computerguy08, obviously the vogon's thread was not your main channel for trw-database updates, but it was good alternative to us, who don't use platforms like discord. Lock-up this thread too and wait for e-mails*. Good luck!

* after all the unnecessary virtual drama I'll send you none

This just proves the point in my last sentence

computerguy08 wrote on 2023-10-31, 15:29:

All this makes me thing that you expect the vogons thread to be the main channel for board submissions

Nobody wants nor expects others to waste time manually cut&pasting unstructured data from emails or chat clients.
Nobody wants _any_ web forum to be used for submitting data.
Even the most rudimentary web form right on the page would be more user friendly than current situation. If Im reading Necroware https://dosreloaded.de/forum/thread/3599-the- … 0742#post140742 post right such system was in place on http://www.win3x.org/uh19/ :
> Alternativ ist, wenn Du direkt auf der UH19 Seite ein Mainboard suchst, welches nicht da ist, dann bekommst Du einen Text angezeigt "Können Sie ein Mainboard nicht finden? Klicken hier um es hinzuzufügen." Da kannst Du dann den Link anklicken und Du landest auf einer Formularseite, wo Du das Zeug auch einreichen kannst.

Looks like uh19 ended with drama
>>http://www.win3x.org/uh19/ leitet aber nicht um...
>Nein, die leitet leider nicht um. Es gab wohl einige Differenzen unter den Entwicklern und das Projekt ist umgezogen. Die alte Seite wird von dem Domänen Inhaber eine Zeit lang online gehalten, aber wahrscheinlich nicht mehr weiter entwickelt. Ich möchte da nichts falsches erzählen, aber das ist, was ich weiß.

computerguy08 wrote on 2023-10-31, 15:29:

not demand answers, none of us has any obligations

When you post "submissions thread: suggest edits and/or add new boards here" you de facto enter into a transaction with whoever takes you up on the offer. Basic reciprocity.

computerguy08 wrote on 2023-10-31, 15:29:

And unfortunately, vogons has been the only place where people have been rude and demanding.

You isolated yourself from feedback. Isnt Vogons the only English language speaking place where anyone could reach you on the open internet? On dosreloaded-de you even introduce yourself as:
>"Hello everyone, I'm computerguy08, the guy from Vogons"

computerguy08 wrote on 2023-10-31, 15:29:

The main problem with a wiki style feedback system is the complete lack of control over what's submitted... attracts a lot of spam

Changes dont have to propagate to main page by default. Nobody is asking for rights to directly edit database.
Its about sane submission method - Form right on the page and some indicator of backlog (X edits awaiting action). Bonus points for button to show pending proposed changes, but that would require basic login to cut on spam.
Email/discord submission process should have stopped a year ago, or rather should never have happened in the first place.

computerguy08 wrote on 2023-10-31, 15:29:

In fact, we just spent the last few months doing a complete rework of the backend, to get it prepared for an enhanced user submission system.

Nobody can see the backend except you (and people in your discord club). I tried and am unable to run it Re: The Retro Web project - a better stason.org/TH99 alternative.

computerguy08 wrote on 2023-10-31, 15:29:

we're working to replace it with something better.

"It's in the works" has been the answer 14 months ago. Main problem is not lack of progress, everyone understands things take time to implement. Its lack of information about progress/bottlenecks. As I said earlier I bet nobody ever saw https://blog.theretroweb.com/2023/04/25/the-r … ing-volunteers/ Google says I was the first human ever to post this link on open internet, Bing doesnt find it at all outside of theretroweb.com domain.

People are frustrated by black-box nature of submissions. Instead of getting angry at each other let us help you.

rasz_pl wrote on 2023-10-31, 18:19:

computerguy08 wrote on 2023-10-31, 15:29:

All this makes me thing that you expect the vogons thread to be the main channel for board submissions

Nobody wants nor expects others to waste time manually cut&pasting unstructured data from emails or chat clients.
Nobody wants _any_ web forum to be used for submitting data.

The thing is, user submission is one side of it, the other side is "board hunting" from old manufacturer sites/archives/forgotten sites or physically owning said board. By comparison, anything structured with all the needed informations is a godsend.
Emails are better than a single thread in a forum, because like I said everything gets mixed together and it's easy to forget about someone.

rasz_pl wrote on 2023-10-31, 18:19:

Even the most rudimentary web form right on the page would be more user friendly than current situation. If Im reading Necroware https://dosreloaded.de/forum/thread/3599-the- … 0742#post140742 post right such system was in place on http://www.win3x.org/uh19/ :
> Alternativ ist, wenn Du direkt auf der UH19 Seite ein Mainboard suchst, welches nicht da ist, dann bekommst Du einen Text angezeigt "Können Sie ein Mainboard nicht finden? Klicken hier um es hinzuzufügen." Da kannst Du dann den Link anklicken und Du landest auf einer Formularseite, wo Du das Zeug auch einreichen kannst.

Discord has forums too now, adding a forum of our own would mean more moderation, more work to split, two ways is already enough, and with discord for those that want to have a more direct talk, or emails for people that don't trust discord/don't care if we respond after 3 days, it feels like a good compromise.

rasz_pl wrote on 2023-10-31, 18:19:

Looks like uh19 ended with drama
>>http://www.win3x.org/uh19/ leitet aber nicht um...
>Nein, die leitet leider nicht um. Es gab wohl einige Differenzen unter den Entwicklern und das Projekt ist umgezogen. Die alte Seite wird von dem Domänen Inhaber eine Zeit lang online gehalten, aber wahrscheinlich nicht mehr weiter entwickelt. Ich möchte da nichts falsches erzählen, aber das ist, was ich weiß.

It's a long story, yes, it is true. But to summarize it, win3x' owner wanted us to make what is now TRW fully compatible with IE4.0 and 5.0 at all costs. Be it worse SEO, having to convert data to older formats that are supported by windows 9x, etc, before any other features. We chose to leave to make sure we can make our own decisions, and it seemed that we left on good terms. However it turned out the owner ahd backstabbed us by archiving his copy of the site to archive.org and made 301 redirects to that archive, making google think that this was the new location of the site and thus shadowbanning us. Asking him to change it lead to nowhere and I had to write a DMCA to archive.org to get it removed.
Had this DMCA failed, the project would probably have died because of his pettyness. Everyone would have thought the project was dead and there would be nothing we can do about that.

This is also one of the reasons why there was no such system from the get go. At the time "the forum was good enough" and "if you make a submission system it has to be ie4 compliant". Not sustainable, waste of time, and also it means that it hadn't been added early, making it harder and harder to add as time passes.

rasz_pl wrote on 2023-10-31, 18:19:

Changes dont have to propagate to main page by default. Nobody is asking for rights to directly edit database.
Its about sane submission method - Form right on the page and some indicator of backlog (X edits awaiting action). Bonus points for button to show pending proposed changes, but that would require basic login to cut on spam.
Email/discord submission process should have stopped a year ago, or rather should never have happened in the first place.

This is the main issue, this is what we struggle with at the moment, because the system is made to edit the main database itself. There is no intermediate state, we have to program one, which implies many deep changes in the system.
I was willing to work on such system for a while, but have faced personal issues for the past year that had impacts on my time and motivation I could dedicate for such a big overhaul, meaning that while I worked steadily on the first 3 years on the project, I have only contributed by small bursts for the past year. On a brighter note, things are getting better for me, and computerguy has contributed a lot recently, and the rest of the team made some tremendous work as well, increasing the size of the motherboard db by close to 33% https://web.archive.org/web/20221102162309/ht … heretroweb.com/

More positive things will come soon.

rasz_pl wrote on 2023-10-31, 18:19:

People are frustrated by black-box nature of submissions. Instead of getting angry at each other let us help you.

This is only true for the now closed vogons thread, which was another good reason to stop it.
I don't see why you think it'd be different with a system integrated to TRW, uploads won't be made public (just in case someone uploads nasty stuff) and you will also need an account to participate. The only differences is that the interface would be exactly the same as the one we currently use, and you won't register your account to discord.com or your email's provider, but to us instead.

rasz_pl wrote on 2023-10-31, 18:19:

People are frustrated by black-box nature of submissions. Instead of getting angry at each other let us help you.

It's of black-box nature because you refuse to look at it from any other angles. You keep going on about that open web thing, which I really don't understand what relevancy it has to the project. The whole point of the site is to have the board info in a public space, which is what TRW does. Your view on the whole project is very obtuse and self-induced, like it is for others here.
As for the development, we chose to do it in a "private club" (even though it's not private by any means, anyone can join and ask questions) because it's much more convenient and practical, so no we will not bend to such silly demands.

computerguy08 wrote on 2023-10-31, 19:08:

rasz_pl wrote on 2023-10-31, 18:19:

People are frustrated by black-box nature of submissions. Instead of getting angry at each other let us help you.

It's of black-box nature because you refuse to look at it from any other angles. You keep going on about that open web thing, which I really don't understand what relevancy it has to the project. The whole point of the site is to have the board info in a public space, which is what TRW does. Your view on the whole project is very obtuse and self-induced, like it is for others here.
As for the development, we chose to do it in a "private club" (even though it's not private by any means, anyone can join and ask questions) because it's much more convenient and practical, so no we will not bend to such silly demands.

If this represents TRW's view on what open means, then we need an open alternative to TRW.

Good luck.

It has become very clear people here do not understand what open means. Nah, I'm not even gonna waste a single extra minute of my life in this echo chamber, I'm out.

If anyone wants to be of actual help and not just shit on the project, we have an email box where you can make suggestions or board submissions.
And for those not scared of technology or which do not use tinfoil hats, we also have a Discord server.

Have a great rest of your day!

When you think everyone else is the problem, it generally means you are the problem.

What is so important in other's submissions you want to see that justifies spending years of your life doing what someone else already did ?

computerguy08 wrote on 2023-10-31, 19:27:

It has become very clear people here do not understand what open means. Nah, I'm not even gonna waste a single extra minute of m […]
Show full quote

It has become very clear people here do not understand what open means. Nah, I'm not even gonna waste a single extra minute of my life in this echo chamber, I'm out.

If anyone wants to be of actual help and not just shit on the project, we have an email box where you can make suggestions or board submissions.
And for those not scared of technology or which do not use tinfoil hats, we also have a Discord server.

Have a great rest of your day!

Since you can't "see" yourself from the side, I'll give you a "joker". The only one who's s**tting on the trw-project here is you and it all started in that other already locked thread because of your hurt virtual feelings. Neither Deksor or evasive attacks with anything any of the contributors or those who still willing to contribute to the trw-project. AFAIK evasive was the last one to manually update the database from the thread's here, and why didn't you replace him in this task when he stopped for objective reasons instead to pretend to be an offended virtual victim from couple of days?!

P.S. I'm glad I helped in refreshing someone's memory (to recall an old password) through resurrecting an old troll's account, just to show his dum*as*ness here too. (the mods already deleted it, but you know very well what I mean) Can I help to you with something more, my dear? 😉 Seems like you're as old as PIII third Tualatin generation.

Hope someone is archiving this project because it's going to end up dead eventually, zero doubt about it. Oversized ego is the most destructive force in nature.

Wow, lots of entitlement in this thread. Chill and calm down guys, TRW is a service that people are offering you on their time, if you don' like it don't use it. I mean, I share @dionb 's view that the submission process is not for me - my old ass self can not deal with Discord to submit a lot of things that I otherwise could have, and maybe that is a loss for the project but if the people spending time and effort on it think this is the best way forward then I'll still support them, I just can't contribute but that is not the end of the world. Cheers.

appiah4 wrote on 2023-10-31, 20:45:

Wow, lots of entitlement in this thread. Chill and calm down guys, TRW is a service that people are offering you on their time, if you don' like it don't use it. I mean, I share @dionb 's view that the submission process is not for me - my old ass self can not deal with Discord to submit a lot of things that I otherwise could have, and maybe that is a loss for the project but if the people spending time and effort on it think this is the best way forward then I'll still support them, I just can't contribute but that is not the end of the world. Cheers.

"Genocide is not for me but if the people spending time and effort on it think it's the best way forward then I'll support them"

As the maintainer of the database for gpuzoo.com (admittedly I've not done any work on that in a year and a half, due to poor mental health), I can tell you all that even if I had a team of fellow volunteers, sites like TRW take a lot of work, and I for one appreciate that the team do as much as their lives allow. If things get overlooked, it's not through lack of effort. As has been pointed out a few times, there are links on the site that tell you how to contribute in ways that the team find more manageable. It's the best resource of its type on the interwebs, and does improve over time. It's a major job, that will never be complete, but it's getting closer all the time.

debs3759 wrote on 2023-10-31, 21:09:

As the maintainer of the database for gpuzoo.com (admittedly I've not done any work on that in a year and a half, due to poor mental health), I can tell you all that even if I had a team of fellow volunteers, sites like TRW take a lot of work, and I for one appreciate that the team do as much as their lives allow. If things get overlooked, it's not through lack of effort. As has been pointed out a few times, there are links on the site that tell you how to contribute in ways that the team find more manageable. It's the best resource of its type on the interwebs, and does improve over time. It's a major job, that will never be complete, but it's getting closer all the time.

The idea that people should be shielded from constructive (and warranted criticisms) just because they exert effort on something is insane. People spend their whole lives exerting effort on abhorrent things.

Contributors to this project help make it possible, and should at least have their voices heard. Not silenced. This is a very fascistic point of view.

debs3759 wrote on 2023-10-31, 21:09:

As has been pointed out a few times, there are links on the site that tell you how to contribute in ways that the team find more manageable. It's the best resource of its type on the interwebs, and does improve over time.

Indeed, I don't get why some people takes this way too seriously and make it look complicated when actually isn't. It is so sad what I'm witnessing here. 🙁

Temporary closing this thread as the original feedback on contributions channel have already been given and the team have answered it. Now its just derailing.

Thread re-opened

Curious why all the bios files (and manuals or other downloads) have a 22 digit number extension after the file name, think I asked this before but never got a real answer (ie: aladd10.exe = aladd10-6505fa27c3fd7439331000.exe) ?
Just wondering why and if that can be fixed, if someone from TRW can explain why it needs a 22 digit added number for the downloads from the website.