There are just some people who conform themselves if those problems are solved for now. When the forum is online, it's fully functional as you said. People easily find what they want. In this thread we are going further than that and thinking about what could be improved and what measures could be taken now to avoid future problems. Not everyone likes or takes the time to think about that, especially if they're not part of the staff. Some people may also feel like they would have to show some kind of practical help to contribute to the discussion. Unfortunately I don't have much help to offer, I don't even know if I would be able to donate if it was necessary, and I'm a recent member, but to me it's important to stay updated and give my 2 cents.
That there's a community around a forum doesn't mean the community owns the forum or the content itself. If that were true, there wouldn't be a single administrator, and there would be a new S48 clone every year, because there's always people who won't think it twice before leaving with a copy of the data to start "the definitive AKB48" forum. I personally think the wiki outgrew the forum itself, and should be a separate entity. The lyrics site might be as well, or could be part of the wiki itself, since many times you google for a single name and, upon reaching the page, you'd like reading the lyrics. If there's already a recent backup of the wiki, it could be setup somewhere else, with its own set of administrators.
Hi, back from the dead here. Well, I was the only Wiki48 admin for a while. Some years ago I talked to Mr Waffle about it and he was able to make me an admin on the Wiki, so I got able to delete pages, create new accounts and ban users, basically. He took a loooong time to respond, but he even installed some plugins that I asked. But, as much as I'm grateful for this, he pretty much disappeared for good later on. Editing the Wiki demands a lot of effort (since we can't install new plugins, demans more manual work than it should, actually) and I was starting to get more busy with real life and everything. But, also, I got down a bit by the fact that we were pretty much dependent on a guy that ignores people that are actually trying to make things better for everyone (by the way, MediaWiki is a very easy platform to use). Also, the forum/wiki getting down from time to time means that AKB48-"please stop copying our stuff"-Wikia getting first on Google Results, ergh. After waiting a long time I passed my account ahead and thankfully we still have a great group of users (thanks ) in the Wiki, which is still a very helpful source for everyone. But there's still this barrier of the forum getting down from time to time and the inability to make larger improvements. Also, the link to the forum means less users, which means less editors. That being said, I agree with @ET920 that the Wiki48 should be a separated entity from Stage48. Of course it needs a greater discussion and it demands a lot of help from everyone, but personally I feel this is the best option for all the fans.
Basically the backup is generated by a python script created by WikiTeam. In this case it used the wiki's API to access the content. The API is publicly accessible so in theory everybody can do a backup (although i would strongly advise against doing it). There is a guide on how you can import the backup, but i don't know if it will work with anything different than MediaWiki.
I can't speak for other members, but I am constantly lurking here. Also during the downtime, I often checked the twitters to see if there were any updates. I was a bit worried this place would be gone forever. But I can't add much to this thread, as most things are already said. Other members might feel the same way. I love to help out in some way or another though (as a web developer I do have some graphic and technical skills, but Xenforo isn't one of them), if we make any progress on this.
From the comments, it seems like there are several options which people would think is an improvement over the current situation. All of them involve having people other than Mr Waffle handling some aspects of operations: 1. complete transfer of the site to another person/entity 2. giving other people permission to pay bills and access the backend 3. giving permission to clone the site and all of us moving over there At this point, it really doesn't matter who has the authority to do things as long as they are willing to work with the community in an expedient manner. Authority can be reassigned later or the person can learn to handle backend. We should only split up the sites if for some reason when negotiating with Mr Waffle, he is unwilling to allow others to have additional powers but for some reason allows us to clone or split off a portion of the site. Just so everyone is on the same page, can someone answer the following questions: 1. Who is in direct contact with Mr Waffle? One or two of these people should be the designated representative to negotiate with Mr Waffle. 2. Who are the current admins? These seem like ideal people to take over the site if options 1 or 2 are selected from above. 3. Who currently has backups of the site and/or is technically capable of creating a new site? This needs to be known if we end up in route 3. Of course, Mr Waffle must sign permission before we can take action due to legal reasons. 4. Who has the technical capabilities and interest to maintain the site long term? This will be a question no matter which option is selected but can be handled later assuming that we can reassign permissions later. I personally think routes 1 or 2 are more ideal but we should be prepared for route 3 if Mr Waffle wants to sign a permission slip and disappear forever.
This is going to be a long post because I'm trying to answer everything I can possibly answer. Bear with me. First, regarding a technical person/team. This is a very good time to look for someone like that before we even consider approaching @Mr Waffle because it does us no good if we can't present a solution to the problems when doing so. However, we don't actually want too many people because too many hands in the pie and all. We saw what happened when Afro_Stud's account was compromised, and he was just a moderator. I shudder to think what would have happened if it was an administrator account with access to the back end of the forum. Either way, one or two people should be enough. The moderator team and I will still be here to handle the day to day workings of the forum, so the technical staff will really only need to know how to update Xenforo when new versions come out, update banners if given the images, add add-ons/features if needed and solve any unforeseen IT problems that pop up. It shouldn't be something that requires daily attention, just someone who can be there when they're needed. The idea of having our own image upload function, besides convenience, is that we know those images won't go down. Other hosting sites may have images that eventually expire or are otherwise deleted. That would leave large portions of our galleries empty or with dead links, which is something we want to avoid. I'll agree here. This is mostly directed @kyoto48☀︎☂, but in case other people feel the same way, there is no need to demonize Mr Waffle. He did volunteer to take over when no one else wanted to and has kept the site largely running, even if it has taken some time for him to fix issues, when he does. Do I wish he would actually talk to us about what is happening or respond to us? Of course. But as the site has been functional and running for years under his ownership, I think a bit of respect is required. As for Trump, I don't know the specific incident you're referring to, but I say dig at him all you want as long as it doesn't bring the conversation off topic. The man is ruining my country, it might be good for people from other countries to know over half the country thinks he's an idiot. Honestly, it might be better that way? One thing I was planning on talking to him about was that I want more transparency how our funds are being spent. Right now, he is the only person with access to Stage48's Paypal account because HoneyRoastedPeanuts dropped off the face of the earth. Primarily, by last year's donation drive, our Xenforo license had expired, which is why we still can't upgrade to the latest version, besides Mr Waffle not being here. I wanted to know whether we finally had enough money to renew our license and even purchase an addon or two that would add features our users had been asking for, and I never heard back from him in the few times I asked. If the lack of donations causes him to come back, then in a way I'm for that, even as administrator. My Twitter account in effect does that already. I think most of the people on here know it already, but if not it's twitter.com/ithebigc. It's also linked under my username to the left. Yeah, about the banners...I don't think I can access them, and even if I could, I have no idea how to replace them, nor can I create the banners that replace them. Only two people have access to the banners, Mr Waffle and our Xenforo designer, @aezea, both of whom are MIA so that's why our banners are years old. Perhaps we should look for a graphic designer too? Someone who doesn't need administrator privileges but would be in charge of making new graphics for singles/other major events who could submit them to the technical staff member.
Been a lurker since BwT times but recently decided to make an account here.. Going to relate my own personal experience. Used to play a text-based game which was quite famous some time ago. Before the game was pulled down by the owner, the owner hardly had any interactions with the players, even those who actually paid premium membership. The game would always reset after a few months of play to give everyone a fresh start, by the owner but he kinda lost interest after a while and took longer and longer time for the reset to occur. Eventually he pulled the plug on the game. What I am trying to say, is to get a back-up and inform the community here about it. During the downtime, I checked the stage48 twitter, the "emergency twitter" and it was not updated at all. New and casual users might not be able to search for ithebigc twitter. I know because I have been lurking here for a while though but others may not know. For the tech team, better to have at least 3 person, so that in any disagreement, one person can act as a deciding factor.
The banner should technically be editable to anybody with admin privileges to the forum. I've poked around Xenforo (and other forum software) in the past and typically banners are a product of an add-on that is pretty user friendly, or they're somewhere in the template code you could probably Ctrl+F to find and replace the link to the banner images. I realize this doesn't really solve the problem, but I just wanted to point out that there shouldn't be too much know-how required to changing the banners once you know where to go to replace them. You rarely have to edit any code; worst case scenario is copy/pasting the new banner's image url into the correct part of the template, but I guess you would have to find it first. Also, I agree with your point about a lean administration team - if you even want to call it a team, if you only have one person. I mean, you really would only need to call on that person as needed, so it's not like they're going to have to log in all the time to mess with stuff. It would be hard to identify an appropriate person, mainly because you're looking for somebody you can trust, with knowledge of the appropriate systems and processes that can be relied on to respond fairly quickly when needed. Bit of a tall order when you consider your candidates are relatively anonymous and the position is volunteer based.
On images... Pretty much sums up why bandwidth will have to swallow images added as attachments. I have an impression anyway, that they don't make up for a lot, as view counts on those I have added myself (so I had a motivation to keep an eye on) are very low. Mere dozens.
Have you ever thought about creating a backup (or even starting a totally new one) in one of those forum host services that don't demand a high technical experience? Of course you probably won't be able to have everything that this forum has but at least there would be a place for people to talk about 48G. And there's also the advantage of not needing a high technical staff to run it.
