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As many of you noticed, we had a site crash today. From around 1300 until 2200 UTC (2021-05-20).
A HUGE thank you goes to mechanicjay who spent the whole time trying to get our ndb (cluster) working again. It's an uncommon configuration, which made recovery especially challenging... there's just not a lot of documentation about it on the web.
I reached out and got hold of The Mighty Buzzard on the phone. Then put him in touch with mechanicjay who got us back up and running using backups.
Unfortunately, we had to go way back until April 14 to get a working backup. (I don't know all the details, but it appears something went sideways on neon).
We're all wiped out right now. When we have rested and had a chance to discuss things, we'll post an update.
In the meantime, please join me in thanking mechanicjay and TMB for all they did to get us up and running again!
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 21 2021, @12:55AM (25 children)
Look, you can keep making excuses, but until you get a more modern content management system in a widely supported language, you’ll continue to build up technical debt. Part of that debt is a lack of current documentation. No surprise there. Oh, and “told ya so.”
Grab something better and start by just posting stories with comments. There are enough CMS that do that out of the box. It’s not rocket science or brain surgery. Move the current system to a subdomain for historical purposes only and make it inactive as far as anything new is concerned - in other words, read only.
Don’t be held hostage by the stupid attempts to recreate the past via buck feta. It’s like going to your old elementary school to teach - nothing is as you remembered it. Evolve or collect your Darwin. Your call.
(Score: 5, Informative) by mechanicjay on Friday May 21 2021, @01:00AM (2 children)
My VMS box beat up your Windows box.
(Score: 2) by wirelessduck on Friday May 21 2021, @01:13AM
If we want to start poking around with postgres support is it just replacing sql queries? Does rehash use DBI::?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 21 2021, @01:38AM
Translation: someone who didn’t know what they were doing threw shit at the wall until it stuck, and now it keeps coming unstuck. And there’s no documentation because inexperienced shit throwing monkeys don’t do documentation. Because there’s no time and no point because it’s just going to be patched again anyway. Got it!
Wanna bet there’s no proper bug reporting system? No version control system? Because monkeys don’t need them ???
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 21 2021, @01:06AM (2 children)
Let's just move it all to a subreddit.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by istartedi on Friday May 21 2021, @07:14AM (1 child)
You've got to be joking. I deleted my reddit account, nuking several years of posts there because it's such a toxic environment. If you wanted Soylent to die of drowning in a cesspool of memes and hive-mind groupthink, I couldn't think of a better plan.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 21 2021, @11:20AM
It was a joke. :-)
I'd rather have a site that sometimes crashes than join reddit.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by khallow on Friday May 21 2021, @01:36AM (7 children)
Like? I've heard the complaints about such things before with a peculiar lack of suggestions for what's supposed to be better.
Here's my take. Slash is written in Perl - that's a widely supposed language. It has a really good user interface and is actively supported - that makes it both a very modern CMS and one that compares well with other CMS I've run into on the internet.
So what's better?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by crafoo on Friday May 21 2021, @09:55AM (2 children)
I agree. The site works fantastic, from a user's point of view. It doesn't seem to be down pretty much ever, and the last crash is the only one I can personally remember. I don't see an issue.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Saturday May 22 2021, @02:39AM (1 child)
Agreed. From out here in this user's chair, my response is... ain't broke, don't fix it. Works exactly as I expect, every day, and clearly has not annoyed me into departing. I'll take the odd crash or glitch as part of the package.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 22 2021, @12:05PM
I have two words for you: preventative maintenance.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 21 2021, @10:19AM (3 children)
Time to start from scratch. Remember groklaw? It never had these problems, and geeklog (the CMS groklaw ran on) is still actively maintained, lots of documentation, and it’s written in php, not Perl, so there are way more people who would be willing to work with it. As far as a CMS is concerned, Perl is like Perl 6 (aka parrot) - it’s pining for the fjords. Has been for over a decade. Perl 5 is in maintenance mode (if you can call it that). It’s dead, Jim.
You all wanted a specific recommendation - go with geeklog. Though it seems that you’ll manage to fuck up even that, because it doesn’t look like anyone running this place has any experience with anything else.
Strange how a bunch of open source fanatics don’t even know what open source CMS packages are available. But you can always mess around with that piece of shit WordPress - it’s probably the only alternative any of you have experience with.
(Score: 4, Touché) by maxwell demon on Friday May 21 2021, @05:38PM (1 child)
I just got curious, searched for geeklog, went to their demo site [softaculous.com] … and with JavaScript disabled, I got nothing.
For a substantial part of the audience of this site, that's already a no-go.
OK, I then enabled JavaScript, and then, after a few seconds of showing me a username and password to remember, it redirected me to a 404 page. Seems to be very well maintained. </sarcasm>
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 21 2021, @10:56PM
The third party demo site works just fine for me, and you can check the commit history yourself. [github.com]
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Friday May 21 2021, @08:28PM
Evidence distinguishes between hypotheses. Both actively supported and not would be imperfect. The minor FORMKEY bug and a single failure don't indicate level of support.
It's written in PHP? You're not selling this well. I see it's also a poor user interface too. And we're missing that user moderation.
Because experience with one CMS can't possibly be applied to a second CMS?
Because True Scotsmen would know all the open source CMS packages. Even the good ones!
(Score: 5, Touché) by janrinok on Friday May 21 2021, @09:11AM (6 children)
Please tell me how long it will take in programmer days to rewrite the existing software 'in a modern language', for free, and keeping all the current facilities, and fully interfaced with your magic CMS, while all the time keeping the current site operational. If you remember to make sure we can migrate from what we have to the new system because it will be important to carry all the existing community details and earlier stories forward. It would be very helpful if you could also tell me where I can find these programmers who are prepared to work for free.
Anybody can produce a simple blog from one of the ready-to-run-out-of-the-box software packages. And the web and github are littered with trivial systems that haven't got any further than the simple blog. That is not what we have today.
Alternatively, if it is that simple, please knock one together for us and offer it as a replacement system. You have, after all, the considerable experience with writing and maintaining HA sites, haven't you? Sounds like you can have it up and running in a week or so.
Go on, I'll wait.....
(Score: 2) by Dr Spin on Friday May 21 2021, @01:34PM (2 children)
Please tell me how long it will take in programmer days to rewrite the existing software 'in a modern language', for free, and keeping all the current facilities, and fully interfaced with your magic CMS, while all the time keeping the current site operational.
And also supply a quote for doing the same with Cobol.
Warning: Opening your mouth may invalidate your brain!
(Score: 2) by DECbot on Friday May 21 2021, @03:17PM (1 child)
COBOL? Why coddle them with such a dev-friendly high level language? At least choose something esoteric like brainfuck, LOLCODE, or Perl6.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 22 2021, @05:51AM
FORTRAN, FOR THE WIN, AND THE ALL -CAPS.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 21 2021, @03:37PM (2 children)
Then modify it as per user feedback. You don’t need a dedicated programmer. What’s the matter with you people - you claim to be all over open source but you’re the worst characters when it comes to Not Invented Here.
As for whether it’s up to the job, groklaw held up just fine (though they could have used someone to spiffy up the look of the place).
Look, just download and play with it. Php isn’t that hard to understand, once you get used to using it as a templating language -creating files using HTML but embedding code in it to publish data held in the database where needed.
So a regular HTML file with embedded code to display the individual user name, the story, current comments, a button to post your on comment, etc. A php-enabled form to handle user input to the database is pretty straightforward. Design your form in HTML, embed php, test it.
Don’t take my word for it -try it. Free yourselves from the tyranny f being stuck with Perl and the very limited pool of people who still want to work with it.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by janrinok on Friday May 21 2021, @04:47PM (1 child)
And of course it already manages the editing of submissions, how do you edit the stories that have been processed to change their release time? How do you edit stories - with multiple editors working simultaneously? Does it have an internal mail system, a test environment? Does it come complete with a suite of test routines? How does it handle malicious abuse? What templating system does it use?
Or are we just swapping the current system for one that you personally like? Only a very small fraction of what we currently have is misbehaving. So you want to change everything? It doesn't make sense.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Reziac on Saturday May 22 2021, @02:51AM
I'm assuming geeklog.net eats their own dog food (if not, why not??) and assuming I was in the right place, all I see there is pretty much the same as any other forum commenting system... which is not what we have here. We're in a unique interface niche; recreating someone else's niche would not be the same, nor what keeps enough of us here to actually notice when the site goes POOF.
So I'm in the camp of... from the user POV, ain't broke, don't fix it. Yeah, probably things could improve here and there. (Like, after I've modded a comment, have the mod box disappear so I don't forget and try to remod the same comment six times.) But overall? I like the experience, and feel no urge to depart.
So thanks to all who keep the lights on.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 21 2021, @01:44PM (1 child)
Is that really going to solve things in the long term? From what I've seen on the web, Soylent could move to something that is modern well supported today, and in five years it will be "that weird thing that was a fad back in 2021 that no one uses anymore, WTF?". It's not like Perl wasn't popular and the way things were done at one point either. I suppose Slashcode predates the time when a CMS really was a thing so you had to roll your own. But it's not like Perl is a bad language or anything and it seems to work reasonably well, at least from a perspective of someone who doesn't have to maintain it :)
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 21 2021, @03:45PM
But instead of uninformed bitching, why not just download it and try it? Most web hosting companies have it available as a one-click install for a reason - it’s quite popular. And it’s better than drupal, and WAY better than “WorstPress.”
(Score: 3, Interesting) by stretch611 on Saturday May 22 2021, @09:10AM (1 child)
Wow... lets go and get WordPress.
Its "modern". Its widely supported. Hell, it takes care of the entire site... including security!!!
While I have not looked at more than a small handful of various CMS products, there are a few things that I learned... they are all bloated pieces of crap. Trying to get them to do anything more than the most basic things essentially requires a "programming expert" in that specific CMS to get it to work. (and seriously, if you are trying to avoid the expense of custom software, you do not do that by hiring customization experts.) They tend to be riddled with security problems... especially if you use custom plugins. And, as pointed out by many others, they are fine for a simple blog... but not much else.
Also, have you noticed... almost everyone that uses one of the big CMS systems is not technical? The same people that think once you install the software, using the default passwords and file locations, that you never need to update or maintain it? It always seems to be a perfect storm when you hear news about a major security flaw that compromises thousands of websites.
Last, but far from least... You should never treat your own product like a commodity.
SN is a news aggregator. If this site did nothing more than a easily available CMS, what would set this site apart from any old mom and pop blog? Absolutely nothing. If you are not different from everyone else, there is nothing memorable about you to set you apart from the rest and no one would come here at all.
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday May 22 2021, @11:42PM
(Score: 1) by Sulla on Friday May 21 2021, @12:58AM (1 child)
As of this post the main page still shows the comment count for this article at 0
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 2) by martyb on Friday May 21 2021, @01:32AM
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 21 2021, @01:06AM (5 children)
SoylentNews.ru is backed up daily... by KGB.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by KritonK on Friday May 21 2021, @06:31AM
And in the US soylentnews.org is backed up by Google. It might be worth checking their cache for lost posts and comments. Assuming they are scraping SN at least daily, most of the content should be available, tough it will require some custom scripting for reentering it into the SN database.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 21 2021, @06:46AM (3 children)
Check Runaway1956's IP in IRC. All your questions will be answered.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Runaway1956 on Friday May 21 2021, @07:38AM (2 children)
You chucklehead - this isn't your grandpa's intarwebz anymore. I can log in from any country in the world, as you are well aware, Aristarchus-of-many-IPs.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 21 2021, @09:55PM (1 child)
What makes you think I am aristarchus, Runaway of many IP's and low IQ?
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 21 2021, @10:33PM
You'd probably sleep better on a nice, soft American-made My-Pillow. A mattress topper makes it even nicer. Relax, breathe, think pleasant thoughts. I think about how comforting mountain lakes are, with tall pine trees and happy children at play. Be thankful for each beautiful new day.
Now, I don't endorse over-indulging in anything, but Budweiser is offering patriotic beer cans in Red, White and Blue. They're collectable and attractive. And you'd feel mostly peaceful when holding one of those cans.
(Score: 5, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 21 2021, @01:13AM (5 children)
I saw literally all these stories back in April... this is a new record for SoylentNews. Bad editors!
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 21 2021, @01:33AM
(Score: 2) by martyb on Friday May 21 2021, @01:35AM (1 child)
You got a great big laugh out of me with that -- much appreciated after today! Please accept a well-deserved "+1 Funny"!
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by fustakrakich on Friday May 21 2021, @01:41AM
Did Charter ever cough up the money?
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 3, Funny) by sjames on Friday May 21 2021, @07:10AM
Clearly Soylent got drunk and hooked up with the wayback machine.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Thexalon on Friday May 21 2021, @10:49AM
That was the problem! Slashdot's old code relied on a certain number of dupes every month to function properly, which is why CmdrTaco and the rest of the original editing team made sure to feed plenty of them on a regular basis.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2, Informative) by stroucki on Friday May 21 2021, @01:37AM (12 children)
Regardless of whether the db is or is not close to running out of disk (which should have been monitored), there should have been dumps taken daily and backed up.
Immutable storage is nice because existing backups cannot be modified, and variable block deduplication deals with insertions and out-of-order dumping of records. To this end let me recommend Plan9's venti for the immutable storage, and my project at https://github.com/stroucki/venti-streamchunk [github.com] for piping data to it.
The backups don't have to be on online, hosted machines, a simple ssh tunnel can have the server be located anywhere.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Friday May 21 2021, @01:44AM (3 children)
I'm not sure if that's desirable, or even possible, technically speaking, of course
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 21 2021, @05:48AM (1 child)
You are not getting enough fiber.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Saturday May 22 2021, @02:53AM
That's exactly what I said about my internet.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 21 2021, @05:25PM
Why would it not be possible, technically speaking?
Whether it is desirable is up to the site's needs. They apparently restored a backup from April, so there are probably backups even older than that.
(Score: 4, Informative) by janrinok on Friday May 21 2021, @06:05AM (7 children)
Go read what was said up the page....
There were backups, the latest one was only 18 or so hours old - but for some reason not yet identified they had been corrupted since mid-April. We cannot do a test restore everyday unless you are offering to join the team and take on that role?
(Score: 3, Funny) by maxwell demon on Friday May 21 2021, @06:21AM
Just ask the NSA, I'm sure they have working backups lying around. :-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 21 2021, @10:29AM (5 children)
I’d say the chickens have come home to roost.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Friday May 21 2021, @10:37AM (4 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 21 2021, @11:15PM (3 children)
Interesting. Web service "crashes." Most vocal person on the news story has experience in "real-time avionic systems." They also claim such experience is related to running a website like this. Obvious conclusion: this website uses planes as its servers. </sarcasm>
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Saturday May 22 2021, @05:51AM (2 children)
This made me smile. But I do not think my previous experience is relevant to administering this site - that is why I an an editor, not sysadmin.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 22 2021, @07:14AM (1 child)
Yeah, but the joke doesn't work without it.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Saturday May 22 2021, @09:34AM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 21 2021, @01:41AM (3 children)
I'm trying to think of what interesting stories there even were this last month, and I'm coming up blank.
So.... nothing of value was lost.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 21 2021, @06:38AM (2 children)
I hope y'all don't forget all the interesting, informative and insightful stuff I posted last month. It's almost like it never happened. It's almost like there's no point in doing that here anymore. Did somebody post something here that a TLA had to make disappear?
--
Late last night I heard the screen door slam
And a big yellow taxi took away my old man
Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone?
They paved paradise
Put up a parking lot
-Joni Mitchell, Big Yellow Taxi
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 21 2021, @10:32AM (1 child)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 21 2021, @11:23AM
arsetechnica is infested by soyboys
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 21 2021, @01:47AM (6 children)
Ethanol-fueled should have his karma back. Check out his rap sheet
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Friday May 21 2021, @05:57AM (5 children)
He's writing rap music?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 21 2021, @06:18AM
He likes to make out that he was opposed to sharing tech with foreign powers, but much more likely that they were just not the foreign powers that he was working for. In other words, Ethanol_fueled is a spy, and he cannot come in from the cold. Mossad has his number.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Friday May 21 2021, @12:40PM (3 children)
I saw some of his latest:
"Jews... are the greatest....Jews.... are da bomb....Jews....dey got rockets dey call fireworks dey send to yo' mom. In Palestine. Chizz!"
He was dressed as Vanilla Ice.
Yo.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by DECbot on Friday May 21 2021, @03:25PM (2 children)
Is this the summoning ritual chant to call forth Ethanol-Fueled? Don't you have to draw a magic ASCII goatse and burn some karma before starting the chant?
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 22 2021, @03:30AM
Summoning EF requires using the GH word.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 22 2021, @05:04PM
I posted this in late April and got hit so hard I couldn't post AC until the Great Reset, so it should do the trick:
/ \ ·\ · / · \ · ·
| | \ · | | ·
|· · `.· |· · | : · ·
` |· · ·| \| | ·
\ ·| / / \\\ --__ \\ : ·
· \ · \/ ·_--~~ · ~--__| \ ·|
· \ · ·\_-~ · ·~-_\ · | · ·
\_ \ _.--------.______\|·· | ·
\ \______// _ ___·_ (_(__> \· | ·
\· . C ___) ______ (_(____> | /
· /\·|· C ____)/DICK \ (_____> |_/ ·
·· / /\| C_____)NIGGERS| (___> · / \
| ( _C_____)\______/ // _/·/·· \ ·
| ·\ |__ \\_________//·(__/ · ·|
| \ \____) `---- --' · · |
· | \_ ___\ /_ · _/ |
· |· · · / ·| | \ ·|
|· · ·| ·/·· ·· ·\ \ ·|
· | / / · | | \ |
| / / ·· ·\__/\___/ ·|· · · |·
| · / · | | | |
·| ·| ·· |· | | · · |
Ignore the stains, just carry on with your chant please...
(Score: 3, Insightful) by darkfeline on Friday May 21 2021, @06:49AM
> It's an uncommon configuration, which made recovery especially challenging... there's just not a lot of documentation about it on the web.
That sounds like an argument for preferring technology that is popular and has larger market share, like, say, Linux over BSD, or a global cloud provider over a local datacenter provider. Just saying.
Let me get behind my flame shield.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 3, Funny) by turgid on Friday May 21 2021, @07:26AM (3 children)
I thought we'd been busted by the Feds for subversive content.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 3, Funny) by Runaway1956 on Friday May 21 2021, @07:32AM (1 child)
That's not scheduled until October. The new fiscal year starts, and they'll have lots of money to squander on us.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Reziac on Saturday May 22 2021, @02:57AM
See, this is why we need Eth -- provides plausible deniability!
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 21 2021, @07:36AM
I TOLD the admins they needed to ban Runaway1956! Feds are closing in!
(Score: 1) by shrewdsheep on Friday May 21 2021, @07:42AM (1 child)
CMS as in configuration management system. We had this discussion before when the laconic answer was that "it's in my head". I'm a hobby sys-admin for my own systems and I know how difficult it is to remember details of particular systems after a while. For SN there are several admins involved which spells disaster in case of failure. Somebody like say martyb should be capable using a CMS to rebuild the whole system from scratch with a simple command. It is not that much work to setup and and saves you a lot of time even in the short run. I can recommend ansible. I have the impression that site recovery at the moment depends on the proper experts being available.
CMS and proper backups and monitoring of disk space. Use volumes so the system comes down gracefully and doesn't take down random services all affected by running out of disk.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 21 2021, @08:39AM
Using some SCM process and software could be a good step. Formalizing the processes at all is an even better one. The fact that apparently one guy (The self-proclaimed bottom of the totem pole, no less) is the only one that could bring this site back up screams loudly. The software is a supplement to proper documentation and procedures, not a replacement. Part of the problem is that the stack is too tightly coupled with frozen dependencies (with known vulnerabilities) and has been hacked together until it "works." Sad to say, I'm not holding my breath.
(Score: 2) by fraxinus-tree on Friday May 21 2021, @08:20AM (4 children)
... in an article from Apr 14 (because that's what we have to work with, you know...)
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Friday May 21 2021, @10:58AM (1 child)
You can't post comments in articles that are more than a couple of weeks old...
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by SomeGuy on Friday May 21 2021, @07:20PM
For a few minutes there, it was allowing new posts. (See a few new posts on the previous old story) Presumably things just had to catch up before it shut them off.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Friday May 21 2021, @06:08PM (1 child)
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Saturday May 22 2021, @02:59AM
And here I thought it was a limitation on the Soylent time machine!
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by srobert on Friday May 21 2021, @01:45PM (1 child)
I have no idea what my karma number was before the crash. Right now it says 50. The concept of a "karma jubilee" where everyone periodically starts over is interesting.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Friday May 21 2021, @03:14PM
Karma is capped at 50
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 21 2021, @03:26PM
you just have to post a working design for "at home fusion" and the site will crashnsa again ^_^
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 21 2021, @04:28PM
I will (redundantly) offer my thanks to the team who keeps SN chugging along.
I find it odd that the people bitching the most about what crap SN is are the ones who are the most addicted to it. Show a little gratitude or bugger off.
The only REAL problems with SN have nothing to do with technology and everything to do with its users. But, every single social website has the same exact problem.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday May 21 2021, @10:22PM
Very few people appreciate the fact that these things don't completely run themselves.
Thanks for keeping it going.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 22 2021, @02:50AM
I notice The Mighty Buzzard has been scarce lately.
My guess is that someone behind the scenes ganged up on TMB and the TMB said, fine, you run it but don't bother me with your problems.
That lasted for about a week.
My guess for who that person is would be martyb, just sayan'.
Don't tell me, let me guess, wanted to monetarize SN with ads.
Hard drives aren't that expensive. But mistakes are.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by pTamok on Saturday May 22 2021, @09:38AM (1 child)
I've been occupied with other life tasks for the past few days, so not able to spend quality time with SoylentNEWS.
I extend a heart-felt "Thank you very much" to all those involved with rescuing the site. Sometimes things go wrong, and what separates the good from the bad is how you respond to the aberrant situation. So well done. I wish I had more time so I could volunteer to help with the documentation, but I don't want to be the kind of person who volunteers, shows up to a couple of meetings and promises to complete a load of actions, and is never heard from again.
I am ignorant of 'The Mighty Buzzard situation', so if a kind soul can provide a link to a summary, I'd be grateful.
Thank you all again. Ignore the kibitzing, but do take up any genuine offers of help.
(Score: 3, Informative) by RS3 on Saturday May 22 2021, @05:41PM
I echo all of your sentiments, including many thanks; that I've offered to help, including admin, even host (yes, really), but never heard back.
I've been working insane hours, thankful for a job at all really, and had little time to spend here over the past many weeks. I do check in many times daily, sometimes only a glance.
I don't partake in irc chat (no time), and sporadically look at journals, but maybe a week or so ago TMB wrote a journal piece that he was resigning from SN. He made reference to "disco", that he doesn't disco any more, ... so if you see "disco" references, you'll make the connection. Link is not available, needless to say.
Not sure when/where it all happened, but I glean that he was getting major flack, including from other SN principals (admins, editors, not sure who?) about his attitude, demeanor, communication style, something.
Sigh. I have a lot of thoughts about his situation. It's a many-layered cake. What should the rules be? Who should institute / enforce them? And how? I grew weary of the many debates about CoC (Code of Conduct), moderation, etc. It all seems obvious to me, but others have, and have a right to their often very different opinions from mine. Like many, if I had time I'd probably start yet another tech site like this one. Sigh again.
What it all comes down to: it's not easy herding cats.