Board merging: League of Non-Aligned Fleets

Ok, Lonaf's at the point where I want to propose merging with WordForge to the membership, provided they don't decide to merge with TK instead (TK's a viable option, as most of the remaining Lonafites cross-post at TK, especially in the MineField, and I'm the only Lonafite that posts here outside of Gagh, who barely posts as it is).

Before I make such a proposal (and Partsking, Lonaf's owner, has already said it's up to the members, otherwise he'll continue to pay the bills for Lonaf), I'd like some information regarding board merges.
Lonaf is a phpBB3 board, and as far as I know, phpBB3 will convert to XenForo. What I want to know, what is the process: Do we simply open (a) refuge forum(s) and invite them over? Can we import Lonaf's database with WF's and retain Lonaf's threads and posts? If so, how does the WF database work around the influx of threads and posts that shared ID numbers with its own?
How about the member list? Most Lonafites would be completely unique to Lonaf, but their ID numbers might conflict with some of ours; Gagh, Mr Phaser Beam and I are members on both; our ID numbers won't match. How would this get resolved? I have 30,321 posts at Lonaf and 8,730 here (8,731 with this post). Would this become 39,051 posts?
At current count, there are 35,752 threads and 785,956 posts at Lonaf. I imagine a complete merge of the two boards would be a bit of an undertaking, and I can imagine could require some downtime on WF for the process to complete (cue bitching on the FB page).

Other issues -- like working in Lonaf staff -- are inconsequential. The admins at Lonaf (Partsking, Mal and Rich [whiskey over at TK]) would retain their positions. Forum setup after a merge is a non-issue, though Lonaf does have a Red Light District forum while we don't have the White Room (dammit Anc).

The sooner I can get this information, the sooner I can get them to tell me they'd rather merge with TK (and watch as vBulletin4 doesn't take phpBB3!). Also, if this does work on paper and we need a test board to do this with, I've run a functionally dead offshoot-board of Lonaf's called HavenBBS (completely unrelated to any HavenBBS affiliated to WF).

Edited because the damn strike-through tags use (s) instead of (-)

Yeah, you're gonna have to talk to @The Exception, @John, and @Order2Chaos about that, I have no idea.

I do still have the testingforge domain if that helps.

Red Light District you say? Perhaps we should consider merging in to LONAF instead?

and the blitzkrieg continues

lonaf is another spinoff i guess? i vaguely remember the name.

Yeah, EFCL's offshoot, if memory of the history serves (especially since it was all before I joined). EFCL was formed so the group hanging around Trek's Captain's Lounge wouldn't be split apart when people got auto-shifted into the Admiral's Lounge (or whatever) via post count, and a group of those were running fleets of their own and split off to form Lonaf.

Or something.

So that's what Lonaf stands for.

I have absolutely no clue if this is possible, but I will look into it for at least 15 minutes in about 5 after I cycle a load of laundry. If you don't hear from me tonight, ask Nick instead.

While we can import the forum, it will not retain the content IDs (forums, users, posts, etc.), as one can only do that form of import on an empty board. The XF documentation is not particularly specific on what happens if you can't select that option, so perhaps the best thing would be to try it on testingforge.

XF has a uniqueness constraint on usernames; users whose names or emails match have to be manually merged. If members do have accounts on each, it would seem to be important to change the names to match before importing, as I have not found an option to merge users in the adminCP after the fact.

Yes.

Indeed, the database must be backed up before attempting a merge, and the board shut down for the duration.

Yeah, hey, why don't we have a White Room?

I don't believe we'd need a test board on the phpBB side, and the closer to real data we can get for importing, the better.[/quote][/quote]

Ok, I'll test the waters over there and see what happens.

Haven's not a test board in that it was a fully functioning board that simply died. It, like Lonaf, started as a phpBB2 board, and I modified it to use the Category Hierarchies hack (though I was a bit impatient in installing it and messed up part of the procedure, it was a vastly superior mod over phpBB2 and 3, imo, even after having to relearn the AdminCP). I wouldn't mind it merging over here, as it has some forums with reference info for a writing project of mine.

I fully support this idea just to see Faceman complain about it.

Where is Faceman, anyway? Is he still stealth-banned?

He was never banned, stealth or otherwise.

He was never banned. I believe he said something about working on a complex trial. Then there's that new baby thing. He probably just has no time for anything recreational.

Yeah. I second that. I recall him saying something about starting a big Federal trial.

Which was clusterfucked by the shutdown, IIRC.

I happened to PM him on an unrelated subject and he said he couldn't post anywhere and wasn't even sure if he could send PMs. I asked him if he wanted me to see what I could do but he sidestepped the issue. Maybe he was just trolling, but it seems an awfully implausible troll.

[Edit: Ironically, his last post (from 20 October) is "Silence the opposition." ]

He was temporarily blocked from posting, which I think was an accident/mistake made by the ginger overlord. It also hit Spaceturkey and We are Borg. When I learned of this from Turkey, I fixed it.

He could still post comments and send PMs, he just couldn't create threads for a day.

Any movement on this @Bickendan?

Lonaf's likely to stay Lonaf. Logically, because they're much more cross-polinated with TK, they'd go that way if they merged with anyone, but Zonker's said he'd stop posting if they went TK. And since they don't visit here, they don't see much incentive to go that way.

To quote Shatter: Fuck TK, fuck WF. Lonaf for life!

*sniff* They make me proud.

Hmmm. Anything we can do to encourage them to post here more?

If their attitude is "fuck WF" I doubt they want to post here at all, let alone more.

Oh well, don't know too much about them anyway. Maybe Troll Kingdom is more interested. Or we can always contact Mike Wong

Well considering in the same post Bick mentioned that many cross posted at TK, and that Shatter dude said 'Fuck TK' as well, I took that to be his statement on merging, not so much posting.

Oh...that could be, I guess.

And can we just burn Gul at the stake now for even suggesting merging SDNet with WF??

It might be worthwhile for some of the staff to post at Lonaf as ambassadors.

Now who's trolling for new members?

The irony's not lost on me

Done?

Aye.