ADMIN: A personal perspective on the move of the LF Forum to photo.net

[_____133]

Sal, you misread me. But anger does that to a person. I never did suggest the Tuan be replaced as moderator of this forum. I suggested that in the event that Dr Quang decide not to stay with photo.net and take the LF forum with him, that another be created in its place with a new moderator. I was not asking for Dr Quang's ouster. God forbid that. Sorry to offend the atheists.

[joshwand]

For the record, here is the state of the current software development effort at the time of this posting:

 

-- Bjorn and I have independently written about 65% of the necessary software. We have yet to merge our branches, but that should be accomlpished within a few days. Those who wish to contribute may do so by joining the project at http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/q-and-a/ . Once you have joined SourceForge, email me and I will add you to the project. Again, we have built the software using PHP and MySQL.

 

-- Bjorn and I both have archives (from several different dates, albeit) of the LF forum, which can be imported into the new software. It is not outlandish to assume that we can similarly spider the LUSENET forum again, and that we might obtain database dumps from photo.net of LF posts since the move.

 

-- We have a perfectly robust server and ISP awaiting us, free of charge. Should that server ever evaporate, we can easily move to a new server, due to the universality of the LAMP (Linux Apache MySQL PHP) platform we have chosen. The messages would move with us; nightly database backups are planned.

[joshroot]

While I haven't been much of an active LF poster (as my LF time has shrank as my photo business has picked), I have kept an eye on the forum over the past few years. I have gotten lots of great info from both the posts and from QTL's pages. A big thank you to everyone for that.

 

But, I have to say that I completely agree with Eric's comments. Yes, moving the forum to photo.net was an action worthy of debate. But everyone pissed away their time and now it's too late. The phil. of photography example is a great one. Everybody knew what was coming, even if they didn't know the EXACT date, and those who really wanted to, had a chance to move out of the way of the train. As an active Leica forum participant, I also have noticed a slowdown in postings as the old crew slowly makes it's way over here. But it's picking back up and in time will be close enough to what it was.

 

The LUSENET forums were blessed by being somewhat insulated to all the growth and changes that drove many of the long time regulars from photo.net. But the only constant is change, and if you don't want to come along, your time is rapidly running out (in my mind it should be too late).

 

Even Eric's comment about what kind of photographers everyone is, was an on point one. I doubt that he was actually saying that we are all bad photographers, he was just trying to make an example. It's like: Those who can DO, those who can't just sit around and talk about it forever.

[mottershead]

Josh Wand: I just wanted to point out that spidering photo.net is not something we allow. Depending on how things go, there could be an agreement to move the content to another site, but don't plan on spidering it off the site without our knowledge and cooperation.

[joshwand]

Brian, I had actually proposed spidering greenspun.com. Of course, after posting this I remembered that the LF forum isn't accessible on greenspun anymore. I would never spider photo.net; that would be unethical. Be assured, I have no plans to do so.

[mottershead]

Matt, we don't think the content of this forum or any other forum is "ours" at all, either before or after the LUSENET migration. However it came to be here, forum content belongs to the people who wrote it, even in the case where that person posted it under a pseudonym or with an unverifiable email address.

 

As for the LUSENET content, it was submitted on greenspun.com without the terms being very clear. So, even though we believe that Philip had the right to move it from one system that he totally owns to another one in which he has an interest, we are not going to insist on maintaining any LUSENET material here if its author objects.

 

Philip urged the LUSENET forum communities to move in December and did not object to people spidering the forum content off LUSENET to other places. If he thought about it, I imagine he assumed that any contributor who objected to this would be able to make those objections known to the people who copied the content. In this manner, Philosophy of Photography moved to usefilm and several other forums on LUSENET made other arrangements.

 

After six months, 13 photography forums hadn't moved, and Philip wanted to take LUSENET down. Even if he just let the system run, there was no one watching it, and it had been down frequently over the past few months, on several occasions for days. He decided to move the forums to photo.net and the photo.net staff agreed.

 

Now that they are here we don't think the forum communities are "ours" any more than the content is. The communties belong to themselves and we know that they can move en masse or evaporate if we don't provide them with an infrastructure that supports them properly.

 

Upon Philip's initiative we moved the forum archives here and are attempting to move the community here. The corporate mission of photo.net is to provide an excellent infrastructure for on-line communities of photography enthusiasts and professionals. There is no doubt that having the LF community here furthers this mission. However, we can't force people to come here if they don't want to.

 

Let me turn now to my attitude towards the effort to move it again, now that it is here. First I note that the people who are planning to copy the content someplace else are not too concerned about their own right to do so even though some of them are quick to accuse photo.net of violating contributors' copyrights. Apparently they cannot see the contradiction in this point of view, and seem to take the approval of the contributors to their own copying for granted, while not hesitating to speak for all the other contributors in objecting to the copying of the forum by Dr Greenspun and photo.net.

 

My own opinion is that no one had a better right to copy the forum archives, in an attempt to perpetuate the forum, than Philip Greenspun and that if he didn't have the right to copy it, nobody else does. Without exception, so far as I know, all of the other forum moderators are delighted to have been rescued from the sinking LUSENET ship.

 

There is only one other person with even a claim to the right to copy the forum content, and that is Tuan, who initiated the forum on LUSENET, linked to it from his personal LF page, and moderated it for years. All of these moral claims to the forum content are sufficient that if Tuan had taken steps to perpetuate the forum elsewhere when Philip approached forum moderators last December, nobody would have objected. Least of all Philip, since that is what he was asking LUSENET forum moderators to do. There would have been no need for any action from Philip or photo.net and this forum would now be elsewhere, just like several other LUSENET forums. However this didn't happen, and Philip arrived at a point where it seemed necessary to take steps to preserve the forum.

 

Now that it is here, photo.net having expended considerable effort to move it, we would like to see the forum thrive and we look with some alarm at the too-late efforts to move it somewhere else. If those efforts result in the forking of the forum, we will regret it, since it will mean that our migration effort might have been wasted. For that reason, it is our intention to resist these efforts and we point out that spidering content off photo.net is a prohibited use of our server and anyone doing it is violating the photo.net Terms of Use to which he has agreed. If the community members vote with their feet and the forum fails here, we may revisit this decision, but for the time being that is our position.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[joshwand]

<p>Brian:

 

<p>

<ul><li>Bjorn, Jennifer, and I are working with Tuan's full knowledge and endorsement. It is only under his mandate that we would perform any future content migration.

</ul>

 

<p>I don't dispute Philip's right to move the content to a working server in order to preserve the forum. However, there seem to be a few main reasons as I see it why some of us are up in arms about this.

 

<p><ul><li>The forum was moved despite Tuan's reservations, and indeed, request that the move not be performed at this time.

 

<li>While we may disagree about its magnitude, the addition of the LF forum to photo.net does increase its value to users, and therefore to advertisers and to the owners of photo.net. I think some of us are uncomfortable with our contributions to our own community being used to forward a commercial venture.

 

<li>Still others of us are concerned about the profit motive weighing against our interests in the long run, should the site come under new management or ownership.

</ul>

<p>Not everyone who participates in the forum has any or all of these preoccupations, and by no means do I impute them upon anyone. I only repeat them here because they are, in my mind, legitimate concerns that need to be addressed. We are not ungrateful; we are just looking our for what believe are the interests of our community.

[david_goldfarb]

If an independent non-commercial server can be found, I would thoroughly support moving rather than staying, and I would participate in that forum and would request that my LUSENET posts be removed from this forum. Perhaps others would do the same.

[katharine_thayer1]

I sent a post to this thread yesterday but it's never shown up, so I'll try again:

 

Erik asked someone to define the problem. Here's the problem, as I see it: we're trying to keep a large and wonderful community intact as we look around at where we find ourselves and decide whether we want to stay here or move on; and divisive and insulting statements at this crucial juncture do not show a respect for the community as a whole or further our goal of remaining a viable community.

 

If parts of the community are not comfortable with photo.net, their reservations and concerns need to be aired and answered, not shouted down. And if they can't be answered to everyone's satisfaction, then this isn't the right place for our community.

 

In December, I wrote that while I would prefer a standalone forum, photo.net was the least objectionable of the commercial sites suggested (yahoo, usefilm were some of the others) because of the similar Q&A software. I now feel less sanguine about photo.net, and it is the arguments offered here on behalf of photo.net that have changed my mind. I logged on only to contribute to this thread, and will not participate further on photo.net; I fervently hope another home can be found for the community.

[wayne__]

In my opinion, we already voted to NOT move to photo.net, unless there was no choice, so I dont understand any allusions above to "if we decide to leave". The fact that we suddenly find ourselves here does nothing to change that IMO. There were other choices that were being worked on but not enough time to implement them it seems. If I could have done anything more, I would (having no web skills other than shooting off my mouth). Its unfortunate that another site wasnt found before the move, but oh well. The effort was and is being made. I commend Josh and Bjorn and the others working on an alternate site, and hope its done soon! I dont see any reason to discuss whether or not we go there, thats all been done AFAIC. My only question is "whats the URL and when will it open"? Anyone can go back and tally the "votes" in pertinent threads over the past 1.5 years, but except for a few vocal proponents of photo.net I thought it was clearly and heavily in favor or remaining independant if a home could be found. After reading this thread it sounds like an even better idea ;-)

[mottershead]

Katherine, I hope you will reconsider that decision. While there is clearly a difference of views, this conversation has remained quite civil. With the exception of me, everyone who has contributed to this post would also be present on any new site. And, if you are objecting to me, I'm not planning on spending any time on the forum, except to answer the odd question about photo.net mechanics. I'm a digital man, myself. (Shock! Horror! Stampede for the exits...)

[katharine_thayer1]

Brian, I think you've missed my point entirely. This is about a fundamental difference in philosophy; you've convinced me by your arguments and comments, in which I assume you're speaking for photo.net, that photo.net is incompatible with my philosophy of internet participation and sharing and community. It's photo.net itself, as you have presented it, that has alienated me.

 

But Wayne's right; this conversation is really unneccessary. Let's get that site up and running and let's go there as fast as possible. Just give me the URL and I'll be there.

[_____133]

This is the irony that comes from Ms. Katharine Thayer's definition of the problem: while you look continue to look around to find yourselves a new home, it is photo.net now which is providing the server space to keep this community intact and this debate going. Toto, we aren't in Lusenet anymore.

 

Face up to it: Lusenet is sinking and it may just disappear below the waterline any moment. Are we all being intentionally obtuse about it? And when it goes, all the contents disappear. Or are you suggesting that Dr Greenspun continue to pay for its maintenance just for you while you, uh, think about it? You have all been looking to find yourselves for the last six months and if you haven't found yourselves already, it is clear to me that you are lost out at sea. Photo.net to the thankless rescue.

 

It is still not clear from all the objections whether you have decided to stay or move. Are you all still deciding? And while you are at it, stay at the house/life-boat of photo.net and continue to throw stones at it? Can we come to a consensus? And until we do, can we keep our peace?

 

All this talk about civility and manners have not been reflected in the way aspersions were cast at Brian and Philip. I do not have to apologise for my sardonic sense of humour. If you are all still dawdling, check your photographs. One's character is reflected in one's work. No, I won't pad it with an emoticon.

 

I ask again: can we come to a consensus? Staying or going? Or are you gonna all dawdle again until photo.net gets sold to Ritz Camera for $50 million?

 

The fact remains: LF Forum was given ample time to move and did not. Photo.net reached out to rescue it from oblivion and members rise up in arms at the impudence and impropriety of it all.

 

The debate was settled six months ago. You failed to act on your decision cf. Philosophy of Photography Forum which did.

 

And now you are all unhappy accusing Photo.net of force. Instead of bristling, let us be honest to ourselves and fair about it.

 

The time to decide is NOW (this should have been said six months ago). If you're going to go, take the contents and go. I wish you all good luck. I don't think Brian and Philip and Photo.net deserve all this flak no matter how it is worded.

 

Jonathan Brewer said it well: this is a forum for the public good and it belongs to the public. Otherwise, it could have been made a private forum (there was that option on Lusenet).

 

Yes, you can excoriate me for my comments. I am steeled against the want of reason and fairness.

 

Are we in danger of cutting off our nose to spite our face?

[mottershead]

Before we decided to move this forum, I read the December discussion, and I didn't remember it as being a majority deciding against photo.net. I went back again and tabulated votes. 29 voted for photo.net; 19 people voted for all the other options combined.

 

There were some contributors that didn't vote but just put forward conditions such as "ACS interface", or "should work with my Palm" that photo.net would satisfy. I didn't count these as either "YES" or "NO" Several of the 19 "NO" votes mentioned that photo.net would be their second choice. The 19 "NO" votes, independent server, View Camera, usefilm, paying Philip to continue the server on greenspun.com, and various other "options".

 

Just thought everyone might be interested in what the results of the December vote actually were.

[mottershead]

By the way, Erik, thanks for your support; I'm afraid your somewhat, uh, forceful style might not be winning converts to our side, though.

[_____133]

I apologise to one and all who may take offence at my, uh, forceful and untempered style. I got emotional. Can't help it. Something to do with the moon. My psychiatrist thinks that I am a lycanthrope.

[jonathan brewer]

Erik X......or maybe Brian can answer this, how many hours combined have been expended by the folks involved in making this move? I ask that question in the sense of if some folks have sacrificed time and effort to make a move, then why not give them a chance, especially since a lot of folks on the Lusenet LF forum were regulars on this and other forums anyway?

 

When problems with Lusenet came up months ago, a lot of folks including me volunteered money, other folks volunteered expertise and equipment, and no one came forward with a plan, or made a decisive gesture toward delegating authority to implement any plan while there was still time, or a spelled out a reason as to why there was no plan that could work.

 

Whatever was is GONE, there is no going back, and life ins't fair, and the main thing I have to remind myself of like everybody else, is that it isn't 'my way or the highway', so photo net is here.

 

This debate reminds me of a guy who loses a beautiful girlfriend, later he meets a lady who is he is not crazy about who tells him she wants him and will treat him right, if he'll only give her a chance, to which he replies 'if I can't have here back, I don't want anybody'.

 

These folks have asked for a chance, if they've expended some effort, give them one.

[mottershead]

Jonathan, I started working on this on Monday two weeks ago to help a volunteer who Philip had recruited to do the move, named Jesse. At that point Jesse had been working I think for a couple of days. He had taken a snapshot of the database on June 2. After working the whole night on Monday, he had to leave to make a plane. I picked up where he left off, with the forums at that point being down. I didn't pull any all-nighters, like Jesse, but I didn't do much else besides working on this during that week, finally bringing the forums up on photo.net the following Saturday. It is hard to separate out LF from the other forums but the LF forum messages represented about a third of the total, and there were some LF-specific issues. Since then, I've been fielding merge requests from LF members, and I still have to move across the messages from June 2 onwards, and the alerts. Merging in the extra messages is not going to be a trivial endevour. I won't count the time writing contributions to this thread and revising the Terms of Use to try to satisfy Sal. So, it has been quite a bit of time.

[squareframe]

this reminds me of when I was test flying a multi-engine airplane that had just had its right engine rebuilt. half-hour into the flight there was an incredible vibration and the right propeller separated from the engine. the mechanic who was riding in the co-pilot seat exclaims 'damnit, I forgot to tighten those bolts'. whining about that fact did me little good. in the spirit of and in the interest of Large Format photography, I simply cannot understand Katherine's concerns or any other objections to being hosted by photo.net. enlighten me, or let's attempt to make the forum work, take advantage of photo.net's hosting services, and do our best to make large images and continue to hone our craft.

[triblett_lungre_thurd]

<p>i too find the elves at photonet to be more like gremlins. s'why i don't give them any of my money and why my participation in photo.net's forums fell off to nothing. once upon a time... photo.net used to be a free-for-all, quite fun and dynamic if buggy and old-world tech. then [<em>edited Phillip Greenspun sold it</em>] it's a hydra-headed beast now, staffed by computer geeks and not camera geeks. as kath alluded, there's a huge difference between the two geeky beasts. one creates to regulate, the other creates to share freely. well, unless yer a commercial photog that is ... but i digress. i enjoyed tuan's forum at lusenet because anything goes...'er rather, went. but watch this...

 

 

<p>trib

 

<p>p.s. one... two... three... four...

 

<p>p.p.s. he who moderates least, moderates best. All hail Emperor Luong!

 

<p><em>As Trib no doubt expected, some of his comments have been edited out. Normally, moderators on photo.net simply delete posts that insult other photo.net members, assuming they notice them. However, this post made valid points, and I have therefore taken the time simply to remove Trib's cruder insults. If Trib's point was that photo.net does not tolerate the type of posts that he is apt to make on occasion, he is right. -- BM</em>

[mottershead]

There is no secret about the legal status of photo.net. It has been discussed several times in the forums.

 

photo.net was founded by Philip Greenspun as his personal web site in the early nineties. At the time, Greenspun was a graduate student at MIT, who was also involved (usually as founder) in several Boston software and Internet startups. One of these was ArsDigita, a company involved in developing, and providing services for, an open-source, web-based, "community system" that Philip had developed. Philip started to use photo.net as the showcase and testbed for the ArsDigita Community System (ACS). While it remained separate from ArsDigita, the photo.net servers were housed in the ArsDigita offices, as was greenspun.com, another showcase project for ACS, and I believe ArsDigita paid the telecommunications costs.

 

By 1999, Philip was heavily involved in managing ArsDigita, which was growing rapidly, and did not have a great deal of time to invest in photo.net. Rajeev and Lisa Surati, two friends of Philip's, were interested in making significant investments of their own funds and time to develop photo.net as a business. Accordingly, photo.net was set up as a corporation, which after a couple of name changes is now known as Luminal Path, Inc. Philip is the majority shareholder and one of the directors, but Rajeev and Lisa, along with angels, have invested significant sums, and they run the company. Philip was listed on the masthead as Editor-in-Chief, but made rare appearances on the site, mostly in the form of article contributions. Despite all of this, because Rajeev and Lisa were very modest about their roles, most people consider it to be Philip's site, but it has not been, in reality, for about three years.

 

Until earlier this year, Rajeev and Lisa, as well as other people for periods of time, were employed by photo.net, but when ArsDigita and Philip parted ways, photo.net had to move and start paying colocation and bandwidth charges at an ISP. Fortunately, by that point photo.net had sufficient revenue to pay those ISP charges, but

unfortunately, it couldn't do this and continue to pay salaries.

Accordingly the company "laid off" all of its employees, who then continued to work almost as hard as before as "volunteers".

 

As for me, I was only a member of photo.net until two months ago, but I am now volunteering full-time (meaning 50-60 hours per week) as Editor-in-Chief. I am trying, as Rajeev and Lisa still are, to make photo.net successful enough from a financial point of view to pay salaries. I am happy to discuss some of our plans for doing this another time, but I should mention that at this point there is no intention to sell the company, and even if there were, it seems very unlikely. The only things of value which the company has are its domain name and a growing audience. However, it does not own the latter, and audiences can only be converted to revenue in the short term through means that the photo.net audience would almost certainly reject.

 

So, there you have the situation. Readers can decide for themselves whether this situation fits Trib's snide description of the state of affairs.

 

One last point, for some reason, Trib would like people to perceive that the people running photo.net are "suits", or (perhaps worse) computer nerds, and not photographers. The truth is that while many of us are software engineers, which gives us the skills to run a site like photo.net, we are all intensely interested in photography. Photography has been my main interest, apart from work and my family, for nearly thirty years. My photographs are posted on the site and anyone interested can look at them.

[triblett_lungre_thurd]

yup...

 

homogenize it pally...

 

that's what we want,

 

3rd

[dk_thompson]

Brian, perhaps you can answer a question for me--this may be a a little off-topic, but here goes...I have noticed that when I answer certain questions on photonet, should I mention a type of product--not even by name, just a type--that my posts disappear. They are flat out deleted, even though in all honesty, I was trying to help the person out. I was sincerely answering a question based upon my personal experiences (which have been less than stellar) with these types of products. I have noticed this several times, mostly on the unarchived forum--BUT these posts have been very recent--they still would have easily persisted for the majority of the day, if not longer. I return to them later and poof! They're gone...entire thread sometimes. It leads me to believe, that there is some legal work behind the scenes, perhaps...advising you all to delete these posts, lest a manufacturer get ticked off or an advertiser perhaps? It puzzles me, because here I am, trying to pass along some good advice....maybe you all think it's just me, but you can pick up several photo books & get the same advice, or better yet--access other websites and get it from there as well. So what's the moderation policy other than deleting messages that sound like they're personal attacks on a member...I find it hard to believe that with some of the posts bashing away at camera manufacturers or film & paper companies, that you can't say something slightly bad--not even by *name* about another type of product...even if it's the truth.....MY opinons on this only.

[mottershead]

DK, none of the moderators have any instructions such as you imagine, and I can't think of why they would spontaneously delete posts that were critical of certain products. photo.net does not receive revenue, so far as I know, from any equipment manufacturers. The partners are all (or almost all) photo retailers. If you go to the Neighbor to Neighbor section you will find criticisms of these partners, sometimes quite harsh -- all uncensored. The only thing that moderators are supposed to delete is extreme ad hominem attacks and obvious trolling.

 

The General forum does have "bozo" filters (Philip Greenspun humor) that reject some postings for the presence of certain words. For example, if you misspell aperture as "aperature" it won't allow the post in. There is a comment in the code to the effect that anyone who can't spell aperture is generally an idiot. Perhaps you ran afoul of one of the bozo filters, but you would have seen an error message, rather than just seeing the message quietly disappear. By the way, there aren't any bozo filters, and I'd like to convince the moderators to remove them from the General forum, since I think they are a little obnoxious.

[dk_thompson]

It has happened to me enough times that I think they are being deleted or edited out...at first I thought it was just me, that it was a fluke--the thread had run it's course and as an unarchived post just went away....then I noticed it happen twice with posts that were very new. Once I got wise, I began very obtusely referring to these products--for one thing, it's not wise for me personally to mention specific products because of the use agreement I have with my employers. It's why i have to sign off with that dang tagline about opinions. There's even more they'd like me to include, but it's pretty obnoxious actually....but this topic I'm referring to is in refernce to film storage which is part of my job. Unless you have a bozo filter for slip agents, I fail to see how this would explain it. The most frequent times have been when I've just suggested in a round-about way that some of those products may have problems in certain conditions...I'm not making it up, *we* had a problem in our museum and had to resleeve a couple of thousand rolls of film, and it took a good chunk of time & money to do so. I have spoken with others who have had this problem as well, and it's well documented in Henry Wilhelm's book among other references. Another time was when "company X's " little logo appeared at the bottom of your site...someone had a problem with one of their storage products that sounded like it couild have been a slip agent problem.... I gave a general answer about the nature of the beast--not naming *any* manufacturer and that thread disappeared...it was there for a while, I could check up on it, but later on it was gone, while the posts above it and below it stayed....so, go figure...I just don't try to answer those questions anymore....y'know there are other places to get this info, or maybe someone will have the problem themselves and just learn the hard way....I'm just curious of the moderation policy that's all....oh yeah:Opinions expressed in this message may not represent the policy of my agency..