We are aware of several bugs in the system at the moment, including the lack of a journal index on the front page, and the failure to update modpoints daily. Thank you to all of those bringing them to our attention. Please continue to do so as you may be the first person to see something going wrong.
Unfortunately, NCommander is currently unavailable to fix these immediately but he is aware of them. He is occupied with real world issues and currently has a very limited internet connection. He will fix them as soon as is possible and we ask that you be patient. It is less than ideal but unfortunately we have no other option.
This discussion was created by janrinok (52) for logged-in users only, but now has been archived.
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(Score: 5, Touché) by turgid on Wednesday December 07 2022, @12:01PM
Thanks again for all your efforts. They are greatly appreciated.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 3, Insightful) by pTamok on Wednesday December 07 2022, @12:17PM (5 children)
If NCommander is the only person who can address SoylentNews technical problems, then the site has a huge problem. There could be many reasons for him not being able to continue - he is a Single Point of Failure, which is a bad idea.
Quite apart from the editorial/policy administration problems, the site needs enough technical resource to keep it going, without relying on a single person. It needs 'techies' to keep stuff running while everyone else argues over editorial/site policy. I'm not in a position to help, much as I would love to, but the site needs more trusted techies to keep things going.
I think there is huge value in having a site that doesn't track people, and which eschews javascript. It is evidence of how things can be done without being beholden to huge amounts of external code, over which one has limited control. I hope that some other people think it i s valuable enough to contribute their time and expertise. I'm really sorry I cannot.
Get a few cloned copies of NCommander, stat!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday December 07 2022, @01:17PM
Maybe this will help to put things in perspective?
TheMightyBuzzard was the only coder dude on staff for a long while. When he left, there were zero people left to fix bugs and stuff. Ncommander working on problems is better than the past couple years. True, he remains a single point of failure, but he's doing something.
We might fault him for working on the production machine, rather than the development machine. But, he's working, where no one has been working.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 5, Informative) by janrinok on Wednesday December 07 2022, @01:34PM
We know!
While the server is being rebuilt then only NCommander can work on it. Likewise, Juggs is still doing work on IRC.
Now, we have been asking for over a year for volunteers to help us, and we have 3 people currently waiting to be trained. But until we have our development server operational (and NCommander is still working on the production server) then we cannot train anybody. The problems are currently with the Perl/MySql interface. The database is being reconfigured so that we can simplify our hardware and significantly reduce our running costs. If you are volunteering to be a Perl maintainer then we will welcome you with open arms. Currently we have only have NCommander who is able to do the task. When the production server is complete and containerised (docker) then it should be a lot easier to duplicate it on the development server, but we are not there yet.
We all feel the same frustration. I don't know if you realise that the reduction in the community has been matched by a similar reduction in the size of the team supporting the site. Most roles are currently unfilled and many are down to one person. Sys-ops has been down to one person for several months. I have been the only Admin working on our site for much of the last 6 months, with others helping out occasionally when they can. Our community contains many 'techies' but, for perfectly good personal reasons, they are not offering to assist with the running of the site.
(Score: 2, Touché) by khallow on Wednesday December 07 2022, @03:09PM (1 child)
A single point of failure was better than the zero points of failure that preceded this situation.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 07 2022, @07:11PM
Heh heh, reminds me of my last job. Now instead of being "the problem" they have "no problem" in the same way North Korea has no covid.
(Score: 2) by liar on Wednesday December 07 2022, @06:00PM
Oh no! The clone comment got this playing in my head! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=baRCq3twqww [youtube.com] "A preteen Boba is portrayed by Daniel Logan in the prequel film Attack of the Clones (2002), which reveals the character's origins as the genetic clone and adoptive son of Jango Fett, also a famous bounty hunter. The animated series The Bad Batch further reveals Boba to have been born Alpha, and to have a biological twin sister, Omega." (wikipedia)
Noli nothis permittere te terere.
(Score: 2) by canopic jug on Wednesday December 07 2022, @01:06PM (1 child)
It might also be that the subscriptions added since the last time the database curdled have disappeared.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Wednesday December 07 2022, @01:43PM
Of course, the money itself has not been lost it is just the displayed data that is incorrect.
(Score: 1) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday December 07 2022, @01:21PM (1 child)
I didn't "lose" any mod points, I just haven't got any new points. When I first read that mod points weren't updating, I still had 3 unused mod points. I still had one of those mod points just a few minutes ago, when I used it to mod a troll.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 3, Informative) by janrinok on Wednesday December 07 2022, @01:36PM
It is the same for everybody - nobody has suggested losing mod points, or if they have it is a different bug!
(Score: 2) by Dale on Wednesday December 07 2022, @02:43PM (7 children)
Is the RSS feed down for anyone else? My feed via ighome.com stopped working right about the time all the recent site stuff started.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Wednesday December 07 2022, @04:39PM (4 children)
Yes the RSS feed is down.
(Score: 2) by liar on Wednesday December 07 2022, @05:54PM (3 children)
My rss reader (foxish) shows 3 entries after this one...
Noli nothis permittere te terere.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Wednesday December 07 2022, @06:17PM (2 children)
OK, there are two different RSS feeds - it seems that one at least is still working.
(Score: 2) by liar on Wednesday December 07 2022, @06:26PM
Foxish says "feed url
https://soylentnews.org/index.rss [soylentnews.org]
site url
https://soylentnews.org/ [soylentnews.org]
folder name
Soylent
Parent Folder
Bookmarks
max feed items
25"
Noli nothis permittere te terere.
(Score: 2) by Dale on Wednesday December 07 2022, @07:23PM
Looking at it for the first time in ages, apparently SN has a widget on ighome that isn't working. The RSS feed does function as expected though.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Wednesday December 07 2022, @06:19PM (1 child)
https://soylentnews.org/index.rss seems to be working, I was mistaken. The 'other' feed is the one that is linked to IRC, and that one is still down.
(Score: 2) by fab23 on Thursday December 08 2022, @12:52PM
There is also an Atom Feed: https://soylentnews.org/index.atom [soylentnews.org]
This is the more modern protocol then RSS1/RSS2.
For Firefox users then Addon RSSPreview [mozilla.org] brings back the feed icon into the URL bar. It even has settings to e.g. open the feed in a new tab and with "Use color icon in address bar" show the shiny orange icon to easily spot if a site has a feed or not.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Freeman on Thursday December 08, @04:40PM
Just feed the code through ChatGPT. What's the worst that could happen? . . . Entire movie scenario later. Yeah, that was bad.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Saturday December 17, @09:49AM
This might not be relevant, but when I go to Search:Meta and sort on 'Most Recent First"
https://soylentnews.org/search.pl?tid=25&query=&author=&sort=2&op=stories [soylentnews.org]
The 'most recent' found is from 31st March 2020.