With the lingering talk/suggestion of a move I'm surprised Edward hasn't come in to offer up even a hollow reassurance that he still plans to make improvements. It wouldn't take that many departures to kill this site off after all.
archBOSTON Update: A New Dawn
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ulrichomega
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I don't see the issue. These are absolutely standard terms of service on literally every website on the internet that allows user-generated content. They might sound grandiose, but they basically amount to "We can display content you upload to others" and "We can ban users if they break the rules."
Equilibria
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What's standard on the corporate internet is not standard on aB. There has never been a "we" to aB that can do anything with users' content before. It has never had management.
ulrichomega
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Such a clause is what allows things like banning theMagicMan or deleting users posts if they post inappropriate content. It's legalese, but it's not some boot stomping on the face of humanity. It's not just the corporate internet that has things like this. It's literally every website, even this one:
http://web.archive.org/web/20170619004535/archboston.org/community/register.php
If we want to get pissed, let's get pissed about SkyriseCities not answering direct questions about planned changes or something along those lines. Let's not conjure up boogeymen of some faceless corporate entity turning these forums into some dictatorship.
Equilibria
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I'm not. I'm saying we were in charge. We are no longer in charge. We could be in charge again somewhere else.
I also reiterate Beton's and Justin's concern from earlier - some posts on this site are pretty long and pretty involved and present content ownership issues. I have done evenings of research and work to build posts on aB. If we want people to be comfortable continuing to do that (and when people like F-Line do it it adds real value) we need to think about who owns that content. When davem drew an alternative map of Beacon Yards way back when and wrote long posts justifying it, Edward's terms would have given a company in Toronto the right to take that map, present it as a product of "their community" and use it to promote themselves, all without his knowledge.
It's more realistic for pictures. Beeline embeds from Flickr. Edward's terms say he continues to own the copyright, but Edward can use his pictures in any way, for any reason, without notifying Beeline, including (presumably) to promote any other business venture Edward chooses to engage in and needs promo shots for. Maybe Beeline is okay with that but again, it's a conversation worth having when we've never had these things be at issue before.
I think it’s pretty clear that most of the regular posters would migrate somewhere else if that became a possibility/necessity. I wouldn’t discount the collective value of what these folks/we contribute. Boston already has Buildup and Curbed, so there’s not really a market for a third commercially-driven, real estate/development-oriented website in this city… Which is what would be left if most of the regulars here found another place to converse.
I’m new here relative to most, and more a lurker than a participant. I am, however, an architectural and transit enthusiast, read new posts daily, and greatly regard the participation and depth of knowledge of everyone here.
It’s my opinion that most of the concerns about this issue assume that what we’re all doing is the equivalent of a book club meeting frequently at the library, or a coffee shop. It is not.
What we all are doing is logging into a worldwide publicly available website domain (archboston.org) which has been assigned by an international body (ICANN) to a specific individual. As part of that assignment, the individual is given full autonomy to use that domain as they see fit, and is only limited (effectively) by the local laws and regulations that the site is hosted in. That domain itself is running on a hosting service somewhere which has its own Terms and Conditions.
No poster here, other than Briv, has ever actually, “Run the Community”. That’s just the reality of how the web works. Moderators are nice, but they only exist if the domain administrator agrees.
Three minutes of searching, and I was able to determine archboston.org is hosted at ionos.com, a European based firm. Someone with more M&A background would be better at determining copyright standing of US generated content for an EU based firm, but they bought 1&1, who bought (name a thousand tiny webhosts that were bought up after Briv created the site).
Here are Ionos’ Terms and Conditions: https://www.ionos.com/terms-gtc/general-terms-and-conditions/
A few highlights:
3.1.6 Some 1&1 IONOS Services may not be available to International Customers, and 1&1 IONOS reserves the right to alter, amend, or discontinue the provision of some or all of the 1&1 IONOS Services to International Customers in a particular market at any time in 1&1 IONOS’s sole discretion.
3.1.7 1&1 IONOS may suspend performance under or terminate this Agreement, cease transmission of data associated with your domain name immediately and without notice, permanently remove Your Data from the 1&1 IONOS Equipment, and take any other actions it deems necessary, in its sole discretion, immediately and without notice, to comply with the relevant Laws if it is informed or otherwise believes, in its sole discretion, that Your Web Site violates the intellectual property rights of any third party or is otherwise the subject of a dispute. As more completely set forth in Sections 6, 7, and 10, you waive any and all claims you may have, now and forever, against 1&1 IONOS relating to the content, use, and operation of Your Web Site and agree to indemnify and hold harmless 1&1 IONOS from and against any such claims.
3.2.2. You acknowledge and agree that 1&1 IONOS or its agents, assignees or licensees may associate any data of any kind, in 1&1 IONOS’s sole discretion, with the Domain Name registered in association with Your Web Site or any URL incorporating said Domain Name until you replace such data with Your Web Site, at such times as Your Web Site is no longer available, and upon termination for any reason, for as long as 1&1 IONOS or 1&1 IONOS’s agent, assignee or licensee continue to be listed as the hosting entity with the domain name registry used to register such Domain Name. This paragraph shall apply to any and all web pages generated by 1&1 IONOS or its affiliates, including but not limited to 404 error pages.
It goes on for twenty-four sections (section 21 is titled, “ARBITRATION AND WAIVER OF JURY TRIAL”), and I could copy/paste more, but the point is archboston.org has already given up the game. The web is not a conversation, it’s a business. All the members can move somewhere else, but the issues concerning the recent ownership/assignment change about the transfer from Briv to whomever will follow the community where ever it goes.
It would be nice to get some more transparency from the new ownership, like a promise to ask posters if it’s okay to use a photo or text for other purposes on archboston.org, but the Terms and Conditions of the site quoted by Justin7 are ridiculously user vs owner tilted, in no way terminate copyright, and are solely designed to legally protect the ICANN assigned individual from A) lawsuits from users claiming copyright infringement from some random who copy/pasted content from a public website, or B) lawsuits from randoms who copy/pasted from a poster.
It’s not about the software, or the platform, or the ease of moving to something else. If you don’t want your stuff copy/pasted from a public website, even behind a paywall or login requirement, don’t post stuff.
I vote to give the new owner a chance. We can always move on.
It’s my opinion that most of the concerns about this issue assume that what we’re all doing is the equivalent of a book club meeting frequently at the library, or a coffee shop. It is not.
What we all are doing is logging into a worldwide publicly available website domain (archboston.org) which has been assigned by an international body (ICANN) to a specific individual. As part of that assignment, the individual is given full autonomy to use that domain as they see fit, and is only limited (effectively) by the local laws and regulations that the site is hosted in. That domain itself is running on a hosting service somewhere which has its own Terms and Conditions.
No poster here, other than Briv, has ever actually, “Run the Community”. That’s just the reality of how the web works. Moderators are nice, but they only exist if the domain administrator agrees.
Three minutes of searching, and I was able to determine archboston.org is hosted at ionos.com, a European based firm. Someone with more M&A background would be better at determining copyright standing of US generated content for an EU based firm, but they bought 1&1, who bought (name a thousand tiny webhosts that were bought up after Briv created the site).
Here are Ionos’ Terms and Conditions: https://www.ionos.com/terms-gtc/general-terms-and-conditions/
A few highlights:
3.1.6 Some 1&1 IONOS Services may not be available to International Customers, and 1&1 IONOS reserves the right to alter, amend, or discontinue the provision of some or all of the 1&1 IONOS Services to International Customers in a particular market at any time in 1&1 IONOS’s sole discretion.
3.1.7 1&1 IONOS may suspend performance under or terminate this Agreement, cease transmission of data associated with your domain name immediately and without notice, permanently remove Your Data from the 1&1 IONOS Equipment, and take any other actions it deems necessary, in its sole discretion, immediately and without notice, to comply with the relevant Laws if it is informed or otherwise believes, in its sole discretion, that Your Web Site violates the intellectual property rights of any third party or is otherwise the subject of a dispute. As more completely set forth in Sections 6, 7, and 10, you waive any and all claims you may have, now and forever, against 1&1 IONOS relating to the content, use, and operation of Your Web Site and agree to indemnify and hold harmless 1&1 IONOS from and against any such claims.
3.2.2. You acknowledge and agree that 1&1 IONOS or its agents, assignees or licensees may associate any data of any kind, in 1&1 IONOS’s sole discretion, with the Domain Name registered in association with Your Web Site or any URL incorporating said Domain Name until you replace such data with Your Web Site, at such times as Your Web Site is no longer available, and upon termination for any reason, for as long as 1&1 IONOS or 1&1 IONOS’s agent, assignee or licensee continue to be listed as the hosting entity with the domain name registry used to register such Domain Name. This paragraph shall apply to any and all web pages generated by 1&1 IONOS or its affiliates, including but not limited to 404 error pages.
It goes on for twenty-four sections (section 21 is titled, “ARBITRATION AND WAIVER OF JURY TRIAL”), and I could copy/paste more, but the point is archboston.org has already given up the game. The web is not a conversation, it’s a business. All the members can move somewhere else, but the issues concerning the recent ownership/assignment change about the transfer from Briv to whomever will follow the community where ever it goes.
It would be nice to get some more transparency from the new ownership, like a promise to ask posters if it’s okay to use a photo or text for other purposes on archboston.org, but the Terms and Conditions of the site quoted by Justin7 are ridiculously user vs owner tilted, in no way terminate copyright, and are solely designed to legally protect the ICANN assigned individual from A) lawsuits from users claiming copyright infringement from some random who copy/pasted content from a public website, or B) lawsuits from randoms who copy/pasted from a poster.
It’s not about the software, or the platform, or the ease of moving to something else. If you don’t want your stuff copy/pasted from a public website, even behind a paywall or login requirement, don’t post stuff.
I vote to give the new owner a chance. We can always move on.
This is a gross misunderstanding of how things work on many levels. I don't have time to get into it at the moment but I'll explain later if someone else doesn't do it first.
Most of what you posted had no relevance to what we are discussing.
Most of what you posted had no relevance to what we are discussing.
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I'm in the middle. I think some are being a bit too antagonistic about this and I fear it could ruin any chance of a revamp if it continues like this. Edward has expressed interest in reaching out to some members to help get a plan going to fix up the site. I will disclose he has reached out to me in a DM asking for my email, which I gave him, but I have yet to receive any follow up correspondence. I truly believe we can work with Edward as a community to help preserve and continue archBoston as it always has been. Believe me, I'm just as frustrated as many here about how this all played out, but it's in the past and I fear we may be spoiling our future path forward with this antagonism.
We have built up such a vast database of knowledge here over 15 years and I will commit to do everything I can to preserve it. It is too valuable to throw away over this at this early stage.
We have built up such a vast database of knowledge here over 15 years and I will commit to do everything I can to preserve it. It is too valuable to throw away over this at this early stage.
Scott
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Wrong, the "community" predates Briv. Don't preach if you don't know the history
Beton Brut
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And I was for quite a lot of this, our age of anxiety.
I'm not sure I can agree with this...
For over a year, a lot of posts during briv's absence bordered on character assassination. I won't defend briv's indecision to either play an active role as admin or fully hand things over to trusted and competent custodians of the site. It's disappointing and frustrating. His subsequent decision to cash out is a desperately tactical move. It makes me really sad.
The current situation is a bit different. Edward isn't a home-grown host; instead, he's here to turn a profit, and has offered features and enhancements to the site. Well, a few of us want to know what we need to give up to see these promised changes, and who governs the tone and direction of the site. I think these are reasonable questions. So far, we haven't seen anything from him that approaches a complete or thoughtful response. I'd expect that a business owner would have a clear set of responses prepared for these and any other questions well before the ribbon-cutting (or in this case, slapping up banner ads for online BINGO games and AshleyMadison).
I couldn't agree more. You and I agree on the desired results. The methodology is still up for discussion.
BarbaricManchurian
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Well, I’ll relate the story of a big forum I read and am on the staff of, SkyscraperCity. They got sold a while back to some Canadian media company. The user experience has not changed at all, but now they have a staff of professional IT people to run the hosting as opposed to a single in-house person. Of course this can lead to issues, the site was down and/or unreliable for a while and they provided few substantive updates. However the issues were fixed eventually (in many more months than needed, but at least they got fixed). There appears to be no concerns about continued posting. Plenty of enthusiast sub forums for around the world, including many with professional-level contributions. The off-topic forum is alive as ever with spirited discussions about news and culture and geography. So overall I think it can work out, especially in the case of the massive ssc forum. However this is a small forum that can be easily recreated within hours elsewhere for almost free. It would only take hours to upgrade and Edward has done nothing so far. We don’t want another absentee landlord situation so at this point it’s best if we move. The internet has tons of almost free real estate to move into and build a home on, luckily not like real life 
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Hi all. Sorry for being away for the last days. Family situation. Will be more responsive again on Monday.
But, in short I need to reiterate that I'm quite understanding with what most of you are posting in this thread. I have a strong and passionate community at UT. I've dealt with all the issues mentioned here over the years.
A couple of things.
1. I was brought in by briv only a few weeks back. I am not familar enough with the members here to just start choosing moderators randomly. I need to familarize myself first to make an informed decision. vanshnookenraggen is the only existing moderator and I'm communicating with him. statler left before I joined on his own accord. It will take a little time to make the decisions.
2. Forum updates.
A. Some people don't think they are necessary. That's incorrect. The existing vBulletin is ancient. Not something that should be used in 2019 for a bunch of reasons including security and usability. XenForo is what I use at UT and it works great.
B. It won't take a few hours to upgrade as some suggest. There's more to it. The UT forum has a bunch of customizations that I'm going to consider for aB. For example at UT we have a photo database that we built that is attached to the forum. Means that anyone can upload from any computer or mobile device without having to use Flickr or some other hosting service (though you can if you like). We host the photos. Just click and upload. And you can upload any size of file. The database will handle any resizing. Makes it easy to use. Also means from an archival purpose nothing gets lost if a member leaves
Lots to consider here before any real updates can be implemented.
Have a great weekend all.
Ed
But, in short I need to reiterate that I'm quite understanding with what most of you are posting in this thread. I have a strong and passionate community at UT. I've dealt with all the issues mentioned here over the years.
A couple of things.
1. I was brought in by briv only a few weeks back. I am not familar enough with the members here to just start choosing moderators randomly. I need to familarize myself first to make an informed decision. vanshnookenraggen is the only existing moderator and I'm communicating with him. statler left before I joined on his own accord. It will take a little time to make the decisions.
2. Forum updates.
A. Some people don't think they are necessary. That's incorrect. The existing vBulletin is ancient. Not something that should be used in 2019 for a bunch of reasons including security and usability. XenForo is what I use at UT and it works great.
B. It won't take a few hours to upgrade as some suggest. There's more to it. The UT forum has a bunch of customizations that I'm going to consider for aB. For example at UT we have a photo database that we built that is attached to the forum. Means that anyone can upload from any computer or mobile device without having to use Flickr or some other hosting service (though you can if you like). We host the photos. Just click and upload. And you can upload any size of file. The database will handle any resizing. Makes it easy to use. Also means from an archival purpose nothing gets lost if a member leaves
Lots to consider here before any real updates can be implemented.
Have a great weekend all.
Ed
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odurandina
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Yes, yes, yes & yes. Perfection can sometimes be the enemy of the good.
DD's points make sense and this forward course is worthwhile.
The new owner deserves some latitude, imo.
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Jusin7 is wrong.
But I agree that moving the database to another platform is trivial.
Justin7, I think incorrectly, assumes that the community is the database. It is not.
I'm an older, and have been thru all the battles.
Don't post to any site, including archboston.org, if you have concerns about copyright.
I still vote to stay at archboston.org.
But I agree that moving the database to another platform is trivial.
Justin7, I think incorrectly, assumes that the community is the database. It is not.
I'm an older, and have been thru all the battles.
Don't post to any site, including archboston.org, if you have concerns about copyright.
I still vote to stay at archboston.org.
Equilibria
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1) Domain hosting is not free. It is cheap. We looked into this before. It was so cheap that people were questioning the value of even collecting a Patreon or membership fee with regularity.
2) If we moved to a different site, we wouldn't be using someone else's resources. You seem to be operating under the assumption that all of our options are sites owned by some individual somewhere. Our plan was (and still might be) to move to a collectively-owned platform. We offered to buy Briv out, remember - we didn't just demand he turn it over.
With that said, thank you Ed for your response. I'm sympathetic to IRL issues, and I hope you're doing well.
You say you aren't familiar enough to "just start choosing moderators randomly." That's inconsistent with your first post, when you asked for nominations. That change in approach feels and awful lot like you don't trust the people here.
We had a slate of mods. I suspect you've received that same slate from many people, and yet you've chosen to cut the nomination process and wait until you're "familiar" enough to make the decision unilaterally. I'd urge you to reconsider, not least because one popular choice has already made it clear he won't accept a unilateral offer from you.
You also didn't address photo ownership and usage rights. You really should, because if Beeline expresses concern, it's a big problem. He's the dean of Boston development photographers and one of the most valuable members here (he's THE most valuable member here).
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He doesn't want to pick at random so he asked for suggestions. We gave them to him. It's that simple. Now he has to consider the suggestions and ask others for advice. What he said just now is not inconsistent with the first post.
I will also disclose that Ed reached out to me via email after his family issues were worked out and we are planning to start a conversation tomorrow.
I will also disclose that Ed reached out to me via email after his family issues were worked out and we are planning to start a conversation tomorrow.
I find it unfortunate that you ignored my post about accessibility.
The font and colors used on the UT forum are harder to read than the font and color used here.
For those of us with vision problems, that is a significant barrier to posting.