Author Topic: A new beginning  (Read 16724 times)

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cp8759

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Re: A new beginning
« Reply #30 on: July 08, 2023, 11:30:37 am »
No idea what 1st amendment has to do with anything unless we're running a church.
It means that any requests to shut down / delete the forum due to someone finding it objectionable for whatever reason are likely to be ignored.

Their privacy policy...
You mean our privacy policy? It's the privacy policy of the offshore company that southpaw has set up to own the site, we just haven't got round to amending it yet. We're not going to be disclosing anything to anyone unless compelled to by a court order, which would require the order to be served on an offshore entity, which is likely to be more hassle than it's worth for most people who might seek disclosure.

I'm sure southpaw and I will get round to updating it at some point.

I would say the relatively little extra work to create a self hosted forum...
What's to stop a hosting provider equally deciding they don't want to host the site? At the end of the day unless we want to set up our own proprietary data centre, we're relying on a hosting provider of some sort or another.
I practice law in the Traffic Penalty Tribunal, London Tribunals, the First-tier tribunal for Scotland, and the Traffic Penalty Tribunal for Northern Ireland, but I am not a solicitor nor a barrister. Notwithstanding this, I voluntarily apply the cab rank rule. I am a member of the Society of Professional McKenzie Friends, my membership number is FM193.

Quote from: 'Gumph' date='Thu, 19 Jan 2023 - 10:23'
cp8759 is, indeed, a Wizard of the First Order

notmeatloaf

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Re: A new beginning
« Reply #31 on: July 09, 2023, 12:29:37 am »
I don't know if you're being deliberately unintelligent.

1st amendment is freedom of religion. Nothing to do with an online forum.

The privacy policy is currently up to the host CreateaForum. They are hosting it for free, they decide who has access to the data.

If you are paying for hosting you make regular backups of the database and move the database to a different provider if needed. With CreateaForum you pay $50 per backup with no guarantee the data is usable seeing as they use their own custom software.

https://support.createaforum.com/8/export-content/

Pepipoo heads down the same path as the old forums, if the owner gets hit by a bus/goes AWOL then the forum becomes a zombie forum.

Southpaw82

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Re: A new beginning
« Reply #32 on: July 09, 2023, 12:37:29 am »
I don't know if you're being deliberately unintelligent.

For a start, don’t gob off at admins. Hard no.

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1st amendment is freedom of religion. Nothing to do with an online forum.

The First Amendment (as an aside, I’ve seen the original, which is bigger that I imagined it would be):

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Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Clearly, it covers more than freedom of religion. In terms of online forums, it generally means that the government (of various stripes in America) won’t grant warrants against a forum because of what was said, unless it infringes the First Amendment (which is difficult).

This site is still in its early days. I’m happy to receive constructive advice and help. Frankly, I don’t understand much of what you’ve said (though I’ve also not taken any time to research it) - but if you can articulate a ‘better way’ in simple terms I’ll listen.
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andy_foster

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Re: A new beginning
« Reply #33 on: July 09, 2023, 12:41:23 am »
If you must "correct" someone and call them thick, in public, I would strongly suggest getting your facts straight first.

The First Amendemnt is *not* confined to religious freedom, it covers religion, freedom of speech, free press, assembly, and the right to **** to he government.

Or to put it another way, I don't know whether you are being deliberately unintelligent, or whether it just comes naturally.
I am responsible for the accuracy of the information I post, not your ability to comprehend it.
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cp8759

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Re: A new beginning
« Reply #34 on: July 09, 2023, 02:06:20 am »
1st amendment is freedom of religion. Nothing to do with an online forum.
You are very seriously misinformed, you might have found https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution but you need to scoll past "Freedom of religion" and read "Freedom of speech and of the press" and the rest of the page. There are some exceptions such as "fighting words" but everything that would be acceptable to us would be protected speech within the meaning of the US constitution, so there's little to no chance of the site being taken offline by the hosting provider. It's actually a fascinating area of law if you look into it.

But even if the hosting provider wants to shut down the site, the offshore company owns the domain name so we can easily re-point the domian somewhere else.

The privacy policy is currently up to the host CreateaForum. They are hosting it for free, they decide who has access to the data.
Actually as both the domain name and the SSL certificate have been paid for, there's a contractual relationship that is just as enforceable as the contractual relationship with any other hosting provider (you know, consideration, acceptance and all of that).

Pepipoo heads down the same path as the old forums, if the owner gets hit by a bus/goes AWOL then the forum becomes a zombie forum.
Surely that would be true no matter what the hosting solution is?

I'm also not quite sure why everyone is so obsessed with the database, the database of old posts isn't really worth much as most become outdated within a few weeks to a few months at most. The real value in the forum is the people it brings together and their collective knowledge.
I practice law in the Traffic Penalty Tribunal, London Tribunals, the First-tier tribunal for Scotland, and the Traffic Penalty Tribunal for Northern Ireland, but I am not a solicitor nor a barrister. Notwithstanding this, I voluntarily apply the cab rank rule. I am a member of the Society of Professional McKenzie Friends, my membership number is FM193.

Quote from: 'Gumph' date='Thu, 19 Jan 2023 - 10:23'
cp8759 is, indeed, a Wizard of the First Order
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sparxy

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Re: A new beginning
« Reply #35 on: July 09, 2023, 09:24:14 pm »
I'm also not quite sure why everyone is so obsessed with the database, the database of old posts isn't really worth much as most become outdated within a few weeks to a few months at most. The real value in the forum is the people it brings together and their collective knowledge.

Not only that, but the internet archive has archived a lot of it. Granted, it won't be easy to just "browse", but if pertinent information is later required to be found again, it's probably on there.

notmeatloaf

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Re: A new beginning
« Reply #36 on: July 09, 2023, 11:12:42 pm »
This site is still in its early days. I’m happy to receive constructive advice and help. Frankly, I don’t understand much of what you’ve said (though I’ve also not taken any time to research it) - but if you can articulate a ‘better way’ in simple terms I’ll listen.
On a normal forum you have control of the database and so if you need to move to a new host, new software or whatever you are able to do this.

With this setup, someone else controls the data which means it is practically very difficult if the host decides to stop offering the service, close the forum, even start charging high fees, because you need to pay them for the data of all the users, posts etc and very likely even if you did it's not going to be in a useful format you can use to move the forum somewhere else.

Additionally, at the moment CreateaForum are monetising all the links which means they are getting revenue which could instead go towards paying for the site costs.

Certainly CreateaForum could be a great company who will host the site without issue. But if they turn out not to be or just want to close the business, or someone takes it over with the aim to charge the existing client base then very likely the forum will need to start from scratch again or pay whatever they ask.

Hosting is cheap, and if the forum was hosted by FTLA then there would be no need to rely on one company. Multiple people could receive daily/weekly backups. You can also control what forum software you want to use and upgrade as and when for security or aesthetic reasons rather than being reliant on the current host.

tl;dr Data is valuable, and the current setup means we are locked into the current provider who may or may not continue to provide access on the same terms in future.

notmeatloaf

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Re: A new beginning
« Reply #37 on: July 09, 2023, 11:18:47 pm »
Actually as both the domain name and the SSL certificate have been paid for, there's a contractual relationship that is just as enforceable as the contractual relationship with any other hosting provider (you know, consideration, acceptance and all of that).
The domain name has been purchased from GoDaddy. From their website CaF don't sell domain names so presumably it was purchased seperately.

The SSL certificate is a free Let's Encrypt one so if you paid for that you've been ripped off.

cp8759

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Re: A new beginning
« Reply #38 on: July 09, 2023, 11:45:52 pm »
tl;dr Data is valuable, and the current setup means we are locked into the current provider who may or may not continue to provide access on the same terms in future.
I still don't know what "valuable" data you're talking about, see the comment by sparx above.
I practice law in the Traffic Penalty Tribunal, London Tribunals, the First-tier tribunal for Scotland, and the Traffic Penalty Tribunal for Northern Ireland, but I am not a solicitor nor a barrister. Notwithstanding this, I voluntarily apply the cab rank rule. I am a member of the Society of Professional McKenzie Friends, my membership number is FM193.

Quote from: 'Gumph' date='Thu, 19 Jan 2023 - 10:23'
cp8759 is, indeed, a Wizard of the First Order

sparxy

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Re: A new beginning
« Reply #39 on: July 10, 2023, 03:56:34 pm »
Quote
Hosting is cheap, and if the forum was hosted by FTLA then there would be no need to rely on one company. Multiple people could receive daily/weekly backups. You can also control what forum software you want to use and upgrade as and when for security or aesthetic reasons rather than being reliant on the current host

Whilst i'm all for self hosting stuff for control of the data, YOU are then responsible for the security of that service.

From managing many SMF/phpBB instances in the past, that is not an easy undertaking. Plus if you host on your own VPS, you need to ensure the security of that too. The benefit of using a service like CreateaForum is that they will manage that, so everyone else can get on with providing a useful service to everyone else.

Plus, it appears that if you fancy donating some money, you can buy perks for this forum direct from Createaforum (see the link in the footer), so in a way, supporting it.

Quote
The SSL certificate is a free Let's Encrypt one so if you paid for that you've been ripped off.

If it's been paid for, then they have probably paid for the service to apply it to their account. There was always historically a cost for having an SSL cert applied to a hosting account, in addition to the certificate itself.
« Last Edit: July 10, 2023, 03:59:39 pm by sparx »
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Used2BCabbyman

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Re: A new beginning
« Reply #40 on: July 10, 2023, 06:20:03 pm »
Thank you for the new beginning.  I gather that the problems with PPP started a few weeks ago; shows you how often I pop in!  I will try to improve.   ;)

andy_foster

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Re: A new beginning
« Reply #41 on: July 10, 2023, 06:36:36 pm »
If you are hosting the site, you have control over its security.
If you are not hosting the site, you have no control over its security.
I am responsible for the accuracy of the information I post, not your ability to comprehend it.

cp8759

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Re: A new beginning
« Reply #42 on: July 10, 2023, 07:45:37 pm »
What "secure" data is held on this public forum exactly?
I practice law in the Traffic Penalty Tribunal, London Tribunals, the First-tier tribunal for Scotland, and the Traffic Penalty Tribunal for Northern Ireland, but I am not a solicitor nor a barrister. Notwithstanding this, I voluntarily apply the cab rank rule. I am a member of the Society of Professional McKenzie Friends, my membership number is FM193.

Quote from: 'Gumph' date='Thu, 19 Jan 2023 - 10:23'
cp8759 is, indeed, a Wizard of the First Order

cp8759

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Re: A new beginning
« Reply #43 on: July 10, 2023, 08:22:08 pm »
So we had our first "incident" today, and were offline for a bit.

I raised a support ticket and we were back online within 43 minutes: https://support.createaforum.com/8/domain-not-working/new/?topicseen#new

Compared to the pepipoo hosting provider that previously didn't respond to Fredd for days at a time, I think that's a definite improvement.
I practice law in the Traffic Penalty Tribunal, London Tribunals, the First-tier tribunal for Scotland, and the Traffic Penalty Tribunal for Northern Ireland, but I am not a solicitor nor a barrister. Notwithstanding this, I voluntarily apply the cab rank rule. I am a member of the Society of Professional McKenzie Friends, my membership number is FM193.

Quote from: 'Gumph' date='Thu, 19 Jan 2023 - 10:23'
cp8759 is, indeed, a Wizard of the First Order

notmeatloaf

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Re: A new beginning
« Reply #44 on: July 11, 2023, 11:36:34 pm »
What "secure" data is held on this public forum exactly?
Well, people are asking for legal advice with their IP address. IP address is personal data under GDPR and bearing in mind police forces used to scrape the old Pepipoo (hence using images for police forces) no doubt they will eventually do the same here.

There's a reason why if you are taking legal advice from a solicitor you don't send an anonymous transcript of the conversation to the police to see if they can match it up with an existing case.

But if you think the data on this site has no value either to the admins or anyone else, whether it be the police or someone trying to make money that is your decision. CaF obviously see value in the data which is why they monetise the links.