I want to help get this site back up to its fine standard

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I am new to this community (this may even be one of my first posts, i cant remeber) but ive read alot of what is going on.
this is no matter what people say a good site....but recently its unbearably slow which is really killing the community sharing help etc, the ftp got wiped out, im sure alot of the members who put worki into that are extremely annoyed, and finally there are so many people on the forum posing the same old 'help i did this' stuff...which leads to the conclusion that the faqs need an update.

well i am unsure of who the admin(s) are but it looks like you guys are struggling or do not have the time to solve these issues on your own.... which i can appreciate.

so i for one would like to offer some help...and im sure the older more experienced members would lend a hand too.

my initial thoughts would be to get some of you veterans to update the faqs try to incorporate the whole upgrading and downgrading as simply as possible... far too many ppl are trying 2005. o and a nice clear sign about the mda3 unlocking.

the other thing i feel is a necessary step is to make the ftp readonly to normal users and have a set of superusers with write access...these would be the people that use it the most or are well respected members...if someone other than them have something worth uploading then they need to send it to a superuser to check and do... its a minor point but it would provide some security without hindering those superusers that need to upload regularly.

finally the slowness.. i dont know whats causing it but theres a solution to every problem...if the server has a low throughput im sure i read somewhere someones company was willing to donate a dedicated server to our cause...wouldnt evev need donations with that.

well theres my 2 pence what do you guys think? i want this community to keep going..the only way thats gonna happen is by putting some effort in!

Tim

I wholeheartedly agree.

In recent months there has been a real decline in the quality of this forum, and though it's not particularly anyone's fault, there is SO much repetition and laziness by so many people who post the same questions AGAIN and AGAIN without taking the time to search first. There's fresh examples of this within the past day!

I don't know how others feel, but as far as I'm concerned there are certain rules that should be followed if a forum is to keep it's usefulness and keep to a structured order. I used to run one many moons ago so I know what I'm talking about. Firstly, people seem to post wherever they want, regardless of content. I can't count the number of times I've seen "help crashed my XDA2 going up to WM2003SE" in General or Development/Hacking. 99 times out of 100 it will be the Country ID error, something I've read about so many times I could now fix in my sleep. I can understand people's panic when this happens as it happened to me as well, but what I did was calm down, get on here and search for Country ID errors. Low and behold, DCS and edSub to the rescue and within half an hour I was back on the road to Upgradeville.

Secondly, there's been a general increase in the rudeness of people posting; from new members and old. Some think that it's OK to post half their question in the Subject, then go "anyone got any ideas?". Then when there's no response within a few hours, the same poster is back saying "no one seen this?" or with some insult about people not helping. Even I've had an odd dig the odd time, so I know how easily it happens.

Thirdly, the WM2005 interest is hacking me off. I can appreciate it if it solves the problems of those using it over 2003SE, but (and I can't believe I'M saying this) just cos it's out there doesn't mean we have to have it - especially considering the risks of such a topic. I'm no legal expert on this but I know MS have been coming down HARD on ANYONE hosting or posting screenshots / divulging information about an alpha product (AFAIK). I wish the moderators would remove this, and then emphasise, as they have done on tekguru, that they will not comment / tolerate any hosting or screenshots etc. I don't want to see this site shut down, and I've posted about it before, only to find a few days later some idiot HAS uploaded the files to the FTP. I bet it hasn't helped the recent slowness, quite aside from its illegality!!

http://www.tekguru.co.uk/phpBB2/index.php?article=5813

I agree Tim, I too would love to lend a hand where needed. I would be happy to help with constructing more up to date FAQs like on tekguru, and I completely agree that FTP needs to be readonly to all new users and most regular members also (prob inc me :shock: ). This site needs to get back on track, as it's still by far the most useful and helpsite resource for XDA/MDA/whatever and I would hate to see it go down the pan.

Ant

glad to see i'm not the only one willing to lend a hand
if we can get a few more people willing to help then it wont take very long at all to get this place going well again

I think Admins have abandoned XDA-Developers site time ago,but in some topics I read that they were busy with the Xanadux Project(Linux port),try to ask more to Peter Poelman e Lumpistefan about admins. 8)
So,I agree partially,there is no return from hold Win2k5,we need to keep it, we are a community,we will not share it in the FTP for security but need to know more about it,reverse it. You can't stop the knowoledge! Also Win2k3SE for XDA2,it is not officially announced,but you can read plenty of posts.
Some minor things to Upgrade,Improve in this site are:


-Create a CHAT in the site: Many users will benefit to this live communication,not only posts.
-NEW Profiles: add XDA3,Magician,etc..options
-Avatars disappeared, admin told it is for couple of weeks,some months ago.
-Improve the Search engine: Did you try to search something? it will return too many post,unrelated.
-Find and fix why XDA-Developers is so slow.

heh you just reminded me...the chat thing
i thought it would be nice to do an irc channel

and thanks for the info i will email peter... if the admins are busy with xanadux thats fine (im quite interested in the project) but we could do with someone to step in and keep this place running (peter?) and to organise a team to do what we all see as the issues.
as to the legality of win mob 2005...ive never cared about legal issues personally...but from the point of view of admin it must be removed off of xda dev...if someone hosts it somewhere and links it in a foum be it on their head... but xda dev cannot host it for their own safety

Originally Posted by tim_programmer

as to the legality of win mob 2005...ive never cared about legal issues personally...but from the point of view of admin it must be removed off of xda dev...if someone hosts it somewhere and links it in a foum be it on their head... but xda dev cannot host it for their own safety

Exactly, MS have shut down sites for simply having posted screenshots, or at least told them in no uncertain terms, to remove them. To find we have uploaded installation files to this site is a big concern to me and MUST be sorted.

Count me in!

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Hi all,

I've been scrounging through these forums for a while now and have learnt a lot - cheers to all with the knowledge who are willing to share. I've managed to unlock XDA 1, 2 and 2s (ok, had to pay to sim unlock MDA3 - but found the link here! ;) ) recently as mentioned we have a painfully slow site, a simple search provides 50 pages of mostly unrelated threads, 10 pages of which are all about the same thing! I'm more than happy to help sort out some proper FAQ pages; I've cocked up on ROM flashing due to country ID too! It's a panicky situation - none of us wants a 200-400 pound paperweight! In short - count me in for hands on help, I'd love to learn more but also help the others out a bit.

Mike

well i sent a pm to peter and no reply as yet (its only been a day so im not giving up yet) but i just read another post of someone tring to get in contact and he seemed to have very little luck... im running out of ideas here i want to help but if the main ppl are not around then we cant really do much... it looks like the admin team have gone completely awol ... im almost tempted to say we should find someon willing to do free hosting (someone mentioned it in one of th forums) and mirror the site...but that defeats the idea of having one nice place... id raher fix than replace....anyone got any ideas?

Originally Posted by unapproachable2kx

try to ask more to Peter Poelman e Lumpistefan about admins. 8)

I'm far away being an admin or anything else here. :roll: I'm just a normal user as you are...

But I've talked to a few of the xda-deveolpers team at the fair cebit in the middle of march. They have lot of work, so this maybe the point why they aren't so often in the forum. And i think for 99% the community just works well without any of those "admins"...

Originally Posted by unapproachable2kx

-NEW Profiles: add XDA3,Magician,etc..options

The profiles (XDA and XDA II) are a special patch for the phpBB-Software. Sadly this patch do not allow more than two profiles. This is the case why only those 2 profiles exists and why the forum is splitted in seperate sections (XDA, XDA II, MAgician, Blueangel, ...)

Regards

Stefan

hey thanks for the info lumpistefan

tis a bit of a shame we cant get hold of someone able to solve the slowness and ftp issue!
with regards to the faq's im gonna try and make an introduction to the himalaya cover sim lock flashing and a few other important things in my spare time if anyone feels like working on the other hansets feel free.. my plan is to do it over next couple of weeks and post it for review make sure i cover everything.