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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
(Score: 3, Insightful) by GungnirSniper on Wednesday March 12 2014, @06:13AM
Why did you pay the ransom if you're considering changing the name and URL anyway?
Tips for better submissions to help our site grow. [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 5, Informative) by mattie_p on Wednesday March 12 2014, @06:29AM
This "ransom," as you call it, was paid by a private individual, not previously associated with the staff of the site. He is cooperating with us, though, and appears to have the best interests of the site at heart behind this decision. You will have to bring it up with matt (not this matt) if and when he introduces himself on the site. ~mattie_p
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 12 2014, @07:11AM
If? Having an Anonymous Coward with the controlling interest in this site doesn't exactly reinforce confidence in the community concept we were building building this site around.
(Score: 5, Informative) by mattie_p on Wednesday March 12 2014, @07:17AM
matt_ does not control or own the site. The actual site is hosted on a linode controlled by NCommander.
What matt_ does own are various domain names and some linode accounts that now seem to be closed. To my knowledge, no financial arrangements have been made between the staff and matt_. If worst comes to worst (which I doubt) matt_ is left holding onto some domain names and we have a new, community-selected name, not associated with him.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Open4D on Wednesday March 12 2014, @06:35AM
Presumably because
Maybe the mysterious benefactor matt_ will answer directly at some point.
(Score: 5, Informative) by FatPhil on Wednesday March 12 2014, @09:57AM
There is no longer a threat, so it's no longer a ransom.
Matt_ has given the sys team pretty much full control of the things that he's paid for. He'd have to jump through hoops to wrest them back from us in reality. When we said "quick, matt_, change the passwords you've been given immediately", he just gave us the passwords, and told us to change them.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Reziac on Wednesday March 12 2014, @03:37PM
That's a pretty good reference for matt_, then. He trusts you, so for the time being, we'll trust him.
And I *like* the existing name. It's unique in a way few names manage.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 12 2014, @07:17AM
Barrabas should have been paid in full regardless. You don't wanna pile up evil karma from the beginning.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 12 2014, @08:49AM
If you read the details on that, the concerns raised with him were pretty reasonable. However by some unfathomable reason some random guy just paid up. Who knows what that really means.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 12 2014, @09:16AM
I did read some. Whatever the concerns, Barrabas initially put up the money, and offered to hand over when NCommander demanded to take over. NCommander agreed to compensate his cost in full, but subsequently tried to nickle-and-dime Barrabas.
No way to build trust.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Open4D on Wednesday March 12 2014, @10:59AM
Did NCommander specifically demand to take over? I wasn't following that particular intrigue very closely.
As for trying to "nickle-and-dime Barrabas", I think the main point NCommander raised after seeing Barrabas's figures was that a significant proportion of the money was spent on some unused hosting, and they should first look into the possibility of contacting the hosting provider to see if anything could be done with regards to refunds/transfers.
(Score: 1) by citizenr on Wednesday March 12 2014, @08:01PM
>spent on some unused hosting
and yet after taking down this hosting whole site died ....
(Score: 2) by Open4D on Thursday March 13 2014, @01:57PM
True, I should have said "spent on what he thought was some unused hosting"
It was actually being used for DNS or something, IIRC. I guess they just transferred whatever-it-was over, rather than try to get it back working in its previous location.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 12 2014, @03:33PM
I don't know about the relevance of the other costs, but wanting to be reimbursed for $400 in unrequested gifts given is a far cry from "nickle-and-diming".
(Score: 1) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 12 2014, @04:19PM
NCommander didn't just dispute the gift expense, but also the cost for some nodes that Barrabas had paid for.
Look, the guy just got turfed out. Of course he was butthurt, but instead of a temper tantrum, he agreed to step aside and hand over, when offered to be compensated in full. Given the situation, you should accept that "in full" means including all the little incidental (and even some items that may be petty/vindictive), and you would be immature and perhaps less than honorable to subsequently split hairs on what is included in "in full" when the full amount came out to less two grands.
NCommander's conduct was less than mature, and Barrabas flipped to a full temper tantrum - an all-around disgrace.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by VLM on Wednesday March 12 2014, @01:17PM
"Who knows what that really means."
I'll give it a shot:
First of all, its "nice guy" not "random guy". I'd buy him a beer if I ran into him at a con or whatever, and so would a lot of people. Whoever he is, as far as has been made public, his reported moral and ethical behavior so far has been exemplary at the highest level. (no, its not me or anyone I personally know).
Secondly there's a huge amount of shitting on Barrabas mostly because he's not willing or available to defend himself, so what better target could exist? Dare I say, bullying? This is site wide, not just this specific topic of a specific article. The endless iteration of one sides propaganda in article after article and comment after comment gets tiring. This particular aspect of the endless dirty laundry posts demonstrates fairly typical human nature in an us vs them situation. All that "primate psychology" stuff really does work, even on techies.
Thirdly the point man made a big deal about being out of the country for a week and there's no way to do financial operations if you're out of the country because its currently year 900 AD and the Knights Templar haven't implemented the first international banking system yet, and none of the rest of the staff apparently had the money and/or will to step up for almost a business day (afaik matt_ was not on staff at the time), and Barrabas quite reasonably wanted to close the deal earlier. That's all it really means, as a financial transaction. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
Fourthly they're all, on both sides, including Barrabas, respectable reasonable individuals, but this is an excellent case study of demands, which in isolation are perfectly rational and reasonable, cascading into each other to generate what amounts to a human communication / relationship systemic failure. No individual snowflake is responsible for starting this avalanche. If there is any value to the community in putting all this dirty laundry out in public, its that at least some people might learn something about human nature in general. There's a good MacKay quote about the whole topic "Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, one by one."
So thats my best attempt at "what that really means"