Shut down hosting forums

I guess someone has to ask it... So what defines the "criteria for selecting a good hosting provider"? (e.g., I warn people away from any host that wasn't a GoPHP5 host, for obvious reasons, but I certainly won't claim that all of those hosts are great hosts; just PHP 5.2 hosts.) If we can have some consensus about that, then I'm +1 for this plan.

Similarly, after 1 month, then what? How do we evaluate if we should leave the forum closed or reopen it?

This leaves many open questions..

* Do the Google ads stay up?
* Where is this replacement page?
* Do we keep the front-page link or remove it?
* Do we want to to keep the old posts?
* If so, what sort of notices and such need to appear on old forum listings and topics?
* What is the schedule?
* Are any notice posts in the forum happening?

I suppose we can mass-disable new comments via the database prompt and forbid new topics via form_alter() in the drupalorg module. Drupal core does not have a concept of disabled forums. Alternatively, we could just remove the forum, which would efficiently orphan all the topics and nuke the forum, which is probably not an option if there is the possibility of resurrecting it in a month.

So, credit card fraud happens. Do we ban the use of credit cards because of some fraud?

The internet has cause some children to be molested by sick psychos. Should we ban the internet for that?

Yes, overly dramatic, but you get my drift.

From the mailing list:

I accept your offer to take lead and watch the hosting forums with
Kieren for now then. This will give those of us who are frankly fed
up with this destructive effect on the community a break and much
needed respite.

This tells me this is a high labor/effort/time area.

Hence to address this, wee need more volunteers specifically to watch the forums.

Those suffering from burnout need a break/rotation.

One cause for this is that some people work out of their mail box/RSS feed, and the fact that comments do not get reflected in these means that said volunteers only see the initial post not the comments. So we can try to address that by comment RSS, or do what the project module does and re-list the forum post in RSS when there are followups.

There are a wealth of hosting review sites out there that have far
more in depth knowledge on the state of various hosting providers then
we do. The basic information is not Drupal specific and frankly other
then Drupal optimizations (which we don;t have much written about
anyway) it would be best to train people to leverage other generic
knowledge and their LAMP/WAMP environments.

What is absent will be : "ask the Drupal community", both the venue and the community will be missing.

We had nice threads in the past on what to ask a hoster for when doing Drupal, specifically Drupal things (safe mode, CGI, ...etc.)

Here are some suggestions that need adding to/refining:

- forbid tit for tat behavior on the forums
- forbid over self promotion (limit posts from the same company to one post per week/month for the same company, ...etc.)
- have just one thread per company per quarter, so as to reduce the number of threads (whether positive or negative).

I suggest disabling commenting altogether. 99% of the behavior is in the commenting from what I can tell. Allow hosts to post a thread to keep the spirit alive, and allow for the ads but beyond that if someone wants to complain about a host they can do so using their own bandwidth.

I believe the disabling of comments will also make it easier to moderate and track which hosts are abusing drupal.org.

@kbahley,
This one forum is a high maintenance irritation effort where decisions you make are oft met with accusations about fairness, etc. You indicated it had value in opposition to those who are doing the works judgment that it was more of a time sink then a value. I took that as an offer that you would take the effort of monitoring that specific forum for the next month to determine for yourself if it had value.

We have never been an active 'police' force. We deal with issues as we come across them or complaints are raised. I do not wish us to become an active policing force either. That could lead to other difficulties and change the nature of the community in a negative way.

You are proposing policies and additional workload but I do not remember you moderating or working in the forums. We do not have assignments for volunteers. We have what people we have who are doing the work and a loose policy regarding that and the realms they normally work in. Drupal 6 should allow more permissions towards the forums but I can't rely on a schedule for a roll out of this at this time.

I wish to avoid having to develop detailed firm policies if that is possible. Kieren has tried multiple phone discussions on this issue already which has ultimately not resulted in an a perceived improvement.

If it weren't for the agreements on ads, I would have already moved forward on this.

I watch the Hosting forums often (sometimes just out of morbid curiosity) and while there are a lot of abuses going on there, there can be good/helpful/insightful posts.

Perhaps there should be a requirement that hosting providers provide a public forum on their own site for help/requests/questions instead of using the hosting forum here for that.

I'll be happy to volunteer to help in this.

~silverwing

Is it possible to have a non-comment forum? (I'm not sure what kind of access module is used here.)

Pretty much what VM said above.

I'm thinking of a Hosting Offers forum where legitimate (as legitimate as one can tell) hosts place offers or announce their services without comments.

Others would be directed to the general discussion forums.

Make requirements for posting there something like:
1. No Free offers.
2. Host must provide a forum or other means of commenting, inquiring or complaining on their own site or affiliated site and provide a link for people to contact your company.
3. Not solicit their services in other forums unless requested.
,,,,,,

re: I've been contacting the main actors misbehaving in the forums over the last several months. I was brought into this situation after every other maintainer had already given up the hosting forums. I've taken action for the fifth time with one company in particular dating back to December 2007, and have documented agreements with two parties that they would not engage in the behavior you outline. Unfortunately, despite those agreements they've both violated them.

What about listing those offenders as bad dogs? Sure, we will ruin their business if we say do not host at novalue-x-hosting.com but they really asked for it and I think that if we post a couple of those as an example, new bad dogs will think twice about going against the community.

I do understand the pros and cons but I think this option is worth considering.

I would support publicly lambasting bad eggs, and I've no problem with doing it under my name too (though, I'm not so much involved in the bad egg discovery, so someone would have to ghostwrite a draft and I'd Morbusize it).

Actually, scratch my #10. You can be a jerk but still provide quality services (or code, content, etc.).

Bert some of these bad eggs are people who contribute a lot of code to the community and other Drupal services. This would then put us in the role of picking and choosing those to lambaste and those to give a pass too. They don't seem to have a hosting service they run (though they do have a preference) but they were more then willing to run down and reply to every posting of the other.

"Bert some of these bad eggs are people who contribute a lot of code"

and some have been warned 5 (five!) times and five times said that they will not spam again. I am sorry if we loose a great developer, a great writer, themer of just nice person but once people go wrong in a very clear way and have been warned for five times, the odds that they work hard coding wise, theming wise or is handbook-writing wise are rather small i Think.

Note: i am not stating that we must crucify them, it is just an option that has not been explored. Mind you: if we do name-the-shamed we are probably moral responsible for destroying their business, not something to be proud of.

Can you at least wait until drupal.org has a suitable replacement for drupalmodules.com before driving John out of business? :P

Seriously, though, this is getting silly. Destroying someone's business is not only "not something to be proud of" it's something we shouldn't even be considering. I'm all for getting rid of the forum but let's not go publically attacking the individuals involved. It's not like they're random spammers posting viagra ads. They're part of the community that unfortunately let their crusades get in the way of their sense.

Michelle

If somebody's business is based on spamming drupal.org I have no moral troubles in driving him out of said business.

Was about to explore purchasing ads on the forums and becoming an active member as we grow the hosting side of our business when this thread was brought to my attention. I'm not sure of all of the back story, at all, and may ping one of you in IRC to get some of it in person.

Mostly just want to be kept apprised of the future of this aspect of D.O. and if I can do anything to help. Will maybe chime in after I've done my homework, thanks.

I found when I visit the hosting forum, it's not to look for the best deal but to find which hosting companies work for Drupal and which do not. I also found that after I've switched hosting companies the forums could come in handy. How do I get Drupal to work on my hosting company's server? Posts with this type of information is what most visitors want and not advertisement. Advertisement should only be in the "Paid affiliate hosting advertisement" and not in the forum.

I think the problem with dropping the hosting forum is that most of these discussions will move elsewhere in the forum. How does closing the forum prevent the negative discussions from taking place elsewhere? What happens when the forums are brought back online at the end of the month? I'm not sure shutting down the forum really addresses this issue. However, perhaps if Kieran's suggestion of shutting down the forum for a month is followed, it can be an opportunity to break some bad habits.

I suggest that if the hosting forum is to continue, the mission of the forum needs to be changed and narrowed. The mission should solely be focused on how to get Drupal to run on a particular hosting company's server. Pricing plans, reviews, ranking one hosting company over another, and posts that are commercial in nature have no place at Drupal.org. The posts should be focused on the technical aspects and not on opinions/promotions.

Under these rules:

These threads would stay (provide a "how to" or "how well"):

http://drupal.org/node/31395
http://drupal.org/node/133786
http://drupal.org/node/157762
http://drupal.org/node/250921
http://drupal.org/node/246492
http://drupal.org/node/247380

These threads would not stay:

http://drupal.org/node/249456
http://drupal.org/node/134085
http://drupal.org/node/9169
http://drupal.org/node/250867
http://drupal.org/node/247447
http://drupal.org/node/205195
http://drupal.org/node/214879
http://drupal.org/node/226829
http://drupal.org/node/78589
http://drupal.org/node/240958
http://drupal.org/node/211166
http://drupal.org/node/232081
http://drupal.org/node/190070
http://drupal.org/node/249181
http://drupal.org/node/248908
http://drupal.org/node/84935
http://drupal.org/node/164140 (Yes, my own post would be banned)

Now, I realize there are governance issues. But if you limit the posts to those with questions on installing/configuring/maintaining Drupal on a particular hosting company it becomes a lot clearer of what can stay and what needs to go.

My only entry into the hosting forum is when it's linked from issues like this in the webmasters queue, on that basis alone I support getting rid of it. I've only just been given site maintainer role and haven't used it much, but my personal reaction to this would be to permaban DVH and anyone else similar. Like killes says, if their business is based around spamming Drupal.org they can see how far this gets them.

I might not do much (anything) in Drupal's forums but I've been involved in running a couple of different forums elsewhere for several years, and persistent trolls are far more of a problem than the occasional viagra bot. No-one has to expend any energy posting in discussions like this about a viagra bot, for a start. Additionally spam like this is far more insidious than a viagra ad and has a tendency to stick around for far longer.

We already have a bunch of 'deprecated' forums. I'd suggest moving it to that container, locking all threads, and locking new posts (via form alter as mentioned, but maybe via taxonomy parent for "Deprecated"so everything put in that container gets locked for free.

For /hosting, handbook page with "things to look out for when choosing a drupal host" + paid ads sounds good if that's one of the options.

Now, I realize there are governance issues. But if you limit the posts to those with questions on installing/configuring/maintaining Drupal on a particular hosting company it becomes a lot clearer of what can stay and what needs to go.

It really doesn't. It requires an army of people to read every post in the forum, decide if it breaks criteria, delete/unpublish stuff that does, open issues about persistent offenders, deal with disputes etc. In my experience it doesn't matter how clear the rules are on any forum, spamming and trolling is a feature of the internet and if you're not prepared to ban persistent offenders it's better to shut problem areas down.

I think "how tos" are valuable. How does multisite work with cpanel? How do symlinks work? Can host X do rsync? And so on...

But...the advertisements etc. do indeed seem to cause way too much pain for the volunteer moderators.

+1 for "shutting down" the hosting forum in its current format.

Related: a few days ago I unpublished a thread in the paid services forum, where someone posted about another person/company alleging fraud and such. Turns out that there is an ongoing feud between the too, and I warned them both they will be blocked if they do not stop. Should we shut that forum too? No. Should we add some text to forbid posting of "I provide services ..." posts to prevent it from degrading like the hosting forum? Yes. Someone with permission please add that.

Back to the hosting forum: seems shutdown has the most support.

We still need a place where hosting tips and tricks are posted.

How about deprecating the current forum, and have a new one for "hosting tips and hints" and clearly state that it is forbidden to post outright "I provide hosting" or "great offer for drupal"? Other than a subtle link in a signature, no other selling goes on. No excessive commenting either.

Failing that, how about a groups.d.o for that, with the same rules as above?

RE: How about deprecating the current forum, and have a new one for "hosting tips and hints"

This sounds good -- I suggest calling it something along the lines of "Server Tuning Tips and Tricks" -- this way, it becomes less about hosting companies, and more about actually working on the hardware that runs your site.

The state of posts about hosting companies is truly depressing -- even the thread on "2008 Hosting Providers" feels more like an infomercial -- http://drupal.org/node/205195 -- for a person new to Drupal coming in and actually trying to find unbiased information, threads like this seem more confusing than useful.

"Server tuning" is covered by the high performance group at g.d.o, and would imply things you can do to a server, and hence a VPS or dedicated. It does not address things you can do on a shared server, or what to look for in a shared host.

Something more generic would be better.

Pages that need updating:

Link to forum on top-right of http://drupal.org/support

This page, http://drupal.org/services/hosting, will be updated to get the list of hosting companies from the Association's CiviCRM database. New text to put above that will have to be written.

What about the long series of posts on "I use so-and-so" or "I tried so-and-so and they are terrible"? I find those posts to be valuable, as long as the hosting companies don't get in there and post their ads.

I personally don't mind hosts from posting as long as they are useful posts. Certainly a few hosts specialize in Drupal and their staff may have valuable insights to share. I do use DVH and have contacted Amit about being more careful with what he says and responds to.

Kieran, I think what we have now with the static page is OK but I would have preferred to see the old Hosting forum remain with comments turned off and a warning that self promotion is strictly prohibited.

The pros are outlined in this thread. It would cut 90% of the "comments abuse". It enables us to keep the old revenue generating ads running. It's not as disruptive to users who regularly use that particular forum.

The long term view is this problem can be resolved automatically via the flag.module or similar. If a post is flagged x times based on x views (x%) then unpublish said post and notify the site maintainers. It would make our job a lot easier and let the community as a whole police Drupal.org in a non-obtrusive way.

Kieran, I think what we have now with the static page is OK but I would have preferred to see the old Hosting forum remain with comments turned off and a warning that self promotion is strictly prohibited.

I think one of the problems with that is if you allow threads about hosting, comments will pop up - most likely in the general discussion forum. I think people will want to discuss hosting (which in-and-of itself isn't necessarily bad) and by having comments available and in one place it would make moderating easier.

And I somehow doubt that flag.module will be used anytime soon (resources).

~silverwing

There's an issue to stop users posting in deprecated forums here: #231728: Users still using deprecated forums

If no volunteers turn up to moderate the hosting forums, I'd rather see that issue marked fixed instead.

What all is involved in moderating? I have limited time, but would like to help.

I can help as well as I already have site maintainer permissions.

My only question would be whethe or not there is a defined rule set to follow with regards to moderating this forum.

I filed a new issue regarding reinstating of the hosting forum http://drupal.org/node/317874 so this should be considered fixed.