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The Browns Board Lives: New Owner, New System, Same Data

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  • And as soon as I got a snapshot of the data I shut the board off as soon as I could, sorry about that. The reason is because any posts or messages that happened after the snapshot time would have been lost. So it was better to shut things down ASAP rather than let it keep running on invision.

    So some posts, more recent ones, got lost. But only within a few hour window hopefully.

  • I can't do Browns Game threads anymore? haha

    That's a cool new feature, the automatic game thread. I dig it.

  • Hi,

    After successful coordination with Invision, @westside-steve , and @atenears widow the browns board, its data, and domains has been completely transferred to me. There are no doubts about who controls the data, domain, renewals, or anything anymore - it's me. Everything is completely off of invision's cloud service, the domain(s) are owned by me. I don't intend to keep a monopoly or make a profit or anything, I just wanted to keep the community alive in a sustainable way.

    No more Invision

    I had no intention to continue paying Invision's cloud service, nothing wrong with their business model - they have questionably raised prices by 300% in only a few years and things. But their target is someone who isn't tech savvy and can't manage things on their own (that isn't me)

    The new forum is hosted in my own infrastructure, and using NodeBB . It's relatively similar in UI, I created some custom plugins, and used some existing plugins. It is an entirely different software but the data has been migrated. Old passwords will work, etc. (I could prove this with my OWN plain text password against the hash algorithm, to prove it worked) - neither I or invision has access to your actual passwords. They are one-way hash algorithms that can't be ran in reverse. But since I knew my own brownsboard password, I could test the one way (my password to the hashed version) to confirm the invision algorithm (which is just a basic bcrypt)

    Nothing against invision - pricing doesnt make sense for someone like me.

    In Memoriam

    I archived some user accounts and gave them badges "In Memoriam" - this refers to some of the late great members who have passed away. Including the original board's founder @atenears, and other great contributors like @mjp28 @tour2ma @the-gipper . It's a small way to honor them, and my interactions with them on here is the main reason I pushed to keep the board alive.

    If I missed anyone and I'm sure I did, let me know. Not intentional, I'm not the most active daily member so I only have a small memory.

    Automatic Gameday Threads and Chat Rooms

    A plugin I wrote for NodeBB will automatically make game day threads 1H before the game with the line, and keep it updated. Injury reports all that stuff. It will then close it after games for a post-game thread, and so forth. It will archive game day threads and make them read-only afterwards.

    Moderators: There are None (yet)

    I was not an admin or moderator of the previous browns board, so I had no insights into who was active or previously a moderator. I didn't migrate anybodys permissions or anything. I will make some members moderators just by default e.g. @westside-steve and @hoorta

    But please help. I am happy to maintain the cost and burdens and backups. I don't want to be a moderator or police users on the forum. So I'm really hoping that other people can pick up the job of being the general police force to keep things on topic and inline.

    I'm not that strict personally - I don't care if you talk about your frustration with Airbnb in the game day thread, but anything illegal or threatening will be an immediate ban and reported to the authorities - if it's perceived as a dangerous threat to another member of the board or society in general.

    Political Board: It's Archived and Read Only

    I don't care about your political opinions, I have my own. I don't care what you think politically. Political content is too sensitive for me to host on my own servers, so I do not want to open the political board again.

    Political Board: Archived, Replaced with New Format

    https://brownsboard.com/category/35/news-politics replaced the out of control political board with a News discussion format. It allows discussing news and politics, but all discussions are underneath specific news articles or stories.

    Steelers Week

    I just received ownership of the board this morning, and I worked all day basically to hurry up and get this thing up because I realized it's a Thursday night game. And not having a browns board running for the first place battle is pretty crazy.

    There will be bugs and issues, report them to me in private. I really wanted a few days to audit things and go over it all, but I didn't get a chance given the Thursday night game.

    Zombo

    I don't know what drama or things happened with zombo in the past, I met him once along with hoorta and others. I like him, I have his old account ready to be re-activated and assigned a new email if necessary so we can return to This week in the AFCN (hopefully)

    Idk the drama, but I assume its nonsense - so I hope he comes back as a regular.

    New Members

    I have cloudflare turnstile and some other things active to prevent spam as a starting point. It's a baseline, I dont want to gatekeep new members too hard but also dont want to allow easy spam. So we may have to fine tune a balance over time based on how things progress.

    Backups

    I have backups for the board running completely automated backed up to Cloudflare R2 - both with wal-g (postgres) and daily snapshots kept up to 30 days. So we're good, in the case something goes wrong or whatever.

    New Domain (brownsboard.com)

    In my acquisition I learned that Stan/Kathy owned not only thebrownsboard.com but also brownsboard.com. I took ownership of both, and made brownsboard.com the default. thebrownsboard.com redirects to this one. I think its nicer to type less and it also works out so I was able to test things without people finding the link.

    Tl;Dr

    I don't expect to make a profit, I don't expect to gain anything. I just like this community and interacted with some great (some deceased) people here and wanted to keep the history and the board alive.



    @bbedward This totally exceeded my expectations in every way BBE - especially remembering the highly devoted fans in here we've lost along the way. You slayed it! Many, many, many thanks man!

  • Hot damn, you really did it @bbedward. You big nerd you. You saved the day and l’m grateful. Thank you so much!

    Heck yes get Zombo back in the fold.

  • Damn... I thought something looked different when I logged in.

    Nicely done, the board looks fantastic!

  • My old password worked just fine. RIP poli board. It was interesting but it was also a hot mess. I’ll kick the shit out of the tires here and let you know what’s funky in the days to come.

  • Great job, sir. Good riddance to the poli board. Happy to mod again if needed

  • Nice job on the reboot... However I will state... It was rather weak not to include the poliboard. You yourself didn't have to engage in it... At any rate... the site looks nice.. Go Browns...

  • Great job, sir. Good riddance to the poli board. Happy to mod again if needed

    @MLD-Woody said:
    Great job, sir. Good riddance to the poli board. Happy to mod again if needed


    Made you a mod

    @nickers said:
    Nice job on the reboot... However I will state... It was rather weak not to include the poliboard. You yourself didn't have to engage in it... At any rate... the site looks nice.. Go Browns...


    I like the idea of it, and i'm not adverse to differing opinions and discussions. But regardless now I may be held responsible for what people post here (even though the ToS says I'm not, you never know how the law might interpret things). Leaving it archived is even questionable for me. It seems completely unmoderated to me at this point, there's doxxing and hateful remarks and various things that I'm not comfortable hosting.

    Maybe if the moderator group proves they can adequately moderate the rest of the board I'd be open to re-opening a political board, but I can't allow anything that's very gray or 4chan-like that might get my servers flagged for anything malicious.

  • @bbedward This totally exceeded my expectations in every way BBE - especially remembering the highly devoted fans in here we've lost along the way. You slayed it! Many, many, many thanks man!

    @bbedward This totally exceeded my expectations in every way BBE - especially remembering the highly devoted fans in here we've lost along the way. You slayed it! Many, many, many thanks man!


    I second this opinion and personally glad the poliboard is where it needs to be. People there can go find another as I'm sure they exist out there. And hopefully most of them also continue discussing the Browns since we all have that in common. Plus I always liked cal's takes on outdoors stuff & "wild" recipes & canning.

  • @MLD-Woody said:
    Great job, sir. Good riddance to the poli board. Happy to mod again if needed


    Made you a mod

    @nickers said:
    Nice job on the reboot... However I will state... It was rather weak not to include the poliboard. You yourself didn't have to engage in it... At any rate... the site looks nice.. Go Browns...


    I like the idea of it, and i'm not adverse to differing opinions and discussions. But regardless now I may be held responsible for what people post here (even though the ToS says I'm not, you never know how the law might interpret things). Leaving it archived is even questionable for me. It seems completely unmoderated to me at this point, there's doxxing and hateful remarks and various things that I'm not comfortable hosting.

    Maybe if the moderator group proves they can adequately moderate the rest of the board I'd be open to re-opening a political board, but I can't allow anything that's very gray or 4chan-like that might get my servers flagged for anything malicious.

    @MLD-Woody said:
    Great job, sir. Good riddance to the poli board. Happy to mod again if needed

    Made you a mod

    @nickers said:
    Nice job on the reboot... However I will state... It was rather weak not to include the poliboard. You yourself didn't have to engage in it... At any rate... the site looks nice.. Go Browns...

    I like the idea of it, and i'm not adverse to differing opinions and discussions. But regardless now I may be held responsible for what people post here (even though the ToS says I'm not, you never know how the law might interpret things). Leaving it archived is even questionable for me. It seems completely unmoderated to me at this point, there's doxxing and hateful remarks and various things that I'm not comfortable hosting.

    Maybe if the moderator group proves they can adequately moderate the rest of the board I'd be open to re-opening a political board, but I can't allow anything that's very gray or 4chan-like that might get my servers flagged for anything malicious.

    I would just say if your gonna choose moderators.. Choose them fairly.. by that I mean people who are on both sides of the Aisle.. Not all on one side... This can be done collectively.

  • @MLD-Woody said:
    Great job, sir. Good riddance to the poli board. Happy to mod again if needed

    Made you a mod

    @nickers said:
    Nice job on the reboot... However I will state... It was rather weak not to include the poliboard. You yourself didn't have to engage in it... At any rate... the site looks nice.. Go Browns...

    I like the idea of it, and i'm not adverse to differing opinions and discussions. But regardless now I may be held responsible for what people post here (even though the ToS says I'm not, you never know how the law might interpret things). Leaving it archived is even questionable for me. It seems completely unmoderated to me at this point, there's doxxing and hateful remarks and various things that I'm not comfortable hosting.

    Maybe if the moderator group proves they can adequately moderate the rest of the board I'd be open to re-opening a political board, but I can't allow anything that's very gray or 4chan-like that might get my servers flagged for anything malicious.

    I would just say if your gonna choose moderators.. Choose them fairly.. by that I mean people who are on both sides of the Aisle.. Not all on one side... This can be done collectively.

    @nickers said:
    @MLD-Woody said:
    Great job, sir. Good riddance to the poli board. Happy to mod again if needed

    Made you a mod

    @nickers said:
    Nice job on the reboot... However I will state... It was rather weak not to include the poliboard. You yourself didn't have to engage in it... At any rate... the site looks nice.. Go Browns...

    I like the idea of it, and i'm not adverse to differing opinions and discussions. But regardless now I may be held responsible for what people post here (even though the ToS says I'm not, you never know how the law might interpret things). Leaving it archived is even questionable for me. It seems completely unmoderated to me at this point, there's doxxing and hateful remarks and various things that I'm not comfortable hosting.

    Maybe if the moderator group proves they can adequately moderate the rest of the board I'd be open to re-opening a political board, but I can't allow anything that's very gray or 4chan-like that might get my servers flagged for anything malicious.
    I would just say if your gonna choose moderators.. Choose them fairly.. by that I mean people who are on both sides of the Aisle.. Not all on one side... This can be done collectively.


    Since there is no Poliboard anymore, there is no "both sides of the aisle". There's only Browns fans.

    The Poliboard is right where it deserves to be. Let's be honest, the only reason Steve took over this board was to keep that abortion running.

    This is primarily a Cleveland Browns message board.

  • @MLD-Woody said:
    Great job, sir. Good riddance to the poli board. Happy to mod again if needed

    Made you a mod

    @nickers said:
    Nice job on the reboot... However I will state... It was rather weak not to include the poliboard. You yourself didn't have to engage in it... At any rate... the site looks nice.. Go Browns...

    I like the idea of it, and i'm not adverse to differing opinions and discussions. But regardless now I may be held responsible for what people post here (even though the ToS says I'm not, you never know how the law might interpret things). Leaving it archived is even questionable for me. It seems completely unmoderated to me at this point, there's doxxing and hateful remarks and various things that I'm not comfortable hosting.

    Maybe if the moderator group proves they can adequately moderate the rest of the board I'd be open to re-opening a political board, but I can't allow anything that's very gray or 4chan-like that might get my servers flagged for anything malicious.

    I would just say if your gonna choose moderators.. Choose them fairly.. by that I mean people who are on both sides of the Aisle.. Not all on one side... This can be done collectively.

    @nickers said:
    I would just say if your gonna choose moderators.. Choose them fairly.. by that I mean people who are on both sides of the Aisle.. Not all on one side... This can be done collectively.


    Yea that's not a problem. @dutch-oven @westside-steve may have personal differences but they are both global moderators of every topic because I trust their judgement. Among @hoorta @ibleedbrown @flugel @mld-woody I either have met them personally and trust their judgements or they helped the transition and I've interacted with them for a long time. @calfoxwc may have vastly different opinions than myself but he's a true browns fan and regular so he has my respect completely.

    I'm not going to run a circus or host conspiracy theories or dox people or do anything that's going to put me on a watch list. I trust the moderator group to be fair and unbiased based on the terms I set. I don't care if you insult each other and fight do whatever as long as it doesn't cross boundaries of getting too personal, etc. The terms are set and that's how it is.

    Like I said, I don't really care. Just stick to the basic decency guidelines and you can swear at each other and still fight all you want. Just don't make threats, post illegal content, or dox people.

    And Zombo I have no idea what the hell happened with that, he's also someone I respect a lot and I hope he becomes an active member again. Also someone I have met personally

  • Way to go bbedward!!

  • Great job, the colors and formatting are amazing!

  • Nice work BB!
    ā¤ļø
    WSS

  • Hi, Zombo here. I'm back. So if you can set me up as Zombo at ** we will have our first This Week in the AFC North tommorow.

  • Hi, Zombo here. I'm back. So if you can set me up as Zombo at ** we will have our first This Week in the AFC North tommorow.

    @Horse-Balls said:
    Hi, Zombo here. I'm back. So if you can set me up as Zombo at ---- we will have our first This Week in the AFC North tommorow.


    You're back, sent you a password reset email for Zombo. The downside is I had to remove the email from your "Horse Balls" account since it cant be duplicated, if you have an alt email I can let you have both though. I just made it some throwaway.

  • @nickers said:
    @MLD-Woody said:
    Great job, sir. Good riddance to the poli board. Happy to mod again if needed

    Made you a mod

    @nickers said:
    Nice job on the reboot... However I will state... It was rather weak not to include the poliboard. You yourself didn't have to engage in it... At any rate... the site looks nice.. Go Browns...

    I like the idea of it, and i'm not adverse to differing opinions and discussions. But regardless now I may be held responsible for what people post here (even though the ToS says I'm not, you never know how the law might interpret things). Leaving it archived is even questionable for me. It seems completely unmoderated to me at this point, there's doxxing and hateful remarks and various things that I'm not comfortable hosting.

    Maybe if the moderator group proves they can adequately moderate the rest of the board I'd be open to re-opening a political board, but I can't allow anything that's very gray or 4chan-like that might get my servers flagged for anything malicious.
    I would just say if your gonna choose moderators.. Choose them fairly.. by that I mean people who are on both sides of the Aisle.. Not all on one side... This can be done collectively.


    Since there is no Poliboard anymore, there is no "both sides of the aisle". There's only Browns fans.

    The Poliboard is right where it deserves to be. Let's be honest, the only reason Steve took over this board was to keep that abortion running.

    This is primarily a Cleveland Browns message board.

    Let's be honest, the only reason Steve took over this board was to keep that abortion running.

    This is primarily a Cleveland Browns message board.


    i don’t think that’s fair. The poliboard predates Stan’s passing and Steve’s taking over, and its purpose all along was to keep the politics off the main board.

    By and large it accomplished that. I don’t know if anyone could have predicted how gross and weird it would turn in to, but clearly there’s an outlet for it. It was statistically the second most popular forum here. I bear my part of the shame in that.

    But it was also a place we could discuss politics on the internet with entities we were reasonably certain were actual people, and l think that’s a diminishing thing on the internet these days.

  • Hi, Zombo here. I'm back. So if you can set me up as Zombo at ** we will have our first This Week in the AFC North tommorow.

    @Horse-Balls

    You’re not Zombo