The Future of Sinclair ZX World

General Chit Chat about Sinclair Computers and their Clones
RWAP
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Re: The Future of Sinclair ZX World

Post by RWAP »

Paul wrote: If it's ok with you I'd like to discuss details in private with you.
I'd like to concentrate these things in our ZX-Team that is already running the German forum, the German wiki, the irc chat and a mail relay server and the zx81.de domain. At the moment all this made by individuals of our team. It might be time to organize these in a structure that gives safety for the future. This will be a discussion in march on our team meeting.
Yes of course - it would make sense to bring as many sites and resources as possible under one body which can ensure the long term survival
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gammaray
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Re: The Future of Sinclair ZX World

Post by gammaray »

Many hands make light work...

Commitments should not be taken lightly but if tasks can parceled out in smaller bits they become less burdensome. Is this possible?

How many "Stonewall Jacksons" do we have on this site?

I for one am willing to make unending monthly donation $5 for hosting this site. Would this discussion also include SMR.com?

Charles
5-TS1000,UK ZX81<-Sheelagh, US ZX81, 2-TS1500/KDLX , 3-TS2040 printer, 2-TS2020 cassette decks, ZXPAND+AY, ZeddyNET, ZXBlast, UDG, ZX8CCB, AERCO, BUILDS/REPAIRS ZX Spectrum, ZX80 Minstrel, ZXMAX48 v1 v2, 2-TS-2068, ROM, 16kRAM
RWAP
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Re: The Future of Sinclair ZX World

Post by RWAP »

gammaray wrote:Many hands make light work...

Commitments should not be taken lightly but if tasks can parceled out in smaller bits they become less burdensome. Is this possible?

How many "Stonewall Jacksons" do we have on this site?

I for one am willing to make unending monthly donation $5 for hosting this site. Would this discussion also include SMR.com?

Charles
It is true that many hands make light work - but the correct structure has to be in place. I have started a similar discussion on the QL Forums also because of the QL Wiki and other projects which I have set up which are QL related.

The main issue is getting people to step forward who are willing to take the lead on this and make important decisions such as how it should be set up.

The discussion would not include SellMyRetro as that is a commercial venture - if something happened to me, then my family would have to try and find someone who wished to purchase that as a going concern. The same applies to RWAP Software and RWAP Services - although it would be difficult to find someone who had enough interest in retro machines with sufficient capital to purchase the stock!
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mrtinb
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Re: The Future of Sinclair ZX World

Post by mrtinb »

You could get 1GB free web hosting here. It supply PHP and CPanel.
Martin
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ZX81, Lambda 8300, Commodore 64, Mac G4 Cube
RWAP
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Re: The Future of Sinclair ZX World

Post by RWAP »

mrtinb wrote:You could get 1GB free web hosting here. It supply PHP and CPanel.
It is not the issue of the cost of web hosting - I share my webhosting betwen several websites.

It is who owns and administers the domain name and the websites. Imagine what would happen if I was killed in an accident (or even hospitalised long term) tomorrow - I am the person who owns the domain name for sinclairzxworld, z88world.com, rwapadventures.com and the person responsible for administering these sites, as well as the QL Wiki, SinclairQL Github, various pages and groups on Facebook etc.

If I can't be contacted and my family don't have access to my email accounts etc - then these would all be lost as they would not be renewed or if there was an issue with the sites, then the issue would not be fixed.

Yes I can make others administrators and give them access to passwords etc - but this is not a long term solution and they cannot (for example) simply take over the domain names and hosting without my agreement....

If I were to say that I will remove all of these community projects from my servers and stop paying for them from 1st January 2018 - would that bring forward people to come up with a long term solution? If something happened to me in the meantime, then my family would have to spend a lot of time and money paying accountants and solicitors to sort out my business and sell what they could (as they have no experience in any of the retro stuff I do) - so it could be that domain names and the forums would be put out to the highest bidder - not exactly what I would want to do.

I could of course make a Will leaving the domain names, forums, websites etc to specific people - but who is willing to take on the responsibility - assuming of course that they survive me - and again they are then left with the question of sorting something out in the event of their own death or long term illness.

At the moment, there are many many retro groups and pages out there on the internet, but they all tend to rely on one person who owns the sites and domain names - which is never going to be a long term approach.
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PokeMon
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Re: The Future of Sinclair ZX World

Post by PokeMon »

I don't know what your specific idea is. If you want a personal backup it would be a good idea to find one or more persons where you share account information. It is easy possible to create a new email account, refer all domain records and hosting sites to be administered. All domain services are handled via email only - this is my personal experience. You can easily transfer domains using KK processes which are handled via email also. So somebody can transfer domain names to a new owner for example and transfer contents as well via ftp.

I think this is more a matter of trust to one or more persons handling this in such a case. And it is a matter of trust that your great work will be continued by somebody. I can see a few administration people here - maybe not bad to share those accounts with them, just in case. I think the people will respect your work and as long as you are staying well alive don't abuse your accounts.

Building up companies or other organizations doesn't make it easier or more reliable. Just my opinion. 8-)
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siggi
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Re: The Future of Sinclair ZX World

Post by siggi »

Maybe a museum would be a solution?
http://www.computerconservationsociety.org/museums.htm
My ZX81 web-server: online since 2007, running since dec. 2020 using ZeddyNet hardware
http://zx81.ddns.net/ZxTeaM
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mrtinb
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Re: The Future of Sinclair ZX World

Post by mrtinb »

I was thinking in the same way as PokeMon.
  • Have a free hosting
  • Share account and setup with 2 other people
  • No bureaucracy
Martin
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ZX81, Lambda 8300, Commodore 64, Mac G4 Cube
RWAP
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Re: The Future of Sinclair ZX World

Post by RWAP »

Free hosting is never really reliable enough - paid hosting has enough issues with spikes in traffic and I have used low cost / free hosting in the past just for the company to suddenly turn off all access to the servers (including FTP) and stop responding to support requests.

With a site such as sinclairzxworld where there are a lot of files uploaded by users onto the server that is a huge risk unless you have a regular backup system of the host.

I cannot currently give others access to the hosting or the domain name because I use one account for several sites, so a new hosting company would be needed. The question is who would own the domain name and how do you protect that in the unfortunate event of something sudden happening to that one person.

I think people are concentrating too much on these forums - administration of forums is minimal - but we also need new sites setting up - a ZX81 hardware resources site (maybe some sort of Wiki) and a software resources site (maybe like World of Spectrum's Archive).

A computer museum or similar is basically what is needed in the long term, but it needs a proper legal entity, the funding and people willing to spend time running it and creating new websites going forward.

At the moment, the ZX81 (as with many other computers) is very disjointed - these forums help bring people together, but if people want software or hardware, then there is the UK forums, the German forums, plus forums on several other generic computing sites, several hobby sites with software and single hardware projects....

Maybe the best way forward is to ask for a list of people who are willing to get together and look after the ZX80 / ZX81 aspects of the various sites and facebook pages etc which I control at the moment. If there are enough people, then they can discuss how best to do this for the ZX80/ZX81 and consider how they will develop extra resources going forward.

People on the QL Forums will also be asked then maybe there can be groups responsible for each site / page etc who can then nominate others to get together to think about an over-arching approach to form a one-stop Sinclair go to place....

As for the Z88 - this has a much smaller user base, and no-one is really active on the forums, so that is more difficult.

OK - so who is on the list?
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Paul
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Re: The Future of Sinclair ZX World

Post by Paul »

Paul is on the list
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