Next steps for VVO

[mixvio]

I'll also say one last thing about this, because you seem to be the one who is — at least most openly — affronted by my presence here, but with all due respect — and I mean this completely without intention to offend you — I don't have the slightest idea of who you are or remember any interactions we've ever had. I'm not trying to be dismissive about anything you're upset with me about and if you actually want to talk to me the door is very open, but beyond that whatever animosity you're holding is one sided, my guy. I can't stop anyone who wants to let a 20-something year old version of me that's over a decade out of date live rent free in their heads but from my point of view it really feels like a genuine waste of time and it's not what I want to invest my limited energy on this earth in. If Cris suddenly dying in middle age isn't a wake up call for all of us to evaluate what we're spending our lives on, I don't know what else could be. I'm not here to argue with anybody about shit that came from a time where there was still a functional US government and everyone believed Hillary Clinton was going to become president. If you want to talk to me, yell at me, tell me what you're mad at me about, the message box is right there and I have said I'm more than willing to take accountability on my share of things. If you just want to be mad at me then okay, I can't stop you, but I can only politely encourage you to find something more productive and enriching in your life than that.

 

[Mona Eberhardt]

I'll be able to discuss on Discord on Friday and over the weekend, because things at RL work are ridiculously hectic and we're finishing off our move to a new apartment. I'll tell you then what I can do (workload-wise and money-wise).

 

[Sid]

I'll also say one last thing about this, because you seem to be the one who is — at least most openly — affronted by my presence here, but with all due respect — and I mean this completely without intention to offend you — I don't have the slightest idea of who you are or remember any interactions we've ever had. I'm not trying to be dismissive about anything you're upset with me about and if you actually want to talk to me the door is very open, but beyond that whatever animosity you're holding is one sided, my guy. I can't stop anyone who wants to let a 20-something year old version of me that's over a decade out of date live rent free in their heads but from my point of view it really feels like a genuine waste of time and it's not what I want to invest my limited energy on this earth in. If Cris suddenly dying in middle age isn't a wake up call for all of us to evaluate what we're spending our lives on, I don't know what else could be. I'm not here to argue with anybody about shit that came from a time where there was still a functional US government and everyone believed Hillary Clinton was going to become president. If you want to talk to me, yell at me, tell me what you're mad at me about, the message box is right there and I have said I'm more than willing to take accountability on my share of things. If you just want to be mad at me then okay, I can't stop you, but I can only politely encourage you to find something more productive and enriching in your life than that.

I'm not upset, just was terribly worried about the future of this site.
I found it totally confusing and surprising (and a bit suspicious to be honest) that after all these years you pop up out of nowhere after almost 20 years to take things over. Bang, there was you being the admin.
Was it only to be nice, was there a hidden agenda? How were we supposed to know? Now that there has been formed a group of admins (hopefully with equal rights) I'm a lot less worried.

It is very well possible you can't remember me, because I ignored you in that time as much as possible. But lets be honest, you were not the kind of forum type back then, that I (and I guess a few others) would want to see here in an exclusive leaders role like Cris had.
But yeah, after reading a few posts of your side, and see how you react on posts these days, it seems IMHO you have matured in the right direction. That is cool.

 

[mixvio]

I'm not upset, just was terribly worried about the future of this site.
I found it totally confusing and surprising (and a bit suspicious to be honest) that after all these years you pop up out of nowhere after almost 20 years to take things over. Bang, there was you being the admin.
Was it only to be nice, was there a hidden agenda? How were we supposed to know? Now that there has been formed a group of admins (hopefully with equal rights) I'm a lot less worried.

It is very well possible you can't remember me, because I ignored you in that time as much as possible. But lets be honest, you were not the kind of forum type back then, that I (and I guess a few others) would want to see here in an exclusive leaders role like Cris had.
But yeah, after reading a few posts of your side, and see how you react on posts these days, it seems IMHO you have matured in the right direction. That is cool.

If I'd come in making changes and saying I intended to exclusively run things (instead of the exact opposite) then sure, I'd understand the cause for alarm. I popped up out of nowhere to you, that doesn't mean I wasn't still friends with Cristiano and knew of this place even if I didn't participate in it. Hopefully you can take this as an opportunity to not immediately rush to a presumption of malice before there's any evidence of it. My motivation was towards a friend of mine who cared about this community even if I didn't participate in it, and it didn't look like anyone else was going to be able to get necessary access to keep it around. I'm not sure if you want me to feel bad about being successful at doing so or not, given your worry over the future of the site — surely losing it completely would have been worse? Because that was what was going to happen in about two weeks otherwise.

In any event, I'd personally like to move on instead of discussing stuff from ~ten years ago (not twenty, god I'm not that old).

 

[mixvio]

Just to make it expressly clear in case there is any lingering confusion, at the moment there are five admin accounts who all have equal authority in Xenforo — myself, Cristiano, Free, Noodles, and Bartholomew.

Access to the hosting service itself is now with Free and Bartholomew and they're coordinating the technical stuff.

Free is already abusing admin privileges and reporting my posts so you should all declare mutiny.

 

[Noodles]

Media Gallery
Allow your users to create galleries of images and videos, organised into categories and albums. $70 (extension: +$15). Again, I don't think we need this.

I don't know if this is why, but I have always found media navigation to be a bit jankey here anyway on mobile. If I don't "zoom out" before enlarging an image, I can't get to the "X" to close the image out basically, because it goes off screen and the ability to zoom goes away.

If there is/was a media gallery, making images "fancier" this may be why.

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

I am unaware about ever having seen a photo album in a user's profile here. There's no media tab in any profile, nor this plugin in the backend. This is what this extension would add as functionality.

Normal image upload into posts is part of the core functionality.

 

[Sid]

I am unaware about ever having seen a photo album in a user's profile here. There's no media tab in any profile, nor this plugin in the backend. This is what this extension would add as functionality.

Normal image upload into posts is part of the core functionality.

Isn't it best to have as little actual photo storage as possible directly on the server?
Or do those albums work with external links just like in posts?

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

You got that right, Sid. Photo storage for every user in a forum like this one might lead to all types of potential headaches: some might try to abuse it as cheap cloud storage, maybe even sharing warez. And if not, a busy forum can still run out of disk space quickly enough. It also makes backups more expensive.

That's the can of worms related to storage space alone. The other one is legal complaints, might it be DMCA take down notices, subpoenas, copyright complaints and so on.

 

[Free]

Free is already abusing admin privileges and reporting my posts so you should all declare mutiny.

Don't make me pull out the cheese balls. I know how to stuff them.

 

[Free]

I don't know if this is why, but I have always found media navigation to be a bit jankey here anyway on mobile. If I don't "zoom out" before enlarging an image, I can't get to the "X" to close the image out basically, because it goes off screen and the ability to zoom goes away.

If there is/was a media gallery, making images "fancier" this may be why.

I'm not sure about the issue with images on mobile. We can look at it. The site has a content component which I'm certain is built-in, but no Media Gallery.

 

[Noodles]

I'm not sure about the issue with images on mobile. We can look at it. The site has a content component which I'm certain is built-in, but no Media Gallery.

Huh, it occurs to me that I can in fact, now look into that issue.

 

[mixvio]

It could also just be the forum theme. Don't underestimate the likelihood that it's the forum theme. 🫠

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

Noodles: it should be fixed now. The issue was that the BB code extended beyond the mobile viewport or failed to shrink responsively. This caused an image overflow horizontally and the side scrolling/clipping of the UI.

This is a well known issue within Xenforo 2.1.X, fixed in later version.

 

[Noodles]

Noodles: it should be fixed now. The issue was that the BB code extended beyond the mobile viewport or failed to shrink responsively. This caused an image overflow horizontally and the side scrolling/clipping of the UI.

This is a well known issue within Xenforo 2.1.X, fixed in later version.

It worked on my meme image above so it looks like it's better.

 

[Free]

This is a well known issue within Xenforo 2.1.X, fixed in later version.

Well known is a relative concept.

 

[Puretone]

You got that right, Sid. Photo storage for every user in a forum like this one might lead to all types of potential headaches: some might try to abuse it as cheap cloud storage, maybe even sharing warez. And if not, a busy forum can still run out of disk space quickly enough. It also makes backups more expensive.

That's the can of worms related to storage space alone. The other one is legal complaints, might it be DMCA take down notices, subpoenas, copyright complaints and so on.

It's been a few years since VVO was started, but iirc Cris purposely didn't include a photo gallery. and again, it's hard to recall, but I think SLU did have one. There was a slew of reasons but the big one was not wanting 'adult' pics on the site.

I could be wrong, it's been several years. But knowing Cris' hobby of taking pics* and a lack of gallery here. And of course it could have been a hosting thing.

*I have a friend inworld who only knew Cris from his SL Flickr account. So another circle of people whom he touched that don't know he passed.

 

[Katheryne Helendale]

Noodles: it should be fixed now. The issue was that the BB code extended beyond the mobile viewport or failed to shrink responsively. This caused an image overflow horizontally and the side scrolling/clipping of the UI.

This is a well known issue within Xenforo 2.1.X, fixed in later version.

Holy shit! That had been bugging me for years! Having it actually working now is sooo refreshing!

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

You are all welcome. Actually thanks to the wonders of LLMs this was fixed under 10 minutes. Otherwise it would have probably taking a few searchs within Xenforo's support forums, but the AI from the start spat out the code snipped required to fix it including a good explanation what the problem is.

Properly used coding AIs are quite something.

 

[Free]

But knowing Cris' hobby of taking pics* and a lack of gallery here. And of course it could have been a hosting thing.

Cris' gallery solution was Snapzilla, until it came down during his major health crisis in 2023.