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Thread: What happened: 2016 edition.

  1. #51
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    Are some of you insinuating that all donation proceeds should go only to expenses directly related to PL? I'm getting that impression. Would like to know your thoughts.

    If so, I would like to point out the ".com" suffix and take an educated guess that PL is not a non-profit organization.

    If Spec can't run this board in his spare time as some sort of hobby, should he shutter the place? I think it's been made clear many, many times why ads and other paid perks are avoided here. I really shouldn't have to clarify.

    That being said, I agree that expanding the donation options would probably help a lot.

  2. #52
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    I just feel it to be in poor taste to accept donations for "time spent" maintaining the forum when there are other people like buffo or mixedgas who spend countless hours organizing or helping folks and ask for nothing and even refuse anything. In my eyes, spec has been and continues to be a bit of a charity case. The value of this forum is not in the software and hardware that it runs on but the posts and contributions made by everyone other than spec. spec can walk away and this forum can die. internet archive will save the posts and they'll remain. someone else will start a new forum and life will go on.

    I know I will be chastised by many for this opinion, and it is only my opinion, but I imagine there will be some who quietly agree with me.

  3. #53
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    Quote Originally Posted by JohnYayas View Post
    I know I will be chastised by many for this opinion, and it is only my opinion, but I imagine there will be some who quietly agree with me.
    Well, you're definitely entitled to your opinion.

  4. #54
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    Jan 2011
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    Santa Cruz, CA
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    Quote Originally Posted by JohnYayas View Post
    I just feel it to be in poor taste to accept donations for "time spent" maintaining the forum when there are other people like buffo or mixedgas who spend countless hours organizing or helping folks and ask for nothing and even refuse anything. In my eyes, spec has been and continues to be a bit of a charity case. The value of this forum is not in the software and hardware that it runs on but the posts and contributions made by everyone other than spec. spec can walk away and this forum can die. internet archive will save the posts and they'll remain. someone else will start a new forum and life will go on.

    I know I will be chastised by many for this opinion, and it is only my opinion, but I imagine there will be some who quietly agree with me.
    I am tired of living in a world where people (myself included) feel they have the right to judge the value of others.

    -Sal

  5. #55
    Join Date
    Jan 2014
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    North Carolina, USA
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    I'm just glad to know it wasn't something I did... as I was editing a post in the Maxwell thread one minute - and then the next minute everything died. I kept thinking... uh oh... what did I just do....

  6. #56
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    Feb 2013
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    Dallas, TX
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    isn't there like a cloud something something that could just run everything virtual on and no hardware to futz with? Probably all too spendy eh? Anyone run the numbers for AWS, Azure, SoftLayer, etc?

  7. #57
    Join Date
    Aug 2008
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    UK
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    So far as I'm concerned, if Robert makes a profit out of the place, then great! He puts in a lot of effort and so deserves to be rewarded. If he doesn't, then so long as he covers his costs, he's fine. I don't think we should be judging anyone providing a valuable resource for getting something out of the effort and time they put in behind the scenes to keep the place running. The time to start moaning about capitalism is when subscription is compulsory to use the board as then some people would be excluded purely because of their own financial circumstances.

    As for hosting, plenty out there. Hopefully he can find one that's both reasonably priced and excellent reliability / space / speed.

    As I also said before, there's inevitably a lot of waffle on any message board, and for space or for simply keeping the information up-to-date reasons, I personally don't see the harm in losing irrelevant material from the past to save archiving. After all, no-one for the future is going to care who had waffles for breakfast 10 years ago, that a manufacturer who's good now used to be bad, that in 2006, some people experimented with diy ways of protecting diodes from static now that we have lasorbs to buy for just a few pence etc... It's far better to keep the information down to what is relevant today either because it's up-to-date or because it has old but has technical use to someone who's bought an old laser and is trying to repair it. eg All the Audience Scanning safety threads / arguments of the past, could be replaced by 1 really well written down to earth Audience Scanning safety thread in the Wiki. That alone is hundreds of threads often full of argument and misinformation into the bin.
    Last edited by White-Light; 06-02-2016 at 01:14.

  8. #58
    Join Date
    Nov 2015
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    England
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    You should keep IRC on freenode. That channel is not big enough to warrant its own irc server.

    You are 100000x better going with a dedicated server from a reliable host such as OVH, hetzner, leaseweb, etc... instead of spending thousands colocating.

  9. #59
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    Dec 2008
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    Canada
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    Quote Originally Posted by White-Light View Post
    After all, no-one for the future is going to care who had waffles for breakfast 10 years ago, that a manufacturer who's good now used to be bad, that in 2006, some people experimented with diy ways of protecting diodes from static now that we have lasorbs to buy for just a few pence etc... It's far better to keep the information down to what is relevant today either because it's up-to-date or because it has old but has technical use to someone who's bought an old laser and is trying to repair it.
    I keep coming back to look for a one time non-recurring donation option but I
    still don't see one. As I've said before... There is no way I'm locking myself into
    another monthly payment since I've been getting rid of them for the past 2
    years.

    If that option was available... even financially strapped members would donate
    $5.00 once in a while rather than being forced to do it EVERY month and being
    forced to choose to donate nothing.


    @White-Light... can't really agree with all of that logic... else we would need to
    get rid of everything up to yesterday because today we have new stuff.

    I'm convinced that the most of any costs to Spec is not Storage.
    Just my $0.02

    Jerry
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  10. #60
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    Aug 2008
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    Well it's only my opinion and I agree there would be a need to be selective over what to retain and what to lose, but realistically, for people coming to PL, do they really want to read through a 10 year old thread of how DJ Knobhead though it was OK to audience scan with high power lasers and with no precautions and measurements, and the 20 page in thread argument that followed?

    Are we really going to expect people to wade through 30 or 40 similar safety related threads full of argument and inaccuracies running to hundreds of pages and thousands of posts, to get try to get to the facts? Personally, I think anyone coming for safety facts, will want to simply come here and get a simple answer. No wading through pages of irrelevant trash, no wading through internal board arguments. Same with LW. Why have numerous threads and pages of crap, when they've changed? Why not just the latest review thread and if you want anything for the benefit of anyone buying an old laser second hand, when not a simple 1 line preface explaining that some older lasers from the XXX era didn't always make their stated specifications, so the 2nd hand purchasing of their older lasers should be carefully considered?

    Even google these days has chosen to forget irrelevant information. So it kind of seems pointless to store arguments and chaff, when we can simply archive the relevant stuff and discard the crap.

    Anyway, my last comment on the subject because what will be, will be.

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