4 ms·

Forth Fans – a website for fans of the classic FORTH programming language

21 points by mindcrime 5y ago

gerikson 5y ago
This site looks unbelievably scammy.
- kragen 5y ago
  Well, it definitely shouldn't be requesting access to my GPS coordinates when I load the entry page.
  - exikyut 5y ago
    I wonder if that's coming from the software the site seems to be running on (perhaps it's misconfigured) or plain old icky ads :) Just verified that my phone doesn't block location requests, but it isn't generating any for this site. Not sure what's going on, but it sounds potentially interesting...
  - mindcrime 5y ago
    The person who runs the site has acknowledged that and said it appears to be a side-effect of having the embedded map for "members and events". I'm guessing they will eventually figure out how to disable that. Or not, who knows?
    - kragen 5y ago
      I think maybe we're being too harsh. Someone apparently just installed this BBS software and put some links and downloads into it in October, kind of like a My First Web Site exercise, and then forgot about it. Probably at some point spammers will move in and then they'll delete the site.
    - exikyut 5y ago
      I was wondering if it was a misconfiguration (or something that amounted to such). That makes perfect sense. It sounds like genuinely useful functionality - on an opt-in basis.
      - kragen 5y ago
        Once the site has thousands of times more users, yeah. It is opt-in in the sense that I declined the request, but it seems like the kind of thing that should be delayed until you click on "meetups in my area" or something.
kragen 5y ago
So far it seems to be content-free except for https://forth.retro-os.live/index.php/forth-links/forth-links https://forth.retro-os.live/index.php/forth-links/forth-link... and https://forth.retro-os.live/index.php/downloads/category/5-forth-files https://forth.retro-os.live/index.php/downloads/category/5-f.... Maybe it got posted here before its author finished writing it?
- mindcrime 5y ago
  The site creator has been publicizing it to some extent. I think it's mainly just that A. it's new and B. Forth is a fairly niche interest. It'll be interesting to see if they're able to bootstrap and maintain a community there.
  - kragen 5y ago
    Naw, https://forth.retro-os.live/index.php/downloads/category/5-forth-files https://forth.retro-os.live/index.php/downloads/category/5-f... shows that they put the minimal content it has up in October and just haven't added anything in the last four months: Latest Downloads HartForth Docs 2021-10-14 FORTH Files/Language Files HartForth (TRS-80) 2021-10-14 FORTH Files/Language Files 64forth 2021-10-13 FORTH Files/Language Files VolksForth v3.81 2021-10-13 FORTH Files/Language Files cforth (Amiga) 2021-10-13 FORTH Files/Language Files Someone did just apparently answer me on the on-website chat thing (84 concurrent users at the moment!), but live chat is the last thing to reach critical mass—forums could work with one user a week, answering the previous week's user, but live chat needs multiple people online at the same time.

21 points by mindcrime 5y ago

gerikson 5y ago

This site looks unbelievably scammy.

kragen 5y ago
Well, it definitely shouldn't be requesting access to my GPS coordinates when I load the entry page.
- exikyut 5y ago
  I wonder if that's coming from the software the site seems to be running on (perhaps it's misconfigured) or plain old icky ads :) Just verified that my phone doesn't block location requests, but it isn't generating any for this site. Not sure what's going on, but it sounds potentially interesting...
- mindcrime 5y ago
  The person who runs the site has acknowledged that and said it appears to be a side-effect of having the embedded map for "members and events". I'm guessing they will eventually figure out how to disable that. Or not, who knows?
  - kragen 5y ago
    I think maybe we're being too harsh. Someone apparently just installed this BBS software and put some links and downloads into it in October, kind of like a My First Web Site exercise, and then forgot about it. Probably at some point spammers will move in and then they'll delete the site.
  - exikyut 5y ago
    I was wondering if it was a misconfiguration (or something that amounted to such). That makes perfect sense. It sounds like genuinely useful functionality - on an opt-in basis.
    - kragen 5y ago
      Once the site has thousands of times more users, yeah. It is opt-in in the sense that I declined the request, but it seems like the kind of thing that should be delayed until you click on "meetups in my area" or something.

kragen 5y ago

So far it seems to be content-free except for https://forth.retro-os.live/index.php/forth-links/forth-links https://forth.retro-os.live/index.php/forth-links/forth-link... and https://forth.retro-os.live/index.php/downloads/category/5-forth-files https://forth.retro-os.live/index.php/downloads/category/5-f.... Maybe it got posted here before its author finished writing it?

mindcrime 5y ago
The site creator has been publicizing it to some extent. I think it's mainly just that A. it's new and B. Forth is a fairly niche interest. It'll be interesting to see if they're able to bootstrap and maintain a community there.
- kragen 5y ago
  Naw, https://forth.retro-os.live/index.php/downloads/category/5-forth-files https://forth.retro-os.live/index.php/downloads/category/5-f... shows that they put the minimal content it has up in October and just haven't added anything in the last four months: Latest Downloads HartForth Docs 2021-10-14 FORTH Files/Language Files HartForth (TRS-80) 2021-10-14 FORTH Files/Language Files 64forth 2021-10-13 FORTH Files/Language Files VolksForth v3.81 2021-10-13 FORTH Files/Language Files cforth (Amiga) 2021-10-13 FORTH Files/Language Files Someone did just apparently answer me on the on-website chat thing (84 concurrent users at the moment!), but live chat is the last thing to reach critical mass—forums could work with one user a week, answering the previous week's user, but live chat needs multiple people online at the same time.