Remove heavy loading logo
Re: Remove heavy loading logo
This is a classic example of "making a mountain out of a molehill." You are very passionate about this issue, no denying that, but I'm afraid you are going to have to accept that it isn't a priority for those who run the community and for many of us who merely participate. Neither you nor I have any special right to make requests or demands here and to expect them to be dealt with to our satisfaction. At the risk of sounding condescending, save this thread, reread it 10 years from now and wonder. I did that with my IRC chat logs from when I was a teen. Some bits were surprisingly deep, some hilarious, and to my shame, some quite pathetic. Mea culpa.
Re: Remove heavy loading logo
If you wanted input or discussion, you should not have phrased your post as a demand. Why would most people bother to respond to that? Especially, when most already knew Jacob's answer and the utility of the change won't really impact most users either way.
Last edited by Chad on Thu May 14, 2015 10:27 am, edited 1 time in total.
Re: Remove heavy loading logo
I wonder how many people actually noticed the phpBB logo until this thread appeared.. I sure didn't 
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Re: Remove heavy loading logo
@fiby41 - Please read this and pay extra attention to #3 and #4 and while everybody else have been very nice about rule #10---I will now break that because this has gone far enough 
Normally, I'd respond to you in private PM but given that you committed a rash of "redditor-fever" making several rude and/or erroneous accusations and statements in public based on incomplete information and wild speculations, I'll correct them in public as well because experience shows that to be the best approach to deal with wrongful speculative assertions.
1) If you're aware of the forum migrations, as you say you are, you're also aware that bigato was the person in charge of that operation and that he managed both of them one of which included hacking SQL databases manually with almost no downtime. Furthermore, he's always been there whenever anything breaks. Calling him lazy or incompetent because of an unwillingness to make small changes is extremely rude.
2) I have worked professionally with software for longer than you've been born and bigato has worked professionally with software in an even more intense capacity almost as long as you've been born and because of that experience it is our very strong preference to prioritize stability and ease of operations above all else. The forum is a 24/7 production-grade system, which may not get a lot of posting but definitely gets a lot of lurking, neither of us think it's amusing to fiddle with such critical infrastructure with users breathing down our neck. For that reason, the strategy is to make as few changes to the stable default version as possible---even including clicking on a few style submenus to remove some logo. This makes it easy to upgrade and maintain. You can think of us as cranky old guys with too many war wounds to think that messing with the system is worthwhile unless it's absolutely necessary.
3) Concerning uninformed speculation about the forum hosting costs and referrals.
a) Killing the logo will only make pages load marginally faster. The logo is nothing compared to the avatars. Besides it's 4500 bytes. And if that's too much you can just switch off images. Which you already did.
b) The hosting is nowhere close to hitting bandwidth limits. In terms of bandwidth, it would be better to kill the avatars instead of dealing with a cached logo. Hosting cost is fixed and NOT dependent on bandwidth.
c) The primary hosting limit is server load which is why we're extremely reluctant to add any bells and whistles such as search functions, plugins, etc.
d) Historically, branding and first impressions is not nearly as important to attract the desired caliber of people as reputation. Calling it INTJ central was a joke. It's funny because it's mostly true, but it isn't a goal to strive for. Attracting by reference works much better for the community I have in mind than attracting random browsers by the choice of logo.
4) We do not exist to serve you or meet your or anyone's requests or demand(s). We'll take them into consideration but that is all you can expect. Being pushy or forceful is a terrible strategy in most [but not all] cultures (remember this is an international community) and is more likely to alienate people than getting them to do anything. Repeating demands only makes it worse. This goes to the core of rule #4 of netiquette. I will just quote it here:
(*)Whenever I say "we", I mean myself and one or more other people --- like mentioned above, I own "the house" but that doesn't mean that I'm the only one taking care of it. It also means that when you're here, you're essentially a guest in my house. This website is not a publicly owned service.
An analogy would be a food vendor having a sign saying "Free Samples" and then having someone come over and take all the samples and using them to open his own restaurant while quoting the "Free Samples" to rationalize this behaviour. It may be with good intentions like feeding the poor but it's still inconsiderate towards the vendor. If anything, you could have asked first.
6) Related, if a thread gets deleted, please take that as a major hint and don't start an identical one.
7) If you want to read all the posts, just go to the sitemap. This is explained on the FRONT PAGE OF THE BLOG to anyone who has visited more than 5 times. Five times is really not a lot.
8) While ripping the blog into an ebook is indeed a one time effort with no maintenance costs, you failed to acknowledge the cost [to me and the rest of the community] of having one or more uncontrolled versions of unedited material floating around in cyberspace readily available to any clown who comes across it. This is why the blog->ebook is going to be edited. There's a social cost as well which you did not consider but which WE ALREADY DID consider and which is the reason that such an unedited version doesn't exist. You're not the first one to rip the blog but you are the first one to try to make it widely available. (Other than the ones who pirated the book.)
9) Being a moderator and having admin or root access are two entirely different and unrelated privileges. You do not need to be a moderator to have root privileges.
10) A described in a very recent post, forum moderators don't serve to moderate but to control spam. Being a moderator is not an esteemed position handed out to the old boys club but merely allows people to flag spam. I give it out on occasion to anyone who appears to spend a lot of time online. If you or anyone else want to be a human spam filter, just let me know. The number of moderators is inversely proportional to the amount of spam that slips through. This is why there are so many moderators. Most of the time the amount of asinine behaviour on the forums is so miniscule that I can deal with it myself.
11) Forums are more than the sum of its present members. A forum has a culture and code of behaviour that's independent of its members. This pertains to Rule #3. Each forum has a certain way of doing things. Certain behaviour is permissible and certain behaviour will drop your karma like a rock(**). For example, while discussion is encouraged, providing useful information and knowledge is more important here. This is why people post links to old and similar threads. It is also why old threads are never considered stale or dead.
It is wise to spend some time figuring out what acceptable behaviour is before putting your proverbial foot in your proverbial mouth.
(**) Entering a any new place and immediately starting to rewrite the code of behaviour, making demands for changes, or claiming that your arguments are superior because they're based on merit or some other rare insight has never impressed anyone [here].
In conclusion, this response was NOT INTENDED to serve as a starting point for debate. It is merely to correct the false accusations you made in public for the minority of people who might not have been following along for very long either.
Normally, I'd respond to you in private PM but given that you committed a rash of "redditor-fever" making several rude and/or erroneous accusations and statements in public based on incomplete information and wild speculations, I'll correct them in public as well because experience shows that to be the best approach to deal with wrongful speculative assertions.
1) If you're aware of the forum migrations, as you say you are, you're also aware that bigato was the person in charge of that operation and that he managed both of them one of which included hacking SQL databases manually with almost no downtime. Furthermore, he's always been there whenever anything breaks. Calling him lazy or incompetent because of an unwillingness to make small changes is extremely rude.
2) I have worked professionally with software for longer than you've been born and bigato has worked professionally with software in an even more intense capacity almost as long as you've been born and because of that experience it is our very strong preference to prioritize stability and ease of operations above all else. The forum is a 24/7 production-grade system, which may not get a lot of posting but definitely gets a lot of lurking, neither of us think it's amusing to fiddle with such critical infrastructure with users breathing down our neck. For that reason, the strategy is to make as few changes to the stable default version as possible---even including clicking on a few style submenus to remove some logo. This makes it easy to upgrade and maintain. You can think of us as cranky old guys with too many war wounds to think that messing with the system is worthwhile unless it's absolutely necessary.
3) Concerning uninformed speculation about the forum hosting costs and referrals.
a) Killing the logo will only make pages load marginally faster. The logo is nothing compared to the avatars. Besides it's 4500 bytes. And if that's too much you can just switch off images. Which you already did.
b) The hosting is nowhere close to hitting bandwidth limits. In terms of bandwidth, it would be better to kill the avatars instead of dealing with a cached logo. Hosting cost is fixed and NOT dependent on bandwidth.
c) The primary hosting limit is server load which is why we're extremely reluctant to add any bells and whistles such as search functions, plugins, etc.
d) Historically, branding and first impressions is not nearly as important to attract the desired caliber of people as reputation. Calling it INTJ central was a joke. It's funny because it's mostly true, but it isn't a goal to strive for. Attracting by reference works much better for the community I have in mind than attracting random browsers by the choice of logo.
4) We do not exist to serve you or meet your or anyone's requests or demand(s). We'll take them into consideration but that is all you can expect. Being pushy or forceful is a terrible strategy in most [but not all] cultures (remember this is an international community) and is more likely to alienate people than getting them to do anything. Repeating demands only makes it worse. This goes to the core of rule #4 of netiquette. I will just quote it here:
5) We've(*) been working on an ebook for years before you came along. You are not responsible for the sudden realization that the blog could be marketed or that it should be available in an "offline" format (see facebook posts a few years back). However, you are responsible for my changing from the Creative Commons license to All Rights Reserved. The original license was intended to make it easy for other bloggers to quote selected parts without having to get lawyers and release forms involved. It was not intended as a free for all buffet in the way you treated it.You are not the center of cyberspace
Presumably, this reminder will be superfluous to most readers. But I include it anyway, because when you're working hard on a project and deeply involved in it, it's easy to forget that other people have concerns other than yours. So don't expect instant responses to all your questions, and don't assume that all readers will agree with -- or care about -- your passionate arguments.
(*)Whenever I say "we", I mean myself and one or more other people --- like mentioned above, I own "the house" but that doesn't mean that I'm the only one taking care of it. It also means that when you're here, you're essentially a guest in my house. This website is not a publicly owned service.
An analogy would be a food vendor having a sign saying "Free Samples" and then having someone come over and take all the samples and using them to open his own restaurant while quoting the "Free Samples" to rationalize this behaviour. It may be with good intentions like feeding the poor but it's still inconsiderate towards the vendor. If anything, you could have asked first.
6) Related, if a thread gets deleted, please take that as a major hint and don't start an identical one.
7) If you want to read all the posts, just go to the sitemap. This is explained on the FRONT PAGE OF THE BLOG to anyone who has visited more than 5 times. Five times is really not a lot.
Save a copy of the sitemap if you want to read everything methodically.If you enjoy the blog, also consider the book which is much better organized and more complete. You can read the first chapter for free or see the reviews (1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9, A,B,C,D,E,F,G,H,I,J,K,L,M,N,O,P,Q,R,S,T,U,V,W,Z). Subscribe to the blog via email or RSS. See updates and links on the facebook page, join the forums, and look for tactics on the ERE wiki. The Sitemap lists all the blog posts.
8) While ripping the blog into an ebook is indeed a one time effort with no maintenance costs, you failed to acknowledge the cost [to me and the rest of the community] of having one or more uncontrolled versions of unedited material floating around in cyberspace readily available to any clown who comes across it. This is why the blog->ebook is going to be edited. There's a social cost as well which you did not consider but which WE ALREADY DID consider and which is the reason that such an unedited version doesn't exist. You're not the first one to rip the blog but you are the first one to try to make it widely available. (Other than the ones who pirated the book.)
9) Being a moderator and having admin or root access are two entirely different and unrelated privileges. You do not need to be a moderator to have root privileges.
10) A described in a very recent post, forum moderators don't serve to moderate but to control spam. Being a moderator is not an esteemed position handed out to the old boys club but merely allows people to flag spam. I give it out on occasion to anyone who appears to spend a lot of time online. If you or anyone else want to be a human spam filter, just let me know. The number of moderators is inversely proportional to the amount of spam that slips through. This is why there are so many moderators. Most of the time the amount of asinine behaviour on the forums is so miniscule that I can deal with it myself.
11) Forums are more than the sum of its present members. A forum has a culture and code of behaviour that's independent of its members. This pertains to Rule #3. Each forum has a certain way of doing things. Certain behaviour is permissible and certain behaviour will drop your karma like a rock(**). For example, while discussion is encouraged, providing useful information and knowledge is more important here. This is why people post links to old and similar threads. It is also why old threads are never considered stale or dead.
It is wise to spend some time figuring out what acceptable behaviour is before putting your proverbial foot in your proverbial mouth.
(**) Entering a any new place and immediately starting to rewrite the code of behaviour, making demands for changes, or claiming that your arguments are superior because they're based on merit or some other rare insight has never impressed anyone [here].
In conclusion, this response was NOT INTENDED to serve as a starting point for debate. It is merely to correct the false accusations you made in public for the minority of people who might not have been following along for very long either.