Avoiding a potential debacle....

[sumgai]

Gang,


It's been discussed elsewhere, but in case you hadn't heard... as of Nov 1st 2015, ImageShack is no longer serving images to forums, blogs, etc. (I know, kinda flies in the face of the spirit of things, but what's a webizen to do.) Therefore, we are asking any member who has contributed drawings of any sort (or photos of your work), and they're hosted on ImageShack, will you please move them to another hosting provider, and then change the links accordingly? Pretty please?

In this manner, we hope to maintain the continuity of the information flow found here in The NutzHouse. We've already suffered several setbacks over the years, as members have left and their accounts at their hosting providers have expired... thus explaining why you occasionally see blank boxes where you expected to find a drawing of some kind.

Yes, this will be a not-easy job, but this request is our first step in trying to prevent wholesale carnage in our Forums. Hopefully everyone can get this done for themselves by the end of January, before ImageShack deactivates your account, and locks you out of your own materials. (But I'm sure that you all have current backups of everything you've ever done for The NutzHouse, right?)

Thanks for your understanding and your help. If you have any questions, you know where to go and what to do, right?





sumgai

[sumgai]

My fellow Nutz,


While my first image hosting service was FileCabin, which went belly up 7 or more years ago, I've been a PhotoBucket user since then. However, PB does not make it a habit of being user friendly. From reading the links posted by reTrEaD and col (and elsewhere), I see that many people prefer to use Imgur for their hosting needs. Does anyone here have any experience with them?

The reason I'm asking is, members of the StackOverflow/StackExchange community have banded together and purchased one Imgur account, and with permission, have shared that account amongst themselves. In this way they have a pretty much guaranteed way of displaying images at a low cost to all. If we were to do something similar, it would be fairly easy to maintain, both image- and payment-wise... we have so few people by comparison.

How does this idea strike you?






sumgai

[reTrEaD]

I've used photobucket and tinypic. No complaints. I haven't the slightest clue about Imgur.

A shared account seems dangerous except between trusted friends. Is there a mechanism that would allow uploading by any member of the group but deletion by only a singular individual?

[JohnH]

Id be happy to chip into paying for an account somewhere.

I've found Photobucket to be OK, but now I don't trust any of the freebies!. Im going to cache everything I have there (I don't still have it all on pc)

What I might also consider doing for my own stuff in the future is putting them in a folder where I host the website for my wife's horse business. That way the URL need never change if I ever need to change providers.

As for Imageslack, $3.99 per month ($96 over two years) just to host images is actually not great value these days, given that for half that, I can own a domain name and get it hosted and use it for almost anything I want. But based on their attitude and treatment of their 'customers', I would never want t give them one cent on principle.

[sumgai]

'TrEaD,


My idea was/is that any member can post images for use on this forum, but Staff people will be responsible for seeing that the hosting site is not being abused, i.e. no one is posting images for use elsewhere, or even just to store them "in the cloud". If they aren't directly related to The NutzHouse, then the "Moderator of the Day" deletes them, without any further warning. I doubt it would come to it, but a member who repeatedly abuses the privilege in such fashion would soon learn what it looks like on the outside of The NutzHouse.

Also, I don't think we need to worry about who can delete images, no one here has that kind of mindset... although it could happen accidentally, there is that. Hmmmm, this bears more thinking. Perhaps a visit to a site like Imgur is in order.

Stay tuned....



(after some further pondering....)
Ya know, it comes to me that since the release of ProBoards V5, Admins cannot block anyone from using the Attachment feature. In previous versions, I had that turned off, for reasons of safety/security/etc. Now, it's on for everyone. While it makes a reader click to see a larger version of whatever, I wonder if that might not be the way to go, instead of an off-site hosting provider. That's a good question, no?

Any opinions on that option?






sumgai

[JohnH]

Nov 21, 2015 0:42:08 GMT -5 sumgai said:

(after some further pondering....)
Ya know, it comes to me that since the release of ProBoards V5, Admins cannot block anyone from using the Attachment feature. In previous versions, I had that turned off, for reasons of safety/security/etc. Now, it's on for everyone. While it makes a reader click to see a larger version of whatever, I wonder if that might not be the way to go, instead of an off-site hosting provider. That's a good question, no?

Any opinions on that option?



sumgai

I'm not a big fan of the attachments. They are too small to see clearly within the body of the page that they refer to, hence interrupting the clarity of the information. Plus only members are allowed to click on them, hence detracting from the ability of our site to function as the webs primo numero uno resource for nutzical knowledge on this planet.

Also I quite often post links from here to elsewhere, and its also very handy to take a quick look at what's new without logging in each time.

[sumgai]

John,


Since I am a member, I had no idea that the attachments were restricted like that. OK, so that idea is off the table, for all the reasons you mentioned.

Thanks!







sumgai

[sumgai]

John,

Nov 20, 2015 14:24:55 GMT -5 JohnH said:

.As for Imageslack, $3.99 per month ($96 over two years) just to host images is actually not great value these days, given that for half that, I can own a domain name and get it hosted and use it for almost anything I want.

This is, in general, a good idea. However, at least here in The States, in most cases a domain name provider (a Registrar) will not permit an organization to own a name. The only exceptions I've found are big companies that run a lot of megabucks through their coffers. Otherwise, they want to know who's gonna pay for this thing,* and in general, whoever pays is gonna be the one listed in the Whois database. (We can, of course, purchase an option to hide that info, but in our case, I don't see any need for that.)

The problem comes about when the initial purchaser leaves the organization, whether desirably or otherwise. (I saw one non-profit lose their domain name because the founder had passed away suddenly.) While anyone can pony up their debit/credit card info to make the payment, they have to know what exactly they're paying for. If that info is not complete and accurate, then the person attempting to pay is gonna be outta luck. (The person who died? - they didn't tell anyone anything, ergo....) The only way past this hurdle that I can see is for newey or myself to do the initial dirty deed,** then share all the germane ID stuff with the rest of the Staff. Even if we pay up front for 10 years, there's still gonna come a time. (Or an accident, or....)*** So long as the proper secret password is given, then the money can be paid to keep the domain name intact.

A small hurdle, to be sure.



As for where that domain name is hosted, that's another horse altogether (as you well know, you and c1). While web hosting companies are generally pretty relaxed about who pays and when, they usually have a clause in their TOS about sharing one's account info, i.e. the username and password. I imagine that won't be an issue if we follow this course to its logical conclusion - we simply run a forum from that domain!

All of the pros and cons have been discussed before about this, but I think this ImageShack thing has finally brought it to a head. The Internet is changing, and I don't always think it's necessarily for the better. We need to seriously consider taking steps to protect ourselves and our mission, and I see no reason not to open the floor for discussion right now.

Opinions, anyone?




sumgai

* I don't really believe it's a money thing, I think it's more about who's gonna be held responsible for any nefarious actions, but whaddoiknow...

** Actually, newey has already purchased a couple of guitarnuts-related domain names, the last time we held this conversation.

*** This all comes under the rubric of The Metro Bus Theory. The theory goes something like this: Tonight a Metro Bus is gonna cream you. Poof, you're dead. What about your website (or what about the program you're writing for a client, but haven't finished coding, you get the idea)? Will someone else be able to take over in your stead? Will life go on for those depending on you, or will they threaten to sue your estate, 'cause you somehow screwed them over? (Never mind your estate will win, but it's a hassle they shouldn't have to go through.) It's called Planning Ahead, and I for one don't believe that anyone I deal with deserves to be left in the lurch. I make sure that my bases are covered, not out of fear of some reprisal, but out of respect for others. Treating them as I want to be treated, if you will. 'Nuff said.

[newey]

Are we talking about migrating the whole board to a new site, or just about setting up our own photo hosting?

When we discussed moving the whole board in the past, sg and I ultimately concluded that there were going to be a lot of issues. The best plan we could come up with was to start the board afresh, essentially a "G-Nutz3", with links back to this board for the historical materials. Even that was a lot of work.

If we're talking about paying for a photo host, that's a lot more doable.

[col]

Hi,

My take on this. The recent problem with image hosting, and the past problems when PB changed their TOS and how these forums operate, all come down to a single factor: lack of ownership of Gnuts and its content. The only way to do that is for someone to register a domain and pony-up some cash (or members donate). It would cost very little money to run a forum like this. What is a little more costly is the time and responsibility, especially if you are not used to running a website. I stress though, none of it is rocket science.

You could easily run a website/forum for $5/month (+ domain registration fees). You can install free forum software, and because I foresee no reason why Gnuts would need anything but core forum functions, no need to install pluggins and code modifications (which can interfere with forum updates).

sumgai If one person was responsible for ownership, and someone else took care of the technical side of things, I think neither would feel overwhelmed. I know that setting up a forum with no website management or coding experience is a be bit daunting, and there is a fair bit to learn, but it really is not that complicated (I know, because I've done it). But, I expect that there are trusted members who already have experience who could do this almost in their sleep. As for your concerns about others having access to domain registration in the event of tragedy, I can think of fairly simple way to mitigate against this. If the owner creates three different encrypted files (easily done with free software), each with their own passwords, he could provide an encrypted file and non-matching password to three trustees. In the event of tragedy or disappearance of the owner, any two of the three trustees could get together (one will have the password to the other's encrypted file) to unlock the login details for the account at the Domain Registrar. You could have just one trustee with all the details, but having three (in the way I described) means that no single individual can wrestle control, and there is double redundancy in case of tragedy.

If you did go down the 'owned' forum route, you'd have to accept moving on from this forum. It is not possible to take the data with you. And although there are ways of spidering the data here for a new forum, PB will not take kindly to it and will (from what I have read) likely simply close down the forum before you have completed crawling the data. What might be best is to create as many informational posts based upon the most useful threads from here, and then link back to the whole thread. But, there is one more complication: I assume that copyright for the images remains with the authors (and, perhaps, PB). This will have implications for doing as I just suggested, but it will also have implications for trying to retrieve and rehost images which have been lost because of the change in policy with Imageshack. Of course, you could try contacting those members through email address they have in their profiles and request permission.

Is someone already copying the lost images from Google and other caches?

[sumgai]

newey,


Yes, this is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, we can do it like I said, put a whole new forum in a new location, and refer back here as needed. (And I do like col's suggestion about seeding the new place with threads referenceing The NutzHouse's more important/popular/recent threads.) OTOH, setting up a separate image hosting service/site is not as easy as doing a forum, strange as it may sound. There are plenty of server packages out there that purport to share your photo gallery with the world, but for the life of me, I can't find any one of them that allows multiple users, giving each of them separate (and inviolable) folders/directories/galleries/whatever-you-call-em's. Essentially, we want another Imgur, Flickr, Photobucket, etc. application, but we want to run it on our own server. Unless I'm misreading all of the blurbs that Google has returned to me so far this evening, this is not gonna be an easy way to go.

Anyone have any suggestions as to server packages that might meet our needs, described above? If so, Thanks!





sumgai

[newey]

col-

You are right, it was the issue of migrating the data to a new location that caused us to abandon the idea in the past. Even with spidering the site, we had questions about whether the formatting would also transfer, or would you spend countless hours rendering the old into a readable state.

There are other issues, too. Someone would have to periodically tend to this site, lest it become "spam central", and also so that ProBoards doesn't take the site down for inactivity after a time. Also, would some members log into the old site, see no new activity, and not follow the link to the new site? How many people have gone to the old Guitarnuts, seen that the site was no longer being updated, and never made it over here? Who knows?

As for photohosting, I was more thinking we would just pony up for a paid account with photobucket or elsewhere. Not perfectly safe and secure, but at least we'd have stuff all in one place, and we could periodically back up the data in case of disaster. Sharing the password would present some issues, we'd have to watch for misuse certainly.

BTW, the domain names I had in the past did not get auto-renewed, as I have had to change my bank account and/or debit card three times in the past year due to identity theft. It is a huge PITA to change everything over after this happens, and GoDaddy was the one I forgot to do . . .

I had also forgotten that my tollway E-ZPass account was linked to the bank card, but that one I found out about after a month or so, when the account ran dry and the tollgate arm wouldn't rise to let me enter!

[cynical1]

If I've learned one thing in the 23+ years I've been putzing around the Internet is that if you take a free thing and try and make it a a paid thing, the odds are against you making a go if it. Human nature says "Hey, look, if whatever you were offering has always given as free, what are you offering on top of that to induce me to pay for it?" If it's nothing tangible to them, they book. ...much like me and Imageschlock.

For giggles, I did some quick math to get an idea of the potential pool of subscribers we might expect if we enacted such a "pay to play" scenario.

GN2 has been here for 10 years.

In that time we've had 75,949 posts, or 7595 posts per year, or just over 600 per month...but this activity is volatile and unpredictable.

On most threads 50% to 75% of these posts are generated by existing members quizzing or assisting the new member.

Most members here are only an active member for perhaps 1-3 threads. Once they have they're answer they're gone.  SG or newey could probably toss out more exact numbers.

In the US we have this thing called "public broadcasting" which lives and dies by individuals making contributions for essentially free content broadcast over the airways. Statistically, they only capture about 10% of active listeners when it comes to the "crack the piggy bank" department.  So, if we currently show 2,853 members, the likely number of regular active members is probably only 1%-2% of that total...and that's our subscriber base.

So, as a quick cheap and dirty calculation, we will have a potential new user pool of about 20 per month, of which 2 will likely contribute. Of the existing members who remain active, we're probably only going to get 10% of them as well...and we run the risk of losing a significant number of them if we institute a fee structure, making an already difficult situation of calculating residuals next to impossible. And with the cost of software licenses, bandwidth, servers and support I would hate to see that become dependent on a small number of people to insure the viability and survival of this site.

More than likely, it was just operating costs associated with these aforementioned things that forced Imageschlock to move to a paid account only structure...and it looks like flowers and black suits time for them...

The most common option is to look for sponsors. This opens the whole issue of monitoring content to prevent alienating said sponsor...not to mention all the adds and crap that come with that arrangement.

So, IMHO, this is just the nature of the beast when it comes to forums, or other donated\free content providers on the Internet.

I may not like the hostage taking of my images, but in all reality, I paid nothing for the service, so what can I claims for damages? Nothing.

Just my two cents.

Happy Trails

Cynical One

[col]

sumgai Most forum software includes the ability to add image attachments. But I think some include inline images too (or as a code pluggin). I agree with you: managing a forum would be easy compared to trying to manage some kind of hosted and shared image account.

newey I would be easy to add a large, brightly coloured redirect notice at the top of this forum. My experience of using a free hosted forum (Conforums) is that they only removed my closed forum after many years of me not logging in, and it never coming up in search results. The forum only operated for a few months (at most) and had very very limited content (threads and boards were inaccessible to non-members, and those members could no longer login). Although I would not guarantee what PB might do, I expect that it will come down to one thing: do they make more money from the remaining traffic clicking their ads compared to the costs of maintaining the forum? I expect that with the rich content here, it will take a long time for it to become uneconomical for them. I am sure it would also not harm to login from time to time. And to that end, I would lock down the boards and threads so that member can add no new posts, but allow guest access and do not prevent members from logging in here. This will guarantee occasional 'activity' for some considerable time. You might even consider allowing members to continue to use the PM system - this might better register with PB as 'activity'.

I don't mind helping with setting up a hosted website and installing SMF forum software (this is the only forum software I know well) in the short term, if that helps.

[col]

I mentioned earlier about sticking with an out-of-box installation of forum software - this makes maintenance (upgrades) much simpler. But in my last post I mentioned possibly using an add-on (this would have to be the case with SMF inline images), otherwise it will be thumbnailed attachments. However, there is a simple middle-position workaround. Now, I don't expect new members would use this, but longer-term members might: All you need do attach your images, and then edit your post to include image tags with the URL to the attachments. I've done this with SMF - it easy and quite quick.

[col]

Oh, and one more thing: you can allow attachments to be viewed by guests - it is an inbuilt option for the forum admins.

[sumgai]

I must concur with col's statements above. It is unlikely that ProBoards will shut this thing off for quite some time after we leave (providing we do leave), and all the more so if some of us do take the time to log in, read one or two threads, then choogie on over to The Real Thing. But I don't see the utility in permitting the PM facility to be used, that'd just be a duplication of what we would have on any new Forum software setup.


And on the topic of sponsors....

Good idea, but I'm not so sure we'd meet any criteria I would require, were I in a position to act as a sponsor. I suppose there might be someone out there in the guitar world that would pony up a few bucks, but in that category, I think we'd have to ask several possible companies for small contributions, instead of one or two large ones. The fact is, we are a low-traffic site. High on quality, sure, but total number of bytes transferred, or total number of eyeballs delivered, those aren't very large numbers here in The NutzHouse. Again, I could be wrong, and it'd tickle me no end for someone to prove it.

One of the things about predicting the demise of companies who hump-and-dump like ImageShack is they do exactly that - take money from wherever, and get outta Dodge. Large outfits that understand the economics of reality also realize that public perception is what it's all about. Screw over even a tiny fraction of your user base, and the whole Internet puts your name on the FuckedCompany.com roster, mosh-kosh. That kind of publicity is not what they're after, not if they truly want the Golden Goose to keep on laying those eggs, year after year.

Times aren't easy in this cut-throat world of Internet-based commerce, and they aren't gonna get any easier for a long time. As noted, Free is king, but somewhere behind the scenes, someone is paying out something in order to support that "free". The trick is to ride the fine line between "I can stomach this little outlay" versus "Holy GeMoly, why is my wallet so bleepin' empty??" I'm fairly certain that we'll find that most sponsors ask themselves this question quite often, hence we would be at their mercy, year over year, and may have to scramble once in awhile in order to maintain our whole existance... that's a scenario I don't look forward to.

I'm not saying it can't be done, nor that we should never examine the option, I'm just thinking out loud here.

OK, my thinking cap has been doffed, it's someone else's turn.






sumgai

[col]

sumgai, I wouldn't really expect PMs here to be used - not on any kind of regular basis. Just if someone logs in and decides to leave a message, say, to contact someone from the past. After all, not everyone from here would sign up with a new forum. I just thought that if there was the occasional PM, it might just help flag the forum as 'active'. I am not suggesting that the PB forum be used for regular communication. But in the end, it probably wouldn't make much difference - it was just a thought; not really a full-blown suggestion.

[sumgai]

Understood, my bad for misinterpreting your intention.

[col]

Actually, sumgai, I think I was less than clear.

[col]

I just realised something (going back to an earlier comment from JohnH) about attachments with PB - they take you to another page! With SMF, when you click an attachment, it is a pop-up - much less disruptive to workflow.