World of Spectrum....

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

Post by jmk »

Mark, I think you are making the mistake of assuming there are only two sides in the community: "friend" and "enemy".

Nobody wants WoS to close down, but we have had to face the facts and realise that the only thing that can be saved is the content of WoS and (maybe) the spirit of it.

This point has been reached, somewhat painfully. As each week passes, the circumstances get worse and we can only hope that WoS continues just that little bit longer. But, it will be a WoS where fewer and fewer people are allowed to post, on fewer and fewer subjects.
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Re: World of Spectrum....

Post by Guesser »

The biggest loss if WoS ever shuts down is the vast wealth of knowledge in the forum archive. I know there's a humongous quantity of crap in there too, but a lot of useful stuff gets posted in 15 years or however far back the database reaches at this point.

Discussions may have moved elsewhere, and all the infoseek data can be stuck in a new database, but all those hundreds of thousands of forum posts are trapped there hard to search and at risk of disappearing forever.
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Re: World of Spectrum....

Post by Mike Davies »

1024MAK wrote: Wed Nov 15, 2017 11:06 pm All the information on WoS that I have referred to is already available on WoS or it's forums. Or was in the now discontinued Wikipedia page on WoS. Or is available on other public sites (like the internet archive).

Lee has already said that he helped Einar with the WoS data. So Einar did start ZXDB from scratch, but he did have help with the WoS data and it's format. He has also had help from other people I believe (although to be honest, I have not followed his every step, so I don't know any details).

When Lee took over WoS, WoS was already in trouble (lack of updates, forum software faults and server problems). As Martjin was not spending much time on it any-more. If you can find them, within WoS forums there are gaps in time due to the forums or the whole site going off-line. This happened multiple times (and no, I did not record the details). Then WoS crashed off-line completely. Lee did what he could and he got something back-up.
I am aware of all of this, and my conclusions on technical architecture and approach used to build a replacement still stand.
1024MAK wrote: Wed Nov 15, 2017 11:06 pm If you were tasked with recovering and rebuilding an entire large web site, that was using a mishmash of old obsolete software glued together with custom code, how would you do it?
In very much the same way Einar has approached it. In terms of prioritisation:
  • Preserve the existing data
  • Render that preserved data as a website
  • Provide the simplest collaborative process to update/correct data
  • Iterate and improve
Einar saw the importance of first preserving the existing data, and shared the fruits of his work. That's goal 1 achieved. Peter and Daniel independently prototyped a website using that data, because Einar shared that data. That's goal 2 achieved. Hikoki -- or was it hikaru? -- collated data on new games released after 2012 that are not on WoS, in a spreadsheet. That was quickly imported into ZXDB. That's goal 3 working.

What remains to be seen is whether the current good-enough solution of Einar being the gatekeeper for updating ZXDB is sustainable. The data is in a much better position. It's in the form of MySQL import statements, which means anyone with general web development skills can take this data and be their own gatekeeper.

Also, note the approach. Started with just Einar. Then Peter joined by building a website on-top of Einar's data. Then other people offered their help to Peter, so now Peter has a small team helping him produce the Spectrum Computing website. Daniel started with his own website (ZXInfo), and is now also sending Einar updates and corrections, so there's at least a team of 2 working on the data updates. Before there was just Martjin, now there's a core team of 3 solidifying around the ZXDB/SpectrumComputing model.

If someone decides a CMS with fine-grained permissions is necessary, he can grab a copy of Einar's MySQL import files, spin up a database and go ahead with building out this CMS. The advantage of Einar's approach is that neither the website nor the data are dependent on having a CMS. In this model, it is not a critical must-have feature.

Einar and Peter's agility has created a viable alternative. One that's also been conducive to growing a network of collaborators. That's starkly different to Fogarty's approach, which supposedly started with a world-class development team, but is now looks to be just one guy doing the development alone.

1024MAK wrote: Wed Nov 15, 2017 11:06 pm And keep in mind that Lee wants members of WoS to help maintain the site. He does not want to do everything himself.
Lets say Fogarty's approach hasn't been conducive to that. Help has been offered by multiple people over the past few years, all rebuffed and declined. Einar bent over backwards to help Fogarty, even offering writing the import scripts to import ZXDB to whatever database schema Fogarty has.
1024MAK wrote: Wed Nov 15, 2017 11:06 pm Whoever took on the WoS site was going to have a lot of work to do.
Yes, Einar and Peter have spend a good deal of time to get to where they are, and within a year they are further ahead than Fogarty has been in 3. Einar has been open about his work, so the WOS data is no longer in danger of being lost. Peter has a small team developing this site.

The key point is that the most important goal was to preserve the existing data in a state it could be used. Migrating it into a MySQL database, and making the MySQL dump itself available to the community, damn that was smart!
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Re: World of Spectrum....

Post by ramsrc »

I think everyone needs to be very careful here. Much mud slinging has taken place over an extended period of time - and in my humble opinion it is now time to stop.

I see this whole situation as follows:

The original World of Spectrum as developed by Martijn was a tremendous achievement - I was tasked with writing a CMS for the company I worked for in the early days of the Internet, because there wasn't anything available at the time and it is a huge undertaking. Even more so for a person working in their own time.

Things were on the wane when the current ownership took over. It was decided - rightly or wrongly - not to touch the existing code, but to develop from the ground up. I don't know what Martijn's code looks like - so I can't comment on whether this was the right or wrong decision. However, I wouldn't want to touch the code of my old CMS these days, given the alternatives.

The task of rewriting everything from scratch is huge, progress has been slow, and the group responsible for WOS prefer not to tell every user about everything. (Which is their right).

That is just about all the conclusions that one can draw from this. Of course, other people will have more knowledge than I do but a the end of the day, this is a hobby - we are all here because we like the Spectrum. Everyone is different, and we need to respect those differences. I actually moved outside of the forum and did some reading on the freely available Social Media sites (which I very rarely do), and quite frankly I was absolutely shocked at some of the things I read.

I believe there is room for more than one site - the way things are looking at the moment, one will be more community driven, and one will be more of a personal site - but that isn't a problem. The main thing is that the community spirit continues. To be honest, I am very close to throwing in the towel because nobody deserves some of the things that are happening at the moment. Sure, I probably won't be a huge loss to the community - but any lost member is a loss to the community as a whole.

This is not aimed at anyone specifically, but to everyone - Please, please, please think before you type - and use your common sense!
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Re: World of Spectrum....

Post by PeterJ »

Guesser wrote: Thu Nov 16, 2017 2:07 am The biggest loss if WoS ever shuts down is the vast wealth of knowledge in the forum archive.
I agree 100%. Let us all hope that never happens. I also join you in the hope the search works again soon.
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Re: World of Spectrum....

Post by Rorthron »

ramsrc wrote: Thu Nov 16, 2017 7:07 am I think everyone needs to be very careful here. Much mud slinging has taken place over an extended period of time - and in my humble opinion it is now time to stop.

This is not aimed at anyone specifically, but to everyone - Please, please, please think before you type - and use your common sense!
Yes, there are obviously a lot of (understandable) frustrations with what's been happening at WoS. It would be great if we can avoid them boiling over here.

I'm really grateful Peter et al have set up this place and have given us an alternative place to discuss Spectrum matters. I think it would be great if we make their lives easier and police ourselves as much as possible.
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Re: World of Spectrum....

Post by ramsrc »

Rorthron wrote: Thu Nov 16, 2017 7:43 am Yes, there are obviously a lot of (understandable) frustrations with what's been happening at WoS. It would be great if we can avoid them boiling over here.

I'm really grateful Peter et al have set up this place and have given us an alternative place to discuss Spectrum matters. I think it would be great if we make their lives easier and police ourselves as much as possible.
That is exactly what I was (in a rather convoluted way) trying to say.
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Re: World of Spectrum....

Post by Hikaru »

@ 1024MAK, interesting. I can't seem to I remember a single time you spoke up against the many injustices happening over at WoS, not when people were banned for no reason nor explanation, not when they were pointed the door at a slightest hint of disagreement, the silent treatment and censorship, the broken features all over the place, not to mention the ridiculous 'development cycle', and so on. Bit of sweeping stuff under the carpet, bit of cracking dank 80's jokes on top of it, the usual thing. But hey, when people draw their conclusions (since, you know, humans are capable of independent thought) and/or react to any of it - indeed to the point that we have another forum now - then that is apparently a problem immediately worth many a wall of text.
Now you're just grasping for straws, stopping short of the 'our senses are imperfect, therefore white might actually be black' argument. Blind and misinformed, at this point, really? Not even shonen manga material excuse me.

Frankly, you need to follow your own advice and stop with the 'nasty unhelpful posts' here, seeing as it is all essentially a very long-winded way of 1) reiterating the idea that everyone is a tr@ll (outright destructive if you ask me), with 2) an added accusation that outside re-action is somehow the main and defining factor to the current state of WoS, or indeed should even be regarded a factor in the first place.

And yes, permutations and derivatives of 'I've paid enough monnies I should by now be entitled to ruin a major website among other things' are bad, bad arguments, that should probably not be used wherever human values are in effect.

I know I'm not exactly being constructive here, but neither is this entire discussion. Truth has a way of revealing itself over the course of 3+ years.
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Re: World of Spectrum....

Post by HexTank »

Why is this thread a thing? It's like you get a new (girl|boy)friend and can't stop talking about your ex.
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Re: World of Spectrum....

Post by Lorfarius »

Better in its own thread rather than building up as snide comments everywhere else. Lots of people are very frustrated after years of it, lets vent and get it out of the way and focus on this place.
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Re: World of Spectrum....

Post by HexTank »

Yeah, I understand that, there isn't any social media that has escaped it, but, as mentioned on WoS, this place isn't supposed to be a replacement yet its biggest thread doesn't give that impression, does it?
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Re: World of Spectrum....

Post by PeterJ »

Rorthron wrote: Thu Nov 16, 2017 7:43 am
ramsrc wrote: Thu Nov 16, 2017 7:07 am I think everyone needs to be very careful here. Much mud slinging has taken place over an extended period of time - and in my humble opinion it is now time to stop.

This is not aimed at anyone specifically, but to everyone - Please, please, please think before you type - and use your common sense!
Yes, there are obviously a lot of (understandable) frustrations with what's been happening at WoS. It would be great if we can avoid them boiling over here.

I'm really grateful Peter et al have set up this place and have given us an alternative place to discuss Spectrum matters. I think it would be great if we make their lives easier and police ourselves as much as possible.
Thank you. I couldn't agree more. Self moderation is the key to the success and continuation of this forum.
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Re: World of Spectrum....

Post by Sokurah »

HexTank wrote: Thu Nov 16, 2017 9:07 am Why is this thread a thing? It's like you get a new (girl|boy)friend and can't stop talking about your ex.
I have to agree. It's been discussed to death on WoS already. I wish I'd never have to read about it again.
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Re: World of Spectrum....

Post by balford »

A phrase I use a lot is 'we are where we are'. Everyone has their own viewpoint on how we got here, the important bit is how we continue.
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Re: World of Spectrum....

Post by 1024MAK »

@jmk - there are never just two sides. It's always much more complex. As is everything where human beliefs and emotions are involved.

And as I said earlier, there are precious few facts. Just lots of allegations and lots of misinformation. Like your statement that fewer and fewer people are allowed to post. Who has been banned recently? The only subject that is banned on WoS is that of the Vega+.

It's sad that there is so much bitterness in the Spectrum community where the average age is that of middle age people.

Anyway, it appears that there is currently no way for clarity to shine through, let alone for people to put aside their bitterness.

I do wish Spectrum Computing good luck and success. I also wish WoS good luck and success. And I will continue to support both.

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Re: World of Spectrum....

Post by richl »

I was watching this crime documentary series the other day and it taught me a valuable lesson about how different people perceive situations. It really made me think hard about my ability to process information and discern fact from fiction. Basically, the kids and their talking dog proved that it was the old lighthouse keeper who'd been behind the thefts all along. Really threw me!

Anyway, where were we? Oh, yeah. To paraphrase what others have already said, arguing amongst ourselves about whether Lee did or didn't kill WoS and similar topics is probably not very productive at the moment. I'm very grateful to Peter for setting this forum up and apologise for my part in fanning the flames. I think most people have made their stance fairly clear so I'm going to take my own advice from earlier and just try and post positive things on this forum instead. With that in mind, I'm saying nothing more on this thread. TTFN :)
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Re: World of Spectrum....

Post by 1024MAK »

Hikaru wrote: Thu Nov 16, 2017 8:22 am @ 1024MAK, interesting. I can't seem to I remember a single time you spoke up against the many injustices happening over at WoS, not when people were banned for no reason nor explanation, not when they were pointed the door at a slightest hint of disagreement, the silent treatment and censorship, the broken features all over the place, not to mention the ridiculous 'development cycle', and so on. Bit of sweeping stuff under the carpet, bit of cracking dank 80's jokes on top of it, the usual thing. But hey, when people draw their conclusions (since, you know, humans are capable of independent thought) and/or react to any of it - indeed to the point that we have another forum now - then that is apparently a problem immediately worth many a wall of text.
Now you're just grasping for straws, stopping short of the 'our senses are imperfect, therefore white might actually be black' argument. Blind and misinformed, at this point, really? Not even shonen manga material excuse me.

Frankly, you need to follow your own advice and stop with the 'nasty unhelpful posts' here, seeing as it is all essentially a very long-winded way of 1) reiterating the idea that everyone is a tr@ll (outright destructive if you ask me), with 2) an added accusation that outside re-action is somehow the main and defining factor to the current state of WoS, or indeed should even be regarded a factor in the first place.

And yes, permutations and derivatives of 'I've paid enough monnies I should by now be entitled to ruin a major website among other things' are bad, bad arguments, that should probably not be used wherever human values are in effect.

I know I'm not exactly being constructive here, but neither is this entire discussion. Truth has a way of revealing itself over the course of 3+ years.
Err, you appear to have missed the posts on WoS where I objected to some of Lee's actions or intentions.

In actual fact, I dislike the word troll. In fact, I dislike any negative label that people use against others. I most certainly do not consider you to be a troll. And I never intend to post 'nasty unhelpful posts', and I don't believe I have done so.

However, it is clear that we disagree on various things. I try to look at situations from as independent viewpoint as I can. I have my own views. But I try to challenge the discussion/argument, not the person. As every person has a right to their own point of view. However, I do and will point out when wrong or misleading things are said.

Clearly WoS is not where we would like it to be. But all this bitterness is not going to help WoS or the Spectrum community in general.

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Re: World of Spectrum....

Post by Pegaz »

1024MAK wrote: Thu Nov 16, 2017 9:48 amAnd as I said earlier, there are precious few facts. Just lots of allegations and lots of misinformation. Like your statement that fewer and fewer people are allowed to post. Who has been banned recently? The only subject that is banned on WoS is that of the Vega+.
The lack of transparency is the cause of many misunderstandings, but who's to blame for it?
btw, I already told you that RMartins was recently banned (without proper explanation) and I almost cant believe you didnt notice it.
Maybe it should have been banned, but we dont know that, and we probably will not find out.
And why Vega+ should it be banned anyway?
5000 fans have invested their money in this project and I dont see why it's inappropriate to talk about it on the Spectrum related website.
Do you have any logical explanation, from independent point of view?
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Re: World of Spectrum....

Post by Hikaru »

1024MAK wrote: Thu Nov 16, 2017 10:11 amIn actual fact, I dislike the word troll. In fact, I dislike any negative label that people use against others. I most certainly do not consider you to be a troll. And I never intend to post 'nasty unhelpful posts', and I don't believe I have done so.

However, it is clear that we disagree on various things. I try to look at situations from as independent viewpoint as I can. I have my own views. But I try to challenge the discussion/argument, not the person. As every person has a right to their own point of view. However, I do and will point out when wrong or misleading things are said.
Well, at the very least it is certainly not fair to categorize everyone who disagrees with the way WoS is managed as being collectively blind and misleaded, or somesuch. And if for whatever reason you nevertheless have to, I believe it would help the communication to denote the actual who's and why's if you have something particular in mind.

I have likewise nothing personal vs you despite these disagreements, I just don't think it's the kind of discussion that needs to be 'challenged', or re-fuelled for that matter. Everything has mostly been said over the years, including this exact phrase. :)
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Re: World of Spectrum....

Post by jmk »

1024MAK wrote: Thu Nov 16, 2017 9:48 am And as I said earlier, there are precious few facts. Just lots of allegations and lots of misinformation. Like your statement that fewer and fewer people are allowed to post. Who has been banned recently? The only subject that is banned on WoS is that of the Vega+.

It's sad that there is so much bitterness in the Spectrum community where the average age is that of middle age people.
@1024MAK - it is not just as simple as people being banned (they have been) and subjects being banned (they have been). I have been in de facto exile and others walk on eggshells in the WoS forums, precisely to avoid the kind of conflict that would precipitate the end of WoS.

A group of people have got together to (quietly) build a lifeboat.

These are not actions driven by anger or bitterness, but from a fundamental desire to see the essence of the Spectrum community survive. Again, the overwhelming emotion is sadness as I watch something I have loved, for decades, die slowly.
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Re: World of Spectrum....

Post by 1024MAK »

Pegaz wrote: Thu Nov 16, 2017 10:25 am btw, I already told you that RMartins was recently banned (without proper explanation) and I almost cant believe you didnt notice it.
Maybe it should have been banned, but we dont know that, and we probably will not find out.
And why Vega+ should it be banned anyway?
5000 fans have invested their money in this project and I dont see why it's inappropriate to talk about it on the Spectrum related website.
Do you have any logical explanation, from independent point of view?
I did not realise that RMartins was recently banned. Sorry if you mentioned it in an earlier post, I must have missed that bit.

I can understand why Vega+ is banned. I don't agree with discussion being banned. However, if I was the owner/operator, admin or moderator of a Spectrum forum, a thread discussing the Vega+ would be subject to close moderation, simply because threads about it often end up going bad. Don't get me wrong, I have no problem with people who paid money coming on and talking about how unhappy they are with the situation. But it's all the other mud slinging that goes on that I don't like.

Yes, and I'm one of the people who now has less money in my pocket, but no Vega+ to show for it. It is a deeply disappointing state of affairs. And the occasional dangled "updates" are rather depressing (at least, for me).

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Re: World of Spectrum....

Post by Nomad »

WOS was one of the first websites I found on the internet back in the 90s, come to think of it its the only one from the dialup days that I think is still in existence. Like most of you guys and girls the Spectrum was a huge part of my childhood, so finding such a active community in the early days that was bringing together so much information on the machine that fascinated me was a big plus. I can remember all my friends at college being green with envy when i walked in with a set of the WOS CD-Roms one day. I think that single event destroyed the grades of most of the computer science class that year. But it was worth it. To have thousands of games, utilities all in one place. When I remember how many years I had lusted after just a few titles and now there were all there waiting to be used. It was great.

But the biggest asset was the forums, being able to research a topic and get the insight and experience of guys who in some cases are no longer alive or active in the community. Being able to find out answers to questions that were often times either never covered or poorly explained in the magazines or the books. It was a godsend. I think that is one of the biggest dangers is loosing all of that data. Not saying there are not competent coders still around but its much easier to search a forum for answers than bothering the same guys again and again with questions that have been answered elsewhere.

After that, the books and magazines were a way i wasted hours looking through. To be able to read books and magazines I didn't have the pocket money for as a kid was great. But with archive.org having a fairly comprehensive collection now its not such a bit worry as say the forum data from WOS.

I just hope the preservation scans, all the maps and other content that so many people devoted so much time to can be preserved and put to good use in some way in the future.

I guess even though I was not an active member of the site, there are many fun memories associated with stuff that I was able to do because it existed. Still I am optimistic about the future of spectrum coding, I see lots of interesting projects and if youtube is anything to go by there still seems to be a lot of interest in retro computing.

I mean things could be worse - look at what happened to the BBC Micro archive websites... (shudders).
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Re: World of Spectrum....

Post by Einar Saukas »

We all share the same concerns about WoS decline and all the valuable information it contains. That's exactly what we are all working to prevent!

Right 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.

The 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.
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Re: World of Spectrum....

Post by fogartylee »

Correction. The entire WoS archive isn't available anywhere else. It's currently around 250gb, with 1tb still to process - around 1/4 of that will be used.

I'd be grateful if you'd stop fueling rumours that WoS is going anywhere thank you.

As for the forums - the search works as well as it can with 1m comments and the size of the database makes it very difficult to host anywhere but a dedicated service. It uses Sphinx as the search service which is about as good as it gets. Without Sphinx it takes 30-60 seconds to do a full search of the forums - with it, it takes less than a second.

You'd also need to check the legality of taking someone elses forum to host wherever you feel like it. A lot of people have posted on WoS over the years not expecting comments to be hosted elsewhere.
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Re: World of Spectrum....

Post by Einar Saukas »

Hi Lee! I wasn't sure if you were reading this forum! :)

fogartylee wrote: Thu Dec 28, 2017 3:11 pmCorrection. The entire WoS archive isn't available anywhere else. It's currently around 250gb
... that's mirrored at Archive.org.

fogartylee wrote: Thu Dec 28, 2017 3:11 pmwith 1tb still to process - around 1/4 of that will be used.
Those 1Tb of unprocessed files, that were not added to WoS archive yet, are not part of the WoS archive mirror. Obviously.

fogartylee wrote: Thu Dec 28, 2017 3:11 pmI'd be grateful if you'd stop fueling rumours that WoS is going anywhere thank you.
I'm not fueling any rumors. I never said WoS will go somewhere, instead I explicitly wrote "if WoS goes down" and "if the forum disappears". Therefore I was discussing a possibility. This possibility would happen, for instance, in case you decided to leave WoS without a plan to replace you. And this has already happened once.

fogartylee wrote: Thu Dec 28, 2017 3:11 pmAs for the forums - the search works as well as it can with 1m comments and the size of the database makes it very difficult to host anywhere but a dedicated service. It uses Sphinx as the search service which is about as good as it gets. Without Sphinx it takes 30-60 seconds to do a full search of the forums - with it, it takes less than a second.
I wasn't debating the reasons why WoS forum search is broken. I just mentioned that it is. I didn't even mention that Martijn's WoS forum (before it was migrated) already had a similar large volume and searches worked just fine.

fogartylee wrote: Thu Dec 28, 2017 3:11 pmYou'd also need to check the legality of taking someone elses forum to host wherever you feel like it. A lot of people have posted on WoS over the years not expecting comments to be hosted elsewhere.
Yet another reason to contact Martijn about it and ask for his approval, as I suggested. And that's only as last resort, "if the forum disappears" as I wrote!
Last edited by Einar Saukas on Thu Dec 28, 2017 4:55 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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