lord above the community in a potentially draconian way, the community is in control and they are a business that needs us more than we need them, especially in this climate of ever miniaturising and increasingly competitive technology.

It would be great to avoid fracturing the community but ultimately the decision to move is down to the individual. It would be a shame to think that we would look a gift horse in the mouth and shun an offer of a more reliable service, in fear of the wider open hand held community losing out to a specific device. I'll end with this: when you rent a home, every room has memories throughout time. It is comfortable and filled with nostalgia and emotional investment. If the place starts to falls apart, you can of course just live with it, but if the landlord refuses to fix the more major things you can either risk losing everything and have to choose a place out of desperation or you can plan in advance, preserve what you can and find somewhere more ideal. Really that is all I think this is. It is a situation which no one wants but is to preserve whatever is possible and move forward.

 

[PoisonedV]

Strikes me wget should be able to suck it down a thread at a time, and then somke clover perl and lynx --post trickery to get it into a new forum (as long as the posting-throttle is disabled.)

Is there an RSS option for the board here? IT'd be trivial to convert XML to post in a new forum.

jeff

I tried a variety of parameters, in the end, though, it's not even worth arching if you have to do a site rip. It's redundant and takes up hundreds of times more space and is overall quite useless, but a parser using the lofi boards or the RSS thing wold be great idea

 

[Nova]

Oh god, this truly is a battle of the mods isn't it?

 

[mr.bear]

I think it comes down to one thing honestly. If the coders move, then everyone else will most likely go with them.

 

[gruso]

Well, it'll be sad to leave this place but I'll just go where the action is. It is getting way beyond a joke, having to copy/paste/edit every link. That's not how the internet is supposed to work. I agree strongly with the recent posts from Alex & MWeston - the new forum structure should mirror this one as closely as possible, at least to start with. It will make for the least bumpy transition.

I noticed Hando online earlier. I hope all this has encouraged him to make contact with someone. If not, then so be it I guess.

 

[rokdcasbah]

I've been lurking a little but not posting much. I had honestly forgotten about the bugs, then I remembered that I had installed the greasemonkey script.

All I can really say is that it's going to be sad if everyone leaves. I was starting to enjoy being a non-noob. Here's hoping Hando's cool with maybe taking a last round of "thank you" donations and passing on the database, or just fixing the bugs? I'm sure just fixing the apostrophe bug would go a long way toward placating people.

I do agree that the talk of mass exodus is a little premature, it's not like GP32X is the only one of these forums to begin with, after all. All that's really happened is that the OP forums added other consoles...it's not like any of the GP32X mods have stepped down, unless I missed something.

Still, new memories can be made. People will go where the relevant info appears the earliest. Or how about this: bring TelcoLou back, and where he goes, I'll go.

I hope Hando is just bored or strapped for time and not depressed. I know how that can be. Hando: worry about yourself first. Don't let the forum subscribers be a weight on your back. If it's a matter of donations than say so, I'm sure this thread is more than enough to spur people to donate.

 

[God Ginrai]

I agree with PoisonedV's earlier comment about using something other than phpBB. I'm not trying to tell you you have to switch to a different forum software, but I ask that you at least consider it.

You might want to take a look at UBB.threads if you're against using Invision: http://www.ubbcentral.com

Not to mention, there's always vBulletin.

-God Ginrai

 

[chuckstudios]

Strikes me wget should be able to suck it down a thread at a time, and then somke clover perl and lynx --post trickery to get it into a new forum (as long as the posting-throttle is disabled.)

Is there an RSS option for the board here? IT'd be trivial to convert XML to post in a new forum.

jeff

I tried a variety of parameters, in the end, though, it's not even worth arching if you have to do a site rip. It's redundant and takes up hundreds of times more space and is overall quite useless, but a parser using the lofi boards or the RSS thing wold be great idea


I am about half done making an archiver which works on the lofi boards. I'll be storing each thread in its own XML file, probably something simple like:

CODE

<thread>
<title>Blah blah blah</title>
<post>
<user>hando</user>
<time>1234567890</time>
<message>Entitized HTML here</message>
</post>
</thread>

...unless anyone has a more practical idea, of course.

 

[arrrgh]

I'll be sad to see this place go but the forum bugs are just ridiculous and I'd rather be somewhere where when something does happen, there's an active admin to fix it. Also this rich text editor thing lags like shit and Greasemonkey is making Firefox slow.