Re: Future of SciRate

[Noon van der Silk]

Hey Jaiden,

  We (Silverpond) might take it on.

  Regarding the hosting, can you tell me some details about it? Who's it with and how much do you pay and maybe an indication of bandwidth?

  

On 10 March 2017 at 08:07, Jaiden Mispy <jai...@mispy.me> wrote:

Hi all,

I've been busy with other projects and haven't really touched the SciRate codebase much in the last year or so. I don't really want it just sitting around-- it's a fairly complex system and will eventually encounter some critical bug or security vulnerability if left alone for too long. It also costs me about $408/year to host which while bearable, is not super ideal.

On the other hand, I don't want to simply stop running it; it sees some (small) active use and there are a bunch of interesting comments up there that are likely worth preserving. That and I have some sentimental attachment to it. :)

Ideas for a more stable long-term equilibrium:

1. Shut down the site and replace it with a read-only static copy that could be hosted for free with no maintenance, indefinitely preserving the comments. This is the very minimum option I would consider if I really just can't run it anymore.

2. Pare it down to something with much greater infrastructural simplicity that fulfills the same basic functions and port the existing users/comments to that. A browser plugin that adds sciting/commenting directly to arxiv.org, for example, could run off a very simple database. It wouldn't need to maintain a synced copy of the paper metadata, which is the main source of complexity (and hosting expense).

3. Someone else is willing to take over the hosting/maintenance and it continues along as it has. The code is pretty robust and runs itself for the most part, but technology marches on so inevitably something will break and the person responsible would need to have the expertise necessary to fix it in that eventuality.

What are your thoughts?

Cheers,

Jaiden

--

Noon van der Silk, ن

http://silky.github.io/

"Every morning when I wake up, I experience an exquisite joy — the joy
of being this signature."

[Noon van der Silk]

Hey Jaiden,

  At this point, I'll take it on personally.

  To confirm,

1) You'll hand over details for the Linode account, and I'll switch the payments to come from me,

2) You'll add me as an admin to the organisation - https://github.com/scirate,

3) I'll take over maintenance of the website and am free to update it as I wish.

  Aram/Steve - It'd be great to have you both involved as advisers. I won't make any big changes for a while, but I might put that recommendation engine on the roadmap. Might be useful to have a hangout, or something, at some point in the next few months to go over anything we'd like to add.

  Does this sound reasonable to everyone?

--

Noon

  

On 10 March 2017 at 19:08, Jaiden Mispy <jai...@mispy.me> wrote:

Hi Noon,

Thanks for stepping up! It's currently hosted on a 4GB Linode. Bandwidth isn't a concern (it never comes close to hitting the limit), we're mainly just paying for the ram and hdd space. The account isn't being used for anything else so if you like I can simply give you the password and you can update the details. 

[Aram Harrow]

Hi Noon and Jaiden,

Steve and I talked and this sounds great.   Noon, thanks for taking this on!

We should talk at some point about recommendation engines, and whether trying to get funding for developer time would make sense.

-aram