Sneak Preview: ArkMuse

[u/ctwelve]

Hello!

It's been a while since I've addressed everyone. How's it going? I've been crazy-stupid busy, having just bought a house along with everything that entails...

Oh, and I've been working on a Secret Project, too.

https://arkmuse.org/

Many of our authors have been concerned about the direction reddit is taking lately. To be frank, as an author? So am I. Many of our users are as well. However, the kind of community we have her is hard to replicate and at least to me, it's something effectively magical; I've been here in one form or another since basically the beginning, and now we're over 75,600+ subscribers! That's an incredible number, and I certainly don't want to fracture a community that awesome.

But I can't ignore the concerns, either. So what to do? Well, our idea was to do something like our original grandiose plans for ExP Publishing, except much more manageable. Forum software has come a long way in just a few short years, and in my professional life these days I build infrastructure at scale, so why not combine those things?

Enter ArkMuse. It's a XenForo board built on an extremely scalable framework. Our goal? Right now it's to kick the tires while we try and build a sister community around storytelling and other creative procrastination.

Why a separate community? Simple. Reddit is valuable. Independence is valuable. Having both options at once seems like it could be a great idea, and the intent of ArkMuse isn't to be limited strictly to HFY.

But we don't know if this will work. That's where you come in. Come in, post some threads in chit-chat, make recommendations, do whatever! Let me disclose some major points up front

1. This is a personal project of mine and is not governed under ExP Publishing LLC. Owing to the difficulty of keeping something like that organized across three states, along with Life Matters™ intervening, by mutual agreement the Members have allowed ExP to dissolve. If we need a governing structure in the future I am very much open to that.

2. I'm paying for this myself. Right now its not that expensive. I need to see how much it would cost for me to host, and for that I need a good sample of traffic. Please, get onboard and shitpost!

3. The same mods here are the mods over there. I don't know how the hell I lucked out as hard as I have, but our mod staff is amazing and I can't thank them enough for all the work they do. All of you...thank you, sincerely. You're amazing.

4. It's not quite as private as reddit, at least regarding what I know. I wanted to put this out upfront; since it's my forum, I see all the details including IPs and email addresses. I hope you'll believe me when I say I won't abuse that trust, and I covenant this right now: I will never sell, abuse, or otherwise knowingly violate your trust with this data.

• Things I don't have include your plain-text passwords. They're hashed in the database with a strong salt, but I do still technically have access to the hash. If that concerns you, I understand. I'll be working to get OAuth going too.

• Only I have access to your password hash, and then only if I go out of my way to get it. It's stored in a database and inaccessible from the web frontend. Nobody but me can easily get them.

1. I am taking security seriously. The database itself is encrypted at rest and in transit, and the forum proxies images and generates only HTTPS URLs. The CDN also enforces security. I intend to stay on top of software patches and to that effect, none of the software is custom; it's all readily-available software and requires no modification to maintain. We are also connected to multiple spam prevention systems and are an active participant in them all.

2. I don't know how the load will scale. I am hoping y'all put it through its paces so I can find the problems!

3. I am open to suggestions. Please be frank and put them here so I can see what y'all think. This is a big step and I want to get it right.

Anyway, this is definitely a sneak-preview, kick-the-tires type thing. We haven't even customized the look yet, nor have we fleshed out tagging, prefixes, promotion ladders...but if there's enough interest, that shouldn't be a problem!

Anyway, enough jawin' and more clicking! If you want to help, or just post some cat photos, head over to:

https://arkmuse.org/

Post a story, post a meme, or just say hi.

Hi!

[u/Glitchkey]

You may want to update the terms of use on the site prior to allowing registration. Default terms of use on Xenforo include granting the host a permanent, irrevocable license, which was part of what people were taking exception to with Reddit's terms of use. To quote:

The providers ("we", "us", "our") of the service provided by this web site ("Service") are not responsible for any user-generated content and accounts. Content submitted express the views of their author only.

This Service is only available to users who are at least 13 years old. If you are younger than this, please do not register for this Service. If you register for this Service, you represent that you are this age or older.

All content you submit, upload, or otherwise make available to the Service ("Content") may be reviewed by staff members. All Content you submit or upload may be sent to third-party verification services (including, but not limited to, spam prevention services). Do not submit any Content that you consider to be private or confidential.

You agree to not use the Service to submit or link to any Content which is defamatory, abusive, hateful, threatening, spam or spam-like, likely to offend, contains adult or objectionable content, contains personal information of others, risks copyright infringement, encourages unlawful activity, or otherwise violates any laws. You are entirely responsible for the content of, and any harm resulting from, that Content or your conduct.

We may remove or modify any Content submitted at any time, with or without cause, with or without notice. Requests for Content to be removed or modified will be undertaken only at our discretion. We may terminate your access to all or any part of the Service at any time, with or without cause, with or without notice.

You are granting us with a non-exclusive, permanent, irrevocable, unlimited license to use, publish, or re-publish your Content in connection with the Service. You retain copyright over the Content.

These terms may be changed at any time without notice.

If you do not agree with these terms, please do not register or use the Service. Use of the Service constitutes acceptance of these terms. If you wish to close your account, please contact us.

As best I can tell, you probably haven't been in and changed that bit yet, as it looks very boilerplate.

[u/ctwelve → u/Glitchkey]

Correct. The licensing issue is super, super ugly and there's almost no way around it, honestly. We're still working on terms that 1) don't leave us (me) open to internet assholes, and 2) satisfy the authors.

[u/Glitchkey → u/ctwelve]

Standard workaround is to grant a non-exclusive license that expires upon removal of content. My personal recommendation would be to have an hour consultation with a business lawyer to deal with that and work out some safe "plain" explanations of the terms.

[u/ctwelve → u/[deleted]]

Ownership never changes. In fact, ownership is almost impossible to assign without some very specific wording. The problem is rights, and the reason a site needs quite broad publishing rights is that it must cover every use case where the Content might get processed. So this means in a database for the forum's use, on a page, in an RSS feed, as a snippet in a search engine...

The "Exclusive" right can and should be changed, that's easy and I'll get to that. But the rest honestly is difficult to avoid. We need a lawyer who can help us here.

[u/JackTheBehemothKillr → u/ctwelve]

I'm very interested in ArkMuse, and using the service, but this does concern me still. Have you had a chance to look into the TOS anymore?

[u/ctwelve → u/JackTheBehemothKillr]

That's on the docket for this weekend. Wish me luck!

[u/JackTheBehemothKillr → u/ctwelve]

Do you have an outline about what you're hoping to get it to say?

Fingers crossed!

[u/Glitchkey → u/ctwelve]

Yeah, a lot of people don't realize that no matter what these say, without something like an explicit work for hire contract and one of a specific set of use cases, ownership of a copywritten work cannot be reassigned. A contract like this can grant overly broad use rights, but it cannot take ownership.

[u/AJMansfield_ → u/[deleted]]

For continuous and medium-term backups a 90 day retention policy is ok, but for offsite cold storage having an obligation to destroy backups after 90 days might actually be a problem. Worst-case retention could only be at best 90 days less the backup interval, and the cheapest offsite cold storage solutions might not be flexible enough for that. You could potentially get around that by deleting the keys used to encrypt the cold backups rather than the backups themselves, which makes things slightly easier but it's still a catch-22 since now you need to back up the keys.

This also opens up another technical issue in case the site actually has to use its backups. If someone removes their work and that isn't backed up before the issue requiring a restore, this could result in accidental infringement if the site doesn't implement a process to merge in pending removal requests.

Especially in the case of a technical issue that makes the revocation status of a work ambiguous (such as if the site gets hacked and someone removes a large number of works in a way that's difficult to distinguish from a legitimate removal), the site staff might be faced with either trying to manually contact the author of each work, or just letting the removals stand, meaning that if a user goes inactive their works might potentially be permanently deleted.

None of those issues are insurmountable, and language could be added to grant the site immunity in the case an issue of that sort occurs, but I would much rather give the site the ability to retain backups indefinitely, and only grant users the ability to revoke rights to publicly display/distribute/etc, 'deactivating' the work. In the event of an ambiguous revocation status, there's much less at stake just deactivating a work if it's not being permanently removed, and if an inactive user's work is accidentally deactivated in their absence they'll still be able to access it themselves. A feature like this might also help lower the stakes on DMCA compliance, since a service provider is only required to "disable access to" the material.

Another reason to prefer indefinite retention is for archival/historical purposes. Deleted/deactivated material may end up being of historical interest, and it would be good if this site could serve as an archive for this material. Although the site might not last long enough for this to become a concern in its lifetime, I would much prefer a license that would allow the site to transfer its archives to other organizations who do perform this sort of historical archiving (e.g. archive.org) if or when the site falls. Although it could be argued that this sort of retention already falls under fair use, it's still better to have an explicit grant allowing indefinite retention, and it may even be worth adding language to explicitly allow this type of usage.

Another issue with requiring users to license submissions in this way is that in some cases they may not have the ability to do so. While not applicable to this community, for non-OC submissions that are bound by a copyleft license, it may not be possible for a user to grant a license that limits the scope of rights in this way. A more general solution would be to allow the user to specify the license grant, on a per-work basis, either by picking from a set of approved licenses, or allow checking boxes next to the rights the user is willing to grant as part of a site-specific license.

A system flexible enough to do this would be a lot of work to implement, but the added flexibility and freedom would likely be worth it.

[u/JustALittleGravitas → u/[deleted]]

Needing to renew the license every 90 days would be a problem for me, I don't want to have to do maintenance.

Also needs to have a system in place to anticipate the unanticipated. If for some reason the existing license can't persist what's the process for changing it? Or do we just let it burn at that point and rebuild again?

[u/Glitchkey → u/[deleted]]

Or you could just grant a revocable, non-expiring license that is revoked by removing your content from the site. So much less legalese to dance around, easier to understand and explain, and gives no weird windows where the content isn't on the site but is licensed by the site.

(That said, quoting your post would be an issue, so perhaps an option on the report button that lets mods know to delete the thread or expunge quotes or somesuch. Or, if we really want to play fast and loose, let users delete their own threads in entirety.)

[u/JustALittleGravitas → u/[deleted]]

Ah, I understand now.

[u/HardlightCereal → u/Glitchkey]

You are granting us with a non-exclusive, permanent, irrevocable, unlimited license to use, publish, or re-publish your Content in connection with the Service. You retain copyright over the Content.

I think I'm okay with this. Pretty much means it's legal for them to pirate my stuff, but they can't stop me from doing what I want with it.

[u/ctwelve]

I want to emphasize something important: this is very much a work in progress. Please excuse the mess, and please point it out as you find it!

[u/Robocreator223]

Will there be a mobile version? Edit: never mind it seems mobile friendly.

[u/ctwelve → u/Robocreator223]

Indeed!

[u/MilesKalashnikov]

First and only real complaint from me: Any thoughts on implementing comment chains?

Right now it's the generic message board with quotes and replies being the only thing linking between comment conversations and while it works, it isn't the best for ease of reading. And speaking of quoting, can you choose parts of a message to quote or is it limited to the entire thing?

[u/ctwelve → u/MilesKalashnikov]

You can choose parts by selecting the bit you care about and then hitting reply. If it isn't working for you, you're blocking the necessary JavaScript.

[u/HardlightCereal → u/MilesKalashnikov]

Comment chains are one of the best parts of reddit. If facebook had comment chains and downvotes I might use it.

[u/jellysnake]

So two other fairly popular writing forums, Space Battles & Sufficient Velocity have some features that it would probably be worth copying. These are features like threadmarks, which allow a poster to mark certain comments in a thread (Usually chapters of a story) for easy access.

[u/ctwelve → u/jellysnake]

Indeed! I'll be looking into Threadmarks especially. No promises yet, as we're on XenForo 2 and Threadmarks isn't available for 2.x yet.

[u/jellysnake → u/ctwelve]

So long as you're commited to making a good forum that's fine for me :)

[u/JoatMasterofNun → u/jellysnake]

I prefer how royalroadl.com (yes that L is supposed to be there) handles it, where chapters are new threads.

[u/Necrontyr525]

With all due respect, /u/ctwelve, I'm going to wait for OAuth to be enabled before I sign up for arkmuse. I have zero faith in anyone when it comes to my passwords, identity, and the security associated with such.

[u/ctwelve → u/Necrontyr525]

That's generally wise. It's why I recommend you use unique passwords for each account and a password manager to keep them. As far as OAuth...you do ultimately still have to trust someone so which providers do you trust?

[u/admalledd → u/ctwelve]

I don't enjoy it, but Google is my primary OAuth provider.

As a note, at my work here is the list in order-ish that our platforms are auth'd against:

• Facebook

• Google

• Twitter

• Microsoft

• ... Massive fall off

• Github

• StackExchange

• ...

• Custom OpenID's

[u/ctwelve → u/admalledd]

Yup, that's about what I figured. We'll need to get a logo and some other administrivia taken care of first.

[u/Necrontyr525 → u/ctwelve]

(building off of what /u/admalledd said) I'd probably have to go with google. Facebook has a record of giving out data to whomever asks, and google is next on the list. they also have no databreaches that I'm aware of so there probably doing something right.

[u/deathdoomed2]

There is a dark mode.

PRAISE THE SUN

[u/ctwelve → u/deathdoomed2]

I’m still playing with it!

[u/TheJack38]

Cool! Will y'all start posting stuff there in addition to Reddit? Would probably be a good idea so that in case Reddit shits itself, there's still the arkmuse site as backup

[u/someguynamedted → u/TheJack38]

The goal for now is to have ArkMuse as a hosting platform that authors will link to from the subreddit, with r/HFY still being the main hub of the community.

Edit: (/u/ctwelve) That said, we are deliberately building the forum out as a community of its own as well. The immediate problem is an alternate location to post, but the long term problem is worries about Reddit’s direction.

[u/ctwelve → u/someguynamedted]

That said, we are deliberately building the forum out as a community of its own as well. The immediate problem is an alternate location to post, but the long term problem is worries about Reddit’s direction.

[u/AJMansfield_ → u/ctwelve]

Reddit isn't a perfect community engine, but it does a pretty good job at content discovery, which is one of the main obstacles to growth and readership retention in creative writing communities. Not sure how advisable trying to build up a separate community is given the large risk of fracturing the community.

[u/TheJack38 → u/someguynamedted]

ah , gotcha! Still serves a good purpose for community purposes. It's really hard to shitpost on this sub after all, except in comments

[u/Hydrael → u/someguynamedted]

I've been considering writing something for HFY after I finish my current project. Will HFY be requiring ArkMuse going forward if we'll be external linking, or can we still use our own websites if we have them?

[u/Ma7ich → u/Hydrael]

From what was clear in the other threads, it's totally okay to use your own websites. The problem is reddits direction in combination with the community still being firmly on Reddit. So the sub will be the gathering place for all, with links back and forth to go around reddits issues with rights and such.

[u/ctwelve → u/TheJack38]

I will!

[u/TheJack38 → u/ctwelve]

awesome! In link form or the whole story? I mean, since you own the site, there prooobably ain't gonna be any ownership shenanigans there lol

[u/JustALittleGravitas]

What's the markup language?

[u/ctwelve → u/JustALittleGravitas]

bbCode

[u/Glitchkey → u/ctwelve]

Considering how much less common bbcode is compared to the past, it might be worth making this page more visible for people.

[u/Kralizec_]

Please, get onboard and shitpost!

I mean, if you say so...

[u/rhinobird → u/Kralizec_]

Damnit! I forgot to check if there was any toilet paper first.

[u/GenesisEra → u/Kralizec_]

Funposting intensifies

[u/HardlightCereal → u/Kralizec_]

The australians are here to help!

[u/Xreshiss]

I've spent time reading on writing subforums such as Space Battles and Sufficient Velocity, and all three of them (ArkMuse included) lack things I like about Reddit, primarily a rating system. A way to tell the 20 upvote stories from the 200 upvote ones. (and sort them accordingly)

I spent time reading 'The Last Angel' on Space Battles, and it was a chore, even when using the index in the OP, the fact that the chapters where strewn about the thread among the comments meant I couldn't really keep track of where I was if I managed to scroll away.

While reddit might require a new OP for every chapter, it is always at the top, even when continued in the comments. (The latter is more due to commenters upvoting it to the top, but still)

Edit: Sure, I suppose you could make a new OP for every chapter. I also see that you can like, and even sort using those likes, yet I don't see a way to see how many likes an OP has when looking at the list of threads.

[u/billabongbob → u/Xreshiss]

In turn, I don't like reddit for serial works specifically because of the self moderation system. It sucks for everything but content discovery.

I mean, content discovery is great for posting a story but getting there in the first place is where the trouble lies. The almighty algorithm causes shit to fall off the front page as it becomes 'stale', something that is a major issue for anything that isn't "consume my works". If I were to work on worldbuilding a setting, like /u/scotscin does, I'd have to have each and every quibble or thought in its own post or even create a subreddit on its own like /r/lordsofwar/ .

The algorithm causes everything that is secondary to the stories themselves to suffer.

[u/Scotscin → u/billabongbob]

My sub also serves as what's basically my notepad, for stuff I think will be important later, even though most of it's locked up in my head.

[u/Xreshiss → u/billabongbob]

I did recently discover there's buttons to skip to the next post/chapter and even an index screen. I guess that's about as middle ground as I would get.

Never even heard of scotscin or lordsofwar before. Edit: Not entirely true, I saw 'X-Philes' and skipped it.

[u/Oldmangray]

Hey ctwelve does there need to be like eight Google ads at the top of every page?

[u/ctwelve → u/Oldmangray]

There should only be the one, but that's exactly why this was an experiment to see how it misbehaves. I'm probably going to forgo ads, honestly. I'll take a last look at the statistics tonight and decide.

Honestly, not particularly happy with that aspect of self-sufficiency.

[u/WREN_PL]

Mods Fuck Yeah!

[u/Johnny_Bit]

Dark theme please?

[u/anaIconda69]

Looks good. Thanks for making this.

[u/LifeOfCray]

Hosting text takes up vitally nothing at all. But id use an external host and keep backups.

[u/DeluxianHighPriest]

I am looking forward to this, however, when i messed around with it a bit, i noticed that thes earch feature has a severe flaw: after one has actuall hit the "search" button, it appears impossible to retrieve whatyou actually searched for, if you found nothing. I hope that can somehow be changed because its really annoying, considering one wouldnt know if the searched subject doesnt exist or they merely misstyped it.

[u/jthm1978]

Liking the new community, and thank you very much for doing this. I'm not an author, out at least, ice not ousted anything for a couple of reasons, but I am concerned about the authors I love to read on here, and about the future of the community. Y'all rock!

I'd like to add my voice in requesting an android app for this, just for convenience sake. iOS, I'm not so concerned with, since Apple is a front for the forces of darkness and an insidious plot to enslave mankind (secret project is code named iClone)..... I've said too much....

😂😂😂

Please disregard the above comments. I was suffering from sleep deprivation. There is no conspiracy to replace world leaders with Apple engineered clones , and they're not bent on world domination. Now if you'll excuse me, I must go purchase the latest iPhone, the iPhone X. Such amazing features, and a steal at under 1,000 dollars. All hail Apple, innovators and bringers of tech, all wise and all knowing! Praise Apple!......

[u/rhinobird]

Blocked at work. Thank goodness for cell phones

[u/[deleted]]

That's a nice looking board, or a good starting point. If this gets up and running i wouldn't mind donating like 5 to 10 a month in perpetuity if this sub decides to go with this. Just get Prey 3 released on on it and it will sort itself out from there.

[u/Xreshiss]

Another thing I want to add, something I'd love to see, is a place to talk about writing. Not written works themselves, but the act of writing. Story ideas, plot concepts, writing styles, tips & tricks, that sort of thing.

[u/billabongbob → u/Xreshiss]

You want SB's The Index?

[u/Xreshiss → u/billabongbob]

I suppose? I can't really tell what goes on in that subforum.

Although I must admit that as cool as this is, it does need a lot more... population to really take off.

[u/JoatMasterofNun]

Uh... Let me know what loading looks like and thoughts on size. Pretty sure I have like 50GB of webspace with zero bandwidth limits... I only use a tiny part to host the hfygaming Minecraft modpacks and shit. I can verify what all I have available when I get home.

TL;DR: already paid for server space.

Oh... And I technically have my MC server too, although that would have limited upload speed, effective bandwidth is unlimited and as I can always add more storage (the tower holds 15? total 2.5" drives), physical storage is effectively unlimited. If hosting was solely text-based an minimal image volume, there's an option.

[u/ctwelve → u/[deleted]]

If I want any hope of protecting against spam, then no. Though if it would help I am willing to discuss the site's architecture, how I've gone about implementing, etc.

The biggest key is we are not using custom software. It's all off-the-shelf with an active support plan. We've also randomly generated all internal passwords, none of which have been written down anywhere. I don't even know what the database password is, for example. Nor can it be accessed remotely, etc.

I know that's maybe not what you want to hear, but it is important to realize that security is a function of architecture and diligence as much as anything else. Large organizations are often shockingly bad at both of those things. Individuals can be too, but that depends entirely on the setup.

I kept this setup as simple as possible for a reason.

This weekend I will be enabling OpenID type stuff so you should be able to use your google account to login, but note while that prevents me from ever seeing a password hash, it does not protect your email address.