A small issue with goblinrefuge?

10 Antworten [Letzter Beitrag]
a_slacker_here
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Beigetreten: 06/29/2013

Greetings ladies and gentlemen:

I know there are goblinrefuge users here, it seems I'm unable to find the site's maintainer and that's why I ask here.

When I upload a file (Even though it is small (35 mb)), the site tell's me: "Sorry, uploading this file will put you over your upload limit.". Anyone knows what is happening or how do I contact the maintainer?

My account is "random_dude".

Thank you.

jorgesumle
Offline
Beigetreten: 06/01/2016

That happened to me too. I emailed the company that runs it on 27/12/2016. I could only find the sales email (name at domain).

Hello SalmonLabs LLC,

I had an error in Goblin Refuge saying that uploading a file would put
me over my upload limit. The video itself weights only 1.3 MB. Is there
a way I can extend my upload limit? Are you planning to do that in the
future?

Kind regards,
Jorge

Haven't received a reply though. There is also another public Mediagoblin instance here: http://roaming-initiative.com/mediagoblin/

jxself
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Beigetreten: 09/13/2010

People should start using other places that goblinrefuge. It's become a sort of "super node" in the MediaGoblin world. Even if, in theory, software is decentralized, if everyone's (or most of everyone) is using the same one it becomes less decentralized. Please start up a node yourself and help keep things decentralized.

onpon4
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Beigetreten: 05/30/2012

Yeah, essentially this. Unfortunately, there aren't any other public ones running right now, so please, if you can host a public MediaGoblin instance, do so!

One problem is that video streaming is particularly expensive. I think MediaGoblin should address this by having an easy to use feature for charging uploaders for the use of the service. Maybe an option that says "allow uploads of videos, but only at a cost of X dollars for Y length of time" (and incorporate support for Paypal, Bitcoin, and whatever else can be supported). Maybe the person behind the Goblin Refuge can even work on this and get it into upstream MediaGoblin.

onpon4
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Beigetreten: 05/30/2012

By the way, if you can't help make the ecosystem better, one place you can upload to in the meantime is the Internet Archive. This is what I'm currently doing.

ayleph
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Beigetreten: 01/08/2017

Hi folks! I maintain GoblinRefuge.com in my spare time. I saw a link to this thread in the #mediagoblin channel on freenode. If you don't mind, I'd like to address some of the concerns brought up in this thread.

Upload Limits
=============

The site currently imposes a 1024 MB cumulative per-user upload limit. I implemented this because the hosting fees for storage and bandwidth were increasing too rapidly. GoblinRefuge.com generates no income and has no ads, and I currently pay for all of the hosting out of pocket.

It looks like there may be a way to user-specific upload limits, but I haven't tested this yet. Perhaps I could use this as a way to generate a small amount of income for the site. Would any of you be interested in paying a small fee to increase your upload limit?

Something else I could do is turn off the feature which keeps the original file. Currently when you upload a video to GoblinRefuge.com, we store both the original version and the transcoded version. I configured it this way because I assumed people would want to preserve the original version of the file, but I realize this takes up more storage space. I could consider turning this off moving forward.

Centralization
==============

I share concerns that GoblinRefuge.com is becoming too much of a central player, and I would love to see more MediaGoblin sites. I'm happy to help troubleshoot the installation and configuration of other MediaGoblin sites. I idle in #mediagoblin on freenode all the time, and I try to help out as much as I can. I'm hoping that once federation is implemented to allow communication between sites, that more sites will open up.

Monetization of Uploads
=======================

Charging users to upload videos is an interesting idea. So far in my hosting experience, storage space is actually the more expensive item though. My storage provider (RackSpace Cloudfiles) charges for storage and for CDN traffic. The monthly CDN traffic charge is roughly the same month-to-month, but the storage charge increases each month because more and more files are being uploaded. Still, even recovering a little of that cost would be beneficial. I think implementing this would be much more difficult than setting up a fee for increased storage space, but I could be wrong.

Contact Information
===================

I began hosting GoblinRefuge.com to see how feasible it would be to run and maintain a MediaGoblin instance. I wanted to eventually offer paid MediaGoblin site hosting, and GoblinRefuge.com is the test-bed for that. It's ended up being kind of a hobby that I run in my spare time, and I never went to great lengths to provide contact information. The site has grown much larger than I expected, and I keep meaning to go back and add stuff like an about page, contact info, and a privacy policy, but I just can't find the time.

The only real advertised way to contact me regarding the site is through twitter (@goblinrefuge). If you've ever seen a server crash on GoblinRefuge.com, you may have seen the goblinpolice email address mentioned; you're welcome to send email to goblinpolice AT goblinrefuge as well. You can also find me on freenode under this nick. I prefer not to get GoblinRefuge.com questions in the #mediagoblin channel, but you're welcome to ping me there and we can figure out a way to communicate.

Thanks
======

Thanks to all of you for using MediaGoblin in general and GoblinRefuge.com in particular. I appreciate the feedback and suggestions about the site. If any of you want to get involved in the MediaGoblin project, please come join #mediagoblin on freenode. We'd love to have more people involved in the code and more people running sites.

- ayleph

onpon4
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Beigetreten: 05/30/2012

> Would any of you be interested in paying a small fee to increase your upload limit?

I would. :)

By the way, if buying higher upload limits are how you're going to handle it, you might want to add an indicator of how much stuff you have uploaded and how much space each file is taking up. That would make it easier to decide how much storage you want to have.

ayleph
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Beigetreten: 01/08/2017

That's a fantastic idea! I'll look into that to see how easy it would be to add.

ADFENO
Offline
Beigetreten: 12/31/2012

I know this message is probably delayed, but here I leave my opinions on
the matter:

Note: I'm in no way an expert in MediaGoblin, so I don't know much about
how to set it up or whether this things can be done or not; I'm only
drawing the cards (exposing ideas).

About upload limits: You can also set it even lower, now with Vorbis
(and Opus) and Theora (or VP8, or VP9), we can have more light-weight
content. Besides, I don't think people need to put something
extraordinarely-exagerated-HD if they're not paying for the service.

About keeping original file: I, as free/libre software activist would do
the following: See if MediaGoblin allows changing the list of accepted
files, and accept only those friendlier to free/libre software by
default (no .mp-nothing, only those like .flac, .ogg, .opus, .webm,
.webp, and those usual text, document, and image formats). And disable
conversion. Too bad it's not possible to scan for the exact MIME type of
the media being uploaded before it was already uploaded (unless of
course we find a way to require the browser to inform the MIME
beforehand). Also, perhaps one can set the service in such a way so as
to have a limit of uploads for a user in a given week (unless he deletes
some of his already-uploaded works, in case for example, he wants to fix
something).

About centralization: We were discussing this in either #fsf, #gnu, or
#trisquel some months ago, and we are also concerned about such
problem. Besides, people assume that they don't have to contirbute to
the service being provided or that they don't have to contribute to
providing an alternative service. An example came from a previous
MediaGoblin instance called Gobblin.se, where some user was uploading
heavy content to that site, and even some that might be under standard
copyrighted license yet.

Taking on from the previous paragraph, I also reported (using the
"report abuse" feauture/link of MediaGoblin) some suspicious materials
being uploaded, that I thought to be under standard copyright
licenses. Although it's been a long time since I visited any MediaGoblin
service provider (I plan to get back on it and on making videos also).

About communication between MediaGoblin service providers: I also hope
for that. I saw some talks about it on LibrePlanet 2016 (yes, the one
from last year), but the MediaGoblin project's website doesn't state
federation as feature yet.

Majin Buu
Offline
Beigetreten: 11/05/2016

> The only real advertised way to contact me regarding the site is through twitter (@goblinrefuge).

Can we contact you through Trisquel forum too?

strypey
Offline
Beigetreten: 05/14/2015

Ayleph, thanks so much for setting up and maintaining GoblinRefuge. A couple of thoughts from a user perspective.

>> Something else I could do is turn off the feature which keeps the original file. <<

This sounds like a sensible way of getting rid of at least half of your storage costs. You're offering a gratis media streaming/ sharing service, you're under no obligation to also provide offsite backups for file that service doesn't require ;)

>> I'm happy to help troubleshoot the installation and configuration of other MediaGoblin sites. <<

That's a generous offer given the experience you now have. Thank you!

Self-hosting multimedia (and especially video) is even more challenging than self-hosting email, blogs, micro-blogs (GNU Social/ Diaspora etc) etc because of the bandwidth requirements. We hear a lot these days in free software circles that it's practical to run single-user (or small group) server packages on a desktop PC at home. Do you think it's realistic to use MediaGoblin on a desktop PC, to host even a small number of videos, of interest to only a small number of people? For example, to replace the use of FarceBook for my family's home videos with a private MediaGoblin server visible only to family members?

>> I'm hoping that once federation is implemented to allow communication between sites, that more sites will open up. <<

OMG yes! A search system that works across a federation of MediaGolbin sites is an absolute prerequisite if there is any chance of breaking the current oligopoly in multimedia hosting, especially web video hosting. Is this something that's actually in development? Even better if the federated search can also search across other free code web video platforms like Plumi (see EngageMedia.org for an example of a Plumi instance).

The Participatory Culture Foundation saw this oligopoly coming over 10 years ago, and attempted to create an open platform with a set of free code projects; Democracy Player (now Miro), VideoBomb, and BroadcastMachine. Unfortunately, only the player project has survived, and I've never found it to be particularly usable on GNU/Linux, but I think their work on envisioning and attempting to realise an open platform for video was pioneering, and still worth knowing about. Here's the PCF's Nicholas Reville describing their original vision (note the irony of this video being hosted on YT - anyone know of copies hosted somewhere more freedom-friendly?):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuGbLY-l930

>> The only real advertised way to contact me regarding the site is through twitter (@goblinrefuge). <<

Do you use GNU Social?