1. Check the 2023 Stage48 Member Ranking Results, how did your Oshimen rank this year?

Regarding the Recent Downtime

Discussion in 'Announcements & News' started by ithebigc, Jun 6, 2017.

  1. Explorerdk

    Explorerdk Kenkyuusei Stage48 Donor

    Joined:
    May 30, 2013
    Location:
    Denmark
    Oshimen:
    miyawakisakura
    Hate, flaming and bickering does not solve the issue, no matter how frustrated people are, the issue at hand needs solved and the objective here is making sure, that Stage48.net and it's projects continues to exists.

    So please be constructive in your comments, voice ideas to how we can make sure this place continues on, that is what the focus has to be, as AKB0048 does, do not make war, entertain the people! :)

    /Expdk
     
  2. goratnik

    goratnik Member

    Joined:
    Nov 27, 2011
    Oshimen:
    Akimoto Yasushi
    Twitter:
    goratnik
    @kyoto48☀︎☂ go watch Anne from CBC/Netflix this year, first episodes have a nice story about taking out at others. I highly recommend; admittably - after having to rethink my own reactions to onscreen events.
     
  3. gocchisama

    gocchisama Member Stage48 Donor

    Joined:
    Oct 12, 2012
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    Paris,France
    Oshimen:
    hirateyurina
    Twitter:
    Gocchisama
    Waffle needs to come here. It's the sinnequanone request.

    To not come here to adress our issues that directly concern him is irresponsible. I'm not going to brush a cat fur because he once again solved the domain billing.
     
  4. ptakbfan

    ptakbfan Kenkyuusei Stage48 Donor

    Joined:
    Oct 3, 2015
    Oshimen:
    watanaberika
    That's the problem, he will only come back to ask for donations and will not entertain conversation with even his staff, let alone the many members of the forum who are probably less inclined to pleasantries.

    I have great respect for all staff, including Waffle, who keep this place running. Their previous work and dedication should not overshadow any current faults, however. Obviously the community has lost faith in its super administrator to complete these tasks for which he has taken responsibility, and if this administrator, Waffle, is unable or unwilling to do what needs to be done or discuss these issues with his staff and members, we really have no choice as a community but to face difficult decisions. There is no excuse for rudeness or hostility (I mean... it's an free internet forum), but I think it is the time for respectful but frank discussion about the problems Stage48 is facing at the hands of one person.
     
  5. foodlfg

    foodlfg Upcoming Girls

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    Aug 2, 2011
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    Hungary
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    yamadanoe
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    well, you cannot work with people who don't want to work with you or in this case with the community. no matter what you do, threat them, ask them politely. it's just won't work.

    what the Waffle guy is doing is eroding the community. when people don't see that the future is secured they become less and less involved which leads to a dead forum in the future. maybe he wants exactly this, how knows.

    i have seen way too many large and small DIY forums going down because the owner was incompetent, didn't care, didn't have the money, or just didn't have the time anymore. it's like history is repeating itself. i'm too old and i'm tired of it.

    not the same but use reddit, twitter, something more stable instead.
     
  6. marioworldakb

    marioworldakb Under Girls Stage48 Donor

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    Jan 4, 2017
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    Hinachan's Cell House
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    Iwata "Sukinaso" Hina
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    marioworld929
    lol just make sure it goes well for the SSK period or we will have a lot of pissed off and sad people beeeetching and moaning

    where's my votes Mr.bigC :^^;:
     
  7. PetalidiStelle

    PetalidiStelle Kenkyuusei

    Joined:
    Oct 31, 2016
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    Portugal
    Oshimen:
    okadanana
    Twitter:
    petalidistellee
    Thank you for opening the thread and clearing some of the ideas.
    It really is hard to suggest anything knowing Waffle isn't active in the community/discussion. But as I already said in the suggestions thread, the most respectful thing for him to do would be to hand all or some responsibilities to interested and trustful people.
    I don't want to see this being brushed off until another problem shows up.

    Is there any thread with alternative social networks for Stage? I know that there are at least Discord and LINE servers but I've only seen them scattered in several threads.
    Maybe it would be a good idea to reunite them in a pinned thread so that everyone has some kind of backup for downtimes or simply an alternative for different occasions (I would be interested in checking out SSK reactions and commenting in real time, for example).
     
  8. wakadere

    wakadere Kenkyuusei

    Joined:
    Nov 22, 2016
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    hell
    Oshimen:
    okada nana + cherprang
    I feel like the only problem with alternatives is that just a few of us who knew the thread before the forum went down is going to know about it.
    And the problem with no one being able to go in and make significant changes to the site make sit look... old. Not old like it is, with a bunch of history and fan dedication, but old as in no one uses it anymore. Seeing all the old single covers and last year's SSK banners in November of last year made me think, at first, that no one really came to this forum anymore. And now its the only place I can discuss 48/46 on.
     
  9. Silenka

    Silenka Future Girls Retired Staff

    Joined:
    Aug 9, 2012
    Location:
    USA
    Thanks for this topic and the clear explanation.

    Hundreds, if not thousands of overseas fans depend on this forum every day for info and news about the 48 groups. If this forum disappeared, fans who do not speak Japanese would not be able to "access" the 48 group in various ways anymore. We all agree that it's important that the forum stays open.

    Not to mention, just as bad, Studio48 (which shares bandwidth with Stage iirc) would also disappear until it could find new hosting - and I'm not 100% sure the files would be accessible to move somewhere else if the domain was locked and unpaid for. That was one of my main concerns while the forum was down. Wiki48 of course would also lose all the work people have done on it over the years. This is a really precarious situation when you consider only one person has the power to keep it all running.

    At this point in the 48 group's life cycle, I do not believe that creating a new forum would be a smart idea unless the entire database could be copied over (and even then, it might not work out as planned). It would only fragment the userbase, which is something that I think no one really wants to happen. The group is less popular than it was during its peak and the consolidation of the overseas fandom is what's needed now, more than ever. So I'd hope that idea would be thrown out the window, unless @Mr Waffle really does disappear for good and then I suppose we'd have no choice.
     
  10. Puni

    Puni Member Stage48 Donor

    Joined:
    Nov 6, 2013
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    Germany
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    kashiwagiyuki
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    puni_2k
    A few days ago i created backups for studio48 and wiki48 and placed them on my Google drive:

    https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B9_mzUy0szqhTmFrd0FBZl9laHc
    https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B9_mzUy0szqhYWNrbVk5ci1INjg

    If there is a need for it i can do this on a regular basis. Keep in mind though that doing this will generate quite a bit of traffic. Especially in case of wiki48, which currently is around 4GB. I don't know what the traffic limit currently is but I would imagine that 1 backup per month would be the maximum that's sustainable.

    IMO the traffic issue is something that should also be discussed.
    If I'm not mistaken we had the out-of-traffic problem already 2 times this year and to me it seemed that it only got resolved by a new month beginning and the traffic counter resetting.
    The easiest solution is to buy more traffic from the hoster. That will however cost more money. I don't have any idea about the finances of the forum so this is just one suggestion.
    What would also be interested is if traffic usage generally is increasing, or if these are just singularities. The consensus of declining foreign interest in the 48G doesn't correlate very well with increased traffic.

    A different suggestion would be to not generate that much traffic in the first place. There are quite a number of threads that are updated on a regular basis with a significant amount of images. Maybe stricter rules that you always have to use thumbnails, smaller gifs and signature images or having them externally hosted would be sufficient.
     
  11. ET920

    ET920 Member

    Joined:
    Aug 25, 2010
    Location:
    Buenos Aires, Argentina
    I guess it looks fine on your resume to mention you own a forum with over 15k users and 1m messages.
     
  12. ptakbfan

    ptakbfan Kenkyuusei Stage48 Donor

    Joined:
    Oct 3, 2015
    Oshimen:
    watanaberika
    I think this is a good idea that bridges the gap between Mr. Waffle's desire to retain control of Stage48 with the members' desire to have administrators in place that can help run Stage48 and continue to build it. I feel like the forum stuff is handled well with the existing staff (though it seems many people would like updated graphics), so it's really about putting a person or team in place above forum admins and below or "next to" Mr. Waffle in responsibility so that the back end stuff can be taken care of in a timely manner.
     
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  13. gocchisama

    gocchisama Member Stage48 Donor

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    Oct 12, 2012
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    hirateyurina
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    Forum software update. it is long overdue.

    That only should justify a technical team aside from ghost waffle. Keeping the bare minimum of service (billing is like 5 min of someone's time) is a tiny piece of what should a pretend administrator should do for a community like Stage. This is reality. It shouldn't be something that a community should say to an admin. This very admin should ask this question himself : am i dragging the forum because of my activity?

    When you are an entrepreneur, do you really want to keep your firm to yourself because you created it, or are you going to open up to investors so it can grow much more faster, in a more efficient way than if you were in charge alone? Waffle needs to stop being selfish and think for all the users of Stage48.

    I'm not being ungrateful here, we have waited for like 3 years for a change of behavior. It didn't happened.
     
    • Like Like x 1
  14. gakushan

    gakushan Kenkyuusei

    Joined:
    Sep 27, 2015
    It took less than a week last year to meet the donation goal so I assume that financing is not a primary part of the problems.

    1. Billing issues are probably the easiest to handle since any person can pay bills.
    2. From the donations thread, the site is on a VPS so someone will need to know how to manage that. Given the bandwidth outages, it seems that either the settings or the contract has bandwidth limits. There should be a way to either purchase additional bandwidth or allow for automatic overcharges.
    3. Software updates, platform migrations, etc. can be nice to have things once the site is running smoothly so they probably aren't pertinent right now.

    In both incidents the concerns were about the speed of response. If the site went down but came back up within 24 hours, we would wonder about what happened but not be worried about continuity of the site. The DNS problem seemed to be fixed by changing the payment method. The bandwidth issue seemed to be fixed by sending more money. For both, if someone else could pay the bill, the incident could have been resolved much more quickly. Even if we don't have an immediate solution to issue 2, at least item 1 should not be a bottleneck.

    Here's a rough draft for a plan:
    1. Find Mr Waffle for a discussion.
    2. Enable someone else able to pay bills (even if this means from their own personal bank account, reimbursement can be figured out later).
    3. Search for technical people to handle server maintenance issues.
    4. Explore transferring or adding names to bank accounts, ownership, etc.
     
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  15. foodlfg

    foodlfg Upcoming Girls

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    Aug 2, 2011
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    Hungary
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    yamadanoe
    Twitter:
    foodlfg
    yep, one person is not enough to run a forum like this in the long run no matter how dedicated he/she is. but let's not talk about dedication here... xD

    also, forum update would be important because hackers can easily exploit known vulnerabilities of an old forum engine which would cause permanent damage to the forum without a competent admin here who can archive.

    i wouldn't mention S48 in my resume. my employer would think that i'm weird which is not true of course, but normal people cannot process this kind of content and they would start getting all sorts of delusions about me & Nakomiku... lol


    @Puni
    it's great. o/ archiving is much needed here, and in a perfect world with perfect people in it, it would come naturally. what has been created by the community, belongs to the community.

    how do you archive the wiki btw?
    do you have some kind of admin account there and you use the official way, or the 1GB xml in you archive is generated by an external program. is this archive compatible with wikis, can it be imported?
     
    • Like Like x 1
  16. ET920

    ET920 Member

    Joined:
    Aug 25, 2010
    Location:
    Buenos Aires, Argentina
    Maybe he can create accounts with higher privileges than moderators, but not as high as his own (I guess he's afraid of someone changing the password and effectively kicking him out of the site). He'd have to live with the fear of someone mirroring the site somewhere else, though.
     
    • Like Like x 1
  17. ptakbfan

    ptakbfan Kenkyuusei Stage48 Donor

    Joined:
    Oct 3, 2015
    Oshimen:
    watanaberika
    Well there's a difference between the permissions in the forum and Stage48 as a whole. A hypothetical "tech team" would be higher than a forum admin (like ithebigc) because the team would be controlling areas beyond just the forum - like the wiki, different pages hosted through Stage48, all the databases, etc. I know that Stage48 used to be hosted through Dreamhost in the past, and I know you are able to grant privileges to other people so that they can control billing, editing of privileges, databases, and everything else, depending on what you want them to do. So, if he wanted to, there is certainly a way (at least through Dreamhost, and I'm sure through other hosting services) to add people that could help run things while still limiting their ability to edit his privileges. The question is... would Waffle be okay with this, and if he would be, who would be an appropriate person to have such control?

    edit: I also considered the possibility that ET920 brought up, that someone who gains access to the databases etc. might be inclined to use his/her access to start a new website, effectively ending Stage48 and Waffle's control. Whoever was promoted to an important role like the one we're discussing would need to be trusted by both Waffle and the members. I think the obvious choice is ithebigc, but they already said they didn't know anything about the site outside of the forum.
     
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  18. foodlfg

    foodlfg Upcoming Girls

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    Aug 2, 2011
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    Hungary
    Oshimen:
    yamadanoe
    Twitter:
    foodlfg
    @ET920
    @ptakbfan
    a copied new forum would worth nothing without the community.

    on the other hand, if the community decides they want to move somewhere else and close this site for obvious reasons, they should be able to do it.

    of course, it's just theoretical seeing the current situation. X)
     
    Last edited: Jun 8, 2017
    • Like Like x 1
  19. ptakbfan

    ptakbfan Kenkyuusei Stage48 Donor

    Joined:
    Oct 3, 2015
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    watanaberika
    You're right, but if someone could promise a new website and forum that solves many of the problems Stage48 has experienced while laying the foundation for more features and a better experience, would members come along? If the community is fed up with this situation, they can always move to another. Yeah we will have to put our trust in this new person or a new website, which is hard, but if people are desperate enough for that stability, they will sign up for it.

    Strikingly, only a handful of us are actually here discussing this. Perhaps the members are more undisturbed about the problems than I initially thought.
     
  20. gocchisama

    gocchisama Member Stage48 Donor

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    Oct 12, 2012
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    Paris,France
    Oshimen:
    hirateyurina
    Twitter:
    Gocchisama
    I agree, what's important is not the forum itself, but the community.

    So why are we bitching on Waffle absence? Since the bills are being paid, and servers are operational. It's because we are being limited for no reasons. We don't live, we barely survive, self sustaining on updates that regular users spend their free time on. And there's no reasons for us to be limited this way.

    We don't want to compromise to another brand new forum because we perfectly now this one is functional, but we can do more that functional. We can make project, do enhancement etc. But we can't because Xenforo is only operate by Waffle.

    Also, there's Stage48 donor here. We can't just donate to a forum that use 10% of his tools. It just doesn't make sense.
     

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