[niffiwan]

On the subject of no suitable candidates, hypothetically, would niffiwan (hope you don't mind me saying it niffiwan) do as an Admin?

He's very nice, knows his way around mantis, frequently helps people with technical issues, spends lots of time here...

But does he know how to administrate a server? Does he have the technical experience necessary to maintain and if necessary upgrade the software running on this server? Does he know how to build a maintainable website?

Funny thing is (& despite Lorric not knowing it) my day job is *nix systems administration   (well, at least it was before I took on this managing sysadmins (aka cat herding) role...)

I can't help with website design, but I have administered Tru64 (eviiiiiiiil), Solaris, and RHEL/Centos for many years.  I reckon I could manage a Debian based system as well without many dramas. I have also administered apache, mysql, postgresql, Progress and Oracle RDBMs (although I am not a specialist DBA). So in short, I'm confident I have the technical skills. What I lack is the time - I doubt I could be a full time (tech) admin, but I could assist Zacam & rev_posix.  Having said that, I don't believe that HLP really needs those skills right now, I'm getting the feeling that other areas are the ones that need extra staff.

[Lorric]

Well, I was pretty damn close to finding you a suitable admin.

[Fury]

And by no means do I want to disparage your past contributions, but for the past few years you've done an awful lot of complaining about what needs fixing or improving around here, without offering much in the way of concrete assistance to achieve it.  It's all well and good to point out, "Software X needs updating," or "Security hole Y needs patching," but hasn't there been any point when you stopped and asked yourself, hey, maybe I could jump in and lend a bit of a hand?

I served you folks as an administrator for FIVE years. I would like to think I've done my part.

Having said that, I don't believe that HLP really needs those skills right now, I'm getting the feeling that other areas are the ones that need extra staff.

Trust me, if you're half as good as your post indicates, your insights and assistance would be really valuable.

[karajorma]

Hell, even as a backup for when Rev and Zacam aren't available it would be worth considering him.

[Spoon]

Just as I would support Axem, I would also very much support niffiwan 

[mjn.mixael]

I <3 me some Niffiwan... but if being an Admin really does suck that much away from actual projects... then I'd ask Niffiwan to decline! He's one of the few coders that actually takes requests anymore... selfishly, us modders need him!

[Fury]

It is completely valid concern, especially for those who have been really productive. But what happens if all admins would take that stance? Worrying their personal investments towards projects and the projects themselves instead of the community as a whole? We'd end up with dysfunctional community, one that most likely wouldn't be productive. We can compare all the modders and coders to cooks who cook food. Then they serve their food on plates to happy customers. What happens when the plates are unwashed or broken? The customers wouldn't be so happy.

The dedicated and talented people have to juggle both somehow, without getting burned out in the process. And I have to stress this, try to recognize warning signs of getting burned out. Noticing it too late can lead to all kinds of problems. I know for having experienced it first hand.

Traditionally administrators are few in numbers and it works in most communities. HLP however, is not like most communities and perhaps that kind of tradition should be broken. What happens when you have more administrators for each required role than is needed? Assuming responsibilities are shared evenly and fairly, then that means each admin has that much more time to spend on everything else. That would practically fix all the problems already mentioned in this topic and address the concern of any single administrator getting swamped with administrator duties and not having time for much else.

Of course that means suitable people need to step up in even larger numbers that what has been discussed so far.

If Karajorma is too busy with administrator duties despite Goober and everyone else being there, how many community admins are needed to keep everyone's workload small enough to let them stay as productive individuals in the community as well? Four, five? Assuming Axem gets promoted, then we could certainly consider upping the ante and get two more community admins, making that three new community admins total. That should do the trick and let these people have fun outside administrator duties. The rest is up to each admin's personality and ability to resist their overbearing responsibility and dedication to keep an eye out for anything and everything and instead allow themselves personal time.

Tech admins are trickier to find, but it certainly would help if niffiwan joins and anyone else capable should step up too. Zacam has been really busy with his personal life recently, so really, any dependable help is well received.

And anyway, this idea about breaking the unwritten rule about having few admins is just my idea. My saying it doesn't make it so, the rest is up to the administrators. The idea is sound though.

[Goober5000]

I'm very interested to see the donation analysis you performed to reach this conclusion.

HLP has always been completely secretive and black-boxish about its financials. AFAIK*, nobody except Sandwich knows how much we receive, from where, or how much we pay, so that "donation analysis" has always been impossible. Bit harsh to get up Mobius like that about analysis that he could never do because the data is kept hidden.

You missed the point of my comment.  Mobius made a completely conjectural statement, and treated it as if it were self-evident.  Since Mobius does not have access to donation data, he should have made it clear it was wishful thinking, or he should have restated it as a question.

"People will surely donate more than $1000 per year" is no different from "SCP will surely implement feature X", or "FREDders will surely flock to join my campaign".


As for the actual financial analysis, I don't think we keep that deliberately secret.  If you've gotten nowhere by asking in the past, was it because you were stonewalled, or because the topic died due to inactivity?

Between member donations and the old ModDB award for BTRL, we are financially in good standing.  The breakdown between roles is a little rickety, though... it has been discussed in the admin forum before and it wouldn't hurt to discuss it again.

And by no means do I want to disparage your past contributions, but for the past few years you've done an awful lot of complaining about what needs fixing or improving around here, without offering much in the way of concrete assistance to achieve it.  It's all well and good to point out, "Software X needs updating," or "Security hole Y needs patching," but hasn't there been any point when you stopped and asked yourself, hey, maybe I could jump in and lend a bit of a hand?

Fury may be a curmudgeon, but I value his insight.  Whenever he raises a point about software or security patches or whatever, I either look into it myself or I ping Zacam and rev_posix for input and/or advice.  So his points are heard, even if we may not take the direction he is agitating for.  For example, he has complained about the forum not being patched, but I've spoken to Zacam and he has the situation under control.  The fact that this forum has so many custom mods and code changes means that the automatic upgrade doesn't always work, so Zacam has often merged the security fix into the code by hand.  Since he didn't use the updater, the version number doesn't change, but the fix has nevertheless been integrated.

Other points, such as member registration, are just due to not being privy to behind-the-scenes stuff.  Yes, we may have a few registrants trapped by the spam filter, but that same filter keeps out thousands of bot registrations per day.

[Fury]

For example, he has complained about the forum not being patched, but I've spoken to Zacam and he has the situation under control.  The fact that this forum has so many custom mods and code changes means that the automatic upgrade doesn't always work, so Zacam has often merged the security fix into the code by hand.  Since he didn't use the updater, the version number doesn't change, but the fix has nevertheless been integrated.

Naturally that is something I don't have the means to verify. Automatic upgrades have never worked properly because of the mods, I used to patch the forums by hand but I also changed the version number. Unfortunately that doesn't extend to the theme files which have been upgraded on several occasions since the SMF 2.0 release candidate, on which current theme is based on.

Meaning we totally need that web designer to upgrade both MediaWiki and SMF themes to fix browser rendering issues and most of all, avoid any potential exploits lurking in these aged themes.

Also, SMF's way of handling mods really does suck and I totally feel bad for suggesting SMF back when vB was migrated to SMF, prior to leaving GameSpy. From what I have researched, some forums implement mods through hooks. Meaning you have to modify forum source files very little or none at all to implement mods.

Yes, we may have a few registrants trapped by the spam filter, but that same filter keeps out thousands of bot registrations per day.

I believe I mentioned this in another topic, I've noticed in several websites that host multiple discussion forums live demos that SMF demos are filled with spam posts, whereas other forums have very little or none. I do not know why this is, do spammers target SMF specifically for some reason or are other forums simply more resistant to automated spam.

[Goober5000]

I believe I mentioned this in another topic, I've noticed in several websites that host multiple discussion forums live demos that SMF demos are filled with spam posts, whereas other forums have very little or none. I do not know why this is, do spammers target SMF specifically for some reason or are other forums simply more resistant to automated spam.

*shrug* Back when we first switched to SMF, one of its advantages was that it was almost never targeted for spam, whereas vBulletin got spammed all the time.  I guess SMF's popularity since then has meant that spammers have adjusted their tactics.

[karajorma]

If Karajorma is too busy with administrator duties despite Goober and everyone else being there, how many community admins are needed to keep everyone's workload small enough to let them stay as productive individuals in the community as well? Four, five? Assuming Axem gets promoted, then we could certainly consider upping the ante and get two more community admins, making that three new community admins total. That should do the trick and let these people have fun outside administrator duties. The rest is up to each admin's personality and ability to resist their overbearing responsibility and dedication to keep an eye out for anything and everything and instead allow themselves personal time.

Things are a little more active than usual today, partly because of this topic, and partly cause of other things that have come to a head, but I've been on HLP for over 2 hours at this point and all I've done is deal with admin, and inter-project issues. I've done very little that actually has to do with Diaspora, let alone MindGames, TBP or SCP coding. Having other admins would not have reduced that workload one iota.

The problem isn't the number of community admins so much as the outright hostility the community has to any sort of change. Any attempt to change things around here is usually met with furious disagreement about why it's a bad idea from people who want to argue and absolute indifference to any reasonable suggestions. Whenever these is a discussion about improving HLP in any way it swiftly devolves into an argument and then nothing gets done. Until something is done about that, HLP isn't going to grow at all.

You won't be able to blame me.

Actually I suspect he will. Your posts in particular take up an inordinate amount of my time as you get reported more often than the next two users put together.

[General Battuta]

That's not really my impression. Attempts to change things that reached a fairly broad consensus have been met with furious silence.

[karajorma]

absolute indifference to any reasonable suggestions.

I don't see how I'm disagreeing with you.

Let me give you an example. The discussion on licensing. What we got was an argument rather than a discussion. In the end I suggested what I still believe to be a reasonable compromise - that we, as a community, say that unless there is an explicit licence we treat all new content as unusable and bug the content creator for an explicit licence.

The result - absolutely **** all change.

[Colonol Dekker]

Wasn't there an implied creative commons licence blanketing the community? Or was that the community competition?

I think, (speaking) as a mere mod, that mods,  admins, global admins and (never heard the term until this thread) "community admins" tend to overlap really. Mods have less capability granted, but admins tend to do all the moderation before I even notice It tbh. Not due to ineptitude or lethargy, simple order of living. I forget how long I have had the mod powah.  But we all have priority shifts in life.

[karajorma]

That was just for the mod competition. It certainly doesn't cover everything else here on HLP.

[Fury]

Mods have less capability granted, but admins tend to do all the moderation before I even notice It tbh.

I'd say that's part of the problem why people think community admins are moderators and why admins have less time for other stuff than they should. Admins should be able to trust moderators to handle moderation and not do that themselves at every opportunity. Forums (including SMF) have warning system for a reason, moderators can use it to issue warnings and prevent misbehaving people from posting. There shouldn't be much reason for administrators to interfere.

HLP has additional moderation overhead in the form of Monkeys, political prisoners and what have you. There is simple solution, allow global moderators to add and remove people from these membergroups at will, like project leads can do with their project's membergroup. Thus removing that responsibility from admins. Only when situation calls for actual (temporary or permanent) ban should admin be involved.

[niffiwan]

Thanks for your kind words of support guys

I understand what Mjn is saying about admin work sucking up time, that was essentially my original concern.  Having said that (and as Fury has pointed out) extra admins help decrease the workload on everyone, and provide extra capacity to easily cope when Real Life gets busy. Therefore I am happy to volunteer to assist Zacam & rev_posix (and anyone else that steps up) with the tech admin work.

[Xelion]

3. Those files would be needed to be backed up through same 10Mbit pipe since there is no backup service in internal network.

Why?

HLP has always been completely secretive and black-boxish about its financials. AFAIK*, nobody except Sandwich knows how much we receive, from where, or how much we pay, so that "donation analysis" has always been impossible.

And that information should remain undisclosed. When people know what finances are available they might start making demands on where it should go...

[General Battuta]

Like, uh, where? It would probably be a piddling sum by any standard.

[niffiwan]

3. Those files would be needed to be backed up through same 10Mbit pipe since there is no backup service in internal network.

Why?

Do you mean:

Why do the files need to be backed up?

(Because people would expect a repository of mods to survive hardware failure/software failure/human accidents)

Or

Why is there no backup service on the internal network?

(Because that'd mean renting a 2nd server from the existing hosting company at probably a significant cost)