Our IRC server has disappeared. We are not sure of the reason yet but we will keep you informed. Lets not jump to any hasty conclusions. It will affect how we manage the site but we will let you know how to restore some kind of IRC access shortly.
This discussion was created by janrinok (52) for logged-in users only, but now has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
(1)
(1)
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday May 31 2023, @07:44AM (3 children)
https://webmail.soylentnews.org/ [soylentnews.org]
Or not, IDK.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Wednesday May 31 2023, @08:14AM
I'm intrigued that the error message at webmail.soylentnews.org states:
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 31 2023, @01:01PM (1 child)
Q -- does the loss of IRC have anything to do with the latest from NCommander,
https://soylentnews.org/~NCommander/journal/14667 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Wednesday May 31 2023, @03:14PM
I don't think so, it looks like several services went down but IRC did not come back up. If that was part of NCommander's rebuilding on a new server then maybe.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Ingar on Wednesday May 31 2023, @08:29AM (2 children)
##soylentnews on libera.chat
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Wednesday May 31 2023, @08:39AM (1 child)
Thanks Ingar - you were a few minutes ahead of me!
(Score: 2) by Ingar on Wednesday May 31 2023, @09:53AM
Your post does look a bit more professional though ;-)
(Score: 3, Informative) by janrinok on Wednesday May 31 2023, @08:38AM (2 children)
We have an alternate IRC channel on LIbera.Chat ##soylentnews.
The URL is irc.libera.chat port 6697, usually written as irc.libera.chat/6697
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VanessaE on Wednesday May 31 2023, @11:37AM (1 child)
This makes me wonder... Libera is reliable, and they're pretty open as far as content goes, so what benefit is there in running a dedicated IRC server?
(Score: 4, Informative) by janrinok on Wednesday May 31 2023, @12:04PM
Privacy, security, control, and for some things - cost? IRC is a very low resource service. It has negligible affect on how much hardware we need to maintain the site. The same goes for email.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by suxen on Wednesday May 31 2023, @09:50AM (2 children)
I tried three times to post my interest and (as a Perl developer with 20 years experience) my willingness to help on the The Future story. None of my comments showed up. I wonder how many other's didn't and if this one will... maybe I should check into the IRC channel, but then I wonder....
(Score: 5, Interesting) by janrinok on Wednesday May 31 2023, @10:53AM (1 child)
Sorry, I have managed to find your comments and I don't know why I haven't responded earlier. However, I now have your username and your offer to help so thank you very much.
There are several issues going on at the moment. First of these are the negotiations between NCommander and Kolie. I am not aware of anyone else's involvement in the negotiations. There is not much anyone can do there other than wait until they are concluded or the community is asked for approval for some issue or other, if necessary.
Secondly, we are still investigating what to do if the negotiations do not reach a satisfactory conclusion. We are doing lot of investigation as to what is possible and what is not, depending on how much (or little) of the existing site we have access to after the negotiations are concluded. This includes trying various options to see what can be created. You are welcome to join in on that - your Perl experience makes your offer very attractive indeed. You mention having limited time available. This site runs on the premise that we are all volunteers, and we only give how much time we can spare, and only when we can do so. There can be no 'obligation' upon unpaid volunteers to work specific hours or take on commitments with which they are uncomfortable.
Thirdly, no matter how the negotiations conclude, we have to eventually rid ourselves of the technical debt but, until we can do that, the existing code has to be maintained. Again your experience puts you in a very, very small group of people who have contacted me. We might now have 2 people if that is how you wish to be involved. That is not a lot when one considers the amount of time that either of you would be prepared to give to the project.
If you don't object, I will use the email address that you provided when you created your account to establish a more direct and less public contact.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by pdfernhout on Wednesday May 31 2023, @03:34PM
Probably should not post this as I don't have the time right not to do it myself, but to address the technical debt, one way to move forward with minimal technical effort is to create a GraphQL layer over the existing SolyentNews database (written in either in Perl or some other language) plus a JavaScript UI in something like Mithril.js for the UI and Tachyons (or similar) for atomic CSS -- which then used that GraphQL API could be a quick way forward. As in like a few weeks to get something working in a bare bones way running alongside the current system which could then be iteratively improved. Essentially, just completely abandon the slashcode approach and replace it with something modern and easier to maintain. But, while I personally would like that, such an approach would lose that thing so many people here like -- having a pure HTML interface not requiring JavaScript to use.
That dislike could be mitigated a bit by server-side rendering of the initial pages and maybe some logic that if JavaScript is disabled to pull more pages. But that server-side rendering would require using a language supporting the JavaScript library side, like using NodeJS and mithril-node-render. So the choice is language flexibility on the server-side versus server-side rendering.
Alternatively there could be a lot of code duplication on the server and UI, or the UI could just be rendered always on the server like now -- but then you are back into technical debt land and more cumbersome implementations.
Moving forward socially may actually be the harder question -- or questions, like who has access to the data, who controls code checkins or deployments, who does backups, who pays for hosting, how the site is moderated or not, who deals with takedown requests or law enforcement requests, and so on. See my previous posts in months past citing Clay Shirky's "A group is its own worst enemy" essay when SolylentNews meta issues were raised before.
https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=50120&cid=1257270 [soylentnews.org]
Those social reasons are why a distributed system like email makes a lot of sense for communications -- but that is very different from a web forum. Hopefully there will be some popular hybrid someday as an alternative to proprietary social media with common open standards for data exchange and various implementations using those. We see the beginning of that with Mastodon, Matrix.org, Zulip, and so on, but they are still not quite there yet as far as popular standards for information exchange.
Ultimately, something like such a hybrid is what I see as the future of online discussions though. I've worked toward such in the past (like with "Twirlip"), but without much significant success. Ideally if one did the GraphQL & Mithril + Tachyons approach specific for SoylentNews, one would do it with an eye towards future federation of distributed systems.
(One might also consider using an augmented JMAP instead of GraphQL for the backend layer, where SoylentNews would essentially become an email-powered application but with a web front-end for most users, with posts and moderation and so on being represented as emails: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JSON_Meta_Application_Protocol [wikipedia.org] )
The biggest challenge of the 21st century: the irony of technologies of abundance used by scarcity-minded people.
(Score: 3, Informative) by janrinok on Wednesday May 31 2023, @06:40PM
*******************************************
The server will be up again in a 'few hours'.
*******************************************