Hello again LES - Things are probably going to change a bit, here are my ideas, I want your input.

AnthonySmithAnthonySmith AdministratorHosting ProviderOGSenpai
edited May 6 in General

Hi Folks.

By now, anyone who cares has probably seen the announcement by @Mason and @mikho about me taking over as administrator on LES.

I never thought this would happen. When I handed the community over to the community to manage 5 years ago, I very quickly lost the feeling of any ownership or authority for the place, it was always a permanent decision in my head.

I won't go into all my recent health issues again, they are documented and dotted around here already. Needless to say, I am not in a good state but stable. The silver lining is that this gave me an opportunity to get back the low-end spirit bug, and it bit hard.

Out of nowhere, I got a message asking if I would like to carry the torch again, and I have been on average 17.6% more happy every day since. The transition in the backend is going to be slow because the guys are slammed time and work-wise right now, which likely prompted the thought to hand it on/back.

Having a solid long break from the LE* world has allowed me to gain some fresh perspective but if I am being totally honest, because I was out of the mix for so long, I feel less connected to the community than ever, probably a bit of imposter syndrome.

For those that don't know me, I was on LowEndBox when LowEndTalk did not exist. I remember the WordPress forum plugin that morphed into LET, I was a moderator and an administrator on LowEndTalk, I remember a time when conversations happened on WHT!!!!! I started LES due to just being sick of the scams on LET (bit more to it but lets not dig all that up now). if someone can find and cross-post the link to my exit from LET 8 years ago, that might be a fun read.

What I can see from my perspective is that some things need to change here, no reflection on M&M, sometimes you cant see the wood for the trees or you just dont have the time and tools available to do what you want to do, the post count and comment count is down considerably by the look of it, but the core small community is still strong.

So here is what I am proposing nothing is set in stone, and I value considered opinions. I am not going to start a poll because they suck I am just going to make informed decisions on what people want and what people obviously don't. Putting what I know, I will be the most controversial first.

  1. Advertising and money in general.

This place is creeping towards a 4-figure per year bill, apart from the fact that it is not low-end and that I am ok to pay for it out of my own pocket, it would be good to get some support.

This does not mean it is going to turn into low-end talk. Initially, my thinking is to use something like TinyAdz (which filters bot traffic) minimally and for not logged-in users only and taking a judgment call from there, it was a previous suggestion i think from @bikegremlin. Sorry if I am not remembering the exact details.

Excess money if any can be used to sponsor community projects and increase the resources of the free services providers to benefit the community by way of grants or paying invoices directly.

  1. Offer post format.

The way offers are posted and displayed needs to change. I am proposing we remove offers from the standard forum feed and instead, they will display on the right-hand column (which obviously needs to be refactored). Clicking on them will still take you to them as a post, just like now.

The offers will be posted via a form that providers will have access to, rather than a free post, to force rules being followed and make any rule-skirting very obvious, this also gives us the opportunity to better manage the data and make things more database-driven.

  1. New Users

We need to change the way new users are onboarded. Currently, you need manual approval. I am sure I can come up with something better, limited posting rights for xx hours, a new users section to post in/introduce, etc. either way the flow of people coming in needs to not have a potential 12+ hour delay.

  1. The ticket/support system

This will probably be dropped and integrated into the forum, just a personal preference, I hate having to flick between the 2, I will likely just publish a break glass in case of emergency email address and centralise everything.

  1. The active providers List/wiki

The plan for this from day 1 was to make it database-driven and the existing list is not maintained beyond adding new hosts, this will become database-driven and provide more stats and info.

  1. Thanks

This is great, the thanks system, but it needs to evolve. I want the community to become much more self-modderating al la reddit / HackerNews so my thinking is that thanks get turned into karma and we add a "dont like/downvote" type of option, I appreciate this has a lot of challenges and probebaly 1000 conflicting opinions but I want the community to be able to have direct input in this way, annoying clickbait offers get sunk and or deindexed etc deserving good quality content gets more attention.

It's a challenge, but i think with enough tweaking we can find a balance. I had a great conversation with @joepie91 about this many many years ago, is he still around?

Good karma needs to be able to be redeamed somehow also maybe against the community free offer threads and bad karma needs to force some sort of accountability on accounts.

  1. Dedicated Server offers

We need to do something about dedicated server offers, the world is just different now, static pricing is not fir for purpose, I don't know what that is yet, but once offers go form based we may be able to do something about a scale per region/hardware type/GPU etc

  1. LES Exclusive offers

This is probably going to change completely. During the last poll, what was very obvious is that it was the need to be exclusive that was kneecapping it; instead, the section will probably have different, no need to be exclusive but require a reply to reveal, maybe spend karma points on, because I can say first hand, you post in there, its on nodeseek in 5 minutes or a telegram group. it does not serve its purpose.

  1. user tags

User tags will become condition-based and automatic.

  1. Blog/microblog/content

I don't really want to give this a name, but something that allows good quality content and information to be indexed better, in a more generic way, not buried 5 years and 20 posts deep in a forum and provide a platform for content in general.

This could be anything from good reviews, how-to, tips, mitigations, warnings, or dedicated provider pages.

  1. The right-hand column rework

It is not useless, but it's really not pulling its weight. When was the last time you made use of the tag cloud?, we can make better use of this space.

  1. Community Notes

This is more of a concept in my head than a fully formed idea, but an X-style community notes plugin would be a good modern tool to have in today's internet discourse.

  1. Host validation

It occurred to me when handling tickets requesting a provider tag recently that it's not really offering any real protection; it takes about an hour to register a company, you can do it pretty much anonymously, and we then trust the information source provided to validate against. I am not saying it does nothing, but it may be a bit of a paper shield in reality.

I recently had to allow a host I can't really get any information on because I am not a lawyer, and their country makes finding details ridiculous. Meanwhile, I rejected a sole trader for being a sole trader who had clearly been doing a bang-up job for a while.

So I am proposing that the community gets to decide. I don't know the exact method or mechanism yet, but this is in principle, if it's a yes, we will do the checks we do that I can't discuss openly to ensure its not ban evasion, known scams, etc.

  1. flagged posts and moderation

Most of you won't have ever experienced this, but it's pretty annoying to have the forum literally filled with flagged posts because @WSS said a bad word or someone does not agree with something.

Reports are great, and visibility is great, but we see them as actual posts when you flag something, and there is no real need; we can move these to a mod-only sidebar.

  1. flagging in general

I want to make it visible on a post that it has been flagged to everyone and possibly even have a threshold whereby it is hidden if flagged enough, more community moderation tools.

  1. remove edit limits

I want to remove edit limits on posts, its just annoying, but this will come with a public, indexed version history after the standard edit thresholds.

  1. general platform changes

Vanilla open source has been EOL over a year now bigger thread about that here https://lowendspirit.com/discussion/9220/is-higher-logic-terminating-open-source-vanilla

So, at some point, this is going to become a problem. I would rather be ahead of that, but its also a massive undertaking, personally I don't see any benefit in just moving to another forum platform and trying to force a round peg in a square hole, my thinking is that we need something more bespoke, an actual LES Platform.

The base of the platform can be vanilla and it can evolve, I dont want to over promise and under deliver on this so I am waiting to get access again so I can see what the situation is, make sure dev matches prod well enough and dump the schema and map it all out a bit more first, but I think we just evolve what we have and make it more fit for purpose.

  1. Doing this alone.

I am not sure I can or want to manage this solo, and by this, I mean the entire community, the daily stuff, the changes, the unresolvable clashing personalities, etc., etc., I am not sure any 1 person should.

So I am proposing we have a 2nd administrator type of role, a deputy administrator, someone who has absolute control on the forum but not platform access or technical or financial maintenance responsibilities, almost a natural succession plan, not least of all because my health situation is complex, there may be significant periods of time I am just not available later this year.

It will be my responsibility that, in the event I am incapacitated, the keys to the kingdom can be handed over entirely, instead of the forum going offline one day and never coming back.

But also someone to challenge ideas and be a second personality to provide balance, suggestions on a person? Self-nomination is also fine. ideally someone who is prepared to manage the discord channel.

I am looking forward to getting started on all of this, but in reality its probably going to be June before I can even start, so we have time to gather opinions, thoughts and dreams from everyone. Please have your say now rather than complain later :)

Maybe you have always thought... It's dumb that LES does not do (thing) its a great time to say it, I have my notebook open!

  1. The Discord channel

While I don't plan to shut it down, that would be a dick move. I really don't like or use Discord; it always feels forced. I personally will not be managing it long term; it will go community-managed or vanish

I am not against using some real estate on the forum as a real-time chat via a websocket or something.

Finally

These are my ideas; they can change. I would always rather try something and fail and adapt and admit mistakes than never try anything, I am also very aware that the absolute reality is that there may be no desire for change, and if that's the case, so be it.

I am also prepared to do none of this and just maintain the status quo as long as people accept offers are at an all-time low, as is everything else. We can't see the drain yet, but we are circling it, if you don't want new content or new people or change, that's fine; it's a totally valid position that should not be attacked.

If the general feedback I get is that there is no remit for change, there will be no change; if there is a lack of feedback, I will take that as apathy and a remit for change.

Hit me.

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Comments

  • WSSWSS OG

    Willies.

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  • WSSWSS OG

    I personally think that keeping with Vanilla is going to be more painful as time goes on. There's so many things that doesn't have and will never have unless it's rewritten. Such simple things as ignoring other users- it's not baked in.

    I also don't like those forever scrolling sites like Discourse, and others feel that the old forum format is dead. GLWS.

    "It's a hard life- to be a stick insect." - Karl Pilkington

  • AnthonySmithAnthonySmith AdministratorHosting ProviderOGSenpai

    @WSS said: ignoring other users- it's not baked in.

    Can be though, good suggestion, it is in the notebook.

    I understand, and you might be right, I just don't know what I don't know yet, when I do know, I will make a judgment call on platform change or rewrite or migration.

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  • May be could be useful to create a roadmap and people could vote their preference in order to establish priorities ( this thing 1st,2nd etc ) . Obviously it is just a suggestion ! I see many things to change so may be would be positive to be done in this style . Step by step you know

    I believe in good luck. Harder that I work ,luckier i get.

  • AnthonySmithAnthonySmith AdministratorHosting ProviderOGSenpai

    @Chievo said:
    May be could be useful to create a roadmap and people could vote their preference in order to establish priorities ( this thing 1st,2nd etc ) . Obviously it is just a suggestion ! I see many things to change so may be would be positive to be done in this style . Step by step you know

    yeah if change is the way, when we know what is changing, I will maintain a roadmap.

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  • NyrNyr OG

    So I am only going to give my POV on some particular stuff, as I am not very active really.

    • The providers/offers situation: this community needs to understand that currently LES has zero bargaining power. I have repeatedly seen very demanding comments asking providers for exclusive deals, blaming providers for doing promos in OGF and not here, etc. And let's not start with the various restrictions limiting the amount of legit providers able to participate. We are a small community, and almost commercially irrelevant. We do not matter to many companies. We can't demand lots of stuff.
    • The forum system itself: Vanilla is dead. Discuss is not necessarily the answer. Flarum is thriving and kind of the spiritual successor to Vanilla. We can keep maintaining Vanilla for a long time, OGF is most certainly going to do it, but this is something to keep in mind.
    • The money situation: I understand this is not the main worry right now, but it would be viable to offer some ad space for providers. It is a win-win situation, and given the size of this forum I would suggest direct deals with interested providers at a fixed price, but whatever works for you. Someone will complain, but 90% of them would not put a single USD towards the bills.
    • Discord should not be discarded as long as some people are interested. Even if you (and me) are not interested, we are in 2026 and like it or not, it is relevant to communities (although our Discord is not super active, from the looks of it).
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  • AnthonySmithAnthonySmith AdministratorHosting ProviderOGSenpai

    @Nyr said:
    So I am only going to give my POV on some particular stuff, as I am not very active really.

    • The providers/offers situation: this community needs to understand that currently LES has zero bargaining power. I have repeatedly seen very demanding comments asking providers for exclusive deals, blaming providers for doing promos in OGF and not here, etc. And let's not start with the various restrictions limiting the amount of legit providers able to participate. We are a small community, and almost commercially irrelevant. We do not matter to many companies. We can't demand lots of stuff.
    • The forum system itself: Vanilla is dead. Discuss is not necessarily the answer. Flarum is thriving and kind of the spiritual successor to Vanilla. We can keep maintaining Vanilla for a long time, OGF is most certainly going to do it, but this is something to keep in mind.
    • The money situation: I understand this is not the main worry right now, but it would be viable to offer some ad space for providers. It is a win-win situation, and given the size of this forum I would suggest direct deals with interested providers at a fixed price, but whatever works for you. Someone will complain, but 90% of them would not put a single USD towards the bills.
    • Discord should not be discarded as long as some people are interested. Even if you (and me) are not interested, we are in 2026 and like it or not, it is relevant to communities (although our Discord is not super active, from the looks of it).

    100% on all of that, everything you said is the conversation in my own head, pretty much, it makes sense, I fear, though, if I put a single advert on the forum for logged-in users, I will be swatted.

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  • AlexhostcomAlexhostcom Hosting Provider

    Hi.

    Totally respect to this thread. But we think that one thing that need to be done is raising the price limits.
    The market hardware is being too expensive over the years, is not possible sometimes to offer low cost deals or flash deals.

    If we can do? For sure, but most of them will turn in "Unsustainable deals" and that is what we don't look for.
    We don't ask for crazy prices to be allowed, but at least increase a little. RAM, Disk all those are being too expensive not only for us, but for everyone in the industry.

    We think this is one of the rules that need to be reviewed. This won't stop anything offering low end deals, in fact.
    Regarding the forum, all is nice but somethings can change and make LES different in some ways like in Design for example.

    Sponsorship and advertising looks fine, but the pricing also determines. Just don't add in excess.

    Best Regards,
    Alexhost

  • Some point of view from me:

    1) ads can work ( the classic banners ) or direct sponsorship likely the t shirts of the football clubs . If someone wants to pay to cover the expenses for one month for example . A provider etc could publish his name in a special thread during that month for example and make it fixed during that month. It does not cost nothing for the provider and the admin . No extra work for banners or for dev space etc.

    2) a bit over complication may be . ( Do not take it personally just my opinion)

    3) Unfortunately we do not have lot of new users . If we have had many many of them it may be could be good option.

    4) I am not aware of it. Yes make it simpler better at the mid long term.
    5). Not pretty sure what do you want to put and how could be included.
    6) could be cool but overall pretty complicated is not it? I mean many many hours of Dev work etc.
    7) completely agree with you respect the dedis completely new things GPU offers etc . May be could be done easily to change the rules for them if the community is happy with that. It makes perfect sense
    8) may be one way to do it is for example the next . A provider offers a nice deal and offers a specific code for LES users. You can make a special moments per day . Likely 20:00:00 some time so the provider must point that code here at that time .( Happy hour for servers like the beer happy hour) Could be abused yes? But making it more hardly to be abused . There are plenty of options but making it more overcomplicated for providers or users gonna be a good idea itself

    1. User tags? What exactly you mean ?
      10) completely agree with you.
      11). Agree with you. The right is not so powerful used
      12) I cannot understand the concept. Sorry.
      13) it is a forum . Basic information is good. Protection is good.but the final decision is not yours . So over protecting is meh for me . I mean even companies or sole traders could do some sort of things . Not a lawyer . Etc. Last step is done by everyone in my opinion .
      14) and 15) Flag some content yeah may be could be improved etc .
      16) I would not touch it . I mean just 1 h is usually perfectly fine for the vast majority of things
      17) many forums are not touched for years . May be same strategy and working for an alternatives meanwhile.
      18) yeah moderators could be helpful
      19) I would not touch it . Not lot of people and going on but does not hurt

    Just my 2cents

    I believe in good luck. Harder that I work ,luckier i get.

  • TL;DR... well, i read it half way :lol:

    Advertising and money in general: I think you need to consider that. If that's not enough, you might want to think about a "donation" system as well.

    Offer post format: 2 different forums? Not sure how I feel about that... Vanilla doesn't support topics which are "read only" for regular user and read-write for "providers"?

    New Users: Yes, limited access until they reach a certain post count?

    Thanks: Sounds fun. Upvote/downvote can be abused and that's the reason youtube removed the "down vote counter"...

    Dedicated Server offers: I dunno about others but I go to LET for dedicated server offers, so broadening the prices will help.

    user tags: You can monetize the user tags :lol:

    flagging in general: Yes, this is missing. If a post has ALREADY been flagged, let the users know so everyone else don't need to click "Flag" button again and again...

    Doing this alone: You mean LES always had only 1 admin? Doesn't most forums have 2 or more admins? Redundancy? What happens if the current admin suddenly disappears?

    One thing I needed is for users to be able to "upload" images to the forum. I wanted it to the point I literally sent a pre-made javascript that, when you "include it" will allow you to upload images to post-images from the text-area. However it was never added, so now I use my custom made LES firefox plugin to upload images. Still, hoping the day would come soon!

    And one more "want" would be a "chat" embeded into the forum. Instead of posting in "The Cest Pit", refreshing page, thæn post again, something that works more like a web-chat would be more fun. I doubt vanilla has something like that so not having high hopes on that....

    I speak fluent sarcasm and broken logic. | I would agree with you, but thæn we’d both be wrong.

  • AnthonySmithAnthonySmith AdministratorHosting ProviderOGSenpai

    @Chievo said: User tags? What exactly you mean ?

    og, retired, senpie etc etc

    @Chievo said: 2) a bit over complication may be . ( Do not take it personally just my opinion)

    maybe, although the plan was to streamline for hosts to remove complexity.

    @Chievo said: 12) I cannot understand the concept. Sorry.

    it basically adds a summary of what is said and what facts were found on the original post, instead of having to go 15 pages deep to find an "ah ha" moment.

    Thanks for your 2c, I appreciate the time you took to write that, even if I did have to scroll up and down to read and remember what i write for context haha

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  • AnthonySmithAnthonySmith AdministratorHosting ProviderOGSenpai

    @somik said: Doing this alone: You mean LES always had only 1 admin? Doesn't most forums have 2 or more admins? Redundancy? What happens if the current admin suddenly disappears?

    Originally it was just me, then it was mikho and mason, now its just me again, or soon will be, so I am suggesting a 2nd person and asking for nominations.

    @somik said: New Users: Yes, limited access until they reach a certain post count?

    Something like that, require a post in introductions before they can post elsewhere etc.

    @somik said: user tags: You can monetize the user tags

    Rough... but maybe a donator tag. idk.

    @somik said: One thing I needed is for users to be able to "upload" images to the forum. I wanted it to the point I literally sent a pre-made javascript that, when you "include it" will allow you to upload images to post-images from the text-area. However it was never added, so now I use my custom made LES firefox plugin to upload images. Still, hoping the day would come soon!

    you lost me there, LES always has had that option? you literally copy and image and paste it in to the comment?

    @somik said: And one more "want" would be a "chat" embeded into the forum. Instead of posting in "The Cest Pit", refreshing page, thæn post again, something that works more like a web-chat would be more fun. I doubt vanilla has something like that so not having high hopes on that....

    yeah kind of what I was thinking tbh, make the pit live

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  • This place is creeping towards a 4-figure per year bill

    Whoa, 32c,128GB,4TB NVME?

    Thanked by (1)Falzo
  • @AnthonySmith said:

    @Chievo said: User tags? What exactly you mean ?

    og, retired, senpie etc etc

    @Chievo said: 2) a bit over complication may be . ( Do not take it personally just my opinion)

    maybe, although the plan was to streamline for hosts to remove complexity.

    @Chievo said: 12) I cannot understand the concept. Sorry.

    it basically adds a summary of what is said and what facts were found on the original post, instead of having to go 15 pages deep to find an "ah ha" moment.

    Thanks for your 2c, I appreciate the time you took to write that, even if I did have to scroll up and down to read and remember what i write for context haha

    I agree with you for the tags !

    Well I have no idea how the thread could be summarised but well you are technical person you know it better.

    And sorry for the scrolling up and down hahaha

    I believe in good luck. Harder that I work ,luckier i get.

  • imokimok OG
    • Get rid of the sidebar.
    • Simple 2 line ads on mobile every now and then or 300x100 grayscale images. Colorful gifs only on desktop. Maybe use Google Ad Manager or similar to handle campaigns?
    • Modern platform. I say Discourse does a lot of things you have in mind. Hopefully they implement pages in the near future. Or use it as a backend and build a new, simpler vanilla-style frontend for end-users with PHP or JS (Astro looks like a good option).
  • Although I don’t have any specific figures, my impression is that both the forum’s traffic and the number of posts are quite low, so it doesn’t seem necessary to make any major changes.

    I think maintaining the status quo and making just a few minor adjustments might be the best course of action.

    The forum is no longer likely to experience explosive growth.

    Please forgive my pessimism.

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  • havochavoc OGContent WriterSenpai

    Cool. Think Mason & Mikho did a good job & I'm sure you will too

    Ads - yeah sure, bills need paying and out of pocket doesn't seem fair.

    microblog

    Can we please get rid of this weird editorial system thing? Its well intended certainly but has actively discouraged me from posting any long form content

    deputy administrator

    Maybe a couple mods with reduced power? Like ability to delete spam or something. Think in particular people in different timezones may be good. Could even make WSS a mod and make him delete his own swearing

    upvotes

    I don't mind either way but i wonder how this would play out for upstart hosts without a rep.

    Host validation

    I don't really rely on it tbh. Think it may be more useful to attach a date to it somehow? Knowing how long someone has been keeping the biz running is in a way more useful info

    Community notes

    Think this would be a mess tbh

    edit limits

    Maybe start by just jacking it up. 6 hrs instead of 1?

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  • AnthonySmithAnthonySmith AdministratorHosting ProviderOGSenpai

    @tulipyun said: Please forgive my pessimism.

    If it's how you feel and how you see things, it is 100% valid.

    @imok said: Get rid of the sidebar.

    completely? sounds scary, what about collapsible with an option to remember your preference?

    @imok said: Simple 2 line ads on mobile every now and then or 300x100 grayscale images. Colorful gifs only on desktop. Maybe use Google Ad Manager or similar to handle campaigns?

    I am already shocked at how many people are suggesting ads haha, unexpected, but ok valid opinion.

    @imok said: Modern platform. I say Discourse does a lot of things you have in mind. Hopefully they implement pages in the near future. Or use it as a backend and build a new, simpler vanilla-style frontend for end-users with PHP or JS (Astro looks like a good option).

    I will look in to it when I have all the info, and decide if a number of incremental small changes are a better option than a whole platform change.

    Just my personal opinion and I could be wrong, but when the split happened, maybe @mikho remembers this as we talked about it a lot at the time, we kind of agreed that if LES was not a pretty close match and "comfortable" people would not switch and I always thought that was why the other 2 splits that happened before LES, one of which I cant even remember the name of now did not get the same traction LES did, but maybe its been long enough now a different platform can work.

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  • MichaelCeeMichaelCee ModeratorHosting ProviderOGServices Provider
    edited May 6

    I don't like Vanilla but I can see it being a pain in the arse to move from.

    I definitely agree on most of your points. Manual user approval is no bueno, same with the backend ticket software and how the provider list works (rarely gets updated). I also agree about host validation and the flagging system. I have 117 discussions but maybe 60 of them are actual threads and the rest are flags. It's super weird.

    The Discord I think is fine. Some people make the argument that it's pointless and takes away from the forum, I disagree. I don't use the forum for "How's life, how's your father" chit chat, but I use Discord for that mostly with @Chievo and @imok - we have discussions that wouldn't be happening on the forum. (Edit: although, if you did kill of the Discord it would be an excuse for me to finally delete my account for good)

    My major disagreement would be ads. There have been plenty of offers for sponsorships and donations. I think ads should be a last resort if at all, but I appreciate things cost money.

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  • Regarding karma systems, my main experience with them is reddit. Personally I dislike it, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be done, or that it wouldn't be beneficial. My response to it, is that I don't downvote anything. It bothers me when I see perfectly good posts downvoted, and I sometimes upvote them on principal to try to undo the damage.

    I like Vanilla. If it's not possible to maintain it, Flarum is second best, in my opinion. I really dislike Discourse, and avoid it as much as possible.

    I don't like Discord, in general, and prefer not to use it at all. Matrix is intriguing, but I haven't used it much.

    Regarding ads, I use an ad blocker, anyway. But I think it's fine to get ads/sponsors to offset the costs of running things.

    In general, I think if you feel compelled to make changes, you should go ahead and make them vs. doing nothing.

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  • @AnthonySmith said:

    @somik said: One thing I needed is for users to be able to "upload" images to the forum. I wanted it to the point I literally sent a pre-made javascript that, when you "include it" will allow you to upload images to post-images from the text-area. However it was never added, so now I use my custom made LES firefox plugin to upload images. Still, hoping the day would come soon!

    you lost me there, LES always has had that option? you literally copy and image and paste it in to the comment?

    That aparently only works for "content creators". Us regular users have to find a third party website to host our images and paste the link instead.

    @somik said: And one more "want" would be a "chat" embeded into the forum. Instead of posting in "The Cest Pit", refreshing page, thæn post again, something that works more like a web-chat would be more fun. I doubt vanilla has something like that so not having high hopes on that....

    yeah kind of what I was thinking tbh, make the pit live

    OMG! Really! That would make the forum feel way more modern! :D

    I speak fluent sarcasm and broken logic. | I would agree with you, but thæn we’d both be wrong.

  • MichaelCeeMichaelCee ModeratorHosting ProviderOGServices Provider

    @david3 said: Regarding karma systems, my main experience with them is reddit. Personally I dislike it, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be done, or that it wouldn't be beneficial. My response to it, is that I don't downvote anything. It bothers me when I see perfectly good posts downvoted, and I sometimes upvote them on principal to try to undo the damage.

    I think a karma system could definitely open up some sort of manipulation. Just thinking alone on that MXroute smear campaign posted on reddit. There was a truck tonne of manipulated voting. We are on a forum where not everybody disagrees and most people are technically knowledgeable.

    Thanked by (3)david3 cservers burntascii
  • MichaelCeeMichaelCee ModeratorHosting ProviderOGServices Provider

    @AnthonySmith said: you lost me there, LES always has had that option? you literally copy and image and paste it in to the comment?

    This was removed to save storage space, only mods/admins/other have access

    Thanked by (2)somik AnthonySmith
  • bikegremlinbikegremlin ModeratorOGContent Writer

    My thoughts aloud - no illusion that it's the wisest, just the best I can think of at the time of writing.

    @AnthonySmith said:
    Hi Folks.

    By now, anyone who cares has probably seen the announcement by @Mason and @mikho about me taking over as administrator on LES.

    I never thought this would happen. When I handed the community over to the community to manage 5 years ago, I very quickly lost the feeling of any ownership or authority for the place, it was always a permanent decision in my head.

    I won't go into all my recent health issues again, they are documented and dotted around here already. Needless to say, I am not in a good state but stable. The silver lining is that this gave me an opportunity to get back the low-end spirit bug, and it bit hard.

    Out of nowhere, I got a message asking if I would like to carry the torch again, and I have been on average 17.6% more happy every day since. The transition in the backend is going to be slow because the guys are slammed time and work-wise right now, which likely prompted the thought to hand it on/back.

    Having a solid long break from the LE* world has allowed me to gain some fresh perspective but if I am being totally honest, because I was out of the mix for so long, I feel less connected to the community than ever, probably a bit of imposter syndrome.

    For those that don't know me, I was on LowEndBox when LowEndTalk did not exist. I remember the WordPress forum plugin that morphed into LET, I was a moderator and an administrator on LowEndTalk, I remember a time when conversations happened on WHT!!!!! I started LES due to just being sick of the scams on LET (bit more to it but lets not dig all that up now). if someone can find and cross-post the link to my exit from LET 8 years ago, that might be a fun read.

    What I can see from my perspective is that some things need to change here, no reflection on M&M, sometimes you cant see the wood for the trees or you just dont have the time and tools available to do what you want to do, the post count and comment count is down considerably by the look of it, but the core small community is still strong.

    So here is what I am proposing nothing is set in stone, and I value considered opinions. I am not going to start a poll because they suck I am just going to make informed decisions on what people want and what people obviously don't. Putting what I know, I will be the most controversial first.

    1. Advertising and money in general.

    This place is creeping towards a 4-figure per year bill, apart from the fact that it is not low-end and that I am ok to pay for it out of my own pocket, it would be good to get some support.

    This does not mean it is going to turn into low-end talk. Initially, my thinking is to use something like TinyAdz (which filters bot traffic) minimally and for not logged-in users only and taking a judgment call from there, it was a previous suggestion i think from @bikegremlin. Sorry if I am not remembering the exact details.

    Excess money if any can be used to sponsor community projects and increase the resources of the free services providers to benefit the community by way of grants or paying invoices directly.

    Yes, bikegremlin.net forum shows ads only to guests - no ads or even analytics tracking for logged in users. That covers some of the costs.

    I am also not ashamed to ask for Patreon support, with a clear message that I don't sell anything extra in return:
    https://www.patreon.com/cw/bikegremlin/membership

    That doesn't stop a few good folks from helping out - so far so good!

    1. Offer post format.

    The way offers are posted and displayed needs to change. I am proposing we remove offers from the standard forum feed and instead, they will display on the right-hand column (which obviously needs to be refactored). Clicking on them will still take you to them as a post, just like now.

    The offers will be posted via a form that providers will have access to, rather than a free post, to force rules being followed and make any rule-skirting very obvious, this also gives us the opportunity to better manage the data and make things more database-driven.

    Good idea, but note that most normal people us phones only nowadays, sigh.

    1. New Users

    We need to change the way new users are onboarded. Currently, you need manual approval. I am sure I can come up with something better, limited posting rights for xx hours, a new users section to post in/introduce, etc. either way the flow of people coming in needs to not have a potential 12+ hour delay.

    I'm using XenForo.
    It has good integrations with automated spam platforms (so if enough forum owners report an IP or email as spammy, you can set the forum to auto-block registration from that.

    However, at least for the moderate traffic forums, it is good to leave manual approval - even for the first few posts (I sometimes manually disable that check if I conclude that a member is legit - comes with experience but isn't fault proof)!

    1. The ticket/support system

    This will probably be dropped and integrated into the forum, just a personal preference, I hate having to flick between the 2, I will likely just publish a break glass in case of emergency email address and centralise everything.

    Makes sense.

    1. The active providers List/wiki

    The plan for this from day 1 was to make it database-driven and the existing list is not maintained beyond adding new hosts, this will become database-driven and provide more stats and info.

    +1
    Good idea.

    1. Thanks

    This is great, the thanks system, but it needs to evolve. I want the community to become much more self-modderating al la reddit / HackerNews so my thinking is that thanks get turned into karma and we add a "dont like/downvote" type of option, I appreciate this has a lot of challenges and probebaly 1000 conflicting opinions but I want the community to be able to have direct input in this way, annoying clickbait offers get sunk and or deindexed etc deserving good quality content gets more attention.

    It's a challenge, but i think with enough tweaking we can find a balance. I had a great conversation with @joepie91 about this many many years ago, is he still around?

    Good karma needs to be able to be redeamed somehow also maybe against the community free offer threads and bad karma needs to force some sort of accountability on accounts.

    XenForo ticks this box too, to a great degree.

    1. Dedicated Server offers

    We need to do something about dedicated server offers, the world is just different now, static pricing is not fir for purpose, I don't know what that is yet, but once offers go form based we may be able to do something about a scale per region/hardware type/GPU etc

    100%.

    1. LES Exclusive offers

    This is probably going to change completely. During the last poll, what was very obvious is that it was the need to be exclusive that was kneecapping it; instead, the section will probably have different, no need to be exclusive but require a reply to reveal, maybe spend karma points on, because I can say first hand, you post in there, its on nodeseek in 5 minutes or a telegram group. it does not serve its purpose.

    Not sure about this.

    1. user tags

    User tags will become condition-based and automatic.

    OK. Fine. I don't mind having "mostly intoxicated" written next to my username...

    1. Blog/microblog/content

    I don't really want to give this a name, but something that allows good quality content and information to be indexed better, in a more generic way, not buried 5 years and 20 posts deep in a forum and provide a platform for content in general.

    This could be anything from good reviews, how-to, tips, mitigations, warnings, or dedicated provider pages.

    When I hear the word "content" I think of marketing SEO crap.
    :)

    But I agree with the idea - just not sure how to implement it.

    1. The right-hand column rework

    It is not useless, but it's really not pulling its weight. When was the last time you made use of the tag cloud?, we can make better use of this space.

    How to use tags so they make sense (i.e. mods/admins only, manual):
    https://bike.bikegremlin.com/23277/website-tags-magic-drawers/

    1. Community Notes

    This is more of a concept in my head than a fully formed idea, but an X-style community notes plugin would be a good modern tool to have in today's internet discourse.

    1. Host validation

    It occurred to me when handling tickets requesting a provider tag recently that it's not really offering any real protection; it takes about an hour to register a company, you can do it pretty much anonymously, and we then trust the information source provided to validate against. I am not saying it does nothing, but it may be a bit of a paper shield in reality.

    I recently had to allow a host I can't really get any information on because I am not a lawyer, and their country makes finding details ridiculous. Meanwhile, I rejected a sole trader for being a sole trader who had clearly been doing a bang-up job for a while.

    So I am proposing that the community gets to decide. I don't know the exact method or mechanism yet, but this is in principle, if it's a yes, we will do the checks we do that I can't discuss openly to ensure its not ban evasion, known scams, etc.

    I would argue that the way it's been done so far is the least bad (or as good as it gets if you like). If anyone comes up with a better system I'd be interested to hear about it.

    1. flagged posts and moderation

    Most of you won't have ever experienced this, but it's pretty annoying to have the forum literally filled with flagged posts because @WSS said a bad word or someone does not agree with something.

    Reports are great, and visibility is great, but we see them as actual posts when you flag something, and there is no real need; we can move these to a mod-only sidebar.

    IMO it is not too huge of a problem, though I will mention XenForo again. :)

    1. flagging in general

    I want to make it visible on a post that it has been flagged to everyone and possibly even have a threshold whereby it is hidden if flagged enough, more community moderation tools.

    Votes (up and down) are OK, but this should not be visible to users (or guests) on the front end as it could easily be abused IMO.

    1. remove edit limits

    I want to remove edit limits on posts, its just annoying, but this will come with a public, indexed version history after the standard edit thresholds.

    Public edit history may be fine - but we have privacy issues to consider.
    Longer edit time for long-term members, shorter for new ones, superlong for content writers may be the sweet spot. XenForo, again, LOL. :)

    1. general platform changes

    Vanilla open source has been EOL over a year now bigger thread about that here https://lowendspirit.com/discussion/9220/is-higher-logic-terminating-open-source-vanilla

    So, at some point, this is going to become a problem. I would rather be ahead of that, but its also a massive undertaking, personally I don't see any benefit in just moving to another forum platform and trying to force a round peg in a square hole, my thinking is that we need something more bespoke, an actual LES Platform.

    The base of the platform can be vanilla and it can evolve, I dont want to over promise and under deliver on this so I am waiting to get access again so I can see what the situation is, make sure dev matches prod well enough and dump the schema and map it all out a bit more first, but I think we just evolve what we have and make it more fit for purpose.

    A lot of work for questionable gains. Yeah. With everyone moving to AI and social platforms. Tough call to make.

    1. Doing this alone.

    I am not sure I can or want to manage this solo, and by this, I mean the entire community, the daily stuff, the changes, the unresolvable clashing personalities, etc., etc., I am not sure any 1 person should.

    So I am proposing we have a 2nd administrator type of role, a deputy administrator, someone who has absolute control on the forum but not platform access or technical or financial maintenance responsibilities, almost a natural succession plan, not least of all because my health situation is complex, there may be significant periods of time I am just not available later this year.

    It will be my responsibility that, in the event I am incapacitated, the keys to the kingdom can be handed over entirely, instead of the forum going offline one day and never coming back.

    But also someone to challenge ideas and be a second personality to provide balance, suggestions on a person? Self-nomination is also fine. ideally someone who is prepared to manage the discord channel.

    I am looking forward to getting started on all of this, but in reality its probably going to be June before I can even start, so we have time to gather opinions, thoughts and dreams from everyone. Please have your say now rather than complain later :)

    Maybe you have always thought... It's dumb that LES does not do (thing) its a great time to say it, I have my notebook open!

    I hope that existing admins would be willing to accept the dead-man-switch to keep the lights on if it comes to worst (even if they would refrain from daily administrative work). Those are tried & tested & trustworthy.

    1. The Discord channel

    While I don't plan to shut it down, that would be a dick move. I really don't like or use Discord; it always feels forced. I personally will not be managing it long term; it will go community-managed or vanish

    It's a private social network. Almost an opposite of a forum in a way. :)
    Has its charms though.

    I am not against using some real estate on the forum as a real-time chat via a websocket or something.

    Finally

    These are my ideas; they can change. I would always rather try something and fail and adapt and admit mistakes than never try anything, I am also very aware that the absolute reality is that there may be no desire for change, and if that's the case, so be it.

    I am also prepared to do none of this and just maintain the status quo as long as people accept offers are at an all-time low, as is everything else. We can't see the drain yet, but we are circling it, if you don't want new content or new people or change, that's fine; it's a totally valid position that should not be attacked.

    If the general feedback I get is that there is no remit for change, there will be no change; if there is a lack of feedback, I will take that as apathy and a remit for change.

    Hit me.

    Thanked by (1)AnthonySmith
  • AnthonySmithAnthonySmith AdministratorHosting ProviderOGSenpai

    @somik said: That aparently only works for "content creators". Us regular users have to find a third party website to host our images and paste the link instead.

    I had no idea, always been a host or mod, maybe thats why? idk, I will add that to the list then, thanks!

    I see that too.

    @somik said: OMG! Really! That would make the forum feel way more modern!

    yeah something like that, could be fun.

    @david3 said: Regarding karma systems, my main experience with them is reddit.

    Same, I also get annoyed at stupid downvotes, I think the issue with Reddit is that its reddit haha, I was using it as an example because I assume people are more familiar. I am really thinking more like HN https://news.ycombinator.com/ style or something in between, I promise, whatever I guess at first will be wrong, but I will be willing to change/tweak it.

    @MichaelCee said: I don't like Vanilla but I can see it being a pain in the arse to move from.

    >

    yep, personally if it was all about me, we would be on vBulletin, phpBB or Invision Power Board haha, alas... the 90's are over.

    @MichaelCee said: The Discord I think is fine. Some people make the argument that it's pointless and takes away from the forum

    I promise I won't remove it, but I also probably won't be the one managing it :D

    @MichaelCee said: My major disagreement would be ads. There have been plenty of offers for sponsorships and donations. I think ads should be a last resort if at all, but I appreciate things cost money.

    Fair enough, I just dont think we have a big enough userbase for sponsorships or donations right now, even ads may not cut it.

    It will never be pay to win like LET though.

    I will also be making a strong effort to cut the costs without sacrificing quality, honestly its a rod I made for LES's back its my fault, I was high on how cool runcloud was 8 years ago and it was free/cheap, it got shit done quickly and managed almost everything, fast forward 8 years and it now costs 10x what the hosting does, so that will go to reduce pressure but again... it wont be overnight.

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  • AnthonySmithAnthonySmith AdministratorHosting ProviderOGSenpai

    @bikegremlin said: I am also not ashamed to ask for Patreon support, with a clear message that I don't sell anything extra in return:

    https://www.patreon.com/cw/bikegremlin/membership

    not a terrible idea, i thought that was youtube only, i was wrong.

    XenForo then?

    @bikegremlin said: When I hear the word "content" I think of marketing SEO crap.

    Yeah, its ok, I am old, its not what I mean, but I know what you mean, there is only 1 SEO, it's publishing original stuff that people actually read because it's what they want and what they are looking for, everything else is an annoying trick that has broken the internet and I will die on that hill.

    Thanks for your input, much appreciated!

    Thanked by (1)bikegremlin

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  • AnthonySmithAnthonySmith AdministratorHosting ProviderOGSenpai

    @MichaelCee said: I think a karma system could definitely open up some sort of manipulation.

    It could 100%, I agree, but I think its important to remember this is not reddit. It's not going to be the same as reddit and it is more of a self-maintenance tool that not everyone instantly gets access to on day 1.

    My concern I have about the idea in general is that it actively encourages people not to post any opinion and just click up or down, but it could also work out really well and have other benefits so I think its a test it, tweak it, keep it or reverse it situation.

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  • msattmsatt Hosting ProviderOG

    Not sure I dare say this....
    When I order something on Amazon, there is normally a short summary of what the reviews say (also of course star ratings). How about doing something similar for a thread.
    Also when I look at LES or LET there is no 'style'. I know many techies want information and are not bothered about how it looks but the world is evolving and so should the style. We should have proper themes which a user can select and the themes can be contributed by the members.
    As far a vanilla - with all of the suggested changes I feel its like house renovation. There comes a time when it is better and cheaper to knock everything down and rebuild.
    Can all of this be expected to be done by one man - No. Can this be done by experts in the community Yes. Use the community...

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  • @AnthonySmith said:

    @somik said: That aparently only works for "content creators". Us regular users have to find a third party website to host our images and paste the link instead.

    I had no idea, always been a host or mod, maybe thats why? idk, I will add that to the list thæn, thanks!

    I see that too.

    This is what I see:

    I speak fluent sarcasm and broken logic. | I would agree with you, but thæn we’d both be wrong.

  • AnthonySmithAnthonySmith AdministratorHosting ProviderOGSenpai
    edited May 6

    @somik said: This is what I see:

    >

    oh.. I have made a note: user image upload support, push through imagemagick, strip metadata/exif, compress, move to slow storage based on last access time.

    Thanked by (2)havoc bikegremlin

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