HTS Needs to Stop Sucking

[tremor77]

@wells: +1 and amen brotha. I think I mentioned in my earlier post using an established CMS, but CodeIgniter would be great too... I think we should select an established BBoard to save us the trouble of writing a forum code.. I'm all for PHPBB3 (If in fact currently it is PHPBB2) - which would allow us to port most of the current forum over easily. But I think SMF Forums should be looked at as well.. We can then create a wrapper around the board for the site at large... the current system of double login to the boards is just stupid.. I wrote a wrapper years ago for phpBB that fused a single login with the board when i was a php noob. I've also been hearing good things about Hotaru CMS but haven't had the opportunity myself to use... http://hotarucms.org/

One thing that could be said though for developing something from scratch.. would be a mission engine. If we had a mission engine with an API, we could allow users to contribute their own missions... we could have contributed / alpha missions area, and.. missions that get enough positive rating could get promoted to official missions... this would encourage alot of new development and creativity... just need to have an engine built with hooks for scoring and results.

[Monica]

Wells, I love you, baby. But you should know this. <3

Couple of great news - bringing back the oldies (some of them anyway.) NightQuest is now Lead Developer (about freakin' time) and will start recruiting some competent devs. Many of you (especially oldies) know of NightQuest. I've personally known NightQuest for over 3 years. He's got the right mind and the knowledge to assist with upcoming projects for HTS! Other great news, most of you are "new kids on the block", so if you have never heard of RootThisBox, it's definitely coming back! Keep your eyes wide open because HTS is coming back with major, positive changes.

[Goatboy]

Keep your eyes wide open because HTS is coming back with major, positive changes.

Changes which should be announced on the main page *coughcoughhackupagoatfurballcoughcough*

[Monica]

Kaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay...


... Oh crap, I will do this when I am home.

[sh3llz]

Fantastic!
I just wish I hadn't heard this before. You'll have to forgive me if my faith is less than ideal. However, I joined the HTS community a good 6 years ago and I'm still here - so I guess that says something. This time, I'm working to make myself personally invested in HTS' improvement as well. I can't be a developer (I've been too silent the past few years) but I can at least give presentations and write articles. Hopefully others will do the same and we can take a step in the right direction from every angle.

Along those lines, I like the idea of making contribution easier. So I have some suggestions to add in regards to presentations/lectures. I like the idea of live lectures but I think if we allowed other forms of submission we'd get a lot more content. For example, users should be able to make videos for HTS and submit them as lectures. Good solid video lectures are hard to come by, and if we could start building our own collection - well, I don't see how it could hurt. Pre-recorded audio lectures with a links/notes page wouldn't hurt either. Pre-recorded lectures could be placed in with the old recorded live lectures. And if the live lectures were also given notes/links pages - all the better.

And as for the live presentations, we seem a bit stuck in the past. IRC and Ventrilo, really? There's something to be said for simplicity and proven methods, but we could also give solid video/audio presentations through something like tinychat or stickam. The presenter doesn't need a webcam or anything, they can show their computer though manycam/similar-software to better illustrate what they're talking about. Now unless the devs are really lazy, I'm not suggesting that we actually use tinychat. Instead, we could easily set up our own chat room with audio/video to be used only during presentations that request it.

[0xBEEF1337]

Delete.

[Kage]

NightQuest is now Lead Developer

Monica, I told you not three days ago, DO NOT exceed your duties as Lead Moderator, and nothing more. Our conversation was exactly as follows in IRC:

[01/16/11 08:48:59P] <Monica> Kage: BTW, don't you think it's better to have NightQuest as Lead Dev?
[01/16/11 08:50:45P] <Monica> KAGE
[01/16/11 08:50:49P] <Monica> NIGHTQUEST 4 LEAD DEV PLZ.
[01/16/11 08:50:51P] <Monica> RESPECTABLE.
[01/16/11 08:51:13P] <Monica> CAN CODE IN PHP, C & C++, ASM AND IS AN AWESOME GAMER. Ok, cool.
[01/16/11 08:51:14P] <Monica> Let's do this.
[01/16/11 08:52:45P] <Monica> Kage
[01/16/11 08:52:47P] <Monica> Don't fucking ignore me again.
[01/16/11 08:55:30P] <Monica> KAGE
[01/16/11 08:55:33P] <Monica> NIGHTQUEST = LEAD DEV PLEASE
[01/16/11 08:55:35P] <Monica> OK COOL
[01/16/11 08:55:36P] <Monica> ADDED.

Nothing is edited nor altered in any way. I never approved of this maneuver, I never responded to you during you saying those things in IRC. You apparently decided to just make the decision for yourself which is NOT YOUR CALL nor is it your authority. Coinciding with our conversaion 40 minutes prior to the above:

[01/16/11 08:14:20P] <Kage> Ok, listen
[01/16/11 08:14:28P] <Monica> Yes.
[01/16/11 08:15:16P] <Monica> Kage?
[01/16/11 08:15:20P] <Kage> I'm tired of you overstepping your authority, and you can get pissy all you want, but I've told you this before, and this will be the last time I tell you: You are Lead Mod, not "Community Manager" or whatever. You oversee all mods of the site and forums, and do not have authority (any more) to hire or fire devs

You acknowledged this, which means you DO NOT have the authority to sit here and claim NightQuest is the Lead Developer. His position within HackThisSite is under consideration, and I do agree he is very trustworthy, reliable, and capable, but until I state his position, YOU DO NOT.


I'm sorry to have done this publicly, Monica, but since you refuse to comply with what we had talked about 3 days ago, I will make it publicly known that you do not have the capability to make these calls.

[Defience]

Wells, that was a great post. Full of comments & suggestions and while CodeIgniter sounds good, I'd be interested to hear what the cons are. There has to be some reasons why your suggestion hasn't been taken. Any ideas?

btw, your satirical piece was

[Wells]

As a new member, I simply don't post because I can't find enough interesting content.

We did have a thread about satcom hacking, which everyone trolled the OP on (granted, yes, he probably would have never understood how to do it, that's not the point). We had a chance to talk about a really neat topic that other people have actually done successfully. I attempted to get the topic going by posting to real resources about it, nobody cared.

I click on the "new threads" post which is mostly low-level help requests, directly related to the missions, or just irrelevant to my interests. If you want to attract people and start a cohesive community where people like me regularly contribute, you need to generate better content and discussions.

Hacking is a huge topic, and the community has really cool interests. Lets talk about 2600 articles we read, lets talk about Off the wall podcasts, lets talk about that recent php exploit in greater detail -- where we figure out what actually causes the floating point to crash php. If you want a community, content needs to be king. All this bullshit about the forum skin is secondary, and yeah it does look like shit, I've blocked the "woah man I'm 14 years old and graffiti is sw33t" graphic on top using adblock, I don't want to visit this site if someone else can see my screen because it just looks embarrassing once you're in the professional arena.

Copying defcon isn't the answer either, I post there and that community isn't about hacking it's about a hacker convention. People who goto the con like to meet up there and chat, and they have a very strict "no bullshit" policy that keeps llamas out. Be careful about who you copy if that's what you're going to do.

Content is king.
Stop looking like a kids site.
Worry about other stuff once you can address these two in that order.

Bravo. See, there are plenty of people around here who know what's important and what HTS should focus on. And yet the people in charge don't seem to get this. They still refuse to follow good advice and are ploughing on writing their own MVC framework and god-knows-what-else. Who is making the content? You are writing a news posting system, and yet the main site hasn't had *any* real hacking related news posts for years. How is this going to change?

[Monica]

@ Kage - I understand your concern, I really do. Although I personally would love NightQuest as Lead Dev, the decision was just not up to me. The community voiced their opinion of the future Lead Dev, and NightQuest is more than qualified to be the HTS Lead Dev. I did grant NightQuest the access, however, I proceeded due to the fact that NightQuest was clearly elected by the community and believe it or not, by Silent-Shadow himself. I'm not sure if I misunderstood, but let's face the fact - HTS does not have a Lead Dev. People are aware of this, including Silent-Shadow. I personally spoke to SS two nights ago, and he is more than aware there currently is no Lead Dev. Moving forward, he'd love to see NightQuest as the Lead Dev, much as anyone else, therefore, SS granted NightQuest founder of #devtalk channel. He also gave me the "OK" to promote NightQuest's access.

Of course, HTS at its current state cannot move forward without both proper administration and developers. If you somehow missed logs - it is a huge concern as to who will take the Lead Dev position. Do you honestly think people are satisfied with the recode after what they've seen so far? Do you honestly feel that someone like Bren, a 12 year old, is responsible and mature enough to handle the position? Do you honestly feel confident that the community feel secure with his contribution? At the same time, the users expect the staff to be role models. I know I haven't been quite the role model since I became inactive and trolled for a little bit, of course, with no intention of hurting anybody. Seriously. Let's move forward. How? Stick with NightQuest, a COMPETENT developer. Therefore.. will attract the community and more importantly - will attract more, competent developers to assist with the recode and future projects.