Brickshelf NOT dead

[Hinckley]

The current brickshelf is not here to stay, in a quote directly from kevin...

This was posted the 18th from Kevin to Peeron.com admins and placed on another site. So the current brickshelf will be closing down...but everyone's files will be placed into a new...and improved brickshelf for all our use *sweet*

From Kevin Loch's post on Lugnet:

Final note:

It has come to my attention that some people have been impersonating me

on various forums. LUGNET is the only LEGO related forum I have ever posted

on (other than r.t.l in the old days) and it's user authentication system

should give you reasonable assurance that it really is me.

[Siegfried]

Actually, according to Kevin, Maj only receives about 10% of the traffic that Brickshelf does. If we BSers were to migrate over there, we would account for the majority of that traffic, essentially turning into another Brickshelf (with a few random images interdespersed).

I know that, and you knwo that, but does Google know that? On that subject, I think the Google ads have gone...

[Starwars4J]

I know that, and you knwo that, but does Google know that? On that subject, I think the Google ads have gone...

As for the ads being gone, he probably cut the contract when he thought BS was ending. So now he has to re-contact them about restoring the ads

Just my idea

[Asuka]

From Kevin

[Bonaparte]

This is good news!

I was preparing myself for another night of backing pirate MOCs.

However, I will still continue taking backups, just spread over the next months.

Next time this happens, I will be ready for it. Armed with backups :-D

I would be willing to donate $5 to Kevin every year (preferably via paypal), but $60?

Why would I do that when there is photobucket which seems to be much more advanced than BS?

[Lord Admiral Helden Ravensdorn]

Eh, for you AFOLs who dont flinch at dropping more then $100 at a time for any Lego product, it shouldnt be too steep...

I might sign up for a featured account for, say, a few months.

[Joebot]

It's not only about what I can get for the money.

I'd pay some money to keep BS intact as a place where the community has a central repository that has most or all of their work so that we can search it, and view it easily without having to look at 4 different places, any one of which may change at any time.

Not 60$ annually.

Are you suggesting a different pricing model where anyone can post pictures for free ... but only paying members have the ability to view / search the pictures? That's an interesting idea.

I guess it depends on what you see as Brickshelf's primary value. Is it: a) picture hosting, or b) the enrichment of the Lego online community. I don't think it's a) because there are other sites that do picture hosting better and cheaper.

So if it's b), then maybe a different pricing model makes sense. Anybody can dump their pictures onto Brickshelf, but if you want to browse the pictures, see what everyone is up to, search for ideas or inspiration or whatever... well, you gotta fork over some cash.

[Brick Miner]

I agree, I haven't contributed anything to the Lego world all week... this has just made me feel like waiting it out in my purpose built bunker... X-D

i think this is a good stratagy for not becoming emotionally overwhelmed.

i think im gonna removed myself some-what from the LEGO community until there is some order/resolution.

- BM

[gylman]

Are you suggesting a different pricing model where anyone can post pictures for free ... but only paying members have the ability to view / search the pictures? That's an interesting idea.

I guess it depends on what you see as Brickshelf's primary value. Is it: a) picture hosting, or b) the enrichment of the Lego online community. I don't think it's a) because there are other sites that do picture hosting better and cheaper.

So if it's b), then maybe a different pricing model makes sense. Anybody can dump their pictures onto Brickshelf, but if you want to browse the pictures, see what everyone is up to, search for ideas or inspiration or whatever... well, you gotta fork over some cash.

It's both a) and b). First of all, having looked through the other sites, I find Brickshelf still works best for me. I don't want comments, I don't slideshows, I just want directories and directories of pictures to which I can easily link from other sites, and which I can browse easily.

Second, I am willing to pay up some bucks each year without expecting every other user to do the same. I'm no socialist, but I'm not expecting every 16 year old highschool kid to come up with the cash the way an adult with a job can. I won't pay 60$ annually ad infinitum, and I think no one will, but I think most AFOLs, after this situation, will not balk at paying a few months subscription each year to keep the cashflow going to BS, especially if he spruces it up a bit and make it look like he will stick around. Some will pay, all will play, and those who pay are more likely to be mature enough to realize that all will be poorer if the community fragments.

It ends up being a donation model, basically, except there is a more specific and hopefully easier (PAYPAL!!!!) way to make the donation, and a more persistent reminder. It might work. I'd try this approach first before migrating to an inferior hosting service (inferior because of the lack of content, as well as the interface).

I would not want to take away searching and browsing from the "freeloaders". But , if there are sensible advantages to paying (max num of pics, some improvement in the interface, no ads, whatever), there will be enough incentive to make it work.

[Hobbes]

You all assume Kevin will charge on a monthly basis.

That would mean he has to reconfigure your account every time you pay or you don't. The most I could imagine is a half year and an annual subscription. Anything else doesn't make sense and would surprise me...

[gylman]

I don't think it would be hard to have a checkbox for each user that is either checked on or off based on pament status, and when you log on the script checks if you are on or off and gives you the appropriate rights and privileges.

It is true, though, that a 5$ payment through paypal is rather futile. They would take too much of a cut.

[dunamis]

From Kevin's LUGNET statement:

...I decided that 15 days was enough time for everyone to copy their files. Turning it off completely for a few days was intended to send the message that this is serious and get everyones attention so they could use the remaining time wisely.

So, just shutting it down cold turkey with no notice, no message was the way to go? Then after a few hours blocking the backdoor too? And just a simple message to the community via LUGNET would not have achieved the same message?

I had long ago written off various ides for charging recurring fees because AFOLs and geeks in general expect everything on the web to be free.

This quote pisses me off to no end. Thanks for stereotyping us as a bunch of freedloaders. Exactly how many times did you ASK for financial assistance and NOT get any response from the community? I'm happy to contribue.

What turned this around is the totally unexpected volume of email I received from what appear to be regular people. Many of these people expressed an interest in paying some modest fee to keep the site running, if only there was a way to do that

Well, how about that? You mean AFOLs are REGULAR people and are willing to help out financially? Go figure...

In hindsight I should have handled this differently but it's too late for that now.

Yes, we've all made mistakes, especially me. Hopefully this is a learning experience for Kevin and for the LEGO community in general. I hope that Kevin finds that the LEGO community is willing to help and pay for services.

I hope the LEGO community sees that the LEGO hobby infrastructure Brickshelf, Peeron, Bricklink, Eurobricks, Classic-Castle, FBTB, etc. (I'm sure I forgot others, sorry) is some of the more robust in the hobby industry. LEGO fans are lucky to have all this available at their fingertips.

I wish Kevin the best and thank him for what he has done with Brickshelf. In the future, I hope Kevin will work more closely with the LEGO community regarding the future of brickshelf.

[optimus-convoy]

Wow! A statement. Would've been nice a week ago. *wacko*

Despite being a bit perturbed by this whole situation, I'm just glad Brickshelf is not dead. The new deal sounds like a fair trade to me. Though it will probably be harder to browse through the latest creations.

I sincerely hope Kevin will try to continue to communicate with the community in the future.

[Widdi]

Now that's good news, bbut since I've got very limited amounts of money I won't pay for uploading to the page. I think that this monthly 5$ fee is just for some kind of an Premium account, like I've seen on various train/flight simulator fanpages. But my small maj.com lego corner will stay there for a while, since I can't really thrust BS anymore. Luckily my folder is backed up on the HD.

mFg Widdi

[Scouty]

I guess my prediction that BS might move to somethingelse was right. I

[Brainbox]

What?! It's happened again! I'm away from my computer for a few days, just like last weekend, and I've missed another piece of important information, again regarding BS. Is there some shadowy conspiracy trying to keep me from knowing the truth? ;-)

Well, it's great to see BS back. I suppose it just goes to show how much we all relied on it.

[Asuka]

Well, it's great to see BS back. I suppose it just goes to show how much we all relied on it.

Yeah.... it clearly showed to how much importance a single place could grow....

And who

[JINZONINGEN73]

MOCpages and flickr are not a substitute for BS. I looked at them in the last few days as all this unfolded, and was totally unimpressed. BS is a very efficient interface, and with very minor upgrades would be excellent. Who needs all the commenting, slideshows, etc etc. They are just a waste of bandwidth and loading time.

The only thing I resent is the poor communication and uncertainty. All of this brouhaha could, should, have been avoided.

Yah, yah. The other sites of potential migration are a bunch of bells and whistles.

They come with their own merits, but really fail to do what Brickshelf does in it's simplicity of browsing.

Likewise though, if Brickshelf ever runs into trouble again, Kevin has GOT TO FREAKIN" TELL US!

...and I say that with love. *sweet*

[aayla-secura]

Hy , what is now with brickshelf , because there isnt anymore the text at the front page .. how long will Brickshelf be open?

Can be used?

What other things can i use .. that are same like brickshelf??

Help please`?!

[dviddy]

Hy , what is now with brickshelf , because there isnt anymore the text at the front page .. how long will Brickshelf be open?

Can be used?

What other things can i use .. that are same like brickshelf??

Help please`?!

Brickshelf will be open indefinitely. It's no longer closing.

<<DV>>

[lostcarpark]

After the Brickshelf fiasco, there was a thread asking people what they'd like from a future picture hosting site, and the general responses tended to focus on features, largely divided between people who wanted it to be as close to Brickshelf as possible and people who wanted neat Flickr-like features.

Unfortunately I can't find this thread.

Let me say that I think Brickshelf is a great site. I know it takes a fantastic amount of effort (and money) to keep such a vast amount of data and serve all the users wanting to see it all. I would like to see some fancy new features, but I realise that would just make the problems of the main site requirement more difficult.

However, my problem with Brickshelf is that I really don't trust the owner any more. I understand he's going to offer a $5 per month premium service, but I'm reluctant to pay for fear of him suddenly deciding not enough people have subscribed and shutting the whole thing down again. I feel he did a lot of damage by shutting the site down without warning. I suspect I'm not the only one with this fear. I also have to say that $5 per month is pretty steep compared to $20 per year for Flickr and comparable sites which offer a much bigger feature set.

But my biggest fear is control. The whole thing depends on one person doing everything. As far as I know this is not because there aren't other people willing to help, but simply because that's what the owner has chosen to do. Of course, he has the right to do whatever he wants with his site, but likewise the AFOL community have the right to ask "do we want to put all our eggs in one basket?"

So, I've been thinking, how can we create a brick photo hosting site that is not dependant on any one person?

The idea I've come up with draws inspiration from two main sources: open-source software and peer-to-peer file sharing.

The first aspect is that the software for the site should all be released as open-source. This means that any can download the software and if they wish, modify it and launch a rival site. But, of course, just using open source software is not enough. While it's good that if the site should go down tomorrow, someone else could set up a new site running the same software, without the photo files, it wouldn't be much good.

So the idea that struck me was to have a number of sites running the same open source software, linked in such a way that photos uploaded to one site would automatically get transferred to the others. The idea would be to have no single central server (otherwise people would always want to go there to get the "newest" photos). Photos could be uploaded to any server in the network, and over the course of a few minutes or hours (depending on how busy things are and how frequently update jobs run), would get transferred to the other servers. I'm hoping that there are a lot of (or at least a few) people who have a webserver available with spare storage and bandwidth. Perhaps there are people working for companies who could persuade their employer to give storage and bandwidth to something like this (perhaps in exchange for getting their logo on pages they serve).

There probably would have to be some sort of a central server to keep track of the servers in the network and maintain security (I think it would need some sort of public/private key system for communication between servers, otherwise it would become a hacker's paradise), and probably to look after the "master" URL. But all user requests would get redirected to a random server somewhere in the network (it could probably try to be clever and look for a server geographically closest to the requester).

So how would it work? Well, let's say I had a webserver with a couple of hundred GB of spare storage space and I could offer a few GB of bandwidth per month to the project, I could offer to add this server to the network. Assuming it met the criteria, I would download and install the software, which would do a "health check" and report its status to the central server. The master server would add it to the network, but place it into "catch-up" mode, and the new server would start downloading the photo archive (this would probably use web services, though I don't want to get too much into specific technologies at this point). Once things get going and the archive gets big, this could take quite a while. Once it has a complete copy of the archive, it would get put into "live" mode, and user requests for photos would start getting redirected there. The server would monitor the bandwidth usage, and if a monthly limit was reached, it would put itself into a "no requests" mode, so it would only be getting new photos and not serving users. At the end of my billing period it would go back into "live" mode and serve users again. If one of my other sites got "slash-dotted" and my monthly bandwidth was hosed, I could opt to place the picture site in "lock-down" mode, so it would take no requests, and would not get new photos. At the end of the month, I would place it back into "catch-up" mode and it would have to catch up with the archive before taking requests again.

From a user point of view, this should all be transparent. I would go to www.something.com, which is the master server. I would immediately be transferred to another URL such as nodex.something.com, but which is located on one of the many donor servers, but as the something.com part stays the same, I don't worry. I can log in and post photos, and use whatever other features the site offers (comments and profiles would be nice). If I were to switch to another server in the network at this point, some of the content I'd seen on the previous server might not have arrived yet, including anything I'd posted. Of course, one aspect that would have to be different is the approval process, since the photos are distributed across many servers, a very different approach would have to be adopted. There are several options, but I don't think it's necessary to decide on one at this point.

The beauty of the system would be the high level of fault tolerance. Of course the single point of failure would be the URL and the master server, but I expect a trust of some sort could be set up to control them, and if disaster did strike and the master server and URL were lost, there would still be lots of servers containing a copy of the data, and it would just be a matter of establishing a new master server and rebuilding the network.

Of course there would be quite a lot of work to create such a system, and it would probably take quite a while to get even a test system in place. I would like there to be several people involved in the development, partly so the workload is shared, but also so that it's not just one person making all the decisions. Further down the road, I think a project like this could be a very good thing to have on the CV and it could attract interest (and funding) from companies like Google. I would be very keen to have it structured in such a way that it couldn't be taken over by a big company who might not have the best interests of the AFOL community at heart.

So what do you think? Is this something that's needed or useful? Is it something you'd be willing to get involved in? Would you (or your company) be willing to donate storage and bandwidth to it?

I look forward to your opinions.

James

[Siegfried]

My attitude is that the best solution would be an index that keeps track of the tags of a particular file, it's file signature (including a hash and it's size) and at least one location where to find it. People download the program and the latest index and then perform searches locally. The index can then be updated via peer-to-peer or via a update download, with people adding their own photos to the index. As a programmer (mostly client based assembly language, not web based stuff) I feel this is possible, and I am serously considering doing it, but I should note that I don't do open source.

I am against the concept of a image hosting site due to the huge bandwidth costs involved, not to mention the legal issues of people posting naughty photos.

[Bonaparte]

After the Brickshelf fiasco, there was a thread asking people what they'd like from a future picture hosting site, and the general responses tended to focus on features, largely divided between people who wanted it to be as close to Brickshelf as possible and people who wanted neat Flickr-like features.

Unfortunately I can't find this thread.

I've merged your topic with this one.

[lostcarpark]

I've merged your topic with this one.

Ah, thanks. I was wondering where it had gone.

[Asuka]

So what do you think? Is this something that's needed or useful? Is it something you'd be willing to get involved in? Would you (or your company) be willing to donate storage and bandwidth to it?

I look forward to your opinions.

James

A very smart and reasonable point of view. *y*

Although I