The future of WAN

Hey WAN-ners,

It's Andy S here - Andy T's spiritual (but less talented and dedicated) half-brother.

Sadly, it's precisely because I am less dedicated and talented than Andy T, that I'm looking at a situation where I either have to offload WAN, or unplug it.

I'll be honest: I don't use the site myself (probably no need for the declaration of honesty - that much must be self-evident). So while I'm aware that it has value for people, I don't really have a good grasp of exactly how much or who those people are. This makes it difficult for me to be passionate about the site's preservation. Mostly I look at it and think one of three things: "maintenance headache"; "liability-waiting-to-happen" or "hosting expense".

Previously I've been relatively happy to ignore all of those things but in the last year, the server farm where WAN is hosted has been moving all of their sites off the ancient servers onto shiny new ones. It's come round to WAN and I just don't have the resources (possibly not even the ability) to do that move. And besides, it seems as good a time as any to pass the site into the hands of someone who will secure it better than I, to infinity and beyond.

Andy T talked at one point of radio209 potentially taking it on, but I'm not sure if that came to anything.

I'd be very interested to hear everyone's thoughts / suggestions/ advice.

Cheers,
Andrew

So, it looks as though the end may be drawing near. However, there's a few regular users who know one end of a computer from the other (I'm hopeless, but do have some experience in this sort of thing due to having moderated a certain much larger site than this for the last year so I'm happy to help) and at least one or two who are verifiable experts. It seems the obvious thing is for people who are interested to come forward and offer to take on responsibilities/contribute to costs. I know quite a few people expressed an interest when WANdeath was first proposed by Ms. BB last year - so who's still willing?

I'm a complete IT numpty - but, as stated before, I'm very happy to help with any words/libel/contempt concerns if required.

Clearly, there are fewer people using WAN than there have been - but it would still be very sad to see it go. In fact there have been quite a few new users appearing in recent weeks.

Maybe a small group of us could get together with Andy S to find out exactly what is required and discuss how to go about it?

i didn't propose it. i heard it direct from WANgod's mouth and decided to blab it to the world.

That would certainly be the most advisable first step. It's been my experience that a great deal of the daily running of any site like this is simply keeping an eye on things, removing hate speech/libel and so on - in other words, not something one needs uber-IT skills to carry out.

yes, i'd be sad to see it go. on the plus side, maybe it would force me to get a life.

nah, fuck that. love live WAN!

I'm not sure who's been keeping an eye on things, content-wise. I think Andy T opened the admin system up to a select number of individuals a few years ago - if those people could make themselves known, it'd be very useful.

In terms of what it would take, you're quite right, the biggest responsibility is that of day-to-day maintenance. But someone, somehow is managing this already. Or put it this way, I'm certainly not and the site hasn't fallen to pieces, so it seems as if the hard task is already in hand.

So I believe the problem is purely a technical one. I need to move the site and the db to someone else's server. Would be best if someone who owned their own server materialised and then the hosting costs aren't so much an issue.

Please don't scrap WAN - it's one of the few links I still have with my home town and I would miss it.

Andy S - any idea of requirements for hosting? Rough idea of bandwidth, SQL version required etc?

Dr Rhythm - sorry, this isn't one of those "I'll test the water and see how many people love the site, then might change my mind" messages. I'm afraid it's coming to a head and one way or another WAN has to leave my hands. Sorry, I know people would miss it, so I hope I can get someone else to run it.

ArthurCRS - Bandwidth, I'm not sure, but I'll find out from the people hosting it. It was built on ancient technology, so regardless of SQL version, I'd upgrade to the latest stable version and fix things around it. Obviously it uses php - again, I'd upgrade to the latest stable version and bring the code of the site inline with that. That's quite a big job in itself and one of the reasons why I'm not the person for it.

Cool, cheers. Not saying I can do it, but a bit more information would help me see.

I was under the impression that AndyT had discussed this with one of the users ... 'bad-timing' ... when this subject came up a few months back. I thought (s)he was offering to take over the technical aspects of it - I could be completely wrong, however.

I think maybe b-t offered help with the upgrades described above, rather than hosting. I'm sure whoever could host it would still find that useful.

Aahh... you're probably right. Just confirming my IT numpty status.

I'm happy to consider - no, wait, let me put that in bold - consider - hosting it on the same server that runs Who Invented Foxes.

I'd like to see some bandwidth and hit count figures before making that decision, though.

old rocker - Andy T may have done, but I don't think it came to anything. And I think it was likely to have been a while back. I may be wrong, but I don't think Andy T has felt any "ownership" of the site for some time.

wrongfellow and arthurCRS - I'll get you both some idea of the demands of the site on a server and will get back to you. I appreciate the conditional offer though, very much. Thanks.

Please keep WAN going, I would miss it a lot too. There's your facebooks, twitters and all that schmoozle, but WAN is different, and unique. Please, please :o)

Could we have a WAN benefit gig to raise money to help with hosting?

^ Top idea JP. What are you going to sing? :)

This little light of mine . . . Im go'na let it shine . . . this little of mine . . . Im go'na let it shine :)

But what will happen to all the WAN critturs? It's them I feel the most sorry for.

I may be happy to host this....

Can I get some metrics? It's PHP/MySQL yes? How big is the database, and how much traffic does it get?

etc

Eek, what a morning to be too busy for WAN.

Hi Andy S and all -- I did indeed discuss maintenance/content ownership with andyt, which is partly why we're still here now -- I am the (at least acting) site admin now.
I wasn't sure if he'd had the chance to pass my details on to you.

WarmedUpCold -- It is PHP5/MySQL. Not sure how much traffic it gets without checking.

If anyone wants to get involved in maintenance, coding and admin they'd be very welcome as I can't realistically devote much time to it. In terms of coding I've established that the PHP libraries are recent enough for CAPTCHA but not much more.

Please don't scrap WAN

Please keep WAN going

Where there's a will, there's a way. There seems to be plenty of interest from people with the knowledge and resources required to keep it alive - I think it's very unlikely to be scrapped.

Hi bad-timing. I'm glad you showed up! Someone who actually knows about the site! First off, thanks for all the work you do. I know it's a time-consuming and sometimes thankless task.

It sounds as if there's certainly enough community desire, momentum and combined resources to keep WAN alive, which is awesome - just unfortunately I can't be a part of it. It's not just the hosting costs - in fact, that's only a small part of it. It's more the fact that I'm disassociated from the site and am not the best steward for it (by a mile). If you add the potential liability on top of that and the need to move servers, then ... well, that's why I'm posting. It's time to pass the baton.

I'll be back in touch with some usage stats asap. It'd be handy if bad-timing, arthurCRS and wrongfellow you could all email me, so I have your contact details to hand - andys [at] dspoke dot com

i just had a horrific thought; that the CEN might try to take over WAN *shudders*

I'm sure Raymond Brown will be happy to become the uber-moderator.

Perish the thought.

If by some horrible chance the end does come, will we get a bit of notice so that one last WAN hurrah will be possible?

I doubt it. Raymond Brown moves stealthily, like a ninja in the night.

^ That's how he produces such top-notch, exclusive scoops.

That sounds like a euphemism.

I'm just going for an exclusive scoop.

*cackles*

maybe we can all have a picnic in the summer to remember the golden age of WAN

good night John boy...

for the record I too would be willing to provide the hosting (subject to knowing how much bandwidth / storage is needed, natch). would possibly even be willing to hack away at the php, but don't hold me to that! not too keen to get involved in moderating of content mind you.

there is no moderation unless the beenpee raise their ugly heads

It would be very sad to see WAN go - it's a source of entertainment and info for me - and also an outlet for anti-social punning which a few of us would be pun-ished for elsewhere. I know bugger all about computers and that, and also have a minimal amount of time, so I don't imagine I can do much to help (though if anyone organises a benefit gig, put me down for a DJ set if that would help).

Just a thought - and shoot me down in flames for being naive if you must - if the end approaches without anything having been sorted, but there is a will to get something sorted, could a Facebook page be set up to maintain contact in the interim??

Good luck to anyone who takes the tasks on.

fuck facebook, bring back redpages!

whatever happened to the starry-eyed socialism of the founders? i guess they got a whiff of that big city cheddar and forgot all about little ol' wanbridge. can't really blame them, i'd have done the same given the chance!

Actually, we do have a Facebook page - it's called Cambridge is WANtastic but hasn't been used by anyone for ages.

Ah - I think I vaguely remember that Dr R.

Here it is...

http://www.facebook.com/#!/group.php?gid=2743575265

Here you go noodle!

I have no computer knowledge but willing to help in any other way.

i didn't propose it. i heard it direct from WANgod's mouth and decided to blab it to the world.

Ah, quite right. Postulated would have been a better word.

any other way ed___?

Here's how you could help: figure out a way to make WAN work without needing any computers.

...a really complicated chain letter?

...clutched by a muttering bigmal, rocking back and forth in a pub corner.

Quick (but anaemic) update on the site's demands for those that were potentially interested in hosting....

I'm afraid I don't have the really important information about bandwidth - nor do I have any up-to-date usage statistics. So the only thing I have ascertained is that the site uses up a little under 800MB in disk space at the moment.

If we started recording stats using Google analytics for a couple of weeks, would this provide enough information ?

That would certainly help.

Can you get the web server logs? I'd be happy to analyze them and come up with some bandwidth figures. A week or two's worth of logs should give some reasonably useful numbers.

800MB is an encouraging figure. I could easily spare that much space on my server.

phwoarrrrr

I would gladly add a 'Save WAN' banner to my Twitter profile image if such a thing were to be created! Other wonderful forums I have been a part of have bitten the dust recently. Don't let this happen to WAN. Down with this sort of thing!

Twitter and Facebook are both fun and useful in their ways but they aren't a replacement for forums like this!

Hey all,

Sorry it took so long to get this together. Had to re-install AWstats on the server and because it was slightly faff-y, it took a while.

I'm going to email those people directly who expressed a potential willingness to help out with more in-depth stats, but for everyone else (and those new to the issue), here's a recap of where we're at and an overview of WAN's useage.

PROBLEM:
- WAN is a liability for me; I can't give it the time or resources it needs to be securely hosted. Right now I'm getting pressure from my hosting company to move the site from its current ancient machine onto their new machines. I neither have the skillz nor the time to do this, so now's a good a time as any to formally pass on the site to someone/people in the community.

TECHNICAL + HOSTING REQUIREMENTS:
- PHP + MySQL
- In the first three months of this year, WAN has averaged (very consistently) per month about 13,000 unique visitors, 40,000 visits, 200,000 pages and 3.6GB of bandwidth

TRICKY QUESTIONS:
- Who owns the site? I guess it's Digital Spoke intellectual property. How formal should the transfer be? Do we need contracts? The very thought bores me, but it may be necessary. However, the more "proper" the handover is, the more I want to make sure it ends up in the right hands. For example, I've been offered cash for the site and all the data. That makes me uncomfortable, but the guy was upfront about it and understanding of my position. However, if that same guy had come forward and offered to take on the hosting of the site for free, he'd be on the list. He could then do whatever he wanted with the data, for free.

So, guys, this is your site. I'm the accidental owner by default only and actually have very little ownership of it in a participatory sense. I want YOU ALL to find the solution. Not because I'm lazy (well, OK, yeh) but because if this community-run site is to survive, it'll only be because the community is involved in how it's run.

For the record, if I feel someone's going to step in and abuse access to data etc. then I'd rather just shut the thing down. None of you signed up for that and I'd be very unwilling to let it happen. But, hey, it's your call ...

13 000 unique visitors per month? Bloody hell. Why do we have so few people posting? Time for a lurker amnesty.

^ That is quite astonishing. Are we really so unwelcoming?

I dunno but we are obviously good to watch or something. There are plenty of forums and sites with forums on that I read regularly but have either never posted to or have only once or twice to ask a specific question, and that's probably true for a lot of people.

Mmmm that is a lot of lurking or maybes folks use the events section or multiple identities or a combination all of the above.

> 13 000 unique visitors per month?
Do those visitors come in via a search engine?
There must be a lot of content on WAN and it might show up quite highly in search's.

Direct visits/ bookmarks etc. account for 90% of visits (in March) while just 8.8% come from search engines.

That said, WAN does score pretty well on search engines, so I'm surprised that ration isn't higher in favour of search engine referrals.

I like the idea of a lurker amnesty!

I feel really straight only ever having one identity and not having a penchant for a bit of lurking !

Based on these figures I'm happy to host the site.

800 Mb of disc space and 3.6 Gb/month transfer won't overwhelm my little server.

It has MySQL already and I'm happy to put PHP5 on there.

Wrnogfellow is King!

*blows trumpet*

AT LAST MY GRATENESS HAS BEEN RECONGISED.

^ now there is a euphamism if I ever heard one Ms BB !

I appreciate Andy S's diligence and Wrongfella for keeping up the one love :-) Cheers fellas ! Plus BT for her ongoing commitment.

So, we have one offer of hosting; any others? Warmed Up Cold / andy_landy / arthurCRS? Maybe the community would prefer someone other than me to do it; should we have some kind of vote? (Does anyone really give a shit who hosts it?)

I'd prefer not to get involved in moderation. (I suspect my moderation policy wouldn't be particularly popular anyway, not to mention possibly being illegal.)

I also don't want to start putting any significant time into maintaining the source code, though if it's going to be running on my server I'll want to give it a quick review first (and I reserve the right to withdraw my offer if I find out it's got more holes than a sieve made of Swiss cheese).

Do we need to talk about these things too?

Should we arrange an evening in a pub somewhere to discuss this face to face so that anyone who's interested has a chance to come and speak their mind? We could even decide what we want to do, hold a public consultation period, and then ignore all the replies, if anyone feels like pretending to be the government for a bit.

Thanks Mrfellow for the offer. As one of the few people who post regually I think a consultation is a good idea.

For the record I don't mind who hosts it, but appreciate anyone who does. I am strongly against any sort of censorship so I don't want any sort of moderation at all. I think that anyone should be allowed to post what they want. The exception being any sort of those cyberbot things. :)

> So, we have one offer of hosting; any others? Warmed Up Cold / andy_landy / arthurCRS?

so my initial offer was conditional upon knowing bandwidth etc, and now we know those details I'm also happy to step up and offer to host. I was a bit slow yesterday, looked like you (wrongfellow) were on the ball and keen so I thought may as well let you roll with it.

for the record I have a couple servers in a cloud somewhere in paris. one of the runs the cambridge fun run website, which I sysadmin, and at it's peak pushed out 2.5GB / 100k requests in one day, so I'm confident they're up to the task :o)

definitely no moderation, you cunts

Thanks Andy S for the stats and Wrongfellow and andy_landy for the offers of hosting. I am happy to take overall responsibility for the source code, although would welcome involvement from anyone else who wanted to get familiar with it. I think it's fairly low maintenance, or at least I have not needed to do anything after manual bot-killing was enough to get rid of that issue. I don't want moderation either. A meeting would probably be good. I've never been involved in signing over ownership of something like this though, so has anyone got any experience of how to do that.

one thing i would like someone to do is to arrange it so that if someone deletes their account, their ability to ignore dies too. most of my ignorants and dead and buried (by me).

I have recently had cause to consider switching my hosting setup, so I think wrongfellow's/andy_landy's offers are definitely best. Thanks chaps. b-t, I'd be happy to review the code so I know what's what and could help out with some things. For instance that request of BB's above sounds pretty sensible and very easy.

I don't think we should really change anything beyond making sure there's no mad holes in it, but since you fancy someone else knowing the site if occasional help is needed I'd be happy to have a look.

Since it's not a question of money, I dunno how formal the transfer would need to be. Can't think of anything beyond changing domain reg details if Andy plans to transfer the domain to someone. I guess it might be nice to have an agreement that nothing's ever changed without a bit of discussion/agreement on here, but I think that's always implicitly been the case anyway.

Glad WAN's future seems safe anyway, nice one.

Hmm. I wonder if I could write a script to create a thousand or so accounts, and get each new account to ignore BB?

ha fucking ha wrongfellow

already getting too big for yer boots i see :P

I'm also totally against moderation. BUT.... there have been occasions where I've contacted Andy T to let him know that libellous/contemptuous stuff has been posted, and he removed it. So this does need to be considered - I've got a working knowledge of this stuff and am always happy to give my opinion.

The other thing is: if someone posted something really libellous, and the person two was the target of the libel decided to act, would the owner of We're All Neighbours be in any way responsible? I know there's a disclaimer on the Idle Chat page but I can't be sure if this is legally binding. Having said that, as far as I'm aware this hasn't happened in the eight years WAN has been in existence.

Happy to turn up and drink beer with people if that's the way forward and I can be of any assistance.

The other thing is: if someone posted something really libellous, and the person two was the target of the libel decided to act, would the owner of We're All Neighbours be in any way responsible?

Very possibly. See Laurence Godfrey v. Demon Internet Limited:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godfrey_v_Demon_Internet_Service

http://www.cyber-rights.org/reports/demon.htm

Happy to turn up and drink beer with people if that's the way forward

Beer is always the way forward!

Hi, I used to use WAN in a couple of guises and just popped back to see what was up, I see the question of closure is yet again being raised.

I just wanted to add my opinion, which was what data did that guy want to buy? Usage data or actual content? When I left I left my content but deleted my account, as obviously when a person deletes their content it makes conversations very difficult to follow. Anyway what I am getting around to is that it makes me very uneasy to think of someone owning my content, I'm sure that legally whoever owns the site owns my content but still.

But hey, do what you have to do, I used the site for a few years and I'm not owed any favours by anyone, just thought I would express my opinion.

Hello again.

Sorry for the late reply. Right, you wonderful hooligans, looks like between us there's the collective will (and means) to carry this thing on in more stable environment. Hooray!

I like the sound of meeting up for a drink, if just for the drink, so let's do that. We can have a think about the trickier "what ifs ..." and so forth.

Old rocker's right, in 8 years we haven't been taken to court, but that's no reason not to cover these aspects. Whoever hosts the data is ultimately responsible, sadly.

Daisy Steiner - don't worry, it won't happen on my watch, but this is probably a good a time as any to remind everyone that everything you post on the web is public. And potentially permanent. Even when you delete your account, many sites (including this one) keep the raw data in the database.

So anyway, what day/time and where?

Cheers,
A.

I'd like to second this - "one thing i would like someone to do is to arrange it so that if someone deletes their account, their ability to ignore dies too. most of my ignorants and dead and buried (by me)."

There! It's finally happened. I've agreed with BB.

*gives self damned good clean with liberal amounts of TCP*

>*gives self damned good clean with liberal amounts of TCP*

you dirty, dirty boy.

There's always one.

Sometimes there's a number two.

drinks, yes, always up for a bevy... weekdays are good for me, but not this friday - planning to be away this weekend :o)

So, we need a when, and a where.

Perhaps Thursday evening at the Devonshire Arms?

I can make that if that suits everyone else. I'm not around until about 8 on Thursdays due to working out of town.

i can't make that but maybe you don't need me anyway

*weeps*

I shall be busy washing my hair in red, white and blue in honour of the lovely couple....

so that would be a light shade of purple then?

Not royal purple?

Well, I'm here...

Admittedly it was perhaps a bit silly of me to get here without being sure I knew what you all looked like.

Er, sorry I didn't know we'd confirmed it since only we two actually replied and the thread drifted off. And I'm now committed to going someone's birthday drinks (that I didn't know they were going to do on the actual day until last night).

Those two posts sum up WAN in a nutshell ;-)

Ironic but dull epilogue -- didn't get the info till it was too late. Big fail.

On the original topic -- I was thinking it would probably need to involve Andy S.
But if other people did get together and sort out things like hosting tonight then that's cool.

hey Andy S

would like to express a serious interest in talking with you about a new home and lease of life for WAN ..

if you're interested do get in touch

kirsten at flackcambridge dot org dot uk

this is a local board, for local people

Flack is a Cambridge based charity ran by and for homeless people I believe.

I Googled them because I'd never heard of them and yes, they do appear to be a Cambridge-based charity for the homeless - I looked at a few online copies of the magazine they distribute and it had some interesting articles. Can't quite see why they'd be interested in taking on WAN though.

Hmmm.... I know someone who does some design work for Flack. Shall investigate.

Do reveal your findings to us - I'm mystified. Basically, what we have is a website that presumably generates costs rather than income (albeit probably not very much, just the registration of the doman). Why would a charity want that? Unless they plan on introducing adverts, of course.

i think the phrase "lease of life" might hold some clues.

We would be internet homeless if WAN went ;-]

Clues I'm missing entirely, Detective Bambaataa. Must be time for another cup of coffee.

Would WAN be housed in a taxi, Kirsten? :)

Yes FLACK is a Cambridge based charity/social enterprise - and you can find out more at www.flackcambridge.org.uk ... we work with homeless people ...
We are aiming to launch a new monthly magazine for Cambridge in October (good 'old fashioned hard copy) which will provide a comprehensive What's On Listings for What's REALLY going on in Cambridge (a Time-Out for Cambridge) hardly any adverts, lots of great content, articles, reviews, artwork, poetry and 16 pages of listings which will be free to list ...

This is a huge task ... not least because the people who are putting on the events we're interested in don't have massive resources of time and know-how to comply with the deadline imperatives of a print magazine so we want to make it as easy as possible for them ... hence the potential for us as hosts of the WAN events listing system ..

I'll be honest I'm not going to have time to keep up with this discussion here but I just wanted to reassure - I just need to get in touch with either Andy T or Andy S or even both! (Andy T and I have already chatted about this informally) so if anyone can point me in their direction that would be very helpful. And obviously if the idea goes any further there'll be an opportunity for all concerns and ideas to aired/heard!

best wishes

Kirsten

(PS it won't be in the TAXI!)

*strokes chin thoughtfully*

I remember Willow Walker.