# What if the SDMB goes dark? Should we make a contingency plan? **URL:** \ **Category:** About This Message Board\ **Created:** [November 17, 2025, 9:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-sdmb-goes-dark-should-we-make-a-contingency-plan/1024934 "2025-11-17T21:57:10Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![hajario](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hajario/32/171_2.png) [@hajario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hajario)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2025, 5:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-sdmb-goes-dark-should-we-make-a-contingency-plan/1024934/41 "2025-11-18T05:48:24Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > I seem to recall discussions years ago that the only reason we exist is because accountants at our owner company/newspaper apparently have never looked deep enough into the books to realize that we’re costing them $4,000 a year (or some sum like that.) Is that true? No one here has any visibility into whether that is true or not but this costs significantly less than $4k/year. ---
**Author:** ![robby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robby/32/11048_2.png) [@robby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robby)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2025, 2:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-sdmb-goes-dark-should-we-make-a-contingency-plan/1024934/42 "2025-11-18T14:16:43Z")
> [@commasense](#): > > > [@robby](#): > > > > This place (and all of you) mean a lot to me. > > _All_ of us? Really? Ok, ~~most~~ some of you. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2025, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-sdmb-goes-dark-should-we-make-a-contingency-plan/1024934/43 "2025-11-18T16:55:40Z")
> [@hajario](#): > > > [@Velocity](#): > > > > I seem to recall discussions years ago that the only reason we exist is because accountants at our owner company/newspaper apparently have never looked deep enough into the books to realize that we’re costing them $4,000 a year (or some sum like that.) Is that true? > > No one here has any visibility into whether that is true or not but this costs significantly less than $4k/year. Here’s the price structure. I’d guess we’re probably on the $1200 a year plan. > **[Discourse pricing](https://www.discourse.org/pricing)** > > Official Discourse hosting plans for communities of every size. ---
**Author:** ![hajario](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hajario/32/171_2.png) [@hajario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hajario)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2025, 5:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-sdmb-goes-dark-should-we-make-a-contingency-plan/1024934/44 "2025-11-18T17:06:16Z")
Finally some actual data! Remember back in the old days when the people claimed it was $10k/year? lol ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2025, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-sdmb-goes-dark-should-we-make-a-contingency-plan/1024934/45 "2025-11-18T17:11:22Z")
IIRC most of that was to pay for Jerry the IT guy’s time at the Chicago Reader. Though I never really understood how the relationship worked. Old mods, do you remember better? ---
**Author:** ![hajario](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hajario/32/171_2.png) [@hajario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hajario)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2025, 5:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-sdmb-goes-dark-should-we-make-a-contingency-plan/1024934/46 "2025-11-18T17:15:04Z")
Was that their argument? He was a full time employees who would have been there anyway and that was a tiny part of his duties. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2025, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-sdmb-goes-dark-should-we-make-a-contingency-plan/1024934/47 "2025-11-18T17:22:04Z")
I thought I’d just throw in this factoid from a Discourse Q&A that I came across: ### [Can I download my data?](https://www.communiteq.com/discoursehosting/faq/#download) Yes. You own your own data. A copy of your files (including uploads and avatars) and databases (full dumps) can be downloaded from the Backups menu of the Discourse admin panel at any time. ---
**Author:** ![TroutMan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/troutman/32/6721_2.png) [@TroutMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TroutMan)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2025, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-sdmb-goes-dark-should-we-make-a-contingency-plan/1024934/48 "2025-11-18T17:30:18Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > Here’s the price structure. I’d guess we’re probably on the $1200 a year plan. Does a moderator count as staff? That plan is limited to 5 staff, and we have more than 5 mods. The $6K/year plan also includes migration services, which we would have used at launch. I hope we’re not on the Business plan, but I’m not sure we can safely guess we’re on Pro. ---
**Author:** ![Atamasama](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/atamasama/32/12961_2.png) [@Atamasama](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Atamasama)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2025, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-sdmb-goes-dark-should-we-make-a-contingency-plan/1024934/49 "2025-11-18T17:34:07Z")
> [@TroutMan](#): > > Does a moderator count as staff? My understanding is that moderators just have greater privileges than other community members, but don’t interact with the Discourse software itself in any meaningful way, therefore they wouldn’t count as “staff”. That would rather be someone like an administrator. So, you could have up to 5 administrators. I could be wrong about this, but that’s how I interpret it. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2025, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-sdmb-goes-dark-should-we-make-a-contingency-plan/1024934/50 "2025-11-18T17:37:35Z")
Same here. “Staff” means Discourse staff, not Moderators. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2025, 5:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-sdmb-goes-dark-should-we-make-a-contingency-plan/1024934/51 "2025-11-18T17:42:23Z")
> [@Atamasama](#): > > My understanding is that moderators just have greater privileges than other community members, but don’t interact with the Discourse software itself in any meaningful way, therefore they wouldn’t count as “staff” That seems like a very reasonable interpretation, because there’s no reason that Discourse should care about how a site is managed except in terms of how many staff are authorized to interact with them directly. But yet it seems that they do, and that moderators count as staff: > **[Understanding user statuses, roles, and permissions](https://meta.discourse.org/t/understanding-user-statuses-roles-and-permissions/35171)** > > 🔖 This is a guide for understanding the various user statuses, roles, and permissions within Discourse, including how they affect user capabilities and how they are stored in the database. 🙋 Required user level: Administrator Discourse has many... ---
**Author:** ![Atamasama](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/atamasama/32/12961_2.png) [@Atamasama](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Atamasama)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2025, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-sdmb-goes-dark-should-we-make-a-contingency-plan/1024934/52 "2025-11-18T17:44:30Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > But yet it seems that they do, and that moderators count as staff: Not all of them. See here: > **Category Moderator** > > This is a non-staff user who is part of a group that has been granted select moderation powers over specific categories. This can be enabled per site using the `enable category group moderation` admin setting, and set for each category in the Settings tab of the category wrench: And that seems to be how moderators work here; mods handle certain categories, not the entire site. That’s why each category has a list of moderators for it. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2025, 5:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-sdmb-goes-dark-should-we-make-a-contingency-plan/1024934/53 "2025-11-18T17:47:11Z")
> [@Atamasama](#): > > And that seems to be how moderators work here; mods handle certain categories, not the entire site. That’s why each category has a list of moderators for it. But that seems to be voluntary in our current configuration, not a software-enforced feature. My understanding is that moderators can act in any forum (“category”) but as a matter of protocol usually confine their actions to their assigned forums. ---
**Author:** ![Atamasama](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/atamasama/32/12961_2.png) [@Atamasama](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Atamasama)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2025, 5:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-sdmb-goes-dark-should-we-make-a-contingency-plan/1024934/54 "2025-11-18T17:49:10Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > My understanding is that moderators can act in any forum (“category”) but as a matter of protocol usually confine their actions to their assigned forums. That could be, I really don’t know. ---
**Author:** ![pjd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pjd/32/3009_2.png) [@pjd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pjd)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2025, 5:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-sdmb-goes-dark-should-we-make-a-contingency-plan/1024934/55 "2025-11-18T17:59:02Z")
According to that link… staff members are .. “members of the Discourse site with admin and/or moderator permissions” But I didn’t think that the SDMB was hosted by Discourse .. ? ETA: although according to [this](https://hostingchecker.com/) site it is ! (Whereas [https://meta.discourse.org/](https://meta.discourse.org/) is hosted by [Amazon.com](http://Amazon.com) !!) ---
**Author:** ![Atamasama](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/atamasama/32/12961_2.png) [@Atamasama](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Atamasama)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2025, 6:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-sdmb-goes-dark-should-we-make-a-contingency-plan/1024934/56 "2025-11-18T18:08:59Z")
> [@pjd](#): > > ETA: although according to [this](https://hostingchecker.com/) site it is ! You’re correct. > It is hosted by: **Civilized Discourse Construction Kit Inc** ---
**Author:** ![snowthx](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snowthx/32/10660_2.png) [@snowthx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/snowthx)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2025, 7:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-sdmb-goes-dark-should-we-make-a-contingency-plan/1024934/57 "2025-11-18T19:42:35Z")
Curious about the move to our current platform. When that occurred there was deliberate action by someone - a person or three or four, to bring our little corner of the internet here. It’s not like we just magically transitioned from one platform to another - someone/people had to “do” stuff to get us here. Anyone that was part of that transition still around here? That may shed some light on what the initial set-up and agreements with whomever may have been. As an aside, I hope we don’t dig too greedily and deeply here and, to continue the whole _Lord of the Rings_ references, disturb some demon in the dark and alert it to our presence. ---
**Author:** ![Reply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/reply/32/15952_2.png) [@Reply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reply)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2025, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-sdmb-goes-dark-should-we-make-a-contingency-plan/1024934/58 "2025-11-18T19:51:12Z")
Keep in mind that the current owners are also eligible for a 50% nonprofit discount off the hosted prices, though I’m not sure if they’re taking advantage of it. In the event of an exodus/migration, if we were to self-host a Discourse instance (as @echoreply said in [#24](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-sdmb-goes-dark-should-we-make-a-contingency-plan/1024934/24)), it would be quite cheap (like tens to a few hundred dollars a year), especially if we keep images disabled. I think a collections bin would take care of paying for that. The technical hurdles are similarly small. The bigger issue is the bureaucratic hurdles we have now, of deciding whether (and when) to reach out to the current owners to assist in any sort of eventual handover. **I wonder… have any of the mods had _any_ recent contacts with The Powers That Be, sometime after the changeover of ownership to the Chicago Sun-Times?** (i.e., last few years)? Do we have _any_ sense of how things are going, how much it’s costing them, etc., or has it just been radio silence for years and years? I’m honestly not sure which is worse/riskier… Anyhow, if we don’t want to use the Giraffe Boards as an “emergency rally point”, so to speak, another potential path forward might be to simply spin up a backup Discourse forum to serve as a placeholder? It’d basically be an unoccupied “safehouse” just waiting for the apocalypse. It would have no SDMB branding at all, but we could start (manually) creating user accounts there, only for the posters who want to reserve their current usernames. Then it’d basically just sit unused, until and unless the actual SDMB were to go dark. At that point, hopefully enough people would remember that the alternate backup board even exists, and start posting there instead. Or, if we _were_ able to come to some sort of migration agreement with the official then-owners, it would be easy enough to actually migrate all the existing users over to the new forum. Posts may or may not come, depending on the legal status and what the then-owners want… I dunno. It really just depends on how many people would be interested in continuing the community in the event the official board goes dark. Some of us are OK with letting it naturally reach its end of life… but dammit, I’m still young-ish and I don’t want to see the board die before me 😅 ---
**Author:** ![Reply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/reply/32/15952_2.png) [@Reply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reply)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2025, 7:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-sdmb-goes-dark-should-we-make-a-contingency-plan/1024934/59 "2025-11-18T19:57:40Z")
> [@Northern\_Piper](#): > > Is it possible to save a complete thread now? You mean a single topic, like this one? There’s [a few ways](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-to-print-or-export-very-long-topics/223138/3?tl=en)… Given a topic like this current thread, `https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-sdmb-goes-dark-should-we-make-a-contingency-plan/1024934/` 1. Add `/print` to the end, like [https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-sdmb-goes-dark-should-we-make-a-contingency-plan/1024934/print](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-sdmb-goes-dark-should-we-make-a-contingency-plan/1024934/print) to make a long printable version that you can save to PDF (or actually print out) 2. Use the topic ID (`1024934`) in a special URL, [https://boards.straightdope.com/raw/1024934](https://boards.straightdope.com/raw/1024934) to get a Markdown version of it. 3. Ask the [Way Back Machine](https://web.archive.org/) or [archive.ph](https://archive.ph/) to save an online copy of it for you. If there’s a particular topic you want to try to archive and a particular format you’d like it in, PM me here and I will try to help you with that. ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2025, 8:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-sdmb-goes-dark-should-we-make-a-contingency-plan/1024934/60 "2025-11-18T20:06:41Z")
Thanks for that. At least now I have a semi-current backup of all my ramblings from the last 22 years. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-sdmb-goes-dark-should-we-make-a-contingency-plan/1024934.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-sdmb-goes-dark-should-we-make-a-contingency-plan/1024934.md?page=4)