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12
End of the forums?
2022-01-10, 11:30 PM #41
The ongoing (~6 months and counting) revisionism on the original Discord gave me an idea for 2022: Since at least one person has backed up the entire forums (and at least one has backed up the thread itself), it would be funny if the Trump Thread was deleted after which stats for who actually were the most active members on the forums in 2017-2021 could actually be generated.

Then again, the last part seems unlikely to be feasible due to the archaic VB version in place...
Star Wars: TODOA | DXN - Deus Ex: Nihilum
2022-01-11, 7:15 AM #42
I think what would be funnier is if all FGR posts were deleted and Nikumubeki radically reinvented himself as the forum's top politic's debater.
2022-01-11, 7:16 AM #43
What's the "revisionism on the original Discord"?
2022-01-11, 9:12 AM #44
is it time to start a ****posting war to see who will be most active 2022-?
2022-01-12, 8:47 AM #45
Obviously I've been the most active :D
2022-01-13, 11:53 AM #46
Originally posted by Nikumubeki:
The ongoing (~6 months and counting) revisionism on the original Discord gave me an idea for 2022: Since at least one person has backed up the entire forums (and at least one has backed up the thread itself), it would be funny if the Trump Thread was deleted after which stats for who actually were the most active members on the forums in 2017-2021 could actually be generated.


That said, it seems like generating those stats could be feasible without any thread deletion, because every thread has bespoke statistics showing who posted in it when you press the number on the "Replies: [number]" line in the appropriate column on the thread list. i.e. to get something like this:

[Unable to find specified attachment]

But if it's not possible automatically (in which case one could just get the overall 2017-2021 stats and manually subtract the Trump Thread postcounts)... then it's actually possible manually, but would take a f'n long time.

(If I still had my pre-2018 eyesight, I'd have already done it, but alas)
Star Wars: TODOA | DXN - Deus Ex: Nihilum
2022-01-13, 7:32 PM #47
I worry that all of FGR’s posts about the Trump thread are negatively impacting these forums. I propose we start a new section of the forum called “Make the Trump Thread Great Again”, where FGR can express his concerns about the Trump Thread without diluting the quality of discussion elsewhere on the forums.
former entrepreneur
2022-01-15, 12:35 AM #48
Who is FGR?
"I would rather claim to be an uneducated man than be mal-educated and claim to be otherwise." - Wookie 03:16

2022-01-15, 7:54 PM #49
Originally posted by Wookie06:
Who is FGR?


Franklin G. Roosevelt, Franklin Delano Roosevelt's little-known grandson.

(Sorry, couldn't resist.)
2022-01-16, 3:12 AM #50
Originally posted by Wookie06:
Who is FGR?


All of us, in a way.
former entrepreneur
2022-01-20, 12:56 AM #51
I am FGR.
"I would rather claim to be an uneducated man than be mal-educated and claim to be otherwise." - Wookie 03:16

2022-01-20, 12:58 AM #52
Originally posted by saberopus:
I think what would be funnier is if all FGR posts were deleted and Nikumubeki radically reinvented himself as the forum's top politic's debater.


Well, posts do have a way of disappearing. Poof! There is hope.
"I would rather claim to be an uneducated man than be mal-educated and claim to be otherwise." - Wookie 03:16

2022-01-20, 6:27 AM #53
All these disappearing posts, but TODOA TC SP still remains

Boh!
Star Wars: TODOA | DXN - Deus Ex: Nihilum
2022-01-20, 8:02 AM #54
Levels are Forever.
2022-01-21, 9:20 AM #55
Originally posted by saberopus:
Levels are Forever.


The Massassi spoof of the James Bond film Diamonds are Forever :P
2022-01-27, 7:58 AM #56
Great to hear... next quest, can we rebuild JKhub?
2022-01-27, 10:20 AM #57
I never spent a lot of time on JK Hub; mostly just followed links there to specific projects or downloads. Can you describe what it was and what the important operations were for users? My understanding is something like:

User-specific things:

* allow user to register
* allow user to create projects (as many as desired)
* allow user to post text updates to projects
* allow user to post image updates to projects
* allow user to post file updates to projects
* allow user to manage all of the above (add/edit/delete projects, text posts, images, files)

Main site things:

* main page: see a list of chronologically sorted updates from all projects (paged)
* allow searching
* project pages: list of updates by date, links to downloads

I'm just trying to get a handle on how much work there is to do if I were to integrate something like this into Massassi. Now that we're on a new platform, stuff like all of the above is relatively simple. But I might not really be capturing what JK Hub was all about.
2022-01-27, 10:21 AM #58
Massassi used to have a thing called "Editor's Corner" where you could post screenshots and text posts I think. But it didn't get used all that much.
2022-01-28, 5:37 AM #59
I was rather fond of the Editors Corner (EC), and used it a bit, and you're correct that JKHUB was essentially that on steroids. The ability to create a profile, have it display all of your projects, and to be able to manage various aspects of one's profile and projects, including separate forums and such, was useful. I would guess that its advantage over the EC was that this appears to have been the plan from the beginning, so it felt more integrated, where the EC felt like an afterthought, and didn't work seamlessly with the rest of the site.
? :)
2022-01-28, 12:41 PM #60
Ah I missed the forums part of it. So every project got it's own forum? Which is basically just a list of messages. Were there moderation tools for the project owner?
2022-01-30, 8:20 PM #61
The file sorting was very useful, as was the open community. The sheer list of files that deserve preservation and access (and not just a list of files with no descriptions) was what I miss about JKHub which Massassi could pick up, with help from the community. If people once again had a platform for those projects, that would be a boon to the whole community. Imagine if you're a JK series fan today and maybe you want to get feedback on your mods and you feel like your only choice is steam? (I know it's not the only place, but hope you get what I mean)...

Quick tip to those preserving JK files... don't host the ISO images of JK on the same server, as this is a risk of the whole thing being taken down (since the games are still being sold at places like GOG and Steam hence are not even "abandonware" despite their age).
2022-02-16, 7:53 PM #62
Everything except the forums has been moved from the old server. So whoever it was that wanted to move forward with the forums, please contact me.
2022-03-13, 9:09 PM #63
Great to here. Did anyone contact you yet?
2022-03-13, 10:14 PM #64
Only Al Ciao. He offered to pay for the new vbulletin license. Nobody else. I've sorta moved on to another project (see our discord if you're curious).
2022-03-14, 7:54 PM #65
Originally posted by Brian:
As everyone can see, the forums aren't really used anymore. In addition, there are technical reasons I'm considering just shutting them down.

They rely on an old PHP version that has been out of date for years, and is likely full of security bugs. There isn't a nice upgrade path to any decent forum system that I can find. There are new versions of vbulletin but I'm not keen on spending hours and hours setting them up, doing the imports, tweaking all the colors, etc., just for some software that nobody uses.

Really the only hesitancy I have is that some of the threads are really valuable to me just from a nostalgia standpoint, and of course the editing forums have a ton of useful info for the 1 or 2 people that still edit JK.

I've looked and I can't find an easy way to output "static" pages that we can just save and serve. I could probably write something to export all the forums/threads but that's another software project that I'm not keen on undertaking.

I'm kinda curious if anyone still here has any programming chops (in any language that can talk to mysql) and would be interested in taking on an "export to static HTML" project. I could strip the database of anything personal (basically just leave join date, username, post count for all users), dump that user info + forums, threads, posts to an .sql file you could import, and then you could write whatever software it takes to export to plain HTML.

Alternatively, vbulletin has a "cloud" plan that says it can import vbulletin 4 and it costs $15 or $30 per month. We could try that but I'm getting to the limit of what I'm willing to spend on this site so it'd be nice to have a bit of help if possible. (It's actually more a time issue than a money issue -- if any long-time member wants to manage the vbulletin cloud -- like the whole thing: tweak the colors/styles, moderation, spam filters, whatever else -- reach out, I may consider just paying the monthly fee and letting you deal with it.)

If the forums are important to you, maybe use an archive bot or something to pull a copy because I don't know how long they will be up. I'm looking to shut down this old massassi server towards the end of January 2022.


Sup Brian. How much are the server costs to just keep everything they way they are. This website should be a time capsule but still functional, there is no need to upgrade anything. Unless there are other reasons you didn't mention. Who cares about the lack of security with older versions of PHP. What's the worst that could happen?

Nobody is going to spend time converting all the posts to static pages. (Though if massassi stayed on UBB or used zcom forums this was a built in feature, LOL)

I was originally the person in talks with coolmatty about taking over massassi about what 6 or 7 years ago. Right before you swooped in and decided you wanted to do it again. Yet here you are. Coolmatty ghosted me after that and I became a little salty about that.
"Nulla tenaci invia est via"
2022-03-14, 9:08 PM #66
The server that now only houses the forums costs $40/month, and I pay for backups at $10/month. It's running an old Debian version that's been out of support for a few years. It's running old, vulnerable php which is also out of support. And it's running old vbulletin that's vulnerable and out of support. It would be trivially easy to compromise the server.

An attacker could get everyone's email addresses and passwords. It's not a position I want to be in.

Sorry about that deal with CM, I didn't mean to step on anyone's toes :( I could always use help, though.
2022-03-16, 12:23 AM #67
Originally posted by Brian:
The server that now only houses the forums costs $40/month, and I pay for backups at $10/month. It's running an old Debian version that's been out of support for a few years. It's running old, vulnerable php which is also out of support. And it's running old vbulletin that's vulnerable and out of support. It would be trivially easy to compromise the server.

An attacker could get everyone's email addresses and passwords. It's not a position I want to be in.

Sorry about that deal with CM, I didn't mean to step on anyone's toes :( I could always use help, though.


You didn't step on any ones toes, there was just a bit of miscommunication is all.

But surely, we could chop that server cost down a lot. If traffic is low, I wouldn't pay more than like $10 a month.

Do we need that many backups? Probably not, let's scale it down.

edit: I'd be happy to contribute to keep things alive even if I had to run an old server out in my garage.
"Nulla tenaci invia est via"
2022-03-16, 12:34 AM #68
I'd rather setup a simple centos 7 server on linode. Old school lamp. I haven't touched PHP in a long time but don't forget I created z@nardi's house of homosapients and zcom forums. My career was built on this. I will never forget.
"Nulla tenaci invia est via"
2022-03-16, 9:39 AM #69
We're on the more expensive linode plan because the forums use a ton of storage. It's mostly the attachments. It won't fit on the next plan down.
2022-03-16, 9:43 AM #70
Actually I checked again, yeah we could get away with the $10/month plan (+$10/month for backups -- it's a flat rate). It doesn't solve the problem of being vulnerable, though. Al Ciao offered to pay the license fee to get the new version of vbulletin. You could just migrate the current stuff to the new version.
2022-03-16, 10:11 PM #71
Well what's the best way to contact you, Brian?
"Nulla tenaci invia est via"
2022-03-17, 12:22 PM #72
Just chiming in to say that the offer is still open, and will remain so.
2022-03-17, 3:24 PM #73
Originally posted by zanardi:
Well what's the best way to contact you, Brian?


Email is fine, brian at massassi but not dot net, it's dot com.

I'm also active on discord if you need a realtime conversation.
2022-03-17, 7:34 PM #74
I tried to join the discord via my mobile device and the link from the sticky post but it said the invite was no good, did I miss something
"Nulla tenaci invia est via"
2022-03-18, 7:37 PM #75
That sucks, I don't think you missed anything. We keep having people join and I don't see any issue listed in discord for the invite. I'll try to PM you a new invite.
2022-03-22, 12:56 PM #76
That worked!
"Nulla tenaci invia est via"
2022-04-18, 1:29 PM #77
I'm willing to chip in as well, however much is needed. Just let me know.
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