(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

John Murga is the only person who can do anything with the forum software and he hasn't been active in the forum for a long time.

Yeah, I was going to say that I don't think there's much I could do without access to the actual phpBB installation, especially since most of the changes wanted would probably require phpBB mods to be installed (without getting into upgrading the forum software).

Offhand, I don't recall seeing any options that would help with the 'long' post problem. I'd imagine it would need a mod (or board style?) smart enough to recognize when a post goes over the length and rewrap it or resize images (though that could be a problem with external image-hosting site links, and really, I'd prefer to do my own resizing than trust a forum to guess at it. )

Maybe this idea has been suggested in the past, maybe not. If it has, then apologies, but....

Does BarryK know how to get in touch with John? Because it does appear that John has gone out of his way to make it so that no-one can contact him online, in ANY way.


Mike.

rockedge wrote:I also submit then edit and rarely ever use preview.

If it helps anyone else, I do the same thing. I post and then edit and pretty much never use preview on here; the downside is that my posts are typically full of typos and punctuation mistakes for the first 10 minutes after they're posted (like this one is), but at least it works.

[I should say at this point that I'm not claiming any great technical knowledge here about the way the forum software works; I do it that way because I find it slightly easier than using post preview.]

Flash wrote:

musher0 wrote:And I thought I had criticized how this forum was maintained in years past...

But did you do anything BUT criticize? Rockedge started a new forum with the idea that people would migrate to it, but few of us ever tried it.

I'm not going to challenge your perception, Flash, you're the boss here.

My comment just means that rockedge's crtiticism above is a much more
fundamental criticism than whatever I ever wrote.

And that's all I'll say about it, I don't want to rekindle that other debate;
we have a different context now. "I'm just saying."

musher0 wrote:rockedge's crtiticism above is a much more
fundamental criticism than whatever I ever wrote

It's more of advising to change course and steer away from the reef that we clearly see ahead of the bow as we are sailing full speed towards it. I just stick to the facts as a fellow crew member.

rockedge wrote:

musher0 wrote:rockedge's crtiticism above is a much more
fundamental criticism than whatever I ever wrote

It's more of advising to change course and steer away from the reef that we clearly see ahead of the bow as we are sailing full speed towards it. I just stick to the facts as a fellow crew member.

I hope your advice is heard and followed.

My own main concern is simply the danger of losing important information when this forum stops working, which could I fear happen. I'm not overly worried about the main threads that interest me since I have backups of my own main recent threads (only).

The other matter to consider is that it is not just a matter of old phpBB not being maintained, but also like all new software, on the whole it tends to be improved over time. Actually many things are better on new phpBB forum. I really like, for example, how you can drag attachments into the open post window without having to browse for them as an extra 'add attachment(s)' task. And also how you then get the option to embed them wherever you like in your post or simply as attachments at the end. That's especially beneficial for HowTo threads since you can embed diagrams inside the text explanations and at appropriate places in the text.

But there is also the issue that the old forum continues to grow, so even more is in danger of being lost the longer that goes on. Rockedge has been maintaining his site for long enough now that you can be pretty sure he knows well how to keep it in top shape. All software needs continuous maintenance or eventually it breaks or otherwise becomes redundant - I can't really imagine old murga-forum to be acceptable many more years from now either way, though I suppose it could be an archaic fascination to look at if the old light bulb was still flickering. Considering its large membership though, someone interested in it should, I'd say, be planning for its replacement though, rather than sitting around pretending it will always still be working (and satisfactorily) tomorrow.

I'm not sure at all what is being found lacking with rockedge's generous offer to the community, but I suspect it is just 'inertia' but the ostrich head in the sand effect is hardly wise.

wiak

rockedge wrote:The window of opportunity to run tests that I offered to upgrade the software and include all the million or so threads contained in the original is closing."

Waited 6+ months and not a peep. So 4 more weeks the test site will run and then I will remove it and work on something else.

I didn't know that your testsite exists. Searched all your previous posts and found a link in the "Forum sucks" thread of user bark-woof-fetch. I tend to ignore such posts. I agree that your testsite is much better than the current forum but as long as it's hidden in the dark you can't expect the response your efforts surely deserve. Or are you referring to response from John Murga?

wiak wrote:I'm not sure at all what is being found lacking with rockedge's generous offer to the community, but I suspect it is just 'inertia' but the ostrich head in the sand effect is hardly wise.

wiak

@ Will:-

AFAICT it's got nothing to do with 'inertia' to the concept of a new site. Those of us who have tried the test site all agree it's miles better than the existing site, in so many respects.

The issue is, quite simply this; John Murga cannot be contacted! Without being able to do this, the necessary 'dump' of the MySQL and phpBB stuff that rockedge needs to smoothy transfer from the old site to the new can't be obtained.....and without the databases, the transfer (or 'upgrade') will never take place.

The keys to the property are in the hands of somebody who has apparently gone AWOL.....a long time ago. What can you do? Flash is our sole staff member, and even he has no idea of how to contact John; in years gone by, John would periodically put in an appearance here on the forum, but as of this day it's 2 years, 1 month and 3 days since John last posted.....

My view is that it's probably better simply to announce to everyone that as of a certain date, the 'new' forum will be the official one (and will be the expected Puppy Forum "home" from that point on). Such an 'event' would be absolutely fine with me.

(*shrug*)


Mike.

MochiMoppel wrote:

rockedge wrote:The window of opportunity to run tests that I offered to upgrade the software and include all the million or so threads contained in the original is closing."

Waited 6+ months and not a peep. So 4 more weeks the test site will run and then I will remove it and work on something else.

I didn't know that your testsite exists. Searched all your previous posts and found a link in the "Forum sucks" thread of user bark-woof-fetch. I tend to ignore such posts. I agree that your testsite is much better than the current forum but as long as it's hidden in the dark you can't expect the response your efforts surely deserve. Or are you referring to response from John Murga?

It was earlier announced here and here

Pity that it didn't seem to work out, rockedge did great work, I guess all depends on John Murga's co-operation to transfer everything, but looks like he's not reachable.
(on second thought, how to get permissions to transfer from the 42000+ users ?)

Fred

Mike Walsh wrote:AFAICT it's got nothing to do with 'inertia' to the concept of a new site. Those of us who have tried the test site all agree it's miles better than the existing site, in so many respects.

The issue is, quite simply this; John Murga cannot be contacted! Without being able to do this, the necessary 'dump' of the MySQL and phpBB stuff that rockedge needs to smoothy transfer from the old site to the new can't be obtained.....and without the databases, the transfer (or 'upgrade') will never take place.

I too originally doubted any new site for two simple reasons:

1. The historic content of the origin forum contains a lot of valuable information and so I felt a new site would be no good without that.

and

2. The user base. Murga-forum is long-established and people are simply used to this being the forum (regardless of it being like living in a house with the walls falling down.

But, when it comes to point 1, if John Murga is no longer about and not able to maintain the existing forum, which seems to be the case, then the forum either will collapse (losing all the historical information it stores, or it will keep limping along without maintenace ad infinitum. In that latter case the old information is not lost anyway, so it is perfectly okay to move to a new forum and link to the old information. On that basis there is another point to moving to what seems to be a reliable up-to-date new forum:

3. It actually provides a great opportunity to re-organise the useful information from the tons more of absolutely useless old junk and inter-mingled ramblings. So I've since realised that if you were able to 'import' the old database, whilst at least then having a copy of the old information on the new site you also however get a copy of the mess.

It has since struck me that it is in fact a waste of time and effort to move whole messy threads over to new forum. It is not in fact difficult for an individual developer to move the exact series of posts most relevant to their own contributions over to the new forum with the additional advantage the new forum allows very flexible organisation in terms of folder and subfolder forum category hierarchies and access control permission (including the usual read-only archives and so on).

So, it seems to me that the main real problem with the new forum is the lack of action by the existing user-base to adopt it. And what would help activate the use of the new forum most of all would be its adoption by key project developers, even if simply to duplicate some of their existing main posts and take feedback/contributions to that new location. The 'enthusiasts' of any such project would certainly follow (since that is where the project is). Personally, by the way, I have discovered that even a couple of interested project contributors is perfectly sufficient to make the effort of publication worthwhile.

And key to that 'encouragement' to particular distro enthusiasts would be the lead developer(s) of these key projects only thereafter taking feedback on the new forum. Fact is, in an active project, feedback and new ideas and contributions is regular and continuous - the new forum would soon start filling up with far more up-to-date relevant information to the historic mess of a broken forum that is currently being tolerated. History/relevant-information always repeats itself, but at least it has a chance of being re-organised better in a new environment.

The advantage in re-organisation far outweighs the effort and risk relying on the longterm continual operation of a who-knows-how-long-alive deprecated ghost. And plenty of scope in such a flexible new forum for the users (if only they would actively contribute to it) to help identify the most useful archived information for bringing across (many hands would indeed make light work of that and there is such a mix of mainly no-longer relevant rambling and some jewels that could nicely be sorted out).

Rockedge (Erik) can be your new 'John Murga' and in the circumstances I personally recommend that.

wiak

Sorry for the macabre question / dark humour:

Does anybody know if John Murga is still alive?
After so many days without receiving "signs of life" from him, has anybody who knows him
contacted the local police department?

Personnally I'd be concerned not hearing from a colleague or friend for such a long time.

Maybe he was killed by Col. Mustard in the library with the candlestick?
(Hopefully this sentence will remain a bad dark-humor joke...)

Just a thought.

Here's John's latest post in the Puppy Linux forum: May, 2018. He seems to be an ambitious guy and probably has a lot on his plate.

I have decided to keep the https://puppylinux.rockedge.org forum running to allow opportunity to explore it.

I agree with wiak after consideration the best method would start with a fresh forum with a structure that fits today's Puppy Linux AND we could link to the original murga forum to access the treasure trove of information and personalities all through Puppy's life so far.

The new forum software is the latest version available and is running on commercial grade servers.

Flash wrote:Here's John's latest post in the Puppy Linux forum: May, 2018. He seems to be an ambitious guy and probably has a lot on his plate.

I realize that, but in case it would have slipped people's minds, there's a pandemic
going on.

Don't you moderators have virtual meetings or exchange e-mails once and a while?
Twenty-five months without news of a person is an awfully long time.

The alternative is that the man is alive and well, but not giving a damn about the future
of this forum. (Sorry for being so frank.)

BFN.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Afterthought after reading rockedge's post above:
Isn't there a mirror of this forum on Archive.org?
(Curtesy of our unsung hero ally, perhaps?

rockedge wrote:I have decided to keep the https://puppylinux.rockedge.org forum running to allow opportunity to explore it.

A heartfelt 'thank-you' from me for that, Erik.

rockedge wrote:I agree with wiak after consideration the best method would start with a fresh forum with a structure that fits today's Puppy Linux AND we could link to the original murga forum to access the treasure trove of information and personalities all through Puppy's life so far.

The new forum software is the latest version available and is running on commercial grade servers.

^^^ + 1.

Seconded. And I say this as a 'medium-term', active forum member; who, although he may well have a high-ish 'post count', doesn't in fact "give a monkey's" about such things anyway.....much preferring to let his actions/contributions speak for him.

I think we all know by now who can generally be relied upon to "help out", and to make regular, useful contributions to the community. I'm more concerned that our community be able to keep in touch.....whatever it takes, and however it needs to be achieved. This community encapsulates a fantastic bunch of individuals, and truly deserves to continue to survive after all these years.


Mike.

For what it's worth, in the past John has replied to my emails but it has been years ago.

I have already joined the new forum so I just hope we can keep all the mostly valuable information intact. No real ideas of how to contact John though.

The one big question.

What forum is going to be kept up and running, year after year.
Whoever is supplying the forum, probably is the only one paying for it.
How long are they willing to do that?

This was always the question with the Puppy repositories.
That is why the main official Puppy repository is located at ibiblio.org.

ibiblio.org was formed as a collaboration between the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill‘s MetaLab, formerly known as SunSITE, and the Center for the Public Domain in September of 2000. At UNC-Chapel Hill, ibiblio is supported by the School of Journalism and Mass Communication and the School of Information and Library Science.

So, a major US university is paying for the repository.
Also, because of this, it gets mirrored by other well funded locations.

I think this forum has been great.

Other fora have come and gone but so far this one continues to have a heartbeat.