An update of sorts from your forum moderation team.

[Astrofox]

First post on the KSP forums in quite a long time. I joined way back in 2015 (the email I use for my online persona actually served the initial purpose of joining the KSP forums) and was active for some time, then kinda just dipped for a while when life got crazy (undergrad). I kinda regret not being active here much for the last few years, but I suppose I was preoccupied with other things. KSP's mods really expanded the game further and let it grow in various creative directions, and this place is an amazing hub for that. I usually come here first to see the mods and what people experience with them before downloading them. If that experience gets lost, sure I can go to other places for the mods but I'm not sure how well player feedback gets communicated.

I hope TTi has the foresight to keep the forums up for a while longer. If not, let's hope we can archive a decent chunk of this place and find a new home elsewhere. It sucks, but all good things must one day come to an end, KSP and related shenanigans included.

[Vanamonde]

To emphasize, I am not saying the forum WILL be shut down. Many games have forums which continue long after the game itself is finished and if nothing else KSP1 is still something that people are buying and playing, and so its forum may continue to be supported. What I am saying is that we are dealing with a vacuum of information and that a closure is at least a possibility. 

[Lisias]

5 minutes ago, Gargamel said:

But it also makes sense to start a backup for archival purposes.  

I noticed that rhe 502 errors have a Schedule, they usually starts at 23:00 GMT-3 and keep going between 3 and 4 hours. Maybe this is the reason? People doing personal backups?

Perhaps it would be a better idea to allow Web Archive to do it? It would save a lot of bandwidth, and with Forum using the same infra as everything else on TTI, wasting such bandwidth on a frozen game at expenses of the profitable ones is surely something that will not be seen with fond eyes.

Another idea would be a static export of the site into a torrent? (Assuming Invision does something like that)

[damerell]

While I wouldn't suggest relying on it alone, the Wayback Machine seems to have a largely complete archive of the forums - indeed, this 2-hour-old thread is in it. Of course, it's read-only, but someone looking to resurrect the forums could get almost all of them back from that.

[Bellabong]

32 minutes ago, Ryaja said:

I think I'll try making a prototype for a continuation. If I succeed I'll post it on GitHub so people can help improve it and start a GoFundMe or something to get funding to host it. If I do start hosting I'll offer all current mods to moderate there too.

People are way ahead of you already. Personally not in a position to answer any questions about it. 

[Gargamel]

18 minutes ago, Bellabong said:

People are way ahead of you already. Personally not in a position to answer any questions about it. 

Then why post about it?

[Madrocketman]

Whatever happens super grateful for the moderation team volunteering to keep this site a safe place. It will be a shame if it goes. You each have been fantastic!

[Ryaja]

1 hour ago, Bellabong said:

People are way ahead of you already. Personally not in a position to answer any questions about it. 

By "people" I assume you mean you are and can't talk for whatever reason? If so good luck

[Gargamel]

Remember folks, this thread is to talk about the future of the forums, not to rehash what has already happened, discussed ad nauseam in other threads.   

[NoSTs]

Hello,
A Shutdown of the Forum would be really unfortunate for the whole community.
This is a Place where we all came together to share our creations and Ideas.
Seeing it all be taken down would remove a big part of Kerbal Space Program from all of our lifes.
And make it really hard to get access to almost everything thats KSP.  Most of it is centralized on this corner of the Web.
I haven't posted a lot but enjoyed the forum very much nonetheless and would hate to see be Lost.
Forums may be antiquated in this Age of Social Media Platforms and Discord Servers, the KSP community can only have a future if its foundation is the Forum.

Maybe we could Start a Petition and convince the operators of this Site to keep it up?
Maybe we could buy it? So its 100% in the Hand of the community like Spacedcok!
Make some Noise, we need to be noticed! (Just don't review bomb KSP that would most likely send the wrong signal)
The Team Fortress players got Valves to remove the Bots!
We need to make sure the owners see how much this Site means to us. And assure us that its not going anywhere soon.

#SavetheForum

Edited July 8 by NoSTs

[DeadJohn]

@Vanamonde Congrats on your stealth promotion. You currently seem to be the most senior person in charge of KSP until you hear otherwise

[RayneCloud]

This just breaks my heart. @Gargamel @Vanamonde If there is anything I can do, to help, please let me know. 

[Little 908]

ksp2 was supposed to be a sequel to the original game, but ended up being its coffin.

 

 

[moeggz]

4 hours ago, Gargamel said:

But it makes sense that when TTi acquired KSP, they moved the forums to a block of servers they use for such purposes

First off thank you all for the update and your continued volunteering. 
 

But am I reading this quote right and that currently the moderation team doesn’t know who is currently paying the server costs? Or even if they are being paid? 
 

That seems to fit Take Two MO of how they have handled this. 

[xXIndestructibleEVAXx]

Well that was a bummer to read

[Ultimate Steve]

Well, looks like the next few days of free time will be spent copying my mission reports into google docs. Serves me right for not writing everything in drive to begin with. But it isn't my fault that pasting from imgur to drive and then drive to the forums will make the images tiny!

@Brotoro What did you use to make your mission report hosting site? Any services or is it completely self hosted and made? I've been thinking about something like that, a place to keep my stuff in the event of a forumpocalypse.

[Ryaja]

We gotta make a bot to archive all this on the Internet archive or something. That'll well be easiest. Though posting won't be possible we can make another bit to scrape that just in case the forums go down soon.

An idea, have it check every link on a page and dump it to the archive(I think they have an API) and the sequentially go through each link for sub links to archive. Though this would be reasorce intensive.

 

According to http://archivebot.com/3 this site is currently being scraped. From my knowledge this seems to be official or semi official for smaller sites like this one.

Edited July 8 by Ryaja

[Jacke]

Thanks, @Vanamonde, for reporting this.  Thanks to the entire moderation team, who've provided distinguish service as volunteers.

I've mentioned this before.  Be sure you're on the various KSP-connected Discords.  If and when these forums disappear, that will be where discussion will move, especially for a community replacement for these forums.

 

6 hours ago, PDCWolf said:

The forum is overrated in its current state, and pretty much completely unnecessary as a place that at most hosts 400 people online and about 20 active in various threads.

I've generally agreed with you.  But this....

STOP IT WITH THE NEGATIVE WAVES, MORIARITY!!!

I know that forums only have a fraction of the player base.  But these forums is how there's a community for all sorts of features about KSP.  Especially, as you immediately go on about, modding!

6 hours ago, PDCWolf said:

The only thing I'm genuinely worried about is the mod scene for KSP1, specially those mods that stopped being in active development/support and only exist here. I'm not even gonna hint at me making any sort of effort, but I will do the minimum effort of saying I genuinely hope someone does some archival work for it.

 

[Ryaja]

And if this is one of the last messages sent you to everyone here for making this such a great place. Special thanks to the mods for giving your time to keep this place civil and welcoming.

[Ultimate Steve]

Neither Discord nor Reddit seem like a good place for mission report and story type stuff. If the forums die down I wonder where people will post that sort of stuff.

[chefsbrian]

5 hours ago, Gargamel said:

As for the forums shutting down, we don’t know.     But it makes sense that when TTi acquired KSP, they moved the forums to a block of servers they use for such purposes.   As long as they keep those servers running in general, there’s a good chance the forums will be fine.   

Its more likely than not that the forums stay up. Put simply, the forum costs are a margin of a margin of a cost, but provide a great metric to point to while they try and sell KSP or PD as a whole. Even if it just sits for years in their backlog of IP that they're open to proposals for, the KSP property is worth millions, and keeping the forums likely costs in the realm of a few thousand a year. Invision licensing isn't all that expensive (on the corporate scale of things - my dayjob pays a thousand dollars a year per person for just one platform a couple hundred people use that isn't even revenue generating or customer facing, a few grand on forum software is nothing), and Take-Two's already going to be well invested in cloud and hosting infrastructure from the rest of their business, so the guts of the forum become a menial occasional task to deal with. It wouldn't be surprising if some of the issues we've been experiencing lately was their team shuffling us off onto the cheapest, lowest tier hosting they got - The forums are valuable as a sales tool, but nobody is gonna be selling it on "and the forums run buttery smooth".

The cold bean counter calculus says that unless the KSP IP is deemed unsellable in perpetuity and never worth resurrecting, that the forums are a worthwhile continued expense. The only reason to shut it down would be a serious breach/perception damage (Not people being salty and mods removing stuff, but like a hack plastering adult content everywhere) or similar outside of normal expectations disaster.

 

[Westinghouse]

Out of interest, what evidence is there that the forum will be shut down? 

Yes, there seems to be plenty of 502 Gateway errors, but that simply might be to do with a switchover of servers. The communication blackout is entirely due to everyone involved with the Kerbal franchise being laid off, including people outside of Intercept Games such as Private Division executives Grant Gertz and Ara Josefsson.

Whichever Take2 executive has been passed the decision making role over the forums has probably barely even heard of the game. The note that they've been handed responsibility for KSP is probably still sitting in their In Tray.

Game Publishers absolutely do not throw away assets that they can potentially make money from in the future. Yes, they might let Kerbal sit dormant for a while, but will they really damage the franchise by killing the forum that hosts such a resource of information? Take2 is all about their franchises they own, take a note in their shareholder meeting a few months ago how they had a graphic listing the game 'brands' they own; Bully, Red Dead Redemption, Outer Worlds, Kerbal Space Program, L.A. Noire. It would be a very brave T2 executive indeed to kill the official forum to one of their brands, no matter how 'niche' it is. Despite the failure of KSP2, the Kerbal name is very well known and recognisable. Plus, the cost of hosting a forum is a drop in the ocean for a corporation like Take2.

[Fizzlebop Smith]

Do a Google search for any mod in your list. Now include any sort of attempt to trouble shoot that and tell me the forums aren't the heart of the KSP community.

Regardless of the active number of people posting daily.. anyone seeking to discover the Kerbal experience will likely move onto modded play.

The builds would be much simpler to the detriment of Kerbal-kind.

 

Edited July 8 by Fizzlebop Smith

[Heretic391]

If it goes down, I wish everyone the best.

[Vanamonde]

16 minutes ago, Westinghouse said:

Out of interest, what evidence is there that the forum will be shut down? 

None. The purpose of my post was to acknowledge that people are asking questions (so it doesn't seem like we're ignoring you), but also to explain that we have no answers to those questions.