Interesting

[Michael Babin]

Very good points Bao and Giles. I also think that having things this way will stop a lot of potential readers/contributors from joining.

On the other hand, the NSFW concept is difficult to get around for administrators [and for those who believe in free speech] but the amount of porn online is ridiculous and always creeping [sometimes flooding] into any innocent sites that allow easy access.

Maybe the age of this kind of forum is truly over and relics like this RSF it will go the way of printed martial arts publications.

[Bao]

I have no idea if Kelley or any admin will see this or reflect over these things. As there’s no official thread or announcement, there’s no official place to discuss or ask questions, so I can only assume that there’s no interest to change or improve anything regarding these matters.

Maybe a thread that has a title more relevant than "interesting" might help. Or a PM to Kelley. Or a tagged post on fb. Or...

Yes, but if Kelley or someone else is interested about the members or the future of the board, they would keep an eye on what is happening here. I have no intent chasing anyone. If they don't see the discussion here, I have little hope about the future of the RSF. So just leaving the thoughts here is a pretty good test. I hope for the best.

[GrahamB]

For once in his life Bao may be right about something

The board can't remember logins, so you have to keep logging in every 5 minutes to use it - in the modern age of convenience people will move to something else that's easier to use. And I can't see why new people would join.

All it will take is for there to be something else that can remember a log in and rsf is gone. I don't think there is anything else right now though <shrug>

[Kelley Graham]

This board is free without advertising, and will remain so. It is very expensive to update and maintain any codebase. The work necessary to update phpbb is nontrivial. I give quite a lot of my time. I don't have any more to give in order to have this board compete with fb or whatever. In my mind, a login screen is a small price to pay. i'll see about longer sessions.

EDIT - I increased the session length from 60 minutes to 1 week. Please don't leave a session open on a public computer. Thx.
EDIT2 - Am working on sensible changes to the front page message.
EDIT3 - Updated 'no forums' message. Am moving this topic to Official News area

[Bhassler]

I have no idea if Kelley or any admin will see this or reflect over these things. As there’s no official thread or announcement, there’s no official place to discuss or ask questions, so I can only assume that there’s no interest to change or improve anything regarding these matters.

Maybe a thread that has a title more relevant than "interesting" might help. Or a PM to Kelley. Or a tagged post on fb. Or...

Yes, but if Kelley or someone else is interested about the members or the future of the board, they would keep an eye on what is happening here. I have no intent chasing anyone. If they don't see the discussion here, I have little hope about the future of the RSF. So just leaving the thoughts here is a pretty good test. I hope for the best. ;)

You're right. Being passive-aggressive is almost always the best way to get things done, show your appreciation to people who give you things for free, etc.

[Bao]

You're right. Being passive-aggressive is almost always the best way to get things done, show your appreciation to people who give you things for free, etc.

Not my intention at all. I do appreciate Kelley’s work a tremendously and the admin’s as well. I am raising my concerns as I want this place to be alive, maybe in a slightly clumsy sort of approach. I see it more as a tragedy for Kelley than for me and others if the RSF would take a sudden end. I think he deserves better. If I sound frustrated it’s because of my own lack of technical programming skills which makes it hard to communicate about these things, and that I am useless as help.

But you know, my concerns are for real. I work full time with digital marketing including social media and have done so for the last 15 years. I do have a very good understand about search and surf behavior on the internet, how lazy people are, how little patience and short attention span they have. I also understand what people do to reach homepages. If the RSF doesn’t show up on Google and other search engine results, the traffic will go down drastically and there is very little hope to get new enthusiasts who join the discussions. Getting the few people who reach the RSF, and don’t know much about the place, to actually join will be very hard. It will be very tough to keep this place alive.

This board is free without advertising, and will remain so. It is very expensive to update and maintain any codebase. The work necessary to update phpbb is nontrivial. I give quite a lot of my time. I don't have any more to give in order to have this board compete with fb or whatever. In my mind, a login screen is a small price to pay.

Personally, I don’t believe that you would always have to work in a vacuum. I understand how tough it can be to get enough of time to do everything we plan. If you don’t have time to split up the board to one visible and one non-visible ( which need membership login to) view, if you think that this is a good idea of course, why don’t you estimate the amount of hours and we try to help you get a programmer who can help you with this, and maybe also with other tasks necessary for the time being? I am sure that we could collect some money as well if we need to pay someone to do it if necessary. Problems are meant to be solved. And there are people who are willing to help out.

/David

[Kelley Graham]

Rsf Is going to be fine. Kind of a word of mouth thing. Facebook and twitter feel like MySpace. Due to their predatory business practice and growing privacy concerns, they will implode. It’s only a matter of time. Specialized niche communities, like us, will persist.

[GrahamB]

Thank you Kelley - the longer log in will make a real difference, and thank you for the hard work. (except my browser still keeps asking me to log in every 5 minutes - I don't know how to fix that, although when it does it I've worked out I can just hit 'back' and I'm actually still logged in).

[Bao]

Rsf Is going to be fine. Kind of a word of mouth thing. Facebook and twitter feel like MySpace. Due to their predatory business practice and growing privacy concerns, they will implode. It’s only a matter of time. Specialized niche communities, like us, will persist.

Ok, then. Good that you have confidence in the community. Please let us know if you need anything that could help you or make it easier.

Thank you for all of your work.

[Kelley Graham]

ok. i've restored public access. keeping the session length in place.

[Giles]

Thank you very much, Kelley.

If there are moments when you could use a little help in some kind of expertise, resources or contacts area, help that in some way can be transmitted online, then - if appropriate - you could post it here. In the sense of: "Anybody out there who knows about/can help out with....?" I think a fair number of RSF people might be willing to reciprocate for all your good work keeping RSF up and running, if there's something useful to be done which is up their respective streets. I would be happy to do something if it's within my skillset.

[Kelley Graham]

Thanks! I have been a one man IT shop since 1994. I've not met a challenge I couldn't meet. What I would like to see is involvement in the Tai Chi Foundations https://train.sifuondemand.com/course/index.php?categoryid=4 open learning project. That would bring new people into our RSF community and Internal training in general. It could generate some resources for improvements to both entities.

[Peacedog]

Kelley,

Again because it doesn't get said often enough. Everyone here appreciates all of the, very unpaid and afterhours, work you do to keep this place going.