Oolite.org website, wiki, BB maintenance options analysis

[SandJ]

I propose to sleep over the discussed topic for a while

By order of ...

Go on, have a larf instead

[maik]

Heavy handed? Care to elaborate? I'm implementing to show what I'm talking about. Do I need somebody's blessing to implement something on my server?

Implementing a proposed solution then pushing it as an acceptable solution without any feedback from others on the forum (not including PMs) is what I would describe as heavy handed. Several posts (which I am not going to troll across the bb to find at this stage) implied that you felt that your solution was acceptable and the act of forging ahead with the download and implementation of content from the Wiki AFTER proving the point that it could be easily copied over is one example off the top of my head.

Reactions to that were actually positive. Until now.

Your server access is determined on people (apologies for the heavy handed nature of this phrase) jumping through hoops to get authorisation from you. You want people to send you copies of their passports or other photo ID before granting them access. None of their credentials related to technical know how have, to my knowledge, been vetted. In addition, these people who have sent their information to you have done so without Oolite Management being involved in the decision making process, which is another issue related to your perceived "heavy handedness". If you have involved Giles and/or Ahruman in this process then I apologise, but no evidence of this has been seen to my knowledge.

Read my post again. I proposed that Giles/Ahruman check identity. Also, checking identity does not necessarily mean copies of IDs. cim proposed a GPG-signed mail together with links to his online identity which was good enough for me. From Ahruman/Giles I can see the whois records of their servers which link their forum personae to their RL identities. None if this is perfect, but better than nothing. Technical know-how I take on good faith if someone tells me he has it. Oolite Management involvement in my asking for identification when asking for access to my server? Seriously? And who is Oolite Management precisely?

I applaud your efforts in making server space available in whatever way YOU feel is fit. I, however have a DIFFERENT OPINION. I did, however, offer an idea for improvement, which is that the security of it should not be dependent on you receiving copies of driving licenses, passports or whatever and that it should be based on forum standing and merit as well as the objective opinions of the Oolite Management. If you want to call that "doing it my way" then fine, do so. I feel you are battering me from both ends here, as in one breath you ask me to offer suggestions or alternatives and when I do you say that I am criticising or that I am "locked into my way of doing things".

You know where it comes from?: Your opinion didn't change a bit on how this should be done, namely give all user credentials away without any restriction. I tried to include your goals by not making it dependent on me but allow Aegidian/Ahruman to administrate user credentials. You just come back with your radical demand again.

The aim of securing access to Oolite, oxps, and the bulletin board is a noble one. [...] let's open the search for solutions to the whole community and see how many ideas we can genereate.

See his first sentence. Regarding opening the search: it is open. We just don't get many proposals. Which solution are you talking about at the moment that I am locked into? BB backup? The one cim and I manage to discuss in a civilized, matter-of-fact way in this thread? "Unwilling to bend" doesn't quite nail it and is just another insult.

I find it interesting that you edited out the part of Aegidian's quote that highlights the contradiction you have introduced.

...However, since the threats to these mostly arise out of the fact that the main sites are maintained by fallible individuals, putting all these sites under one roof would crystallise those threats into a single point of possible failure.

However I'm not sure what to suggest in terms of decentralisation that could help with ensuring access...

I find it interesting that you avoid the point I was making. Also, there is no contradiction. He talks about putting everything under one roof which is not what we are discussing.

Were Ahruman and/or Giles involved in selecting those who are "able to be an administrator"? If so, then your whole argument on that point is moot, and would have been rendered moot long ago if that had been made public. Apologies if I missed a message. To be honest, I haven't had a strong opinion on WHO should be made an administrator or even how many there should be. That's Oolite Management's decision to make, not yours or mine. If it makes any difference to your interpretation of what I am saying, then change the phrase "the community needs to be able to resolve" to "the selected members of the community..."

No, they were not. Nor was there any reason. Talking about the Wiki: There was discomfort with Winston being gone and the Wiki left unmaintained. I created a backup server, some people supported me keeping it in sync with the Elite Wiki. Since when does anyone of us need to ask permission from "Oolite Management" to create a backup or choose who to give admin access to the backup? I stated quite clearly that I am happy to continue keeping it in sync as long as is necessary. Again, no permission needed.

I disagree strongly with your opinion that there will always be someone around with the required knowledge. The more disparate technologies that are used, then the less likely it is that someone on the forum will have all the required knowledge.

Yes. Well. As I said, if no one is around then implement something else. No big deal. You point out another backup option yourself below.

You ask what my requirements are for the data loss and restore time. Do you want to hear/read my opinion

Yes, this is why I asked for it. It would also be nice to hear other peoples opinions.

To be honest, as I (and others) have said, I don't feel that the BB requirements are relevant as part of this discussion other than as a knee-jerk reaction to the relatively inconsequential downtime that was experienced over the weekend.

Aegidian included the BB in his now much quoted post. Feel free to ignore it.

If Giles wants to task you with implementing a backup strategy then that's between you and him. Since he has asked you to poll the forum

He did not ask me to poll the forum. As I said, I PMed him with a suggestion after his post. In addition I wanted to open the discussion, hence my post in this thread.

then you need to be willing to take other opinions on board, and from our conversation so far I see no evidence of you doing that, or maybe that's just your reaction to me personally.

Execept cim nobody else made a suggestion. As you can read, we are discussing it. As you also haven't made a suggestion before, there is no reaction to you personally.

I have no experience of backing up phpBB installations. The phpBB admin panel has a backup option there that allows the database to be backed up and restored quickly and easily. Maybe that would be a good option?

This is a good option if it is acceptable to lose posts that have been made since the last backup. This is why the question about data loss requirements is important.

I find it interesting that after you asked for some reason why I think I know what the community needs you had no comment to make on the response to that. Again, this reinforces my opinion that no matter what I say, you will disagree with me as a matter of principle, which saddens me. Contrary to maik's opinion, I have no emotional baggage related to this conversation. It has neither made me angrier or more frustrated than my usual background levels of irritation at the world in general. I have no responsibility to the community and no power to change anything. I just made a suggestion and wanted to share my experience if it would be useful.

Sorry I did not comment on your exhaustive lists of professional experiences and certifications. It is certainly relevant.

Just to recap. In my opinion the website needs a simple CMS (textpattern, gpEasy or whatever other options someone likes) in order to be easier to update. The Wiki should stay where it is, unless there is a continued drive to make cim's (I think) idea of using the wiki as oolite.org the accepted one. I have no opinion on the BB backup strategy as this was not something raised in the initial "updated media" discussion. I feel that the disparate file hosting needs to be consolidated somewhere. And I feel that access to the back end servers needs to be opened up to whoever Oolite Management feel would be appropriate. That's it. If others have other opinions then I have absolutely NO objection to them but WILL respond if I think something is a bad idea. Likewise I have no issue dealing with someone thinking that my ideas are bad ones but, as noted, will defend them if I feel my personal experience differs from someone else's.

I agree that it would be nice to have a CMS for oolite.org. While I like cim's go at creating an oolite.org homepage within the wiki I rather lean towards the decentralized approach of keeping things separate, but don't have a strong opinion here. Having a template based solution like textpattern makes managing content very easy, but I also don't have a strong opinion on the solution here. For the BB, I think that there should be a backup solution that minimizes data loss in the event of failure. And for the Wiki, in my opinion a daily backup to some other server is sufficient. Main servers and backups should be accessible by more than one person and there should be consensus on who hands out the keys under which circumstances to whom. I don't have much of an opinion on the file hosting as it doesn't bother me the way it is now.

Maybe we can go forward from our two recaps now to get back on track?

[Selezen]

@maik:

I'm gonna bring the "quote war" to an end. Not the discussion, however.

Y'know, I don't think I know which conversation you're reading. In your last post you have contradicted SO many things that we've both said that I'm not sure any more where the conversation stands. One thing that stands out though is your very sarcastic comment about the relevance of "professional qualifications". You asked why I think I know what the community wants. If you don't think that a person's experience in the specific areas in which this discussion are dealing with are even relevant, then that is quite scary. Partly for that reason I personally would be wary of putting you in a position of responsibility in any aspect of a community's online presence. Apologies if that is harsh, and no doubt you feel the same way about me, but again it's just an opinion from a person who has never met you or has any idea of your actual abilities so I'd advise against taking it very personally.

You also ask who I think Oolite Management are. Well, even a cursory read of the topic would reveal that. I feel that we're just dancing round in circles now, and the more we quote and requote each other the muddier the waters are getting.

In writing the posts I've written here, I've constantly referenced previous posts. If, on occasion, I've misrepresented something then I apologise. Seriously, though, I think that you have taken the opposite position on several issues through this conversation even in contradiction to your earlier standpoints.

It's never going to end unless we agree to disagree. It's already become a slanging match, and that's regrettable. Since it has now come to involve sarcasm it's obviously gone too far to be objective now and thus serves no purpose.

I'd like to move that this topic get back on track towards addressing the need that was originally highlighted.

@All:

The reason for this discussion and the two topics before it were to try and present options for making the hosting of the various sites more accessible and to share the ability to administer the back end servers to install plugins, updates and the like. From then, the BB has been added to the mix. If Giles and/or Ahruman (just in case there is any doubt, the defined "Oolite Management") have been discussing things in private messages and I am unaware of it then again I apologise, but I'm not aware of any opinion or movement by either of them towards a suitable and acceptable (to them) end result of this discussion.

You all know my opinions on the subject at hand. My offer to provide hosting for files and any necessary content remains open and if there's anything I can do to help please ask.

[Commander McLane]

Shall I propose to sleep over the discussed topic for a while, I do not see any point this discussion is going to have a solution at the end by the way it is going.

What he said.

I admire everybody's civility up to this point (and I mean everybody's), but honestly, I don't think that this is a meaningful discussion anymore at this point, and I don't see that it's leading anywhere useful at this point.

To re-phrase my last post: by and large, what we currently have is working. No harm is done in leaving it like that for the moment. No harm is done in letting go for a while. Please.

[another_commander]

I have stayed out of this topic so far as well, but I do want to jump in at this point to mention and emphasize that the level of civility of this discussion is testament to the quality of people we have in this community. As moderator of the forums, I want to thank everyone for making my life so easy.

With that out of the way, I wanted to add something else: I say it with full reservation and speak entirely from memory, and I do request to be corrected by any of the guys from the dev team if I am wrong, but I believe Ahruman had said at some point during an internal discussion about wikifying oolite.org, that having a wiki-like interface on our main website would not be so professional. I don't recall the exact wording he used, but I seem to remember that he was not really enthusiastic about it.

I do agree that what we have works in a satisfactory manner, especially since winston gave the option of releasing access to the wiki. As for oolite.org, it could maybe do with a bit of lifting and improvement on the Gallery section, but I feel that since it is the official website for the game, anything that goes in will need to have approval from Ahruman and / or aegidian. The source of the site is available on Berlios and anyone with a proposal for alternative layout is welcome to provide a patch, but I would prefer if the actual authority for applying the changes on the mainline remained with Ahruman and aegidian.

[maik]

One thing that stands out though is your very sarcastic comment about the relevance of "professional qualifications".

No sarcasm meant, it was in all honesty. Your professional experience means I respect your opinion on web tech topics, not that you know what the community wants.

"Oolite Management" is a term that you coined in the course of the discussion. I was (maybe not very clearly) hinting that it is not necessarily unambiguous. Aegidian and Ahruman are the creators / main developers of Oolite as a game. Winston, Aegidian, and Ahruman are the owners of the three servers. Does being developer of a game automatically give you authority over every server that hosts part of the community? Maybe, but this is at least something that you cannot just declare.

Regarding your mistrust of my person and thus casting doubt on my integrity: This is completely unwarranted. For me, you are crossing the line of friendliness here, and not only by a small margin. So far we managed to not get personal. I'd like to keep it that way.

Enough for now, I just went on a business trip until late Friday with limited opportunity to continue this. Maybe a good thing.

[Selezen]

To re-phrase my last post: by and large, what we currently have is working. No harm is done in leaving it like that for the moment. No harm is done in letting go for a while. Please.

That seems to be the consensus of the discussion at this point, to be honest. Seems like the sensible option, all things considered.

[JensAyton]

State of the oonion
Oolite.org used to be hosted on BerliOS. Because of the recent failure, in which BerliOS started ignoring virtual host settings for Oolite specifically (other projects with identical configurations were not affected), and because of BerliOS’s historical unreliability, it is now hosted separately (Binero).

(For the record, since there was some confusion upthread, I own the oolite.org domain; Giles never did. It used to be held by a third party who wasn’t using it for anything. For subdomains and e-mail addresses for official-looking stuff, apply within.)

While it was hosted on BerliOS, all project admins (there are currently six) could edit it, but no-one else ever did. I’m currently fishing for another core developer to have FTP access to the new host.

When the original oolite.org was designed, and when I solicited a redesign some time ago, using a CMS (or any other large tooling) was explicitly rejected. This is partly because I have hated every CMS I’ve ever met with the heat of a thousand suns, but mostly because it would introduce a significant maintenance burden on a site that’s intended to be mostly static. I reject the idea that oolite.org needs easy addition of “content”; being small and focussed on “here’s what it is, here’s where you get it” is a feature, not a bug. The gallery needs updating, but the small amount of HTML editing involved is not the obstacle, it’s the editorial work.

A site with many updates, stuff about OXPs and a gallery of a thousand pictures would be good as a community site. That’s not the same as being a good site for the game itself.

That said, I’m semi-retired. I could get behind the idea of handing over the keys to someone else – the keys meaning editorial control, control of the oolite.org domain and responsibility for hosting, in one package. But it would have to be an Oolite developer or long-term forum member who I feel I know.

[Diziet Sma]

Thank the Good Lord Giles for that!

Thank you, Jens.. that finally gives some clear idea for the scope of this discussion.. perhaps now some genuinely constructive conversation can be had.