Setting up independent PhysicsOverflow mirrors, releasing all code

Question

Sorry Polarkernel for being suspicious, but the recent issues make me worry about code review. My main concern is with the fact that there have been unresolved issues regarding the comment deletion. Vladimir tells me that comments were deleted wholesale, I believe through blanking edits. I saw one edit in November, and honestly I don't believe that it happened via spam filter, no matter what you claim. I would like to see the spam filter algorithm which selected that comment, as the author of such a spam filter is totally incompetent. I made a comment disappear once by editing to whitespace, and although it never happened again, that just makes me more suspicious that there are some subtle bugs, or else features that randomly turn on and off by random chance, due to some coding issues produced by lack of review (review is essential--- that's part of what the GPL is about). I am perfectly willing to take all the costs of mirroring myself, to put the same code up at another site, and sync the two sites together. I will share the password and financial burden with all other academic administrators, to make sure the site is properly hosted and owned. Should there ever be a loss of trust in one site, the mirror would be available, and the hosting of content and mirror would allow the site to get duplicated, in case of problems. But it is essential that the site is run on completely open code which can be reviewed by anyone. I would like to review all the code, others will too. It is GPL, and it is simply good manners to return the patches to the Q2A community, as they would be useful to others, and also to us, for mirroring purposes. This is academic convention regarding free software, and it would also be good for you, and get you some credentials. This is not to diminish from your fine unpaid work, but to get it proper recognition.

Comments

"It is simply good manners to return the patches to the OSQA community" - and it's simply bad manners, to attribute the work of the Q2A community, to the OSQA community : ) I edited your post to fix this error.

Answer 1

Spam filter

You as administrator may find the spam filter in the admin panel under postings. There you find a list of censored words. If one of these words is found in a post, the post gets deleted. This is original Q2A code, I did not make any change on it. There have been several spam attacks last year, and once, we continuously received a comment (Edit: this is not a quote, rather it's a crude lookalike made by Dimension10 based on memory of the actual spam. The actual comment was longer) 

Welcome to 變速器! 變速器 a revolutionarry reformulation of solar wi-fi transmission! See for more knowledge on solarwifitransmission-reformulate.cn!

I have found the found the phrases "變速器, revolutionarry, reformulation, solar wi-fi transmission, solarwifi-transmission-reformulate.cn" together in the field of censored words, so some moderator must have been foolish or hasty enough to add them there due to the spam we were receiving. I assume this was the reason for the deletions.

Sharing Code

I will not share my code as long as this community is so small. It is not GPL code and I even could sell it, as for instance some companies do (an example here). Who would give me any guarantee that you would not use it to set up your own site, as you announced somewhere in the actual discussion?

Should this community once grow to a respectable size, I will publish the code, as open-source, on GitHub. However, to be usable for others, still a lot of work would have to be done. Until now I concentrated on solving the requests of this community.

Your mistrust hurts me. I tried all the time to be as neutral as possible, I did not even vote to posts on Meta (as long as they haven't been in a direct relation to the development requests), although morally I would have some rights to do so. I am completely independent and I am not an employee of PhysicsOverflow. My contribution was thought to be a gift to this community, also almost no one ever noticed this, or even said thank you.

Comments

Re: spam filter; yes indeed, I was the foolish moderator who hastily added in all the main nouns from the spam comment, which accidentally included "reformulation". Edit: Just got a downvote on this. @RonMaimon I'm assuming this is you, and this is quite stupid; what's the downvote supposed to mean? That I didn't add the words? That I shouldn't have? That it wasn't me? That it wasn't foolish? That I'm not a moderator? That the comment wasn't spam? That it wasn't accidental? That "reformulation" is not a word? Or that you'd like to downvote anything that comes from Dilaton, me, and polarkernel? Seems that the latter is the most likely.

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Thank you, polarkernel. I did not know you had done such a great work.

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Thank you, @polarkernel, we did not know how the site functioned. Thanks a lot!

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I want open code because there have been too many glitches--- we must be able to review the code. I don't know anything, and I don't trust anyone. Of course people should be free to set up their own site--- there is no reason to prevent forking. That's what mirrors are for. As long as everything is open, there is no reason to fork, it's just more work for others. But how can I have trust if someone still doesn't forthrightly tell me what is in the code, and suspicious things happen?

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@RonMaimon The spam filter is in the original Q2A code itself, you can go check it.

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@dimension10: Can this spam filter remove a phrase from a comment? Or it blocks the entire comment/answer?

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@VladimirKalitvianski As far as I know, it would block the entire post.

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But isn't modified Open Source code supposed to still be made freely available to the public?

At least, that's what's implied here under 3.derived works

3. Derived Works

The license must allow modifications and derived works, and must allow them to be distributed under the same terms as the license of the original software.

Rationale: The mere ability to read source isn't enough to support independent peer review and rapid evolutionary selection. For rapid evolution to happen, people need to be able to experiment with and redistribute modifications.

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@physicsnewbie See this answer (at the bottom) of one of the Q2A main developers to this question. I do not (yet) distribute the code.

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This spam is using "transmission" in two different senses. The Chinese "transmission" is "speed changing machine", which is the "transmission" of an automobile, the gears, while the English "transmission" is the completely different "transmission" of electromagnetic waves, so the comment does not make sense as spam. This was the reason for my downvote, as this is not authentic spam.

On the other hand, if you type "transmission" into google translate, you produce as the automatic result the three character phrase that appears here, the transmission of an automobile: 變速器. This is a fabricated spam comment, created by mindlessly translating to Chinese by someone who doesn't speak Chinese (unlike my wife), and posted here for the sole purpose of getting the word "reformulation" into the spam filter.

The word "reformulation" is extremely obscure and is neither correct nor a common mistake in this context. The "see for more knowledge" is a Euro-English grammar error (hi Dilaton), not a Chinese-English grammar error, and I could not go to the link being advertized, and I have not been able to find these spam comments elsewhere by googling. Other spam is spammed everywhere. Other spam also always made sense, as much as spam can, and I saw plenty of it.

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@RonMaimon It's fun to read Sherlock Holmes again (kidding). In Spanish "transmission" (transmision) is both gear and the process of transmitting. Regarding "see for more knowledge", I don't think it's a Spanish-English mistake, although it might be (we Spaniards would say "for more information, see ..."). No, I'm not Watson at all, though.

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@drake: Don't joke around, it's not the same thing in Chinese, the wave transmission is a different pair of symbols that I forgot. I thought the spam looked totally fake, even before verifying the Chinese. Somebody just made this comment amateurishly so as to stuff "reformulation" into the spam filter, cackling maliciously. I have lost trust, and I am ten thousand times more paranoid than VK, and I might have just lost my mind also.

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@RonMaimon Not joking, aside from the Sherlock thing. I thought you meant the opposite: one spelling and two meanings in Chinese and one to one in English. I see where your suspicious come from. Anyway, weren't you sure yesterday that Dimension10 and polarkerner had nothing to do? Have you changed your mind?

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@drake: Dimension10, with 100% certainty, had nothing to do with it, as I have been in regular communication with him throughout, and he is always candid. He is completely lacking in guile, he flip-flops sides all the time as he learns new things, and he gets mad at me and curses at me to my face whenever he happens to flip flop away from my position (which is every other day, and is a sign that he has done nothing against his conscience). For example, he called me a dishonest dick after I explained the main motivation behind the "no anonymous moderators" question. So he's totally cool.

I thought Polarkernel had nothing to do with it, mainly because Dim10 said so. But now I understand that's only a sign that Dim10 doesn't think so. Dimension10 forwarded me an angry email from Polarkernel to Dilaton and Dimension10, saying how upset he was, but I didn't get these emails directly, and they might be a show for dimension10, who I think is totally gullible (still less so than me at the same age).

I don't see the same responses from Polarkernel on the site, I see nothing from polarkernel. He still thinks I am completely insane, because of the ALL CAPS SCREAMING OBSCENITIES I sent to Dilaton to start out. Now with this unbelievably elaborate spam filter hoax, and several less notable other glitches, I don't know anything at all.

I would love to believe polarkernel is a physics-loving philanthropist who loves to code PhP in his spare time for no renumeration, but really, for all I know, it's just another one of Dilaton's alter-egos, as the only person I can see who would have the motivation to invest this much time and effort is Dilaton. This situation can't continue. You need to know the people who run a site, and that they are never going to do malicious things in software or through tricks, or be anything other than completely honest with everyone always, in the Pauli Sheldon-Cooper physicist autistic-savant style.

Dilaton has decided I am a dictator trying to take over the site, despite the fact that I have been completely absent for a whole 3 months. Dimension10 calls me Bonaparte, Mao, David Zaslavski, etc, whenever I say anything negative about the other mods. It's not a pleasant atmosphere.

@Dilaton: For God's sake, man! We're not stupid, we're physicists. We can see through all this deception shit, and smell it a thousand yards and stay the hell away from the stench. Just be honest and tell everyone everything, and the site will be a thousand times more welcoming to academics than it is currently. If you can't do that, how can we trust the site? The last thing in the world I want to do is run a site, which is why I didn't buy hosting when I heard you did it.

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the only person I can see who would have the motivation to invest this much time and effort is Dilaton

I also have this feeling that Dilaton considers PO as his property. An enterprise created to "tailor physics" (for a Greater Good) as if physics could be a private garden. That's a reason for those abuses of power.

If PO is a private site with owner's preferences in respect to physics and physicists, this must be clearly stated in FAQ and rules. If PO was meant as a place to let people breathe (unlike some other physics sites), this dedication must be in the owner's conviction.

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@Dimension10: Did you just lie here? On purpose? Or did you lie in your email. Whichever way, dude, there goes my vote on your moderatorship. What the heck? Is "don't lie" such a hard thing to do? It's like what you learn in physics nursery school.

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@polarkernel: This is not "not exact", it is MADE UP WHOLECLOTH. Also, you post it as if it were dug up from the archive, and then you have the balls to say "sort of, not exactly" after I have to sleuth out that it's a total lie again. I don't want to hear "it was something like that", I want to know exactly what it was and exactly who added "reformulation" to the spam filter, because Dimension10 just lied here. I am removing my vote for dimension10 for moderator. What the heck? Can't any of you people tell the truth for 10 minutes straight?

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To clarify - yes, this is not the exact spam message we received, but there was a rather similiar one (yes I wrote it, from what I remember of the comment), and this is similiar to the actual one, which also contained the word "reformulation" (leading to all this unfortunate auto-deletion), and the same url, the same mis-spelling of the word "revolutionary", and around the same structure.

@RonMaimon I added it to the spam filter, and "reformulation" was accidentally one of them, because I was stupid enough to add all the main nouns in the comment.

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@dimension10: That isn't MADE CLEAR IN THE ANSWER, that was ADDED TO THE ANSWER after I figured out that this spam is FAKE, you dishonest twat. This post was presented as authentic spam when first posted. It is extremely important that you don't lie. Don't lie. Do not lie. Please don't lie. Tell the truth. Be honest. Say things that are true. Not things that are false. GET IT THROUGH YOUR THICK SKULL. Also, you just deleted my question about it. "Who wrote this fake-ass Chinese spam?" Don't delete my questions ever again.

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@RonMaimon Not after you pointed it out (what do you even mean, you "pointed it out" only after I explained to you about it), maybe after you read it.

You're seriously just over-reading into all this, all I was saying is the explanation for why "transmission" translates incorrectly - because the original spam comment is lost, and this is meant to be a re-construction (which was, admittedly, forgotten in this answer). The point is not the actual comment, it's the fact that it contained the term "reformulation" (in a different context of course), and that I was silly enough to add that into the spam filter because of this.

I hid your question for a while because I thought it would just lead to duplication between here and that thread, but ok, it's undeleted now.

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@dimension10: Your edit post-dates my downvote for sure, but I wasn't home when I saw it, and it took me a few hours to get to a computer where I could respond. Perhaps the edit saying "this is approximate" was between the two events, but I don't think so, because drake commented on my post, and didn't say "hey wait, they said it's not verbatim, but a reconstruction".

But ok, I can see that for sure it wasn't deliberate deception on your part, and I believe you there was some authentic spam that contained 'reformulation' in some way, possibly to do with physicsoverflow.com (as physicsnewbie suggested), and that you accidentally put the word in the spam filter. But it sure looked like deliberate deception yesterday, which could have been avoided if instead of emailing each other about what to write, you just included me in your discussions, as I have asked to be included, and as I used to be included.

Answer 2

The total length of code written by PolarKernel, is some 24,000 lines long, while the original Q2A code, for comparison, is 36,000 codes long. Needless to say, these aren't minor patches.

All this code, does not come under the CC-BY-SA license, as that only holds for user-submitted contributions. Q2A's GPL license, as well, is very permissive, and there are hundreds of Q2A developers who make proprietary plugins and patches for Q2A, so as far as the legal issues go, there is no need for PolarKernel to make his code open-source.

Now, polarkernel is not an employee of the site whatsoever. His work is purely voluntary, unpaid, and an act of kindness; in fact, he pays for the hosting (which will start to cost, I believe, next month or the month after).

This means, that any decisions about the code, are completely his own. If he decides to sell some of the plugins tomorrow, as proprietary, it's completely his decision, because it's his code, and his work is unpaid and voluntary. Given that he's been even paying for hosting, he can always choose to make the code proprietary, and sell it, if he wishes to. The fact that he's giving the code freely to us, and even paying for hosting, should be enough, shouldn't it?

Personally, I would absolutely love it, if the PhysicsOverflow code one day became open-source, but the decision is always polarkernel's, and there are technical barriers to making it open-source (complicated installation instructions, code not commented out, code made to just work for PhysicsOverflow, etc.) according to polarkernel.

Also, I wouldn't be very happy with the idea of setting up "mirrors" at the moment, when the site is still so small.

Comments

@VladimirKalitvianski What are you saying? By "sell the code", I meant that he can, if he wants, allow other people to use the software at a cost. I don't know what you mean by "exposed".

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@VladimirKalitvianski If PolarKernel is to stop supporting the site (which I do not envision happening), or be unable to do so, he would move the domain ownership to some other trusted moderator (Dilaton), of course.

It isn't any more fragile than any other site with community-generated content, except that here, the domain is registered under the name of a single person, and not an entire organisation. But you eventually need to trust the owner(s) of any site you contribute to.

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@dimension10: Right, but PolarKernel is not paid. Can we pay for the domain at least?

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@VladimirKalitvianski Thank you for the offer but this is really not required. The amount for 2015 was 35,70 EUR and has been already payed. This is really the smallest of my contributions to the site. In my country, an amateur website designer gets this for not even one hour of work.

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@polarkernel: Thank you for this clarification. I was afraid that this payment was somewhat important.

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@dimension10: I mean a fragile character of PO enterprise. No funds, no guarantees, all depends on good will of one person, etc. I believe in honesty of PolarKernel, I just do not want PO to disapear.

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@dimension10: It wasn't a legal issue--- I know he can do whatever he likes. He only needs to release the code if he distributes it, which he doesn't plan to do. The question is one of demonstrating a commitment to openness. I just don't see it. For all I know, Polarkernel resets all the votes by hand every night, and deletes all users from Singapore. Not that I believe this, but why make it difficult to rehost and mirror?

I had complete trust in Polarkernel and Dilaton, and their work seemed like manna from heaven, they were offering water to a man dying in the Sahara. But the site is clearly going to be hosted by a person who refuses to expose or share the code, for no apparent reason, who keeps the site under lock and key. What's the motivation for helping? It could be a selfless act of philanthropy, but usually this is not done anonymously.

Please help me out @polarkernel, I am grateful, but I can't understand the reluctance to release code and mirror. It's not like you will be any less involved or any more, it would just help you with review and patches. When people offer to help you do something hard, and work for no compensation, I simultaneously become grateful and suspicious. In my experience, the only person who ever offers to do a ton of work for no compensation is myself, and I'm probably lying to myself when I say that.

(Edit: I think the fear is that someone malicious would take the code and start a competing site--- and that malicious person is ME. I guess I see.)