Board Upgrade POLL

[robject]

Semi-official poll to get the sense of the board's denizens.

Sitrep: Migration has failed twice in as many years [sic], and vBulletin 3 is End Of Life.

Question: Course of action? (Multiple Choice - choose as many as you like)

***

My current preference is to archive all the goodies on this board, install a new one fresh, and send subscription invites to everyone.

I'm not partial to a particular BBS, though it seems that VBulletin and ZenForo are the most popular and, I suppose, have the best support + features.

I don't prefer bulk auto-subscription. People who still want to be a part of the board won't have a problem registering, and those that don't, don't have to ask to be removed.

 

[Spinward Flow]

So long as the contents of this forum are not lost and remain accessible (and can be linked to somehow) ... wiping the slate clean and relaunching the forum from scratch is perfectly acceptable.

If archiving the forum results in posts becoming inaccessible, that is a Hard NO.

There is simply too much (Rich world) history contained in these forums in their present form for the past work of so many contributors to be lost in a forum update.

 

[robject]

Agreed. I figure we can lock all of the forums. Everyone who is subscribed, is still subscribed. No new content. Search + history remain.

Then the software nerds among us can talk about ETL and such for as long as they like.

 

[bookwyrm]

can't say that I'm very Techno Savvy, but even I can see that Traveller CotI, like Real Life, has to deal with Tech Level increases.

for the last 2 choices, I guess it depends on which is best for CotI & all of us Citizens. one way is Automatic Citizenship, and the other I choose to stay a Citizen, so I went with both.

I still find interesting info in CotI, and like the give & take with everyone in this OTU/MTU that we all share.

for the rest, I guess it all depends on which format best fits the needs of the CotI Community with the least disruption with what is already here. it looks like that is where the biggest concerns are.

thanks for the Poll, it actually made me nervous a little bit, thinking of the changes that are coming over the horizon.

 

[robject]

Yes - and note that the current material really MUST remain accessible. It's impossible to list all of the goodies stored here. But a partial list shows its value:

* "Ask Joe Fugate" and "Ask Dave Nilsen" threads.
* Sunbane/AoTI charted space data reconciliation and sanitization record.
* Substantial OTU discussions re economics, population, piracy, traffic, etc (Hans et al).
* Substantial OTU discussions about the Darrians, the Aslan, the Vargr, Hivers, K'Kree....
* Posted starship designs.
* Variant systems for just about everything (chargen, starship design, combat, world design...)

"And everything else".

It's like a gigantic issue of JTAS with no table of contents.

 

[agorski]

I'm not partial to a particular BBS, though it seems that VBulletin and ZenForo are the most popular and, I suppose, have the best support + features.

On the Xojo programming forum I frequent they use Discourse. I have learned to like it a lot, but the question is what features do we really need on a new forum here.

I'd prefer that we use something with a huge user base that won't get abandoned, and that has the (yet to be determined) features we want (Do we need file storage? an art gallery?)

 

[robject]

I'd prefer that we use something with a huge user base that won't get abandoned, and that has the (yet to be determined) features we want (Do we need file storage? an art gallery?)

"Wanted Extras" is a good idea for a new poll. First we need to list what this one has -- paying attention to the extras, that Hunter et al added, that we wanted, which vBBS3 didn't have.

So the first question is, what added features does THIS forum HAVE?

 

[Swiftbrook]

I have been playing Traveller since it came out - I'm of the (very) old guard. I generally visit the boards many times a week and post occasionally. I think you should do what is best that provides a Traveller site/forum/board and is easiest for you to administer/maintain.

My main concern is that I joined the board so long ago that I used my Hotmail email address and I believe new accounts from Hotmail (and Gmail) are currently auto rejected. I want to continue to use my gaming hotmail email for this site. If you use new board software/site, this current site should remain up for a while with at least a 'Request Membership' thread open so that vetted old timers like me can get our login IDs and email working even if the 'rules' don't allow them. Also, I would prefer that no one could swipe my user name if it takes me a while to check in because real life gets in the way.

-Swiftbrook

As Always . . . .

 

[Spinward Flow]

Send a new subscription request to all users. DO NOT bulk-re-register!
Do a bulk re-register of all users. DO NOT send a new subscription request!

Point of clarification on this question.

Moot members ... bulk auto re-register, so long as their subscription is paid up and current.

Everyone else ... new subscription request. DO NOT bulk auto re-register users who are not moot members.

Sound fair?

 

[Enoki]

One thing that would most likely be highly useful here--feasible maybe?--is that all of what's on the board in content is gone through and condensed into some sort of reference site rather than just a bulk archive of posts.
That would make the contents more useful and eliminate much of the banter and empty posts condensing the remainder into something truly accessible and useful.

 

[Spinward Flow]

One thing that would most likely be highly useful here--feasible maybe?--is that all of what's on the board in content is gone through and condensed into some sort of reference site rather than just a bulk archive of posts.
That would make the contents more useful and eliminate much of the banter and empty posts condensing the remainder into something truly accessible and useful.

That would definitely be a NON-TRIVIAL undertaking on the order of thousands (plural!) of man-hours to accomplish.

I see where you're going with that idea, but getting from Here to There won't be happening "for free" (so to speak). Even on a volunteer basis, the thought of needing to comb through that much backlog of written material to "distill" it down into only the useful info sounds like a LOT of work that could take months (if not years!) to complete.

Nice thought ... but the practicality of implementation has ... issues ...

 

[whartung]

It's XenForo, for the record, but that's ok.

I toss my hat in to the ring of porting the board to something new. Many VB boards have ported to XenForo, with some success.

Another board I'm on recently ported to VB5 and are now looking to move off, their experience wasn't good. This was I'd say 3ish months ago that they did this.

Discourse is free, and a decent system. I've used several Discourse boards with success.

But it's certainly Different than VB. One nice thing about Discourse is that it works fine even if you have Javascript turned off. It's pretty much completely usable (though I have not tried adding attachments like that). It works fine and is usable in Lynx (a terminal based web browser).

We should NOT have to keep an "old version" around. We should be able to port it over.

I'm in the beta forum for another forum that's preparing to migrate VB to XenForo. I think that with little custom coding, we should be able to retain all of the links that we may have in our threads (and external to the site) in our current system. The links structure of both is very similar and even the message ids are retained in the port. Ideally someone has already done that for XenForo, which makes porting more viable.

I can't say if this is possible with Discourse.

It's one thing to lose the content, it's also a thing to lose the links to the content. Best if we can have both. To me, this is a critical consideration when discussing a migration.

I am very curious what custom features we have here that should be considered in a migration.

 

[Swiftbrook]

I'd prefer that we use something with a huge user base that won't get abandoned, and that has the (yet to be determined) features we want (Do we need file storage? an art gallery?)

Want file storage: I think so.

Want art gallery: Absolutely. I much prefer looking here then searching the web.

 

[robject]

One thing that would most likely be highly useful here--feasible maybe?--is that all of what's on the board in content is gone through and condensed into some sort of reference site rather than just a bulk archive of posts.
That would make the contents more useful and eliminate much of the banter and empty posts condensing the remainder into something truly accessible and useful.

Yes. One thing at a time though.

Data extraction can be mulled over at our leisure.

 

[aramis]

Semi-official poll to get the sense of the board's denizens.

Sitrep: Migration has failed twice in as many years [sic], and vBulletin 3 is End Of Life.

Inaccurate. 6 times in 4 years, 3 of them in the last 2 years. (you just weren't privy to 4 of those attempts.)

 

[tjoneslo]

There are a couple of things about this discussion:

There already is a very active Traveller Discord server (DM me if you want an invite). I really don't like the idea of trying to move everyone here to Discord. Either people will move on their own or will refuse (because of the limits / options of Discord).

The technical differences between XenForo and VB5 for the end user are pretty minimal. They have all of the same features and customization features. The reason for using XenForo would be the administrative side, which is apparently much easier to manage.

So yes, I know of two attempts to do an upgrade, but not the reasons why they failed.

 

[robject]

Thanks Wil, and thank you Thomas.

So yes, I know of two attempts to do an upgrade, but not the reasons why they failed.

I only know generally. I know Hunter improved the board. This might have made it incompatible.

 

[Timerover51]

As I lack sufficient knowledge of the various options to make any sort of informed decision, I have chosen not to vote. My Moot subscription is paid up through November 2, 2021. If the forum ceases to exist prior to that, I would expect a pro-rated refund.

Having dealt with other major updates during my life, I am not exactly sanguine about a seamless change-over.

 

[whartung]

There already is a very active Traveller Discord server (DM me if you want an invite). I really don't like the idea of trying to move everyone here to Discord. Either people will move on their own or will refuse (because of the limits / options of Discord).

Just to clarify, Discourse and Discord are completely different systems, nobody is talking about Discord. Discord is not a forum system.

 

[Nathan Brazil]

I vote upgrade the board balancing easy support with what is affordable within your current budget. I like higher System(Site) Level Availability over features. Yea, call me an old mainframe grognard.

If the old threads can be rescued/archived, great please try. If not, I will miss the insights of Don, Hanse and others. If a either or must happen, I think the most important thing here is supporting NEW discussions of Traveller over reminiscences.

One question: What is the difference between

• Send a new subscription request to all users. DO NOT bulk-re-register!
• Do a bulk re-register of all users. DO NOT send a new subscription request!

?