(Originally posted by Tannin on 23 Jan 2002 04:22 )
Who is welcome to this community?
Members of the old Storage Review forum community in particular, but also anyone who is (a) interested in computer storage, and (b) capable of discussing matters of mutual interest in a civilised way.
Who runs Storage Forum?
Well, everyone really. We want to encourage members to take part in the decision-making around here.
Final decisions rest with an informal group of twelve former Storage Review Forum veterans. At present, the team members are:
Clocker (Chairman)
Handruin (Webmaster)
Adcadet
CougTek
Energy
Flagreen
Groltz
Mercutio
P5-133XL
Pradeep
Tannin
Time
How were these people chosen?
Lots of people talked about finding a forum replacement. Eventually, some of us had to get together and actually do something. Obviously, the first thing to do was get a few of the more prominent SR veterans together and get a team organised. I scribbled down a list of the first 20-odd people I thought of and started writing emails. Soon we had a hard core of like-minded people. We elected Clocker chairman and he immediately proved his worth by pointing out that we had not yet included Handruin. (A glaring omission from my original list, which I will probably never live down.)
The chain of emails soon grew into a mailing list. Many of the people on the original list were impossible to contact. Some did not reply. That left about ten of us tossing around about 30 possible options. One of the first things we did, out of courtesy, was contact Eugene and Davin to bring them up to speed on our hopes and plans.
We also discussed going ahead with the original idea, which was to expand the group to perhaps 20 or 30 members by each of us inviting two or three other SR veterans that we thought might be able to make a contribution. At this time, however, Eugene wrote to us offering to fill us in on SR's future plans, and asking that we agree to keep them confidential (so as to protect SR's business interests) and not discuss them outside the group. We thought that was fair and reasonable and agreed.
At around the same time, Handruin stunned everyone by offering this site to us - we already had several offers of free hosting, but Handruin simply acted: he loaded phpBB onto his server and ... well, you can see the result. While the rest of us stood around and emailed one another with thoughts about hosting and bandwidth and forum software and administration, Doug burned the midnight oil and just did it.
The email list Clocker and I had been maintaining migrated over here. Plans to broaden our base by adding more SR regulars to the team went on hold because of the confidentiality requirement. Organisational issues took up most of our time. By the start of the last week of January, we were wondering if the forum was ready to open to all: on the whole, we thought, not quite ready. But we did think it was time to start catching up with a few more of the hard core of SR regulars, both to get their help with beta-testing the forum, and to make sure that we stayed in touch with community feelings. Hence Mercutio's email invitations.
What is the relationship between Storage Forum and Storage Review?
They are separate organisations with no formal relationship and quite different purposes.
Storage Review was (and may well remain) the best storage test and review site in the world. SR is a commercial enterprise.
Storage Forum is a community-based home for discussion. No more, no less. We have no desire to become another hardware testing and review site.
Does this mean that you are all deserting SR?
No. We are all rusted-on Storage Review fans. Most of the admin team members have given to the SR Donation Jar long since, and we all very much hope that Eugene and Davin can find a way to make SR a commercial success at last. Remember that SR's key business assets are the hard drive database, Eugene's testing expertise, and Davin's coding skills. The forum community is not something they can hope to sell: it might be nice to have but it is expensive in terms of bandwidth, and not something that generates significant income - else they would have been rich long ago!
If SR closes (or simply closes the forum section to save bandwidth costs), Storage Forum will be here.
If SR remains afloat, it is up to each individual to make up his or her own mind where they want to visit.
Speaking for myself only now, I won't stop being a frequent and enthusiastic member of Storage Review, and while it survives I'll still post regularly. On the other hand, Storage Forum does nightly CD backups and I think old posts matter, so I'll post my longer and more carefully thought-out things here.
What is the Confidential Forum?
When we first contacted Storage Review to let them know what we were doing with the Storage Forum, they in turn told us something of their rescue plans for StorageReview.com, and asked that we keep commercially sensitive matters private. So we created a confidential forum where we could discuss matters which we had promised not to disclose.
The members of the confidential forum are the Storage Forum admin team plus Eugene and Davin of Storage Review.
It now seems to be morphing into a place where the admin team can get together to talk things over and make decisions, without the messy business of emailing twelve different ways. Our non-disclosure agreement with SR will become irrelevant after a time, no doubt, but the confidential forum will probably remain a part of the administrative machinery of Storage Forum. We are trying to switch as much admin discussion as possible over into the public section for all to share in, but there will always be a need for some private discussion between admins to deal with spamming and the like. We expect that part of the admin team will step down from time to time, and that other Storage Forum members in good standing will take their turn at the wheel.
Is this site actually ready for heavy traffic?
So far as we can tell, yes. But we need to be ready to cope with the unexpected. We have contingency plans in place to bring on reserve capacity if it's needed.
What happens next?
Good question! Stay tuned.
