XF2 upgrade

[Wuzakian91]

You were literally just complaining about threadmarks not working right on XF2, and now you want to switch to one that just straight up doesn't have them at all?

For that matter, all those other forum softwares are missing features found in XF1 let alone 2. They'd all be even more of a downgrade than XF2 would be.

There is a reason that nearly all surviving forums have migrated to XF over the past decade or so.

Click to shrink...

While correct about the threadmarks, it feels like you're cherry-picking only one of my gripes regarding XF2. Open source software still wins out in all the other categories mentioned. And unlike proprietary platforms, it's easier to change open source software to suit your needs, without pesky license restrictions.

A solution is to code additions to the open forum software that are tailored to QQ's needs, either through volunteer work or funding it using money that would otherwise go to XF2. This gives us the best of all worlds. Plus, it is never smart to lock a website into an ecosystem requiring continued spending (a subscription) for something as simple as security updates. Xenforo can refuse to do business with you at any time (for example if they ever decide they don't like certain nsfw stuff here) and you're suddenly left holding the bag anyway.

QQ requires a certain kind of freedom considering the risque nature of the content here, and the track record corporations have regarding such things isn't good, e.g. Patreon. Open source is the ultimate freedom.

 

[TheMidnightRook]

And unlike proprietary platforms, it's easier to change open source software to suit your needs, without pesky license restrictions.

Click to shrink...

If you have the right skills and the time to do so.

Alethiophile gave an estimated timeline of 4-6 weeks for the upgrade... in December of 2020, so assuming it's not a skill issue, his free time must be a factor.

 

[Wuzakian91]

If you have the right skills and the time to do so.

Alethiophile gave an estimated timeline of 4-6 weeks for the upgrade... in December of 2020, so assuming it's not a skill issue, his free time must be a factor.

Click to shrink...

I address this in my post:

A solution is to code additions to the open forum software that are tailored to QQ's needs, either through volunteer work or funding it using money that would otherwise go to XF2.

QQ requires a certain kind of freedom considering the risque nature of the content here, and the track record corporations have regarding such things isn't good, e.g. Patreon. Open source is the ultimate freedom.

Click to shrink...

 

[Winchester]

It's worth complaining about. Xenforo 2 is built from the ground up to be a time-wasting advertising delivery platform in a way XF1 isn't. It's designed to clutter up your screen with unnecessary information, grab your attention and make it harder to find what you're looking for.

To give you an example, XF1 respects search operators, showing posts with both quoted words, a total of 3 pages:

https://i.imgur.com/6ScszvX.png

In contrast, XF2 shows posts with either word, increasing the number of results to a whopping 21 pages:

https://i.imgur.com/KyJeAkg.png

So called "similar threads":

https://i.imgur.com/QTQukEX.png

To top it off, we have the aforementioned issue of threadmarks not showing and the website being unfriendly to non-javascript users. It's also expensive:

https://i.imgur.com/3Hqa2wJ.png

XF2 is —à la many websites in the past decade—built to exploit the attention economy. Aren't we all sick of websites becoming worse like this yet?

Click to shrink...

Try searching for +test +nope instead. That works on SB and SV. (my test search was for +battletech +gundam, first post only, and I get 12 pages of results, and all of the ones I checked that didn't include both words in either the title or the tags did contain both in the text, even as far back as the last page).

As for the rest, all the "your attention HERE please" features can be turned off. And have been on several of the forums I frequent.

As for open source, sure that works great under two circumstances - either the program is so small you can grasp it for yourself; or it's so big and popular that there's corporate investment into keeping it going. Basing your platform on something that requires a small team of enthusiasts to keep their interest going indefinitely for free is a bad strategy, because sooner or later they will find something that actually makes them money that will take priority.

 

[Wuzakian91]

Try searching for +test +nope instead. That works on SB and SV. (my test search was for +battletech +gundam, first post only, and I get 12 pages of results, and all of the ones I checked that didn't include both words in either the title or the tags did contain both in the text, even as far back as the last page).

As for the rest, all the "your attention HERE please" features can be turned off. And have been on several of the forums I frequent.

As for open source, sure that works great under two circumstances - either the program is so small you can grasp it for yourself; or it's so big and popular that there's corporate investment into keeping it going. Basing your platform on something that requires a small team of enthusiasts to keep their interest going indefinitely for free is a bad strategy, because sooner or later they will find something that actually makes them money that will take priority.

Click to shrink...

With +battletech and +gundam, I'm able to replicate your results, but not with +test and +nope. This is likely due to the fact that battletech and gundam are mentioned often together.

I'd argue open source is more dependable than Xenforo; to give an example, phpBB has a history going back to 2000, far longer than XF's 2011, and was even more recently updated (2023-10-22; 4 months ago for phpBB vs 2023-05-16; 9 months ago for XF). The sheer number of open source projects going strong after decades refutes your point. And who's to say Xenforo won't stop developing one day? Unlike with open source, there won't be anyone to pick up the pieces and keep the project going either because the code isn't available.

Not everything in this world is done for money, and not everyone is willing to abandon a project they've poured decades into because it doesn't make them money.

Note: this isn't necessarily advocating for phpBB. It was just one example of forum software with a long history.

 

[Mana_Knight_Jorin]

With +battletech and +gundam, I'm able to replicate your results, but not with +test and +nope. This is likely due to the fact that battletech and gundam are mentioned often together.

I'd argue open source is more dependable than Xenforo; to give an example, phpBB has a history going back to 2000, far longer than XF's 2011, and was even more recently updated (2023-10-22; 4 months ago for phpBB vs 2023-05-16; 9 months ago for XF). The sheer number of open source projects going strong after decades refutes your point. And who's to say Xenforo won't stop developing one day? Unlike with open source, there won't be anyone to pick up the pieces and keep the project going either because the code isn't available.

Not everything in this world is done for money, and not everyone is willing to abandon a project they've poured decades into because it doesn't make them money.

Note: this isn't necessarily advocating for phpBB. It was just one example of forum software with a long history.

Click to shrink...

XenForo 1 is the best forum software! Ever! And QQ should just keep using it!:)

 

[magic9mushroom]

It's worth complaining about. Xenforo 2 is built from the ground up to be a time-wasting advertising delivery platform in a way XF1 isn't. It's designed to clutter up your screen with unnecessary information, grab your attention and make it harder to find what you're looking for.

To give you an example, XF1 respects search operators, showing posts with both quoted words, a total of 3 pages:

https://i.imgur.com/6ScszvX.png

In contrast, XF2 shows posts with either word, increasing the number of results to a whopping 21 pages:

https://i.imgur.com/KyJeAkg.png

So called "similar threads":

https://i.imgur.com/QTQukEX.png

To top it off, we have the aforementioned issue of threadmarks not showing and the website being unfriendly to non-javascript users. It's also expensive:

https://i.imgur.com/3Hqa2wJ.png

XF2 is —à la many websites in the past decade—built to exploit the attention economy. Aren't we all sick of websites becoming worse like this yet?

Click to shrink...

You are contributing something to the discussion. Jorin is merely repeating the same thing he's said over a dozen times before, and demanding that QQ do something hilariously stupid i.e. stay on unsupported XF1 forever and get hacked.

It's the broken-record bit that I was objecting to.

 

[Winchester]

What is it that makes Xenforo 2 so "ugly" that people can't shut up about it?

I mean, looking at the front pages of SB, SB, QQ and AH, the only Xenforo 2 specific change is that instead of the search box being permanently visible, you have to click a "search" button to see it.

SB and SV doesn't have the "Members Online" display that AH and QQ use, but that's by choice, AH has it and they're on Xenforo 2.

Same with the forum statistics panel.

The Staff Online, Recently Awarded, Discord integration, trending threads and tag cloud that you see on SV and SB? Those are all optional, AH doesn't have those.

In the thread list view, the one "huge" change is that the threadmark addon will add a word count so you can tell how long a story actually is (unless the author is being one of those twits who posts a "sidestory" with every chapter), and that Xenforo 2 doesn't hide the links to the first and last three pages of the thread until you mouseover them. Oh, and the default locked, pinned and watched icons are different but you can change those.

Reading a thread, SV and SB have that header element where you can set a thread cover art, whether it's ongoing and the summary. That's optional, AH doesn't have that. Same deal with the threadmark index at the top, AH doesn't have that either. It's optional. AH also still has the same tag system as QQ, but then again so does SB and SV.

Xenforo 2 has a couple more options in the thread toolbar at the top, aside from Watch thread and Ignore thread - the "who replied" command so you can see who participates and how many posts they've made. On SB and SV, the theme puts the Threadmarks menu in line with the page selection and takes away the "go to first unread" button, but that's also optional - AH has a "new" button on the right that takes you to the first unread post.

The big ugly reactions bar that SB and SV have? (especially SV)? Check out AH.com, their UI for that is entirely different and much less obstrusive. It's all SB and SV specific options. In fact, their UI in general is much less obstrusive. (It should be mentioned that SB's current UI is a recreation of the Xenforo 1 version, which was a recreation of the Vbulletin version, and SV's is basically the same layout but with different style features. AH.com went straight for default XF2 for the theme, I think).

At any rate, all of that "ugly engagement-catering garbage" or whatever it was called that is on SB and SV? That was custom made by Xon for SB and SV, and not something we'd be required to use here.

Oh, and I should mention that I know there's a new editor that looks new and different, and doesn't have a bunch of the buttons that QQ currently has, but that's basically it. And I believe the editor itself has replacement options. (In fact, the SB editor has way more options than the AH editor, despite using the same UI style, so it's really extensible and could probably be given all of the options QQ has right now. Though there'd be a lot of menus...)

 

[Wuzakian91]

What is it that makes Xenforo 2 so "ugly" that people can't shut up about it?

I mean, looking at the front pages of SB, SB, QQ and AH, the only Xenforo 2 specific change is that instead of the search box being permanently visible, you have to click a "search" button to see it.

SB and SV doesn't have the "Members Online" display that AH and QQ use, but that's by choice, AH has it and they're on Xenforo 2.

Same with the forum statistics panel.

The Staff Online, Recently Awarded, Discord integration, trending threads and tag cloud that you see on SV and SB? Those are all optional, AH doesn't have those.

In the thread list view, the one "huge" change is that the threadmark addon will add a word count so you can tell how long a story actually is (unless the author is being one of those twits who posts a "sidestory" with every chapter), and that Xenforo 2 doesn't hide the links to the first and last three pages of the thread until you mouseover them. Oh, and the default locked, pinned and watched icons are different but you can change those.

Reading a thread, SV and SB have that header element where you can set a thread cover art, whether it's ongoing and the summary. That's optional, AH doesn't have that. Same deal with the threadmark index at the top, AH doesn't have that either. It's optional. AH also still has the same tag system as QQ, but then again so does SB and SV.

Xenforo 2 has a couple more options in the thread toolbar at the top, aside from Watch thread and Ignore thread - the "who replied" command so you can see who participates and how many posts they've made. On SB and SV, the theme puts the Threadmarks menu in line with the page selection and takes away the "go to first unread" button, but that's also optional - AH has a "new" button on the right that takes you to the first unread post.

The big ugly reactions bar that SB and SV have? (especially SV)? Check out AH.com, their UI for that is entirely different and much less obstrusive. It's all SB and SV specific options. In fact, their UI in general is much less obstrusive. (It should be mentioned that SB's current UI is a recreation of the Xenforo 1 version, which was a recreation of the Vbulletin version, and SV's is basically the same layout but with different style features. AH.com went straight for default XF2 for the theme, I think).

At any rate, all of that "ugly engagement-catering garbage" or whatever it was called that is on SB and SV? That was custom made by Xon for SB and SV, and not something we'd be required to use here.

Oh, and I should mention that I know there's a new editor that looks new and different, and doesn't have a bunch of the buttons that QQ currently has, but that's basically it. And I believe the editor itself has replacement options. (In fact, the SB editor has way more options than the AH editor, despite using the same UI style, so it's really extensible and could probably be given all of the options QQ has right now. Though there'd be a lot of menus...)

Click to shrink...

The ugly UI is but one of the issues with XF, as mentioned above. There's also the search operators not working and QQ locking itself into a paid ecosystem that can drop it at any time due to NSFW. And from what I see of the QQ XF2 demo site, it has a lot of attention-grabbing or annoying "features" by default.

If QQ is going to need to modify XF2 to make it bearable anyway, why not just switch to open source and add needed features to that?

Also, you seem to know a lot about Xenforo. Is there a conflict of interest here we'd like to disclose?

 

[Winchester]

The ugly UI is but one of the issues with XF, as mentioned above. There's also the search operators not working and QQ locking itself into a paid ecosystem that can drop it at any time due to NSFW. And from what I see of the QQ XF2 demo site, it has a lot of attention-grabbing or annoying "features" by default.

If QQ is going to need to modify XF2 to make it bearable anyway, why not just switch to open source and add needed features to that?

Also, you seem to know a lot about Xenforo. Is there a conflict of interest here we'd like to disclose?

Click to shrink...

I am an unpaid volunteer moderator on Spacebattles, one of the first adopters of Xenforo (because we were at the time owned by the developer of the software and he used the site to test how it would work on a large-ish forum). I didn't join the staff until after he left, but I was a member of the site long before Xenforo.

I am also a very long standing member of Sufficient Velocity, Alternate History, Questionable Questing, and The Fanfiction Forum, all of which except Sufficient Velocity switched to Xenforo from other platforms (Sufficient Velocity started as a Xenforo forum). There are probably a few other sites I use that use Xenforo that I'm not remembering off hand. Of these sites, only Questionable Questing is still on Xenforo 1. Even The Fanfiction Forum, which sees at best ten posts per week, still upgraded to XF2. (there were eight in the last seven days, three of which were about Akira Toriyama).

As for "paid ecosystem", Xenforo is a piece of software. They don't run the servers like Livejournal or Tumblr or Fanfiction.net, them revoking licenses and refusing service over NSFW would be like Microsoft deciding you can't use Word on your own computer if you write erotica.

I haven't heard of any paid forum software that didn't also *host* the forum ever revoking a license to use their software for anything.

 

[Wuzakian91]

I am an unpaid volunteer moderator on Spacebattles, one of the first adopters of Xenforo (because we were at the time owned by the developer of the software and he used the site to test how it would work on a large-ish forum). I didn't join the staff until after he left, but I was a member of the site long before Xenforo.

I am also a very long standing member of Sufficient Velocity, Alternate History, Questionable Questing, and The Fanfiction Forum, all of which except Sufficient Velocity switched to Xenforo from other platforms (Sufficient Velocity started as a Xenforo forum). There are probably a few other sites I use that use Xenforo that I'm not remembering off hand. Of these sites, only Questionable Questing is still on Xenforo 1. Even The Fanfiction Forum, which sees at best ten posts per week, still upgraded to XF2. (there were eight in the last seven days, three of which were about Akira Toriyama).

As for "paid ecosystem", Xenforo is a piece of software. They don't run the servers like Livejournal or Tumblr or Fanfiction.net, them revoking licenses and refusing service over NSFW would be like Microsoft deciding you can't use Word on your own computer if you write erotica.

I haven't heard of any paid forum software that didn't also *host* the forum ever revoking a license to use their software for anything.

Click to shrink...

It's a paid ecosystem in that you need to keep paying XF to receive updates (12 month extension must be purchased), and they can refuse to provide future updates by not doing business with you or even revoke the lifetime use license if I'm interpreting it correctly:

As an aside, they do offer hosting as a service:

It's totally a risk QQ has to take into consideration should they move forward with XF2 -- that Xenforo will decide one day that they don't like certain stories here and demand we remove them or else.

 

[Winchester]

It's a paid ecosystem in that you need to keep paying XF to receive updates (12 month extension must be purchased), and they can refuse to provide future updates by not doing business with you or even revoke the lifetime use license if I'm interpreting it correctly:

Click to shrink...

Basically, the actual license agreement says:

You are solely responsible for ensuring that Your Content and Your use of the Software complies with all applicable legislation and regulations, including but not limited to all applicable Data Protection and Privacy legislation.

You undertake to ensure that the Software is not used by You or others to engage in or promote: illegal activity; any activity that would violate the rights of third parties; defamation, discrimination, harassment, hatred or harm of third parties.

Click to shrink...

You also can't use Xenforo together with software you've pirated, you can't remove the copyright info at the bottom of the page without paying the fee, and you can't change it to something else without permission.

Those are basically the only ways you can get your license revoked, and bringing such things to Xenforo's attention would basically require that law enforcement is involved, at which point the situation is fubar anyway.

Considering that Xenforo's own forum has tags for discussing NSFW-related addon development (like, how to hide subforums from people who aren't old enough for access, etc), I am not exactly worried - unless the US decides to throw out the current protections for fictional material, we're not getting our license revoked, and if they did the site is hosed either way.

 

[Wuzakian91]

Basically, the actual license agreement says:



You also can't use Xenforo together with software you've pirated, you can't remove the copyright info at the bottom of the page without paying the fee, and you can't change it to something else without permission.

Those are basically the only ways you can get your license revoked, and bringing such things to Xenforo's attention would basically require that law enforcement is involved, at which point the situation is fubar anyway.

Considering that Xenforo's own forum has tags for discussing NSFW-related addon development (like, how to hide subforums from people who aren't old enough for access, etc), I am not exactly worried - unless the US decides to throw out the current protections for fictional material, we're not getting our license revoked, and if they did the site is hosed either way.

Click to shrink...

It's good that they can't revoke the license willy-nilly. I hadn't read that part. However, they can still just refuse to provide updates.

According to XF's site, they are based out of England and as such don't benefit from US-based laws:

XenForo®​ Limited is a company registered in England and Wales with company number 07294282 and VAT registration number 109425230.
Registered address: XenForo Ltd., International House, 101 King's Cross Road, London, WC1X 9LP
​

Click to shrink...

​

​

The UK doesn't take too kindly to fictional depictions of underage activities, like shotacon, nor is the goverment the only avenue for pressure that XF might face to cease business with QQ. Card companies like Visa are also known to pressure businesses to remove NSFW – targeting all NSFW, not just those depicting the underage. It is very likely XF accepts credit cards as a means of payment, so that there is another risk factor added on to the pile.

Should QQ want to retain its creative freedoms, XF2 is likely not the way to go. Also, can I just add what a joke it is that you have to pay to remove the Xenforo branding. That alone should make QQ think twice about its decision. ​

 

[searcher8]

Also, can I just add what a joke it is that you have to pay to remove the Xenforo branding. That alone should make QQ think twice about its decision.

Click to shrink...

You... do realize that Xenforo's branding is also present at the bottom of every page on QQ in it's current iteration, including the same page this very thread is on, right? Or did you not notice this part of the website at the very bottom, right under the box where you write a new post?

Spoiler: Large Image

Seriously, you're now at the point where you're left complaining about things that are already in Xenforo 1. If QQ's owners don't think this is a major issue for them in Xenforo 1, I can't imagine they're going to give a shit about Xenforo 2 doing the exact same thing.

 

[Wuzakian91]

You... do realize that Xenforo's branding is also present at the bottom of every page on QQ in it's current iteration, including the same page this very thread is on, right? Or did you not notice this part of the website at the very bottom, right under the box where you write a new post?

Spoiler: Large Image

Seriously, you're now at the point where you're left complaining about things that are already in Xenforo 1. If QQ's owners don't think this is a major issue for them in Xenforo 1, I can't imagine they're going to give a shit about Xenforo 2 doing the exact same thing.

Click to shrink...

Of course I'm aware of this. I think it's a joke that XF1 has this forced branding, just as I do with XF2.

 

[Generic_Generica]

The ugly UI is but one of the issues with XF, as mentioned above. There's also the search operators not working and QQ locking itself into a paid ecosystem that can drop it at any time due to NSFW. And from what I see of the QQ XF2 demo site, it has a lot of attention-grabbing or annoying "features" by default.

If QQ is going to need to modify XF2 to make it bearable anyway, why not just switch to open source and add needed features to that?

Also, you seem to know a lot about Xenforo. Is there a conflict of interest here we'd like to disclose?

Click to shrink...

Fucking lmao are you kidding me right now.

"Is there a conflict of interest here we'd like to disclose" man, get off your high horse with this conspiracy nonsense.

Y'know what? I'm gonna lay down some facts for the thread at large, since I used to be a mod and I'm still friendly with ultima333. He proofs my quests, and I talk with him and game with him, and we've talked about the XF2 upgrade in the past so I have some inkling about what's going on behind the scenes.

Fact 1) ultima333 has been paying, out of his pocket, for the site to get an upgrade to XF2. He had to pay for a second license because there was fucky-wucky going on contacting the goddamn site owner for the deets of the first. I know he just paid again to renew XF2 addons that QQ isn't even currently using, because those are for XF2 and QQ's still on XF1. I know he paid Xon to help with the transition from XF1 to XF2. And right now, all of that money and effort's being pissed away with nothing to show for it.

The admins are paying for addons that QQ isn't using right now. That QQ cannot use unless we get an upgrade to XF2, which they would not pay for unless the intent was for the site to upgrade to XF2 because otherwise that truly would be pissing away money pointlessly.

Fact 2) I know, for a fact, that other members of the moderation team are annoyed that the upgrade hasn't happened yet. I know for a fact that this has been a topic of contention for some of the rest of the team for a long while, even before I left. This topic had its own thread in staffcomms before I left, and it's probably still there after I left.

And finally, Fact 3) We've had a working testbed for XF2 up since September.

https://xf2.questionablequesting.com/

It's running on an out-of-date version of the database, but it's still up.

So let's just put this together, shall we? What are the implications behind these facts?

The implication here is that an upgrade to XF2 was always the intention considering the amount of time and effort that's been poured into making that a thing, a large chunk of the mod team either wants the XF2 change or are ambivalent towards the idea of upgrading to XF2, and frankly, there's jack shit any of us regular fucks can do about it.

I don't think y'all are going to complain so hard the admins are going to give up on four fucking years of effort and at least a couple grand worth of USD. I don't think there's a supposedly clever argument in the world that'll get them to ditch the idea of upgrading to XF2 and instead pivot into transitioning to some open-source forum software that they probably know very little about so they can spend even more years (and probably more dosh) to get the forum on that open-source forum software.

Let's not kid ourselves here, that isn't happening, and it's pure copium to think that'll happen. The upgrade to XF2 has been, quite frankly, the epitome of development hell... And you seriously think the admins want to deal with more development hell?

Pull the other one.

 

[Winchester]

Seriously, you're now at the point where you're left complaining about things that are already in Xenforo 1. If QQ's owners don't think this is a major issue for them in Xenforo 1, I can't imagine they're going to give a shit about Xenforo 2 doing the exact same thing.

Click to shrink...

They've been complaining about using Xenforo *at all*, for all of their eight posts on this forum, mostly with scaremongering about "what if Xenforo decides to ban NSFW sites from using it?"

First of all, software doesn't stop working just because the license has been revoked, under most circumstances. Given that you're allowed to keep using Xenforo even if you stop paying for updates, I don't think they have a backdoor of any kind that would lock the forum down in any way, and if there was, someone would have discovered it by now and it'd be all over the internet.

Second, the whole license agreement is cover your ass language to prevent anyone from holding Xenforo responsible for what happens on a forum that uses their software - that's basically all it is.

Third, in the event of someone actually trying to take the site down, the vector is much more likely to be the webhost. And credit card companies going after second order connections to porn would have bigger fish to fry first.

Fourth, there are no competitors that offer similar levels of functionality for running quests and fiction threads, *which is why all of the forums I mentioned use it*. And it would take hundreds of hours of paid development costs to produce the addons required to add such functionality to any of the open source platforms. Especially if we want the guy who wrote the Xenforo versions to do it, so he can make sure that the imports work correctly. And that addon would also still cost money even if we managed to avoid paying for its development.

 

[TotalAbsolutism]

We'll consider agreeing to remain on XF1 permanently if one of the people insisting on that signs a legal agreement accepting full personal liability for the consequences of the inevitable security issues.

psst this is a joke, ofc we won't do that

 

[Wuzakian91]

Fucking lmao are you kidding me right now.

"Is there a conflict of interest here we'd like to disclose" man, get off your high horse with this conspiracy nonsense.

Y'know what? I'm gonna lay down some facts for the thread at large, since I used to be a mod and I'm still friendly with ultima333. He proofs my quests, and I talk with him and game with him, and we've talked about the XF2 upgrade in the past so I have some inkling about what's going on behind the scenes.

Fact 1) ultima333 has been paying, out of his pocket, for the site to get an upgrade to XF2. He had to pay for a second license because there was fucky-wucky going on contacting the goddamn site owner for the deets of the first. I know he just paid again to renew XF2 addons that QQ isn't even currently using, because those are for XF2 and QQ's still on XF1. I know he paid Xon to help with the transition from XF1 to XF2. And right now, all of that money and effort's being pissed away with nothing to show for it.

The admins are paying for addons that QQ isn't using right now. That QQ cannot use unless we get an upgrade to XF2, which they would not pay for unless the intent was for the site to upgrade to XF2 because otherwise that truly would be pissing away money pointlessly.

Fact 2) I know, for a fact, that other members of the moderation team are annoyed that the upgrade hasn't happened yet. I know for a fact that this has been a topic of contention for some of the rest of the team for a long while, even before I left. This topic had its own thread in staffcomms before I left, and it's probably still there after I left.

And finally, Fact 3) We've had a working testbed for XF2 up since September.

https://xf2.questionablequesting.com/

It's running on an out-of-date version of the database, but it's still up.

So let's just put this together, shall we? What are the implications behind these facts?

The implication here is that an upgrade to XF2 was always the intention considering the amount of time and effort that's been poured into making that a thing, a large chunk of the mod team either wants the XF2 change or are ambivalent towards the idea of upgrading to XF2, and frankly, there's jack shit any of us regular fucks can do about it.

I don't think y'all are going to complain so hard the admins are going to give up on four fucking years of effort and at least a couple grand worth of USD. I don't think there's a supposedly clever argument in the world that'll get them to ditch the idea of upgrading to XF2 and instead pivot into transitioning to some open-source forum software that they probably know very little about so they can spend even more years (and probably more dosh) to get the forum on that open-source forum software.

Let's not kid ourselves here, that isn't happening, and it's pure copium to think that'll happen. The upgrade to XF2 has been, quite frankly, the epitome of development hell... And you seriously think the admins want to deal with more development hell?

Pull the other one.

Click to shrink...

First of all, there's no need to be so emotional. Second of all, that just sounds like sunk-cost fallacy to me. It's commendable that ultima333 has been paying for XF2 out of pocket, but if there's a better alternative to XF2, there's no reason to remain with it. I think you guys are greatly exaggerating the cost and time of developing features for an open source forum software, just because trouble has been encountered getting XF2 to work, which I'd argue is another reason to not use it (if it's that annoying to set up).

With the right devs, it wouldn't cost that much or take a lot of time to mimic the functionality of Xenforo while having the aforementioned advantages of being a freer platform, ideal for QQ.

First of all, software doesn't stop working just because the license has been revoked, under most circumstances. Given that you're allowed to keep using Xenforo even if you stop paying for updates, I don't think they have a backdoor of any kind that would lock the forum down in any way, and if there was, someone would have discovered it by now and it'd be all over the internet

Click to shrink...

Ironically, this argument could be used to advocate for remaining with XF1. After all, the software still functions, even with no updates, Why switch off it?

Regardless I've said my piece and do hope I've at least led some mods to reconsider things.

 

[Megaolix]

Regardless I've said my piece and do hope I've at least led some mods to reconsider things.

Click to shrink...

I assure you, it changed nothing at all.

 

[Mana_Knight_Jorin]

https://xf2.questionablequesting.com/

Click to shrink...

Oh sweet Mana Goddess... It's so damn ugly. ... :cries: .....

They've been complaining about using Xenforo *at all*, for all of their eight posts on this forum, mostly with scaremongering about "what if Xenforo decides to ban NSFW sites from using it?"

First of all, software doesn't stop working just because the license has been revoked, under most circumstances. Given that you're allowed to keep using Xenforo even if you stop paying for updates, I don't think they have a backdoor of any kind that would lock the forum down in any way, and if there was, someone would have discovered it by now and it'd be all over the internet.

Second, the whole license agreement is cover your ass language to prevent anyone from holding Xenforo responsible for what happens on a forum that uses their software - that's basically all it is.

Third, in the event of someone actually trying to take the site down, the vector is much more likely to be the webhost. And credit card companies going after second order connections to porn would have bigger fish to fry first.

Fourth, there are no competitors that offer similar levels of functionality for running quests and fiction threads, *which is why all of the forums I mentioned use it*. And it would take hundreds of hours of paid development costs to produce the addons required to add such functionality to any of the open source platforms. Especially if we want the guy who wrote the Xenforo versions to do it, so he can make sure that the imports work correctly. And that addon would also still cost money even if we managed to avoid paying for its development.

Click to shrink...

We'll consider agreeing to remain on XF1 permanently if one of the people insisting on that signs a legal agreement accepting full personal liability for the consequences of the inevitable security issues.

psst this is a joke, ofc we won't do that

Click to shrink...

How about this? When you switch over to XenForo 2, leave this forum intact. Change it's url to https://forum.questionablequesting.com/old/ . It would still be a pretty forum.

Then you would have your XenForo2 forum. And this one would be left as a forum for those of us who want to read the fics in XenForo 1 mode. Everybody wins then.

You get yours. We get ours. Everybody is happy.

What you say?

 

[Twilight666]

Oh sweet Mana Goddess... It's so damn ugly. ... :cries: .....





How about this? When you switch over to XenForo 2, leave this forum intact. Change it's url to https://forum.questionablequesting.com/old/ . It would still be a pretty forum.

Then you would have your XenForo2 forum. And this one would be left as a forum for those of us who want to read the fics in XenForo 1 mode. Everybody wins then.

You get yours. We get ours. Everybody is happy.

What you say?

Click to shrink...

.... are they supposed to pay, moderate and support both of them ?!?!?!?!
Because if that's what you want.... I can tell you their response here
(timestamp 14m39s)

 

[TotalAbsolutism]

How about this? When you switch over to XenForo 2, leave this forum intact. Change it's url to https://forum.questionablequesting.com/old/ . It would still be a pretty forum.

Then you would have your XenForo2 forum. And this one would be left as a forum for those of us who want to read the fics in XenForo 1 mode. Everybody wins then.

You get yours. We get ours. Everybody is happy.

What you say?

Click to shrink...

... no? No. Yeah, no.

That's arguably worse than leaving it on XF1 alone since the likelihood of corruption from trying to have two different software read/write to the same database, uh... Well, it approaches one, to put it mildly.

Even assuming you mean the most reasonable possible interpretation of that, which is maintaining the XF1 version of the site in read-only mode (somehow) that would increase all of our operating costs and, given we'd still need to maintain login capability, not remove the very real security concerns that we have.

 

[TotalAbsolutism]

First of all, there's no need to be so emotional. Second of all, that just sounds like sunk-cost fallacy to me. It's commendable that ultima333 has been paying for XF2 out of pocket, but if there's a better alternative to XF2, there's no reason to remain with it. I think you guys are greatly exaggerating the cost and time of developing features for an open source forum software, just because trouble has been encountered getting XF2 to work, which I'd argue is another reason to not use it (if it's that annoying to set up).

With the right devs, it wouldn't cost that much or take a lot of time to mimic the functionality of Xenforo while having the aforementioned advantages of being a freer platform, ideal for QQ.

Click to shrink...

There isn't a sunk cost here, there's an investment; because the realistic alternative is to just abandon QQ entirely.

'With the right devs'? What, ones that don't mind being paid in free porn and pixie dust?

Ironically, this argument could be used to advocate for remaining with XF1. After all, the software still functions, even with no updates, Why switch off it?

Click to shrink...

Because every passing update to XF2 makes it inherently more secure than XF1, which hasn't been updated in years.

 

[ultima333]

The ugly UI is but one of the issues with XF, as mentioned above. There's also the search operators not working and QQ locking itself into a paid ecosystem that can drop it at any time due to NSFW. And from what I see of the QQ XF2 demo site, it has a lot of attention-grabbing or annoying "features" by default.

If QQ is going to need to modify XF2 to make it bearable anyway, why not just switch to open source and add needed features to that?

Click to shrink...

Because we're not developers. We have no interest in having developers. We do not have the budget for developers.
You wanna know something about most OSS?
It's often basic-bitch, and needs a lot of work to customize how you want.

You know all the nice features people like?
- Collaborative threads
- Integrated voting and dice rolling
- Better ignoring features
- Better moderation tools (something *we* want)
- Pretty much all of the 'nice' features SV/SB have

Yeah good luck finding a good open source forum software that has all of that in easy packages, and then good luck finding support for that if shit doesn't work right away.

How about this? When you switch over to XenForo 2, leave this forum intact. Change it's url to https://forum.questionablequesting.com/old/ . It would still be a pretty forum.

Click to shrink...

That's not how it works.
You would have a completely fractured/separate database/site, as it's not possible to have both accessing the same database.
Going to/from is also not an option, because the upgrade process changes the database structure in the process.

The UK doesn't take too kindly to fictional depictions of underage activities, like shotacon, nor is the goverment the only avenue for pressure that XF might face to cease business with QQ. Card companies like Visa are also known to pressure businesses to remove NSFW – targeting all NSFW, not just those depicting the underage. It is very likely XF accepts credit cards as a means of payment, so that there is another risk factor added on to the pile.

Should QQ want to retain its creative freedoms, XF2 is likely not the way to go. Also, can I just add what a joke it is that you have to pay to remove the Xenforo branding. That alone should make QQ think twice about its decision.

Click to shrink...

This is frankly baseless fearmongering, such would not happen unless it was like, legitimately law enforcement being involved, and again at the level of law enforcement getting involved would mean something has gone completely off the rails anyways.

Re: Visa fearmongering, keep in mind it took decades for them to take action against *just* pornhub, which has RL shittiness tied to it, and they did not go after the other easily-findable XXX sites.
Additionally, Visa can fuck off, as QQ is a privately-funded, non-revenue making hobby site. We have no income streams other than donations, not even ads. That's also why we slide under GDPR.

First of all, there's no need to be so emotional. Second of all, that just sounds like sunk-cost fallacy to me. It's commendable that ultima333 has been paying for XF2 out of pocket, but if there's a better alternative to XF2, there's no reason to remain with it. I think you guys are greatly exaggerating the cost and time of developing features for an open source forum software, just because trouble has been encountered getting XF2 to work, which I'd argue is another reason to not use it (if it's that annoying to set up).

With the right devs, it wouldn't cost that much or take a lot of time to mimic the functionality of Xenforo while having the aforementioned advantages of being a freer platform, ideal for QQ.

Click to shrink...

Here's a bet then.

Do it.
Do it, make your own site so much better than SV/SB/QQ, show us, and have everyone migrate to it.
Do it, find those "right devs" who are willing to give away hundreds or thousands of hours of expertise to a volunteer project for a hobby forum.

Xon isn't one of them; dev work for Xenforo add-ons is literally a job for him, he charges for his time and work.

You'll quickly find "finding the right few developers to give away a fuckton of time for zero money" is a very difficult thing to do.

Ironically, this argument could be used to advocate for remaining with XF1. After all, the software still functions, even with no updates, Why switch off it?

Regardless I've said my piece and do hope I've at least led some mods to reconsider things.

Click to shrink...

Lol. Lmao even.
You have not. At all.

"XF1 works fine" it is effectively running on fumes. Security vulnerabilities have already been found for XF1, that Xon had to manually remediate as there was no official patch.
We are lacking features that people have been asking for for years now.
We're not going to stay on XF1 forever.

 

[Mana_Knight_Jorin]

... no? No. Yeah, no.

That's arguably worse than leaving it on XF1 alone since the likelihood of corruption from trying to have two different software read/write to the same database, uh... Well, it approaches one, to put it mildly.

Even assuming you mean the most reasonable possible interpretation of that, which is maintaining the XF1 version of the site in read-only mode (somehow) that would increase all of our operating costs and, given we'd still need to maintain login capability, not remove the very real security concerns that we have.

Click to shrink...

Databases can be copied. Use phpMyAdmin. Export. Create a new database. Import.

In \library\config.php adjust the "username", "password", and "dbname" to point to the new database.

Yes. I meant "read only" mode. Just change the user permissions. Go to the "Admin Control Panel". Click the "Users" tab. Click "User Groups". Change it so that the members are on "read only".

Don't forget "Options"/"Basic Board Information" and "Board URL".

Am I the only one around here who can actually think up these solutions now?

 

[ultima333]

Databases can be copied. Use phpMyAdmin. Export. Create a new database. Import.

In \library\config.php adjust the "username", "password", and "dbname" to point to the new database.

Yes. I meant "read only" mode. Just change the user permissions. Go to the "Admin Control Panel". Click the "Users" tab. Click "User Groups". Change it so that the members are on "read only".

Don't forget "Options"/"Basic Board Information" and "Board URL".

Am I the only one around here who can actually think up these solutions now?

Click to shrink...

Hang on, I feel like breaking out some reaction images for this

Spoiler: y tho

edit: damn you imgur, breaking my embeds
edit2: there we go, how embarrassing lol

 

[Generic_Generica]

Hang on, I feel like breaking out some reaction images for this

Spoiler: y tho

Click to shrink...

Embeds aren't working, fyi.

At least not on my screen.

 

[alethiophile]

A solution is to code additions to the open forum software that are tailored to QQ's needs, either through volunteer work or funding it using money that would otherwise go to XF2.

Click to shrink...

Okay, so.

XF2 costs $60 per year for the software license ($195 for the first year).

A software developer's salary is reliably over $100k per year. You wouldn't need a full-time dev, probably, but for hourly work software contractors are typically over $100/hr, and this kind of work would be up in the dozens of hours at least.

The numbers here are just not within the range of plausibility.

 

[Wuzakian91]

Okay, so.

XF2 costs $60 per year for the software license ($195 for the first year).

A software developer's salary is reliably over $100k per year. You wouldn't need a full-time dev, probably, but for hourly work software contractors are typically over $100/hr, and this kind of work would be up in the dozens of hours at least.

The numbers here are just not within the range of plausibility.

Click to shrink...

I said that when I believed upgrading to XF2 was $250+ a month, and missed the self-hosted license (it's sneakily tucked away on the Xenforo site), which is far cheaper. It would've probably been more economical operating under my original assumption of $3k a year to just hire a dev instead. I agree with you regarding the numbers. It would probably have to be a volunteer effort if you guys don't want to pay a couple k at the minimum to fund something like this. I figure on a decent-sized site like this, it might be possible to find volunteers.