Having practical experience with both, I'd agree. The moderation work is far easier with PHP than with Boinc. You get a lot more spammers though (perhaps 5 - 10 per day). If there were some way to tie PHP forum registration in with a Ralph / Rosetta account, that would sort out that problem.


Because this is a Boinc forum, Ethan will probably have little choice but to delete this entire thread again, including these recent neutral posts. That's not his fault, so please don't blame/flame him if he does that.

---

I think the problem is we are all too obsessed with credits...

And as far as flaming and arguments, don't participate in the forums if that bugs you, for you will find the same situation in every web based board that mankind makes for eternity...

Not to start anything, but I fail to see how my post was obscene and deleted. Or was it that this thread was deleted and ressurrected or....I just don't want to be sending any wrong messages I guess...

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Human Stupidity Is Infinite...

That is another bug in the Boinc forum code. If a moderator deletes a post, the reason code always shows 'obscene' regardless of which reason code the moderator actually picked.

---

by ethan

If I could lock a thread and remove individual posts I would, but the only option is to delete.

by halifax-lad

Good thing would be for the new forum code to be uploaded that allows devs & mods to bar people from the message board system for upto 2 weeks in a row

which dr. kim thinks is an excellent idea.

by ethan

I wish it was that easy. The problem is we don't have the ability to edit messages.

by ethan

I don't have the ability to edit, unfortunately.

by angus

David Kim's only visible post from the last 24 hours (of two) is to tell us that he's going to install more ways to block people from posting.

David Baker won't post here, but will post on the XS site about the backdating topic, and his only two other posts have likewise been hidden in the banned thread.

The only other project representative - Ethan - hid the thread that has the majority of the discussion on the whole issue.


And - you wonder why this project has MAJOR PR problems? Gee... who would have thought. All the goodwill that's been generated over the last 6 to 8 months has been flushed away. No longer is Rosetta the model BOINC project that's renowned for it's communication with members.

i have to say angus, this is the first time i've agreed with you, but i have to ask.....can you still defend this type of message board as being appropriate for the size and scope that the rosetta project has become? it's painfully obvious that as it is, it's not working, either for the participants or the moderators. and i for one don't understand their reluctance to fix the problem.

by mikemars

The PHP forum is far easier to moderate than the boinc forums, simply because there are more tools at hand (thread locking, editing, private messages, banning of IP ranges, ...). The single most useful tool is private messages - the benefits of being able to have a quiet word with somebody without involving everybody else are enormous.

this solution has been proposed a few times before mike, but i don't think has been taken seriously.

from dr. baker, by way of whl

Dr Baker Wrote :

Please remember everybody, I'm a scientist trying to solve science problems, and I am relatively new to the sociology of distributed computing. I don't think it is true that the complainers are having a disproportionate influence over the project. The new credit system was proposed by many people over the past months, and I don't think anyone thinks it is not reasonable.
The problem with the offensive posts is very hard to deal with--it would require a full time moderator which we don't have (it is basically me and David Kim right now, and I don't even know how to delete stuff and believe me I have a zillion other things to do as well--trying to deal with this issue is certainly making it difficult to focus on science today). And the boinc developers are already swamped and can't make changes to address these issues either.
PLEASE--try to think about the science and the benefits to humanity, and ignore the taunts from the little guys--they just don't matter--and I hope all this will blow over soon. You have been making a fantastic contribution, and I would hate to see this cause any disruption to our collabortive efforts together.

perhaps we could convince dr. baker that a regular php board could be implemented and then have trusted volunteer moderators, thereby taking some of the workload off the project scientists.

the benefits of having that are

a. better organization of posted material
b. the ability of the mods to keep things "civilized" thru deletion of posts, private message warnings, locking of threads and banning
c. a daily posts button to cut time spent reading post to a minimum, which would save the mods time.

the cons are that

a. the message board won't look the same
b. you'd have to re-register for it. (which might be a blessing in disguise)

as large as rosetta has become, don't you think it's time to solve this problem, or do you really want things like this to flair up over and over again just so you can whine that you can't fix it for whatever excuse you can find.

The problem is not the medium, but the message.

You can have the biggest. bestest, whiz-bang mesage board ever, but if the project people don't post it's all a waste. Dr Baker does his thing on the science topics, but that's it. We don't get squat on the nutz and bolts of running the project, what modding goes on is done by anonymods.

And yes, I can still defend using this board as is. 3 sections, plus the Q&A for newbies. Easy to find where things are posted. Just need to lean on BOINC admin to get someone to fix the code bugs.

As for php bulletin boards - arrgh. Big targets of hackers and spammers, separate registration required, not integrated. Takes way too much time to implement and maintain for a project of this size.

---

Proudly Banned from Predictator@Home and now Cosmology@home as well. Added SETI to the list today. Temporary ban only - so need to work harder :)



"You can't fix stupid" (Ron White)

by ethan

If I could lock a thread and remove individual posts I would, but the only option is to delete.

by halifax-lad

Good thing would be for the new forum code to be uploaded that allows devs & mods to bar people from the message board system for upto 2 weeks in a row

which dr. kim thinks is an excellent idea.

by ethan

I wish it was that easy. The problem is we don't have the ability to edit messages.

by ethan

I don't have the ability to edit, unfortunately.

by angus

David Kim's only visible post from the last 24 hours (of two) is to tell us that he's going to install more ways to block people from posting.

David Baker won't post here, but will post on the XS site about the backdating topic, and his only two other posts have likewise been hidden in the banned thread.

The only other project representative - Ethan - hid the thread that has the majority of the discussion on the whole issue.


And - you wonder why this project has MAJOR PR problems? Gee... who would have thought. All the goodwill that's been generated over the last 6 to 8 months has been flushed away. No longer is Rosetta the model BOINC project that's renowned for it's communication with members.

i have to say angus, this is the first time i've agreed with you, but i have to ask.....can you still defend this type of message board as being appropriate for the size and scope that the rosetta project has become? it's painfully obvious that as it is, it's not working, either for the participants or the moderators. and i for one don't understand their reluctance to fix the problem.

by mikemars

The PHP forum is far easier to moderate than the boinc forums, simply because there are more tools at hand (thread locking, editing, private messages, banning of IP ranges, ...). The single most useful tool is private messages - the benefits of being able to have a quiet word with somebody without involving everybody else are enormous.

this solution has been proposed a few times before mike, but i don't think has been taken seriously.

from dr. baker, by way of whl

Dr Baker Wrote :

Please remember everybody, I'm a scientist trying to solve science problems, and I am relatively new to the sociology of distributed computing. I don't think it is true that the complainers are having a disproportionate influence over the project. The new credit system was proposed by many people over the past months, and I don't think anyone thinks it is not reasonable.
The problem with the offensive posts is very hard to deal with--it would require a full time moderator which we don't have (it is basically me and David Kim right now, and I don't even know how to delete stuff and believe me I have a zillion other things to do as well--trying to deal with this issue is certainly making it difficult to focus on science today). And the boinc developers are already swamped and can't make changes to address these issues either.
PLEASE--try to think about the science and the benefits to humanity, and ignore the taunts from the little guys--they just don't matter--and I hope all this will blow over soon. You have been making a fantastic contribution, and I would hate to see this cause any disruption to our collabortive efforts together.

perhaps we could convince dr. baker that a regular php board could be implemented and then have trusted volunteer moderators, thereby taking some of the workload off the project scientists.

the benefits of having that are

a. better organization of posted material
b. the ability of the mods to keep things "civilized" thru deletion of posts, private message warnings, locking of threads and banning
c. a daily posts button to cut time spent reading post to a minimum, which would save the mods time.

the cons are that

a. the message board won't look the same
b. you'd have to re-register for it. (which might be a blessing in disguise)

as large as rosetta has become, don't you think it's time to solve this problem, or do you really want things like this to flair up over and over again just so you can whine that you can't fix it for whatever excuse you can find.

The problem is not the medium, but the message.

You can have the biggest. bestest, whiz-bang mesage board ever, but if the project people don't post it's all a waste. Dr Baker does his thing on the science topics, but that's it. We don't get squat on the nutz and bolts of running the project, what modding goes on is done by anonymods.

And yes, I can still defend using this board as is. 3 sections, plus the Q&A for newbies. Easy to find where things are posted. Just need to lean on BOINC admin to get someone to fix the code bugs.

As for php bulletin boards - arrgh. Big targets of hackers and spammers, separate registration required, not integrated. Takes way too much time to implement and maintain for a project of this size.

I believe that this is one of the first times that Angus and I have agreed on anything.

---

BOINC WIKI

I believe that this is one of the first times that Angus and I have agreed on anything.

|THUD| I can die happy now :)

---

Proudly Banned from Predictator@Home and now Cosmology@home as well. Added SETI to the list today. Temporary ban only - so need to work harder :)



"You can't fix stupid" (Ron White)

not before you hear from me again!

actually mike with php, there are some boards that require you to activate the account thru a link sent to the email address you used to register. that stops a lot of spammers.

and because of that lack of tools and functions, communication is destroyed, not encouraged. how can any of you accept that? it's the communication that is going to grow this project, help to resolve how credits are calculated in a somewhat decent manner given the diverse personalities involved, and allow everyone to air their opinion in an orderly manner. why wouldn't you want that!?? the bonus is that it can be handled by volunteers, freeing up some time for the scientists to science.



by angus

The problem is not the medium, but the message.

the problem is the medium, 3 sections you say to find everything. right. and as soon as you clikc on 1 of the 3 to go where you think you'll find what you need, you're immediately greeted with a brick wall of topics, pages and pages of them endlessly streams of them (ok, a little dramatic but you get my drift)titled by people who might give some thought as to what the subject should be. on a regular php board that wouldn't happen. if someone posts a subject where there is one already posted, the new one is moved (can mods move threads here?) and or deleted, with the 2nd poster told why. no big deal.

perhaps you're afraid a php board will limit the size of signature lines? btw, what's his name?


if anything, wouldn't it be worth it to just be able to hit the "post reply" button without getting endless repeats of whole posts, like 2 of the above that take up so much space, forcing people to scroll through and possibly missing thoughts?

as to "a project of this size", what exactly does the size of the project have to do with it? size should never be a criteria for good communication!

You can have the biggest. bestest, whiz-bang mesage board ever, but if the project people don't post it's all a waste.

tell me how you can equate the 2? as to why dr. baker and co. don't post more often, it could be for a variety of reasons, one of which might be that they can't easily find where to put their posts.

---

By the way the ban tool WILL NOT work, if you were to say banish me for two weeks it would only enrage, I would sign up in new user, copy and paste and be 10 x more annoying.

When someone starts a thread in a reasonable civilized manner and is then the butt of trolling and derogatory remarks and the mods do squat he is bound to get angry and retaliate.

IF YOU DO THIS IT IS PRETTY OBVIOUS THAT YOU ARE NOT GOOD FOR THE PROJECT AND I WILL ZERO YOU OUT AND REMOVE YOUR ACCOUNT(S) AND WARN OTHER PROJECTS ABOUT YOU. THIS IS A MESSAGE TO ANYONE WHO PLANS ON DOING SUCH. WE WILL TRY OUR BEST TO PREVENT TROLLING AND DEROGATORY REMARKS SO THAT YOU DO NOT HAVE TO TRY TO RETALIATE.

Seriously, I`m glad you have finally decided to do something about the obvious baiting and I can see Ethan is already doing some <thumbsup>.

It will need a lot more work before peace breaks out but I hope you get there and sort out the mess.

---

Not all Czech`s bounce but I`d like to try with Barbar ;-)

Make no mistake This IS the TEDDIES TEAM.

actually mike with php, there are some boards that require you to activate the account thru a link sent to the email address you used to register. that stops a lot of spammers.
...

The CPDN PHP forum uses a combination of image verification and email activation. We get about 2-3 spammers a day who go through both phases, and around 10 who only do the initial image verification phase. Without image verification it'd probabably be several dozen a day.

The spammers who don't email verify are primarily building google link farms (their account page including website is visible even if not email authenticated, but they can't post). Note that email activation can be automated (image verification can be too, but it's extremely hard).

An example of a URL advertised via a forum registration link farm is here:
http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=%22www.gaa.com%22+interests+location+%22posts+per+day%22&btnG=Search&meta=

Spam accounts are usually deleted within an hour or so by the site admins, moderators can't do this. There are many 'questionable' accounts which aren't clear whether they're spammers or legitimate, which we have to leave intact.

If there were an additional verification stage where you have to link a climate project together with a PHP forum account, then it would reduce the 10 spammers down to very few indeed (I don't recall any spammers turning up on the boinc forums).

As mentioned earlier, PHP forums are targetted by hackers, unlike other forums.

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(I don't recall any spammers turning up on the boinc forums).

As far as I know, there have been a small number - early on in S@H BOINC before you had to have credit to post in the message boards. This was the cause of the requirement for credit.

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BOINC WIKI

What about Groupee's message board application (formerly Infopop)? I know Ars Technica uses them. Anyone have experience with it?

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What about Groupee's message board application (formerly Infopop)? I know Ars Technica uses them. Anyone have experience with it?

I would go with vBulletin personally. There is a license you have to purchase but it's not that much in the grand scheme of things. The signing up and moderating functions are pretty extensive and not that difficult to use.

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Free-DC

Stats for all projects

Custom Stats

The one big disadvantage with external forum software is, that in case of trouble with rosetta, there is no easy way to have a look at the erorrs, because the nick are not linked to the boinc database.

The one big disadvantage with external forum software is, that in case of trouble with rosetta, there is no easy way to have a look at the erorrs, because the nick are not linked to the boinc database.

VBB (Vbulettin) is loverly to use, we use it at our forum. They are also nice people from what I remember. They MAY if you ask them help with integration into BOINC, they may not of course ;-)

It should be possible to have the boinc sign up integrated into most fourms. I know at Find-A-Drug they managed to get the sign up through the client to also then sign you up into the phpBB forum automatically.

It just a matter of altering some code to get data from the databases (though I wouldn't know where to start :-)

Given you have the code in the boinc forum for that (which is php code) and phpBB or vbulletin are php code wave a wand and they might splice together, lol

www.vbulletin.com

The is also other boards as will.

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Team mauisun.org

The one big disadvantage with external forum software is, that in case of trouble with rosetta, there is no easy way to have a look at the erorrs, because the nick are not linked to the boinc database.

VBB (Vbulettin) is loverly to use, we use it at our forum. They are also nice people from what I remember. They MAY if you ask them help with integration into BOINC, they may not of course ;-)

It should be possible to have the boinc sign up integrated into most fourms. I know at Find-A-Drug they managed to get the sign up through the client to also then sign you up into the phpBB forum automatically.

It just a matter of altering some code to get data from the databases (though I wouldn't know where to start :-)

Given you have the code in the boinc forum for that (which is php code) and phpBB or vbulletin are php code wave a wand and they might splice together, lol

www.vbulletin.com

The is also other boards as will.

The BOINC development team made the decision early on (probably mistakenly, but whatever) that modifying an existing BB was going to be more work than developing one from scratch.

The BB is open source, and at this point, it might really be easier to add them to the current BOINC BB code and submit them as features.

One feature that will not be added is allowing a moderator to edit a post (not my decision, but it is probably a good one).

Locking threads, and some of the other tools may not be that hard to add, and would probably be accepted by the BOINC developers.

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BOINC WIKI

Locking threads, and some of the other tools may not be that hard to add, and would probably be accepted by the BOINC developers.

BOINCstats already has the facility in to lock threads and also has a who's online.

For anyone who doesn't like the forums just hang tight more and more people are working on different aspects of BOINC to make it evolve in a better way

---

Join us in Chat (see the forum) Click the Sig


Join UBT

...
One feature that will not be added is allowing a moderator to edit a post (not my decision, but it is probably a good one).
...

Or added back in? I used to be able to edit posts on the BBC/CCE boinc forum, unless that was a custom modification to the code.

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...
One feature that will not be added is allowing a moderator to edit a post (not my decision, but it is probably a good one).
...

Or added back in? I used to be able to edit posts on the BBC/CCE boinc forum, unless that was a custom modification to the code.

No that must have been a custom edit so that the BBC could control what was been said. BOINC dev's have said this facility will never be introduced into there standard code, of course this doesn't stop projects from playing with the code if they so wish

---

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Join UBT

There is an imperfect solution for hiding thread entries with a minor mod of forum_rate.php (untested!) :

    if ($choice == SOLUTION or $choice=="p") {
        $rating = 1;
    } else {
[b]        if ($logged_in_user->isSpecialUser(S_MODERATOR))
            $rating = -100;
        else[/b]
            $rating = -1;
    }

Default filter threshold is -25


If hiding and unhiding is required, this would be the code :

    if ($choice == SOLUTION or $choice=="p") {
        $rating = 1;
    } else {
        $rating = -1;
    }
[b]    if ($logged_in_user->isSpecialUser(S_MODERATOR))
        $rating *= 100;[/b]

{I know, the BOINC style would require more curly brackets *g}