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Tonight looks absolutely perfect... all I need now is a location to set up a telescope 😂

Best I've found is East of Cambridge, about 2h drive away.

The issue is that all it takes is a pile on (that some members enjoy) to get a legal recourse that doesn't affect those that made the comments but the website owner.

I would ban the victim.

To be very clear the risk of a closed community is a snitch, and the victim is most likely to snitch... So they would be the first to be banned.

A closed community is a different culture, not better, not worse, but different.

Still needs someone to run the tech, I can't as I've been doing it, and the point and purpose is to make who is running it be near impossible to determine.

Lolz rep for this.

There's a reason why I said it would be relatively easy to make the forum work on the fediverse, a lot of the concepts that eventually arose in activity pub were put into the architecture of the forum software. I was going the same direction that the fediverse is now doing successfully.

Yeah totally.

Because there's an lfgss app made by someone else, and that's intentional, the site is API first and the UI is implemented as a different layer, and I hoped this would allow a kind of federation, the ability to seed new communities from small but relevant parts of another.

So yes, it is broad and essentially says the content can be used however by whomever.

I don't disagree.

That's how it works if you want to run a service and not have people flounce and say "I withdraw my copyright", which would then need that tracking at every level to enable compliance, which is frankly impossible as the vast majority of images are reposts from elsewhere and you didn't have the rights either 🤷

The best the internet has is creative commons, and maybe I should've gone with that, but I carried forward a rights grab from the mid 1990s instead as I was lazy in building the system.

Would I be forward in saying that costs are covered for a year?

Well I've no idea where you got that impression from, it's been an aspiration but we've seldom managed it.

In recent years we've hovered around the 1-3 months worth of funds, it rises in the Summer, and declines in the Winter. Right now, Winter, we have less than a month of funds and I've been bailing it out each month by covering the difference.

But hey, if you want to put up the money, then I guess it could be covered for a year.

Who owns the copyright to this treasury of knowledge, wit and invention?

The site has had the same T&C since the vBulletin days, and the most recent wording was more than a decade ago:

You confirm that images, sounds, text or information that you submit or create ("User Content") whilst using the forum will meet the Rules of Acceptable Use.

You give us unlimited permission to use your User Content and allow others to do the same for no fee. In legal terms this means that you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free and perpetual licence to use, copy, reproduce, distribute, adapt, re-format, modify, publish, translate, licence, sub-licence, assign, transfer and sell the User Content anywhere and in any form.

In essence you own the copyright to your content (i.e. you post that I'm replying to) but you grant a right to us to use it (i.e. to show it to others, re-format it, make it public, etc) and you grant a right for us to transfer the content too.

It's that set of rights that allow any public website to operate, and also allow it to be archived.

I draw a very strong line around private stuff regardless of whether it's covered by the T&C above (which it is).

@velocio what happens to DMs when you delete a user?

It depends.

Your part is deleted, but if the other recipient still has a copy in their inbox then it continues to exist. If they delete it too then it's fully deleted.

The key here is facades over facades, an unknown (to everyone who isn't a member) name of the site, and every layer in a different country.

So a few of you have wondered about this, so let's go there.

To ignore the OSA by making it not applicable as much as possible, and essentially to replicate the setup of sites that do piracy and dodgy stuff.

You will need:

1. A domain name in a neutral country, Switzerland is good... and some backup domain names, Sweden is also good. Avoid the US and UK domain names including .com .net etc.
   
2. Move the servers to another country, Sweden, Germany and Denmark are pretty good.
   
3. Place the load balancer for the servers in another country again, still Sweden, Germany or Denmark, but don't make it the same as where the servers are.
   
4. Configure the forum to hide everything by default... just lock it down.
   
5. Configure the forum to have a manual review of new accounts... if they don't meet a threshold don't give them access.
   
6. Set up crowdfunding in a way that is deniable when linked to the forum... it does stuff, maybe it's a cycle club ;)
   
7. Replace email authentication with a TOTP or passkey only.
   
8. Disable email notifications.
   
   

In this World... the only thing that can be a risk to the forum are the members itself... in this World, move the moderation of existing members to be near zero tolerance. If someone even half flounces... kick them immediately and lock them out, if someone takes up time of the moderators... kick them and lock them out. The biggest risk is the members themselves.

All of the above is very, very trivial to do... and would be a maze for any authority to shut down. Every time "they" (authorities) go through the expensive and time consuming process of getting legal access to a domain name, or shutting down a load balancer... it takes moments and very low cost to set up a new one. This is extra nice because we actually think we're low risk... we don't even have illegal content... and we moderate pretty damn well... so this is a very high bar for enforcement, for what is a very low risk target... this route makes it disproportionately hard to shut down something of disproportionately low risk. It's even harder for any authority as they won't be able to see what's going on, they rely on snitches.

Reads less like a takeover and more like a new forum with a similar name. The later doesn't really need anyone's blessing. If they start something new, promote it and it gets critical mass it happens but it isn't the same

Also this... if it's just a "stand up an existing piece of forum software", well... it doesn't get anyone out of the coverage of the OSA, and go ahead and start using whatever you feel. This one is Simple Machines Forum, and in the bottom it says "Powered by ForoConnect" which only has 2 hits on Google... both are the sample site he's showing us.

It would be a jump in a total unknown, with an unknown leader, and unknown motivations of that leader... but hey, that's no worse than creating a Facebook group and attempting to build a successor there.

That choice doesn't need my blessing, which is fine as I won't give it.

It was originally done by email in the few days when I was receiving hundreds of emails and notifications... so it got lost, I read it and thought "reply later", and then didn't, that happens.

I've replied, and will copy the core of the reply here:

I should've replied, but I will flat out reject your offer HighGear .

I am only considering a single option, and that's to hand it over to existing members of the LFGSS forum who are long-tenured and active members, on the basis that the forum in roughly the same shape continues to exist.

I will not sell the Microcosm platform, nor the communities or data therein, and nor would I move them in their current form to anyone who isn't a long-tenured member with aligned ethics... I will only gift it to the community itself, or shut it down and delete it.

That should also re-assure people here... I am not considering selling the forum or gifting it to any commercial entity. This is not a cash-in or sell-out.

And if a group does form to take over and has a leader, I will state roughly the requirements in a contract form: non-commercial, non-profit, respecting the privacy of users as much as is possible given reasonable constraints (that you may need technical measures to operate within the OSA).

My proposal:

Winter solstice: Christmas lights ride
Spring equinox: GSIAD
Summer solstice: Hyde park tramp beers during the day
Autumn solstice: Bridges ride

Optional social around each

I don't think that person / role Velocio referred to needs to be a tech person, they'll need tech support, finance and legal support

If they cannot find those resources then they should choose the route I've chosen and shutter it. The risk cannot be managed without modifications to the software, without understanding the legal stuff, and without ensuring it can be paid for.

I.e. DMs are very likely going to be scanned, which is likely a paid service and need more funds, and then it needs implementing... Alternatively the legal may recommend fully disabling DMs, which will also kill all of the classifieds section, so then the recommendation may be to recommend ways to have private communication elsewhere, etc.

There's a lot of implications of keeping there place running that revolve around managing the risk identified in the OSA risk assessment.

Whomever chooses to put their name to it has to really be sure they can follow through on all of this, acting like a company director, to steer the shop in the right direction and avoid shipwreck, otherwise it's just volunteering for pain, a role for masochists, and the pain primarily will fall on the individual.

For this person, and for the small team of other roles that support them, it's going to consume their lives for the next year or two. It's not really a part time commitment any longer.

Hence my decision... I can't do this full time, and I can't align what it would to have to become with my ethics (privacy focused), the combination of those factors makes this a very obvious choice for me.

If it goes, will the website and anything posted before the cut off date go?

Yes.

I'll leave a small link to the discord, but everything else will disappear and then be deleted.

There will be no backup kept after the closure, to ensure the privacy and safety of all private parts of the forum I will delete it all.

The public parts will be archived by ArchiveTeam and made available by the Wayback Machine.

Is the forum most likely to shut and move to to discord?

Yes, most likely.

Or is the save the forum campaign likely to work out?

Maybe, slim but possible chance.

Needs a strong leader to really step up and own it, to take on the personal risk and liability, to reduce that risk as much as possible, and engaged engineers to modify the code to reduce that risk, additionally needs that leader to align people on sustainable fund-raising.

This is possible, but no leader has yet stepped forward willing to take this on long-term.

So the "most likely" outcome remains the shutdown... the default should nothing change is that the platform that runs this and other forums shuts on March 16th, and LFGSS goes with it.

The default is death. I'm copacetic about this, everything has it's time, and this end is premature but perhaps it's just the time for it, if someone steps forward and proves there's a lot more life to live in this guise, then great... if it dies I'll celebrate the past, if it lives I'll celebrate it's future. The community will always survive, people are connected individually, via small local groups who are friends, and most loosely via Discord now... it may not have the same vibrancy, but it exists, and communities that exist remain wonderful things.

Could be May Day weekend, which is always glorious

This is a great idea... how about making it the closest Saturday in advance of the equinoxes?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equinox

This would be March 15th in 2025 (which we already have the GSIAD on), and September 20th 2025.

A Summer Solstice thing already happens... the Dunwich Dynamo.