Author Topic: "Grivitation-like" paradigm would have helped in the interim (Read 42399 times)

CodeTRUCKER · « **on:** March 19, 2008, 08:13 PM »

Hello All,

I would like to touch on (ever so delicately) the "pain" felt by the absence of DC on our browsers while the DC-Team was working their tails off. Now... I don't want to stir up a hornet's nest nor do I want to cause a big ruckus about Gri and "Grivitation," but it is only fair that this be addressed, given how Gri has been made the butt-end of some chuckles and guffaws on DC at times. Ironically, if Gri were watching the latest goings-ons he might have had the last laugh.

Regardless of what you think of Gri and his weird (to the western world) style of communication, *IF* we had somehow adopted at least a tolerant mindset and tried to understand "Grivitation" the loss of connection with each other during the loss of the forums would have been non-existent and an antidote to "withdrawal" that so many expressed.

I'm not smart enough to understand all of the mechanics of Grivitation, but I do understand that it is a methodology whereby communication and thereby relationships (read: DC Community) are not restricted to a single conduit and therfore NOT vulnerable to injuries caused by attack/damage of the recent sort. As I said, I'm not smart enough to understand the way Grivitation works in the nitty-gritty (perhaps Gri does?), but the real fix is not a new server, but a new paradigm. As long as our connections/communications/relationships are sequestered to a single interface vulnerability cannot be eliminated. The stronger you make a fortress, the greater the destruction *when* (not *if*) it is finally compromised.

I don't have the answer (yet?), but there are a lot of bright, creative and intuitive folks around these parts. A Grivitation-like paradigm has additional benefit, but I think I've said enough.

FYI - This is not a note in support of Gri or an attempt to condone his actions/inactions. If you have comments about Gri, please take it to another thread. This is an attempt to suggest we might think "outside the box" (maybe we need a whole new box) in regard to "forum" structure and interraction.

Something to think about...

CodeTRUCKER

Edit: Edited subject and body for clarity

Wordzilla · « **Reply #1 on:** March 19, 2008, 08:47 PM »

I failed to see any need to ask DCer's to tolerate more of such spamming activities from Gri, or even the necessity to bring this issue up again. He's banned on numerous friendly and tolerant forums, including SimpleMachines.org. He repeatedly forces his incomprehensible ideas on people who have absolutely no interest and don't know a thing about what he's doing.

Back when I was involved with stopping his activities on DC, I'd seen quite a number of instances where he "required" forum members to set up his Gritnik (or whatever it's called) signature almost right after he joined those forums. Follow his "Grivitation" bread crumbs and you'll see what I mean -- what else can get more ridiculous?

And he's a hypocrite, who strongly advocates free speech superficially and do the very opposite when it goes against him. Josh and I made a dozen posts on his own Grivitation forum which he disliked. Now those postd are mostly deleted or modified. Also the forum signatures of Josh's and mine were modified without notification, to boost his "Grivtnik" propaganda. I'm not making all these up, join our IRC channel and ask the folks for the facts.

IMHO, it's not something any person with least respect for free speech would possibly do. It's both hypocritical and worthless, and do not justify attention from dc folks, let alone troubles and anxiety caused.

CodeTRUCKER · « **Reply #2 on:** March 19, 2008, 08:53 PM »

You missed the point.

Wordzilla · « **Reply #3 on:** March 19, 2008, 09:01 PM »

I think DC forum is already friendly, kind and tolerant enough under the 'reign' of mr. mouser.

ps. It's probably wrong to believe that a person who behaves in weird ways must have some genius traits or high IQ that are above and beyond common people. More than often 'weird' just means mentally messed up, and is by no means a synonym of 'geeky'.

~~pss. Believing that this Gri-topic will go nowhere, I'll refrain from posting further in this topic.~~

f0dder · « **Reply #4 on:** March 19, 2008, 09:02 PM »

The (hard core of the) DC community stayed together on IRC during the forum-hack...

But I think I see the essence of CodeTRUCKER's point. Grivitations very likely isn't the solution. But some distributed forum type sounds like an interesting idea... but also like a LOT of coding

(and a problem is that you'd probably set up the distributed hosts equally, thus if one was hacked, the others would be, too)

tinjaw · « **Reply #5 on:** March 19, 2008, 09:11 PM »

BTW, it already exists. In fact, it existed since pretty much the beginning of Internet time. It is a distributed system of messaging that has no central point of failure. It is called newsgroups. It appears some of you have forgotten your alt.internet.history.

CodeTRUCKER · « **Reply #6 on:** March 19, 2008, 09:12 PM »

... But I think I see the essence of CodeTRUCKER's point. Grivitations very likely isn't the solution. But some distributed forum type sounds like an interesting idea... but also like a LOT of coding (and a problem is that you'd probably set up the distributed hosts equally, thus if one was hacked, the others would be, too)
-f0dder (March 19, 2008, 09:02 PM)

My vision is not one based on "coding," but on a user-implemented paradigm shift toward expanding experience with links back and forth across diferent boards, i.e., having a link to my "Coding Monkeys" user account. See what I mean?

Wordzilla · « **Reply #7 on:** March 19, 2008, 09:14 PM »

Forcing everyone to browse 10+ individual forums for individual "decentralized" posts in order to get the whole of the thread borders on abuse.

CodeTRUCKER · « **Reply #8 on:** March 19, 2008, 09:20 PM »

BTW, it already exists. In fact, it existed since pretty much the beginning of Internet time. It is a distributed system of messaging that has no central point of failure. It is called newsgroups. It appears some of you have forgotten your alt.internet.history.
-tinjaw (March 19, 2008, 09:11 PM)

I think I must have been deformed during my early (formative) Internet years... I thought newsgroups were a place you went if you wanted to be maligned, insulted, criticised ripped to shreds for offering different views or a critical view? Maybe I went to the alt.wrong.groups?

Kudos on the proper capitialization of "Internet."!

CodeTRUCKER · « **Reply #9 on:** March 19, 2008, 09:29 PM »

Forcing everyone to browse 10+ individual forums for individual "decentralized" posts in order to get the whole of the thread borders on abuse.
-Wordzilla (March 19, 2008, 09:14 PM)

Andersen, your animosity toward Gri is showing. This would be ok, except that your posts don't address the subject, but rather attempt to discredit the idea due to some offense you still hold toward Gri. That's personal. Please keep it between you hand Gri or are you the "Post Police!" I said nothing about "Forcing." Your use of the word and your intent is obvious regardless of how many smileys you append it with!

For clarity, I am offended by what you have offered so far.

If you post further, please offer something appropriate to the intent.

CodeTRUCKER · « **Reply #10 on:** March 19, 2008, 09:36 PM »

ps. It's probably wrong to believe that a person who behaves in weird ways must have some genius traits or high IQ that are above and beyond common people. More than often 'weird' just means mentally messed up, and is by no means a synonym of 'geeky'.
-Wordzilla (March 19, 2008, 09:01 PM)

Galileo, Einstein, DaVinci, Columbus, Goddard, etc.

f0dder · « **Reply #11 on:** March 19, 2008, 09:38 PM »

tin: newsgroups are very different from forums, even though a decent newsreader will make them somewhat similar. But still, the conversational tone on usenet tends to be very different from what we have achieved here.

Wordzilla: with distributed, I meant in a unified way

, so you wouldn't have to check out a boatload of forums... just that the information would be replicated and load-balanced.

tinjaw · « **Reply #12 on:** March 19, 2008, 09:45 PM »

tin: newsgroups are very different from forums, even though a decent newsreader will make them somewhat similar. But still, the conversational tone on usenet tends to be very different from what we have achieved here.
-f0dder (March 19, 2008, 09:38 PM)

f0dder, you ignorant slut. [1]

You are missing the whoooooole point. I am just pointing out that the technical means are already in existence. The fact that most humans are jerks that can't stay on topic and is not an issue here.

For example, if there was alt.donationcoder, and the only ones posting there were the same 100,000 that posted here, we would have continued on the conversation without a hiccup.

[1] Saturday Night Live skit we are discussing in parallel on IRC. Search this page for "you ignorant slut". This was on US television for years, so I will use that as a barometer of acceptable public language.

Wordzilla · « **Reply #13 on:** March 19, 2008, 09:45 PM »

I just don't want this topic to turn into another unnecessary flame war on this forum. Yes, I strongly object to Gri's ways of posting, it's v clear and there's no need to hide anything.

I'm not trying to discredit the idea, thou. The very fact that u described this "Grivation-like" paradigm makes me believe that this is how it will run if implemented, i.e. "Forcing everyone to browse 10+ individual forums for individual "decentralized" posts." -- based on what we experienced with Gri's posts.

Wordzilla · « **Reply #14 on:** March 19, 2008, 09:49 PM »

Wordzilla: with distributed, I meant in a unified way , so you wouldn't have to check out a boatload of forums... just that the information would be replicated and load-balanced.
-f0dder (March 19, 2008, 09:38 PM)

Thanks for clarification. Well, let's make sure backups are made more often and on regular basis - does it solve the problem?

f0dder · « **Reply #15 on:** March 19, 2008, 10:16 PM »

No, backups only guarantee we can get back on track - a distributed approach would mean we never go down. There's several issues to address, though... first, servers would need to be heterogenous (ie, linux, bsd and NT, something like that) to ensure not all get hacked at one time. And, because of how the internet protocols work, there would need to be a "single point of failure" server that was unhackable, which would arbitrate against the distributed servers...

mouser · « **Reply #16 on:** March 19, 2008, 10:39 PM »

well one thing we are definitely going to do is set up a backup emergency forum (and website mirror) so that if the site goes down again, everyone will know where to go while the main site is unreachable. it's not the perfect solution but i think it would help.

CodeTRUCKER · « **Reply #17 on:** March 19, 2008, 10:43 PM »

I just don't want this topic to turn into another unnecessary flame war on this forum. Yes, I strongly object to Gri's ways of posting, it's v clear and there's no need to hide anything.
-Wordzilla (March 19, 2008, 09:45 PM)

If you didn't want to start a flame war, why did YOU start it?

I'm not trying to discredit the idea, thou. The very fact that u described this "Grivation-like" paradigm makes me believe that this is how it will run if implemented, i.e. "Forcing everyone to browse 10+ individual forums for individual "decentralized" posts." -- based on what we experienced with Gri's posts.

Whether you were "trying" to or not is irrelevant, you did! Carrying a moniker like "Wordzilla" requires a stricter judgement when using words. Your diction becomes circumspect and requires the utmost discretion when making choices about what words to use in expressing thought. I'm not completely sure what a Global Moderator is or does here, but it seems to me that the insertion of personal biases and inflammatory remarks would certainly not be on the job description. If you are a "Global Moderator" then "moderate," but leave the "parenting" to those with patriarchal and matriarchal lineage. You don't need to protect anyone. If for some reason you feel like you should interject your own personal biased deflections in someone else's thread, at least have the deference to remove "Global Moderator" from your labels as it gives a tone to the forums that is incongruous with the vision Mouser and I both share for DC.

PhilB66 · « **Reply #18 on:** March 19, 2008, 10:50 PM »

the vision Mouser and I both share for DC.
-CodeTRUCKER (March 19, 2008, 10:43 PM)

Is this vision made public? Would love to know more about it.

CodeTRUCKER · « **Reply #19 on:** March 19, 2008, 10:59 PM »

the vision Mouser and I both share for DC.
-CodeTRUCKER (March 19, 2008, 10:43 PM)

Is this vision made public? Would love to know more about it.
-PhilB66 (March 19, 2008, 10:50 PM)

No public declaration needed. The very tone of the DC community shouts loudly that a board can be a place where people of integrity, common courtesy and deference can co-exist with opposing views. Oh yeah, it's also a place that proves you can be a geek and still be normal.

mouser · « **Reply #20 on:** March 19, 2008, 11:10 PM »

wordzilla has some history with gri that makes them not get along, but i agree that in keeping with the spirit of DC, wordzilla could have been more diplomatic and less incendiary. let's remember to keep things civil even when we disagree.

f0dder · « **Reply #21 on:** March 19, 2008, 11:11 PM »

I don't think most of us are "normal" (by their terms), but most of us can blend in and have decent lives - that's what matters in that regard

. And the friendly tone and level of understanding here rocks.

So let's forget about the personals and think about the technicals again...

CodeTRUCKER · « **Reply #22 on:** March 19, 2008, 11:40 PM »

Let me try again, I'm not suggesting anything "official" or "coded." What I am trying to provoke is some creative jucies as a new paradigm which would be immune from any intended/unintended disruption. At least in my mind, I can conceive nefarious doings by large corporate (bigger than MS) entities that will have major disruptive impact. What I'm trying to conceive is a methodology that will allow connectivity even in serious circumstances. Imagine the way YOUR forum interractions/relationships work out mechanically on DC. Now erase that picture from your mind and try to visualize a completely different image.

Simply, what would be that picture?

f0dder · « **Reply #23 on:** March 19, 2008, 11:57 PM »

CodeTRUCKER: I don't think anything non-automated would work. It's too much pressure on the end-user, and it would leave us with a totally fragmented view in the case of a breakdown. And even without breakdown, we would either need custom reading clients (NOT going to happen!), or having to click a lot more links, and those links being external... OK OK, ajax embedded stuff could help, but...

Wordzilla · « **Reply #24 on:** March 20, 2008, 12:02 AM »

I may have been emotional on this matter, for that I apologize. But I don't believe I made false or inaccurate claims against anyone.

Truth be told, I don't think I'm a "Global Moderator" in essence and I often forget being one -- it was so arranged that I could remove some spams in time and move topics to appropriate boards for the folks here. Such chores, absolutely nothing political or distinguishing in 'class'.

I was actually upset about the merely possibility of this kind of topic evolving into a flame war and tried hard to prevent it from happening. I may have overdone it and it worked in an opposite way, not to benefits of anyone here.

Agree with f0dder I do: If you want talk technical, talk technical.

To CodeTrucker: a diplomatic and efficient discourser who means to talk 'technical' might not have devoted so many words on marginally relevant stuff like 'Gri', 'Grivitation', 'tolerant mindset', etc. Yes, I might be too sensitive, but don't you think it'd be a far better idea to just talk, e.g. 'distributed load-balancing and backup'?

Secondly... I would like to touch on (ever so delicately) the "pain" felt by the absence of DC on our browsers. Now... I don't want to stir up a hornet's nest nor do I want to hijack this thread... in fact, I won't see the thread here!
-CodeTRUCKER (March 19, 2008, 08:16 PM)

Well, if i were to demand more attention to this thread, honestly I'd do same.

Can't really say it's a good idea if calm of mind is voted for.