Refugee camp to more permanent housing?

by charvaka Fri May 27, 2011 3:21 am

When threads started getting killed on CH and we had to move quickly to another place, we settled on this forum knowing full well that there were some serious limitations with it. I have been researching other options over the last month, and I now have a prototype for us to consider. The new forum has a number of distinct advantages over this forum:

More privacy: I have disabled IP logging, and verified that IP addresses do not get stored along with posts.
More control to the user: Users have more control over their experience; you can choose your own theme (from among 12 that I have set up), you can choose how many posts / threads you want to see on a page, whether to see others' avatars / signatures, etc.
Option to browse in threaded view. That forum has both the "linear view" that we have here, and a threaded view that is almost identical to what Sulekha CH had a few years ago (before they started they rebranded it to Sulekha Forums.)
Latest posts on front page: It has the latest posts view almost identical to what Sulekha CH on its first page
Working community moderation: Once five or more users report a post, it automatically gets hidden. This is a very effective form of community moderation that doesn't rely on an admin. That feature doesn't seem to be working here.
Zero ads: You don't have ads anywhere on the site.
Automatic transfer of all contents: I can migrate all content here (except polls and poll results) to the new site. As a proof of that concept, I have already migrated the posts until last weekend (when I last logged in here as admin.)
Fewer bugs, because it is maintained off an open-source platform unlike Forumotion. (For the techies, it is based on MyBB version 1.6.3.)

Now to the down-sides:

It is not a free forums site like this one; I set it up with a monthly subscription for $5 a month. The time I spend with CH is worth more than $5 a month, so I don't have any issues with keeping that going in perpetuity. (May be I will reduce my contribution to KQED.)
The site does keep track of the IP address used at sign-up. You can overcome this by doing your initial sign-up through a proxy server. Because you have to do that only once, it is not that onerous, and you can be a lot more comfortable on the privacy front.
The forum does not have a good WYSIWYG editor yet. A couple of editors are in development, but I haven't enabled them because they are not high enough quality yet. Forumotion didn't have one either until a couple of weeks ago, and I was fine without it.

I would like users here to check out the new forum, and then participate in a vote on this forum. If a majority of users want to move to the new forum, I will close this forum for a 2-3 hour period one late night Pacific time, and migrate everything over to the new forum. If the popular vote is against moving to the other forum, I can shut it down and cancel the subscription.

Now, here is the address of the new forum: http://ch.chaikaapi.com. Because we are in testing phase, I request that you create a new ID there for testing although your current ID exists there. You don't need to enter a working email address. If we elect to migrate, I do have a way to automatically generate new passwords on the new forum, and have those passwords PMed to you here without me seeing any of that content at any point.

Please post your reactions to the other forum here.

My personal opinion is that the other forum is vastly superior to this one. This one is like a hastily thrown together refugee camp that we got up and running on the day of the disaster, while that forum is a more thoughtfully designed home that has been built in the weeks after.

by Guest Fri May 27, 2011 3:24 am

Whats wrong with this one? Maintaining the CH relationship is becoming too much work, I say!

by charvaka Fri May 27, 2011 3:26 am

Another advantage for those who use the forum on mobile devices: the other forum is compatible with Tapatalk, so you can post in Mobile view from your phone. It also has a lighter view for fast read-only browsing on the phone.

by charvaka Fri May 27, 2011 3:30 am

My original post got excessively lengthy, and I didn't want to bury these acknowledgements in that long post. I would like to thank the following posters for helping me test the software infrastructure behind the new forum: Hellsangel, Huzefa Kapasi, SomeProfile, Rashmun and Tracy Whitney.

by charvaka Fri May 27, 2011 3:33 am

nutmeg wrote:Whats wrong with this one? Maintaining the CH relationship is becoming too much work, I say!

It is impossible to do the following here:

disable IP logging
have a "latest posts" view (like CH does)
user-chosen themes
threaded view
user control over whether to see avatars and signatures

I am completely fine with us staying here, but I wanted to create an alternative which people who don't want me to know their IP address can also sign up. Without that, I see some CHers never making the switch.

by charvaka Fri May 27, 2011 3:39 am

nutmeg wrote:Whats wrong with this one? Maintaining the CH relationship is becoming too much work, I say!

Also, this forum may need admin intervention if it is subjected to serious attacks... the other one can get by through community moderation.

by Guest Fri May 27, 2011 3:39 am

charvaka wrote: Without that, I see some CHers never making the switch.

Who are you missing this badly?

by charvaka Fri May 27, 2011 3:42 am

nutmeg wrote:
charvaka wrote: Without that, I see some CHers never making the switch.

Who are you missing this badly?

Sandilya, Seva, Luke Warmus, Black Swan, to name a few.

Anyway, I gotta to go bed now... have a big meeting tomorrow. Good night.

by Another Brick Fri May 27, 2011 3:56 am

i am absolutely fine with forumotion and would like to continue with it. i have no privacy concerns.

by Guest Fri May 27, 2011 4:13 am

OK I tried loggin in to the other forum.I am being refused entry even after requesting a password reset.

by Guest Fri May 27, 2011 4:29 am

Another Brick wrote:i am absolutely fine with forumotion and would like to continue with it. i have no privacy concerns.

consider the following:

a) this site does have glitches. posts disappear. my own post disappeared once. in this post of mine i am quoting a post of mine that has disappeared. in place of this post by harharmahadev, there was another post by him carrying the content, "a brain!" for whole day yesterday. either he edited "a brain!" (impossible 'cos you cannot edit after 10 mins.) or the post vanished. indophile has also complained of his posts disappearing. the admin cannot fix this issue.

b) the site has an unusual storage method. when you click on a user and click on all posts by him/her, the list gets truncated to 8 pages in a FIFO way (even when the user may have made 20 pages worth of content). yet, the list of topics goes back to day one. maybe the admin can fix this issue. again, when you use the "search" tool, you will be restricted to 8 pages of content by any user.

by Another Brick Fri May 27, 2011 5:06 am

ok, i wasn't aware of these issues.

however, what if carvaka comes across an irresistible maid and follows strauss-kahn's suit and ends up in jail and then can't pay? where will sara bojiji report about this incident?

by Guest Fri May 27, 2011 5:11 am

by Another Brick Fri May 27, 2011 5:20 am

i mean, the new forum will be dependent on one individual and that's risky. if he wants someone to back him up, they may have to exchange personal details. this forum does not have that problem.

by Guest Fri May 27, 2011 5:36 am

i agree. this forum is quite good (i like it more than invision/vbulletin/sulekha ch) despite the minor inconveniences.

by Guest Fri May 27, 2011 6:34 am

nutmeg wrote:OK I tried loggin in to the other forum.I am being refused entry even after requesting a password reset.

login? you have to register in a new id there for testing purpose! i just did -- no problem. later the password to your existing id (nutmeg) will be intimated to you by admin or something. right now it is just testing stage.

by Guest Fri May 27, 2011 6:46 am

Huzefa Kapasi wrote:
nutmeg wrote:OK I tried loggin in to the other forum.I am being refused entry even after requesting a password reset.

login? you have to register in a new id there for testing purpose! i just did -- no problem. later the password to your existing id (nutmeg) will be intimated to you by admin or something. right now it is just testing stage.

it didnt let me register s nutmeg coz the id exists!

by Guest Fri May 27, 2011 6:52 am

register as nutmeg1 or megnut. id nutmeg is safe and will be restored to you in the event we decide to migrate.

by Guest Fri May 27, 2011 8:01 am

ok. registered as asterisk

by Guest Fri May 27, 2011 8:38 am

so. what do you think?

by Guest Fri May 27, 2011 9:41 am

Huzefa Kapasi wrote:so. what do you think?

i like the likes given/received feature but would like this to be a a post level and not user level.

by charvaka Fri May 27, 2011 10:05 am

nutmeg wrote:
Huzefa Kapasi wrote:so. what do you think?

i like the likes given/received feature but would like this to be a a post level and not user level.

That's the intent. I havne't tested that feature yet... let me look into it.

by Hellsangel Fri May 27, 2011 11:00 am

Here is the kicker. The site is blocked for me.

by charvaka Fri May 27, 2011 11:21 am

Hellsangel wrote:Here is the kicker. The site is blocked for me.

Blocked by websense? For me Forumotion is blocked by websense too. Let me see if there is something I can do so websense doesn't block it.

by doofus_maximus Fri May 27, 2011 11:40 am

I tried to read NYC MAyor speaking in Hindi thread started by KV in the new forum

Readability of where one post stops and where the next starts is a huge issue. Very confusing.

by charvaka Fri May 27, 2011 4:34 pm

charvaka wrote:
Hellsangel wrote:Here is the kicker. The site is blocked for me.
Blocked by websense? For me Forumotion is blocked by websense too. Let me see if there is something I can do so websense doesn't block it.

I've written to websense to get it unblocked. I am optimistic that they will unblock it.

by artood2 Fri May 27, 2011 6:24 pm

Those wary of IP tracing would be wary of a forum totally maintained by you. I think this forum is good and do not see a need to move to the new one.

by SomeProfile Fri May 27, 2011 10:48 pm

Regarding IP tracking - Theoretically speaking, on the new board, the admin could turn on IP tracking at any time and none of us would know, right? So, effectively, there is not much of a difference between the two forums. Admin has the IP tracking ability on both forums. Granted that the other forum makes you go through a couple more steps to find out the IP address, but it still comes down to the question of the users trusting the admin.

Regarding $5 per month cost - what exactly is this for? I thought Icyboards allowed unlimited posting for free, just like forumotion? I am somehow not comfortable using a forum paid by somebody else. At best, I'd feel like a guest in somebody else's house. At worst, like a free loader.

Permanency 1 - What happens if for some reason, the current admin is not able to pay $5 per month due to planned or unplanned reasons?

Permanency 2 - How dependable is the new forum in terms of permanency? Can we be sure it will continue to exist for a long time to come? We asked similar question about Forumotion, found out that it was one of the top message board hosts on the Internet and we felt relatively comfortable that it would exist for a long time to come. What about Icyboards?

Community moderation - I am still somewhat iffy about this. What stop me from registering 10 different handles and voting down every post by Sasthi?

by charvaka Fri May 27, 2011 11:30 pm

SomeProfile wrote:Regarding IP tracking - Theoretically speaking, on the new board, the admin could turn on IP tracking at any time and none of us would know, right? So, effectively, there is not much of a difference between the two forums. Admin has the IP tracking ability on both forums. Granted that the other forum makes you go through a couple more steps to find out the IP address, but it still comes down to the question of the users trusting the admin.

Correct. But my reasoning is this. Once I set it up, I will never login as admin. I can say that because community moderation works there (it doesn't seem to, here.)

SomeProfile wrote:I thought Icyboards allowed unlimited posting for free, just like forumotion?

That is correct. But Icyboards doesn't allow you to access the underlying database, which is necessary in order to migrate threads and users from Forumotion. So what I have now is a site that's set up by me.

SomeProfile wrote:I am somehow not comfortable using a forum paid by somebody else. At best, I'd feel like a guest in somebody else's house. At worst, like a free loader.

I hadn't thought of that one... I don't really have anything to address that.

SomeProfile wrote:Permanency 1 - What happens if for some reason, the current admin is not able to pay $5 per month due to planned or unplanned reasons?

I am still grappling with this one. I have the domain locked up for 5 years, but the hosting is another matter. I don't anticipate any real reasons for not being able to pay the 5 bucks, but it is a worthwhile question to ask. If I get run over by a bus and my credit card is ter, there will be a problem of continuity with that forum which is not as acute for this Forumotion forum.

SomeProfile wrote:Permanency 2 - How dependable is the new forum in terms of permanency? Can we be sure it will continue to exist for a long time to come? We asked similar question about Forumotion, found out that it was one of the top message board hosts on the Internet and we felt relatively comfortable that it would exist for a long time to come. What about Icyboards?

This is not Icyboards. This forum can stay alive as long as someone pays the bill for hosting ($5 a month.)

SomeProfile wrote:Community moderation - I am still somewhat iffy about this. What stop me from registering 10 different handles and voting down every post by Sasthi?

We can set it up so that only two handles can be registered from any IP address in a 24 hour period. We can also set it up so that it takes some minimum number of posts before you have the privilege of voting down. (That way regulars have that right, and new handles don't.)

I am not really wedded to the other forum. I really, really like the interface and its customizability. Forumotion has been frustrating for me in that respect; simple things like showing latest topics instead of latest posts are "impossible" here. But this is way, way better than where we are coming from. I just wanted to put the other alternative out there so people can experience it and see if it makes sense.

by charvaka Fri May 27, 2011 11:32 pm

artood2 wrote:Those wary of IP tracing would be wary of a forum totally maintained by you. I think this forum is good and do not see a need to move to the new one.

With community moderation, I can swear off the admin account, and everybody will be able to verify that easily (last time admin logged in.) So once it is set up, it would be on autopilot. Here if we get attacked by say a porn poster, it would require intervention.

by charvaka Fri May 27, 2011 11:34 pm

doofus_maximus wrote:I tried to read NYC MAyor speaking in Hindi thread started by KV in the new forum

Readability of where one post stops and where the next starts is a huge issue. Very confusing.

It will probably take a little while to get used to. It does have multiple themes, so some of the themes may work better for you than the others (see the bottom right to change the theme.) I have also improved the demarcation of posts -- check it out again.

by charvaka Tue May 31, 2011 3:09 am

I posted this on a Friday before a long weekend -- bad timing on my part -- so I thought I would give this a bump in time for the work week. Do check out the new site at http://ch.chaikaapi.com. If you want to post there, sign up for a new (temporary) ID -- you don't need to enter a valid email ID.

by Guest Tue May 31, 2011 3:14 am

registration is limited to 2 per IP every 24 hours. it takes half a minute and there is no capcha.

by Guest Tue May 31, 2011 12:03 pm

*bump*

by rawemotions Wed Jun 01, 2011 3:55 am

It looks like you have already ported the stuff into the new forum. Does it mean, we are moving there ?

a) I see some are tagged as Junior Member, some as Members and some as Senior Members " How is this tagging done and on what basis ?

b) If the username has already been ported, has the password also been ported ?

c) Long term arrangments for pay site. Is it 5$ per month per member ?

by charvaka Wed Jun 01, 2011 9:20 am

rawemotions wrote:It looks like you have already ported the stuff into the new forum. Does it mean, we are moving there ?

No, that was a test to see whether porting works. If we all decide to move, I would do another port of all content.

rawemotions wrote:a) I see some are tagged as Junior Member, some as Members and some as Senior Members " How is this tagging done and on what basis ?

It is based purely on number of posts. I am thinking of disabling that.

rawemotions wrote:b) If the username has already been ported, has the password also been ported ?

Right now only usernames have been ported. Passwords cannot be ported, but they can be regenerated with random characters. And the system can PM the original users here the regenerated password on the new forum; i.e., you would get a private message saying your password to the account rawemotions in the new forum is X3bjey$ahjd2 or something like that.

rawemotions wrote:c) Long term arrangments for pay site. Is it 5$ per month per member ?

No. I meant that it takes $5 a month to keep the site up and running. I would be paying that if we move there.

by Rekz Wed Jun 01, 2011 11:39 am

Somehow i feel like kachha nimboo in this motion forum pale

by Guest Wed Jun 01, 2011 11:46 am

why? come let's chat in http://ch.chaikaapi.com./

i have started a thread there for you. register there and let's see how nimbuish you feel there.

by Rekz Wed Jun 01, 2011 1:14 pm

Alright checked out chaikaapi...looks good...features are cool...smileys are working...all is well...
so when is the house warming? what's the dress code? Smile

by Guest Thu Jun 09, 2011 10:38 am

i just checked chaikapi. it has been hit by a spammer, like a REAL spammer. Shocked

by charvaka Thu Jun 09, 2011 10:44 am

Huzefa Kapasi wrote:i just checked chaikapi. it has been hit by a spammer, like a REAL spammer.

Haha... I had disabled the spam blocking so it would be easier for people to test. In practice, we would need a captcha for signing up accounts, if we were to move there.

There isn't enough interest in that platform. I will keep it dormant, as a backup option just in case we get severely attacked here. (The thing I am worried about is attacks that require admin intervention, in case I don't have the required amount of time to intervene effectively. On the other forum, community moderation would take care of such attacks.)

by Guest Thu Jun 09, 2011 12:08 pm

yes, it is best to keep it dormant for now. btw, did anyone see google's doodle today? maybe i'll start a thread.

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