Plans for the future of Gamingforce
 

I've been throwing this idea around for a little while, but what finally triggered this post was a PM from Miles:

fuck the iphone

Anyway, note that our server is now host to SD as well, with the owner chipping in on the monthly fees. The problem now is disk space, and there is an obvious solution to that. I"m planning to separate the Concert Hall and My Stuff forums from gamingforce.org (which is our dedicated server) and move them back to gamingforce.com (on a shared hosting plan), along with all their attachments. Obviously we can't re-use our vBulletin license for that (unless someone else coughs up the cash for another one) so the .com side will most probably be converted to SMF.

Meanwhile, GGMD will be moved to the Entertainment category. Behind the Music could be made a subforum.

The move will most probably happen around the end of the month. All current members should retain their accounts on both domains. After that, registrations will be separate.

Any idea on how much disk space this move will free up?

About 15 gigs, I think.

Oh sure, but when Pang suggested it he got infracted. :(

If the disk space makes a big difference than I support this. Are there any plans to delete old (non-my stuff, non-concert hall) attachments for extra space as well, or will that be unnecessary?

Well there's a difference between suggesting it because oh shit and suggesting it because fuck you

But we're pretty much going to move the entire attachment directory over so once that's done, we'll wipe all attachments on this side (due to the implementation it's impossible to tell which attachments are from which forum -- they're stored in a directory structure depending on user ID). Plus, we'll be transitioning to vBulletin 3.8 someday so we could be nuking a good number of our modifications and plugins in addition to that.

By the way, Pang will be moderating .com as well. Just so you know.

I guess it's the end of an era. Will we be attempting to maintain the "brand", so to speak, or will the split board be free to develop its own direction?

I support this course of action, as it will eliminate a major source of inter-forum clashes by splitting up the snooty elitists on one side, and the obnoxious elitists on the other :tpg:

Simple Machines Forums? Man. I used to post on VGmp3.org a number of years back, so that'll be fun to use again.

Anyway, I tried posting an announcement in My Stuff but I'm getting database errors trying to view it. I accidentally posted a duplicate, at that.

Hmmm... This seems like an ok idea, but it seems to me that it would be a fairly temporary solution. What happens when we run out of space again? Not to mention the question of how will new members know which site to join - presuming they even realize we are in two parts...

Something in the back of my head is telling me that this isn't a good idea, but maybe it's just Pang moderating those he told to **** off.

Dice roller broke announcements too apparently. Just fixed the hell out of that shit.

(also toasted the duplicate announcement)

So will the split off CH and My Stuff just have Basil, waferballs, ^_^ and Bucky (And apparently Pang) moderating it or will we all be moderators there too? I only ask because the chances of me ever logging on to a board made up entirely of My Stuff and CH are pretty slim.

Also, I agree that this might well completely nerf our membership intake as people by and large only join for those two bits any more and just happen to find an awesome community in the process. Is there not some way you can move the attachment hosting to .com and leave the actual discussion bits here?

While the sharing forums probably do comprise the bulk of our new membership I don't think they're members we necessarily want. When's the last time a great newbie came along and their first 20 posts were requests? Just leave front page links on each forum to the other, perhaps where the IRC notice is now:

Gamingforce Filez! Click here to pirate some sheet music!

Gamingforce Discussion! Click here to actually talk to human beings!

Honestly I don't know why attachments weren't disabled ages ago. Does anyone outside CH even use them? There are dozens of rapidshare clones out there for anyone too lazy to just get their own hosting.

(Oh, it turned out I had 3 total attachments adding up to less than 1MB; I deleted them hope it helps)

Not necessarily. The type of people who join to request stuff in the Concert Hall are not usually the type who visit other forums and interact. Heck, I think I heard that refrain repeated quite often in the past year or so.

I don't know much about the sharing forums, not having found much reason to browse the boards as of late. However, if My Stuff is such a membership draw, then we may as well keep it here, since it's got more to do with the board's history (of FTP runners).

Of course, this proposal will most probably completely sever the Concert Hall for good. But hey, at least it will finally be free to develop in a direction that may turn it into a viable community. Heck, they probably don't even need to use "Gamingforce" in their name or the .com domain.

As and when we split off CH, can we change the banner to something Kristallnacht themed?

There are ways to host attachments externally.

Remote server image/attachment database hack - vBulletin.org Forum

I didn't realize that sheet music was still being hosted as attachments. I thought the decision was made to move all of that off-site a long time ago. Also, the .com site is a separate site now? Is it commercially hosted, or piggybacked off of someone else's webspace?

We recovered the .com a while back, Secret. bobo let it expire, and luckily Kaleb.G was able to snag the domain in an auction.

According to the WHOIS information, Kaleb is currently hosting it on his Dreamhost account.

I have a question Blah. What are the current specs of the dedicated server? I'm curious about this, since 15 GB doesn't sound like much today, but it is obviously substantial enough to make you consider splitting the forums.

I got Kaleb to point the DNS to my Dreamhost account, so gamingforce.com is now hosted on the same location as the former Serious Business.

Our dedicated server has 50GB of space. 22GB is taken up by VGMdb at the moment.

Yeah. And we could upgrade to more space but the host charges an additional 30 dollars a month for that and I want to milk the 50GB for as long as possible. Thanks to the economy I don't even get my end of the year bonus anymore which before would almost pay for a year of hosting so my budget is tighter than before.

If we're to make sacrifices it was always the GFF attachments that would go first. Doing cleanups of old attachments could only help for so long.

I don't know a lot about all this madness, but I think it's a wise idea to separate.

Meanwhile, I am also confused about the attachments. There are so many places you can upload them - why host them on here, especially when it is not the most cost-effective way to do it.

Since when is anyone in the Concert Hall thoughtful for anyone else except their own?

Well, the way I look at it, it's not a matter of thoughtfulness, but more "hey, that option is there. Why not use it? It's easier than going to another site to upload my shit!"

I don't think most people consider the cost and/or the burden when they're uploading. If the option is there, it must not be a major concern! (not that I subscribe to this notion, but I have to say I wouldn't think too much about it myself if I was on another site which gave the option)

And if you need me to move it again for new shared hosting, just let me know via e-mail or PM.

I'm with Pang. Who really uses attachments? I've used it like maybe once for the .rar containing the gff banner psd files but that is actually related to GFF and useful. People attaching pictures of their desktop, sheet music, etc. should kindly fuck off to their nearest free and easy imagehost/filehost. Clear the attachments and disable the feature. Really, convince me why we should keep the feature if its just going to cause us pain.

I'm not completely enthused on moving Concert Hall and My Stuff from the forums for this reason. I'm not sure what would be a better use of the .com but I don't think its this.

How about the reason that a city's worth of people who grew up wearing helmets their entire childhood are now posting in one sub-section?

Well, nobody's questioning that we should be rid of these people; it's more that there's a sense of guilt for passing the infection to what was once a noble URL. GF.com should perhaps be used for a better and more useful purpose, like serving as a mirror for furry webcomics or something

Jesus Christ Pang. These people we're trying to get rid of are the goddamned small pox blankets of the internet. GFF is Fort Pitt. Just throw them out and let them smash against the fortifications while we laugh at how awful they are.

I'm not against attachments as much as I am against their permanence. Attachments from 2006 are likely ignored by now and thus unimportant. Why do we keep them?

If there were a statute on how long attachments remained attached, then we would have a system in which the balance is maintained and the server load would remain at a manageable level instead of the growing monster it is now. I mean, Concert Hall people make requests all the time; if they want an attachment reposted, I doubt they'll hesitate to speak up.

Of course, is there even a way to automatically purge an attachment once it reaches a certain date in age, say six months?

I had seven attachments. I've since deleted them and edited my older posts that had attachments with some bbcode linking to the attachments' new home on my own hosting.


For example:

attachment:
+ [ stafficon-mod.gif ]


BBCode~ if you're interested:
Just so I can be cool like Pang. :boxing:

I'm not arguing with that; it just seems wasteful to turn our other holdings into a Hooverville out of some misguided pity.

I'm wondering if there's a way we can optimize the image scans over at VGMdb to take up less space, but that's an issue I'll bring up at VGMdb.

Wait... I thought VGMdb was on its own hosting. We're still sharing? =o

gamingforce.com isn't exactly a noble URL. It was and will always be known for filesharing. That's why I'm moving those forums back there, since I like to think our community has outgrown that.

Acer, we're pretty much piggybacking on the VGMdb server. Did you think we had the money to pay for two dedicated servers?

Can Bender stay? I can understand it if it's not possible, however.

I guess. I wasn't quite sure what we'd do with the .com anyway so I guess that's as good as anything. =|

Piggybacking VGMdb? Wut? VGMdb is a neat project and all but last I recall people round these parts donate and fund this server primarily for GFF. I could have sworn VGMdb was split from GFF to do its own thing for this and other reasons; not being associated with a thieves' playground being one of them. Really, I bet noone would raise an eyebrow if Wikipedia and Mininova were on the same server. =/

No, I wasn't aware that we needed the money to pay for two dedicated servers. Silly me.

Donations ran out a while ago. Right now we're paying for the server out of our own pockets. To be frank, the admins are primarily paying for VGMdb.


Yeah, what do you think I'm trying to accomplish by moving My Stuff as well (they don't use attachments).

I don't like the idea of nuking attachments. I like having a file permanently available on a post. imgshack and such hosts can go sour, and it's not like I'm making sure I'm saving every single image or attachment I put in a post.

I usually host to img tag, then attach as well, for the sake of preservation.

I think folks would be more inclined to donate if they knew how much money was needed every month and/or how much money was left to pay each month.

Maybe something like this~

http://www.thegond.com/rp/monthlydonations.png

Pulled that shit from bitgamer btw

Good to know. =/

I think you're trying to make more space for VGMdb and SD (whatever the fuck that is) because apparently the admins could give two half pennies about GFF.

SD is SlightlyDark.

SD is SlightlyDark.

Concert Hall and My Stuff are our biggest liabilities right now. Although we've had only one DMCA takedown notice so far, I'm fairly certain our host won't take kindly to future notices.

Got any more snark to add? I know I'm not the best GFF cheerleader around but I'm the one getting shit done here.

We've all more or less banded together here because it's what made the most sense financially.

I don't think that Blah is implying that the GFF admins don't care about GFF. What he's saying is that the majority of the server's bill is paid by VGMdb staff, and has been for a while now. Much of the staff is common to here too, so it's not an issue. Naka offered to move SlightlyDark over to our hosting so that he could start contributing to the server bill, and lower the monthly tab for the rest of the regular contributors.

Now that I've seen more of the story, I agree that moving the "pirate" parts of the board to other hosting is the best solution. It's not just about disc space, though running out of space may have sped things up.

While obviously these decisions are down to whoever's paying the bills, I don't think it's unreasonable to be somewhat agitated at the notion that the board essentially exists at the pleasure of VGMdb (of all things), that the community is considered less important than an overblown card catalogue.

How did that even happen? VGMdb appears to be several months younger than this iteration of GFF so exactly at what point did it become "VGMdb's server"? Was there a big ceremony with handing over the keys to Squirrel and all that.

By all means you do whatever you have to, I just think it's a little underhanded that this has all suddenly come out now. "O hey, incidentally, Kaleb owns you guys."

Nope. Go ahead and prune like ya please. We'll still be here after your done. Maybe.

really blah i hope you understand where i'm coming from b/c jesus christ sometimes man sometimes

I'm with Pang on wondering when, exactly, Gamingforce became second banana to VGMdb. It's not like GFF is going to be wiped off the planet because VGMdb hates us or anything, but it would've been nice to know (or it'll be nice to hear clarification) when this happened.

Oh, please. The effort to split the two forums from GFF is barely worth it as it is. I know most of you have never administered anything other than Dreamhost's one-click MediaWiki install but trust me, this shit isn't trivial.

Since you're all upset that GFF apparently isn't top on my list of priorities, maybe someone would like to step up and take over. I'm tired of this song and dance.

Don't pin this on me, Pangalin. Miles is in charge of finances for both Gamingforce and VGMdb.

I don't think it's in our best interests financially to split. It's going to hurt us both, and we'll both be scrambling to find new support.

Your tone aside, Blah, I get your point. I'll stand back.

As long as GFF isn't going anywhere, I'm happy.

Yeah but it's no fun to pin things on him because he's always too busy making journal entries about my Japanese teacher!! to notice :(

edit: and then traveling to Japan

edit: to buy video games

edit: and making journal entries about buying video games in japan

edit: not even japan-exclusive games or anything

edit: just rpgs and shit

THE ADMINS ARE DOING SOMETHING THAT IS ALIGNED WITH MY INTERESTS

I WILL NOW PROCEED TO INSULT THEM

Yes, but you'll do this aligned-with-my-interests thing whether I insult you or not, because "my interests" are not even remotely the actual motivation.

so free

to fly

to spit on those below

Pang doing his battered wife impersonation now

Blah would it make you happy if I issued a formal apology to Miles

because really now

really

Oh by the way removing CH and My Stuff will also remove all their props

Do you love me now

So is this idea the result of space issues or isn't it? Because if that's the entire problem it could so easily be solved by just disabling the completely useless attachments once and for all.

Or is it to be done in hopes of wiping away GFF's dark past due to some "takedown notice", as you seem to be implying now, Blah? We've been fileshaing here for the better part of ten years now, and My Stuff certainly has it's most active days behind it. So if My Stuff wasn't a problem-child in the heydays of '03 and '04, why now suddenly?

Well, if the site has gotten one DMCA, it's easy to guess that it'll get another at some point. Considering the idea of My Stuff and CH being split off has been bandied about for a long time by many people, seanne, now is a pretty awful time to go about saying "Well it hasn't done much wrong so let's keep it!"

Space issues is the immediate problem. And seanne, filesharing used to be the main draw of this community, so that kind of offset the risks. But as you said, those days are behind us. My Stuff isn't pulling in the membership anymore, so it's become more of a liability.

However, the best thing that would come out of this move is the separation of two communities that are perpetually hostile towards each other.

Color me surprised here but VGMdb is 22GB? Really?

All that touhou shit. :mad:

Also not to be a dick or anything Pang but yeah Miles is a horrible weeaboo but what are his other options? Make entries about his daily life between working his ass off to pay for his place to live, school and this forum or interact with a community of assholes you have little in common with?

Really though you guys are some dickheads.

If it really is a liability, will simply placing it on a different forum really change that? What do we do when the next letter arrives?

I guess I must have missed this. Really? I couldn't imagine why that would be the case.

GFF is like Denny's.

The Concert Hall is your slovenly uncle who comes in, doesn't order anything, drinks everyone's water and then takes a ton of mints when he leaves.

The waitress asked your Uncle to behave himself. He refuses to.

This has made the chef *very* angry.

Huh? Why would a letter for gamingforce.com affect gamingforce.org? They're on completely different hosts.

For the sake of the collection each CD scan must be a 40 MB TIF file. :cape:

DID BOTH OF HIS KITTENS DIE OR SOMETHING? I REMEMBER THOSE ENTRIES. THOSE WERE GOOD. THERE WERE KITTENS IN THEM. :mad:

As I recall, a few years ago the community as a whole was asked to not use attachments anymore because of disk space issues. This was around the time that we implemented a rule so as to not allow attachments in the "Post Your *******" type threads and thus we've been using external image hosting since then. More than a few of us have Photobucket, Flickr or (insert imageshack clone name here) accounts for this reason.

So in short: No. I don't think anyone uses them outside of CH.

Which brings me to another question. Was this rule implemented for the sake of allowing attachments in CH or is this sudden ballooning in size fairly recent?

It might not affect .org, but what to do should a letter arrive for .com? Pack up and leave again? You make it sound like there's some imminent threat present here which will mean the end of GFF unless My Stuff isn't moved pronto. And considering the bulk of what is shared in there is VGM, that seems quite unlikely to me, knowing how little the copyright proprietors over in Japan seem to care about infringement. I mean last I checked Sarah's hellhole was still online and spewing.

LeHah: Now that you mention it I seem to recall hearing about that particualr piece of drama.

See, the wonderful thing about this is that if shit goes down on .com, it doesn't affect .org. It also doesn't affect the other domains that are hosted here. That's the entire point. We can chug along fine while the .com side does whatever needs to be done. (Note that our last letter was, in fact, not for VGM)

So, are we clear now?

Galbadia Hotel has been down for several months now, I believe.

The point, seanne, is that we are essentially throwing what will be the .com section of the board to the wolves to survive on its own merits. It has its purposes, yes, but it poses a threat to what are seen as more legitimate sections of the community. All these sharing threads and FTPs and attachments et al are unnecessary when bittorrent ummmm exists.

In the now unlikely-seeming event that they actually do give me some authority over Black Market GFF, the first and smartest thing to do would be to crack the fuck down on the nonstop public piracy. But that'll be hard to do. It's ingrained in some people. It's nearly impossible to shut down the behavior, so unfortunately bitches got to get on a boat to Australia.

Very well sir it seems that we have a deal

I'm not actually attacking Miles at all, he seems like a decent guy and while he's almost always MIA I know he has plenty of reasons for that. He's a busy guy. That's fine. I'm just saying it's useless to say "oh, that's Miles' responsibility" to a bitching user since when the hell is anyone going to have an opportunity to talk to Miles about a goddamn thing?

Squirrel et al might not strictly be in charge of anything but at least they are informed which is more than most of us can say. :shrug:

I know Miles brushes off the weeaboo shit without even noticing, anyways

I have to agree with blah. Moving the trading forums completely removes the risk of our host getting another letter and giving us the boot. That would mean moving 3 whole websites to another location. If the sharing content is hosted on another server then our host wouldn't hear about it and we'd be in the clear. If we're going to accept other websites on our server in order to help cover the $2400 annual cost then it wouldn't be fair to the other 2 if we had to pack our bags and leave because someone on gff.org shared something that pissed off a publisher.

And trust me, I'm really glad that Naka was willing to move SD to our server. His monthly contribution would help a lot in covering the monthly costs.

Uh huh so what happens when folks start moving their My Stuff things to their chocojournal like um people have already been doing? What if I want to tell people about what DS flash cartridge to get and list some of the great websites to get DS roms from? Folks link to cracks and torrents in the OS & Software forum to help others out. People who more than likely are using hacked copies of Photoshop and PaintShopPro are making art in Creator's Cafe. Where does it stop?

$2400 annually? Really? That's how much it costs a year to run this server? I think I'll start donating something rather nice if it means GFF actually has significance with you all.

There's one point I'd like to bring up, if I may.

In my perspective, the only reason My Stuff and Concert Hall have even existed for this long is because they're hidden from guests, that they're hidden from the general public, and restricting those boards to members-only give a first impression to the record labels cracking down on piracy that we're just another message board and that they shouldn't bother with us, because to them, we're not doing anything illegal.

But - If My Stuff and Concert Hall are going to separate to the .com domain - how do you expect it to survive, what with both boards clearly out in the open for everybody to see?

It's just like Scoremania, those separated film score bootlegging message boards that a few people in My Stuff and I tried to run way back when. Those boards were repeatedly taken down, and the longest streak we had with one iteration of that board was about a year.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not opposed to an MS/CH/community separation, far from it. So long as server space issues are resolved somehow, fine. But I haven't the slightest idea how a separation could work and still prevent the sharing boards from being detected by the RIAA or whomever. Hell, even discussing about it right here in a forum that can be viewed publically is a major risk in itself. If the separated .com domain gets a cease and desist letter or action is taken then - is that just the end for MS/CH or what?

I mean, it's amazing that in all of nine or ten years the sharing boards have been up we've only gotten one DMCA notice and no action has been taken from anybody to shut us down, but.

Muwahahahahahahahahahahahaha

: rings hands together :

See, and that's the problem right here. 2400 bucks for a videogame message board including a videogame music database is insane.

There are people who have donated hundreds of bucks already (donating seems to be so important that we even have a TOP DONATORS LIST, which is very lol), and yet we always come to a point when we're discussing financial issues once again.

What I don't understand is how people just keep talking about donating this, donating that, instead of just getting rid of the attachments. But yeah, as always, it takes dozens of posts until we get something done here http://www.inferno.trivadeon.com/ima...es/537di5e.gif

GFF is still a message board, not a fucking file hosting service.

We used to own the house, Mush. Now we're just its renters clawing at the knees of our fellow rentees in order to get by each month.


I like how the idea to have a "how much money 'needed/left to pay' for this month" visual aid at the top of the forums (or at least on the fucking donations page) has not been discussed because that certainly wouldn't be helpful at all.

Yes. Don't you agree that is a fucking stupid situation?

There's four regular contributors to the monthly fees now, so we don't have to rely on donations anymore. Speaking personally, I'd rather not, because people have arbitrary expectations of what donations entitle them to.

GFF will be around for the long term. I don't expect we'll even be removing the attachment feature, because attachment usage outside CH is relatively minimal.

Speaking personally, Blah, rather we should, because that way we won't be treated like some poor street urchins sucking the sap from the server.

Let's see $2400 divided by 3 (GFF, VGMdb, and SD) = $800. But I'm sure that's probably not right since one of us is probably using more storage than the other and perhaps one of us is probably using more bandwidth than the other. So sure let's throw an extra 100 bucks on top of that just in case.

So $900 divided by 12 = $75. So if I were to donate 75 to 100 bucks a month you're afraid you'd have to treat GFF like equals to VGMdb and SD? Awww... would changing such a status quo and sharing the server cost equally be so frustrating and painful, Blah? I'm sorry if the concept of not being able to slight some poorly hidden contempt our way because of GFF monthly fees being taken care of by GFF members instead of by some group of almost seemingly unrelated shadowy benefactors who graciously allow this place existence upsets you. I really am.

Acer, are you really that upset that Concert Hall doesn't get to use our server space for their attachments? Really now, this move benefits GFF as much as it does our other two domains.

Don't you guys have a place explicitly dedicated to having these internecine squabbles out of the public view?

I don't give a flying fuck about Concert Hall, Blah. Move it. Burn it to the ground. Like I give two shits. My beef is with this sudden order of respect you've revealed in this thread.

1. Why were we not informed that GFF was not the only tenant of the server?
2. Why were we not informed that donation money was not being sufficent enough?

And then I absolutely adore how you respond to Pang.

With this:
Yeah, I get it. You know how to move the stars and planets, and you are entitled to your priorities and where you place your efforts and enjoyment. We have CHz for a reason (he's awesome and fun to play with). However your priorities and attitude displayed in here are painting a picture where the high and mighty Blah looks down upon the cretins that squander his land to which the mighty Blah smirks and relays a message to the people that they have had masters all along and that they would do good to look down upon their shackles with great joy and praise the sky where their masters set forth their posteriors to rest lest they wish for gazes of disapproval.



Oh we do, Pang, but despite that Blah chose not to confer in that particular privacy with staff on his important decisions. Instead Blah carried forth such declarations and certain enlightenment in this very public and open place of discussion, and now here we stand to perform upon this stage to flutter and prance before all who wish to witness splendor and awe.

In light of Basil's comments about how an unhidden My Stuff and Concert Hall would be shut down almost immediately, I second the motion to just delete both and pretend nothing ever happened.

Also, as a matter of interest, if it wasn't VGM that got us a warning letter, what was it? Was it when LeHah reported us to the RIAA for that Superman box set?

Acer:

Do you not remember when we delayed the restoration of GFF during the last crash? That was because Miles was busy saving the data for VGMdb off the broken hard drive -- on our dime too, since we weren't going to ask GFF members to pay for something that wasn't theirs. In fact, in my temporary message put up on gamingforce.org I explicitly stated that GFF and VGMdb were hosted on the same drive. Nobody made a fuss about it then. Why now? What do you want me to do, Acer? Get down on my knees and suck your dick, because you're suddenly waving money in my face? I'm sorry that I hurt your ego, but if your only argument against this decision is my tone of voice, I'm going to devote my attention elsewhere.

Hey guys, uh, I heard there was going to be dick-sucking?

Calm down Blah, I think Acer is just concerned that from the way you tell it, it looks as though the Gamingforce forums are reliant on SD and VGMDB to remain in existance. This is a worrying situation because in the past when we were reliant on someone else (bobo) we were let down and damn near lost the whole place, and in fact would have done, but for your own and Miles' intervention.

I can't speak for Acer but I think is main issue is that if we're relying on them, we have little in the way of a safety net if they decide they don't want us anymore. I don't think he's saying that we pay so we deserve respect, he's saying he'd rather pay so we weren't reliant on anyone else. I imagine he's also bothered that we have to sacrifice part of our boards (Albeit parts we won't miss) to make room for VGMdb or SD. It makes us feel like the expendable ones out of the three.

The hostility I imagine comes from some slight frustration that other projects are seemingly a higher priority for the admin team than this place, and again, the echoes of bobo. Nobody would ever question yours or Miles' dedication to this place but you've got to realise that people get nervous here when an admin comes out with an announcement of this magnitude almost out of the blue and especially for those of us tasked with looking after the place, without mentioning it in the Hut first.

Nobody really gives a flying fuck what happens to CH or My Stuff, as you said yourself, the community has outgrown them and I doubt many of us would even have noticed if you'd just deleted them. If I'm reading the mood in the thread right, people are concerned that we're in danger of losing the Gamingforce forums because of the dubious legal standpoint of sections of the board or the huge database attached to an online catalogue of computer game music (Or whatever VGMdb is, can't say I've ever visited).

Getting all defensive and snarky because people are worried is only going to exacerbate the situation. All people want is reassurance that these boards aren't going anywhere, telling people if the don't like your tone of voice you're going to turn your attention elsewhere is hardly a sensible way to give that. If you need more money in order for us to guarantee our survival then by all means tell us.

See, I'm a little bewildered here because essentially VGMdb and GFF share the same set of admins (me, Miles, Secret Squirrel being a past admin). Heck, Naka from SD used to be a GFF admin too. We're not exactly strangers.

Of course you aren't and I wasn't suggesting that you were. It's just that the rather sudden nature of the announcement caught us off guard and as other people have already mentioned in this thread, Miles is less hands-on than he used to be.

All I'm saying is that I can see how people might draw parallels in their minds to the end of the bobo era and his increased absences and prioritising of other projects.

Nobody wants to lose the boards and whilst we have no problem ditching CH or My Stuff to do so, we don't want to feel like next time VGMdb needs more space for whatever it is they do, we'll have to cut out Community Commons.

And I'm not suggesting that we will, I'm suggesting that while we're relying on two other websites to exist, that shadow hangs over us, no matter how unlikely it actually is.

And you know, it might have been nice if you'd mentioned this in the Hut before Board Support.

Okay I'll give you that it's probably my fault that I didn't know GFF and VGMdb were on the same server. I must have skipped reading your message from that last crash completely or just plum forgot it. My bad. However SD sharing the bill is something I wasn't made aware of until now. Neither was donations running dry and forcing VGMdb admins to cough up the dough that donations from GFF could have been helping with. Miles asked a few months ago for some donation help to which I obliged. A need was shown and it was fulfilled. If only we had an indication say up top or on the donation page to show us what GFF needed to pay in order to keep this whole ship afloat. If only.

Having GFF and VGMdb on the same server is all fine and dandy and you two did a noble thing to spend the money to save VGMdb (and GFF) off of that broken harddrive. The problem I have now is GFF being treated like second banana to VGMdb due to how the server is funded nowadays. The only issue with having GFF and VGMdb on the same server as previously mentioned is GFF's pirate booty party times.

I only flaunt money because I want GFF to pull its fucking weight like VGMdb and SD. Why is that such a bad thing, Blah?

Again you forget that my argument isn't against this decision of moving The Concert Hall, My Stuff, and the 15 GB of attachments. My argument is against this:

The only entitlement that I want by helping keep GFF matching the monthly bills of VGMdb and SD (or whatever amount of payment is deemed fair and proper) is that GFF is shown the equal respect it once had. That is all.

The only proper argument I have against the decision you're going to make in moving The Concert Hall and My Stuff to the .com is that unless you don't want it to make a giant bleep on the RIAA/whateverthehellelsecopyrightprotectionagency radar you'll need to give it a cover of some sort. The forums gave those two hideaways the camouflage they needed to survive without hundreds of take-down notices being hurled our way. I argue that without a proper cover The Concert Hall and more importantly My Stuff will have to be destroyed or reformed to the extent that they are deemed pointless be that a good thing or a bad thing. We need something else to take place on the .com. Something decently sized like our forums. You could place a fake forum on top of that but that seems rather wasteful. I have had no idea what we should do with the .com besides it being used as the current redirect but I'd hoped that it would be something slightly special in the future. That is why I stated "I'm not completely enthused on moving Concert Hall and My Stuff from the forums for this reason. I'm not sure what would be a better use of the .com but I don't think its this." However I grant you that the move must be done for storage reasons and for the future safety of the server. I propose that the .com still be used for something good despite mostly being a cover for The Concert Hall and My Stuff.

and good lord these blueprints (this thread) need to be stored somewhere private eventually lest we wish to invite the enemy in for punch and pie

Miles did say that it was another $30 a month to double our disk space. We could afford that but you'd agree it's more cost effective to move CH instead. Moving My Stuff is just a matter of killing two birds with one stone.

Also, I've already addressed the issue of priorities. I have stated before that I'm preoccupied with VGMdb, that's exactly why I pushed for CHz to take over my role. He's been doing great so far, don't you think?

Acer:
Let me put it this way: even if I'm not that enamoured with GFF recently, Miles is still the de facto owner of the server, so rest assured he has your backs.

I'm indeed planning to shelter the .com side from public view. As for what the public facade should be, I'm planning to leave in the hands of the admins and moderators there.

It wasn't a complaint, it was an observation. CHz does indeed do a great job, I was simply saying that we don't want to be kept too out of the loop on these things if you're busy with VGMdb because Miles isn't here to tell us and I can't see Naka or Squirrel making an announcement in the Hut somehow.

Just throwing out if it's for the sake of the server GFF resides on even if it is VGMdb and SD needing more space I'd be willing to help fund it.

That's jolly good. And I've acknowledged how wonderful CHz is already. It was a wise decision.

And I can see that you are preoccupied with VGMdb. I took a visit last night and the place looks great. Well, besides a few graphical buttons here and there which I'm very tempted to fix up and pass off to you in hopes to be rid of the dreaded white pixel matte that befouls your canvas. May I be of service in that regard?

Cool. Cool. That won't change my stance on keeping an eye on the first mate says and does in regards to the ship. If it helps, I still trust your decision making for the most part.

Very good. I look forward to this.

I can say that, from the VGMdb side, we've (or at least I have) had the exact same concerns as you about the shared hosting. I'm encouraged to see that any rifts we have can mostly be solved by communication and openness. Actually, I'd prefer the whole monthly balance sheet -- income and expenses -- to be public, especially since people are asked to donate from time to time. But I've never seen this done on a private site, so there's probably some reason.

About the concert hall: if GFF really doesn't want it anymore, I would envision a move to .com as a temporary solution, and think that the CH regulars need to pick up the ball and run with it. Perhaps a few of them could obtain some hosting and start their own site. But at this point, I don't think anyone there even knows that the move is coming, so someone needs to start this conversation in CH.

They've never bothered to help us or have a say in the past - why start now? Inform the zombie droves when theres a decision made and when its going to be acted on; anything beyond that is just going to give them a false sense of entitlement.

Heh, see that's why none of the regulars give a fuck about ditching them. They're so fucking insular, we could move the entire subforum to a new url and but for their bookmarks not working, none of the regulars there would even notice. We're a place that prides itself on it's sense of community and they simply aren't a part of it.

Not true. In spite of LeHah's consistent belligerent comments, I've been following the thread closely and have been considering the suggestions (not that I can do much about it, but I'm planning to motivate some action that will help server-wise).

Regarding attachments in CH, Sass is mostly right - hardly anyone in the CH is aware of the running costs of the server and this has not been communicated properly to CH members previously or now. The animosity hasn't helped either. CH people by nature tend to follow rules quite deliberately so I'm sure if someone politely asked them to stop using attachments a lot of server space can be freed up. Heck, I even deleted my 4MB of attachments after reading this thread.

Also, since many new members come through the CH they're not really aware of the situation of GFF as compared to the regulars. The immediate task then (which has long been overdue) is a big sticky regarding server costs and alternatives to attachments.

Mersenne, even you must admit that your ability to read threads outside your preferred subforum is very much an exception to the rule. Board Support is essentially the lobby corkboard of the apartment building that is GFF, and it says a lot about a tenant that doesn't read the corkboard and needs to have every little piece of news tacked to his front door instead.

Moreover, even if every single person frequenting CH were to abruptly stop using attachments this very instant, it would not begin to resolve the legal questions — which are, in the long term, much more pressing. GFF could surely pony up another $30 a month if it had to (although much of this is out of a desire not to have to). Finding an entirely new host or (god forbid) fending off a lawsuit is another matter.

But that situation only arises if a split occurs - which would greatly expose those hidden file-sharing dens (MY STUFF and CH).

"That situation" already almost occurred. If it happens again, 3 websites go down unless CH and My Stuff move to gamingforce.com. Admins have already said that they would try to keep you guys covered up, so it's less of a big deal than you think.

So what I'm reading here is: Please don't take away our camouflage.

Is this incorrect?

It seems fairly evident from the thousands of people who just show up to leech from Concert Hall that the camouflage doesn't work that well. They wouldn't be signing up if wasn't obviously there. It's not like the file sharing that goes on here is a carefully guarded secret.

Just throwing this out there, but classical music and soundtracks are at the very, very bottom of the RIAA's problem child list.

Yet obviously somebody had a problem, or we wouldn't have got the letter that we already did.

(We're not going to get an answer as to what that letter was for, are we)

As SS has put forth, and two of GFF's foremost music experts quickly dashed, there is a potential in asking the movers and shakers of CH and My Stuff on how to better carry themselves after the eventual separation.

While I am a lousy example of such a person, having migrated from CH to GFF a while back, there are a few that would do very well to organize this on their end. Mersenne, despite my general misgivings, has been relatively keen on things as of late and would be one such candidate, and the irc concerthallers, the few of them that are there, are another set, going back and forth between one community and the other.

I really hope that it doesn't end up with someone with absolutely no vested interest to take control of something they would care little about.

It was for some sort of Superman soundtrack. More My Stuff than Concert Hall.

Please excuse my lowly interjection, but from what I can tell, no one who is part of Gamingforce Forums PROPER gives two shits about CH and all that shit.

I'm perplexed as to why they're even included on our boards. Unload them. It's only logical. Nothing against them, but they've holed up here and need to go blossom into their own community elsewhere. Gamingforce is neither the place for them, nor should we pay their way. (when I say "we," I mean whoever is paying for them under the GFF banner)

Which is why the attachment options (in my opinion) should be shut off for Gamingforce.org if the forums intend on staying here. I don't think anyone is going to argue over that one.

Meanwhile, GFF has become second? third? fiddle to VGMdb and SD. SD won't be much of a strain I would imagine (since they seem to have minimal activity), and I don't even know why Naka would offer to split the costs even on that one.

I know next to nothing about VGMdb so I can't really comment. I would just hope that our community, which has thrived for so long and (as I understand it) has begot these new projects would stand tall and get priorities.

I can't imagine GFF being a huge financial strain when you remove CH and My Stuff. And those guys (no offense) should have packed up and left a long time ago.

Now, I hope I haven't completely misunderstood the entire thread. I probably have. I've been watching closely, though. I'm hoping I haven't completely missed the mark.

If this is strictly a money problem, and doing so would be better for the whole board, then I’m sure most Concert Hall members would agree with me that doing away with attachments would be completely fine. I have no problem really hosting any files I share on MU, RS or similar services. If the administrators wished I’m sure they could always just disable the attachments in the Concert Hall and other high-bandwidth areas while still leaving the option open to the other areas of the board. That way none of the members from other areas of the board would be inconvenienced.

If however the main problem is really that of worrying about possible future problems caused by copyright infringement, then perhaps splitting the Concert Hall section off entirely would be the best course of action. As much as I would like to think it wouldn’t be the case, if file sharing were to be prohibited, then I can’t really see many of the CH members sticking around and just chatting. I do however agree with the mentioned statements earlier, that the CH would become an easy target for copyright holders to take down if it was suddenly taken from the shadows, so splitting it off would probably be the same as deleting it outright.

That being said, I must say I feel a little conflicted over this whole matter.

On one hand, if at all possible I would love to have the Concert hall or at least some iteration of it remain on this server. Even if all attachments and sharing were to be prohibited I would still like an area on this forum to discuss music with others. True, I suppose if worse came to worse I could probably find similar music discussion communities on other websites, but I would still love the Concert Hall to remain part of this board. I may be a minority amongst concert hall members here, but I for one do occasionally enjoy browsing through other sections of this board, even though I’m usually met with hostility and usually get disses for just about anything I say. If the forums were split though, I would probably end up just focusing on the new forum at the expense of browsing this one anymore – or perhaps vice versa.

On the other hand, I have always felt a little awkward when trying to participate in other areas of this board, and I can sort of in a way understand peoples’ hostility towards CH members who never contribute outside their sub-forum. I’ve also always felt the concert hall never really fit the “gamingforce image” either. It is really almost like night and day between most of the concert hall members and members from the rest of the board…

I really hope some sort of mutually beneficial conclusion can be reached on this matter…

It's hardly a surprise if people don't wish to be a part of this community when many of the "regulars" behave with such shoddy manners as the ones you're displaying here, Shin.

That said, considering how diverse GFF is in terms of the hobby's and interests we cater to, it's hardly surprising if someone joins here because he or she has heard about the Concert Hall or My Stuff. And why must you be interested in the entire forums to browse a singular forum which caters to your interests, such as CH or My Stuff? It's actually quite humorous how the people complaining about these so-called "leechers" are almost always users who seldom, or never, actually browse the forums in question. If the "leechers" were such a problem don't you think they would be dealt with accordingly by those who do [and believe me, those who are problematic are dealt with].

And as I previously stated, the attachment situation in CH should have been dealt with the minute it became a problem. One-click file hosting sites have been around for a few years now...

Well this is certainly a surprising turn of events.

I don't really care if people don't wish to become a part of the community because we don't have CH or My Stuff. Those are undesirables anyway. Any member worth a damn in the past year on my radar hasn't come from either of those places.

It's also not the people that are problematic, it's the content of the forums. Most of the regulars (and thusly, the people who run this place in the end), don't go to either of those forums, and most of the regulars to those specific forums could easily get together and create a new community for themselves if they so wanted. We're just being kind of doing it for them, from my point of view, because they pose a significant threat to the boards with actual content, and not just illegal files.


Shin edit: Sorry, editted the wrong post. All I did was trimmed down Seanne's quote a bit

Yes, on that note, there hasn't been any new member worth a damn in the past year.

Most of the regulars on this forum used to be people who joined for filez in the first place, so the membership has been diminishing ever since the closing of GFA. I don't know what incentive people even have to join nowadays (especially if you were to take away the last of the original GFF, the VGM servers); playing Dungeons & Dragons I guess.

The thing is Seanne, I can be as rude as I like about the CHetards here in Board Support, safe in the knowledge that no more than two of them will ever read it and those two are probably already convinced I'm a boorish barbarian who listens all kinds of devil music and doubtless doesn't even own a harpsichord.

Yes, I'm being uncomplimentary about them but I hope you're not suggesting that Concert Hall types would be more outgoing if the rest of us didn't swear quite so much. My Stuff is not in the same league of unpopularity by any means. Most of us here will have had some interaction with My Stuff and the regulars there are not an insular community of their own, they interact with the rest of us perfectly normally and although some don't venture out often, they don't get all upset when someone gently pokes fun at them. Also, all the stuff in there is hosted off-site, all My Stuff is is a glorified links board and as such, the drain on the server is minimal. The only threat to the rest of us from My Stuff is the potential for a law suit fucking us all over next time LeHah makes some moves to maintain the exclusivity of some album he paid far too much for.

Think of it like this; Gamingforce is a small town and one side of town is a traveller camp (My Stuff). They're a bit unruly and make a bit of mess and don't pay to use the land but then they also aren't a drain on the town's resources particularly and they sell good drugs which occasionally, people from in town like to buy. On the other side of town is a gated community (CH), inhabited entirely be paedophiles who spend all day passing kiddie-porn around amongst themselves. They use the streetlighting and police paid for out of the council tax budget but they're all on long-term benefits so don't pay any council tax themselves. They have their own private security teams who enforce their own interpretation of the laws of the town and they never leave their compound.

For a long time, the town has existed as is. People bought drugs from the pikeys and sometimes, the naughtier kids would climb over the wall into the gated community for a game of footy on their nice park, until they were chased off by the security teams. Now though, the two neighbouring towns in the district are expanding and need a bit more space. On top of that, a disgruntled dealer from in the town has called the feds and sold out the pikeys.

The townsfolk are concerned that the expansion plans of the other towns might mean their own town amenities will suffer and as such, they look to the biggest drain, the gated community full of people who don't contribute to the town as a whole. As an added bonus, the removal of a large nonce-ring will mean less hassle from the feds if they ever show up. At the same time, a decision is made that maybe we ought to move on the travellers too because although we don't really mind them and they don't have much of an impact on the tax bill, it's not like we have that much to do with them and they are breaking the law after all.

Given the choice of higher taxes or getting rid of all the undesireables, the paedos and the pikeys, it's understandable that most towsfolk would choose to lose the outsiders en masse, no?

What I'm getting at is that Concert Hall is seen by a lot of people here as a non-contributing group who go out of their way to remain distant from the rest of us. Whilst at the same time there's a lot of My Stuff-ers who we have no interaction with, they don't go out of their way to remain aloof, they operate on the same rule set as the rest of us and they don't use up a huge amount of server space to conduct their illegal activity. If the server was based in Finland or wherever Pirate Bay are to avoid getting in trouble for posting links to illegal stuff, My Stuff wouldn't even have come up in these discussions. What we're primarily worried about is Concert Hall but the simple fact is, most of the regulars there, people who probably visit this place as much as I do, won't even be aware fo the problem, let alone the suggested moves to fix it, unless a very explicit message is posted in their little forum telling them.

Gamingforce is a community and through their specialised interests, general lack of a sense of humour and fear of social interaction outside of choir practice, the CHetards simply aren't a part of that community and as such, not many people who are a part of the community would be too sad to see them go. The rare breed of CH poster who does occasionally post elsewhere will continue to do so after a split, especially if we have inter-forum links clearly labelled and available.

For most of us, it's a win-win situation. The only real issues raised in this thread are that some people are worried that Gamingforce isn't self-supporting and are concerned that we're playing second fiddle to SD and VGMdb, which has pretty much been shown to be untrue because deep down, Miles still loves us more than them.

Thud. You might notice if you were around or still a member worth a damn. Instead you've fallen off as much as anyone and just sort of wander around failing at being sarcastic.

Condescend a little more. I can still make out some of your face through the smug.

That being said, I've never had an issue with CH existing, or MyStuff. I use MyStuff fairly regularly, and CH I don't go to enough to care.

Ah, yes, Thud, the person who won the best newbie award with 35 votes, because there was literally no one else to vote for. Point taken.

You might think I'm an asshole, but honestly I'm not saying this to be condescending, it's just the truth. I understand that it's not anyone's personal responsibility to create attractions for drawing in new members, but at least we could not try to actively get rid of them (I'm mostly talking about My Stuff; I don't care about Concert Hall one way or the other).

Says the guy who comes here to do nothing but bootleg. Clever.

Not to beat my own drum but its a sure sign of how little you bother with the rest of us if you're not in on the RIAA joke already. I don't think Japanese WWII vets have been hiding in caves for as long as you weirdos have. If anything should be done, perhaps we should rename "Concert Hall" to "Malignant Tumors", considering just how much good the people who populate it do for the rest of GFF.

All of these analogies seem kind of silly and not really accurate.

The Concert Hall was created because people here were interested in classical music and performance. It grew on its own over the years because it was of value. I know we had crossover members back then (Face, Minion, someone else whose name I can't remember) who have since left. So it's not some group of gypsies that took up residence out of nowhere. We fostered it when we had an interest in doing so.

So, I don't the level of rage against CH (unless this is some backhanded overreaction to Minion.) They just need a gentle push to move off on their own, and I think they'll be fine.

Also, come on Shin. You need to boil your thoughts down to something more concise and readable, especially for us Americans.

The level of rage is based on that they should've been pushed off a long time ago, since they give back nothing to the larger community. Yes, they exist as a single function on a board with many other subforums - yet we don't have the same overwhelming numbers of giant bags of dickholes in Video Gaming or Community Commons, do we?

People show up simply to "get what they want" and ignore the rest of the forum - and these are the kind of people you want to stick up for, SS? I understand that theres some rose-colored glasses involved with it on your end but the truth is - can you name one person from CH who isn't a staff member and has done anything worth mentioning on GFF? Even a really funny journal post or something?

Where does it say that someone has to make a contribution worthy of Lehah's seal of approval in order to not be considered a dickhole around here?

These are the following things that's bothering me a bit, regarding the future plans.

1. VGMDB is accounting for 44% of the available server space. I don't know how much room there is to expand the database (that is to say, how many video game soundtracks and doujin albums remain uncatalogued), but suppose it grows to 35 GB? 45 GB? Will there be future cutbacks here, or perhaps forum prunings? Or will this definitely be where the line is drawn?

In a nutshell, I am asking how much maximum space would be allocated for the Gamingforce Forums.

2. What are the current hosting plans for the split-off CH/MS boards? Will they be hosted on a Dreamhost account?

If anyone really wanted to be a smart guy they'd say look at the donation list and not counting you top three psychos, stack up to see who answered the call when Miles asked for it when we first got this place running.

I don't see a lot of CH members on that list, do you? I'm sure if he made the call again it'd be a chunk of the regulars around here footing the bill, not the CH people.

Also I read all of Shins post and I'm American. Why you gotta disrespect, Squirrel.

Heh heh. Essentially what I'm saying is that there's a feeling amongst certain regular members of what we'd probably call the wider community here who are resentful that their forums are threatened because of the actions of a group of people who make no effort to become part of that community.

I don't believe anyone has an issue with CHetards sticking to their own discussions in their own sub-forum really. The issue is that space on teh server is apparently at a premium now and there's an increased risk of the whole place getting taken down in a legal battle. Ignoring VGMdb and SD, this is due to a massive attachment load from CH and illegal filesharing in CH and My Stuff.

The fact that CH types as a rule are so aloof and don't engage in conversation outside their forum makes it easier for the rest of us to see them as expendable.

What people are saying is that if CH was more than just a leech magnet on one hand and a bunch of hawty closet cases on the other, we'd be more inclined to think of ways to work round the problem but as it is, they're perceived as a drain on the place and removing them is the simplest solution to the problems we have.

What Zerg raised is the other issue and is the same thing Acer was worried about. What reassurance do we have that when VGMdb gets even bigger, we won't be forced to prune something else off Gamingforce, the worry being that next time it might be something we care about. Blah has pretty much allayed that fear though by assuring us that Miles is looking out for us and that you and him will listen to our concerns if we have any.

At this point we're all just standing around waving pitch-forks for the fun of it but I'd genuinely like to see some input from some CH regs in here before we cut them loose and I'm trying to coax some of them out as we speak.

Shit, that ended up all long and wordy again. Sorry Squirrel, I think I'm just naturally obtuse.

Our card catalog site (VGMdb) has about 40,000 scans now, and that number is growing steadilly. Eventually we will have to upgrade our plan to get more space. Based on current trends, VGMdb is going to consume the lion's share of space and maybe BW no matter what, and that's something we'll have to come to terms with. We've been toying with the idea of putting up some kinds of retailer purchase links on some of the albums to help recoup some of the costs, but that's still in the idea stage.

You do have links up telling people to come and join this message board, right? ;)

I assume in the same place where it says people from CH are worthy of any form of respect.

I have no issue with CH and MyStuff purely because they're entirely ignorable, but at the same time they are an isolated community nestling within the large one. I agree that if attachments are taking up a lot of space then they're a natural start point for cutting back, but to the extent of removing forums? Is that entirely necessary?

And if there are space restrictions that all three sites must fall into, why is it falling to GFF to make cutbacks? If VGMdb is using up the lion's share of the space, then why is the onus not on VGMdb to start imposting limitations?

Much like Acer (and plenty of others here) I'm willing to throw donations down to support GFF, but I'll confess I forget sometimes and so a prod from time to time wouldn't be the worst thing.

Well, I still haven't done a bona fide links page, but I do give the GFF link with a kind of shout out.

About Us - VGMdb

Dang, it looks like I'm just as wordy as Shin.

Maybe you could add a link to us in your Off-topic discussion forum. I bet that'd increase our flow of new members, even if they were all tragic VGM nerds. I mean, if we're sharing a server it might be nice to share our members too...

I'm not sure if this sentiment will resonate anyone else's view on the subject but I'll give it a go anyway.

I've been here for almost two years, and I may do more lurking than actual posting, but so far I've observed that most often the members of CH who actually come here for the discussions in the main part of the CH forum are the ones who tend to at least try and participate in discussions going on in the other parts of the board. Heck, I've even seen some of the regular non-CH members post in that part of the forum a number of times. I remember when I myself first joined this iteration of GFF it was because I remembered having read and participated in a few of the discussion topics in there many years back and I was curious to see if what it would look like today. I've also noticed that a certain number of the people who frequent that part of CH don't necessarily participate very much in the sheet music sharing part of it.

I have noticed that the incursions from both camps into the other have lessened a bit in the last few months, but nowhere near the point where there is absolutely no contact going on whatsoever, which is how some people seem to be seeing the situation. However, the Musician's Library (where all the sheet music trading is going on) is a whole other matter, and I do agree that that part of the boards is almost completely detached from the rest of what goes on here.

In any case, while I do agree that the massive sharing threads are the logical place to retrieve server space, I'm not sure that removing the discussion part of the CH would neccesarily be beneficial to the GFF community, as to me it still seems to have it's place within GFF as a whole.

What's more, the moving of the sharing part of the sub-forum might well alleviate tensions between the CH regulars and the rest of the community, as CH would no longer be that part of the board that absorbs server space disproportionately to the amount of regular members who benefit from its presence on the boards.

I'm going to remain here no matter what happens, but I would honestly be sad to see that part of the board go completely as to me it doesn't feel like it's out of place.

I admit that my past donations were mostly justified by the fact that the money was helping to support VGMdb. If people are worried about VGMdb getting more precedence than GFF, they should shut thy flaps and open thy wallets in support of GFF.

Except that Blah would prefer that we not donate, since hrrrrmmm hrnnnnnrn hmmmmmmm

Speaking of, according to Blah I like it in the rear.

Too bad. I'm donating $50 and these admins will take it

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/09...0/donation.png

Some clarifications I feel I should make:

Q. Are you going to prune other parts of GFF?
A. What else is there to prune, really? How much more space can we get by removing posts? Just to put it in perspective, every single post on GFF added together (all 650,000 of them) comes to merely 300 megabytes. The drive space consumed by text is downright negligible.

Q. But what happens when we run out of space again due to VGMdb?
A. We'll start paying the additional $30 a month to double our drive space to 100GB. Happily.

Q. What happens when that runs out?
A. With requirements of that magnitude we'll have to seriously consider third party storage. Removing GFF wouldn't solve anything.

Q. So why move the two forums instead of just moving the attachments off-site? The forums themselves aren't using much space, like you said.
A. To decrease our risk of legal liability. This also ensures the long-term survival of GFF and its fellow tenants on our current dedicated host. The two affected forums will be moved to cheaper shared hosting, which means there is a lot less at stake.

Another motive for this is the separation of disparate communities. There's the possibility that the migrant forums can have their own dedicated administration.

As much as most of us dislike The Concert Hall, Rychord has a point in that we could probably just move The Musician's Library in order to avoid legal ramifications.

However as Blah says it would give The Concert Hall a chance at their own community if the entire CH was moved. Hmmmm...

Whatever you say, GAY PERVERSE
 

Q. Where is Paikuhan?
A. ...

I'm sure Pai Q Han will come back someday. He's a good moderator.


"Jay Converse"? With a name like that you don't even need a nick, just roll it natural Max Biggs style

The thing is that there would be nothing stopping those who prefer to follow the sharing threads to the .com from starting their own discussion forums there if they are so inclined (in fact it might even be desirable, what with the whole camouflage issue and whatnot).

Another solution might be to incorporate a CH type sub-forum in the Creator's Cafe...?

He did close one of my threads.

That's not a bad idea, thanks Pang

Nobody's trying to "break up the community". Everybody will retain their membership on GFF.org after the split. If people decide, individually, not to ever USE their GFF.org account to post again — that's their choice, isn't it? I mean I'd be pretty annoyed if someone moved Laughs & Games to another board, but I'd just post in both places since I'm um what's it called. Interested in multiple things.

If you don't understand why that thread went off the rails then you weren't paying attention. It wouldn't be possible to say it to your face because nobody uses asterisks as completely inept self-censorship when speaking vocally.

As far as people being hateful to CH regulars when they pop their heads out, I only ever really see LeHah doing that. You can't draw conclusions from that crap; LeHah hates everybody.


v you're putting an awful lot of thought into an essentially unsustainable model, Bas

To be completely honest, I have no idea what the best kind of a camouflage would be when MS/CH eventually splits to the .com domain. Naming the split-off forums as something music-related generates a red flag to the record labels. We could make the split-off forums appear as a message board for a completely unrelated topic (ie gardening, pets, religion), though that would possibly require changing the forum skin or overall appearance of the board to outsiders. Several problems lie in taking this course of action, however:

1) What if people start signing up and are wanting to discuss these fake topics, unaware it's actually just a cover for MS/CH?
2) Would we want registration enabled or disabled? If enabled, how would it work? There's the option of having registrants activate their own accounts or to have administrators activate them instead, though the latter would create a substantial amount of work for us.
3) If registration is enabled - do we create any fake subforums/topics and have those show up for guests, or do we display a notice for guests saying something like "You must be registered to view these boards"?


There's also the option of copying posts/threads from the non-MS/CH areas of Gamingforce and integrate that into the split, though would that really work in the long run, seeing as we're still a fairly active community? Would those higher powers-that-be wonder why there's two "Gamingforce" message boards, with one of them appearing inactive (on the outside)?

Someone probably has better ideas than I do, so I'd like to hear them, if any.

Basil, no offense, but you're attempting to duplicate what occurred here as a happy accident, and you're justifying the excisement of the community in the process. If you really need a camouflage to exist then you're better off not screwing up another community that you're using for that camouflage.

Going to some other forum and attempting to do the same thing again is a bad idea waiting to happen. The odds of you successfully finding another topic or whatever to hide behind and get active posts in is pretty damn small, unless there's a hidden shared hobby the guys have in there that no one knows about.

When you get kicked out of the house because the cops might, just might, find your weed stash and Mom and Dad are tired of worrying about it, the first thing you think about is typically "How can I get a roof over my head," not "Where is the new hiding spot for my weed." Mom and Dad are even helping you find a new house. "Sure but I can't hide my weed in this house they're giving me! This sucks and YOU SUCK." is the reaction I'm seeing.

Alternatively...

Originally I'd planned to say something about not seeing a real need for the split to begin with. One notice in all the years that My Stuff and CH have been up and running seems pretty negligible, and it seems strange to move a whole forum of people away from the main community even if they don't interact with it much. Granted, I also underestimated the absurdity of their victim complexes until seeing the responses Shin's attempts at diplomacy have received. Personally, I don't see forums. People tell me I don't post in the Concert Hall and I believe them.

That's all changed now though, because GARDENFORCE FUCK YEAH.

Congratulations on disproving your own victimization. Being called names around here is pretty standard, and has little or nothing to do with you spending most of your time in CH.

Tritoch,

I know being called names is standard practice, hence I ended with "After all, if CH disappears, who are you all going to complain about and call names--each other? Oh wait, you do that too!" --this was my (poor) attempt at a joke.

I don't feel like a "victim" when strangers online call me names, etc.--it says more about them than it does about me.

For the record, I promised to defend any Concert Hallers who posted in here from unwarranted abuse. I never promised to defend them if they made a complete tit of themselves.

This was such a civilised discussion yesterday too. :(

Yeah, this went to hell in a hand-basket pretty damn quickly by the looks of things. Though the moment someone takes Mo0 at all seriously is always a sign things are heading down a bad road.

Nonsense aside, I want to say thanks to Blah: cheers dude, you answered my questions from before, so thanks for that. Appreciated, and cleared up a few things I was unsure about.

That's not to say we can't learn from this though.

Those of us who post all over the boards know this is a very silly place at times, as evidenced by the banner and name changes. We find that kind of thing funny and it's one of the reasons this place never gets stale or boring.

The Concert Hall types are largely unaware of goings on outside their little section of the boards and for the most part this is fine, they have no need to venture out so not getting everyone else's sense of humour is no problem.

The problems occur when they do need to venture out, either because of an April Fools prank they don't get or because something pretty serious like the entire forum being moved to a different site. Most of the CHetards are perfectly reasonable people I'm sure who are capable of delivering or understanding rational debate but sadly, the ones who choose to come out and express their views are often basically idiots with a huge victim complex; Mersenne, Gay Perverse, packrat and so on.

When they make fools of themselves, they get abused, as would any member who spouted the same sort of crap no matter where they usually posted. Because they see themselves aas intellectual martyrs or something though, they take it personally and assume that it's because we all hate them and all the other CHetards.

Although this is patently bollocks, they say it often enough for other, marginally more self-assured CH types to start believing it and this whole culture of there being no point even bothering with us because we all hate you arises.

What we really need to do is ban the idiots like Mersenne and Gay Perverse from this thread and the one in CH and try to get some opinions from the more reasonable and normal CH regulars.

I mean, we don't need to at all of course, it's Blah and Miles' server they can do what the fuck they want when they want but in the interest of doing something positive that benefits the maximum number of people, it makes sense to me to at least attempt to engage the affected parties.

At the end of the day though, if we really can't find any CH regulars who care enough about the place to engage in discussion about it's future then I guess it really doesn't matter what happens to it and you might as well just delete it Blah.

Additional Spam:
In some form of probably hopeless attempt to get this back on track, I've posted new announcements in both the main Concert Hall and the Musician's Library bit and changed the title of this thread back.

By the way, whoever's put the word filter on the full site name should probably make an exception for links, since it's breaking internal links. For instance, a link to this thread...

http://www.gamingforce.org/forums/bo...tml#post682013

First as a CH-regular, I must admit CH has brought about enormous benefits to me as a music student, whether through the vast amount of recordings or your not-so-regular sheet music or even books on piano pedagogy(which I treasure dearly).

Yes, CH has been instrumental in developing me, in some way or another.
Sure, I'd definitely miss CH if its down, and I think I would (as would all other CH-ers) miss the potential it possesses.

CH is a channel for (classical) music lovers to explore and delve into new realms very conveniently, as compared to if you would to gather all the various data(scores, recordings..) yourself.

I agree, CH is pretty desolate, but I think there at at least ten to maybe twenty regulars who share stuff and post and discuss music occasionally. And believe me, as a music student, this opens up another dimension for me, as opposed to sticking to one way direct input from my various teachers. The various recordings uploaded and traded between us helps a lot, because they are pretty expensive you think about buying lots of them.

I wouldn't think all CH-ers have bad attitude. I think most of them(like me) are just a little more intrested in fiddling around with music and are pretty busy with work so its just bookmark in, check for new stuff, or upload new album bought, check for discussion threads on music, close IE/FireFox, chill out.

Personally, as a musician, I dare say I'd do anything to give a hoot about the world's current happenings and just seek refinement after refinement, and maybe one day perfection in art. But alas my current studies(non-musical) does not permit me to. So you see, I think music-inclined people could possibly be a little eccentric like this. Thus the non-venturing out of CH.

Regarding the space issue I think we would be all OK for deleting of attachments. And possibly banning attachments function or enforcing a rule to stop that. I think most of the stuffs are actually uploaded on filesharing websites like megaupload/rapidshare etc. now. Its only a few files here and there, but of course it snowballs. So deleting the attachments could work. Perhaps would this be a possible solution to the space problem? If not, why not?

I wouldn't like to see CH go down. Taken down now, or in future by some law firm. Its been part of me for quite some time already. I've been here since before the crash of the first forum. And I strongly believe it has many benefits to young upstart-musicians.

Agreed, but unless some admin steps up to do that if they feel is warranted and to promote actual discussion in this thread, I'm pruning the bullshit from here and tossing in everyone's favorite piss trough.

Enjoy it, PERVERTS.

We're also 6 pages into a "serious" discussion. It may be a good idea to give a quick pros-cons synposis / "Previously, On GFF" overvue on the whole subject.

I kinda did that in my new CH announcement... kinda.

That's not a terrible idea. But I'm gonna keep with the notion that at least illegal stuff of The Musician's Library would be moved because well we're still planning on moving My Stuff no matter what. Might as well take one other dubious facet over to the .com while we're at it. I wouldn't mind having a deloused version of The Concert Hall sticking around on the .org. I know you guys seem to follow your rules fairly well and new ones probably wouldn't be that big a deal especially if you know there's a certain den only three different characters in a url away.

See, I like this idea, what with being a classical musician who thinks that only talking with other classical musicians on classical music topics makes one a douchebag retard.

Dbin's suggestion isn't half bad. But if it were to happen, I'd like to see a change in the people who run that section. New blood is needed to enforce new policy.

I've been following the thread, and I really don't see what all the fuss is about. Moving the entire CH would amend to everyone's feeling here. Forum regs wouldn't take a second glance after CH is gone and vice versa. Let CH sort itself out at the .com domain. The ones who don't move will have no clue why CH disappeared one afternoon (aka. leechers) and no one will care.

The only problem I have with this is My Stuff. Why throw it on top of CH? The main difference between CH and MS is that there is actually DISCUSSION in CH, though I admit the vast majoring on both forums are primarily leechers (who are the real problem).

It's a little sad to see GFF split like we are, having ventured around every forum and even gffchat sometimes. But who am I so say.

Alright, so(after looking at this thread for some days and reading Shin's post in the CH)...

As a concert hall regular(well, I'd call myself a regular) I wouldn't like to see the whole Concert Hall gone/moved/deleted. I'd be fine, though, with the removal of the musicians library in order to have more space...
Sure, it's convenient to have the sheet music threads, but they aren't necessary and they aren't the reason why I continue coming to gamingforce(even if I first came here because of FF7 piano sheet music).


Also, I think Dbin's post said what I wanted to say(and more) better than how I said it.

Just a note to Blah and anyone else. I'm transferring gamingforce.com from Answerable to NameSecure (my regular domain registrar). This should occur over the next couple weeks. I don't anticipate much downtime, but I'm sure there will be some. I mainly wanted to do this now before increased activity comes to gamingforce.com.

I'd like to second the sentiment expressed by others before (Rychord and Dbin IIRC). I understand if the trading forums have to go for space and legal reasons, but I'd love the discussion part of the Concert Hall (CH main board and Listening Room subforum) to be kept around.

Even though it hasn't been very active these days, it's been a part of GFF for a while, it does have quite a few well-established "crossover" members (Dull, Zergrinch, Nahual, Hito/Iago, wvlfpvp come to mind) and it's not really doing any harm. It has had some relatively successful community events, like the yearly composing competitions or the collective arrangement projects. Plus I always thought it was kind of cool for a general purpose board like ours to have a section to discuss the playing of an instrument, classical music and related topics.

Besides, it seems to me that most (not all) Musician's Library regulars don't care much for those discussion forums (much like they don't care about the rest of GFF), whereas several "actual" GFF members have already spoken up to keep them around. This ought to say something.

Needless to say, we have to differentiate between the Concert Hall per se and the Musician's Library. While the latter can be compared to My Stuff, the Concert Hall provides a lot of room for discussion, which a forum should be about anyway. And don't give me that "wow but wait a second, we're a VIDEOGAMES forum" shit - we even discuss fucking food issues.

So I guess the best idea is to keep the Concert Hall and move Musician's Library (which is taking a lot of server space) to some other place. Even those of you who seem to have some kind of personal problems with the Concert Hall and its members should realize that this is an acceptable compromise.

Of course I won't get many props for this idea since it seems to be more up-to-date to propose the total annihilation of the Concert Hall, but maybe the more mature of you can tell me what you think about it.

Just want to point out that getting sheet music is not as easy as it sounds. In many case even if you want it there is no way you can obtain it. The musician library has done a great job in the exchange of rare items. And people would reach out help by going to the local library to obtain item for scanning. It has great impact on musician around the world.

And I do think if CH is not undercovered anymore, it won't survive long.

However if the split is going to happen, i have no objection and no right to object.

After all i totally believe who pays for it should do whatever they think appropriate.

And yes reading this thread gives people the impression that most poeple in GFF hates CH people, even if that's not the case.

Conclusion: LeHah treats everyone equally.

The two main issues are space and legality, right?

As for space--there are other sites that offer sheet music, so why not let them look for it that way? Google can be your friend.

Legal issues--Most classical sheet music published before 1923 is in the public domain, so a nice Google search for the piece you want may actually lead you a free download.

Or, have a thread that provides a list of OTHER sheet music sites. There's a good chance that music can be found.

Just separate GFF from the sheet music that way.

From what I've seen a vast quantity of sheet music that is shared here is not actually in the public domain. Or there are a number of other copyright restrictions in play, such as publishers who transcribe the music, make a few minor edits, and then receive updated copyright control over that specific copy of said piece for another 75 years.
Sure Bach has been dead for about 250 years now, but good luck finding a scannable/scanned copy of his music published before 1923.

This whole matter of legal problems is a steaming load of dung, and is quite clearly a trumped up argument to whip up as much support as possible, for fear that the "community differences" and "out of space" arguments wouldn't be enough to convince people to go along with the plan to separate the forums.

We've had, what, one copyright problem throughout the entire lifetime of this forum, and that was for a Superman soundtrack?
We've even had Alistair Hinton come on to these forums for a while, harassing various members to stop posting sheets that his publishing company has put out; and yet here we are probably two years since without the slightest hint of legal action. Observing his zealous behavior, I would figure that if anyone would file a DMCA notice against GFF for sheet music sharing, it would be him.

I find it surprising that either so many of you are so stupid to think that there really is a looming legal danger, or are so cynical as to think that you must masquerade as one in hopes of convincing others to believe it.
The only thing that has changed that precipitated the need for this discussion is the shrinking amount of usable server space, which is very easily resolved and I believe would be an acceptable solution to all parties concerned.

Nonetheless, I don't really intend to influence any decisions that would be made regarding this matter. I just plead that those doing so would cut the crap.

So if I present supplementary arguments for moving the forums, I'm just spewing crap?

Only when said supplementary arguments are embarrassingly weak and really without precedent.

packrat, My Stuff and The Musician's Library are liabilities to the server we all reside on. They have to be moved. I can see The Concert Hall staying as long as it stays clean.

I don't think there's any need to further justify things to a person who thinks a DMCA notice from the service provider is a trivial matter.

It's just one notice! No sweat!

It just seems silly to hear people talking about the Musician's Library like a menacing cloud of legal doom.
I can understand My Stuff being a potent DMCA liability. The content of that section has often been popular and recent media, which is rigorously policed.
The Musician's Library, on the other hand, does not have nearly as much liability as most appear to be communicating here.

But I suppose I might have mistakenly (though quite easily) misconstrued their chatter to be exclusive to the Concert Hall considering that's generally been the focus of the last 7 pages.

In any case, I've read through the posts supporting the case for Concert Hall to stay put. That's fine with me. If the Music Library is preserved as an external link visible only to members in Concert Hall people might not even notice it's moved.

Point 1 of moving The Musician's Library
* it takes most of the forum attachments off of GFF and frees up space that the server needs

Point 2 of moving The Musician's Library
* it removes one obvious (albeit minor compared to My Stuff) liability to the server

Point 1 + Point 2 = Problem solved!

If you can't see (or are ignoring) this part of the issue, then you are a fucking idiot.



Can I request that any user who is arguing for it staying while ignoring this issue have their name changed to "Fucking Idiot?"

I know I'm anything but a regular (though a few faces may remember me from all 'dem years ago). But I've been mulling it over and I have to say moving Musician's Library and My Stuff is a good decision, given the situation, as long as those boards somehow remain sheltered. Hope someone has a specific workable idea, though, because the devil is in the details.

The irony of shunting aside the filesharing that used to be GFF's main attraction (Gamingforce Audio, anyone?) is a little thick. But, as has been mentioned before, it really isn't much of a draw anymore.

One problem with linking so subtly like this is that you may get a DMCA notice for Gamingforce.org anyway. If the CH/MS regulars don't notice the domain change, who's to say a DMCA-filer will notice the .org -> .com transition after clicking on that board.

However, the primary issue *is* diskspace. I understand if the possibility of an inept legal team is a little more than you care to worry about. :p

The transition is now complete.

Don't know enough about the backend of the forum operation, but if we were to go this way, would it be possible / reasonable to set up some kind of automated diff -> merge operation that ran at a regular interval. Maybe once a day or half-day? Would then seem externally like there was regular participation. Seems like there has already been some opposition to this route, however.
One option here, that I've seen on several corporate sites trying to maintain family friendliness, is too announce with an interrupt page that the viewer is leaving X site and heading to a site where the content is not controlled by them. "Do you still want to go?" This would at least fix the problem of unobservant industry folks.

If it went that way, perhaps the other end could then be a very small operation liberally laden with "No robots" /robots.txt files so that it wouldn't get listed? On the crazy side, could even do a rotating name or something similar so that bookmarks wouldn't work.

Anyhow, generally agree the filesharing does need to at least be well hidden, even if it was a good member draw.

That's a nice simple idea. :)
It would also help people understand why they have to log in again to access those boards. That is, unless member & session data can be shared across websites' forums. I wonder, can that be done?

Indeed. Another easy thing to do is have the Gamingforce.com root display nothing but a blank or placeholder page. Make it so that someone has to have access to a Gamingforce.org account to be able to see any way to access the .com boards (unless they know the exact URL of the .com forums obviously), which leaves them just as protected as they are now. And even if someone knows the exact .com board URL, it could display just a login page for guests, not a forum listing or anything.

But, hell. Those who are actually working on it could already be way ahead of our thought-play.