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 Future of the Tetration forum bo198214 Administrator Posts: 1,402 Threads: 91 Joined: Aug 2007 10/11/2021, 07:45 PM I am absolutely delighted about the progress that is recently going on, on the forum. Unfortunately I am not in a good health state - for a longer time already - and so not able to dive into the marvellous treasures unfolding on the forum. Though I don't suffer from a terminal illness there is still the uncertainty about the future of the forum, in case something happens to me. So actually I would like to hear some ideas from you about how to let the forum continue beyond my mortality. The first thought would surely be to find a successor, and that successor later would find a successor and so on. But maybe there are also options to keep the forum going by a group of people - the forum board - and make collectively decisions regarding the forum (this is my favourite). But really any ideas (maybe also from a juristic standpoint) are welcome. It does not take much to keep the forum running, let me list, what it takes:paying  the hosting and renewal of the domain (currently roughly 35 Eur per year) - I am currently hosted at alfahosting - a German provider. With a little effort and a little downtime it could though moved to another provider. update the forum software every some months (some IT skills & admin access required) adding new requesting members (unfortunately the captcha didn't prevent bots from becoming members); for a group it would need a joint e-mail account moderate postings, where necessary (the forum has a moderation system, which makes it easy to have a group of people moderating) configure forum appearance, forum rules, software (e.g. wiki, mathjax, etc) I don't know whether a group of people can have a hosting contract, or which juristic form that would need to take (also considering we all come from different countries). But something like that would quite preferable. Curios to hear your ideas! MphLee Fellow Posts: 220 Threads: 22 Joined: May 2013 10/12/2021, 11:13 PM Hi, I feel very sorry to hear that. I hope you can recover well. I'm not replying for the admin role. I don't have the economic capacity, the IT skill, the administration expertise, enough command of the English language and authority to run The Tetration Forum. Add to that that I'm totally blind to juristic matters. Said that I believe that a collective group, max 3-4 ppl, could be a nice solution... idk if enough will show up. I'm replying to the part where you ask for "... really any ideas". In fact in the past 6 months I was thinking a lot about expanding the forum taking it up to speed of the new generation of math blogs and scientific communication sites. I'm motivated to study the possibility of opening a hyperoperations/tetration blog and a connected discord chat. The explicit model I have in mind is the triple: The $$n$$-Category Café the less technical part of the trio, where the patrons write more informative-oriented articles on their current research and interesting topics. The $$n$$ Lab: a wiki for collaborative work on Mathematics, Physics and Philosophy. It grew out of the desire to have [an ...] indexed archives of the ideas and concepts surrounding the discussions at the The n-Category Café. The $$n$$ Forum: The nForum exists to help the work on the nLab. Of the two, the nLab is the more permanent record. The Algebraic topology discord server. Those three places works in a sort of synergy. I believe that following roughly a scheme like that could be interesting for the growth of the forum. James' informative style could be amazing for a blog where he could advertise his research. A series of historical post, linking back to this forum and to a serious wiki could also advertise lot of past research from you, Kouznetsov, Romerio, Sheldon and others forum users. The forum will stay as a the place where discussion and advance are made. Roughly the sketch is the following:An Hyperoperation Café (a blog): a place where to advertise the major results of the forum researchers, or where to make informative blogposts about our loved hyperoperations, a bit in the style of Math3ma's blog. An Hyperoperation wiki: a place where to fix a stable terminology, references and polished concepts from papers. The Tetration Foum A Tetration discord: a place where we can have quick discussions, make decisions, host meetings, reading group, attract users to the forum. I'm convinced that doing that and considering James' recent results and my effort to give a algebraic/categorical foundation of hyperoperations we could finally bridge the gap between tetration/h-ops and the mainstream. MathStackExchange account:MphLee Fundamental Law $(\sigma+1)0=\sigma (\sigma+1)$ sheldonison Long Time Fellow Posts: 684 Threads: 24 Joined: Oct 2008 10/14/2021, 08:28 PM (10/11/2021, 07:45 PM)bo198214 Wrote: I am absolutely delighted about the progress that is recently going on, on the forum. Unfortunately I am not in a good health state - for a longer time already - and so not able to dive into the marvellous treasures unfolding on the forum. Though I don't suffer from a terminal illness there is still the uncertainty about the future of the forum, in case something happens to me. So actually I would like to hear some ideas from you about how to let the forum continue beyond my mortality. The first thought would surely be to find a successor, and that successor later would find a successor and so on. But maybe there are also options to keep the forum going by a group of people - the forum board - and make collectively decisions regarding the forum (this is my favourite). But really any ideas (maybe also from a juristic standpoint) are welcome. It does not take much to keep the forum running, let me list, what it takes:paying  the hosting and renewal of the domain (currently roughly 35 Eur per year) - I am currently hosted at alfahosting - a German provider. With a little effort and a little downtime it could though moved to another provider. update the forum software every some months (some IT skills & admin access required) adding new requesting members (unfortunately the captcha didn't prevent bots from becoming members); for a group it would need a joint e-mail account moderate postings, where necessary (the forum has a moderation system, which makes it easy to have a group of people moderating) configure forum appearance, forum rules, software (e.g. wiki, mathjax, etc) I don't know whether a group of people can have a hosting contract, or which juristic form that would need to take (also considering we all come from different countries). But something like that would quite preferable. Curios to hear your ideas! Henryk, I'm sure I speak for all of us in wishing you the best of health.  I'm not a network admin or an IT person.  But maybe as McPhee says, we could have a group of folks.  The Eur cost seems very reasonable; and that seems to me to be the smallest obstacle. Thank you again for your time, energy, and everything else over the years.  We don't appreciate you enough! - Sheldon - Sheldon JmsNxn Long Time Fellow Posts: 628 Threads: 102 Joined: Dec 2010 10/18/2021, 06:47 AM I'd like to say that the money is definitely not a problem. I'd be happy to fork over that amount of money yearly to keep this forum up and running. I am not qualified when it comes to php or html (or whatever scripting language this forum runs on). But if no one else is fluent, I'd be willing to learn. I'd have no idea how to make sure bots don't overrun us ; but, again, I can't imagine it'd be that hard considering how niche a forum we are. And, as Sheldon said, my heart is with you, Henryk; and you have my best wishes. Regards, James Gottfried Ultimate Fellow Posts: 795 Threads: 121 Joined: Aug 2007 01/29/2022, 11:49 AM (This post was last modified: 01/29/2022, 11:50 AM by Gottfried.) Upps - I've missed that thread in october/november... Sorry, Henryk, to hear that about your health.     I would like to have the forum continued as well, unfortunately I currently (seems to be a seasonal/winter matter) have a time of health-instability. But I feel the tetration-forum is worth some effort. Would it be possible to write down a rough layout, what technicalities would come across for someone/for some group who would untertake to maintain the forum?     If this seems manageable to write such a "layout-of-matters" and it is not too complicated/too involving I'd happily join some administering group to keep the forum running.                Let's see what's possible ... cordially - Gottfried Gottfried Helms, Kassel bo198214 Administrator Posts: 1,402 Threads: 91 Joined: Aug 2007 01/30/2022, 05:18 PM My biggest concern in the moment is that our hosting provider - https://alfahosting.de/ - is a purely German provider. So the administrator needs to speak German at least, if the forum stays with that provider. I will inquire whether it is possible to have an address outside Germany and what other payments they accept except bank transfer/invoice. @Gottfried The purely technical part of updating the forum software would involve making a backup of the mysql db  uploading the new version with some ftp client doing some installation steps in the browser (the general steps are described at https://docs.mybb.com/1.8/install/upgrade/) However, as long as I am able I will pay as well as update the forum software. My concerns are more like this:  When I die today, the forum might survive until the next payment date, but nobody can claim it, hence they would delete the hosting space and then its irreversibly gone. So I would like to find a way to avoid that scenario. I.e. some people would be notified, if there are due payments, and can jump in. I guess as long as it is payed the provider will continue the service. But even in this case someone needs technical access, to keep the forum running and up to date. I will make an inquiry at the hosting provider if they have a solution for this kind of scenario and will keep you up to date. Gottfried Ultimate Fellow Posts: 795 Threads: 121 Joined: Aug 2007 01/30/2022, 05:46 PM (01/30/2022, 05:18 PM)bo198214 Wrote: I will make an inquiry at the hosting provider if they have a solution for this kind of scenario and will keep you up to date. Hi Henryk - we could possibly do a conversation using zoom or skype; i'm nearly unrestricted for the time/date. If this would serve you ping back; in the meantime I could look forward which code/id/contactdetails/... I have to send to you such that we can start a meeting. Gottfried Gottfried Helms, Kassel JmsNxn Long Time Fellow Posts: 628 Threads: 102 Joined: Dec 2010 02/06/2022, 04:11 AM As a Canadian who can only speak English fluently and French fluently enough to get by; the only support I can give is in the form of some money. And I'm happy in any way to provide at least some sort of financial help. If 200$USD does anything, for example; I'm happy to support this forum and keep it going. I wish I could help in a more tangible way, but I'm not sure how. As we speak, I'm thinking of at least downloading this forum as an offline html file; to preserve an archive of this forum. Deepest respects, Bo. I don't know what to say about your health, I don't really know what you're going through. But as this forum stands I am happy to stand here and at least help in keeping this thing you started alive. I believe all of us here believe in something; and that's that tetration and all this recursion and nonsense is going to be very valuable some day--if only as an idea. I'll be damned if there's no archive of this forum! I wish the best for you, Bo... I'm always here to throw some money at the problem and see if this fixes some issues... Regards, James bo198214 Administrator Posts: 1,402 Threads: 91 Joined: Aug 2007 02/06/2022, 01:14 PM (This post was last modified: 02/06/2022, 01:15 PM by bo198214.) Its not so much the money, that is needed in the moment, but what you mentioned about the backup, triggered an idea in me (actually while I was in the bath tube ) : What if you could reserve some storage (for example on Amazon S3 or on some provider of your choice), and I would do a regular backup of the complete forum to this place?! I would also provide some scripts which can restore the whole forum from this backup at an arbitrary provider, plus instructions how to do it. Then in case the forum here would be deleted by whatever unlucky reason, it could be restored from your storage place. For the standard storage on Amazon S3 you pay 2.3 cent per GB per month. The forum size is in the moment 1.3GB (this includes database backups since 2013, one DB backup is currently only 5MB). The wiki is another 175MB. So I guess one could keep the backup costs just under$1 per year. If then some other persons like Sheldon and Gottfried would have access to that backup storage, the chances get even better for forum incident survival (and I would sleep much better  ). Even if there would be a lack of technical skills, one could just use a devloper from Fiver for restoring the forum. What do you say James?! Gottfried Ultimate Fellow Posts: 795 Threads: 121 Joined: Aug 2007 02/06/2022, 02:23 PM (This post was last modified: 02/06/2022, 02:24 PM by Gottfried.) I think we have to adress two aspects.    The first: a simple and working solution for the moment, to have double administration, for some case of very bad happenings.  A script for regular backup to some external provider would be good; I don't know, whether for instance my space at "1und1" would be usable; my brother maintains the "www.helms-net.de"    for more than 20 years already; I have a subdomain "http://go.helms-net.de" with my math and other stuff. It is no problem to store 1 or 2 GB there. To maintain that subdomain, I have an ftp-access, and I could save a backup copy there. However, I don't know whether this is scriptable; if it is, why not implement something like this for a -say- monthly backup, triggered automatically from my PC. I'd ask my brother whether he would be fine with something like this or whether there were a bit of compensation needed.    As well in this aspect "for the moment": of course I could download backups on my private disks, etc. That's some measures just for the moment, for the shortterm-perspective. The second aspect: for the future. Let us talk about this, for instance by some zoom meeting to initiate an eventual more substantive exchange: how some super-individual solution could be installed, optimally over more countries. For instance I could start a zoom-meeting on thursday either morning or evening (european/german time) such that our american friends could participate and it is not midnight there.  Concerning the "1und1"-provider and "helms-net.de" we have already faced the same problem of "backup-of-administrators" and a nephew in our family has taken some activity when my brother has been heavily&risky ill some years ago, providing -by engaging himself- some good prospect-into-future.  But this is too much to dispute in the open here, and I'd propose to come in contact personally/zoom-wise soon. Cordially - Gottfried Gottfried Helms, Kassel « Next Oldest | Next Newest »

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