42 réponses à ce sujet

[-Semper-]

Sunjammer wrote...

The good news is that Jeff has replied to my PM and said that the toolset wiki is not affected by the recently announcements so, for the time being, we shouldn't have to worry about the wiki vanishing. And should that change Jeff has said he'll let me know so we can work out how to transfer it.

don't stop thinking about plan b here. the legacy forums were closed without warning and a lot of the knowledge was lost that day. yeah, bioware said that they'll look into things to get all the content back but till today not a single thing happend - and won't happen ever. it was just too costly to migrate the legacy forums and with the bsn in place ea didn't want to pay to host another forum with low activity and discussion about old games. therefore they simply fabricated a faux story about a hacking attempt to shut it down, never to be seen again.

1-2 years ago there was an interview with one (or the only one?!) programmer of the bsn with promises about the bright future of this place. updated content, added features to manage projects, blah blah blah. again, nothing ever happened. instead they want to scrap it to only keep a bare forum alive which eventually will reduce the costs.

long story short: keep looking into alternative homes. in the end ea cares about the money, and a modding community is the exact opposite.

[DarthParametric]

Ideally to transfer the wiki you'd want someone from Bioware to dump a copy of the database, which could then just be transferred to a new (private) server. I can't see that as being overly likely though. Trying to rebuild it just from ripped pages seems like it would be a serious PITA.

I agree with Semper, plan on it having a limited lifespan, regardless of what Bioware says. I wouldn't be surprised if all the old stuff is axed by the time DAI launches.

[Sunjammer]

I agree that some sort of direct transfer of the data would be best assuming it is feasible. To that end I'm going to try to start a "if the Toolset Wiki were ever in danger" dialogue with Jesse Ried (assuming he accepts my friend request).

That said, MediaWiki has Export/Import functions which, if memory serves, works at the Category or Page level so we wouldn't have to migrate individual pages by hand. An administrator can go to the Export page and enter a list of categories and/or pages and export them. This generates an XML which contains the data for all of the relevant pages (optionally including their templates and). On a new wiki the administrator can go to the Import page, selects the XML file and import it. This creates all of those pages in the new wiki.

On a different note Ottemis has also started cataloguing links (including some DA:O ones) here which we should probably keep an eye on.

[DarthParametric]

Ah, that's not too bad then. I'm assuming your account doesn't have the permissions to do the export though, or you'd have already done it. Probably still need a contingency that doesn't rely on anyone from Bioware actively doing anything.

[dr.drummie]

can we preserve toolset setup and all original campaign project files (levels, morphs, lightmapper, etc.) on private server? cause this files are still under projects section, does bioware allow this (i believe that these files are legally owned by them)?
for wiki you can export it with programs like httrack.. it lasts but it could be done (i.e. for local offline copy), but for forums and blogs it would be difficult (permissions / language/ etc..)..

[Sunjammer]

DarthParametric wrote...

Ah, that's not too bad then. I'm assuming your account doesn't have the permissions to do the export though, or you'd have already done it. Probably still need a contingency that doesn't rely on anyone from Bioware actively doing anything.

When the wiki was last updated Jeff added me to the wiki admin and bureaucrat roles so I can export the wiki if/when it becomes necessary or, as is more likely to be the case, prudent. Once we export it where do we store it? What do we want to do with it? What do we do about changes and update (especially if we start migrating all blogs into it)? The wiki isn't currently under threat so we can take our time to work out what the best course of action will be.

dr.drummie wrote...

can we preserve toolset setup and all
original campaign project files (levels, morphs, lightmapper, etc.) on
private server? cause this files are still under projects section, does
bioware allow this (i believe that these files are legally owned by
them)?
for wiki you can export it with programs like httrack.. it
lasts but it could be done (i.e. for local offline copy), but for forums
and blogs it would be difficult (permissions / language/ etc..)..

Ideally we want a backup of the Toolset installation package, light-mapping solution (and the old version of python) plus all the single player resource files. Making personal backups is fine but, for example, I'm not entirely sure on how EA would view things if we backed it up to cloud server and shared it with the community. Either way a first step is to catalogue the locations (and file sizes) so we have an idea of the problem. In the meantime I'll contact Jeff.

[dr.drummie]

I guess most of you knows this project and site:

https://code.google....N_IndexBuilders

lot's of interesting links..

Modifié par dr.drummie, 17 novembre 2013 - 04:29 .

[DarthParametric]

Sunjammer wrote...

I can export the wiki if/when it becomes necessary or, as is more likely to be the case, prudent. Once we export it where do we store it? What do we want to do with it? What do we do about changes and update (especially if we start migrating all blogs into it)? The wiki isn't currently under threat so we can take our time to work out what the best course of action will be.

Prudence would suggest dumping a copy and archiving it locally right now as a worst case scenario fallback plan. The wiki could get axed at any point without prior notice, at which point the horse has already bolted. And based on prior experience, that is by far the most likely scenario. Figuring out what to do with it once you actually have something is a much easier problem to deal with than lamenting a lost source of information that can never be retrieved.

[MerAnne]

DarthParametric wrote...

Sunjammer wrote...

I can export the wiki if/when it becomes necessary or, as is more likely to be the case, prudent. Once we export it where do we store it? What do we want to do with it? What do we do about changes and update (especially if we start migrating all blogs into it)? The wiki isn't currently under threat so we can take our time to work out what the best course of action will be.

Prudence would suggest dumping a copy and archiving it locally right now as a worst case scenario fallback plan. The wiki could get axed at any point without prior notice, at which point the horse has already bolted. And based on prior experience, that is by far the most likely scenario. Figuring out what to do with it once you actually have something is a much easier problem to deal with than lamenting a lost source of information that can never be retrieved.

I have to agree. 

You can call it a dry run, a test, whatever, but so far, Jessica and Jesse have only agreed to look into keeping projects active.  I haven't seen anything saying that projects will not become ReadOnly on November 19th.  Just that they would 'look into it'.  Not that Read-Only would be horrible thing as long as nothing was deleted.  They have clearly stated that the toolset wiki would not be impacted.

My concern is that they will change their minds and on the 19th because no one has ever promised that projects will NOT be made Read-Only.  The original message was:  (Polls, Albums, Projects and Blogs) moving to Read-Only as of November 19th 2013, and ultimately phased out of the site.    'phased out' sure sounds like they have plans to delete. And being paranoid, I am also concerned that we would be given as little notice when they actually delete polls, albums, projects, and blogs.  And while they are on a roll with deleting maybe the toolset would be made 'read-only and eventually phased out' because all of the modders have been driven away from BSN so there is no real reason to spend resources (even space) on something that doesn't directly, financially benefit Bioware/EA.

Have a wordy way of agreeing, don't I?   If you get a downloaded copy now, it will give you something to use to test alternative solutions for the toolset wiki.  I don't know how much work it would be, I don't know how to do it, but if it can be done without having a huge negative impact on your real life, I suggest getting a download of the toolset wiki sooner rather than later.

And if the toolset wiki is always hosted by Bioware, you have a backup copy.  I sincerely hope that is the case

[DarthParametric]

Hosting it independently is pretty much a non-issue. Low end VPS packages with more than enough bandwidth and overhead are in plentiful supply for peanuts. Assuming obtaining a dump of the database or other export vector is a non-issue, the question is not how to host it elsewhere, it's more a case of whether Bioware/EA would allow it.

[ZolaWeston]

DarthParametric wrote...

... the question is not how to host it elsewhere, it's more a case of whether Bioware/EA would allow it.

Good point. I have been wondering that myself. These are Bioware's toys and they would be in their rights to ask for them not to be distributed (even if it is just backing them up).  I hope they do allow it though because it would be a sad day indeed for the modding community if they decide otherwise.

[Sunjammer]

I got an email from Jesse yesterday to say that he's copied some of the resources (lightmapper, single player resources) to their CDN. I'll double check if the toolset installer will be joining them and then I'll post the links in the wiki when I get home (currently sitting in an airport and they've just announce my flight is half an hour late).

Jesse is talking to a couple of people about the community hosting the wiki. He also doesn't think there will be an issue with us hosting the files ourselves.

Will update when I know more.

[ZolaWeston]

Ah, that is good news - thanks for keeping us updated Sunjammer.

[Sunjammer]

I've created the Community:Toolset source files page with a view to adding a third link to each of these entries once the community has something in place.

Modifié par Sunjammer, 21 novembre 2013 - 10:14 .

[Sunjammer]

About mid-December Jesse emailed me with some more information for us, unfortunately, with the holidays and what have you I forgot about it until now:

Jesse wrote ...

I’ve gotten a list of general guidelines for hosting content:

- make sure credit is given to the rights holder

- don’t make ownership claims over someone else’s intellectual property

- you can’t make money or commercialize it

- you can’t claim you are an employee of BioWare or EA

- for your own work you can’t claim it as approved or created by BioWare or EA

I wouldn’t consider that list exhaustive but it should provide you with some structure on next steps if you do want to host content from BSN elsewhere.

The work Rolo Kipp is doing at neverwintervault.org is also worth a look at.

Modifié par Sunjammer, 08 janvier 2014 - 06:31 .

[DarthParametric]

So, does that mean that the EA legal department has given the idea the (tentative) green light? Or is this just the musings of mid-level employees with no actual authority? I'm happy to kick in enough dosh cover a few years of domain/server hosting, but not without something a tad more concrete regarding the likelihood of cease and desist letters.

Modifié par DarthParametric, 09 janvier 2014 - 06:28 .

[Sunjammer]

In his previous email Jesse said he had spoken to Fernando and that Fernando was going to see if he could provide some more information on the subject of hosting mods. Subsequently Jesse responded with the above. Read into that what you want.

Modifié par Sunjammer, 09 janvier 2014 - 08:53 .

[MerAnne]

The toolset wiki is throwing and error: "403 Forbidden You don't have permission to access /wiki/datoolset/index.php/Compatible_Companion_Mod_Creation on this server." (just an example, it does that on all of my toolset wiki links)

Was there any progress in getting the toolset wiki copied to another location? Or do we think that the toolset wiki was much messed up during the change to how the forums looked?