I will have to read this whole thread, as I have not. I don't look at every thread, even though I never seem to log out of this site (I'm often the only one on). More work to log on and off.

I am on Safari on both devices and have had no trouble with anything, but that could be in part because I don't use all the functions available, so miss some of the problematic ones. I do like this platform mainly because it's easy on the eyes.

I'll have more of an opinion after I assess what's going on and what's been causing problems.

I strongly vote we do NOT move to the new site, if it's the link that WTG provided
https://wtf.coffee-room.com/ca...2/general-discussion

or, at minimum, we need to get in and lock it down. There are hundreds of spammy users registered to use the site now. It will be a big job to kick them all out.

https://wtf.coffee-room.com/users

Did not know about that site. WTF does not need more problems.

It’s déjà vu. We covered this issue about 7-10 years ago when it was debated whether WTF should move to a web site owned by forumite markj. As I remember, it was not a polling topic. Rather it was a discussion topic and it was decided that WTF would stay here. With two important features not working and an old school forum design, maybe it’s time to reconsider.

Besides, the quote and the edit post features not working, another feature is sorely lacking here that most forums have. It’s a post preview mode in which you can check to see if your links are working correctly BEFORE you post.

I’m surprised WTF has lasted as long as it has because of its declining membership. It’s rare that we get a new member. When we left Piano World’s Coffee Room subforum, three web sites were created. Larry created Fat Shirley, jgoo created TNCR and they were the owners/administrators. I’ve always assumed either MattG or jon-nyc is the WTF owner/administrator. So who is it then?

quote:

Originally posted by Nina:
I strongly vote we do NOT move to the new site, if it's the link that WTG provided
https://wtf.coffee-room.com/ca...2/general-discussion

or, at minimum, we need to get in and lock it down. There are hundreds of spammy users registered to use the site now. It will be a big job to kick them all out.

https://wtf.coffee-room.com/users

Yet another great point. I imagine that someone who hosts a free site might not want to discourage spammy users the way we would. Their priorities, and ours, might differ.

quote:

Also, wtg has been cryptic about Matt's status as administrator. I think the moderators should be transparent and tell us who is administrating WTF.

I'm afraid that I don't know any more than you probably do. Matt is, as I understand it, the administrator, and he has not transferred his authority or added another administrator. I don't know why, perhaps he's just unaware of the need or perhaps it requires effort he does not wish to expend. I know that some have made efforts to contact him and have been unable to do so.

So, as best as I recall, no one has exercised administrative powers over the site for several years.

That is as transparent as I can be.

quote:

Originally posted by Nina:
I strongly vote we do NOT move to the new site, if it's the link that WTG provided
https://wtf.coffee-room.com/ca...2/general-discussion

or, at minimum, we need to get in and lock it down. There are hundreds of spammy users registered to use the site now. It will be a big job to kick them all out.

https://wtf.coffee-room.com/users

This is something under our control and the work is already underway. Ax started deleting the spam/marketing users on the other site as of a couple of days ago.

To prevent the spammers from being repopulated we can a) require an email confirmation, which may stop a lot of them or b) require Admin authorization for a user to get added. I would vote for the second method. Any of our existing members who want to create a user account will use their old screen name. Since we haven't had a new user in I-don't-know-how-many years, I'd be surprised if we see any new faces. But if someone did find us and wanted to join, we could make that happen.

It's part of trying to create a site that is potentially appealing and useful to the community. It is a work in progress, which is why a trial period to gather user input helps a lot. And it may end up being an experiment that stops after the trial period, with the site simply staying as a backup in case of an outage here.

Other things that could be in the pipeline include choosing a layout that's different from what's there right now, adjusting font sizes, establishing community rules, things like that.

When I registered at the new site today, it required an e-mail confirmation. Was that requirement just added? I was certainly surprised to see a member list 22 pages long!

Big Al

So I'm going to cover a bunch of background info in this post.

First, we need to recap the players and their responsibilities, so we're all on the same playing field. I'm going to use the terminology I'm familiar with and try to define it as I understand it. I'm not conversant in the forum/web development world, so apologies if use the wrong words. I hope the explanation will make it clear what my understanding is of how things work. If I'm off the mark on how any of this operates, please feel free to chime in and correct me.

The forum host is the company that hosts our forum and provides the forum software. I've seen "Groupee" in and "Social Strata" mentioned on this site. I believe that one or the other was the forum host when WTF was set up. It used to be the case if you clicked on "Powered by Social Strata" at the bottom of the page, it would take you to Social Strata, whoever they are.

A few years ago, that link stopped going to Social Strata and instead to what I assume was a new host called Crowdstack. I assumed Crowdstack had bought out our previous host, much as happened with TNCR and the host they were using. Now if you click on "Powered by Social Strata" it goes to a 404, page not found. So I don't know who our current host is. And I don't know how to find out.

A forum host charges to host WTF. And how much we are charged depends at least in part on how much storage the forum uses. There are probably other limits on how many users/admins/moderators you can set up, but that's just a guess on my part that I've cobbled together from general knowledge.

There is also a single forum owner. That's the WTF person who pays the bills and who has a relationship with the forum host. Think of them as a super admin who also has other super powers to do stuff. You may recall the old Decorator of the Month contest. I'm assuming this person needs to have a level of technical expertise. At one time I believe Cindy was the forum owner and transferred that responsibility to Matt quite a few years ago.

There are also administrators . They have fewer powers than the owner. I don't know exactly what those powers are. There were several administrators when WTF was established. I couldn't even give you a complete list of who is currently an admin. The only person I know for certain that I've turned to for admin support is Ax.

Then there are moderators . Their powers are quite limited. They can edit or delete posts only in the Off Key forum, as far as I'm aware. The moderators are pj, Quirt, and myself. Moderators have access to another area that gets info on any posts that get reported (when you hit the Report Post button).

I'll stop here and put together a separate post on history. Please bear with me.

quote:

Originally posted by big al:
When I registered at the new site today, it required an e-mail confirmation. Was that requirement just added? I was certainly surprised to see a member list 22 pages long!

Big Al

I think it must be something Ax added. He and I talked about the spam user problem yesterday, and he indicated that he would be deleting them and he was the one that mentioned that we could do email confirms or an admin approval requirement. He must have implemented it.

He's been keeping that site up to date from a software perspective, but since it was just a backup site, he wasn't looking at anything else. As i mentioned above, the site as it stands now is a starting point. We can build it to be what we want.

quote:

Matt is, as I understand it, the administrator, and he has not transferred his authority or added another administrator. I don't know why, perhaps he's just unaware of the need or perhaps it requires effort he does not wish to expend. I know that some have made efforts to contact him and have been unable to do so.

This is a significant concern IMO, almost as big a concern as the broken elements of this site.

As to Nina's concern, re the back-up site and spam problems, it's my impression that problem is fixable.

So Nina, if that concern were resolved, would it make you more willing to try to consider moving to the back-up site?

I think it's premature to talk about moving. We are nowhere near that point. It's not possible to make a decision now because no one here has sufficient information to make that call. We're only at the very beginning of a process, and it may well end in not moving. We just have to give it some time.

I had hoped for people to give the backup site the old college try, see what works and what doesn't, and for adjustments to be made to see if we can make it a site that everyone can love. And if people don't have the time or inclination to test the other site, that's totally fine, too. Everybody has different perspectives and levels of involvement.

Not all of these affect all people, but here's the list I've compiled of things that are broken.

1. Reply/Edit/Report missing icons. Messed up emojis.

We all know what these are. Things seem to work better if you're using Apple products and not so well if you're on Windows. At least that's my take.

2. Password reset function is broken

Resetting a password should be automatic. You hit "Forgot password", it sends you a link to your email address, and you reset it. Used to work that way here, but not anymore.

That functionality is broken on WTF because (and Ax can explain it better) the forum software doesn't send out emails correctly anymore. If you need a password reset, it has to go up to the forum owner who does some kind of magic to make it happen.

The bad email thing leads us to...

3. PM notifications by email don't work

I used to get an email whenever I'd get a PM. Several years ago, I realized I hadn't gotten one in ages even though I was getting PMs. After learning about why password resets didn't work, it became clear that the same "send an email" function in the forum software must be involved in the email PM notifications, and that it broke both features.

It also means that as a moderator, I no longer am notified that someone has reported a post and requested moderation.

4. New PM indicator malfunctioning

We all know about the flashing "New PM!" message. It's supposed to indicate that you have a new message. I remember a few people complaining years ago that their New PM thingy was always on. Then it started happening to me. PMs that were years old and that I had read were suddenly looking like new messages. Even if I read them, they are still marked as unread.

AFAIK, all of the above are problems in the forum software that is maintained by the forum host. That means no one at WTF can fix them.

5. Seemingly missing Delete Message function.

This is not a forum software problem. This is a result of the last Decorator of the Month color choices. The Delete Message text is black, and the background it's on is black. The function is there, it's just impossible to see. It 's been that way since the last DOM contest.

OK, the next post will cover some history and will outline our operational vulnerabilities...I'll post something later tonight...I'm going to have dinner...

ETA: Or maybe tomorrow. Things have come up IRL...

I will go where the group goes or stay where the group stays.

I'm incredibly grateful to Matt for silently continuing to make this place possible, to Ax and any other admins I don't know about, and to the moderators, one of whom lives here with me.

It's remarkable to think of the effort that has gone into creating this community. I don't want to lose anyone. I would like people who have left us to come back. Honestly, I think it's possible that we will lose people for reasons related to this issue, whether we go or stay, for reasons already expressed by others.

We knew this forum would break someday, because that is the nature of technology, and Ax was far-sighted enough to provide us an escape pod. The technological part of this place will break beyond our tolerance level eventually. Whether this is that time, I can't say, but I'm willing to check out the alternative site, if that's the best way to stay together.

So the things that have given me pause and brought me to where I am:

First and foremost, the forum owner has not posted here in several years. That wouldn't be a deal breaker, but communication regarding issues and problems has been an ongoing challenge.

No one is trying to steal the forum from anyone, but we have a situation where much that should be pretty easy to do is made unnecessarily difficult. That's hard on the people who are trying to keep us afloat.

On one hand, outages have been dealt with on a timely basis. OTOH, broken functionality was reported last year and there has been no acknowledgement of receipt of that information, much less an indication of when, or even whether, the problems can be fixed.

Recognizing that circumstances and priorities change for all of us, and to ensure good operational support of the forum, a request to transfer forum ownership to someone who is on the forum more often, and who is accessible and responsive, has gone unanswered.

I don't think anyone here knows what it costs to keep the lights on. In the past, at least, it was not free. But things changed in a significant way.

We used to see a request for donations to support the forum. We haven't had a fund raiser in years.
We used to do data purges, maybe once a year, to keep data usage under certain limits to keep costs in line. I have PMs that go back to March 2019, so the last purge must have been before then.

Who is our host? What is the cost? How is it getting paid? What happens if it doesn't get paid? Will we only find out if the forum disappears one day? We used to contribute to the care and feeding of WTF, and something changed radically with no explanation. Leaves me wondering why. Maybe I'm the only one wondering this. Feel free to say so if it's the case.

Not a big deal in one respect, but most puzzling because it was such a popular feature...the Decorator of the Month contest stopped abruptly and with no explanation.

https://well-temperedforum.gro...303958397#4303958397



I guess I see the risk because I was the one on the front line any number of times trying to deal with these issues. The only thing I could think of to keep the doors open if we had a catastrophic outage and couldn't reach the right people, is to figure out a way to do a backup site. Ax totally stepped up to the plate and did that. I thought that gave us some breathing room.

As our problems have continued to accumulate and people have posted about their frustration just trying to edit or delete a post, and as participation continues its downward trend, I thought we could use that backup site to experiment. To take some time to explore an actual alternative rather than simply talking about whether we should move. Like Q-L said, we've been here before. Why not a real life playground as a way to get a better feel for what we might be rather than being stuck with what we have?

Anyway, that's pretty much it. If you've gotten this far, thanks for sticking with me.

Matt is a friend on Facebook, but we don’t interact much. When we do, he seems like his old self, a sharp guy with interesting observations. Perhaps he got bored with managing WTF. He’s probably friends with others from here.