Needless to deny it.
The situation of abandonment within this site is clear for everyone.

Active users who work to improve our database are only a dozen (maybe twenty?)...
With hours and hours of work, we have succeeded in creating an accurate and coherent database, which has no equal on the web.

It would be very sad if all this would be lost.


This thread does not intend to be argumentative.
It is only an opportunity for comparison, but also a hope.

The hope that its founder, give us a sign on the fate of this wonderful community he created...

As others said before, there is a willing user base and there is more than one business model to carry on this software. From my point of view the best would be an open source approach to avoid the risk get into this situation again...

I'm tired of complaining about the current situation: Ken has to declare, what his goals are!

Quoting scotthm:

Quote:

I just had two contributions approved today, and here we are on the forum discussing it.  If we were abandoned the site would be inactive.

Screeners who monitor contributions are willing users.

It is the direction of the founder, which is missing...

Running a business is hard, regardless of whether or not it is successful. People who do it, don't take it lightly. They usually risk masses of time and money to make it work, often at great personal sacrifice. It is my opinion that the owner of this resource - web site and products, is no different.

If my premise is true, then one of the last things I would be concerned about is any sort of indifference, incompetence or lack of professionalism by Ken.

I suspect that the cost of running this site, all the background operations, insurance, Apple approval process, taxes and other business regulation expenses costs more than some of us earn in a year. If somebody doesn't care about it, it would be a lot simpler and cheaper to just pull the plug. Trust me - somebody must care, a lot.

We are spoiled that we have a FREE forum, FREE web site for displaying our collections, and a FREE technical structure for a collaborative process for managing the database. Not perfect but FREE. And on top of that, a ONE TIME LIFETIME FEE for every product, which some people even refuse to pay. But somebody (Invelos) is paying for it.

In my opinion, there is clearly a serious either personal or family health, financial or legal issue at play. My hope is that whatever is the issue, gets resolved to the benefit of Ken and / or family, and that he is able to continue to provide this valuable resource. So, I'll keep working on my plugins, and I hope the contributors (my heros!) keep making those contributions. I am willing to hang in there as long as Ken can hang in there and provide this platform we enjoy.

Quoting CubbyUps:

Quote:
...
I would even go as far as having a way to download the onlineprofile file (forgot what it's called but it's needed just to be able to add profiles. It's a file that sometimes gets corrupted or whatever. Or one has to reinstall the program.

Well you are assuming that you will be able to continue to use the program. Based on how it works, it would be difficult to continue to use it without the online process to back it up.

However, there is a built-in profile sharing mechanism already. Actually two of them: (1) you can restore selective profiles from a database backup, and (2) you can export / import a profile file (but I can't remember how to do it ...)

I doubt that such a system would work for very long, without the kind of infrastructure that Ken has provided, which is more expensive and difficult IMHO than I think most people realize.

Quoting CubbyUps:

Quote:
Ah found it, this file.
OnlineList.dod

"Download the file by right-clicking on the download link below and selecting "Save Target As". Then, browse to your "My Documents" folder, then into "DVD Profiler" from there."

I've had where either the file gets corrupted or had to reinstall the program, and needed that file just to add dvds in.

So if it were possible to have an off dvdprofiler site (as backup) to download that for fellow users just in case.

Quote:
However, there is a built-in profile sharing mechanism already. Actually two of them: (1) you can restore selective profiles from a database backup, and (2) you can export / import a profile file

Sure, but if fellow users don't know where to share them what's the point.

Well the OnlineList.dod is a small, but important, part of the pie. It is analogous to the table of contents and index belonging to a massive book. It must change whenever the contents of the book changes. In our case, the contents of the book are the hundreds of thousands of profiles, images, reports, etc. that are stored in the online database.

So, it is not enough just to protect that file. You have to recreate the process of keeping that file up to date, and all the cloud-based data that backs it up. Today that process is called the invelos Forums, the DVD Profiler program, and the Online database Why do you think there are not more alternatives? Answer: It is hard and expensive to do.

Quoting Assassin:

Quote:


There is still no master translation source, there are no future plans whatsoever, looks like more and more people (including me a little bit) take a small step back because they

Perhaps another reason some take a step back and not contribute that much is that with the recent update they simply don't understand the new features because the rules haven't been updated. Personally I think the rules should have been updated Before the update was released. Even before contributions were enabled for the update.

Second even for those that do, perhaps they don't like it that we still don't have a one movie per all profiles approach. So one could have the same movie multiple times in their database and yet have different cast/crew or other data in each of the profiles.

Still don't have a good way to identify people that share the same with others but don't have a known birth date. So the CLT just bunches all of them together, and unless one knows for sure one has to also either lump them all together locally or go by another database (which itself may not be accurate either).

Quote:
Personally, I have no where else I want to go.

Ditto.

But I think some are a tad scared about what's happening behind the scenes.
I've been here years and I can remember when Ken was posting on the forums on what seemed like a daily basis. Now, as others have pointed out, he doesn't and only updates the program.

I think some are worrying about it, and perhaps rightfully so.

Personally I don't think that it's a bad thing to come up with some sort of backup plan so that the community can keep in touch with each other. Now whether or not that means trading profiles or just keeping in touch is up in the air.

For now, I think that it might be a good idea to choose if one of us should host a site/forum in case the worse happens or a public forum that already exists. If the latter I would pick the blu-ray.com forums.