The Proboards Forums

**wild1145** · January 10, 2021 at 1:46 AM

Just to let people know, I've temporarily enabled maintenance mode on the old Proboards forums, this is a temporary step while we work in much slower time to open the forums up to everyone and to make sure that all threads can be sensibly archived for future reference.

Registration has also now been disabled, and will not be enabled in the future, I wanted to ensure we could have a snapshot in time of who was registered ideally before we moved, but obviously that's not worked due to the historic issues with the forums.

Just wanted to let people know in case there was concern, nothing's been changed / deleted, I just want to make sure people can find their way here easily, and that we can work on updating the permissions to allow read-only access to everyone as we review the threads that are currently restricted to certain member groups.

Cheers all.

Xen · January 27, 2021 at 12:41 AM

How long will maintenance mode be enabled? It really shouldn't take this long to "archive" the forums. All you have to do is restrict everyone from doing everything except the ability to read threads (of course not every thread). I've been wanting to go back and look at stuff, but I can't because the forum is still in maintenance mode...

January 27, 2021 at 12:57 AM

@Xen#6500 I do not believe maintenance mode was enabled necessarily for archival purposes. Maintenance mode was mainly enabled to tell our players "Hey, we have a new forum, please stop registering on this one." From my understanding, Ryan plans to keep this on for a little longer, but when it opens, everyone will be able to access all of the threads deemed appropriate to access.

**videogamesm12** · January 27, 2021 at 12:57 AM

@Xen#6500 At this point I might as well just release every thread I have archived. Would make for a great shitshow when I get to the threads I've got from the Recycle Bin.

Xen · January 27, 2021 at 1:52 AM

@Ivan#6501 It was mainly enabled for archival purposes. That is literally what the first sentence of this thread states. Directing players to this forum does not require the Proboards forum to be in maintenance mode and registration has already been disabled so no one can even register there.

Honestly, even to archive the forum does not require maintenance mode. Any category that may contain sensitive information (such as Senior Admin Lounge) is already hidden by default because no one has the permissions; that was never restored. The forum can still be open and "archived" at the same time.

January 27, 2021 at 2:01 AM

@Xen#6505 The best way to convey a big bold message to people on ProBoards is unfortunately putting it in Maintenance mode or setting the forum to login only; though login only sometimes isn't ideal because people are already logged into ProBoards.

I know Ryan said "archival purposes", however I suggested maintenance mode to Ryan after he brought up the topic of how to get players to understand we have moved forums, and this is what prompted him to enable it. He can correct me 100% if I am wrong, but I'm sure archiving had a play in this as well as getting the message across.

I believe the purpose when the forum was reenabled to the public was to make everything visible including admin only channels.

Xen · January 27, 2021 at 2:40 AM

@Ivan#6506 It may be the best way, but it isn't necessary. The vast majority of people who need to access the TF forums already know where to go. We also have a webpage with a URL that has been the same for years. That could easily be used for important information such as a forum change. When Seth was the owner and we had switched over to Flarum, all that was needed was a simple thread and it worked just fine.

It is completely possible to make admin only categories visible to everyone without maintenance mode being enabled. Just don't allow visibility of those categories until they are ready.

**wild1145** · January 27, 2021 at 6:29 AM

The process to properly archive the proboards forum hasn't started as I've been busy with other things.

The reason it is in maintenance mode is because the aim is to make as much publicly accessible as possible including places like the admin only boards. But that takes time to read through threads and work out what still needs to be locked down and what doesn't.

Xen · January 27, 2021 at 6:35 AM

@wild1145#6517 Like I said before, that does not require the entire forum to be locked down. All of the admin boards are not viewable by anyone except those with moderator privileges. Once you've read through all of the threads in sensitive boards, then you can make it viewable by everyone. You have many staff members that can do this stuff (I myself would be willing to help).

**wild1145** · January 27, 2021 at 7:32 AM

@Xen#6518 and as I've said before. It was an intentional decision as this thread says.

It's the most effective way to open things up and then work through locking specific threads back out of view and making sure the permissions as a whole are setup properly. Nobody should be regularly visiting proboards anyway now so I'm not sure what the big deal is?

Xen · January 27, 2021 at 8:17 AM

@wild1145#6519 Before the Proboards forum was locked, it was visited regularly. Many people went back to see old threads and posts for reference, evidence, or just to reminisce.

Unlocking the forum right now would cause no issue. All that needs to be done is permissions revoked from posting and registration and maybe shoutbox disabled. Admin boards are not viewable by anyone else, except for those with moderation privileges. That stuff could've been done in a matter of minutes, but it has been over two weeks and nothing has been done...

My issue is not with the forum itself as much as it is with you refusing to at least allocate these simple tasks to others (such as your developers or executive team or even admins) that you say you don't have time for or were unable to get to because you were busy.

Xen · May 22, 2021 at 9:23 PM

It has been over five months since this was posted, so I am going to go ahead and bump it again. At this point, there are no real excuses as to why this forum has not been properly archived and opened to the public. It'd be really appreciated if someone would just do it.

**StevenNL2000** · May 22, 2021 at 10:04 PM

@Xen#18395 At the moment, only Finest, Wild, and I have the technical ability to do that. I would have done it already, but I simply do not know what Wild wants it to look like.

Madea · May 22, 2021 at 11:49 PM

@Xen#18395 Out of curiosity, should the archive include the staff sections?

Xen · May 22, 2021 at 11:57 PM

@Madea#18407 Anything that does not include sensitive data, then sure, but to open the forum right now would pose 0 security threats. As Steven said above, Him, Wild, and Finest are the only ones with permissions on the forum. That means any board that is hidden (such as the admin lounge) will stay hidden to those without perms (which is everyone except the three listed above).

**wild1145** · May 23, 2021 at 12:57 AM

@Xen#18408 that's not quite true. Proboards permissions now are in such a bad state, it's tricky to fix all the permission problems not to mention every thread needs reviewing.

This has fallen behind in my plans, but hasn't been forgotten...

Xen · May 23, 2021 at 1:32 AM

@wild1145#18412 The forum was open for a long time before you decided to close it and I do not recall any security threats stemming from that. A few weeks to a month is understandable, but 5 months of keeping like 90% of this server's history closed off to the public is just not okay. As I said 4 months ago, this type of job could be easily allocated to someone else or a small group of trusted people.

**wild1145** · May 23, 2021 at 2:05 AM

@Xen#18416 Which was fine when most people's ranks were the same, which is no longer the case. There's a lot of data that needs to be reviewed and a proper plan sorted out. None of which I have time to sort out right now.

While the history is great, we as you have said have lived without it this long...

Xen · May 23, 2021 at 2:32 AM

@wild1145#18418 I don’t understand why you are making it more complicated than it needs to be. Steven literally just said he would do it himself. You can throw a couple of extra seniors or executives on the team and it'll be done within a few days. Just tell them what to do. The permissions cannot be that difficult to fix, it is Proboards for god's sake.

**wild1145** · May 23, 2021 at 11:36 AM

@Xen#18419 because if it was simple I'd have done exactly that.

Between Seth and the fact it was never designed to be restored, it's a shit show.

I'll give you an example.

Everyone is added to groups that don't exist. I can't remove people from those groups because they don't exist, and I can't remove the groups because they don't exist, but they still grant permissions as if they did exist.

That's just one of a large number of fairly complex technical issues we have because of the way proboards was left.

The proboards forums are absolutely fucked at this point and are far worse than I thought when I made this thread. It needs time when I've got the headspace to tackle it to work out how to get it to the stage we can then deal with the archiving and publishing of everything because right now I just have no way to easily do that with the state it's in.

As you've said before, we've gone without them for months, there shouldn't be anything on there we actively need, so this activity as I said will be picked up when we have time.