WIKI RECOVERY

[Rich]

Hi CentralWare
This forum has always encouraged users to maintain the Wiki. I'm not
aware of any Wiki spam incidents in the past, but if you want to put a
safeguard in place, I would suggest using post count as a qualifier.

[CentralWare]

HELLO EVERY@NE!

wiki.tcl has the new user registration process set up to a confirmed email address; though it's very easy to create bogus free-mail accounts, it requires human interaction which tends to lessen the spam risk a bit (though paid promoters don't mind doing this extra step manually.)  I have to assume, if users are granted read/write access, it's also implied they do the vacuuming and other house-work as well (cleaning up bogus posts, moderating, etc.?)

In our experience, FORUM was a place anyone could come and go, drop messages, etc. and is the communal connection.  FORUM is also the place where mediation and constant clean-up are needed as some people can't help themselves and just spew negativity everywhere they go.  WIKI was more like the Owner's Manual; stating fact as opposed to speculation, run by owners and admins as opposed to the general public thus ensuring accuracy as opposed to being more apt for error.  That's our definition at least -- in no way would it be something we'd pressure or require for anyone else to follow!  (ie: to each their own.)

Per an earlier email, the WIKI will be set up for all non-newbie/noob members to have R/W access on the wiki, R/O for everyone else.
I do have one trick up my sleeve to help prevent promoters; we'll see if we get any truly dedicated ones in the months to come!

NOTE: We're going to tidy up HOW we authenticate users for WIKI administration...  if you're an "X" level user on the forum and you click on the wiki LINK from the forum, we send along your session ID from the forum and voila...  we know your user level already, no need to bang on the database door!  As long as the session is alive, you're logged into both systems.  In theory at least!!!

We near the finish line, my friends!  As soon as logins and permissions are done at the wiki, I believe my to-do list is finally cleared.

I cannot thank each and every one of you enough, especially those who stepped up and lent a hand in this awkward turn of events, some of you going that extra mile to help me get this almost-fifteen-year-old operating system back on her feet (the public interactive portion of it, at least) and if I'm not mistaken, we went from the potential of losing YEARS of posts, wiki content, etc. down to a loss of roughly 48 hours (from last week) of low traffic during the server transition, a zero loss at the wiki level, a complete save of multimedia and not even a single user account was harmed during this production.

KUDOS EVERYONE!

[CentralWare]

I'd like to see the wiki used instead of the forums for posting most how-to type posts because I find those very difficult to discover via the forum - they're hard to find amongst all the usual "help me" type threads.

I couldn't agree more!

To that end I'd prefer if it were openly editable by all users. But I'm not volunteering to continually check edits for spam myself...

...and there we have it ladies and gentlemen, the dilemma
You're not alone CNK; in fact, most people fall into the same category.
Statistically speaking, it's easier to get money out of people than it is to get them to do something remedial.

I had to "donate" 96 hours on the books to justify why I spent so much time on a non-profiting, non-client project that's not my own.
My accountant is going to soil herself when she tries to categorize it, but it had to be done and the deadline is drawing near. $7K to save someone else's forum/wiki?
(From what I saw, December 7th the old server is up for renewal.)  If our previous host is a COVID victim, for example (God forbid, though the date is possible!)
hosting won't have a renewal happening this upcoming December and wiki/forum will have died in the weeks or months that followed.  That's a little more vital
than spam management and refereeing the wiki, but the core behind it is the same.

If nobody does [fill in the blank] nothing gets done.

Now comes Administration / Moderating...  If it takes an admin 2 hours a week to scour the wiki for junk posts, hate-mail, etc...  eight hours in an average month...
imagine what he or she could have been doing instead.  Answering forum posts?  Compiling the next kernel for the upcoming release?  Building TCZs
per user requests?  Bug-testing Raspberry Pi Zero-W2 devices that even the admins have had a fun time getting their hands on?  (It took me 10 months before
one became available overseas that I was able to get an order in at 3:33AM in the morning to beat the frenzy.  They were out of stock in 11 minutes.  I haven't
even plugged the thing in yet as I have but ONE...  and I'm obsessive when it comes to "...always have a backup!")

There are between 15K and 20K TCL users in the database. Imagine if ONE user took ONE page of the wiki ONE day every 3 to 6 months or so.
(X number of wiki pages, Y of them were modified yesterday... 365 days in a year, LOL lock down editing on legal holidays...)
dynamic probability tells me a single user would not likely be recycled within 3-6 months, making the worst-case scenario 20 minutes of "work" in a year, which many
of the users are ALREADY READING the posts - which is half the work!
The entire wiki would take ultimately five minutes or less to be maintained DAILY for many months to come.

Nobody is being asked to do anything; but it would be nice if a few kind eyes who happened across this post remembered these ridiculous stats somewhere down
the road and they see something out of place...  maybe we'll get lucky and they'll take it upon themselves to spend a minute or two making necessary adjustments...
helping us make TCL as awesome as it can be.

[gadget42]

according to the Members "View the memberlist" as of 20221009-1500cdt-usa there are 14,813 total

Tiny Core Linux » Members List » Viewing Members 1 to 30 (of 14813 total members)

perhaps one of the admins knows how many individual members have been active in the last 24 months but IMHO a conservative guess would be around 50-75
("active" meaning at least 1 post per month so 24 posts in that timeframe)

[CentralWare]

@gadget42: If you saw my stats prior to the server havoc, you'd notice I haven't "posted" in quite a while, but I'd check in from time to time.  It all depends on what you'd consider "active."  Now someone from Japan who signed up 11 years ago and hasn't logged in since...  that might be a bit less than active

[CentralWare]

There's a little under 300 unique members that have logged in within the past 60 days.

[nick65go]

So, what is the point to be a member of a forum for long time, but then not contributing to the documentation /helping the forum? IMHO the "inactive" member (for ex: 3 months) should be ERASED from the member list. His/her contribution will still remain for posterity.

It is so easy for that person to create a new ID later, even if his/her pride is trashed a little. The actual 14000+ user list is now misleading a newcomer (just passing-by here) about how active is this forum / wiki.

Same issue for a user with many (ex: 500) posts in total, but not active in the last (ex: 1-3) years. What does his/her "senior/full" status mean for a "dead" hero? We will remember his/her contribution, like we remember old presidents/inventors/ etc, but that is all, R.I.P.

[NewUser]

I rarely post here, but I read everything (maybe I just skim the Raspberry Pi threads). Should my account be removed because I don't post? Perhaps, but I'd be right back, I think.

[Rich]

Hi NewUser
There are no forum requirements on frequency of posts or logins.
We will not be deleting accounts based on when the most recent post
or login occurred.

[CentralWare]

@nick65go: Easy there, champ! Bare in mind this project and its associated boards started with Linus Torvalds' original break-away story, followed eventually by TCL's origins with Robert Shingledecker and the baton is passed on to all of us to carry on the project.  Neither RobertS nor Linus himself had "prerequisites" of how much effort a passer-by or even a software leach had to put forth in order to be a member of this Country Club - it's "open door" to anyone with a rule-set similar to my own ("Keep it clean, keep it kind, or just keep it to yourself.^TM")

Bare in mind there are many people who stop by that aren't programmers / coders, scripters or just hard-core 'Nixers¹; a good number of our members even use Win## as their primary desktop and some are just "experimenting" with the Linux concept and for others, Tiny Core may not be the "easiest" to just push a button and make it happen so they shy away.  Also bare in mind that one of the search criteria that lands people here is based on OLD COMPUTER operating systems (ie: recycle/repurpose - see Shingledecker links above) and of that, there's even a company who sells modified HP AIO Core² based machines and it's not like they're here posting Q-n-A, findings, etc.  Or maybe they are?! Who knows?!

@NewUser: (LOL!) By all means!  God forbid if I tripped over a virtual cord and some user accounts were deleted somehow...  there's nothing stopping you from signing back up!  That's the beauty of Tiny Core and similar projects; it doesn't matter what country you're from, your gender, race, religion, etc. it's one of the few places people are welcome and are welcome to get along - and for the most part, they do!  In fact, I was running statistics about a week ago trying to make sure the user database was properly intact and from the looks of things, there were only about three or four accounts over the past decade and change that were booted from what we'll call "inappropriate forum behavior."  My employee history isn't even that strong!  (Close, though! At least that's what they just said  )

Of the thousands of member profiles on the TCL forum, there are also a number of incomplete sign-ups that will likely be revisited (people or bots who run through the account creation part and then never email-confirm that account.)  Beyond that, there is one maintenance related function that is likely to be implemented regarding potential ghost accounts as well as the never-been-confirmed accounts; we're going to send out a couple emails between now and the end of the year(ish?) and emails that bounce will "flag" the user account to update their account information and renew their "email confirmation" when they next log in, but beyond that, there's no sense dropping 'human' accounts.  Assuming success, we might eventually turn that maintenance cycle into a newsletter a couple/few times a year to touch base and update those who haven't stopped by in a while as well as keep the membership database clean.

To those who visit we welcome you to the Tiny Core family!
To those who invest IN Tiny Core for many of us, it goes much higher than a simple Thank You!


¹ 'Nixers' A title we coined in the 80's for die-hard Linux fans back when even Slackware was still an infant. A "Nixer" back then was a
    phrase used to imply a second job like being a bouncer at a pub and for some, the concept of Unix->Linux was definitely moonlighting.
    Hey! From the looks of it, there's still someone carrying the torch!  At least by name.
² Wow! Computer

[vinceASPECT]

Hello

You mean 300 diferent people?

thx
C

[CentralWare]

perhaps one of the admins knows how many individual members have been active in the last 24 months but IMHO a conservative guess would be around 50-75
("active" meaning at least 1 post per month so 24 posts in that timeframe)

@Gadget42: The database doesn't tell me (directly) how many people have posted nor whether a post is a question of their own or an answer to someone else's...  but in the past 24 months, 3,183 Unique Active Users have been doing "something" on the forum (logged in) out of the 55,803 Logins that have been recorded

[gadget42]

perhaps one of the admins knows how many individual members have been active in the last 24 months but IMHO a conservative guess would be around 50-75
("active" meaning at least 1 post per month so 24 posts in that timeframe)

@Gadget42: The database doesn't tell me (directly) how many people have posted nor whether a post is a question of their own or an answer to someone else's...  but in the past 24 months, 3,183 Unique Active Users have been doing "something" on the forum (logged in) out of the 55,803 Logins that have been recorded

just to clarify, you are saying 3,183 unique user log-ins have occurred in the last 24 months, but does your further 55,803 log-in number encompass the entire time the forum has been up and running from the very beginning(so back in 2008)...or just some unknown subset?

btw a HUGE KUDOS AND THANKS for all your knowledge, hard-work, and precious non-renewable time!!!

[xor]

i can't understand your question or problem!?

perhaps one of the admins knows how many individual members have been active in the last 24 months but IMHO a conservative guess would be around 50-75
("active" meaning at least 1 post per month so 24 posts in that timeframe)

@Gadget42: The database doesn't tell me (directly) how many people have posted nor whether a post is a question of their own or an answer to someone else's...  but in the past 24 months, 3,183 Unique Active Users have been doing "something" on the forum (logged in) out of the 55,803 Logins that have been recorded

just to clarify, you are saying 3,183 unique user log-ins have occurred in the last 24 months, but does your further 55,803 log-in number encompass the entire time the forum has been up and running from the very beginning(so back in 2008)...or just some unknown subset?

btw a HUGE KUDOS AND THANKS for all your knowledge, hard-work, and precious non-renewable time!!!

[Rich]

Hi CentralWare
I just did a check on members who were last active within the last 730 days (2 years)
and I came up with a count of 1910 unique members.