Forum cleaning, Wiki changes, and Discovery Issue 14/4.86 development

[Igiss]

As our board grows larger and nears 700,000 post mark, we have to change: as you probably noticed, the structure of our main forums was overhauled recently, and it looks like the change was an overall positive one. Unfortunately, due to hosting restrictions for the database and size of the stored files, our growth is not limitless: we will have to clean out the database to get rid of some of the dated threads and posts, PMs, attachments, avatars, and photos.

The moderators will begin removing old threads manually in one week. You may still back up some of the older (2005-2007) threads that you find especially valuable until then, and they will not remove important announcements or anything of historical importance for Discovery Gaming Community. However, it will be different with PMs, attachments and other stuff which is no longer used. Beginning 5 days from now, we will remove all PMs stored by the board from the beginning of its existence, which count up to 55,000. We encourage everyone who has important conversations, texts and other stuff stored as PMs to back it up elsewhere, otherwise it will be irreversibly lost.

We will also be removing all attachments present on the board beginning 2 weeks from now, so please back up all your stuff stored as attachments on the forum, and track your important posts that rely on attached images or other files. Maximum allowed size of size of attachment and avatar uploads will be reduced to 75 Kb. You can still use avatars of any size stored elsewhere. Photos and avatars that are in use will not be deleted, regardless of their size. Reducing the size of individual uploads will allow an increase in the total number of allowed uploads, and hopefully we won't need to remove the attachments again for a long time.

Some good news is that the board will opearate faster after pruning posts and attachments and changing some of the outdated configuration settings. We will also allow members to change their display name once in 180 days: currently, changing the name requires addressing the administrator, and we are aware that many members are no longer pleased with the names they chose during registration. This is your chance to change the name. In case of abuses, however, we will have to increase the time limit or remove the feature altogether.

There were also changes related to the Discovery Wiki, which by now contains over 1,300 articles. The look of the wiki was changed to look more Freelancer-ish, and the board now has a special forum to discuss Wiki-related questions. Your contributions into expanding and better organizing the wiki are always welcome.

Despite the Discovery Development Team being silent for quite some time now, we are working on future updates of the mod, and have started to collect information on building the new version, which will be named Discovery Freelancer Issue 14/4.86, and will have 14.00 version number for its final version (if no unexpected changes occur). We cannot share any plans on the expected release time period; like before, the mod will be released when it's ready, but we do aim for much a shorter development cycle than Discovery 4.85 took us to complete. Meanwhile, the first pieces of information that we are going to publish about the new version are the outlines of the storyline. We will start in about a month's time. Before that, faction leaders and general members interested in sharing storyline plans for their factions can contact me as described in this thread, and contribute to the story development.

This thread is open for comments, and you are welcome to post your feedback; in future, we are going to open most of the News posts for user comments. Stay with Discovery!

[chovynz]

I'm thinking that Igiss would have to set permissions for us to be able to post in the news thread/forum. So I've decided to open up a Feedback thread. Hopefully this isn't a pain-in-the-cactus-holder.

After reading this I have a few questions and concerns. While I do understand the necessity for it, I also am concerned that some history of Disco will be lost.
Is there a way to preserve all the text? How big is the database?


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"As our board grows larger and nears 700,000 post mark, we have to change: as you probably noticed, the structure of our main forums was overhauled recently, and it looks like the change was an overall positive one. Unfortunately, due to hosting restrictions for the database and size of the stored files, our growth is not limitless: we will have to clean out the database to get rid of some of the dated threads and posts, PMs, attachments, avatars, and photos.

The moderators will begin removing old threads manually in one week. You may still back up some of the older (2005-2007) threads that you find especially valuable until then, and they will not remove important announcements or anything of historical importance for Discovery Gaming Community. However, it will be different with PMs, attachments and other stuff which is no longer used. Beginning 5 days from now, we will remove all PMs stored by the board from the beginning of its existence, which count up to 55,000. We encourage everyone who has important conversations, texts and other stuff stored as PMs to back it up elsewhere, otherwise it will be irreversibly lost.

What types of older threads? I browse old discussions with older admins and learn valuable things. That has quite a bit of value to me, but it may not to someone else. Can "Historical Importance" be further defined? What types of threads do I need to be looking at recording?

PM's is understandable. I've gotten used to doing it since the message limit is only a 100 all up anyway.

Also what dates are going to be removed? I saw the 2005-2007 comment up above. Is that the range that posts will be deleted in?

We will also be removing all attachments present on the board beginning 2 weeks from now, so please back up all your stuff stored as attachments on the forum, and track your important posts that rely on attached images or other files. Maximum allowed size of size of attachment and avatar uploads will be reduced to 75 Kb. You can still use avatars of any size stored elsewhere. Photos and avatars that are in use will not be deleted, regardless of their size. Reducing the size of individual uploads will allow an increase in the total number of allowed uploads, and hopefully we won't need to remove the attachments again for a long time.

Some good news is that the board will opearate faster after pruning posts and attachments and changing some of the outdated configuration settings. We will also allow members to change their display name once in 180 days: currently, changing the name requires addressing the administrator, and we are aware that many members are no longer pleased with the names they chose during registration. This is your chance to change the name. In case of abuses, however, we will have to increase the time limit or remove the feature altogether.

Both paragraphs understood. Both seem fine and good.

There were also changes related to the Discovery Wiki, which by now contains over 1,300 articles. The look of the wiki was changed to look more Freelancer-ish, and the board now has a special forum to discuss Wiki-related questions. Your contributions into expanding and better organizing the wiki are always welcome.

Definitely. It's not yet finished and we are finding more and more work to do. So the more people who help the faster it will be updated!

Despite the Discovery Development Team being silent for quite some time now, we are working on future updates of the mod, and have started to collect information on building the new version, which will be named Discovery Freelancer Issue 14/4.86, and will have 14.00 version number for its final version (if no unexpected changes occur). We cannot share any plans on the expected release time period; like before, the mod will be released when it's ready, but we do aim for much a shorter development cycle than Discovery 4.85 took us to complete. Meanwhile, the first pieces of information that we are going to publish about the new version are the outlines of the storyline. We will start in about a month's time. Before that, faction leaders and general members interested in sharing storyline plans for their factions can contact me as described in this thread, and contribute to the story development.

This thread is open for comments, and you are welcome to post your feedback; in future, we are going to open most of the News posts for user comments. Stay with Discovery!

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Seek fun and you shall find it. Seek stuff to Q_Q about and you'll find that, too. I choose to have fun.

[Dab]

I think the entire Story and Biographies section needs to be saved. A lot of that is important to Disco history, at least on the player side of things. And in comparison with the other forum areas, it's using up a relatively small amount of space.

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[chovynz]

I'm wondering if we should ask to save a couple of the flood topics, then get rid of the rest of flood and start again with flood.

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Seek fun and you shall find it. Seek stuff to Q_Q about and you'll find that, too. I choose to have fun.

[Montezuma/Kukulcan]

I'm wondering if we should ask to save a couple of the flood topics, then get rid of the rest of flood and start again with flood.

Save the flood threads that are listed in the 'epic flood threads' thing.

Apart from that, im happy in condemning flood to a painful, prolonged death.

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[Internity]

I think the entire Story and Biographies section needs to be saved. A lot of that is important to Disco history, at least on the player side of things. And in comparison with the other forum areas, it's using up a relatively small amount of space.

Agreed with you Dab,

Admins/Moderators please keep the Story and Biographies sections. Don't delete them. Thats one of the most important sections in this forum.

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LNS Ithaca

[Agmen of Eladesor]

Thank you for the positive feedback.

It's impossible to open the actual post to everyday users, so this will be a useful post.

Posts that mean something ... will be kept.

But seriously - I show 374 pages of Flood, with 20 posts per page. And the "Say something about the person above you" post in flood is 743 pages long. Kudos is cool - and it's 194 pages long, too. That doesn't even begin to get to the posts that we have hidden and not actually deleted. (See, you guys thought we were deleting things - we really weren't, just changing access to them - until now...)

So net result - we're going to do a file purge. Consider it a defrag for the forum. If there's something out there you want to keep - make sure you've copied it down somewhere. And please keep your moderator team happy with milk and cookies - we have to do all this MANUALLY!

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Oh god... The end of days... Agmen agreed with me.

[dr lameos]

Can we keep all the diplomatic matters as well? or infact the entire roleplay forum could be good.

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[mwerte]

I am fairly certain that the Roleplay section wont be touched.

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[Fletcher]

Anything like announcements, stories, gameplay discussions that were positive and conctructive I believe need to be saved as they can serve a reference for future purposes.

Flood I wish to keep, but a lot of it does need to go due to the sheer size of it.

Maybe the general gaming and other non-Discovery forums could be pruned.

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"Oh chuffing blimey, another day, another person being whiney!"
Fletcher's Feedback and Stories Thread