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Kenneth Folk Dharma forum blocked by Wetpaint

Hi Everybody,

The Wetpaint administrators have blocked the KFD forum at kennethfolkdharma.wetpaint.com for reasons known only to themselves. I'm trying to work it out with them, but haven't yet been able to get a straight answer. There is a message on the Wetpaint Central home page about a bunch of sites being blocked due to offensive content. Not sure how that applies to us, so maybe it's just a mistake. Meanwhile here is the plan: I'm working with Owen Becker to move the KFD forum to a new platform, one that will be more reliable than Wetpaint and with quicker page loads. I'll keep you updated here as it shapes up. We will do our best to move all the existing threads to the new site.

Thanks for your patience and looking forward to seeing you on the new and improved KFD forum.

-Kenneth

RE: Kenneth Folk Dharma forum blocked by Wetpaint
Answer
1/21/13 7:31 PM as a reply to Kenneth Folk.
Thanks for the update. I tried to get on there and, for a second, thought I'd personally been blocked/banned. I hope the situation gets resolved and all that content is able to be saved for posterity.

RE: Kenneth Folk Dharma forum blocked by Wetpaint
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1/21/13 7:39 PM as a reply to Alan Smithee.
Hi Alan,

Yes, there's something a little bit shocking about being blocked and you wonder if you should take it personally. Realizing that it isn't up to me whether the forum ever comes back online makes me ponder how much we are at the mercy of things we take for granted.

RE: Kenneth Folk Dharma forum blocked by Wetpaint
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1/21/13 11:37 PM as a reply to Kenneth Folk.
I've experienced a smaller version of that sensation -- realizing how much we are at the mercy of things we take for granted -- the first time my computer hard-drive crashed. My parents were just a few weeks away from giving me an external hard drive as a backup [I'd asked for it as a gift] when my computer crashed and never recovered. All the data inside -- which I'd thought of as real and almost material [movies, books on PDF, my writings, etc.] disapeared in the blink of an eye. I guess people have similar sensations when their houses burn down, etc. Sucks. I can't imagine why they have blocked the site. There was obviously [as we know] nothing "offensive" on there. Hopefully it is just a temporary error, like when I got "accidentally banned" from the DHO 'cause one of the admin's fingers slipped on their tablet...

RE: Kenneth Folk Dharma forum blocked by Wetpaint
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1/21/13 11:38 PM as a reply to Alan Smithee.
Alan Smithee:
I can't imagine why they have blocked the site. There was obviously {as we know] nothing "offensive" on there. Hopefully it is just a temporary error, like when I got "accidentally banned" from the DHO 'cause one of the admin's fingers slipped on their tablet...


# puts hand up

Ipad mini, fat finger tips and the banning button quite close to the recent posts link = "accidental banning"

Apologies.

It should be made clear that banning wil only happen after probably multiple warnings as was the case for james yen. If anyone finds themselves banned on the dho without reason and prior warning, it is most probably accidental. Contact one of us moderators via email if so (mine: nhalay at gmail)

Nick (mod)

RE: Kenneth Folk Dharma forum blocked by Wetpaint
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1/22/13 7:53 AM as a reply to Nikolai ..
Ahh OK then - another mystery. Glad to hear about the platform that would be cool to see it on a faster one.

Thanks

RE: Kenneth Folk Dharma forum blocked by Wetpaint
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1/22/13 8:05 AM as a reply to Kenneth Folk.
I have an offline backup I did of the site on November 19, 2012. Unfortunately that's the most recent one I have, but that's a lot of stuff that would be gone (possibly) otherwise.

Regards,
Jayson

RE: Kenneth Folk Dharma forum blocked by Wetpaint
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1/22/13 8:15 AM as a reply to MuMuWu MuMuMuMu.
MuMuWu MuMuMuMu:
I have an offline backup I did of the site on November 19, 2012. Unfortunately that's the most recent one I have, but that's a lot of stuff that would be gone (possibly) otherwise.

Regards,
Jayson


That's great to hear though Jayson.

RE: Kenneth Folk Dharma forum blocked by Wetpaint
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1/22/13 8:54 AM as a reply to Kenneth Folk.
Thanks for letting us know. I'm looking forward to a more streamlined platform. Working with Wetpaint is all too frequently like watching paint dry. emoticon Laurel

RE: Kenneth Folk Dharma forum blocked by Wetpaint
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1/22/13 9:05 AM as a reply to Jane Laurel Carrington.
Meanwhile here is the plan: I'm working with Owen Becker to move the KFD forum to a new platform, one that will be more reliable than Wetpaint and with quicker page loads.


I hope you will be using something open source, well supported, mature and with a large active development ecosystem Kenneth. Drupal or maybe Wordpress make good candidates. Use your own domain name on your own shared server (not a hosted thing like Wetpaint) for the obvious (now..) reasons.

Really sorry to see this happen to you and your fantastic site. Onwards and upwards...

RE: Kenneth Folk Dharma forum blocked by Wetpaint
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1/22/13 12:26 PM as a reply to Bagpuss The Gnome.
@MuMuWu: OK, Jayson, that's fantastic; thanks to your backup, we have all the discussion threads through at least November 19th, and we'll see if we can get the rest. A couple of ideas:

-I know Daniel used custom software to strip the old DhO Wetpaint site of its discussion threads and move them here to the new DhO. I'll ask him about that.

I haven't checked yet, but the Internet Time Machine may have a recent snapshot of our forum.

@Laurel: You said that using Wetpaint is "like watching paint dry." LOL

@Bagpuss: Right you are. Even as we speak, I'm trying to configure bbPress, running on my Wordpress site, kennethfolkdharma.com, as our new forum. (Thanks to Omnipleasant for installing it a while back as a security measure in case of a crisis like this one.)

RE: Kenneth Folk Dharma forum blocked by Wetpaint
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1/22/13 12:34 PM as a reply to Kenneth Folk.
Sorry to hear about this, Kenneth. I hope the site gets back up soon and that the content can be recovered and transferred. I second the "watching paint dry" sentiment and think moving away from Wetpaint would be positive.

Jim / apperception

RE: Kenneth Folk Dharma forum blocked by Wetpaint
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1/22/13 12:42 PM as a reply to Fitter Stoke.
Thanks, Jim.

OK, just checked the Internet Time Machine. It looks like that isn't going to help us. We have Jayson's backup through mid-November, and I'm still hopeful that Wetpaint admin staff will get the site back online soon. Meanwhile, I'll get busy on the next incarnation of the KFD forum, so people can resume their practice threads.

RE: Kenneth Folk Dharma forum blocked by Wetpaint
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1/22/13 1:01 PM as a reply to Kenneth Folk.
Kenneth Folk:
Thanks, Jim.

OK, just checked the Internet Time Machine. It looks like that isn't going to help us. We have Jayson's backup through mid-November, and I'm still hopeful that Wetpaint admin staff will get the site back online soon. Meanwhile, I'll get busy on the next incarnation of the KFD forum, so people can resume their practice threads.
Kenneth, you may also be able to salvage some content with Google's cache. Just add cache: before any of the forum URLs to see if Google picked them up.

Example

RE: Kenneth Folk Dharma forum blocked by Wetpaint
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1/22/13 2:19 PM as a reply to bud ..

RE: Kenneth Folk Dharma forum blocked by Wetpaint
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1/22/13 3:48 PM as a reply to MuMuWu MuMuMuMu.
As gutted I am about the lockdown on KFD, I am positively rejoicing about the possibility of a new platform! Bring it on!

RE: Kenneth Folk Dharma forum blocked by Wetpaint
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1/22/13 5:21 PM as a reply to Andy W.
This blows, but...



Long live KFD and the DhO!!!

RE: Kenneth Folk Dharma forum blocked by Wetpaint
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1/23/13 12:07 AM as a reply to MuMuWu MuMuMuMu.
OK, everybody, here is an opportunity for some do-it-yourself empowerment. Using the link that MuMuWu just posted for Google Cache, you may be able to save your practice threads between the dates of MuMuWu's last backup on November 19th and the time Wetpaint blocked our forum on January 22nd. It's up to you; since we don't know whether Wetpaint will put the site back online, you can buy yourself an insurance policy by accessing your pages via Google cache and cutting and pasting them into a document on your computer. I recommend this if you can possibly find the time. Once you have saved the information, we can try to figure out how to reconstruct it on the new site. Now get to work! emoticon

We're pretty close to opening up the new KFD forum for posting. Just need to figure out how to allow people to log on. Maybe tomorrow...? I'll keep you updated. Thanks for your patience and support.

@AndyW: Me too! Can't wait for the new, faster, cleaner, more reliable KFD forum.

RE: Kenneth Folk Dharma forum blocked by Wetpaint
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1/23/13 9:29 AM as a reply to Kenneth Folk.
It may be possible to use Warrick to save Kenneth's site from google's cache.

I tried to get it to run on windows by installing activeperl and the dependencies listed, however I couldn't make it work.

It there's anyone who runs linux and has some inkling on how to run perl scripts and such, you could give it a whirl.

The software can be located here: http://warrick.cs.odu.edu/

Instructions on running it on windows xp (I'm running windows 8 - could be part of the issue I'm having): http://www.cs.odu.edu/~fmccown/research/lazy/warrick-windows-install.html

More details and direct download link:
http://code.google.com/p/warrick/wiki/About_Warrick

"Warrick is a utility for reconstructing or recovering a website when a back-up is not available. Warrick uses Memento TimeMaps to discover archived copies of resources. Such resources may exist at the Internet Archive, Google, or another archival organization. Warrick will download the pages and images and will save them to your filesystem. Warrick can be run through our website or as a command-line utility (directions for downloading, installing, and running are given below)."
- from the last link above

RE: Kenneth Folk Dharma forum blocked by Wetpaint
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1/23/13 10:04 AM as a reply to MuMuWu MuMuMuMu.
My god - I had no idea how 'attached' I was to KFD until it went down!

I really hope Ron, Antero and Laurel's practice journals (in particular) don't get lost - they're such an invaluable resource for people like me......