New Wrong Planet

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Given that the site is falling to pieces with no sign of an update in the near future, I'm curious as to what people think about my proposed solution...

Lock this version of the forum down and move it to a subdomain such as classic.wrongplanet.net for reference, while opening an entirely new forum to be used as the main site. Posts would still be saved on the classic site, but the new forum would require re-registering. Think of it as a fresh start.

What do you think?

I'd say the amount of cross-referencing back to the old site to refer to posts, effectively abandoned, would be unworkable. There would also be no way of continuing with open topics.

The ideal solution would be for the existing data to be migrated, intact, over to the new version of the forum software - and that, as far as I'm aware, is still the plan. There should be no reason to lock anything down.

New software rollouts often have a transition period where both the old and new software run concurrently. Can't see why it can't be done here.

Whatever threads are ongoing will have time to run thier course.

Since there are often 5 or more threads dedicated to the same topic researching past comments seems like a minor issue which the read only “classic Wrong Planet" should be enough to solve.

Everybody re registering is a good idea. There are endless accounts for people who have not posted in years. Some members have been stuck with a user name they created while drunk late one night, others are stuck with a name created to reflect a special interest which is no more, others put Aspie in their user name during the DSM 4 era when the word was a official diagnosis and had a positive/pride connotation and now they feel the colloquial term has an ableist or faker connotation.

Last edited by ASPartOfMe on 04 May 2014, 4:42 am, edited 2 times in total.

May I ask what is wrong with the site, and why we can't expect updates? Have I missed something?

The codebase is insanely old, and contains almost no re-usable code - It is horribly in-efficient, and as more users pound it, it slows down.

The only way to fix this, is to re-code the lot.

Some new software does - accounts, say, where there is one common data set used by the old and new versions, but I'm not sure this would work out too well here because there would be independent sets of dynamically changing conversations split between two sites.

Except for the new ones that were started while this was happening.

This site is largely "write-only" already, hence the repeated topics. Asking people to research on another site (and presumably quote none of it on the new one) will fare no better, and the new site will probably be just as "write-only" as the old one. Such is the nature of forums...

I don't think the site is that bad. It has annoying issues sometimes, but heck do you want to pay for the shiny new Rolls website? I can only imagine how expensive this is.

I think Cornflake should deliver us all martinis in a Brian suit. That would be my idea Wrong Planet.

Thash an exshellent idea... hic
*falls over*

toast

Here you are:

Someone would have to create a whole another forum and announce it here and have new members sign up there but I don't think alex would want them using the same name he uses here. It's been done before with another forum I used to go to. It was on bravenet and then the service shut that forum down and two people who posted on it decided to make their own forum and it was at Network54 and lot of us move there making the other forum dead after the owner had re created it. Then the admins decided to move to another server and shut the network54 forum down and only had it as archived. Then they moved again to another server doing the same with the other forum, archiving it again where it's only viewable, can't be posted on. Then they moved again and now reside on Simple Machines and the forum is way inactive because lot of the members moved from it and went somewhere else or moved on from the community. I have done that before and then came back.

Sometimes creating new forums to replace the current one kills the current one because most people are going to the new one and quit posting on the old one. I have seen it happen so I can understand why some admins would take an issue to their members creating a replacement forum and see it as stealing their members when they advertise it on there. Amy and Gareth of AFF always took a huge issue whenever a replacement forum was created when they would decide to shut down their forum for some reason and would go paranoid and throw false accusations at their members and mods and this time they decided to never re open it. I am sure some of you remember the drama about it last summer.

I was not suggesting that someone else create a forum and steal Alex's branding, but that an official replacement forum be created by Alex.



I'm not sure why you're bringing that up here, because AFF's closure was not the result of a replacement forum being created.

This is me.

Just so we know when we need to re-register I am ok with it.

I have been on various forums since 2000 and this site is by far the most annoying and time wasting with it's constant captchas, and error messages that have nothing to do with why I can't do what I want. As a person with executive function issues a lot of time is wasted when I have to in 2 or more steps do what should be done in one step.

I would hope Alex would do it or contract it out to capable people which I am sure we have here. I have my doubts any of this will happen though. In my opinion he is letting being in the TV industry inflate his ego. That was the impression I got when I saw him speak a month ago. I hope my impression is a product of my poor people reading skills. If a person starts a competing site I doubt he or she would have any access to the WP data anyway, by definition they must start with 0 members.

I would keep completely different sets of data running during the transition period. Another words what somebody writes on on the old WP does not change anything on the new WP and visa-versa. A pinned notice thread should be created in to every section During the transition (2 weeks?) when both sites a running you ask people not to start a new thread. After the transition period the old WP is read only.

The problem of numerous threads on the same topic indicates that most people are not researching WP. That means that while the problem of numerous threads on the same topic will likely continue on the new forum, the inconvenience of going to the old WP for researching won't be a problem for most members.

Any change will screw over somebody. I am sure we will have posters that are hyperfocused and will not read the notices and thus will get a negative surprise. If enough notice and time is given I would expect the transition to be a no more then a minor inconvenience for 90+% of the members. As much as we do not like change after 10 years as mentioned a fresh start is exactly what is needed.

I believe your reading of Alex is accurate.