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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: 5, Informative) by mattie_p on Wednesday March 12 2014, @07:03AM
juggs, your question reminded me I needed to do this. So it triggered this post. Otherwise I'd have to do it later.
Regarding matt_, We had no prior knowledge of matt_ before the events of 10 March. In other words, he wasn't a volunteer or staff member, hadn't particularly drawn attention to himself in any way. At this point, we have some knowledge of who he is, what he has done, and why he chose to do this. I'd prefer to let him explain himself, or permit us to use his words regarding why. Also, and I should clarify, please read "we believe the site is secure, he is a standup guy, and we can all move on with our lives" as "we believe the site is secure, we believe he is a standup guy, and we believe we can all move on with our lives." That said, the staff has no reason to doubt matt_'s motivations and he has provided certain proofs of who he is. He has given us control over accounts previously associated with Barrabas as proof he is the buyer of the domain name.
Regarding your advice to slow down, I sent an email to all staff about 8 hours ago, with the following instructions. I have no fear in posting the contents here, though slightly edited to protect the innocent and guilty alike:
(Score: 3, Insightful) by juggs on Wednesday March 12 2014, @07:47AM
6) Is not necessary. A summary to you as acting CO perhaps, but to publish more dirty linen on the front page. Just stop the drama right there, it's turning into a Punch and Judy show.
I'd also suggest moving away from "units" and less of the dictat from above in your missives. Successful communities coalesce they are not rounded up.
Just suggestions. :)
(Score: 3, Informative) by mattie_p on Wednesday March 12 2014, @08:00AM
This was not intended to air more dirty laundry or create more drama, merely to introduce the staff in those positions to the community at large, let everyone know what they are doing for the community, and to publicize the areas they need help. I apologize if this was unclear.
We're still defining our terminology. Units, groups, sections, etc., are all being used essentially interchangeably at this point.
(Score: 2) by etherscythe on Wednesday March 12 2014, @07:51PM
I suggest this go into a Journal rather than front page. You can have a story with links as part of a general status update, but a full story each seems a bit too much clutter distracting from the General Nerd News.
"Fake News: anything reported outside of my own personally chosen echo chamber"
(Score: 4, Insightful) by unitron on Wednesday March 12 2014, @08:06AM
I'm actually in favor of being able to peek behind the curtain, since it's not every day that a site like this gets built.
something something Slashcott something something Beta something something