World of Spectrum....

Y'know, other stuff, Sinclair related.
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emook
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Re: World of Spectrum....

Post by emook »

To be honest the new site sucks Lee. It looks awful and seems overly engineered for what it needs to be.

On mobile its even worse. Personally, I don't want to use that as my new WoS but then how would you know that as you never involved the community.

Hidden stuff on WoS? meh. When the FTP was open there was a lot of stuff that wasn't of interest. We we care about has already been taken care of

I'd much prefer have Einar involved in curating a new database, he's shown to be intellectually capable of taking on such a task.

Merry Christmas by the way.
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Re: World of Spectrum....

Post by 1024MAK »

Einar Saukas wrote: Thu Dec 28, 2017 2:41 pm We all share the same concerns about WoS decline and all the valuable information it contains.
Err, you have Martijn to thank for the decline of WoS. When he found true love, he more or less abandoned updates on WoS. And then after the site trundled on for a number of years, the server became unreliable, before finally failing completely.
Einar Saukas wrote: Thu Dec 28, 2017 2:41 pmThat's exactly what we are all working to prevent!
Funny, I thought your objective was simply to maintain a database.
Einar Saukas wrote: Thu Dec 28, 2017 2:41 pmRight now, there's a copy of all files from the original WoS archive preserved at Archive.org. The entire content of Martijn's Infoseek database is stored inside ZXDB, with corrections and improvements. Both SpectrumComputing and ZXInfo provide basically the same information you can find at the original WoS archive, except SpectrumComputing currently adopts a more strict policy to only distribute permitted files. Even so, it recently got green light to redistribute all games from Hewson, Zenobi and a few others, more will certainly follow. And SpectrumComputing already achieved the same "spirit" of the old WoS forum from its best days.
First off, it's rare that Archive.org captures all publicity available data. Second, it's even less likely to capture non-publicly available data, or get pages/data if there are broken links. So when did Archive.org crawl WoS? When WoS was not being maintained by Martijn or more recently? Please also note that Archive.org is just as venerable to server or hard drive failure as any other site. Earlier this year, I could not access a site archived on Archive.org due to a system failure. I don't know if this was a temporary failure or something else.
SpectrumComputing only has a fraction of copyright holders permissions compared to WoS. And in case anyone had not noticed, the World of Spectrum site is online and no less functional than when this forum came online. Lee has recently posted on WoS his plans for the near future.
Spoiler
Lee wrote:As we edge closer to the new site switching over, we are looking at additional features, storage and the future of WoS.

At the moment, the site takes up nearly 250gb - including the database size (approximately 2.5gb). This doesn't include books.

So, moving forward, we will be adding books next - these will be similar to the magazines pages, followed by software, hardware, and the rest of the old WoS data.

2018 will see us integrating the forums more into WoS. This means users will log onto WoS in general, and allow users to vote for software, comment on each database entry, as well as other goodies associated with personal accounts. We will also be integrating the majority of the forums into Infoseek. Add to this the language translations, text versions of scans and other work we are preparing for, there is a lot going on!

Finally, we are looking at lifting download restrictions as per old WoS.
So if anything, the WoS sites are expanding and improving. And the WoS forums look plenty active to me. The magazines section is looking really good now.
Einar Saukas wrote: Thu Dec 28, 2017 2:41 pmThe only part we still risk loosing, if WoS goes down, is all the forum history. Although WoS forum searches are still broken, thus in practice most of its content is already inaccessible anyway... Also there's a good chance Martijn kept a backup when he left, so if the forum disappears, we could simply contact him and ask for his approval to restore a read-only copy somewhere.
The search system is not perfect, granted. But it is possible to find lots of stuff. So it's not as useless as you imply. Any possible archive of the forum data will be just as hard to use unless a pre-search database is constructed, or you throw lots of resources at it.

The forum software that this forum is using also has problems with it's search function. As this forum is still relatively small, it's not likely to be a problem at the moment. But should it grow to anywhere near the size of WoS forums or StarDot forums or any similar sized forum, then various problems may appear with the search functionality.

Given what happened, I think it unlikely that Martijn will have anything other than a very old backup. So even if he does have such a thing, it will be of limited value.

If everyone really values the online archive and Sinclair computer internet presence, then you should support all web sites that are about the Sinclair computers (ZX80, ZX81, ZX Spectrum etc) including WoS.

The infighting that has happened in recent times helps no one. So let's see some community spirit and goodwill for the New Year ;-)

And there are a number of other Sinclair computers web sites that would love more support ;)

Mark
Last edited by 1024MAK on Thu Dec 28, 2017 7:09 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: World of Spectrum....

Post by Whacker »

Personally, myself like many of the casual spectrum users that have come back to the scene don't really care about promises of what may be uploaded in the future.. more what is available publically for all.

One BIG concern I have over WoS right now, and I see this echoed from many sources recently is that all resources, be it manuals, schematics, publisher history, etc. is that it's being placed in a manner where there is a notable sense of gatekeeper access, trying to wall off information into a closed environment where, if you're deemed unworthy / argue against the current viewpoint, a simple IP block or account ban will remove your visibility for information.

If the community is to thrive, we need to view all information that has been given to the scene as open to all, and maintain a unified opensource database. This is how creativity that leads to projects like the 'Next', Zaxxon's work and others occurs. By your own statement Lee you highlight that archive.org doesn't have a full backup of the site (albeit quiet a recent one), which worries me that there is a greater risk of lost documentation by hoarding between a few select individuals.

I loved the old WoS just as I love Spectrumcomputing now. It's not about how 'flashy' the site is or the bells and whistles that power the site in the background. It's about the ease of access and availability to all the information can be retrieved, it doesn't matter who has the biggest archive of data or how high res the images are. It's about enabling likeminded people to connect and collaborate ideas, build upon them in a open discussion and take the aging machine into another decade.

The moment any site becomes about one person's ego controlling the way it moves forward, the sites days are numbered (which is clear from the amount of users pulling backups)..
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Re: World of Spectrum....

Post by 1024MAK »

Whacker wrote: Thu Dec 28, 2017 7:06 pmOne BIG concern I have over WoS right now, and I see this echoed from many sources recently is that all resources, be it manuals, schematics, publisher history, etc. is that it's being placed in a manner where there is a notable sense of gatekeeper access, trying to wall off information into a closed environment where, if you're deemed unworthy / argue against the current viewpoint, a simple IP block or account ban will remove your visibility for information.
What gatekeeper access are you on about?

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Re: World of Spectrum....

Post by balford »

I presume Whacker's talking about the requirement for individual API keys for programmatic access to WoS resources.
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Re: World of Spectrum....

Post by Whacker »

permanent site logins to access all material,m (API keys), and of course IP banning is a good one...

I registered late november to find my IP was blocked 24hrs after (without a first post made) to the live.worldofspectrum.co.uk subdomain, one that's still inforce as of today. Pity really..

Of course if this is just a server hiccup, and nothing to do with my association to a Mr Andrews or Mr Cropper then I would withdraw my concerns...
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Re: World of Spectrum....

Post by fogartylee »

Lovely to see peoples opinions here.

Just for clarity, when I put the mags back on, I was slated because the page load time was too long with an issue being an average of 70mb. So, I reduced the thumbnails and made browsing quicker and easier. On SC, the thumbnails are actually the full size images so still 70mb page size. I see no complaints about that.

But for further clarity, I also offered to write the javascript needed to access the WoS magazines API and display the thumbnails correctly, and ultimately by default have access to the hi-res pages without needing any additional work. Strangely that offer was ignored by the team here with no explanation. A hell of a lot of work has gone into the mags as they were never initially indexed, and there were pages missing, incorrect, etc - that has all been done (I do know there are still some problems we are looking at)

And for those that don't like how the new site looks? That's the whole point of the data and files being accessible to everyone. If you don't like the site, use the API and create your own!
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Re: World of Spectrum....

Post by balford »

It is nice to see people's opinions here, and even nicer that people are allowed to express them freely ;)
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Re: World of Spectrum....

Post by fogartylee »

Whacker wrote: Thu Dec 28, 2017 7:23 pm permanent site logins to access all material,m (API keys), and of course IP banning is a good one...

I registered late november to find my IP was blocked 24hrs after (without a first post made) to the live.worldofspectrum.co.uk subdomain, one that's still inforce as of today. Pity really..

Of course if this is just a server hiccup, and nothing to do with my association to a Mr Andrews or Mr Cropper then I would withdraw my concerns...
There is a bug in the anti-leeching script. Nobody is banned by IP unless they leech (and the bug will be fixed this evening).

Where have you got the idea you need a site login to access data? The forums are separate entirely to the rest of the site, so there's no way you've registered on the "live" domain because no option exists.
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Re: World of Spectrum....

Post by Mike Davies »

Einar Saukas wrote: Thu Dec 28, 2017 2:41 pm The only part we still risk loosing, if WoS goes down, is all the forum history.
I have that covered: the whole publicly-visible forum as an archive of JSON documents. If WoS does then disappear, we can curate the useful information out of it and make it Google-searchable.
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Re: World of Spectrum....

Post by R-Tape »

fogartylee wrote: Thu Dec 28, 2017 7:26 pm But for further clarity, I also offered to write the javascript needed to access the WoS magazines API and display the thumbnails correctly, and ultimately by default have access to the hi-res pages without needing any additional work. Strangely that offer was ignored by the team here with no explanation.
I had a feeling you'd be itching to publicly mention this.

It's not that strange, you haven't exactly been receptive to SC or ZXDB over at WoS (the SC thread you locked for no good reason still has the padlock on it by the way).

I gave my opinion on this to Peter and Ricardo - I didn't want to work with you. They had site specific reasons why, we're still working on magazines, and basically we wanted to go our own way. I don't know if Peter replied or not (he's not around tonight) but he probably should have. If you wrote to me my answer would have been 'thanks but no thanks'.

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Re: World of Spectrum....

Post by Whacker »

fogartylee wrote: Thu Dec 28, 2017 7:30 pm
Whacker wrote: Thu Dec 28, 2017 7:23 pm permanent site logins to access all material,m (API keys), and of course IP banning is a good one...

I registered late november to find my IP was blocked 24hrs after (without a first post made) to the live.worldofspectrum.co.uk subdomain, one that's still inforce as of today. Pity really..

Of course if this is just a server hiccup, and nothing to do with my association to a Mr Andrews or Mr Cropper then I would withdraw my concerns...
There is a bug in the anti-leeching script. Nobody is banned by IP unless they leech (and the bug will be fixed this evening).

Where have you got the idea you need a site login to access data? The forums are separate entirely to the rest of the site, so there's no way you've registered on the "live" domain because no option exists.
I'll take that then that from midnight tonight, I'll be able to see live.worldofspectrum.org if I type it in my browser (oddly typing in www.creativespectrum.co.uk performs the same result too.....)
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Re: World of Spectrum....

Post by fogartylee »

I'm not even sure if you're being serious now.
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Re: World of Spectrum....

Post by PeterJ »

Evening all,

I don't use Facebook Messenger much, but can confirm before Christmas I got a message from Lee offering our site an API key. I don't recall any offers of development though, but can go back and check if needed. I recall thanking Lee for the offer, and said I would check with the development team. As Dave says, the developers discussed it and we decided not to use the API. I had it on my list to reply to Lee, but have not done yet for which apologies are due.
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Re: World of Spectrum....

Post by Whacker »

fogartylee wrote: Thu Dec 28, 2017 8:17 pm I'm not even sure if you're being serious now.
Sadly, I am.. but I think the easiest way to resolve is just to renew the IP after the next lease expiry. It doesn't solve the issue of IP blocking on the site (which is a pity) but it gives me a work around to re-access.

Still commend the work your doing on the site Lee, don't get me wrong, it's just I have concerns that the archive is becoming more walled in with each site sharing information via ZXDB, with WoS fighting against the ever increasing change...
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Re: World of Spectrum....

Post by fogartylee »

You do know the URL you posted is wrong?

I *think* I've fixed the leeching bug. I'm sure someone will let me know if I haven't....

The access to WoS data is far more & a lot easier than it was before. If anything, the walls are being knocked down.
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Re: World of Spectrum....

Post by RMartins »

After my ban from WOS was included in this thread, I feel obliged to share the facts I know.
I did not want to get back to this subject, but I treasure transparency.

1 - My ban from WOS was due to a comment I made in the IndieGogo - ZX Spectrum Vega+
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the- ... #/comments

If you go throught a lot of clicking on "show more" link, you will eventually get there ("Rui Martins" is my username in indieGogo), since there is no search feature unfortunately.
Spoiler
Image
I stand by what I wrote, as a "wake up call"/warning, since I have known of worse happening for a lot less.
Today, I would write it in a different wording, since I have since realized it can be read in a different tone/context.

2 - I was banned on WOS because I had a similar username, on both websites.
There was no evidence that IndieGogo "Rui Martins", was in fact WOS "RMartins", since IndieGogo supposedly does not share the emails of it's users.

3 - I did not receive any feeback or warning that I was banned.
I got to know about it by a friend (I was busy with health issues in my family, so ZX surfing was low priority).

4 - I also seem to be the first user in WOS that had it's Avatar changed to an image with "User banned - Carry on".
Why ?
Your guess is as good as mine.


So, with the information provided above, take your own conclusions.
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Re: World of Spectrum....

Post by 5MinuteRetro »

fogartylee wrote: Thu Dec 28, 2017 7:26 pm Just for clarity...
I'm all for that. I think all of us here are, which is why we're here. So, just for clarity, why *exactly* - and with clarity - were mentions of Spectrum Computing and ZXDB banned from WoS? The reasons expressed at the time on WoS were neither exact nor clear. At least, not so I saw: I abandoned the listing WoS ship at precisely this point. So yeah, I'd love some clarity.
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Re: World of Spectrum....

Post by fogartylee »

The admins at the time had also spent (along with Martijn) some considerable time helping Einar create ZXDB. They had all expressed disappointment with his actions following our help which - as we were told - was to help WoS, whereas it seemed afterwards the intentions were very different.

And as said on WoS - those actions weren't agreed by me, and the end result was that they have all left the role to concentrate on helping WoS with the database info instead.

As an aside, I have since also gone against the admins votes by offering to assist ZXDB further which has been rejected. So sometimes they are right and sometimes they were wrong. It happens - there is a new team of admins now.
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Re: World of Spectrum....

Post by 5MinuteRetro »

fogartylee wrote: Fri Dec 29, 2017 12:33 am The admins at the time had also spent (along with Martijn) some considerable time helping Einar create ZXDB. They had all expressed disappointment with his actions following our help which - as we were told - was to help WoS, whereas it seemed afterwards the intentions were very different.

And as said on WoS - those actions weren't agreed by me, and the end result was that they have all left the role to concentrate on helping WoS with the database info instead.

As an aside, I have since also gone against the admins votes by offering to assist ZXDB further which has been rejected. So sometimes they are right and sometimes they were wrong. It happens - there is a new team of admins now.
Was that a reply to my above comment? If so, still seeking exactness and clarity. If not, still waiting.
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Re: World of Spectrum....

Post by ADJB »

fogartylee wrote: Fri Dec 29, 2017 12:33 am The admins at the time had also spent (along with Martijn) some considerable time helping Einar create ZXDB.
When was "the time" that time was spent by the admins and Martijn helping Einar?
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Re: World of Spectrum....

Post by fogartylee »

ADJB wrote: Fri Dec 29, 2017 1:09 am
fogartylee wrote: Fri Dec 29, 2017 12:33 am The admins at the time had also spent (along with Martijn) some considerable time helping Einar create ZXDB.
When was "the time" that time was spent by the admins and Martijn helping Einar?
There's been a FB group chat around for a year. It was started when the core admin scripts were completed and we were ready to start working on individual sections. Einar joined around February or March - at which point we had already started uploading tables & CSV files of the output to be checked.
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Re: World of Spectrum....

Post by Rorthron »

fogartylee wrote: Fri Dec 29, 2017 12:33 am The admins at the time had also spent (along with Martijn) some considerable time helping Einar create ZXDB. They had all expressed disappointment with his actions following our help which - as we were told - was to help WoS, whereas it seemed afterwards the intentions were very different.
I am somewhat bemused by this account.

In case you have forgotten, Lee, the reason why Einar started the ZXDB project was because you quit WoS ("Had enough", July 2016). In that thread you explicitly stated that you wanted someone else to take over and you explicitly offered to help anyone who was willing to do so. All Einar did was to respond to your request and take on responsibilities you had decided to abandon.

When you changed your mind and decided to hang around, Einar continued to offer his help to you, but you repeatedly and often quite rudely spurned his efforts.

Your characterisation of Einar's actions and motives is quite at odds with the facts.

Moreover, I find it interesting that you have confirmed what we suspected all along, that the moves to censor mentions of ZXDB and Spectrum Computing were done out of spite and with no purpose other than to harm another Spectrum website (one which was not even involved in your dispute!).
fogartylee wrote: Fri Dec 29, 2017 12:33 amAnd as said on WoS - those actions weren't agreed by me.
Yet you still keep the Spectrum Computing update thread on WoS locked.
fogartylee wrote: Fri Dec 29, 2017 12:33 amAs an aside, I have since also gone against the admins votes by offering to assist ZXDB further which has been rejected. So sometimes they are right and sometimes they were wrong. It happens - there is a new team of admins now.
Just what are you trying to say here? Are you now suggesting you think it was right, after all, to censor and block mentions of another Spectrum website? Or are you conceding the WoS admin team was wrong? And what does SC's decision not to accept your offer have to do with it?
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Re: World of Spectrum....

Post by fogartylee »

Unless you have access to the FB admins group then you have no idea of what discussions happened or didn't happen. I was warned by several people in advance that it would be a mistake to aid Einar but chose to ignore the warnings.
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Re: World of Spectrum....

Post by balford »

Quite interesting that Richard, Gerard and David have been thrown under the bus as far as WoS moderation goes. Funnily enough whilst I don't always agree with them I've found them somewhat more approachable than the admin who purports to be acting in the site's best interests...
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