This is topic What is the future of Flare? in forum Officers' Lounge at Flare Sci-Fi Forums.


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Posted by Dukhat (Member # 341) on :
 
So even without any new Trek to talk about other than the final movie in 2016 or whenever, this place has obviously died. Every once in a blue moon a few of us post some nuggets of info, such as model pics or new finds in TNG-R, but for the most part no one else is contributing. I've even taken to posting more at the TrekBBS. So what is the future of Flare? I have always loved this place, but I know that its glory days are passed.
 
Posted by Shik (Member # 343) on :
 
I think part of ot is that Flare has always been very discerning, weeding out the types of people one finds at TrekBBS who start topics on every stupid little idea that pops into their shrunken little heads. Because we don't bother with the idiot topics or polls or such, there's not much to draw people in. Flareites are a rather closed community, but I personally like that. On a personal level, I constantly find myself coming back here to sift through the archives, searching for comments & ideas to work into writing, so for me this is a wonderful resource still.
 
Posted by Saltah'na (Member # 33) on :
 
Part of the reason is the forum itself. We're talking about forum technology from sometime in the 2000s that has never been updated. Not sure when that will be done.....
 
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
 
Well, it's old, but it seems to still work. Are there newer features that we're missing that you think would convince people to post here more often?
 
Posted by Saltah'na (Member # 33) on :
 
I think the biggest problem is the registration. Try dealing with 5000 spam registrations. I know that Charles was trying to put in some sort of Capcha authentication to keep spambots out. Charles still has registrations sent directly to him to authenticate.
 
Posted by Guardian 2000 (Member # 743) on :
 
I try to post here… it is one of my standard rounds… and concur that it remains a great resource and is not dead, just slow. Slow is okay.

If anyone ever has designs on ending it, I would want to keep it running or at least archived at my site.
 
Posted by Guardian 2000 (Member # 743) on :
 
You want dead, go to http://www.subspace-comms.net . . . that place used to hum, but now hasn't seen a new message in months.

Come to think of it, I was actually doing a little quickie comparison lately of the geeky boards I frequent. One of them has a boatload of members but the main topical area is slower than the comparative areas here and at another small forum.

Personally, I prefer the small forum atmosphere.

Shortly after my little comparison (and before I could do anything with the data), the other small forum got a new member who was posting like crazy, which wasn't really a whole lot but it overwhelmed the time I have for such things. I'm a quick reader, but I'd rather savor a post and consider it thoughtfully, compared to having to blast through speed-reading because I feel like I have to read them all in the short time alotted.

I realize in the modern era everything has to be quick and now and social and high-traffic and blah-blah-blah, but that's not relaxing.
 
Posted by Guardian 2000 (Member # 743) on :
 
Actually, I see the problem with Flare now. I am a conversation killer.

 -
 
Posted by Krenim (Member # 22) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Saltah'na:
I think the biggest problem is the registration. Try dealing with 5000 spam registrations. I know that Charles was trying to put in some sort of Capcha authentication to keep spambots out. Charles still has registrations sent directly to him to authenticate.

This.

Also, I seem to have completely lost the ability to read the name "Charles" and not hear Ian McKellen's voice.
 
Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
 
I think there's a combination of factors. There's a lack of new material -- despite the official name, Flare is really a Star Trek forum, everything else is tangential. I'd bet the average age of the members has gone up almost linearly, and we all have jobs and families now. And Krenim hasn't posted a new episode of "Series ?" in years, so there's not as much to talk about.

Wait, how'd that get in there? [Razz]

Seriously, there's just too many distractions on the internet now, and real life priorities, so we all never post as much. And when we do, we keep missing each other, or we just don't bother to post. (I still visit semi regularly, but even if I read something interesting, half the time I'm too apathetic to post a reply.)

The lack of material is probably key. In Flare's heyday, we weren't just talking about new episodes, we were re analyzing and discussing old episodes and new materials discovered. The DVDs were new, many of us could go back and rewatch favorite episodes to glean new details. But the amount of new details on the blurays, as awesome as they are, tend towards the incredibly mundane. Now it's just one movie every few years. (That averages to about one lens flare per day, I'd bet.)

Let's face it, we've all grown up.
 
Posted by Krenim (Member # 22) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by MinutiaeMan:
And Krenim hasn't posted a new episode of "Series ?" in years, so there's not as much to talk about.

Wait, how'd that get in there? [Razz]

Yes, yes, I know. Truth be told, I've been seriously considering releasing a Cliff's Notes version of Series ? Season 6.2, with the option to go back and write full versions of the episodes later if/when I have the time/energy. At least that way, some of the major questions (i.e. "What do you mean the Excelsior crew doesn't escape?") get answered.
 
Posted by o2 (Member # 907) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Saltah'na:
Part of the reason is the forum itself. We're talking about forum technology from sometime in the 2000s that has never been updated. Not sure when that will be done.....

On the other hand there is no advertising - I like that!
 
Posted by Guardian 2000 (Member # 743) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by MinutiaeMan:
In Flare's heyday, we weren't just talking about new episodes, we were re analyzing and discussing old episodes and new materials discovered. The DVDs were new, many of us could go back and rewatch favorite episodes to glean new details.

{…}

Let's face it, we've all grown up.

I imagine we are growing out, actually. ;-)

Speaking for myself, I still dig deep into this stuff and find new details all the time, occasionally even posting here when I do. I suppose, to borrow from "Measure of a Man" a bit, that it helps to have an adversarial system to keep one motivated.

It also helps that I think most fiction is shit but that I have grandfathered in a few things including Star Trek, meaning I am more likely to rewatch Trek than I am to watch some new drivel that is even dumber than the shit I watched growing up. Seriously, most characterizations now are inferior to the comparatively nuanced motivations of one Roscoe P. Coltrane, Esq.
 
Posted by shikaru808 (Member # 2080) on :
 
Lack of new material does indeed suck. I suppose we could all start talking about SW VII?
 
Posted by Omega (Member # 91) on :
 
Yeah, Flare was very specifically about certain things, and those things were based around particular shows and huge amounts of free time. Neither of those really exist for us any more. So what is there to talk about? Our lives? Well, we do the catch-up thread every year or two. Current events? I suppose we could try that...
 
Posted by Guardian 2000 (Member # 743) on :
 
Just as an example of what I was talking about . . . a thread detailing warp velocity examples across the canon:

http://www.starfleetjedi.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=6329

That's the sort of pure research that is still going on in some quarters. Yeah, it's being done under the banner of the Vs. Debate, but it's the sort of thing that one might've expected to find here.

Or here's a post of mine about "The Passenger"[DS9]

http://www.starfleetjedi.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=6522

Right now I'm writing a blog post in which I have found reference to Jouret IV showing up on a star chart in "Child's Play"[VOY].

http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Jouret_IV

I pulled up the episode on StarTrek.com and checked for the context . . . boom, done. Turns out there really wasn't any context except for Icheb just going nuts multitasking with all kinds of screens going in Astrometrics. So, the fact that Jouret IV was shown in an image near Rigel and Vega means nothing.

But out of curiosity (since the real Rigel is like 3000 LY away as I recall whereas Vega is nextdoor), I went ahead and looked around further.

http://www.atlasoftheuniverse.com/50lys.html

Vega is "west-northwest" of us and about ten light-years "higher", at a distance of about 25 light-years. Rigel is listed at that site as 770 LY distant (Wikipedia, more recently, gives it 860). But so near as I can tell from http://www.atlasoftheuniverse.com/5000lys.html Rigel ought to be basically in the complete opposite direction from Vega.

That suggests that Icheb's star chart was not a "top down" map, but a projection from some location that is not Earth.

However, ignoring the multitude of Rigels, this could imply that, projected two-dimensionally, Jourey IV (which I'm going to spell that way because I keep typing a Y there so dammit) lies along a line that includes Rigel and Vega.

Of course, then there's Pollux IV on that map, too, at which point the whole plan goes to poo. Pollux is almost due "south" of us and rather higher, which just kills the angles. It's 34 light-years away per the Atlas site.

This is actually interesting, though, because if we ditch the Rigel and keep a line from Pollux to Vega, we still sort of basically end up pointing roughly 45 degrees west, or toward the northwest. (We could also go southeast, in principle, but I like that less.)

That would put Joureydammit IV off to the northwest, instead of the north-northeast as commonly assumed. (Well, I say "commonly" . . . this guy puts it in weirdville in the F/K/R triangle region, about 75 LY from Sol to the ESE: http://www.sttff.net/AST_MAP.html )

The westerly positioning could actually dovetail pretty nicely with my recent ruminations on the Borg which featured the "Borg in the Northwest" hypothesis.

http://dsg2k.blogspot.com/2014/03/the-borg-have-been-busy-ii-assimilation.html

JouretokayfineIbackspacedthistime IV being toward the northwest, in other words, actually fits that, and we could even go further and suggest the presence of a transwarp doomaflotchy there. (The one a light-year from Earth in the Voyager finale would just be a new thing or fluke).

See? Boom. New material, slackers. ;-)
 
Posted by Fabrux (Member # 71) on :
 
We all knew this board was dying but I think I finally killed it. I had a request to open registrations so someone could join. I had to manually approve the registration and delete all the spam bots. However, I forgot about the spam bots for a while and now there are over 12 000 registrations in the queue. It has essentially shut down and can't be pruned; the forum software pukes trying to open it up. [Frown]
 
Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
 
So it's YOUR fault! [Razz]
 
Posted by Fabrux (Member # 71) on :
 
Somewhat. [Frown] Although apparently Charles has been researching alternate forum software for Flare. He is just rather busy these days.
 
Posted by Saltah'na (Member # 33) on :
 
He'll probably need to nuke the entire registration backlog and start from scratch. Also, if he can get capcha in there, I think at a minimum, will solve most of our issues here.
 
Posted by Guardian 2000 (Member # 743) on :
 
So I'm all like "alright, forum software's old, but maybe there's some helpful info online I can provide for that problem" . . . and I get to Googlin', and about six seconds later come across the Wikipedia page, which spake thus:

quote:
UBB.classic (formerly Ultimate Bulletin Board or UBB) was an Internet forum software package originally written by Ted O'Neill of Social Strata, Inc. in 1996. It was written in Perl and used a flat file database. The last version of the software was 6.7.3, and was maintained by Charles Capps until he left Social Strata (then known as Groupee) in early 2006.
And then I'm all like "okay, nevermind then."

I never realized the maestro was among us.

And it's a flat file database! I much prefer that anyway. SQL gives me a headache.

But, just to be over-simple and hopeful, I would presume a suitably talented person (i.e. someone who knew what the devil they were looking at if they opened it up in Notepad++ or something) might have a chance at pruning the last 12,000 registrations manually (i.e. everybody since 137th Gebirg (Member # 2692))? Or is the flat file in some magic chronological format with no timestamping?

I know nothing of the database itself (and next to nothing about Perl), but if it features something like (registration)so-and-so(/registration)(approval)nein-verboten(/approval) or something, couldn't a regex be built, even if it came down to building an expression that included not killing all the names in the 18 pages of members?

Feel free to pooh-pooh my poo-poo, here. But, if it's plausible, I might volunteer.

Whatever the case, the absolute last thing I would ever want to see happen is for the information contained in all the many posts to just poof into dust. Somewhere there's a dork who's researching things and you just know they're gonna come across this site over and over, even if they can't participate.
 
Posted by Saltah'na (Member # 33) on :
 
If you want to take this on, by all means, contact Charles.

Don't know if you have realized but the stalwarts of this forum have been around since 1998 when many of us were teenagers or in our early 20s. And most of us who are now in our 30s have gone on to do typical things that people do in their 30s. Like have kids. Charles has 2 himself, so you can imagine the amount of free time he has dealing with those rugrats.
 
Posted by Cartman (Member # 256) on :
 
TLDR: everybody became old fat fucks.

A webservice tied to a flat-file DB (probably a binary format given that UBB is ancient proprietary code, but who knows) backend in 2014, awesome. No wonder the perl interpreter chokes on it. This might just be the last UBB.classic board in existence, a relic in more ways than one. Maybe we should arrange for it to be protected as a historical site.

I'm guessing the only DB admin tool is the forum software itself and the DB format is either undocumented or lost to history. That would make low-level cleanup or importing to SQL (with associated migration to phpBB or w/e) rather hard, although apparently not impossible. How big is Flare's DB anyway? Is there an automated backup policy? Does anyone besides Charles even have remote server access or is this *still* a one-man show?
 
Posted by AndrewR (Member # 44) on :
 
PLEASE don't shut this place down.

I still visit when I can/remember.

I love that I'm part of something like this that is essentially still going, coming up on nearly 20 years.

That is unheard of in the world of the internet!

There might be a "Living Witness" [VOY] type situation where this board is used archaelogically in the future!! [Smile]

However, in reality it's all not quite correct - and Charles (yes now I hear Sir Ian's voice NOW!!) wears black gloves a la Janeway. [Big Grin]

*leave it alone*.

Still love this place.

I also think there is the 'facebook' effect - unfortunately apart for work I do rarely venture away from looking at Facebook. It does keep you constantly... 'entertained' if you subscribe to enough non-friend sites. I know this isn't a good thing really.

I don't even really go to Youtube as much. Hmmm.

True it could also just be 'life' getting in the way.

It might also be the fact that Star Trek has such a wonderful tapestry of information, that other 'universes' except for Tolkien's universe (maybe a few others) have.
 
Posted by Guardian 2000 (Member # 743) on :
 
What is this mysterious "life" thing of which you speak? And children… does that not require sex? I read about the topic once. Are you saying you guys have been having sex? Like with real girls? What's that even like?

;-)
 
Posted by Orion Syndicate (Member # 25) on :
 
I still pop in every once in a while to have a look around. Those of us who were around in the early days had the time to post; I remember hours spent on here every day, between lectures at university. :-)

The torch has to be passed on. Sorting out registrations, and allowing new people to come in who have the time and passion that we had, to bring life back to the forums, would be the way forward.
 
Posted by Dukhat (Member # 341) on :
 
So I've been getting requests from multiple people over at the TrekBBS asking if they can join Flare, since I'm apparently some sort of bigwig concerning this place [Wink] While I share Shik's attitude about this place being selective, I also think that new blood would be great for Flare. There is interest, and it sounds like all that needs to be done is a board upgrade and some sort of captcha put in place for spam. Could this realistically happen, or should I just tell these people that they're just not going to be able to join?
 
Posted by Shik (Member # 343) on :
 
Explain to them about The Trials.

New meat—er, blood might be nice, if only to get YTA moving again.
 
Posted by Fabrux (Member # 71) on :
 
Well, surprisingly I managed to clear out the registration queue so we can open up the board for registrations again. But, given the flood of spam-bots that flow through our non-CAPTCHA registration system, I think what might be the best way to do this is open registrations for a 24 hour period and get everyone to register during that window. That way, I have a better chance of approving genuine registrations.

Mark, do you have a thread going on TrekBBS about this? I have no idea if this sort of thing would be permitted by the staff there as we are essentially encouraging folks to go to a "competitor" as it were...
 
Posted by Guardian 2000 (Member # 743) on :
 
All hail Fabrux, l33t h4x0r!

The window plan is excellent, also.
 
Posted by Dukhat (Member # 341) on :
 
What I can do is contact one of the mods over there and see if it's ok for me to make a post about this (honestly, I sincerely doubt that they think we're a competitor to them [Wink] )
 
Posted by Guardian 2000 (Member # 743) on :
 
They're quaking already.
 
Posted by Dukhat (Member # 341) on :
 
Just to let everyone know, the Subspace Comms Network has just been updated in exactly the same way Flare needs to be (with the spam protection, etc.)
 
Posted by Fabrux (Member # 71) on :
 
My gods, SCN is still around? :S
 
Posted by Dukhat (Member # 341) on :
 
So the admins at the TrekBBS are cool with me posting that Flare will be open for registrations for a 24 hour period. I just need to know when that will be. I can post this now, so that when there is a confirmed date, people will already know about it, and I'll make sure to update the post on that day as well.
 
Posted by Fabrux (Member # 71) on :
 
I can open up registrations 8 August 0000 ADT through to 9 August 0000 ADT. Or, we can go farther ahead.
 
Posted by Dukhat (Member # 341) on :
 
That's fine. I'll make a post about it.
 
Posted by Fabrux (Member # 71) on :
 
Fresh blood..... [Eek!]
 
Posted by Fabrux (Member # 71) on :
 
So, um, I kinda forgot to open registrations at 0000 this morning. So, I just opened them up and will leave the board open until 0000 ADT Sunday. I posted to the thread on TrekBBS to that effect.
 
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
 
Sweet- I sensed a disturbance in the ether and returned just in time for new member initiations!

Smiles everyone...smiles!
 
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
 
When I came to the site just now, there were five forums with new-post indicators by them. Usually, there's maybe two at most. I thought "man, the new people are having a big effect already". Turns out, there weren't actually any new people. Weird.
 


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