CZ Talk:Proposal for cost-reducing hosting plan

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Comments on proposal item #1

Memory question

Can we see if there is an option for more memory? Having more RAM might allow more people to work simultaneously without noticeable slowdowns..Pat Palmer 20:27, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

I believe we discussed the issue and decided to see first how response times fared before upping RAM and $-costs. Anthony.Sebastian 20:26, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

Comments on proposal item #2

Could we just not restore forums, for now?

Personally, I wouldn't mind a restart to the forums, for now at least, rather than putting energy into trying to restore them. The amount of information now in the forums is too large easily to deal with right now.Pat Palmer 20:32, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

Removing the forums and replacing them with on-wiki discussion has the disadvantage that the forums are the only place where non-Citizens can provide comments about anything that we're doing, so this change would make it impossible to hear their concerns. I think that, if we want to remove the forums, we need to provide some other venue that serves the purpose that I mentioned. I don't know how easy this is to do in MediaWiki, but perhaps have a specific page or namespace that non-logged-in users can edit? Cheers, James Yolkowski 00:32, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

I recall asking about this before and being told that it isn't possible. Maybe we could set up a Google Group that anyone could contribute to without being a member of the project? John Stephenson 13:23, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

That would work, I think. Or what's mentioned below would be good as well. As long as this consideration isn't forgotten about. Cheers, James Yolkowski 02:00, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

Sounds okay to me. But I'd rather try to keep our forum database on the Simple Machines Forum software, even if we have to selectively reduce the database size by removing ancient/unneeded history—possibly a few long-active-termers could store the removed data locally. Does anyone know whether archived forum data is compressed and if so by what factor, and if not could it be so compressed? Would someone volunteer to find out including how, and how recover? Might require contacting the SMF software folks.

As forum administrator I can download an archive of all posts and other data. As of today, it is 54.4MB uncompressed and 14MB compressed into a .gz file. The uncompressed version can be uploaded to a new SMF installation. However, there is a privacy risk: I found that by doing this you can see the content of private messages sent using the forum software. So you would really have to trust whoever kept the data. John Stephenson 13:18, 11 August 2013 (UTC)

Might there be numerous clouds out there with inexpensive (<~$10/mo) application hosting? Who would like to explore that? Some might already provide SMF software. Anthony.Sebastian 20:01, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

I never considered the forums to be part of CZ's core focus. To me it was always a sideshow--different game, same players. And it was a distraction to my time. It'd be okay with me to just pull the plug. Those that behaved badly would be glad to see it gone too. OTOH, divine justice (karma?) might dictate keeping the forums around forever just to remind people how people behave (as if we don't have enough examples). I'm not that beholden to my text to want to archive it. OTOH, I could see some future researcher writing a dissertation on the CZ experiment.... :0!
You could go old-school: How much paper/ink would it consume to print out the forums? Then you could donate it all as a paper copy to an archive: experiment preserved--we're not paying for it (in either cash or disk-space)--no one of us has to manage it in perpetuity--and someone gets a nice tax write-off (check with your accountant first). RDJ 22:21, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

Comments on proposal item #10

etc.

EC wiki

Excuse my intrusion into a discussion I don't understand a word of, but nobody seems to have mentioned this. The EC doesn't exist any more, so is its wiki needed? The new council could be asked to make a quick decision. If they don't want to continue with it, it could be put into cold storage after the actual decisions have been copied somewhere. Peter Jackson 13:24, 11 August 2013 (UTC)

Hi, Peter, and thanks for the suggestion. We are actively looking at using some Google Groups as an alternative. John Stephenson is currently testing use of a Google group to replace the part of the forum open to outsiders (where they can leave comments on articles without joining the project). The main sticking point is that Google Groups emails participants (if they want it to) whenever a post is made, and this email shows the email address of the poster. If we reply there to public folks, our emails will be exposed. So there are some privacy concerns. But bottom line, we're assuming we may shut down the current forums, and we're exploring Google Groups (a few different ones, probably) to replace parts of the forums. If you'd like to be involved with this, please contact John Stephenson. I imagine more testers would be good!Pat Palmer 22:14, 15 August 2013 (UTC)