TromboneChat

Tried to use the latest donation site, couldn't get it to work...

I have no idea what Richard has been doing.  The donation site goes right to him to help defray the costs of hosting the Site.  Maybe he doesn't need money now (but I really doubt that)?  Hosting TTF is a small part of his business.

I used it today. It stalled out the first time I tried, but the second time it worked fine and went straight to Paypal.

I'm surprised he has not raised the $3500 yet.  If everyone that came on here in the last 2 days gave $25, he'd have more than enough.

Maybe folks are just so used to it being broken they don't even notice anymore.

I wish I could know there was some mechanism in place for a generally available person, in addition to Richard, to do the sort of fixes and upkeep about which the current mods always "we have to wait for Richard to fix that" during the stretches when Richard is not able to do those things.

Quote from: robcat2075 on Sep 01, 2017, 03:39PMI wish I could know there was some mechanism in place for a generally available person, in addition to Richard, to do the sort of fixes and upkeep about which the current mods always "we have to wait for Richard to fix that" during the stretches when Richard is not able to do those things.

You and me both

And me 3 since Ive actually managed backends to similar projects professionally. 

There have been numerous offers over the years from numerous qualified individuals to either assist or assume full responsibility for keeping things running, but the proprietor prefers to provide a bare minimum of support to an eleven year old beta test version of a bug infested, highly vulnerable, occasionally hacked software platform.  What a swell guy!

Quote from: BillO on Sep 01, 2017, 03:20PMI'm surprised he has not raised the $3500 yet.  If everyone that came on here in the last 2 days gave $25, he'd have more than enough.

Maybe folks are just so used to it being broken they don't even notice anymore.

Uh, no.  Fool me once...  Lengthy rant about catching up for the years of donations first, poor support, poor management, and the number of trolls that don't get dealt with deleted.

But I will leave in that I understand health issues, all too well.  If you can't do it yourself but are asking for and accepting money for it's operation, then get some people involved who can handle it for you.

I donated and the process worked first time. Would be interested to know how much has been raised.

Has any of the mods asked Richard to be more transparent regarding this issue?

I was able to make a donation yesterday.

Quote from: MTbassbone on Oct 22, 2017, 01:30PMHas any of the mods asked Richard to be more transparent regarding this issue?

Endlessly.

I know he's probably not reading this, but if you were to set it up as a GoFundMe, then people could actually track how their contributions move toward a goal.

I donated, but I am very skeptical about the use of this fund raising effort.  The lack of transparency and communication by the creator of the forum is a major concern.  I don't want this to fail, and that is why I ultimately coughed up some cash.  I don't understand why he is on one hand so vested into this site, but on the other so withdrawn.

That's something that has me scratching my head too. I have some professional experience working with backend/frontend technologies and have offered to help with some of the more technical aspects of managing the site but I haven't heard anything back!

The 'bot' that I made to manage the classifieds would be a lot more efficient if I could get it to run inside the server instead of from my own. One of the reason it's broken right now. Right now it basically acts as a human and clicks the button to remove posts if they are older than 60 days. (Although Chrome updated recently and broke it so I'm in the process of fixing it... grad school isn't helping at the moment but I think I finally found a workaround and have to code it maybe sometime this week.)

Richard only mails one of the Admins..... and that seems to be a one way process.

The rest of us are as much in the dark as ordinary members.

We have no idea of what money has come in and what it is used for.

Chris Stearn

Euphanasia writes:

> if you were to set it up as a GoFundMe, then people
> could actually track how their contributions move
> toward a goal.

But that would allow everyone to see how much money had been collected, information the proprietor has NEVER shared with anyone, not even the staff.  Only the proprietor knows the actual cost of operating this site, which some have suggested is far less than is collected in donations.  If this is, in fact, the case, it should be clear why the proprietor doesn't want to disclose donation totals.

I kicked in $25 last night. Hope it helps, as I spend way too much time on this site.

I see nothing wrong with the owner collecting more than what is required to keep this site up and running. I'm sure he needs income like the rest of us.

Heck, I would be in favor of all the moderators and volunteers receiving some cash too.

I've said it before. The site needs a professional management. Moderators do a great job here but the owner is not very interested. If he has health problems and really OWNS the forum he should sell it. It could be partly commercial and partly voluntary. I mean it needs to be a comercial site with ads so maintenence is secured. It must be worth something?

I've said it before; One day the forum and all knowledge and efforts will be gone. It WILL crash and never go up again.
It is obvious there are no redundancy which is a great pity. A site like this should be hosted professionally. There are people who do this for a living. Mirrored databases and several webbserver-instances. There are webbhotels that could host this site for a fee. Not too expenive if it is built on open source technology which I guess is the case.It should not be up to one man with health problems. I vote for a commercial site. If it is not built on business it will die in a crash and if it gets too commercial it will not be as popular, because it is built on volontary contributions in the shape of free shared knowledge, and if the site goes too commercial the moderators probably want to be payed, because then it will just be like any job to them. A good balance is what the site needs where the mods decide. There could be certain sections where ads are alloud and other sections were ads are forbidden. The site only needs enough money to survive.

/Tom

I think I have made this suggestion before, but how about charging a small fee for posting classified ads? $10 for each ad or $20 for unlimited for a year would cover the cost of the site. It looks like there are about 5-10 new ads every day.

Quote from: MikeBMiller on Oct 23, 2017, 09:31AMI think I have made this suggestion before, but how about charging a small fee for posting classified ads? $10 for each ad or $20 for unlimited for a year would cover the cost of the site. It looks like there are about 5-10 new ads every day.

Great idea!!!

/Tom

I think it's just like anything else.  People are willing to donate but not when they don't have confidence in what/who they are donating to.

It is indeed fine if he makes money on this.  I'd be actually quite a bit more likely to contribute if he was upfront about that.  BUTit needs to be at least a little transparent to get any of my money right now. 

I did think it was *nice* that it was at 69% raised for a year.

Cheers,
Andy

Quote from: MikeBMiller on Oct 23, 2017, 07:33AMI kicked in $25 last night. Hope it helps, as I spend way too much time on this site.

I chipped in this evening.  I also find this site to be very valuable.

--Andy in OKC

I chipped in, too.  Because I like and care about the forum.  And the forum has been very good to me!  I have learned a ton and have sold a couple hundred horns here...

But I can honestly say that I would have donated perhaps 5x as much over the past 5 years as I have if the site were well run.  But it is not.

I saw the announcement on the main page about the server crashing the other day and an all-nighter at the datacenter to get it back online. I was surprised to see this. I figured the site was being hosted somewhere or something.

The goal of this year is $3500. This is $291/month for a year. I don't know what kind of resources the site runs on now other than some old 143GB disks on a 16-year old(?) server, but Linode will do 24GB RAM, 8 cores, 384GB SSD storage, 16TB of traffic for $160/month. This is $1920 for a year. The pricing is straight forward and simple. No trips to the datacenter needed. Digital Ocean has similar plans. Add the cost of the forum software if there is any. Migrate the old site to legacy location on the new server or something for searching.

Maybe this has been recommended before and it's all falling on deaf ears... 

How much community effort would it take to just make a new site?

Quote from: quiethorn on Oct 26, 2017, 11:12PM
How much community effort would it take to just make a new site?

There is a new site here:
http://www.trombonechat.com/index.php?sid=db7b281d89c265a7a7a75c91b07de997

Unfortunately, there is no way to migrate the content of this site, which is where the value of the site is.

Quote from: SilverBone on Oct 27, 2017, 12:41AMThere is a new site here:
http://www.trombonechat.com/index.php?sid=db7b281d89c265a7a7a75c91b07de997

Unfortunately, there is no way to migrate the content of this site, which is where the value of the site is.
Well, that and the value of the commentariat.  That is, the network externalities of all of us coming here and chiming in.

Fun thing that has been discussed before, the historical content cannot (or at least should not) be migrated without the express consent of the owner.  So, moving to the other site is kinda tricky.  Not impossible, but tricky.

I would be quite happy to fund a significant portion of the entire venture, if it were open and transparent.  As it is, I do not contribute because I do not see that transparency.  I know he won't see this Richard, but we are all trying to tell you to take our money... but you have to step out from behind the curtain first.

Cheers,
Andy

Any news? November has almost come and gone.

Merry December?

Quote from: elmsandr on Oct 27, 2017, 06:50AM
I would be quite happy to fund a significant portion of the entire venture, if it were open and transparent.  As it is, I do not contribute because I do not see that transparency.  I know he won't see this Richard, but we are all trying to tell you to take our money... but you have to step out from behind the curtain first.


He won't. That's why we founded Trombone Chat. There is a long story about how things got to where they are now, but the takeaway is this: Richard will not part with this site. He has had several opportunities and has refused them all.

Quote from: bubbachet on Dec 05, 2017, 02:12PMHe won't. That's why we founded Trombone Chat. There is a long story about how things got to where they are now, but the takeaway is this: Richard will not part with this site. He has had several opportunities and has refused them all.
I know.  I like to keep re-iterating the point.

The offer still stands and people still change their minds sometimes.
Andy

Not a bleepin' chance.  As a professional Linux admin, I've offered my help before and have never received a response.  The phrase "143 GB SCSI" hard disk shouldn't have been uttered for about 8 years now.  Modern cloud hosting services are far better equipped to do the hosting piece of this, and there's no reason to purchase forum software, period.  Use something like Drupal or PHPBB.  Encrypt all traffic with TLS.

TromboneChat it is--Richard, you won't get a cent from me.

John

Well, it really does look like the admin took our money and abandoned us again.

Nice.

BillO writes:

> Well, it really does look like the admin
> took our money and abandoned us again.

This is hardly breaking news.  Based on past experience it appears that the proprietor looks upon this site as his personal piggy bank, which can be tapped whenever he's hard up for cash -- or at least there's solid evidence that has, in fact, been the case in the past.  There's also good reason to believe he has collected far more than the actual cost of operating the site.

Note that this is the second round of fundraising that has promised a software upgrade to the vulnerability riddled eleven-year-old beta test software on which the Forum has always run (it has *never* been upgraded.)  My advice:  don't hold your breath.  It's a mystery to me why folks continue to patronize the place, when there's an alternative at "TromboneChat.com" with endless possibilities for new features and adequate support.

Quote from: Todd Jonz on Jan 11, 2018, 08:19AMIt's a mystery to me why folks continue to patronize the place, when there's an alternative at "TromboneChat.com" with endless possibilities for new features and adequate support.

As far as I can tell, TromboneChat.com is only a virtual alternative to the Trombone Forum.  Nice as it may be, no one uses it.  The last post appears to have been Sat Oct 21, 2017 11:48 am. 

Using TromboneChat may be a bit like vox clamantis in deserto ! 

When this site dies trombonechat will be the immediate site to visit. Unfortunately the old threads here will then be lost, and to be frank this site was a lot more interesting when more pros were active. The few who still write here write more sparse, and new pros don't seem very interested in sharing. I miss Mike Suter and other characters like him.

The information could be saved if someone writes a "crawler" to collect and put everything in a new database before this database is lost 

I think the owners ads to collect money scares people off. As a programmer I noticed he did a couple of errors when writing all that read text. One is the ad changed the startpage. Since he did that ad the latest "new" posts does not show up on the bottom as they used to. I don't think he meant to do that. I think it is very strange he has not corrected that error.

The owner may have contributed when building this site, but now the best thing he could do is to sell the site to someone.

/Tom

Could everyone interested in using Trombone Chat, by default, start each post here with an "ad" of sorts for that website?

I'd be more wont to push it if they fix the bugs that have crept in.  For example, you can't post pictures (unless they fixed that recently -- Brian?).

Quote from: watermailonman on Jan 11, 2018, 11:11AM
It could be saved if someone writes a "crawler" to collect and put everything in a new database before this database is lost 



Taken care of! My bot that handles the classifieds takes a backup every time it checks. I would caution against people using a true crawler for this site as they tend to be high overhead, checking the whole site every time it runs. I built this one to only fetch updates and it does so slowly to not burden this server.

Quote from: Matt K on Jan 11, 2018, 11:43AMTaken care of! My bot that handles the classifieds takes a backup every time it checks. I would caution against people using a true crawler for this site as they tend to be high overhead, checking the whole site every time it runs. I built this one to only fetch updates and it does so slowly to not burden this server.
So, you have crawled the entire site Matt?

Quote from: Dan Hine on Jan 11, 2018, 11:23AMCould everyone interested in using Trombone Chat, by default, start each post here with an "ad" of sorts for that website?
use ur sig

 

Quote from: mwpfoot on Jan 11, 2018, 12:17PMuse ur sig

 

I hardly ever read signatures...   

Quote from: BillO on Jan 11, 2018, 12:02PMSo, you have crawled the entire site Matt?

Everything but Chit-Chat and Purely Politics. There's a hugely disproportionate amount of content on those parts. Last I checked everything else was ca. 30 MB of text. With those I suspect it would be at least 3x - 4x that size. 

Fortunately, it seems that the site is under a Creative Commons license so if it does go down, I can probably post it somewhere so long as I give credit to the contributors and make no financial gain out of it.  But I'm hoping that that day will be later rather than sooner if for no other reason than I don't want to research it to avoid getting slapped with a suit 

I also thought that the trombonechat would be more popular, though this site certainly has network effects.  Very cyclical. As long as people post here, more people will post here, etc. etc.

I'll have to check with Brian about the picture issue over there. I might be able to help fix it. That certainly is one of the detriments over here but it's technically a problem over there too at the moment. But fixing it over there would be easier than coming up with a custom bot over here and might help to get more traffic over there.


EDIT: Not sure what happened there.  Must have posted too soon. Fixed now.

If we ever have to head for the lifeboat, I doubt anybody really cares about PP Religion, or Chit-Chat.  Or even the Classifieds for that matter.

If it comes to that, contact Brian Keegan (Sliphorn) since he owns Trombone Chat.

Quote from: Matt K on Jan 11, 2018, 02:51PMEverything but Chit-Chat and Purely Politics.

Awesome!

You needn’t worry about the content.  It also belongs to us.

Does this (from the Terms of Use) mean anything towards the discussion of who owns the content of this Forum?

"Post editing and deleting
Posts may be edited by the poster for a period of up to four days after posting.  Please note that, since the content is never actually fixed in a medium, the poster therefore holds no copyright on the material.  Neither does The Trombone Forum need a license to use/host the content in the post.  All posts are therefore public domain content."

...Geezer

Please note that the limit on editing is now 48 hours and not 96 as you said.

As to rehosting on Trombone Chat, the owner has tried to negotiate with Richard without success.  If this Forum goes belly-up we will have nothing but whatever Matt has managed to cache.