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SoylentNews is people

posted by mattie_p on Wednesday March 12 2014, @06:00AM   Printer-friendly
from the knock-on-wood dept.

I promised that we, the staff, would provide a quick status report after all the drama on Monday. The site issues today delayed that, and I thank juggs in IRC for reminding me of my promise. We've been very transparent and we want to continue that trend. Most of the comments we've seen have been encouraging of this method. However, we hope the transparency will result in less drama and in more productivity in the future.

On Tuesday, 4 March 2014, Barrabas, the "Man Behind the Curtain" resigned from his position. In his resignation, he retained ownership of the domain Soylentnews.org and associated domain registrations, as well as certain accounts on linode.com, our host. (See our article on backup plans.) Read more inside.

There were some negotiations between Barrabas and NCommander regarding compensation for money invested by Barrabas as part of the transfer of authority, along with the linodes and the domain names. Those negotiations broke down, resulting in a situation that became public on Monday, 10 March. Barrabas decided to sell his entire interest in the site. While the staff decided to create a poll to figure out which way to proceed (we were completely divided on what to do) an individual member of the site stepped up to purchase those rights from Barrabas.

That individual is known on IRC as matt_. Despite the similarity in name, he is not me. I've offered to let him introduce himself on his own schedule. For now, we are working with him to ensure all of the accounts and technical transactions are being transferred. As of right now, we believe the site is secure, he is a standup guy, and we can all move on with our lives.

However, there is such a thing as being over-zealous, and making decisions too rapidly. Today we decided to take down the linodes that Barrabas had set up. What we did not know was that those linodes contained our DNS zone records. Taking those boxes down took down our DNS records and therefore the site. Slashcode can be a little tricky, and one of its dependencies is DNS. So when we took down DNS, we took down slash on the linode as well. This was bad. We managed to get it working again, and created an incident log that provides some details to those interested. This also describes a second related incident, tied to taking down DNS.

As a result of this, we are making some changes in the way we conduct ourselves. I have asked the unit chiefs to be more proactive and less reactive. The first part of this (step 0, actually) is creating documentation of each unit. Our Team Pages link on the wiki leads to each of our 5 major groups right now. Please check out each of them for more details on what needs to be done and how to help, if you are interested.

We are currently having our poll on the future status of our IRC network, and within 24 hours we are going to launch a new poll to select our final site name (or so we hope). We have 7 candidate names (including SoylentNews). We are going to hold our initial round with all of them. If one name earns 50% + 1 vote, that name wins. If that doesn't happen in a particular round, we take the names that are within 5% of the leading candidate to the next round. If no other name is within 5 percentage points, we will take the top 2 names for the final event. Finally, look forward to updates from each of our major units regarding their work in progress and their current status over the next few days.

This is a learning experience for all of us, and we hope that the drama can decrease so that the community can grow together. Thanks for reading! ~mattie_p

 
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  • (Score: 3) by GungnirSniper on Wednesday March 12 2014, @06:05AM

    by GungnirSniper (1671) on Wednesday March 12 2014, @06:05AM (#15049) Journal

    Monday was the 10th.

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +1  
       Underrated=1, Total=1
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   3  
  • (Score: 2) by mattie_p on Wednesday March 12 2014, @06:07AM

    by mattie_p (13) on Wednesday March 12 2014, @06:07AM (#15050) Journal

    Thanks, it'll be fixed. I wanted to get this out and no editors were available to doublecheck. ~mattie_p

  • (Score: 3) by Taco Cowboy on Wednesday March 12 2014, @06:15AM

    by Taco Cowboy (3489) on Wednesday March 12 2014, @06:15AM (#15053)

    Tell us what you guys want. Do you need a new domain ?

    If so, let's do it.

    But before we go register for yet another domain, let's get a vote going on name choosing.

    Get a name which is short, sweet, and simple, something that sync with geeks, and after the vote ends, go get it.

    If we can't get the .com, .org or .net, we can go for .info, or even .ru, .jp or whatever.

    Then transfer the content there, and begin anew.

    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by mattie_p on Wednesday March 12 2014, @06:32AM

      by mattie_p (13) on Wednesday March 12 2014, @06:32AM (#15058) Journal

      I don't want to start a run on domains, but the staff has assurances on the final list of domains regarding their availability to be transferred to the site. These names are already in the hands of people who have promised to give them to us for the cause. Should the winning name not be available or the offer is withdrawn, we will probably do a new run-off with the runners-up. ~mattie_p

      • (Score: 2) by unitron on Wednesday March 12 2014, @09:11AM

        by unitron (70) on Wednesday March 12 2014, @09:11AM (#15123) Journal

        Where might one submit name suggestions without making them public and causing someone to grab the URL?

        --
        something something Slashcott something something Beta something something
        • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday March 12 2014, @09:52AM

          by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Wednesday March 12 2014, @09:52AM (#15133) Homepage
          The only way to prevent the landgrab is to just grab the url in advance. It's probably $8. Some have grabbed half a dozen (2 2lds, 3 tlds each)

          (unless it's in one of the new wanky fucking-stupid not-real-TLD TLDs)
          --
          Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
        • (Score: 5, Informative) by stderr on Wednesday March 12 2014, @10:16AM

          by stderr (11) on Wednesday March 12 2014, @10:16AM (#15147) Journal

          Sorry, but that's unfortunately too late now. The list is already final and various members of staff has bought all the domains so we're safe no matter which of the 7 domains is chosen as the final, permanent name.

          --
          alias sudo="echo make it yourself #" # ... and get off my lawn!
        • (Score: 2) by Open4D on Wednesday March 12 2014, @10:30AM

          by Open4D (371) on Wednesday March 12 2014, @10:30AM (#15151) Journal

          Below mattie_p mentions a "suggestions" mailbox, in a thread about voting methods. Might be worth trying it for site name suggestions too? Especially if you've got a really good one.

  • (Score: 2, Funny) by isostatic on Wednesday March 12 2014, @07:14AM

    by isostatic (365) on Wednesday March 12 2014, @07:14AM (#15075) Journal

    You're forgetting the international dateline