This forum is going..going ..gone !

[james phillips]

Of recent we have all noticed that this forum may be going the way of the "dodo bird" in the very near future. Recently Wayne asked the question as to what will happen if this forum becomes suddenly unavailable forever in the future.

 

<p>

 

I would like to jump to the conclusion that this is very likely to happen. So I ask now and invite everybody to respond to this thread until the question is resolved. Q.-Tuan Luong .. if you are out there and reading this, could you please post an answer here for all of us to read.

 

<p>

 

If not then would somebody who has the knowledge and skill to move and keep this forum alive please step in and make a definitive and positive action towards placing this content somewhere it will be safe and reachable.

 

<p>

 

My apologies if I have offended anybody but I just wish to encourage a positive action to begin before it is too late and the content is lost.

 

<p>

 

Thanks for reading this.

[ellis_vener_photography]

<I>"I would like to jump to the conclusion that this is very likely to

happen."</I>

<P>The sky is falling! the sky is falling!<P>Seriously, what proofs

do you have do you have to make this supposition? My

understanding is that these Lusenet (greenspun.com) forums

are being moved over ( even as I write this) to the more powerful,

more robust, photo.net servers. This does not , as I read it, mean

that this forum is goingto be forced into the main photo.net forum

section, but will run run seperately on the same

machines.<P>My source is a post yesterday from one of the

photo.net worker bees about this very subject. if tuan wants top

do something different re the forum hosting, then I'm sure we will

get plenty of notice.

[qdb1]

There is another LF group on Yahoo:

 

<p>

 

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Largeformat/

--

Q

[clayton_tume]

Just checked out the yahoo LF site.......what a piece of crap!

<p>

If you can put up with flashing adds and the tortuous sign in process

it may be ok for you.

<p>

I'll happily host it on my web site ADD FREE if there is ever the

need, but as someone already mentioned, it's been around for years

and will carry on into the future.

<p>

Clayton<br><a href="http://www.bigshotz.co.nz">www.bigshotz.co.nz</a>

[dan_smith]

Please don't move anything to Ya'Hoo. A sure ticket to getting

spammed unmercifully along with passwords & problems.

[steve_gangi2]

Yahoo should only be considered as a last resort. I run some groups

there and am also a member of the large format group there, and there

is nothing I or they can do to get rid of those annoying pop-up ads.

The spam mail can be taken care of but it is a major hassle. They

made it hard to get to the preference screen, and too many boxes you

have to check off. Additionally, Yahoo sometimes munches user

profiles. About the only thing I can do is keep spam messages out of

my groups and restore privileges to people who got their

profiles "eaten".

[wayne__]

The sky is falling! the sky is falling!

 

<p>

 

Seriously, what proofs do you have do you have to make this

supposition?

 

<p>

 

---------

 

<p>

 

the proofs are in the messages last Dec and the year before by Q.

Tuan, and the worsening of the access problems here.Heck, even if it

isnt going to disappear it is unavailable for days at a time, and

those times seems to be getting longer and closer together. Q is

currently away I think, and will hopefully fill us in on the situation

when he gets back. If you have "proof" otherwise, please provide a

link to it rather than dangling a hearsay carrot in front of us ;-)

the move to photo.net was discussed long ago, and it was almost

unanimous that users didnt want to go there

[greg_durrett]

There's a fellow implementing a Greenspun-like forum over here

http://joshwand.com/q-and-a/. He seems serious about it, and invites

posters to check it out...

 

<p>

 

Greg

[ellis_vener_photography]

I have written to the sysadmin at photo.net and asked about this. As soon as I

get a response you'll see it here.

[qdb1]

Yahoo has its issues, but it does at least work.

 

<p>

 

I host a Scan-HiEnd group there which is very successful. If you can

live with the popup ads, and know how to deal with the spam issues,

there are a number of features that make it a reasonable choice.

 

<p>

 

This is the best list of the lot. I hope it can be kept going.

[james phillips]

As an addendum to my original question, I only wanted to add the

following. My intention was to NOT raise undue fear or concern unduly

but just to error on the side of caution. As others and I have read

from previous posts that it is quite possible (quite likely) that

greenspun.com will not want to host this site sometime in the near

future. Before it goes offline, which would mean that we would loose

our �avenue of communication�, I thought it might be best to help

resolve these issues now.

 

<p>

 

I now would like to hear from Tuan officially (if he is able to

comment) to know precisely what the future of this forum is. As I

have mentioned previously that if we do not ACT soon, then perhaps we

may not have the chance to act later when the situation occurs. We

have already been cautioned that there exists the very probable

chance that greenspun.com does NOT want to host this site content in

the future. We will only be able to blame ourselves in the future if

the wonderful content of this site disappears and we sat idly by and

did nothing to help Tuan and the others to save it.

[mike_mahoney]

As sites go, this one has minimal software and server requirements.

There have been a number of offers of help to host the site, so any

fears of it's disappearance are probably premature.

 

<p>

 

Like others, I'd like to know of our backup plan should we one day

find ourselves without our current server.

[ellis_vener_photography]

The sky is falling part II. <P>I contacted a photo.net sysadmin

and got the following response: <I> <P>I had offered to host the

large-format forum at one point but after looking at it the work

was a pretty big task because of the old code all the

greenspun.com forums run on. Philip wanted to move it to

photo.net but Tuan wasn't sure he wanted to do that. The

problem is getting the old data from the greenspun.com

machine into the new installation--it's not as easy as you'd think.

First I'd like to see if we can move it someplace more stable (like

photo.net) where we can easily keep the old data.

 

I may see if Philip will let me move the greenspun.com machine

into my datacenter so I can get it running better and have the

ability to get it back up quickly should it crash. Right now that

machine and several of the other photo.net servers are located

in a borrowed space and I don't have physical access to the

hardware to kick 'em back to life. This has been a problem and it

has taken several days to get someone to restart the

servers--this ain't good enough."</I></P>

From my conversations with Philip, i get the my impression that

he is happy to continue hosting the have the LF forum or have it

move over to the photo.net servers and to keep hosting it from

there. but that decision is Tuan's to make. This is one of about

two or three dozen LUSENET forums hosted by greenspun.com

and a lot of those are effectively dead, but this one is not.<P>I

still haven't tracked down the guy who made the post I referred to

in my first post in this thread.

[qtluong]

I just got back today from a five week long trip. The situation

is that in December, after my post about the possible move to

photo.net or alternatives (please refer to "The future of this

forum" posting in the Admin category), I received a couple of

alternative

offers to run the OpenACS software on a server. However, they have

not yet materialized. As

Ellis mentionned, while setting up a new BB appears easy, transfering

the data from greenspun.com to a new BB appears to require some

work. What's next ? If none of the alternatives materializes fast

enough, let say before the summer, I will hand over the forum to

photo.net.

[j.l._kennedy1]

Am I understanding correctly from the previous posts that starting up

OpenACS on a different server and continuing the forum is not the

heavy workload problem, but the heavy workload problem is only

transferring the historical data over to the new server? If that is

correct, I would speculate that most of us would rather continue the

forum with no historical data than to continue with photo.net.

Besides, think how much fun it would be to answer all those which-

tripod-to-buy and tri-x-vs.-tmax and what-lens-would-you-buy-if-you-

could-only-afford-one questions again! I'm serious, I think it would

be a shame but not the end of the world to continue on with no

archives. Certainly better than photo.net. Additionally, maybe the

historical data could be transferred over slowly as time permits

after the new server and forum was underway. I'm frustrated that I

have so little knowledge of web servers and the like. Does anyone

agree?

[bj_rn_nilsson]

I don't think that this forum needs a particular kind of software to

run. It's rather a matter of finding someone who is willing to host

it. The reason for me saying this is that I'm a web programmer by

profession and that I could easily port the functionality of this

forum to whatever is needed really.<br>

 

This forum is currently run with tcl (pronounced tickle) software

which probably is OK, but I have frankly not written a single line of

tcl code in my life. But that can be compared to someone who have

never shot and processed a single sheet of say Agfa APX 100 or have

ever used PMK developer. Not having used a specific film or developer

doesn't make me a lousy photographer as I may get excellent results

with Ilford or Fuji. (There are of course other brands as well, but I

can't remember the names... :-) Porting the functionality of the

forum to say Perl or PHP (which are other programming languages)

isn't that hard to do. Besides there are already lots of "free" code

available which would make the porting into a matter of getting a

desireable look and feel. I'm quite sure that there are lots of ideas

for improvement of the forum as well.<br>

 

So, do I have anything against the current forum. In general, no,

apart from the regular downtimes from which we all suffer. What I'm

trying to say is that IF the forum is to be moved, the important

thing is to find a host for it that can give us the space we need and

a somewhat better "uptime". Which software to run it with doesn't

really matter, as long as it is stable and that it isn't some

esoteric kind of stuff which would make the code unmaintainable for

anyone except the one who writes it.<br>

 

Having more or less insinuated it, could I do a porting of the forum

to some other kind of software? Well, at the moment I do have the

time for it. I cannot answer for what my schedule will look like in

say two months. But it is a matter of a few days of coding if so

would be the case. And the answer is no, i.e. I don't expect this to

bring any greenbacks into my pocket. I'd do it simply because I enjoy

this community and all the knowledge in it very much.

[wayne__]

I agree with the anything but photo.net post.

 

<p>

 

To the poster just above, apparently there ARE people who are quite

partial to this software. See the "This forum and Palm OS" thread. But

again, anything but photo.net IMAO.

 

<p>

 

Most importantly though, I hope the people who have the knowledge and

ability to help avert the loss of this forum are contacting Q. Tuan

and working with him by email to figure out how to do it. Just talking

about it here wont help, but it would be nice if those involved keep

us updated here.

[alpshiker]

My personal wishes are to keep the old threads, as they are full of resources and I often like to search references to

a product or technique. But of course there is little I can offer to pass the archives into a new forum.

 

<p>

 

If they can be kept, a search engine as in PhotoNet would be invaluable to quickly find old threads. I personally

participate to some Yahoo forums but dislike very much the forums messy format, and the recent advert popups are

disturbing. The actual Greenspun format or PhotoNet format would be fine. From two evils, PhotoNet would be the

least.

 

<p>

 

My appreciation and thanks to those who will put the ideas into practice. Let us know if we can participate in a way

or another!

[jim_noel3]

I agree. Photo.net would be a reasonable alternative. But if this

forum goes to Yahoo, it has seen the last of me. I can't stand the

flashing adds.

JIm

[ellis_vener_photography]

J.L. kennedy writes: <I>"I would speculate that most of us would

rather continue the forum with no historical data than to continue

with photo.net."</I> <P>I don't understand what the hostility is to

this forum being hosted on the photo.net servers/?<P>No one

said that the forum wouls be incorporated into the main

photo.net forums, and even if it was you can always select just

the p.n forums you want to see and leave out those that you are

completely uninterested in.<P>

And once again, if this forum goes to yahoo! not only am I out of

here, but I'm going to request that my past contributions are

deleted as well. I'm very much more concerned with yahoo!'s

copyright claims to my work as they are a corporate outfit that

will sooner or later try to wring every penny of value out of their

product (our content) than I am with p.n trying to do something

similar. <P>I am also very concerned with continuity, obliterating

the past is a rather silly Stalinist approach to education.