New site for developers of all camps

[OlafSch]

you find the site under:
http://www.amigacoding.de

I want to describe shortly what I think what this site should be about and the rules.

First I think the situation is that it is very difficult for programmers that want to start programming (be it amigians or developers that want to start support one or all amiga platforms to get informations. Informations are split on different special sites or even lost (like utilitybase). But this special sites are mostly dedicated to only one platform and there is no central resource anymore covering all platforms. There is also no platform covering all platforms where programmers can discuss without the typical discussions.

So I think this site should be:
Neutral, covering all platforms. Emotional discussions with phrases like "True", "done right" will be stopped by moderation (for that there are already enough sites)
Resource for programmers and people interested in programming/development
Supporting communication between programmers and collaboration between all camps
Any insulting comments will be deleted without any comment

There are parts of utilitybase in web left:
http://web.archive.org/web/201002070...ilitybase.com/

I would like to ask the people who have contributed to utilitybase in the past add the informations on this site (to save them). I cannot do it myself.

[Spellcoder]

Nice to see new initiatives, however isn't it confusing to use the same name as my amigacoding.com wiki ?

Also I hope it'll stay online for a long time, as when sites/forums disappear they can take a lot of usefull information or discussions with them. This way the AMOS factory also lost many discussions/posts due to new incarnations of the site/forums. Which is funny because the posts from the AMOS emailing lists which existed before the forums (since 1993) are all archived on Aminet and will never be lost. (funny to read back my old posts there from '93 :P). Maybe it's an idea to have exports/archives of discussions uploaded to Aminet every now and then to preserve knowledge?
(it was also one of the reasons I requested the release of the AMOSPro sourcecodes, since I knew Francois Lionet already lost all the sourcecodes himself)

[OlafSch]

Originally Posted by Spellcoder

Nice to see new initiatives, however isn't it confusing to use the same name as my amigacoding.com wiki ?

Also I hope it'll stay online for a long time, as when sites/forums disappear they can take a lot of usefull information or discussions with them. This way the AMOS factory also lost many discussions/posts due to new incarnations of the site/forums. Which is funny because the posts from the AMOS emailing lists which existed before the forums (since 1993) are all archived on Aminet and will never be lost. (funny to read back my old posts there from '93 :P). Maybe it's an idea to have exports/archives of discussions uploaded to Aminet every now and then to preserve knowledge?
(it was also one of the reasons I requested the release of the AMOSPro sourcecodes, since I knew Francois Lionet already lost all the sourcecodes himself)

I plan to stay it online for a long time.

the problem with forum-software is (when you change it) that the databases are all specific and propably not very good documented so when you want to take over the data from one system to another you must have someone who knows both and how the data are organized (propably in reality not the case). So by changing the system you loose all data. I will try to save some of the threads from utilitybase in my site.

[Lonewolf10]

Originally Posted by Spellcoder

Nice to see new initiatives, however isn't it confusing to use the same name as my amigacoding.com wiki ?

Glad to see you posting here... at first I thought OlafSCh was you under a new username!

Originally Posted by Spellcoder

Which is funny because the posts from the AMOS emailing lists which existed before the forums (since 1993) are all archived on Aminet and will never be lost.

I still have to finish archiving and uploading the Y! AMOS list emails to Aminet. It's not been forgotten, I have just been busy with other things

[ascp]

http://www.amigacoding.de/ seems gone now too. :/

[Daedalus]

There was very little activity on amigacoding.de, but perhaps it's only a temporary thing until they can make it GDPR compliant. I know that the various other German Amiga forums were quite concerned with this, with talk of a1k.org not accepting new members. AmigaForum.de appears to be down as well, likely for whatever reason amigacoding.de is down too.

[OlafSch]

Originally Posted by ascp

http://www.amigacoding.de/ seems gone now too. :/

I have disabled my amiga websites for now, expecially the forum site will stay offline propably because of EU data privacy law. I am not sure how compliant the forum is and I do not have much time now to reprogram it and am not interested to get sued for a hobby forum.

[nogginthenog]

It looks like amiga.org has the same problem.. Down since 25 May.

[Gorf]

It would need only three "simple" steps to make a forum safe for the EU:

1) don't collect any data from visitors without being logged in (no cookies etc.)
2) let users give consent when they log in
3) inform all existing users about how you store data by email - no reply required.

[indigolemon]

I've been doing some reading into this myself, and found the following:

GDPR applies to you if you process personal information AND are processing it as part of an enterprise. Article 4(18) defines enterprise as `a natural or legal person engaged in an economic activity, irrespective of its legal form, including partnerships or associations regularly engaged in an economic activity'. So basically, it seems that if you aren't making any money through your site you are ok.

Still doing more digging to see if this is a widely held understanding, but given very few Amiga sites are likely to be making lots of cashola, most are probably OK.

[OlafSch]

Originally Posted by Gorf

It would need only three "simple" steps to make a forum safe for the EU:

1) don't collect any data from visitors without being logged in (no cookies etc.)
2) let users give consent when they log in
3) inform all existing users about how you store data by email - no reply required.

that is not that simple...

For example I use a forum system and have to analyze what data are saved and how long. And of course I would have to offer a system what data are saved and delete everything if requested. All of that would need a lot of time I do not have to analyze and test, in worst case I would even need to program functionality for a hobby website. I assume that many forum owners now have that problem. And nobody really knows what exactly has to be done.

[OlafSch]

Originally Posted by indigolemon

I've been doing some reading into this myself, and found the following:



Still doing more digging to see if this is a widely held understanding, but given very few Amiga sites are likely to be making lots of cashola, most are probably OK.

That is wrong. Of course every company (beginning with self-employed) are affected but also associations and of course also forum websites, even if they are just for hobby. Basically every site in any way collecting date, be it websites with logfiles and contact forms, eShops or forum sites. If it is done for fun or for business is irrelevant here. Just pure private sites like myHomepage showing your family might be exception but even there you can get in trouble if you offer links f.e. on a facebook page. As a example, webfonts (f.e. from google) were hip in webdesign, now you have to remove them because you can get sued because by using them google could collect data and as a website owner you are responsible for every link...

[Gorf]

On allmost every system you can switch off logging - you don’t need ip logging, since you have a valid email-address.
And that is the only personal datum you are keeping.
Any comments in your forum are anonymised through a nick.
If someone wants to you to delete all personal data: you delete the profile with the email address. All comments under the pseudonym can stay.

(At least that is what our lawyer told us at my office...)

[OlafSch]

Originally Posted by Gorf

On allmost every system you can switch off logging - you don’t need ip logging, since you have a valid email-address.
And that is the only personal datum you are keeping.
Any comments in your forum are anonymised through a nick.
If someone wants to you to delete all personal data: you delete the profile with the email address. All comments under the pseudonym can stay.

(At least that is what our lawyer told us at my office...)

IP is any case logged on webserver in logfiles, something you cannot switch off. I do not know if the software I use is compliant (or can be made compliant), in best case it could be done by changing preferences but there I am not sure. Older systems (no longer supported) certainly have a problem now. Regarding what lawyer tell... nobody knows exactly until there are decided court cases because the rules are not precise in many cases.

[indigolemon]

yeah - it's an utter minefield - but this thread is interesting: https://theadminzone.com/threads/gdp...m-owner.143855

Specifically posts by user 'aomtealfox' who seems to have been involved in the writing of the GDPR.

[Daedalus]

One issue I can see for existing forums is that there may be other information stored besides the email address, such as age, gender, location and so on that people have to explicitly approve for you to be allowed to use it. So, for anyone who already joined a forum before GDPR, they will need to approve the use of those details, or else the forum owner should delete them. Getting approval can be difficult - people ignore emails, emails get caught in spam traps, people don't read them correctly, people genuinely no longer want that data to be used...), so the forum owner will have to delete at least some existing information before the forum is compliant. To me, that sounds like a fair amount of work.

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by OlafSch

IP is any case logged on webserver in logfiles, something you cannot switch off.

On Apache and on Nginx you can turn the logging off.
You can also periodically delete the logfile.

I do not know if the software I use is compliant (or can be made compliant), in best case it could be done by changing preferences but there I am not sure.

I understand the problem and I don't know your system either of course ... is it some open source tool?

Older systems (no longer supported) certainly have a problem now. Regarding what lawyer tell... nobody knows exactly until there are decided court cases because the rules are not precise in many cases.

That is true and I hate the new rules myself (or at least the stupid way this law is made). But I am very confident, that we are on the save side following the rules I mentioned. If not, our lawyer will burn on the stake!

[OlafSch]

it is SMF Simple machines forum

it is still in development and open source

it seems they are working on making it eu compliant:
https://www.simplemachines.org/commu...781#msg3974781

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by OlafSch

it is SMF Simple machines forum

it is still in development and open source

it seems they are working on making it eu compliant:
https://www.simplemachines.org/commu...781#msg3974781

That post looks very promising. I hope they can build in this new features quickly - so you can bring your page online again.
Hopefully at this point there will be more overall clarity about this matter as well!

[SimonCD32]

big ups to everyone still developing for the Amiga