thank you. but i would prefer not to host stuff on google drive. but some other provider could work (as i said, i am willing to pay a reasonable amount).

So keep a backup. Torrents can be messy because they can be broken if there are no seeders.

If the content is static, then I’d recommend some older P2P filesharing like eD2K to keep one big zip/rar file backup shared among peers.

yes. content would be partially static. most files will not update, only new stuff will be added. and some files be updated.

some day you’ll graduate as well and life will move on for you.

I am graduating. That is why when i leave, i want to leave stuff in a functional state so they do not have to start a fresh. I did mention this in post, but i wrote a whole lot more than i should have, and i do not expect anyone to read all this.

ou’ll move far away, get a full-time job, maybe have new hobbies or a family and time will come and you’ll stop supporting it as well. I’ve seen that all the time and most privately run things vanish sooner than later.

absolutely. as i said, individuals work for selfish reasons, and once i leave, i would not have a selfish reason anymore.

And I’d say if you’re the main/sole contributor of content, it’s questionable if this even survives long term. Unless people upload recent exams and material, the content will become obsolete after a few years.

yes. it does get obsolete. but our department is still relatively new (5th or 6th year since establishment) and hence, most course have not been taught by 2 or more profs. hence, much of it will stay relevant as long as professors stay.

My juniors have started bugging me again to get drive working again (new sem has started).

So you kind of need some community anyways.

I would have to pull some shit to form a sub division of department society. then i can get budget to either buy some drive subscription, or set something local, but set it behind some proxy, so it would appear not to be hosted in college (reverse vpn if you will)

there is another resource run by dev club, but not many of our department folks are in dev club. Also, their solution imo is worse. they techinically do have a index with search, but not a good one. also - very slooooooooooooow. Ans this is when their solution is smaller than mine (and their solution gets contribution from other departments as well).

I understand it would be better be done by a entity instead of a person, but problem is, entities would have to abide by institute rules. and then whole lot of problems from “why not possible” point 2 applies.

I could get some of my juniors to form a small group within department, but i do not think many of them do anything unless they are given a motive for it. and there is no real motive to maintain a good database other than helping others. entities can do “good things” but individuals often do it for selfish reasons. that was partially the case with me. I used to make notes, and then tons of messages from classmates to share notes, and got fed of sending stuff individually. then i started sending stuff in group chat, but not having a good way to search chat history meant people would not find it, and ask me again. so i made a drive. a course happens where people have to install software, but actual instructions are very hard - i get messages - i make scripts to install, or compile the end product and just ship it. You might think these are good deeds, but they are still selfish acts. I used to maintain a good directory structure anyway, might as well upload it.

I would seriously consider this, and try to implement this weekend.

Like this your stuff is compliant and you allow folks to access a google drive for example that you or someone else can manage.

people would not differentiate (in future, i would not be the one to upload stuff, but newer gens would), so i would set everything to be uploaded to google. I would still try to maintain 2 offline backups in case google gets angry.

I use it to share with family that is not tech literate.

that is definitely reinforcing.

I would still try to find if i can host directly in campus, and not google or any 3rd party at all.

I could try these, but the problem is, I am graduating. I could set it up once, and maybe even give someone else (or myself) remote access to the hosting infra, but I would likely be less available to manage stuff.

Good dsolutions though. I could possibly try to make the latter solution work (managing nexcloud is relatively harder imo, and i have no idea how would i mount a encrypted google drive to it). It still feels like something only i would have to maintain, but if I can get it in a setup and forget stage (or like a annual maintainence), then I could consider it.

the only problem now is money. I would have to use vps for this kinda stuff. the sbc + ssd idea was something i had proposed to a junior. but hosting anything in college premises with college internet would have to “techinically comply with copyright rules”. if it was a git like solution or torrent like, even administrators would not be able to access the stuff (comparable in tech literacy)(i am not talking about people who manage or internet infra, but copyright stuff, like our library department). With a drive like setup, they would be able to use it too.

Can i setup a password to access the stuff, like a simple password, common for all? then only student who have password be able to use it. maybe i can setup http authentication. but then again i would fall back to - it is getting too tough for them to use it.