New admin needed

[Deimos]

....
I can't see anyone raising their hand right now, saying "yes, yes, I'll be the admin" if he/she doesn't even know how much money he/she will have to commit to pay in the future, yes? ...

Precisely.  Discussing the various potential sources of revenue --or lack of them-- is very much germane to the conversation of folks offering to serve in admin positions.

[Prof Marvel]

....
I can't see anyone raising their hand right now, saying "yes, yes, I'll be the admin" if he/she doesn't even know how much money he/she will have to commit to pay in the future, yes? ...

Precisely.  Discussing the various potential sources of revenue --or lack of them-- is very much germane to the conversation of folks offering to serve in admin positions.

Yes, this is EXACTLY the point. The duties are not so much the problem as procuring the needed revenue.

[Cora Courcelle]

For what it's worth (from someone who could no more be an admin than she could fly), I don't mind ads and personal circumstances mean I have to consider carefully how I spend my money.

I'd hate to lose BG but the Professor is quite correct to point out that there isn't much steampunk input going on at the moment - yes, I am also guilty of not posting frequently - it would be a shame if more people left because they felt they weren't getting anything valuable from the forum and were being asked to pay a 'donation'.

Of course whoever takes over can't be expected to carry the cost.
Do people really hate ads that much?

[Deimos]

....Oh, and here's a hat for Deimos


yhs
prof marvel

@ Prof Marvel...forgot to thank you for the hat....very jaunty.

Also, the suggestion of moving the server out of the UK.... I have to agree with the Prof on this one too.
US isn't nearly so skittish when it comes to discussions about weapons, especially guns.
Oh, woke fragile snowflakes may start hyperventilating,   but they probably aren't interested in steampunk anyway, and would never see the posts.  

[The Sammy]

Seems I chose an interesting time to check up on this old haunt. A few thoughts.

For all those saying they'll simply block the adverts; good for you. However someone's name will be on the bill, someone's account will be paying the fees every month. Everyone who doesn't view ads and blocks them is now not contributing anything and making that person pay out more, potentially up to the previously mentioned $700 odd a year. Ads are also not a magic solution, you've noticed the place is effectively dead now? How much do you think it'll actually generate in ad revenue? Bots don't count (the current majority of active users it seems from the activity page), ad revenue is a complicated calculation based on views, clickthrough, and activity.

For anyone considering running as "the administrator" (and yes, one person will have to be the named the legal owner for DNS purposes and be financially responsible unless you're setting up a formal organisation) I speak from experience; assume you will have to pay all the fees, because it is very rare the money materialises from anywhere else unless you are selling something. If you're not happy with the responsibility of paying the fees you'd best avoid it. Even when people promise to pay that drops off quickly and you find yourself unable to back out without shutting it down or passing it on.

Whatever the answer there would need to be large scale changes which inevitably mean you lose a significant portion of your userbase, that's true if you go ads or fees (even voluntary), and you can see it from this thread alone.

Maybe it's time to let it die, move everyone active who cares to follow to a Discord group, Masto instance, or similar. Set up a nice cheap web page directing users to it with a link to an archived version of the forum.

Either way it's running on software 7 years out of date which is a security nightmare waiting to happen, software I imagine is now completely unsupported, and averaging little more than a few posts a day. It's not running on HTTPS from what I can see so it's not going to be long until browsers start outright blocking it, and the work required to bring it to any semblance of modernity is more than anyone here has the technical ability to follow through with.

I've been here or there for 10 years now, and I know it predates me by a long way. Such is the way of life. Anachronisms are all fine to play at until the forum software is hacked and everyone's details leaked, which will have real world consequences and I'm surprised hasn't already happened considering in 5 minutes I could find at least 3 unpatched exploits that are effective against SMF 1.1.20.

A shame, but this place used to be polite and nice. It didn't used to be a place where people unironically used the term "woke... snowflakes". Disappointing.

[Sorontar]

Brass Goggles isn't alone. I am in a number of other communities. Here's how some of them work...

A club wiki that is effectively archived because no-one bothers to update or add pages. Funding is by the club.
A gaming site with a forum that is dated with only a few contributors. The software is dated and complicated. Funding is by the host. Originally it was a mailing list, then a forum, then a forum/wiki mix.
Another gaming site with a forum that uses dated and complicated software. Funding is a miracle by donation. They have set up Discord as Plan B. They have lost a lot of contributors ove r the last few years.
A club that uses a forum. Funding is by the club. They refuse to shift to any social media that they can't control and "own". Branches tend to use social media but are forced to make announcements on the forum by central.

I use ad-block and other semi-protective measures. It does not really impact the sites because I wouldn't click on ads anyway.

Ultimately, whoever takes on the Admin roles will have the choice of how to run BG because they are doing the hard work. Others may dislike their choices, and leave, but such is life.

Yes, we talked about using social media like FB. I suggested using FB to (automatically) announce daily what the current discussion points are in the forum (and accepting no comments). That hasn't happened and https://www.facebook.com/pages/Brass-Goggles/ is unknown.

We have Spare Goggles already. What if Spare Goggles was to become the permanent site? What would the costs be? Could the community handle the shift? Who admins Spare Goggles?

Sorontar

[Prof Marvel]

+++ to What Augustus Longeye said!

We have Spare Goggles already. What if Spare Goggles was to become the permanent site? What would the costs be? Could the community handle the shift? Who admins Spare Goggles?

Sorontar

Interesting  idea
- what are the costs & etc of sparegoggles?
- what are the ramifications of moving to Discord?

update:
I am not sure discord would work for us.... i found this:
------------
Q:
We currently have text and voice channels , but we don't have a way to have non-real-time conversations.
My suggestion is a forum channel.

The forum channel will have topics in a list clicking on single topics will open a thread where people can post
replies to just like a sub- forum on older style websites.

Discord only has real-time forms of conversation and does not allow for traditional forum based stuff. Not
everybody can be online on discord 24/7 to catch every bit of conversation and more crucial conversations
can be posted in these forum tabs.

Thank you for listing Naida
----
A:        1 year ago
    discord isn't supposed to be like the old forums imo and text channels are better than forums so no, i don't see
how this can improve discord
------


Ah, so....
"Text Channels are better than forums"
Really?
No, not really.

best
prf mrvl

[J. Wilhelm]

Discord is not "Kosher" in my opinion. Perhaps I got the wrong impression, but I see a lot of seedy characters there. I don't think we're that "underground. Might as well move on to one of the" chan" darkweb sites.

SNIP
We have Spare Goggles already. What if Spare Goggles was to become the permanent site? What would the costs be? Could the community handle the shift? Who admins Spare Goggles?

Hear hear! I second the motion. I was under the impression that sparegoggles.forumotion.net was self sustaining already. Am I wrong? We can start a pilot programme right away to test the forumotion platform.

I'd like to add that the value of the brassgoggles.co.uk forum is in question. I'm not questioning the intelectual or intrinsic value of brassgoggles.co.uk, as there's a long and rich history behind it. But the value of the forum machinery itself is in question. I don't think that $780 / yr is an equitable price for a forum that is for all intents and purposes a small group of people - less than 50 people, including old time lurkers, for sure, likely less than ½ that number of active participants in a year. Living off donations is a luxury reserved for much bigger groups of people. Self-finincing like we used to is a bigger luxury, given that all of us are suffering from the impact of a pandemic. We must acknowledge that reality.

We're going to have to start small again. I don't see any shame in that. Better than closing shop and saying "it's all over folks"

[J. Wilhelm]

Seems I chose an interesting time to check up on this old haunt. A few thoughts.

For all those saying they'll simply block the adverts; good for you. However someone's name will be on the bill, someone's account will be paying the fees every month. Everyone who doesn't view ads and blocks them is now not contributing anything and making that person pay out more, potentially up to the previously mentioned $700 odd a year. Ads are also not a magic solution, you've noticed the place is effectively dead now? How much do you think it'll actually generate in ad revenue? Bots don't count (the current majority of active users it seems from the activity page), ad revenue is a complicated calculation based on views, clickthrough, and activity.

SNIP

A shame, but this place used to be polite and nice. It didn't used to be a place where people unironically used the term "woke... snowflakes". Disappointing.

Perhaps you were under the impression we were discussing how to keep *this* forum clunker alive   trust me, the discussion wasn't really leaning that way  

Also I'd add that I'll be very harsh on people bringing political rhetoric into the forum. Discussions with Tower were very interesting, but they were interesting because *I* was waging full warfare against him, trying to contain his survivalist poison. He was an absolute handful to keep in check, and I don't think anyone else could successfully contain him (sorry for my narcissism, but it's true).

[Sorontar]

My gaming group has shifted part of its operation to Discord for various reasons - the forum software is unstable, the gamers use Discord as the current free popular audio software for chatting while gaming (Mumble and TeamSpeak were some of the previous favourites, but don't do text chat well) and it removes the need to maintain the hardware (and is cheaper).

Yes, the textual aspects of Discord is a glorified chat room, not a forum or mailing list. I have heard that they are planning to connect conversational posts together, but I'll wait till I see that.

The point is that the gaming group needs a fallback position. Like we have Spare Goggles if BG falls over, they have Discord. If the collapse is permanent, they have enough in place in Discord to survive.

Sorontar

[Prof Marvel]

Yeah, nearly $1k per year for BG is not sustainable...
and BG needs to be updated/upgraded/and needs ongoing maintenance and and and

I did some quick looking and found some "stuff"
https://webhostinggeeks.com/best-forum-hosting

So there are affordable alternatives...

but migrating BG over to elsewhere could be a nightmare.
BG is friggin BEAUTIFUL! The rich graphics are AWSOME
but right now, its all about the remaining forum members and the ability to chat, share, stay in contact, etc..

Let's investigate Spare Goggles.
- It's not as pretty
- it doesn;t have the incredibly rich graphics
- maybe we can add some later, maybe not

but it's THERE and running. No real migration is required just to use "as is"

we need to know
1) what does it cost?
2) where is it hosted?
3) what are the limits? size, members, throughput, etc...
4) more etc

How do we alert the existing membership, I mean beyond a banner header page here?
Is there a feature on BG to send a mass mailing announcement to all members?

If not, can we access the memberlist?
it is simple to run a shell script ( sh or rsh ) to pull members who logged on in the last year or so,
then parse for their email (if any) then check the addr for legit
and send a mass "we are moving" email to what is left in there.

also... let us say this forum is put in ARCHIVE mode,
with a banner directing folks to spare goggles or whatever
is there any cost involved to archive BG?
how long will it last?

I think we also ought to archive the entire BrassGoggles forum to The WayBack machine (aka Internet Archives)
for posterity and the public good.

damnit I love this place and the people on it......

[Prof Marvel]

I just jumped over to Spare Goggles, and

Wow

It's sort of an undecorated not-yet-steamy clubhouse, complete with most of the essential
forums, almost all of the current members, sort of all ready for us to jump ship,
take over, redecorate, etc etc...

So how can we do this strange thing?



yhs
prof marvel

[J. Wilhelm]

I just jumped over to Spare Goggles, and

Wow

It's sort of an undecorated not-yet-steamy clubhouse, complete with most of the essential
forums, almost all of the current members, sort of all ready for us to jump ship,
take over, redecorate, etc etc...

So how can we do this strange thing?

yhs
prof marvel

Sparegoggles.forumotion.net is pretty basic, but it's complete. It's got a mobile version as well, so if you log in, you will se a very undecorated site, you need to request the desktop version from your web browser.

[Prof Marvel]

So, a great alternative looks like

- Migrate people over to Spare Goggles
- back up Brass Gogles onto the Wayback Machine
- let proteus put BG into Archive mode and save him ~ 1k per year and TONS of aggravation...

Spare goggles is working and ready to go!
It's sort of an undecorated not-yet-steamy clubhouse, complete with most of the essential
forums, almost all of the current members, sort of all ready for us to jump ship,
take over, redecorate, etc etc...

So how can we do this strange ump ship thing?

If everyone agrees, I would like to see a bunch of lists:
1) who is the owner/operator of spare goggles?
2) are they willing to let an ill-defined group of wacky steampunk volunteers take it over?
3) what is the cost of running it? It's on Free Forum, which looks like, well, free!
4) can we put together a committee of wacky steampunk volunteers  to redecorate & run the thing?
5) am I out of my mind?

I am investigating the ads, which are minimal.
I am investigating any "security issues" which seem minimal.

like I said before - I love this place and the people on it.
I am not willing to let it go quietly into the dark.


"passing of the baton"

yhs
prof marvel

[J. Wilhelm]

So, a great alternative looks like

- Migrate people over to Spare Goggles
- back up Brass Gogles onto the Wayback Machine
- let proteus put BG into Archive mode and save him ~ 1k per year and TONS of aggravation...

Spare goggles is working and ready to go!
It's sort of an undecorated not-yet-steamy clubhouse, complete with most of the essential
forums, almost all of the current members, sort of all ready for us to jump ship,
take over, redecorate, etc etc...

So how can we do this strange ump ship thing?

If everyone agrees, I would like to see a bunch of lists:
1) who is the owner/operator of spare goggles?
2) are they willing to let an ill-defined group of wacky steampunk volunteers take it over?
3) what is the cost of running it? It's on Free Forum, which looks like, well, free!
4) can we put together a committee of wacky steampunk volunteers  to redecorate & run the thing?
5) am I out of my mind?

I am investigating the ads, which are minimal.
I am investigating any "security issues" which seem minimal.

like I said before - I love this place and the people on it.
I am not willing to let it go quietly into the dark.


"passing of the baton"

yhs
prof marvel

I haven't seen any ads on sparegoggles.forumotion.net. Are we paying, or is it free? You said, "Free Forum"

EDIT. nevermind, I see where it is... https://www.forumotion.com/create-forum/phpbb3
 It's a free forum. Looks like they have a header type ad, but they're only their own ads.

For an example of regular ads, I just found the new site for the Mexican forum I listed above.The domain name changed to https://steampunk.forosactivos.net/ in the last few years.

You'll see ads at the very bottom of the page, or at the top, below the page header. Very minimal. The forum looks abandoned since 2015, before the domain name changed. It's still running. No captain at the helm. Should I command that ship?

[SeVeNeVeS]

2 initial hurdles with spare goggles, as von corax pointed out earlier in the thread

Spare Goggles is an independent, ad-supported site that was set up by (I think) Pheobsky (who has since disappeared, and so no new SG memberships are being approved.)

So someone will have to contact Pheobsky, who has not been active here for 3 years.

I tried as an experiment to register under a different name with no joy, just got the runaround with I'm not a robot and captures of traffic lights, cars and buses.........so, if you ain't already a member, you can't join.

[J. Wilhelm]

2 initial hurdles with spare goggles, as von corax pointed out earlier in the thread

Spare Goggles is an independent, ad-supported site that was set up by (I think) Pheobsky (who has since disappeared, and so no new SG memberships are being approved.)

So someone will have to contact Pheobsky, who has not been active here for 3 years.

I tried as an experiment to register under a different name with no joy, just got the runaround with I'm not a robot and captures of traffic lights, cars and buses.........so, if you ain't already a member, you can't join.

So we make a new one. And while we're at it pick a best choice out of several sites. By that I mean a stable platform and not one about to go out of business. I wonder how old is forumotion.net, I imagine it's been purchased and sold over the years.

[SeVeNeVeS]

IF BG is a financial no no ( I admit I would rather keep the old girl running if at all possible) but practicality has to be considered, yep it's unfair to expect people being out of pocket by quite a considerable amount every year, then reluctantly........... a new forum could be the answer.

I don't see anything wrong with forumotion.net, but if a better alternative can be found, so be it.

End of an era, sad times, but move on we must................one way or another.

[Sorontar]

If you want to see who are the moderators for Spare Goggles (and send Pheobsky an email - don't swamp them), go to https://sparegoggles.forumotion.net/g2-moderators

Sorontar

[von Corax]

As the person who's probably going to be doing this, let me address some of the comments above:

Also, the suggestion of moving the server out of the UK.... I have to agree with the Prof on this one too.
US isn't nearly so skittish when it comes to discussions about weapons, especially guns.
Oh, woke fragile snowflakes may start hyperventilating,   but they probably aren't interested in steampunk anyway, and would never see the posts. 

As I understand it, the boxen which host BG are currently in a colocation facility in Texas. Colocation is expensive but made sense at the time; now, not so much. If I've intuited the issue with European access we are also using a Content Distribution Network which, again, made sense at the time but not so much now.

The prohibition against politics, religion and modern firearms were Tinkergirl's, and were imposed to prevent the sort of conflagration which caused Steampunk Magazine and the Gaslamp Bazaar forum to implode some years ago. With the excption of Admiral Wilhelm vs. The Tower, there have been few occasions of which I am aware for the moderators to enforce these prohibitions; this self-censorship appears to have become a cultural norm rather than a rule. (In My Humble Opinion, these Forbidden Topics have been given rather wider a berth than necessary; I have faith in the general maturity of BG netizens, and we have the moderators to prevent the snowflakes from snowballing.)

Yeah, nearly $1k per year for BG is not sustainable...
and BG needs to be updated/upgraded/and needs ongoing maintenance and and and

I did some quick looking and found some "stuff"
https://webhostinggeeks.com/best-forum-hosting

So there are affordable alternatives...

but migrating BG over to elsewhere could be a nightmare.
BG is friggin BEAUTIFUL! The rich graphics are AWSOME
but right now, its all about the remaining forum members and the ability to chat, share, stay in contact, etc..

Let's investigate Spare Goggles.
- It's not as pretty
- it doesn;t have the incredibly rich graphics
- maybe we can add some later, maybe not

but it's THERE and running. No real migration is required just to use "as is"

we need to know
1) what does it cost?
2) where is it hosted?
3) what are the limits? size, members, throughput, etc...
4) more etc

How do we alert the existing membership, I mean beyond a banner header page here?
Is there a feature on BG to send a mass mailing announcement to all members?

If not, can we access the memberlist?
it is simple to run a shell script ( sh or rsh ) to pull members who logged on in the last year or so,
then parse for their email (if any) then check the addr for legit
and send a mass "we are moving" email to what is left in there.

also... let us say this forum is put in ARCHIVE mode,
with a banner directing folks to spare goggles or whatever
is there any cost involved to archive BG?
how long will it last?

I think we also ought to archive the entire BrassGoggles forum to The WayBack machine (aka Internet Archives)
for posterity and the public good.

damnit I love this place and the people on it......

Spare Goggles has several plusses and problems, some of which I've pointed out already, but to summarize:

Plusses:

• already exists
• ad-supported, so no operating costs

Problems:

• Pheobsky, the admin, has disappeared
• no-one has been able to register since 2016
• probably no way to import the current user database
• no possibility of importing posts from BG
• probably no control over what advertisements are shown

In short, moving to Spare Goggles, or to a replacement for Spare Goggles, means completely abandoning almost everything that makes Brass Goggles what it is.

....
I can't see anyone raising their hand right now, saying "yes, yes, I'll be the admin" if he/she doesn't even know how much money he/she will have to commit to pay in the future, yes? ...

Precisely.  Discussing the various potential sources of revenue --or lack of them-- is very much germane to the conversation of folks offering to serve in admin positions.

Yes, this is EXACTLY the point. The duties are not so much the problem as procuring the needed revenue.

The current bill for keeping Brass Goggles as is runs about CA$1,030.00/year. This is obviously not sustainable, but there are other options. I currently master another web site for which the organization I work for pays CA$167.40/year (not counting domain registration) for a virtual web server, email service, not quite 100GB storage, unlimited bandwidth, PHP, and SSL. This should suffice for Brass Goggles given current traffic levels; that price (possibly plus some additional disk space) would put it in the ballpark of a personal/vanity site (which I suspect BG was originally for Tinkergirl), and is an amount I could probably stomach with any help at all. (I would need to see BG's current traffic and usage statistics, of course.)

The big challenge would be migrating to a new host. I would think this would involve first installing SMF 1.1.20 on the new host, dump/load the database, then (once things are running smoothly) upgrade the new host to a current version of SMF. I think with some help that I could foot the bill for the current host for as long as it takes to complete the move.

[SeVeNeVeS]

As the person who's probably going to be doing this,

So where is proteus?, swans in, drops a bombshell and buggers off again for 10 days and counting, how can we ask any questions?

[J. Wilhelm]

In short, moving to Spare Goggles, or to a replacement for Spare Goggles, means completely abandoning almost everything that makes Brass Goggles what it is.

Really?? I'm not sure I'd put it that way. To me, that's a formatting issue. Many of the most interesting threads are practically abandoned, and with the eventual loss of image servers, are also devoid of pictures! I could live with old threads being archived, just with appropriate links and pointers.

[James Harrison]

If you want to see who are the moderators for Spare Goggles (and send Pheobsky an email - don't swamp them), go to https://sparegoggles.forumotion.net/g2-moderators

Sorontar

Useful list, but I only know of one moderator there who has been active here in the recent past.  The problem is that people move on, drift away, life happens and / or they no longer have time to manage, or even visit, the forum.  I don't see that there is a solution to that, beyond perhaps making moderator status an elected position with a set lifespan and (say every 12 months) mods have to be elected/ re-elected. 

[J. Wilhelm]

upgrade the new host to a current version of SMF. I think with some help that I could foot the bill for the current host for as long as it takes to complete the move.

So let's say we try to transplant Brassgoggles.co.uk to a smaller SMF based forum. Is there such a thing as a current version of SMF?

[Deimos]

...I have faith in the general maturity of BG netizens, and we have the moderators to prevent the snowflakes from snowballing....

"...prevent the snowflakes from snowballing"...omg that is a great line! 
I'm going to use it  for everyday [real time] conversations (as needed).