SoylentNews

Please cast your vote in the comments to this Meta.

A valid vote should contain a single word - either "Yes" to accept the documents or "No" to reject them. A single vote is required to accept ALL of the proposed documents.

TO OVERCOME THE TECHNICAL PROBLEM: Please include a single paragraph containing anything at all - it will be ignored by the software during vote counting. However, the vote "Yes" or "No" must be on a line all by itself.

For ease of reference links to the documents are repeated here:

• Soylent Phoenix - Bylaws (as submitted for Company Registration)
• IRC Section 501(c)(3)
• Policy
• Definitions and Common Terms
• Transfer of Assets Agreement
• Discussion Policy

[Voting closed as of 23:59 UTC 28 Feb]

Don't worry - this will be a relatively short Meta, and it is not to explain another site outage!

Community Vote on Site Documentation

In December 2024 I released a Meta which detailed the proposed documentation for the site under the Soylent Phoenix board. This is a legal requirement resulting from the creation of a new company. I repeated the links to the documentation in January. The next step is for the community to accept or reject the proposed documentation. The previous voting software is no longer available to us but I believe that a straightforward count of comments will suffice.

I will publish another Meta which will contain the links to the proposed documentation but it is not to be used for any discussion regarding the contents. Each current account in good standing (i.e. having a karma of 20+ and created on or before the publication of the December Meta (16 Dec 2024 - that is up to and including account #49487 ) will be eligible to vote. In order to cast your vote your comment should be limited to a single word - "Yes" or "No" (upper or lower case is acceptable) on a line all by itself. "Yes" will indicate your acceptance of the documentation and "No" will indicate your rejection of it. Your last comment of a maximum of 2 attempts will be the one that counts so you will have the opportunity to change your vote. Any more than 2 attempts from an account to cast a vote will be discarded. Comments may contain a single paragraph to overcome the 'lame comment' filter. The contents of the paragraph will be ignored. The vote will remain open for 1 week and will close at 23:59 (UTC) on 28 February 2025. The result will be made public once the Board are satisfied that the voting has been fair and democratic.

Existing votes will remain valid and do not have to be redone.

Entering into a discussion in the vote or justifying why you have voted in a particular fashion will nullify your comment. There has been a period of over 2 months for discussion and suggested changes.

It is important that you cast a vote. As an extreme example, if 1 person alone votes Yes and 2 people vote No then the documentation will NOT be accepted. Not casting a vote doesn't make any statement whatsoever but may result in the majority of true community opinion being ignored.

Essentially, the documentation is the same as that adopted in 2014 except it has been rewritten where necessary to clarify the meaning or intent. It also incorporates in one location changes to the rules that have been accepted by the community since 2014 (e.g. the definition of Spam which was adopted by the site in 2021).

I expect that many noticed that the site went down and, if you are reading this you will also realise that it is now back up.

The entire server died leaving a wake of Out-Of-Memory messages, which resulted in the site itself, IRC and our email all failing. We (and by that I really mean kolie!) have restarted the server and doubled the amount of memory available to it.

Of course, that doesn't tell us why it ran out of memory, although we knew that it was a bit tight, nor what specifically happened today to push it over the edge. That will probably take a while to work out.

It might take us a while to put more stories in the queue but you should be able to comment on many of today's stories that have only just appeared on your screens.

We are sorry for the inconvenience and we are getting back on our feet again. As always, a big THANK YOU to kolie for his efforts.

[Rescheduled to keep it visible--JR]

Introduction

For most people the holiday season is over. There are a few who have their winter holidays booked as we still have a few months of the skiing season to go yet, but I don't think that this affects any of our staff! So I offer a belated 'Happy New Year' and wish you all the very best for 2025.

Volunteers for the Board

Slightly less than 12 months ago I asked for volunteers to serve on the Board of SoylentNews and fortunately some people stepped forward and took on the 3 key roles (Chairman, Treasurer and Secretary). They have each contributed to the setting up of the site and getting us where we are today. However, they will soon be wanting to stand down from their current posts. The concept of the site is that the governance is provided by the community and that posts should be rotated occasionally. We are again seeking volunteers to assume one of the current positions. The roles are important, they are the most important posts on the site because without them there can be no site, but I don't think that they are particularly arduous. They are not roles that require a daily or even a weekly input. They maintain an overview of the site and they have an independent decision-making role in future site operations.

Volunteers for the posts should remember that they must be prepared to sign site legal business documents and therefore cannot maintain perfect anonymity. On the site we have not given any additional information other than their nicknames and user ids. Nevertheless, somewhere in the masses of paperwork and records that the US demands and maintains their names and contact details are recorded.

If you wish to volunteer for a post then you should have an account in good standing i.e. not banned or created within the last few months, and with a reasonable level of karma. Please volunteer either here in the comments or directly via email to admin@soylentnews.org. If you have volunteered for a post previously then it does not preclude you from volunteering again. If you have questions regarding a role then please raise them here. If appropriate, I will ask the person currently in that post to reply so that you get the information direct from 'the horses mouth'.

Once we have a volunteer or volunteers for a post we will hold an election for the community to approve and select a person for a post. This will be done openly and everyone with an active account created before the date and time that this Meta is published will have a single vote. The reason for this restriction is to prevent a mass of new accounts attempting to unfairly influence the outcome of the vote. The current Board will make the final decision on who is chosen.

As you will all be aware there has been much happening behind the scenes at SoylentNews. This is an update on activities which you possibly haven't noticed.

Administrative Documents

It has been necessary to redraft many of the documents for the original site which no longer refer to the correct business entity behind the new site. In most cases they are merely reprints of the original documents with typographical and grammatical corrections along with minor changes to reflect the company name. However, some are new documents (e.g. the new Bylaws, and how to successfully complete a bank transfer to our account if you wish to do so in preference to using either Stripe or Paypal etc). I would welcome any necessary corrections that you identify in them.

Bylaws

The Bylaws were written over many months with community contributions throughout. They affect how the business is managed from a legal aspect but not how the day-to-day activity is controlled. They were adopted by the Board and they were submitted to the relevant Federal and State organisations that control the creation and operation of such things when Soylent Phoenix was created. The Bylaws are significant to you in a couple of ways. Firstly, there are no shareholders/stakeholders on the Board - you own this site. Secondly, in the future any major changes to the operation of this site will require at a minimum a consultation with the community and possibly a formal vote to authorise the adoption of the proposed change. You now have a much louder voice in how this site will be run. Nevertheless, that does not mean that every minor change requires full community approval; the decision will ultimately rest with the Board.

If you wish to read the Bylaws they can be found at Soylent Phoenix - Bylaws (as submitted for Company Registration). Details of the current voluntary Board members can also be found there. The Board will require a confirmatory election by the community where other community members will also have an opportunity to be elected rather than the existing Board members. However, the voting software that was to be used to manage the vote became unavailable when audioguy left the site. I am still looking for replacement software that is reliable enough to ensure a free and fair vote. I would welcome any suggestions that you may have.

Tax Status

For those US members of our community who can benefit from it we are registered as an IRC Section 501(c)(3) company which means that subscriptions and donations are tax deductible for those lucky people. Subscriptions and donations can be made by Stripe or Paypal, but additionally now also by direct bank transfer either inside the USA or internationally.

Soylent Phoenix Policy

The Policy statement is for the most part a copy of the original statement but there are some differences. One is the inclusion of a policy statement regarding doxxing which I hope is self-explanatory. The second relates to the removal from view of persistent spamming. Removal of spam content has always been part of the site policy since its inception but it is both reaffirmed and clarified by the latest statement. Software is under development to assist with this function which will also give the community increased oversight of how such things are managed.

Definitions and Common Terms

To support the Soylent Phoenix Policy statement there is also a new document called Definitions and Common Terms. This is necessary because some community members seem to be confused over certain definitions as they apply to this (and the previous) site. I have searched through numerous Metas issued over the last decade and extracted the approved essential elements so that they can be viewed in one place. I will continue to update this document as needs dictate.

Transfer of Assets

In May of this year NCommander announced that the funds had run dry and he asked for community support while the change between companies was taking place. The community responded brilliantly and you donated enough to keep the site operational for around another 6 months. Those of you with a sharp brain will realise that the pot was empty again in late Oct . The 2 treasurers acting on behalf of their respective Boards ensured that money from the new company was used to pay the final bills as they came in. I am grateful to both of them for their work in doing this and to both Boards for working cooperatively. It was also to our benefit. NCommander agreed to gift all the assets from SoylentNews PBC to Soylent Phoenix in their totality. It was a generous gesture and much appreciated. The terms of this agreement are available for your perusal at the Transfer of Assets Agreement.

DRAFT - Discussion Policy

There is one document that is presented in Draft format and I would welcome your comments. Again it results from apparent 'confusion' over what is permitted in a journal and what is not. Essentially, journals have little to no staff control. They belong to the person who creates the journal. The Discussion Policy is an attempt to state the purpose and function of all discussions on this site as clearly as is possible. It is important to realise that this is a statement of what is already agreed and has been the policy since 2014. I would like your comments regarding its clarity and not whether you agree with what some people write in their journals. The latter would need a change of policy and would have to be addressed ultimately by the Board and the community.

Hardware

The move of all data from Akamai/Linode servers was completed several weeks ago. It was carried out in stages and Linode staff were very helpful. The account was closed when the work was finished. It removes a significant expenditure from our running costs.

Software

The site is now functional but if you experience anything unusual or unexpected please let us know so that it can be investigated to ensure it is nothing amiss in the software that we are using.

There is still software being developed by kolie, (with occasional help from NCommander), and a new member of the Dev/Sysadmin Team - that is Robc (Robc207 - 3408). Welcome!

Some of the software under development, in addition to the spam management software that I have already mentioned, includes improved security hardening of the site and additional administrative tools. You should remember that although quite a bit of work has been carried out on the community's UI, there has been very little work on the administrative software - which still looks and behaves as it did when it was first written almost 30 years ago.

We are also actively seeking a secure way to enable ACs to rejoin the community in main page discussions. This is a significant problem but there are several ideas that are being developed and tested to see if it is a practical proposition.

Joining a Team

If anyone wishes to assist in the running of this site then please do not hesitate to contact any of the staff. In particular, we are currently looking for someone (1 or 2 people) to manage the mediawiki. This is a very light task (a couple of hours per month at most) but at the moment almost every task is being shared among a very small group of people. Having someone to take responsibility for the mediawiki would free others up to enable them to do more of their primary role. I am not asking for someone to write the wiki contents (although if that is a job that you fancy then please step forward) but someone to control wiki access and do a little bit of wiki housekeeping.

Anonymous Coward Contributions to this Discussion

It is a fact that if this discussion were to be open to ACs on the front pages it would quickly become a focus for Spam from a very small group of people. Therefore, the contents of this Meta will be reproduced as a journal belonging to "AC Friendly" [https://soylentnews.org/~AC+Friendly/journal/] and ACs will be welcome to comment there. Valid points of discussion will be copied across to the front page story under the username of "AC Friendly". If an AC wishes to respond to a specific comment then please link to that comment in the first line of your own comment. Spam in that journal will be treated appropriately.

Finally...

It doesn't matter what religion you follow or what your beliefs are, the time is approaching when many people celebrate a notable festival of some kind and the end of the current year. The team at SoylentNews send their very best wishes to the community and to those close to them over the holiday period.

We've Done It

After almost 2 years and a lot of hard work by many people, we have finally achieved what we set out to do. On Wednesday, the Linode servers were decommissioned, and the site is now completely independent and running on its own hardware. All the site data and the domains belong to the community - yes, you own this site.

It could not have been possible without the dedication of quite a few people - some of whom have not made it to today. It wasn't pleasant and it wasn't easy. There were numerous meetings to create a new set of Bylaws. That in itself took many months of often acrimonious debate. Everyone wanted the same end, but they were not happy with how it was being achieved. In the end, as is always the case, it required a lot of compromise, and it meant we needed to say goodbye to the old way of doing things. So to all of those who participated in those meetings: mechanicjay, AudioGuy, Deucalion, Fnord666, MartyB, Separatrix, cmn32480, kolie, hubie, mrpg, requerdanos, fab23, chromas, fliptop, dx3bydt3, tedious, cosurgi, Runaway1956, and even aristarchus, and many that I have probably missed out, a huge thank you from me. And if I have missed you out then that is entirely my fault and I apologise!

The Bylaws dictate how the business will be managed. They do not contain any rules about how the site will be used, or what is permitted in submissions or discussions and what is not, or any of those things that tend to interest the community. But there are some unique differences in our Bylaws from those previously. The Board (which I will get to in a moment) manage this site on your behalf. While they handle routine matters as appropriate to their post, many actions require them to seek the agreement of the community. You will have a say in major decisions. After all, you own the site. The data cannot be used for any purpose other than maintaining this site without a majority decision of the community.

So having created the Bylaws, we could apply to create a company. This was necessary so that the new company (Soylent Phoenix) could receive whatever assets the original company (SoylentNews PBC) was prepared to transfer. For legal reasons, the Board members cannot be anonymous; they have to sign various pieces of legal documentation to create the company. So I asked for volunteers from the community. More than we needed stepped forward and so the business was created. The Chairman of the Board is OregonJohn (6105), the Treasurer is Dale (539) (and he is actually a qualified accountant!), and the Secretary is holeinone (17639). They have also been working hard on your behalf setting up the company, creating Stripe accounts, managing the current funds, and filling in the paperwork that is associated with a business. Technically the Board is a temporary one because they do not yet have the approval of the community. But that is built into the Bylaws, and it allows us to keep moving forward until their posts are confirmed by the community, or challenged by someone else who believes they should be allowed to do the job.

Next came the transfer of assets. Like all things this did not go as smoothly as everyone had hoped it would. Quite understandably, it was necessary for everything to be accountable and legal, and to look after everyone's interests. Again, it was only by having some tough discussions and making compromises on both sides that anything has actually been achieved. So another thank-you to NCommander and Matt Angel. I think we have a solution which, while not meeting all of our initial dreams, is one that we can live with for the future. The site never squandered money and there is nothing to suggest that your donations have been misused.

You will probably now all be aware that two people have donated hardware and a data connection at no cost to the site. Those people are kolie and fliptop, and they have my sincere thanks. Kolie's server is the one that you are using at the moment to read this Meta. In fact, it is handling all of the site including email, IRC, DNS, Varnish, the database, etc. etc. Fliptop's server is currently an off-site backup for our data but will probably require a bit of expansion before it will cope with the full Docker installation. You will also be aware that, over the recent weeks and months, kolie has built the entire software infrastructure into Docker containers, moving each function one by one from the Linode servers and incrementally adding it to our own hardware. He has put many man hours into this task and I for one have enjoyed working with him - although my contribution has been considerably less than his! Again, I offer my grateful thanks.

Finally, none of this would have been possible without the community being tolerant and understanding as we have encountered each unexpected obstacle. The community has, in fact, grown slightly in the last 2 years, but it remains at roughly 10% of what it once was. I thank you all for making this possible. Welcome to your site.

And now for something completely different....

Community Representatives

To provide the community with more visibility regarding the actions of staff and the reason and justification for those actions, we have created 3 posts which will act as Community Representatives. Their prime role is to provide the community with the assurance that management is behaving responsibly and within the rules governing the site, and for the community to have a focus when they have concerns regarding what is going on behind the 'curtains'. They will act as your voice in discussions and decisions. They will have full access to staff discussions but will only have limited access, and then only when absolutely necessary, to the data stored in the database. We have had 3 volunteers for these posts for many months, but I will provide more details once I have confirmed that they are still volunteering for the role, and when we have hammered out the working procedures that must be adopted for this system to function correctly.

TOR

We now have TOR up and running again - we had it quite a few years ago and then it disappeared. Eventually, the link will be in the SoylentNews side panel on your screen, but for now it is cut and paste:

http://soylentqarvi3ikkzpp7fn4m5pxeeonbv6kr4akgkczqethjfhmalhid.onion

Elections

As I mentioned earlier, technically the current board is temporary. If you wish to stand for a post then you may do so. We will be asking for nominations in the near future. However, remember that you cannot remain anonymous as your name has to be recorded on the official business records.

We will provide you with a Meta page should you wish to explain to the community why you believe that they should vote for you. The method of voting will be 1 vote per active account, which must be in good standing (i.e. meet a minimum karma level and not be currently banned). The software that will be used is still under consideration as the original voting software was written and operated by audioguy who is not currently taking an active part in the site management.

You cannot nominate someone else for a post. They have to put themselves forward as a candidate. You can of course vote for them should they do so.

realDonaldTrump Account

Accounts that have been dormant for over 5 years quickly attract attention when they suddenly re-appear. In recent years we have seen attempts to resurrect old accounts, sometimes by people other than the original owner. There is an option built in to Rehash which is named "Force User to Verify Account" (FUVA) and it appears on the user's administration page. It simply resets the password and sends the new password to the email address that we hold for that account in the database. The account holder can then reset the password to something of their own choosing and everything works as it should. Currently, it is invoked automatically after the 5-year point if the account becomes active again. About a week ago the "realDonaldTrump" (rDT) account suddenly sprang back into life, having been dormant since 2019, and for the most part it was welcomed by the community. However, by making a comment the FUVA triggered.

I think that the account holder has either forgotten how to access his email or the email address has lapsed for some other reason. So the account is now stuck in limbo. Without a working email contact we cannot send the new password to the account holder. I do NOT want to know who the account owner is. However, they must provide a working email address, which can be a temporary or throw-away address, and they must provide sufficient detail about the account to prove that they are the true account owners. The site can be reactivated as a parody account which will have specific restrictions associated with it.

Community Involvement

Although the site is now independent and 'under new management' there is still much that remains to be done.

• For the present the rules that we have inherited will remain in force, but they will have to be rewritten and approved by the community to take us into the future.
• We will need people to assist with the sys-admin role - which is more Docker management than anything else. Interested people do not have to currently know or use Docker, I am sure that we can provide guidance on acquiring those skills and then explaining the current site structure. It is much simpler than it once was.
• We are investigating how to create a separate environment for both testing code before it is integrated into the main site and as a training facility.
• As ever, we need your support by providing submissions and by participating in the discussions. There are 23 submissions in the queue but 17 of them by one of our 2 submission bots which many people dislike.

Potential Return of Anonymous Cowards to the Full Site

Over the last week or two the level of spamming and abuse has significantly reduced. However, the reasons for this are unclear, and it might not indicate a permanent or even long-lasting change. If the low level continues for a significant period (certainly into the New Year) then it might be possible to re-admit ACs to the whole site again. This is something that is we all want to see, and it would be a welcome enhancement to the site. However, it depends entirely on those few individuals who account for the vast majority of the spam and abuse.

If ACs are allowed back onto the full site then any permanent return is entirely dependent on the spamming remaining at a very low level, and for personal attacks to be rare events.

Withdrawn - It didn't even last until we got this Meta out. JR

Over the coming days and weeks we will be switching servers from Linode to our own hardware. The first switch will take place tomorrow. This will also require some DNS changes but you just keep using the same URLs that you are using today. Other than that services should look and behave exactly as they do now. There may well be minor disruptions to connections and we ask you to please bear with us if they occur. There will be pauses of a day or more in between each service being switched over, while we continue to monitor that everything is working as expected.

Moving the data from a live server to a new server means that there will be a finite time between making a backup and installing it on the new server. The site will indicate that maintenance is being carried out. That implies that posts made during this interval will be lost. The process will begin around 1600 UTC on Monday 28 October. We will attempt to make the switch over as quickly as possible and there should always be a live server online. If you lose access to the site completely remember that you can still contact us via email ('nickname' [@] soylentnews.org), on IRC, or by shouting VERY loudly.

If your comment is lost please do not believe those in the community who will no doubt claim that comments are being intentionally deleted. They are not (unless you are one of our small number of persistent spammers).

Once each switch is completed I would hope that we can inform you immediately. However, that might not always be possible - everyone has to sleep sometime! Please make any observations regarding problems, or even compliments if the system is responding better than before, in the comments for this Meta. However, our testing so far indicates that the new servers are more responsive than the existing servers but of course they have not yet been placed under quite the same load.

UPDATE: You should all be accessing the new server. Please let us know if you experience any problems. A big thank-you to kolie!.

It is a long time since we issued a Meta regarding the situation of the site. Much has been happening, but nowhere near as quickly as we had imagined or had hoped. But we are now almost there.

The handover of assets is taking place. The new Board has been instrumental in this and, when the transfer is finally complete, I know that NCommander wishes to write his own Meta to you, the community. Details of who is in which seat will happen once the handover is complete because, until that point, the current site is the one that has existed since 2014, and it is still headed by NCommander.

New hardware is being set up which will allow us to drastically reduce the running costs of the site. Two people, fliptop and kolie, have donated the use of servers and internet connections free of charge to SoylentNews. This is an extremely generous donation on their part and one for which the new Board is extremely grateful. Contracts, where requested, are being actioned as I write this Meta. There will still be annual costs for domains etc.

The new hardware will have a new software structure installed on it, based on Docker containers. These will provide a significantly easier system to manage and, hopefully, will also take care automatically with many of the disruptive issues that we have seen in recent months. I do not claim that there will not be any initial hiccups but the site will still be running on Rehash and will look and behave exactly as it does today. There will be issues regarding updates to software for which new procedures will have to be produced and documented, but that is a task for the future and it need not delay the transfer.

Regarding changes to software, there is an incident that took place last weekend. A community member informed us that the moderation system, under certain usages, could compromise the identity of both the moderator and the moderatee. I passed the information to NCommander and kolie who, despite it being a weekend, identified and confirmed the problem, and subsequently identified a potential fix. The software change was made by kolie first thing on (his) Monday morning, which means that a serious problem was identified and the fix implemented in a fraction over 24 hours. I don't think anyone could have done it any faster bearing in mind that this is an all-volunteer site and considering that it occurred at a time when most people would rather be having some private time with their families. The team we have at the moment is much smaller than we have ever had before but it is still capable of managing the site and keeping the stories flowing. It is only right that I acknowledge on your behalf the contribution made by, and offer my thanks to, the community member who reported the issue (who may identify themself if they wish), NCommander and in particular kolie, who is very much involved in the new site just as he has been for the last 18 months or so.

However, not all problems are under our control. The current issues with IRC have resulted in a ticket being raised by NCommander for support action to be taken by Akamai/Linode. The problem occurred immediately after some routine maintenance, and it appears to be related to DNS and IPv6 as a result of changes that have been introduced by that maintenance. I do not have all the details to hand but it is being actioned.

For this site to remain active and interesting we rely on community support. Whether that be by making submissions (you should know the sort of topics that we are looking for, and we can always put some things under the 'random' topic), or by offering to assist with one of the teams, or just by commenting as many of you are doing now. I realise that this is an important time in the run-up to an election but please discuss TFA and not bring politics into every discussion. You can discuss politics as much as you wish in your journals. In fact, there is no 'politics' topic, nor has there ever been one.

I have been asked numerous times when will ACs be allowed back onto the front pages? There is only one person stopping that from happening now, and it is not me. There will always be occasional spamming and that can be managed quite effectively by community moderation. When the excessive spamming and abuse stops for good then ACs can return to full discussions. But spamming will not result in closing down this site.

🍆

Sometime last Tuesday, our IRC went offline. If you made any changes prior to that, could you please reverse them?

In the meantime, we have a backup server that you might want to use:

irc.libera.chat/6697 channel: ##soylentnews

This can always be used to contact staff when, as now, our own IRC is having problems. It is thought that the problems might not be internal to our servers and I am told that a ticket has been raised with Linode.

You can always use this IRC channel for general chat at any time.

Just to give you advance notice that the continual problem with the renewal of SSL certificates is due to occur on Monday 5 Aug.

Nobody in the new team has the necessary access nor knowledge of the current hardware configuration, and control remains with NCommander. The transfer of assets has been initiated but as one of the two members of the current Board is out of the country everything has temporarily ground to a halt. We cannot reconfigure the existing structure as legally we do not yet 'own' the database or existing hardware assets.

I have requested that NCommander assist by renewing the certificates but that depends upon his availability. He has been kind enough to help in the past. There is nothing more I can do at the moment.

I know that this is easily fixed - but until the formal exchange of the assets takes place we are on very shaky ground with regards to liabilities and responsibilities.

Although it might seem that the site is not progressing there is nothing that could be further from the truth...

The New Company and Transfer Of Assets

A new company has now been formed, along with IRS agreement that we are a registered as a 501(c)(3) company (donations will be tax deductible for anyone under the US IRS system) , and we have our own bank account and Board. Therefore, I informed the current Board of this at the end of last week requesting that we initiate the transfer of site ownership and its assets. I also proposed a way that we could do this with the minimum of disruption to the site itself. Ideally, it should from the community point of view be nothing more than a redirection of URLs to different IP addresses. The proposal has to be studied and accepted by the current Board, or they might suggest an alternative proposal. NCommander is moving home for much of this week and so I do not expect a response in the next few days.

Site Downtime

We are experiencing a recurring problem with a drive that keeps filling up. Several of our community have offered suggestions which have been implemented but they do not appear to be having the desired effect. Further investigation is ongoing but, for now at least, the problem has been resolved by freeing up space by moving files that did not have to be on that particular drive to a different drive on that server. I would like to thank the community for their patience but there are only 3 people who have easy access to that particular server, and I am one of them. The configuration of the infrastructure is not straightforward, and I am not a sys-admin. So to some extent we are still reliant on NCommander and kolie for some of the technical expertise or advice that is sometimes necessary, and to whom I am grateful for any assistance that they can give.

Submissions

We have had a small number of our community helping by making submissions that meet our stated interests and topics of discussion. There has also been a handful of submissions on the '/dev/random' topic which have also received a very healthy number of comments. But for the majority we are still relying on upstart and Arthur (both bots) to bring fresh material to our submission queue. Any relevant submissions from the community would be welcome and I encourage you to think about the more unusual and loosely-tech-related topics that you would like to see discussed. A fully prepared submission would be ideal but if all we get is a URL then that is just putting a greater workload on the small number of active editors that we currently have. Try to at least provide some kind of summary and perhaps ask your own questions to prompt the community to respond. We can do all of the formatting to meet the site's needs for you. But if all you have is a URL then we will try to make a submission from it. Off-topic submissions that are just a URL will probably not be processed.

Spamming

There has been a significant reduction in the amount of spamming anywhere on the site over the last few weeks. It hasn't gone completely but it is currently manageable by normal moderation by the community, and occasionally by the staff.

Complaints

Complaining about things you don't like on the site by means of public comments is not recommended and is usually a waste of your time and ours. If it is something that can be rectified immediately then we will, of course, do so but anything more significant takes a lot of time for the few staff that we have. Complaining anonymously will not be actioned. If you wish to make a complaint then we must have a way of contacting you privately. This can be any email address that you choose, providing that it lasts until the problem can be investigated and any necessary action taken to remedy the problem. We will probably have further questions to help us resolve the Issue and we will also need to inform you of the progress of our investigations and the final decision. That will be at least several days as an absolute minimum. If you keep repeating the same complaint anonymously in different threads and over a period of time it will be treated as spam - as was explained about 3 years ago in a Meta by Martyb.

If it is not important enough to justify an email then it is possibly your personal problem and not something on the site that must be changed. Any alternative response could result in the staff being tied up in malicious anonymous complaints which we have not got the resources to address.

Audioguy was one of the original team who created the existing SoylentNews site. He has stayed with us since that time and has served the community as a sys-admin for over 10 years. It is no exaggeration to say that over the last year or two he has played an almost single-handed role in keeping this site working.

Audioguy has suffered a series of significant personal and medical events over the last 6 months or so. He is now about to commence ophthalmic surgery tomorrow (Wednesday) and is facing other potentially life changing medical issues in the near future. He has, quite understandably and reluctantly, been forced to stand down from his role which was effective from late last week. Unfortunately that has meant that we have lost the ability to correct the current certificates problem. Access to the Linode servers is still controlled by the existing Board and we have experienced additional problems accessing one of our servers by the usual methods. This appears to be common to many staff and has further exacerbated the current problem.

I have written an email to NCommander requesting his assistance in updating the certificates so that the site becomes fully operational again. Your patience is appreciated. What might appear to many in the community to be a relatively minor issue is, behind the scenes, a major blow to the existing team. We have other sys-admins who are ready to pick up the challenge but they do not yet have the necessary access, nor are they yet experienced in managing the beast that that is Slashd.

Returning to audioguy, I am sure that the entire community would wish to join me in thanking him for a decade of support to the site, and to wish him well for the upcoming surgery. He remains one of this community and evidence of his past contributions can be found in numerous bits of code and associated documentation. He has also, for example, been the manager of the technical wiki which has been vital to the support team for all of that period. We are indebted to him.

Good luck for the future, audioguy. Take it easy. Best wishes to you and your family.

Outages

I would like to thank you all for your patience during the recent outages. Something is causing a problem with the database itself. It appears to be running out of room and thus having problems when creating backups. This is not a new phenomenon - NCommander observed that the database was corrupted in Nov/Dec 2022, and he fixed the corruptions that were present at that time. I know that others have done similar 'repairs' over the years. Those of you who have been with us a while will know that we have had various site outages since the site's inception in 2014. We try to get the site up as quickly as possible but we currently have a single active sys-admin who has to find the time to fix the site in between running his own business and having a decent work/life balance. The cause of these corruptions has not been identified despite speculation by some individuals.

New Site

The administration associated with creating a business continues and we think that we are now at the final stage. The paperwork has to be signed by several people and this means sending mail around the USA in order to get real signatures from specific individuals. However, we think that this should only take a week or two.

Deleting Spam

For the last month or so we have been deleting Spam from the Polls and journals. Deleting content is not new. Spam, doxxing, abusive material, CEOS, inappropriate ASCII art etc has often been deleted in the last 10 years. In fact, most of our registered community have the ability to delete some material (their own journals for example), and this has happened from time to time in the past. We also delete outdated submissions on a daily basis. The site software provides a means of making such deletions and it can cope with them. The software that is being used is not new - it has been in Rehash since the site became active. We have received some positive feedback regarding this measure - the Polls and journals are looking much tidier as a result. Unfortunately, we are going to temporarily suspend this measure to simplify the investigations into the database corruption problems. So, as unsightly as they are, we will be returning to the use of Spam moderations on a hopefully temporary basis. We have, of course, also received some negative feedback but it only seems to have come from a couple of Anonymous Cowards, one of whom is our most prolific spammer.

Participation

Finally, I would like to thank the staff for their continued efforts in keeping the site online and active. The participating user count continues to climb, as does the number of pages served each day. Many usernames that have existed for a long time but appear to have been inactive for a while are reappearing and participating in the discussions. I hope that we will soon be able to restructure our site in an affordable yet more robust structure in the very near future.

Jan

Just a brief update - but welcome news for a change.

After a long wait (and after a query to the IRS regarding the progress of our application), fliptop has received news verbally that we have been approved by the IRS for Not For Profit status. The essential paperwork should be with fliptop by the end of the week. Once it has been received we can then move ahead to create a company. Again, we cannot guess how long this process will take but it is the final step required before the community can take control of the site and its assets.

My grateful thanks to fliptop for his efforts.

So, just a follow up. According to matt, we got around $2,000 USD right now in the PBC overnight, and there are still more payments processing. I paid the Linode bill this morning. So, funding problem: solved. We should be set for the foreseeable future as far as money goes!

Seriously guys, you stepped up, and I am thankful. Since I'm here, a quick update on what's going on: Right now, we're mostly just waiting for paperwork to go through as far as handing the site to a newly-created, not-for-profit. It's slow work and I'm not directly involved, but I've seen that there has been a fair number of articles on the subject so I'm pretty happy that everyone is aware of what's going on.

I could write more, but I think I'm going to keep this short and sweet for now. Once I have a final total, I'll post it.

- N

Addition: We have been asked if people can donate anonymously without having an account. The answer is "Yes". Click the subscription link and then make a gift subscription to another account (It defaults to NCommander but you can choose any account). Pay via stripe using an anonymous username.