15 réponses à ce sujet

[PapaCharlie9]

I talked myself out of posting this twice already, but I'm not going to let fear of drama and histrionics and thread lockage prevent me from understanding what may be a very important factor in deciding where to go from here.

So please, let's try to keep this as close to civil discourse as possible.

DISCLAIMERS

• This is not an attack on bsn.boards.net nor biowaresocialnetwork.boards.net nor an invitation to dog pile on either one of those sites
• This is not an endorsement of fextralife, RDF, or the Refuge
• This is not the place to cheerlead for the place you like best for personal reasons

What this topic attempts to discuss is the risks and rewards for users to live on a freeboard model, like Proboards, as compared to the alternatives, whether a broad-based, ad-funded site like Fextralife (and if that is not an accurate descriptor, please provide a better one), or the homebrew site the Refuge, by ViSeiRa.
 
I've heard rumors from more than one person about horror stories and being burned by Proboards or similar freeboard sites. At a minimum, let's hear those stories out here, in one place, so we can evaluate these stories and decide for ourselves what they may mean.
 
We all need to understand what the trade-offs are for each choice. It would be great to get an on-the-record claim from each owner of each site about things like:

• Funding? Who pays the bills and how? Is this sustainable? (There's no such thing as a free lunch).
• Governance: how do the TOS terms compare? What is the appeals process? Can the owner pull the plug without notice? Who owns the content?
• Scale: Is there a limit (technical or TOS) on maximum registered or active users? Amount of content?
• Access: are their regions or domains that are blocked? Why?
• Ownership model: Who owns the site? What does ownership entail?
• Succession plan: if the owner can no longer run the site, is there a plan in place for someone to take over?
• SLA and DR: what's the annual uptime expectation? What happens if the database crashes? Is there backup and recovery? Is it automated or manual?
• Moderation: what is the moderation policy? Who can moderate and how do they become moderators? Appeals process?

Taken altogether, these factors have a material impact on the day-to-day experience of us, the community. So let's take some time to review these factors, before anything is set in stone.

[Biotic Apostate]

I can answer a more general question. I'm a member of a smaller group on proboards, we have registered, when the news of BSN's demise broke. We've just started receiving ads, and I suspect other proboards BSN groups soon will too. The cost of removing ads depends on the number of pageviews.

[Biotic Apostitute]

Or you may use an adblocker add-on for your browser.

[ViSeiRa]

Okay, speaking for my site (to be launching soon, called the refuge)

 

Funding? Who pays the bills and how? Is this sustainable? (There's no such thing as a free lunch).

• I pay the bills, and despite what most people might think, hosting a forum that can handle 1000+ simultaneous users is not expensive and I have the means to fund this for a longtime.

 

Governance: how do the TOS terms compare? What is the appeals process? Can the owner pull the plug without notice? Who owns the content?

• Users own their content but by using the site you're giving it a permanent and irrevocable license to use and publish the content.
• Appeals process is simple, if a post contains private/personal information then each user has the right to delete it upon request whether that post is their or someone else's.. anything else stays as long as it conforms with the site's guidelines.

 

 

Scale: Is there a limit (technical or TOS) on maximum registered or active users? Amount of content?

• No limits, technical or else.
• Site will be hosted in a cloud service based in Germany which abides by German data protection laws.

 

Access: are their regions or domains that are blocked? Why?

• None but the site reserves the right to block access to certain IPs (range based as well) depending on user behavior.

 

Ownership model: Who owns the site? What does ownership entail?

• Cheesy as it may sound: nobody does, as long as there's a community the site will keep running whether by myself or someone else.

 

Succession plan: if the owner can no longer run the site, is there a plan in place for someone to take over?

• I'll never pull the plug, IF the moment comes and I'm not able to continue supporting the website other alternatives will be considered ie. community donations but ads will never be an option and if that doesn't work then the web site's code/full database will be shared with someone/ multiple someones who can carry over.

 

SLA and DR: what's the annual uptime expectation? What happens if the database crashes? Is there backup and recovery? Is it automated or manual?

• Annual uptime is expected to be 99.9%, any updates/maintenance will happen seamlessly without any interruption of service (the benefits of the cloud and identical dev/production environments and failovers)
• backup is fully automated, full restore in event of catastrophe wouldn't take more the 12 hrs.

 

Moderation: what is the moderation policy? Who can moderate and how do they become moderators? Appeals process?

• Moderation policy still being worked on (in discussion with possible super moderators now), we will not launch with moderators but those will be chosen after the site launch and it'll depend on a myriad of factors like community engagement, fairness and leadership skills.
• If a moderation decision is in dispute then it's to be discussed directly in private with a super moderator whose decision on the matter is final.

 

I can answer any questions you guys have.

[Puddi III]

• Funding? Who pays the bills and how? Is this sustainable? (There's no such thing as a free lunch).
• Governance: how do the TOS terms compare? What is the appeals process? Can the owner pull the plug without notice? Who owns the content?
• Scale: Is there a limit (technical or TOS) on maximum registered or active users? Amount of content?
• Access: are their regions or domains that are blocked? Why?
• Ownership model: Who owns the site? What does ownership entail?
• Succession plan: if the owner can no longer run the site, is there a plan in place for someone to take over?
• SLA and DR: what's the annual uptime expectation? What happens if the database crashes? Is there backup and recovery? Is it automated or manual?
• Moderation: what is the moderation policy? Who can moderate and how do they become moderators? Appeals process?

 

I feel like we are at a disadvantage without first hearing these supposed "horror stories," but that aside.

 

On VSN, which is also Proboards:

• paid for by ad content, sometimes shady ads.
• terms of service are pretty standard- no illegal stuff, pornography, etc. CS tried to get our board shut down for porn-ish content that she (and others) posted, which we were able to appeal by removing the offending content. Hypothetically Proboards could pull the plug if such offenses are not addressed. The original admin can pull the plug without notice.
• I am not aware of any limit on users or posts. There is a storage limit for plugins and images used in themes and such.
• Not aware of any region blocks.
• Proboards owns it, and the admins can do pretty much anything you would expect moderators of a forum to be able to do, but AFAIK only the original admin can delete the forum.
• Yes, the original admin can hand off most admin responsibilities to others. Proboards will only contact the original admin re: terms of service issues though, so a complete handoff would require handing off account details.
• Proboards has never lost any of our data for the year we've been running, at least. But if the core of the question is whether you can rely on a fanmade free forum as a sacred eternal database of your contributions to internet society, then given the above, probably not.
• Tyrannical.

[OdanUrr]

• Tyrannical.

Never fear, we're currently plotting a coup d'état with the help of Count Reinhard von Lohengramm. What could possibly go wrong?

[Alan Rickman]

Speaking as a user, I've never noticed any "shady" ads on VSN, and I do keep them unblocked since it would be a bit of a dick move to block them on such a relatively small site that relies on ads to cover the costs.

[Puddi III]

They are rare and seem to be more of an issue on mobile devices, for some reason. Personally I haven't experienced any, but they are reported often enough to be worth mentioning.

 

Probably occasional mistakes by proboards regarding which ads are let through that they correct on their own, and don't seem to be particularly harmful if you are careful.

[They call me a SpaceCowboy]

I've been using my phone to access the proboards for the past 2 weeks. I miss my PC, lol, but I haven't had any issues with ads.

The only issues I have with ads is when they block the screen and you can't scroll past them.

[Fexelea]

I want to share with people my long-term experience with free boards. I ran a very successful (500,000 posts at the time) board on Forumotion (works almost exactly as proboards). My experience was initially great: setup was easy, spam was easily taken care of by in-place processes, decorating the forum was simple.

 

• Then the community grew, and when this happens EVERY community wants more. "can we xx?", "why can't we yy?". I started to feel like I couldn't do all the things that were asked for me, because you need database and server access, which is locked away from everyone.
• Later on, as it grew more, the ads showed up. And their quality control was atrocious. You would get pop-ups, videos, redirects, intense flash animations and, eventually, malware warnings. And me as the admin could do nothing, because it was handled by someone else. Unless I wanted to fork over a few thousand dollars everymonth to remove them.
• And of course, then came the arbitrary changes to the posting and code, that happened suddenly and without notice. You would wake up one morning and your "reply" area would be completely different, and now designed in a way that makes the forum look extremely odd. And nothing you can do.

 

Eventually, when we decided we needed to move because all the above together made for a limiting experience, you learn the reality of it: you don't own any of this. It is owned by the company hosting you. You have no access to user accounts, database, or exports that would enable you to migrate easily. It traps you and your users there.

 

I eventually managed to scrape the posts much like I'm doing for Bioware - but user accounts were a nightmare and every single user had to reclaim their account just like here.

 

A note of caution on proboards policy. They effectually give themselves the right to disclose your personal information at any time, by creating a loophole as below:

 

 

YOU HEREBY GRANT THE PROBOARDS PARTIES A PERPETUAL, FULLY PAID-UP, WORLDWIDE, SUBLICENSABLE, IRREVOCABLE, ASSIGNABLE LICENSE TO COPY, DISTRIBUTE, TRANSMIT, PUBLICLY DISPLAY OR PERFORM, EDIT, TRANSLATE, REFORMAT AND OTHERWISE USE USER CONTENT IN CONNECTION WITH THE OPERATION OF THE WEBSITE, SERVICES OR ANY OTHER SIMILAR OR RELATED BUSINESS, IN ANY MEDIUM NOW EXISTING OR LATER DEVISED, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION IN ADVERTISING AND PUBLICITY. YOU FURTHER AGREE THAT THE PROBOARDS PARTIES MAY PUBLISH OR OTHERWISE DISCLOSE YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION IN CONNECTION WITH THEIR EXERCISE OF THE LICENSE GRANTED UNDER THIS SECTION. YOU AGREE TO WAIVE, AND HEREBY WAIVE, ANY CLAIMS ARISING FROM OR RELATING TO THE EXERCISE BY THE PROBOARDS PARTIES OF THE RIGHTS GRANTED UNDER THIS SECTION, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION ANY CLAIMS RELATING TO YOUR RIGHTS OF PERSONAL PRIVACY AND PUBLICITY. YOU WILL NOT BE COMPENSATED FOR ANY EXERCISE OF THE LICENSE GRANTED UNDER THIS SECTION.

 

 

About Fextralife:

 

 

• Funding? Who pays the bills and how? Is this sustainable? (There's no such thing as a free lunch).

I self-funded Fextralife for many years, until in 2013 we decided that in order for the site to be truly sustainable, the community should pay for itself via ads on views. We take a lot of care to veto our ads and take action to ban bad advertisers, we also provide a VIP subscription that removes all advertisements from the site for usd 3/month. The forum itself has 1 advert on footer only, and one for non-signed in users.
As a result, we have managed to develop software and servers that kept the site up through 38,000 simultaneous users highs and been able to develop many requested features and engage in projects such as saving the Bioware boards.

 

• Governance: how do the TOS terms compare? What is the appeals process? Can the owner pull the plug without notice?

Our TOS can be found here. Our privacy policy is here. Our copyright policy is here.

 

• Who owns the content?

We do this a bit differently than other places because of the wikis. The content submitted to the site belongs to the site, which gives the site the ability to take legal action against scraper sites (places that try to steal content by copying posts and publishing them as their articles without permission). The agreement is, simplified: you give the content to fextralife to "own", and fextralife gives you an irrevocable license to use/repost that content. This way, you effectively own the content, but we have the capacity to assist you in protecting your interests without you having to disclose your identity to a third party site via DMCA.

 

• Scale: Is there a limit (technical or TOS) on maximum registered or active users? Amount of content?

Since we own the software, database and servers, there is no limit to scale.

 

• Access: are their regions or domains that are blocked? Why?

There are no geographical blocks. There are registration blocks for certain emails to prevent spam, but the major providers (gmail, yahoo, hotmail) are allowed.

 

• Ownership model: Who owns the site? What does ownership entail?

Fextralife is owned by myself - There's a collaborative team of 2 administrators, 2 developers, 2 blog editors, ~8 moderators, ~10 wiki organizers, 2000~ regular wiki editors.

 

• Succession plan: if the owner can no longer run the site, is there a plan in place for someone to take over?

We have a corporate setup so the site can be passed to other administrators seamlessly. It's actually in my Will.

 

• SLA and DR: what's the annual uptime expectation? What happens if the database crashes? Is there backup and recovery? Is it automated or manual?

We have weekly automated backups. We have never had content loss issues. The forums are up through even the worst of traffic.

 

• Moderation: what is the moderation policy? Who can moderate and how do they become moderators? Appeals process?

Our forum guidelines can be found here. Moderators are selected from the community and apply by PMing me and answering a set of questions as seen here. All warnings are logged in a moderator forum, and all bans must comply with the warning policy and have the majority agreement of the moderating team (who are users). We have banned less than 10 users in the last 3 years.

 

 

I'm happy to reply to any other questions anyone has

[PapaCharlie9]

I've seen posts by various people who have been burned by Proboards or similar freeboard sites before. At a minimum, let's have those stories collected here, in one place, so we can all make our own decisions about what they may mean.

 

I feel like we are at a disadvantage without first hearing these supposed "horror stories,"

You are absolutely right. Truth is, I had personally only heard rumors of horror stories, not actual horror stories themselves (until now, see above). Thus a major motivation for this thread.

I'll edit the OP to clarify.

[Cassandra Saturn]

They are rare and seem to be more of an issue on mobile devices, for some reason. Personally I haven't experienced any, but they are reported often enough to be worth mentioning.
 
Probably occasional mistakes by proboards regarding which ads are let through that they correct on their own, and don't seem to be particularly harmful if you are careful.

these "shady ads" are actually rogue ads that is stated by proboards, they are asking everybody to use their ad removal tool by simply reporting what has happened and took place. this tool is very useful for keeping such ads off and away from the forums.

[Cassandra Saturn]

Unofficial Bioware Social Network

http://biowaresocial...ork.boards.net/

• Funding: not paid for, but it might be payment eventually in future should the forum needs to upgrade.
• Governance: Proboards ToS as part of rule. the Owner reserves the right to inform users if the forum plug should be pulled. but as of status for uBSN. the answer is never. the content is owned by users who reserves the right to post, edit and delete. also, the Moderators has right to delete a post if needed. other option for moderator is to inform the user about it to discuss, but no warnings or bans will be handed out. if the user/moderator has resolved the issue regarding a post, it will be decided upon on the user or moderator to edit or delete the post. (it's better this way to discuss than to just hand out warnings/bans)
• Scale: unlimited user number, unlimited amount of content.
• Access: All countries are not blocked. they are welcome to read, view any said content on uBSN
• Ownership model: Cassandra Saturn. as the forum administrator and an system Administrator of uBSN, my job is to oversee and create more boards for uBSN. also responsible for all theme updates, upgrades and more. pretty much everything for uBSN.
• Succession plan: still working on that plan should it happen.
• SLA and DR: all content and data is always saved and protected by proboards servers. so here's backups in case an accident happens. the content is not lost forever.
• Moderation: Moderation policy is to pick a user that had been favored by the Community, as in users who favored the said user. also, moderation policy is work in progress.
• uBSN is place for the bioware community to have a home, make posts and be drama-free environment. it will be home for those who need a break from other forums, make friends, family here. discuss various topics including Bioware.

[N7M]

It's good to see the thought and planning that went into a few of the places that formed. The transparency is commendable too.

[N7M]

Have all the newly created substitute BSN boards actively taking in users from here been spoken for by their owners/representatives?

[Kantr]

BSN boards haven't spoken yet (conyan?)