Bored@ in 2015

Greetings!

I'm excited to write a blog post because there has been some good news in the last few months that I want to share.. and it's been a long time since I've posted so an update is needed. Most importantly, I want to try and set the stage for 2015 and what to expect. I've put together a high-level list of the top 5 initiatives as a framework for where I'll be making investments in 2015. Many of these initiatives we've already made headway, so we're off to a great start.

#1. Performance, Reliability and Security (TRUST)

In 2013-2014, all resources were dedicated to building a Boredat REST API (with 64 endpoints!) and then building the first version of the iPhone App on top. Now that the first version of the app is out, I believe it is crucial for us to re-focus our energy back on the primary service of performance, reliability and security. Remember that all new development work is personally funded out-of-pocket... and I think this is the best use of those funds.

I've already started this initiative and we've made some tremendous progress since. A few weeks ago we did a major re-architecture of our resources.  We were offline for around 8 hours and in that time we:

1. Moved our entire database off our primary web server to its own dedicated machine, specially tuned and performance-optimized for MySQL databases.
2. Resized our web server from 8GB down to 2GB, since we no longer need all that horsepower.

The operation was a great success. Ultimately we moved 122,549,318 database records (approximately 41.5 GB) from one machine to another. With this setup, we doubled the speed of b@ performance while cutting our operating costs in half!!

It is safe to say we've solved most of our immediate performance concerns, and now we're focusing on security tasks. For instance, an improvement that went into production recently: As you may or may not know, in order to reset your password you have to supply the 4-digit PIN that you created at registration. Last week, I implemented a password reset attempt lockout on this relatively old PIN reset system. With a known user ID, if you attempt and fail to change the password 5 times, the user ID will be locked from attempting a password reset for 1 hour. This makes a brute force password reset much more difficult.

I expect to perform other security enhancements throughout 2015, many of which will never really be experienced as "new features." However, I will make announcements with an explanation of what was done as they happen throughout the year.

#2. Community

The second most important focus area is community building. Each board experienced 2014 in a different way. A quick recap:

Bored@Baker has had a really tough year, starting in February when someone posted a "Rape Guide", which then got picked up by Cosmo as a perfect opportunity to write a slam piece on b@b and fraternity culture. A commenter on b@b:

What I just recently discovered, after Cosmo released their article, a couple of alumni "trolls" gravitated to b@b and made matters worse. I have spent a lot of time recently cleaning house: scrutinizing repeat offenders and disabling or perma-banning their accounts. Since then, the waters have significantly calmed.

On the other hand, Bored@Butler had an awesome year. The big turn around has a lot to do with some prominent personalities taking ownership of the community and making it their own. Huge shout out to Tonnerre, G-Had, paetrik, tdh, Helix, Virgilio, cipher, broken_symlink, from the zero, cc... all wonderful personalities! And then there's fuckitletsgobowling, Network Leader. This guy, and these personalities... remind me why I still do this!

Bored@Carleton consistently surprises me almost every day, with new fantastic phenomena that occurs in what might ultimately represent a utopian b@ network.  In many ways, Bored@Carleton is the polar opposite of Bored@Baker this past year, and Bored@Butler is somewhere in between. B@C holds a special place in my heart for a number of reasons. It was the first board to grow on this platform that wasn't an Ivy and didn't have its own fancy URL (students log in at carleton.boredat.com). In many ways, the community at Carleton represent everything that I hope a b@ network to be, and is also affirmation that b@ has a place at other schools.

For what to expect in 2015: Full circle back to Dartmouth and Bored@Baker. "Community" as a priority here means better moderation tools, more disincentives for violating rules, more transparency in how the community moderates itself, more accountability from the moderators... Any kind of feature that will help nourish even the most challenging of communities like Dartmouth. For Carleton and Columbia, this means more features that make their communities better (like long-requested features, more badges, etc).

#3. Mobile

As you know, the iPhone App is out! It was an incredible amount of work because we made the decision to "do it right" by first creating a REST API. Since our top two priorities are focused on the service and building capabilities into the web app, the strategy for mobile is to find an intern to run with the existing code, make improvements, and build in new features. To read more about this currently available internship opportunity: see here.

#4. Growth

With our core service bearing the brunt of our investments, I hope to mobilize some new efforts to get a few more "supported networks" on b@.

#5. Sustainability

This initiative is about investing in ways to help make b@ a self-sustainable service. To do this we'll need to discover other ways to raise some revenue. Today, our Google Ad program is doing a fantastic job covering our operational costs (coupled with the decrease in price via the new setup). However, to really move the ball forward we need to find ways to fund the necessary development described in all these other initiatives.



With all that said, I cannot fully express my excitement for what 2015 will hold for Bored@. I've thought a lot about it and I think we're ready to go. Thank you to all of you who help make this community possible.

Jae