Update/Closure: The "Garage" on the DIY EC forums is offically, permanently gone

[MattsAwesomeStuff]

A little background.

Once upon a time everyone here was on the DIY Electric Car forums.

Then whoever founded the community sold it out to a company called "Vertical Scope" that had been running around buying up 1800 mostly-automotive forums across the web.

5 years ago Vertical Scope botched an upgrade, while simultaneously updating all 1800 forums they owned, at the same time, without sandboxing or testing any of their updates first, based on an emergency that didn't exist and a deadline that they misread about a requirement that wasn't. They clearly weren't hiring the best and brightest.

It took months for the forums to be brought back, and they were missing all kinds of content for several more months. But what never came back was the "Garage" section, where people hosted their conversions themselves. This is a unique piece of EV history in the world.

This prompted Johannes to plant these forums and this community here, so that we wouldn't be subject to the incompetence of corporate overlords. And many of you, especially those of you Euro-centric, moved on over.

...

Well time has gone by and eventually I've gone from lowly serf to the admin that runs the whole place over there (i.e. a janitor with otherwise no powers).

Just to poke the hornet's nest, once a year or so I bump the thread where we were promised that the Garage was "being worked on" and "a top priority" and "we'll get that running this week" and "thanks for your patience" and ask for an update.

Through it all, they've assured us no content is lost, and there's "always a backup".

I even tried recruiting volunteers to fix the Garage section itself before Vertical Scope spat in their faces and wouldn't give them database access and wanted a verbal description of how to fix it. Like storytime for children I suppose.

At some point I figured they'd admit they were never going to put resources into fixing it, and I'd ask for a data dump so maybe we could repair it ourselves or at least archive it or... something.

Whelp...

Vertical Scope recently made a vapid post asking people to tell them about themselves, and what they're up to, and to tell them to say hi. Just a bizarre empty shell of "engagement" they'd never read and that I called them out on and said instead of posting bullshit like this, can you please fix our Garage section?

Lo and behold, I successfully shamed them into actually looking into it.

And what they discovered is that the backup server some time ago was deleted because of "maintenance costs". Apparently they can't afford, what, a single gigabyte on a shelf somewhere? And that the content it archived is permanently gone.

At this point I don't think anyone was holding their breath, but, I figured for the old-timers here I'd post and give closure that, that part of our history doesn't exist anymore. I'm a completionist, and I like to wrap up loose ends, and I value closure myself, hence the post, for anyone who might still care.

If you'd prefer it from the horse's mouth: https://www.diyelectriccar.com/threads/ ... rs.209564/

...

And while on the topic, just wanted to say thanks to Johannes for founding this community here and keeping it safe.

[johu]

Oh wow, I almost forgot about that affair.
I wonder had this forum gained as much attention without their f*ckup.

Anyway, backups are frequently made of the database and file system of this server. So far we're just using 43 GB. Fits on a $5 USB stick if needed. Very high maintenance cost!

Thanks everyone for contributing.

[MattsAwesomeStuff]

I wonder had this forum gained as much attention without their f*ckup.

Didn't you only even create this forum because of that mess?

Certainly everyone who was a developer of any kind abandoned ship immediately and came over here. The slap in the face of working on an open source project and then all your work just being purged for months is enough incentive to say never again.

I've kept the lights on over there if for no other reason than because it's still overwhelmingly the top result for people looking for EV builds and the name is certainly more descriptive of its goals than the forums here. And it's not like I sandbag the discussion over there, but, I do not-so-subtlety push people over here when they start having and kind of development effort, by honestly and bluntly telling them that's where that portion of the community left to and they're likely to find their peers over here.

Anyway, backups are frequently made of the database and file system of this server. So far we're just using 43 GB. Fits on a $5 USB stick if needed. Very high maintenance cost!

You don't host pics.

And, I mean, $5 is $5. You don't get rich wasting money.

[Aragorn]

anything stored on the internet archive/wayback machine?

I dont know what exactly was lost, but for instance here is a random garage page:

https://web.archive.org/web/20170602205 ... e/cars/435

[MattsAwesomeStuff]

anything stored on the internet archive/wayback machine?

Yeah, I cover that a bit in that thread, and the thread from 5 years ago.

The wayback machine has some, but in my experience it's usually full of holes.

Also, if it's not rebuilt into something convenient to browse then there's little difference between deleted and "technically available".

It would have to be connected to people's usernames and all that and... despite being an admin I'm a forum admin who can move threads and delete users, not touch the database itself.

[Aragorn]

Fair enough, i cant view the thread, it asks me to login and i dont think i have an account over there.

Agreed, its no substitute for the original site. Just thought it might allow folks to grab their stuff and archive it out themselves etc.

[MattsAwesomeStuff]

Fair enough, i cant view the thread, it asks me to login

Oh? Odd. I thought that didn't exist. Maybe because it's in the tech support forum, that's private to members.

I'll quote:

"Good morning, my name is Kyle. I've been here before and been asked to step in on this matter, as I was present for both the server move and the software change. There is no easy way to say all of this; while trying to restore and/or migrate the garage kept being sidelined due to changes in tech management and direction, there was always the hope that it could still be brought to the forefront of issues. Every time we said we were working on it, we pushed to prioritize it. But other issues or projects were always given higher precedents due to traffic and the amount of effort required to make it work. It was a broken software even before the server move. That leads me to today. I've been searching with one of the original ops team members from when we first took over the site to find the original data to try to slot it into the showcase system here. Unfortunately, I must inform you that it and several other large pieces of historical data from other sites on the network before the software change were lost when a storage server was taken offline due to maintenance costs and some security concerns. There's no way to retrieve it. This is one of the biggest failures on our part that I can recall, and I can only apologize for it, including the choice to back out of the volunteer fix. I'm unsure how we can return from this, but I'll ask, short of the impossible, what would you like to see? "

[P.S.Mangelsdorf]

I just want to take this space to once again thank Johannes for this forum and its high quality, fair rules, and generally useful layout.

It seems like those would be basic requirements for a forum, but they are all too uncommon, so it is deeply appreciated. I know it's not easy.

The forum and this community are a fantastic resource and have been a highlight of my build, and I'm sure countless others.

Thank you.

[Jacobsmess]

I just want to take this space to once again thank Johannes for this forum and its high quality, fair rules, and generally useful layout.

At the risk of going too off topic, I'd like to reiterate this and also add that as a new member to the DIY EV conversion community, I've found that the DIYEC forums to be mostly unhelpful, cliquey, full of scam accounts (despite admins best efforts) and quite spiteful due to a handful of prominent users. However, the OI forums not only put up with my complete lack of understanding on most of the subject matter, but answer and inform in helpful and meaningful ways.

Thanks all.

[asavage]

Anyway, backups are frequently made of the database and file system of this server. So far we're just using 43 GB. Fits on a $5 USB stick if needed. Very high maintenance cost!

You don't host pics.

Actually, OI does host pics: Attachments.

While -- for a large volume of images as I like to use it -- I don't enjoy interacting with the Attachments feature as implemented, it's adequate for one-off pics, although stored resolution seems limited. Still, that 43Gb is likely chock-full of images. And he backs it up frequently.

As a forum owner myself, I always wonder its fate when I pass . . . will someone take up the responsibility?

I've found that the DIYEC forums to be mostly unhelpful, cliquey [ . . . ] and quite spiteful due to a handful of prominent users.

There does seem to be less entrenched politics here than there, I agree. Fewer ideologues?

[MattsAwesomeStuff]

I've found that the DIYEC forums to be mostly unhelpful, cliquey, full of scam accounts (despite admins best efforts) and quite spiteful due to a handful of prominent users.

I haven't seen any cliqueyness there. None of those people are hanging out and talking outside of the forums or privately or ganging up and supporting each other blindly.

Scam accounts yes but those are in the classifieds and are obvious, (and purged daily, but, it's 100x the size of target that the OI forums are).

Spiteful, ehn, I've seen a few back-and-forth people that bicker with each other, and I've tried to have a light hand in moderating, though more aggressively so on request now. What I typically see in communities is that whatever the personality of the "prominent" users, tends to be overrepresented because they're the ones taking time out of their day to contribute. So you might say "These people have a lot of negativity", and they do, in the circumstances where it's warranted. But you would notice the same people having a lot to say that's positive, in the circumstances where that's warranted. They're more active all around, so you get more of both. If you're easily triggered by anyone being told off, that might be the things you pay most attention to and miss the good those same people contribute.

The OI forums here, being much less popular, prominent, and approached, tends not to get the same crowd of confidently-wrong beginners that the DIY EC forums do. It can be exhausting providing the same advice to people practically bragging about how they've reinvented the wheel better. There's less need for criticism here, because there's fewer idiots showing up making idiodic claims that should be shut down before someone goes and copies them.

When I'm steering people here I tend to curate a bit as to whether they have something to add to the community. Anyone who seems to be doing reverse engineering, I quietly usher out of the DIY EC forums and send them over here where they're more likely to find co-contributors and cut down on the noise:signal ratio. Someone just wanting to blather, I don't bring it up.

But thanks for the feedback. I have no idea what I'm going to do with the community, but, with the parent org circling the drain it might all go up in smoke in the next year or two when budgets run out.