Forums need an upgrade...

[Gwyneth Llewelyn]

Hi all,

As some of you might have noticed, we get hundreds of spamming users registering every day. This is mostly because the forum software is quite old and needs to be updated. Unfortunately, it cannot be automatically updated, because it slightly predates the moment that an auto-update tool was developed for this version!

So what this means is that to keep it up to date I need to do a reinstall and reimport of the database, which is something that will mean a few hours of downtime if all does not go well

Since the CDS forums are so intensely used, and even the slight "hiccup" usually earns me a flood of IMs and emails, I would like to ask you when the best time for the upgrade would be. I'm thinking of doing it early on GMT morning, during the week — that way, only the Europeans would be affected, and only until their lunch time.

What do you think?

Oh, and of course I'll keep many backups in case something goes seriously wrong

[Cindy Ecksol]

Sounds good to me. Just make sure to spam us in world and every other way you can think of when you're ready to make the move so that we won't jump all over you

Cindy

[Sonja Strom]

Thank you for your work on this Gwyneth!

If there is any way we could get those old font codes to work again that would be great. Having them not working makes the older forum posts a lot harder to read.

It seems to me like any time would be okay for the possible downtime you talked about, so long as there is warning in advance - except for the last two hours before a Representative Assembly meeting, which always is when nearly all of the forum posts relevant to the RA are made...

[Gwyneth Llewelyn]

You're right, Sonja, unfortunately, that was the old import tool that had a problem, and sadly it's not recoverable. When I really, really have nothing to do, sometimes I change the old posts... manually (yes, I know, it's no solution).

In that case, if I might suggest a convenient date, I'll attempt the upgrade Thursday morning, around 3 AM SLT or so!

[Sonja Strom]

Understand. I have also gone through all of my posts and changed them manually.

That time sounds perfect.

[Naftali Torok]

time is ok for me,( I will survive one morning with breakfast without reading the forum,....hehehe)

[Rose Springvale]

Thanks Gwyn, for keeping the forums alive. (grumbles)

is there any way we can help?

[Gwyneth Llewelyn]

Rose, just don't panic, things will eventually come back

The forums are now open again. They will just need some minor tweaks but they should be usable now Let's hope the spam decreases...

[Rose Springvale]

Yay Gwyn!

Thanks for your work on this. Even though you are too good at it and the forums are back.(smile)

[Gwyneth Llewelyn]

... it's not finished yet. A few things broke with the upgrade, like the clever RSS feed, which was actually an obsolete module from the pre-alpha release I've installed a new one, but it still requires some minor tweaking here and there to get everything working properly.

And I've still got 3,500 spambots to delete... manually. *sigh*

[Gwyneth Llewelyn]

Ok, 3,500 spammers were deleted. I hope I haven't deleted any real users by mistake, it's not always easy to figure them out! If it's your case, please accept my apologies, and re-register again — this time, if possible, using your avatar name (separating first and last names with a space), so they can be more easily checked (I might add an automatic validation system for "real" avatar names if we still continue to get the insane amount of spammers registering for our forums! — but this will not happen "soon")

My apologies too for all of you who relied on the RSS feed. The simple module that did the RSS feeds was developed for a pre-alpha version of this forum software — it's not only completely obsolete, but had some security problems too, and had been long since discontinued. Instead, I've added a new module — but this will mean that most of your RSS feed readers will now be utterly confused because of the changes. Again, I'm sorry about that

Finally, for the forum admins/moderators: I'm aware that some of the panels have broken down. They're not critical for now (related to the appearance), but I hope to be able to track down what has broken them and get them operational for now. At least, the important features are all operational

[mkhandr]

Thanks for the work on cleaning up the forums! I'm just getting used to using them--I tried to post something in the "closed" representative assembly one, and I can;'t seem to find the post button--can the new RAs be added to that forum? Thanks!

[Gwyneth Llewelyn]

You're right! Sorry about that... you should now be able to post...

[Sonja Strom]

Welcome to the CDS Forum, Micael.

Thank you again Gwyneth for having put in all of this work. I know it was not easy to do, and it is great you have upgraded the forums in a way that was so easy for everybody else.

For me the forum is an interesting and important part of our community. There are times when I find it difficult to actually "be" in the CDS but I can follow discussions in the forum and take part in them. I can find out about events and developments, and exchange ideas with everybody in the community who wants to do that. The forum is also a place where discussions in the community can have a history - it allows us to read through former posts to see what has been discussed and done in the past (learning from history), and creates a record of what is happening now, allowing people in the future to better understand what decisions we made, and how and why we made them.

Your work is providing us with a good service.

[Rose Springvale]

What's up with the forum approval process? I've been referring new people here and to the portal regularly and today i learned that access is being limited. Registration either denied or not approved.

Folks, if you don't know it, it takes a LOT of time to teach people about CDS and to bring in new citizens.I don't mind spending the time, but it drives me crazy to WASTE time. When we have a person's interest, we only discourage them when they are turned away from our forums, especially when we've directed them here for answers!

There are so many sites that let people in with the click of a button that the only lesson we are teaching about democracy is that it's clunky, slow and ineffective. That's not what i want the take home message to be!