Just a note of appreciation for all that Richard has done for the nlab! Thanks in particular for archiving your work. Maybe not farewell but just a pause or break? :-)
]]>Christian Sattler contacted me to remind me about #239; my apologies for the delay, I have now made everything available here.
]]>Why wasn’t this ever put on the main page of the nLab while the migration was happening: reality check
]]>Yes, I can and will do that. I was originally planning to thoroughly document how everything fits together and how to deploy things, etc, and may not have the energy/motivation to do this now, but can at least post the code, and people can get in touch in case there should be any desire to deploy it, etc, in the future. It will probably not be before the end of next week at the earliest unless there is an urgent need for it. The code for the ’old’ nLab, i.e. that which is now live, should be up to date in the git repository.
]]>Is it possible for you or somebody else to create another repository on the ncatlab Github, and upload the source code over there?
]]>(The above was me :-). I am by the way happy to share any code with anyone, just ask; the code that I have written over the past years for the nLab, which comprises a large part of the ’old’ software, is completely in the public domain. Just to correct a typo as well: ’by the nLab’ should have read ’for the nLab’.)
]]>My wish is to retire quietly from this thread, but I must just record here that I have truly have no idea what insinuations are being made in the previous comment. For my part, I consider everything I have ever done with regard to the nLab to be public knowledge, and there is nothing that I wish to hide or am aware of hiding.
I did not wish to mention it, but I suppose I must now respond specifically to one insinuation that was made in the nLab talk Google Group that I was somehow blocking access to the funds that were donated by the nLab. This is completely untrue: the money has never, at any point, been my responsibility, and I have no idea actually of how to access it. It has always been handled entirely by the Topos Institute; Brendan Fong, who has in the background quietly helped the nLab immensely by putting everything in place for handling these funds and by continuing to oversee them, will be able to confirm this, but there should be no need to make the enquiry.
]]>It’s unfortunate that this drama is playing out publicly, but it’s even more unfortunate that only part of the drama is publicly visible. I don’t think the solution to that is to try to make everything public, but I would like to caution all observers not to leap to conclusions based only on what you can see.
Work is already underway on stabilizing the nLab in both the short and long term. Thanks to everyone who’s offered suggestions and help; we will be sure to reach out to the community if anything is needed.
]]>That’s very generous aerskine. It sounds like the top priority is the issue that Urs mentioned in 226, of migrating the nLab as-is to AWS. How difficult do you think it would be to do that?
]]>Just a very quick message to say thank you very much for all the kind words to those who have taken the time to leave a comment here, much appreciated!
]]>I don’t know how much money the nLab donations amount to, but I suspect they aren’t actually enough to pay a dev to do full-time work to finish the job Richard started. If this is the case, we should have been advertising the possibility of supporting the nLab financially more heavily, seeking microdonations, perhaps even on a regular basis. Complaining that the money we have is not being spent on a paid developer, and blaming the only active volunteer we have, is disingenuous. Especially when said volunteer has asked more than once for others to join in and help him on a volunteer basis, with apparently little effect.
In any case, as far as our “fund raising drive” went, it was pretty poor from a marketing standpoint. If we are serious about using the goodwill in the category theory to leverage some income, then complaining publicly about the state of the nLab is not how to go about it. We could have pulled a “the nLab needs you!” lever, letting people know that editing is not happening, this is unhealthy long-term, and that hard cash means we could probably pay someone to hurry up the job. I feel Urs’ analogy is flawed, even if I agree it feels like that to him, since for probably 99%+ of users, not much changed about their nLab experience, given how few active editors we have.
]]>Thanks Adeel!! What a relief.
I have rented an AWS server since the time we made the first attempt at migration (if I can recover my login data, will have to check, but I am for sure being charged for it each month). If there is a volunteer who is capable and has the time/energy resources to migrate the current installation as is to that server, please contact me.
]]>I’d like to echo Keith and add a thank you to Adeel for your work getting the recent downtime fixed!
I don’t have time to do much more right now, but I hope that in the near future, the nLab community can come to a consensus on the future of the nLab software. I think Richard’s new software looks exciting from what I’ve soon and I hope he is willing to reconsider his resignation, as it would be a shame for the tremendous amount of hard work he has done to go to waste. Perhaps we could carry out the migration to the new software in parallel, while the current version continues to exist and be editable? Surely it will not be too much work to, once the new system is ready, take the new edits after Dec 2021 and migrate just those to the new software.
This all sounds perfect if it can be done that way. Do you think the existing server will hold out for the time being?
]]>Just a comment from the peanut gallery: I have the utmost respect and admiration for all the hard work, insight, and technical skill that Urs, Richard, and a small army of volunteers have put into this project. I greatly appreciate, and find invaluable, what they have done. I hope that some temporary setbacks in what was no doubt a technically challenging transition, sort of “changing horses in midstream”, do not overly disenhearten and discourage people.
]]>Guest #221: if that link is not working for you, please try clearing your cache or using another browser. Is the main nLab also not working for you?
]]>Guest #218 and #219:
Is this the wiki you’re referring to? I am able to access it and see edits as recently as today.
]]>