The backup would contain private information like emails addresses and PMs so that would be no good. Only a limited number of people, likely admins, should have access to that. I don’t know, but don’t think, you can make a backup file of only public topics as an admin. But there is this plugin that I mentioned above that lets an admin write an SQL query and make that query available to a user group of their choice.
That didn’t work btw as that’s a separate volume.
Let’s keep things simple!
@tallakt has full access and can continue the forum in case I disappear. That’s good enough for me.
The forum is automatically backed up and the backups were not in danger afaik.
Increased the backup rate from every seven days to every day.
Spinning up a copy wouldn’t be the issue, but private user data.
If I was absolutely certain, that one could only make a copy from the backup, but would not be able to access any admin or user accounts, then the backup could be spread anywhere, as far as I’m concerned.
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Thats a good point. I was thinking only the messages were in the backup
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You would need approval from the individual users I think.
But if that is your position you should look into the plugin I mentioned as that allows you to do something like that.
Discourse backups include the full site database, which contains everything on the site: topics, posts, users, groups, settings, themes, etc. Depending on how the backup file is created, it may or may not include uploads. See the next section for details.
So user info like emails would be there as well as private messages between users. This kind of information should not be distributed freely.
Passwords are most likely not stored in plaintext format. One could see if a user is using a leaked password, but not extract the password if it is strong. [checking passwords is quick, guessing the password very slow]
That being said, once any user supplies any info or message on a public and free forum, they could not expect absolute confidenciality.
So I still think sharing backups with a few trusted users could be ok. I would also like to add to the privacy aware users, that we do not know who has acces to this info as of today, it is trust based.
I have previously said the value of the forum is mostly in the immediate interactions and not so much in the archeaology. So for me only the forum maintainers would have a bigger value in having backups, because that gives continuity if somehow the server goes offline.
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sorry reading forum argue of data storage seam a little silly? really silly?
cant you make a fire walled server to meet your need? might cut down on cost and bulk out the storage? if people have mad their own thumb drive data banks? 2Tb a slot? sandisk does have the means for this? but it down to you, who and what you do? in house is often cheaper? not outside costs. ive know a few tech heads where i am? build there own host server out of an old pc tower? as long as it can access the internet your away? just a thought for the morning? you might thing of having a few redundancy systems? so if the power drops out the server keep working? might also be beneficial to have more than one in the link? it harder to cyber attack then? there not one signal location but many. i suspect some on here know how? never tried myself? but i am aware it can be done.
I think the issue is more that people want to save the messages in case the forum suddenly disappear.
The forum is hosted on cloud services, very sound setup, not too expensive and can be grown to bigger capacity if we need to
fair doos!
i hope something can be sorted out?
The problem with sharing of course is that the forum contains private data. So sharing must be controlled.
Doubt anyone would be bothered to set up a new forum…
But here’s an interesting prospect…
If you have a downloaded database of the forum
Can that be turned into a vector database, then uploaded to pinecone,
So that we could use AutoGPT to reference its work in relation to the framework of AWESystems.info vector space ?
Kinda like
In making things you have cycles of brainstorming and checking your work. The forum seems mostly brainstorming. Do you want a brainstorming chatbot? I’d like a chatbot that was good in mechanical engineering and physics and math. I’m tempted by the $20 a month GPT-4 subscription, is this just as good?
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Good call @Windy_Skies
There needs to be a mix and currently “brainstorming” is easy
It’s trying to get the right adversarial agent bots to act to fact check the relevance of their work toward your goals which is currently difficult
Thank you for your support!
Here’s where the funding comes from now:
Here’s what fees we are losing:
And those are the costs:
So in summary the funding gap is about 2,5€, which I consider my own donation. So the forum is fully funded by member donations.
Thank y’all for your support! 
I’ve also added the possibility to pay yearly.
There seem to be additional losses though 
Stripe payout:
Paypal payout:
3,57€ + 1,65€ (converted) = 5,18€ Actual Payout
I think thats ok that the payment service takes a cut if it simplifies collecting $. If we need more I think there is plenty of room to increase donations…
The fees that are listed in the first post are quite alright, but the additional losses before payout are too much. Gotta figure out where they actually occur and of they are necessary. Only if there’s no other way I’ll call for additional donations.
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