One thing to consider in moving the community is supplementing the forum with a Q&A site such as stackexchange which is a much better format for the vast majority of users seeking answers to their questions compared to a forum that is more discussion based where answers can get lost in the noise.
There is an open source alternative software to stackexchange:OSQA
1. It is currently hosted on a dedicated 8GB 2GHz quad-core Xeon server from softlayer.com (server location: Dallas, TX USA)
How much of that would you say is utilised during peak (regular, not DDOS) times?
Originally Posted by
For those asking, yes a lot of the forum systems (including open source ones) have vB migration tools. Sure, a cheaper or free forum system can be used but think about the expertise of the volunteer who intend to administer it [...]
There is also the task of creating custom plug-ins.
Wouldn't that be much easier on an open source platform though? A community-developed VB plug-in seems like a non-starter if every volunteer developer has to shell out $195 just for being able to play.
Originally Posted by
If moving to a new domain/forum name, I agree that members should be notified and asked for their permission.
Hm, that would effectively make migration practically impossible so perhaps the rest is moot :-/
We can always migrate posts content, without migrating users (as content was already publicized in... well, public.). At least in EU it works and is legal.
/Estel
// Edit
Of course, it would be only about content from users, that are not interested in giving permission (can't be pinged, or not willing to).
// Edit 2
In worse situation, we may do something like our own "wayback machine", i.e. big archive of "snapshot" from content of threads presented already, ending with link to actual, "live" discussion in future forum.
Not most convenient, but there are tools to do so via batch, and it's better than nothing.
In the bottom left of this and all tmo pages it says all content cc isn't that enough for migration?
Hm, yeah, there are a couple of issues at hand: content (ie public posts), and user data. If we can't migrate the latter then all we have is a read-only archive.
Well, quick&dirty system for handling auto-asking for allowance - if it's really needed - could be set-up. This could be even beneficial - during transfer, we would drop accounts of MIA/uninterested people (i.e, those that fail to permit their accoutns migration during, lets say, 5 or 6 months deadline).
But, considering that *everything* is CC, it seems to apply for visible user profiles to. As for rest, we're not keeping any personal data, like address or real name (unless someone provided it to TMO, agreeing to CC content), so I think it's really less of an issue, that looked initially.
We need to speed this up. Nokia keeps increasing the angle of attack with every news release.
So the more news about Nokia that comes out, the closer they are to implosion. 4th quarter income warning may be the final item to do them in. So we need to be out of here in 4-5 months...
