The Big Move from Modified to Footbag.org (?)

professor · Post by **professor** » 15 Sep 2008 08:33

I was for this in 06' and I'm still for this. Although, I would like to keep PM's and edits.

Hey Steve, I'm willing to help with this if needed. I'm a 4th year cs major, but I don't know php and hardly know sql, so I don't know how much help I can be. I'm willing to learn though.

Ners · Post by **Ners** » 15 Sep 2008 08:35

I think that Phase I is a great idea, that makes us independent of non-footbag hosting service. I would also think that having one official forum that can be easily found through footbag.org (Phase II and beyond) is convenient and would make information about our sport more accessible. That could logically lead to having more players, which is obviously a good thing. I was involved in translating the contents of footbag.org to Polish, and I think every step directed towards improving this site is a step forward.

Pozdrawiam
Szymon KaÅ‚wak (Ners)

krawallier · Post by **krawallier** » 15 Sep 2008 08:53

webmaster wrote:there is on average more personally-identifiable information on your Modified profiles than on your footbag.org profiles.

on average this might be true. but if i don't remember wrong the footbag.org forum posts can be found via google - with the displayed usernames. so my personal name can be connected to my forum posts by people outside of the footbag community. as i said before, i really favor the idea that people within the footbag community (basically anyone registered at .org) have access to my real name and know that this post was written by me. but at the moment this is not true. i do not want people to find my forum posts when they google me.

there is several reasons. to give you a simple, footbag related one:

somebody asks different 20 footbaggers to do shows - and they start discussing online how much money to take. just google their names, and read their discussion. not good. the first half of this has happened. i hope the latter half didn't happen.

PS: btw, i noticed that my .org member name was first.lastname@ ... i changed that just now, better late than never.

webmaster · Post by **webmaster** » 15 Sep 2008 09:09

Max -- first of all, as I said above, assume I'll make it so you can only see full names when signed in. (That's obviously not the case today.) Then, what's the problem?

Steve

krawallier · Post by **krawallier** » 15 Sep 2008 09:12

webmaster wrote:Max -- first of all, as I said above, assume I'll make it so you can only see full names when signed in. (That's obviously not the case today.) Then, what's the problem?

Steve

then, there is no problem!

i guess i have misread one of your posts. sorry about that.

Moxie · Post by **Moxie** » 15 Sep 2008 10:23

Although it was already figured out, I'll add that I also find it very important to have the forum posts be as impossible to google as possible. I've had seriously creepy guys google me and come up with stuff on online, like .org events I've been involved with. I know that's my fault for doing anything online, but it'd be great to keep that to a minimum.

DoctorJay · Post by **DoctorJay** » 15 Sep 2008 11:22

Ah, nice thread, nice idea. I want to give my two cents on this and of course if there are some tasks on which I can help I will spend a few hours of my time.

In my opinion you should respect peoples wish to keep their privacy. Most of the people won't read this thread and they will be very surprised to find some of their modified-posts on footbag.org.
For those, the big merge will be a big mystery - keep this in mind. Moreover you cannot know what others will make with this kind of data.

According to my knowledge of php/sql, this project seems to eat a lot of (Steve's) time, and if there won't happen any noticeable proceedings for a few weeks or months, maybe the attitude of people willl change.

Just a proposal to keep things easy for all, maybe you will find some of them interesting:
* Make a backup version of modified and keep it as a read-only history version, for example on modified-board.footbag.org (Steve/Mike already did)
* Add all mods of modified to the existing mods on footbag.org/forum, so modified-users will think they can expect the same communication-environment as here. I guess there won't be a difference anyway.
* Allow each member to propose threads to you, which should be added/transfered from modified to footbag.org - you can see how many topics will be mentioned and so you can think how to implement those topics in the existing footbag.org-board-structure
* Posts from unknown members will get a guest-user-avatar/profile, of course there will be an opportunity for a moderator to assign a modified-user-name to an existing footbag.org-profile. This should be possible if the specific person wants this and not an "opt-out"-option.

Moreover some thoughts that my ideas could work out:
* Active modified members who wants to make the move just go to footbag.org and start posting there.
* There will be two things which will need most of time and energy of this transfer:
1) to transfer the mentioned posts
2) to assign the modified usernames to the org profiles if the person wants this.
Those tasks can made from any volunteer, you won't need to be a software engineer, so Steve could be supported by a lot of people. Anyway maybe Steve codes us an interface to pick up specific posts from the modified database and push them into the footbag.org database.

In the long run, I think it is much better to have the community on footbag.org, because this is the website related to the footbag community /IFPA. I guess the IFPA represents the footbag community, and if the footbag-community wants to have some changes on the forum/website - just get involved in the right manner and I am pretty sure changes will happen.

I hope my thoughts are useful for the further evolution of this project.

Rieferman · Post by **Rieferman** » 15 Sep 2008 11:46

doctor jay wrote

Active modified members who wants to make the move just go to footbag.org and start posting there.

Agreed, seems like the easiest thing for those that think that .org is the right solution.

Jeremy · Post by **Jeremy** » 15 Sep 2008 15:27

When I google my name, I get modified results on the first page.

shredzilla · Post by **shredzilla** » 15 Sep 2008 18:27

That's funny when I google mine I get Chris Miller: images and spamming

Ian Brill · Post by **Ian Brill** » 16 Sep 2008 07:47

I think it would be fine to make the switch. I think it's a noble effort to move everything, and that it's both worthwhile and generous. I wish I knew about PHP so that I could help. Currently I am abusing myself, trying to learn JavaScript and Ajax. It is possible that at some point I may be able to contribute to this effort.

I think it's great that the online footbag presence may possibly converge a bit.

Another item: I hate my handle name. I never realized I would have to live with it, when I first, anonymously tested out the waters of Modified. If we make the change to .org, I would prefer the option of having things changed to my full name, Kenneth Ian Brill. Provided there is privacy as outlined.

webmaster · Post by **webmaster** » 16 Sep 2008 08:28

Ian Brill wrote:Another item: I hate my handle name. I never realized I would have to live with it, when I first, anonymously tested out the waters of Modified.

That's where there's actually good news and a little bad news.

Good news #1: the "handle" really doesn't mean anything on footbag.org, since your primary identification is by your name (on your forum postings).

Good news #2: on footbag.org, you can actually change your username if you don't like it.

Bad news: any change to your footbag.org member name (now and after Phase II is complete) will "fork" your identity on the forum, so you won't be able to get at your PMs on that identity, you won't be able edit any of your previous postings, and all your old postings will be associated with your old username. But they'll still have your full name at the top.

Basically, it would be like creating a new account here, except the good news is it's permanently orphaned and permanently associated with your footbag.org account so there's probably a way to reconcile it and nobody else can do anything nefarious with it.

I may be able to "fix" that at some point, but today anyway, that's how it works. At least you can change your user name, and at least footbag.org does put your full name from the get-go.

Steve

Wasabi · Post by **Wasabi** » 16 Sep 2008 15:24

I have no problems with the merge/move/whatever.

I do like my PMs, but I guess I can do without. I just need to use an alternative e-mail that is primarily used for private messaging, so that I can reduce clutter from my usual e-mail addies.

I really like my "edit" and "ignore" functions, and I don't want that to be changed. I'm pretty fickle on this matter, and I don't want the convenience of these two functions to be any less of what it is now on modified.in than it will be after the merger.

dyalander · Post by **dyalander** » 16 Sep 2008 19:33

First off, thanks to Steve and Matt for getting this going and thanks especially to Steve for answereing everyone's questions.

I'd have no problem with a full content change over and the sorts of username changes being talked about.

I think more mods would be a big improvement to the forum.

I have a question of my own:

My understanding is that footbag.org has certain restrictions as to what it can allow on its site with respect to product sales (I might be wrong about this - but am I right in thinking you can't post prices)

How would this affect out For Sale section and can you please spell out any other restrictions to what we'll be allowed to post above and beyond those already existing at modified? (obviously at this early stage you may only be able to give me a preliminary answer but whatever information you could provide would be good)

webmaster · Post by **webmaster** » 16 Sep 2008 20:05

Dyalan Govender wrote:How would this affect out For Sale section and can you please spell out any other restrictions to what we'll be allowed to post above and beyond those already existing at modified? (obviously at this early stage you may only be able to give me a preliminary answer but whatever information you could provide would be good)

I'm not sure what you think is different today on footbag.org's forum. I don't think we care either way. The only policy was on the mailing list; on the forum, I think the only issue is that we don't want to pollute the informational forums with advertisements. But something clearly marked as "for sale" and clearly intended to be a place for people to discuss products would obviously be just fine. I think the biggest reason in the past there've been policies against selling things on the footbag.org mailing lists was because people were blaming IFPA and/or me whenever there was a dispute. And we certainly will not make any attempt to police these sales, beyond the community moderation that I think by now people are pretty familiar with.

So I guess the answer is, "no change from today on Modified" and I just don't know why people think somehow footbag.org is more or less restrictive than Modified is; it's all the same types of stuff here or there. Not really sure there's any difference except the basic features of the forum that we've discussed now ad nauseum.

Steve

Tsiangkun · Post by **Tsiangkun** » 16 Sep 2008 20:33

Steve, and Matt,

in the interest of making your proposal as attractive as possible, I have more suggestions.

I think .org is a great resource for all things footbag, but modified it a great resource for all things footbag player. The difference is subtle, but important to keep people hanging around and contributing. How much footbag is there to talk about ? I think a large part of the reason modified is popular is because it gives people multiple forums to talk about what they are into outside of footbag, at various degrees of seriousness.

I wouldn't suggest copying the "kicking it" forums (kicking circle, arts&leisure, and discussion), but I doubt a forum will be able to sustain activity without some equivalent sections for people to talk about themselves. I'm not sure one general purpose chaff section is sufficient.

Blue_turnip · Post by **Blue_turnip** » 16 Sep 2008 21:34

Yeah I'm definately up for the move to footbag.org, and always have been.

hacksterbator · Post by **hacksterbator** » 17 Sep 2008 11:34

yeah, i'm all for the change.

Drew · Post by **Drew** » 17 Sep 2008 16:25

I would like the change. As it is now, it's like .org is for footbag, and modified.in is for the players, as someone put it.

I think it could help the community to have all the resources on one site instead of splitting them up into two resources.

Buuuuut, what's going to happen to modified.in? Disable the board?

dyalander · Post by **dyalander** » 17 Sep 2008 17:24

Thanks Steve - I know that the guidelines for the footbag.org forums are minimal compared to the modified.in ones, but I don't have much experience with the types of things that get edited and removed - i.e. I wasn't sure how closely these guidelines describe the limits of acceptable posting and mod activity so I just wanted to get some idea.

the footbag.org forum guidelines wrote: Please don't reply willy-nilly to posts. Think it out, decide whether or not you want to post the message to the forum or just to a person you're talking to. And then, carefully consider whether your message will be rejected. It wastes the moderator's time and yours if you post a message that will be rejected. And you know who you are, those of you who have the same types of posts rejected over and over again, so please cool it.

I was basically wondering exactly what sorts of things would lead to post rejection - are we talking the same things in the modified rules? Sounds like we are.

I had seen prices get edited out ("[moderator edit: please talk about pricing privately]") and I know the guidelines mention not wanting the forums to become a marketplace, but it sounds like you'd be happy for prices to be posted so long as it was in a designated area.

Sounds like I have absolutely nothing to worry about. Thanks again.