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I was going to post this to a particular story, but thought this might generate more attention and discussion as a general submission.
Seriously, what is going on with all these troll mods? Just because you disagree with someone, thus earning a "disagree" mod, does not mean that person is a "troll." To steal a definition from Urban Dictionary:
An Internet troll, or simply troll in Internet slang, is someone who posts controversial, inflammatory, irrelevant or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum or chat room, with the primary intent of provoking other users into an emotional response or to generally disrupt normal on-topic discussion.
Just because you disagree with someone, does not mean they are trying to do the above. Be faster on the "disagree" and slower on the "troll." Under such abuse, it is hard to have a good discussion and, in itself, is trollish behavior by "generally disrupt[ing] normal on-topic discussion." Other than people disciplining themselves, a concerted effort to police such abuses, or making moderation logs public on the bottom of a comment where the score is shown now, I'm unsure of what to do about. As it stands, it is getting increasingly ridiculous to read what discussion is here on any topic remotely controversial, and is expanding outside of even those. It is starting to drive me away from the site, and I'm somewhat confident it is doing the same for others. I'd be interested to see what others think about the depth of the problem, if they even believe it even exists at all, and what solutions you all have for it.
[Ed note. This story is published exactly as received. First off, it bears repeating that complaining about moderations in the comments often leads (rightly) to an off-topic moderation. That is a contributing factor to my decision to run this story. Secondly, moderation is something that I on occasion have found I've fat-fingered and given a different moderation than expected. Thirdly, in the grand scheme of things, a comment's moderation is — relatively speaking — small potatoes. It is NOT a measure of your IQ or value as a human being. or standing in the community. Just accept that stuff happens and that as likely as not, someone will be along to moderate it the other way. Which is a good opportunity to say: PLEASE USE YOUR MOD POINTS! Lastly, if you think a comment was moderated in error, then send the CID (Comment ID) link e.g. "(#876543)" in an email to admin (at) soylentnews (dot) org. Keep in mind however that we are all volunteers here and there most likely will be a delay between when you send out an email and when we can get around to it. --martyb]
[Updated: 20190823_111312 UTC See comment from JR who far more precisely and eloquently expressed the idea I was attempting to. I concur with his assessment. If I want people to upmod a comment of mine that I believe was unfairly downmodded, then I need to be willing to upmod other's mis-modded comments. For perspective, so far this month, anywhere from ~150-~350 mod points were used in any given day. It bears repeating: use your mod points!]
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I just finished updating the certs for SoylentNews.
We get our certs through Let's Encrypt. Yes, we could automate the whole process, but it has been discussed and decided that given our... unique configuration, it is best to have a human in the loop than to let a script somehow run amok and then try to restore things when who-all-knows-what got deployed and things have gone sideways.
I have checked our web sites for production, dev, and staff as well as sending and retrieving e-mail; all seemed to be okay.
More than anything else, this is a check on us to see if we (well, me, actually) overlooked anything. If you do detect any issues, please post a comment to this story.
(Hat tip to The Mighty Buzzard for standing by in case I bollixed up something.)
[Update: Unless, of course, you cannot post a comment to this story! Then pop onto the #Soylent channel on our Internet Relay Chat (IRC) server and let us know over there. --martyb]
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Earlier this morning (around 0520 UTC) we experienced a sequence of faults which we do not, yet, fully understand. Unfortunately this coincided with several key admins being asleep as they should be.
Several of the team started to try to recover the site but all the obvious efforts failed to have the desired results (e.g. restarting the failed software and switching it all off and back on again). Chromas took the lead in this but he was unable to resolve the problems. SemperOSS showed up next and made a mighty effort but things failed to cooperate. Martyb was next in and checked on status of our servers and a few other things but ultimately could not provide much assistance.
TheMightyBuzzard turned up at his usual time and he and SemperOSS set to work trying to recover the site. After a long slog it became apparent that the existing software had suffered some form of corruption and that a simple recovery was not going to be possible. The decision was finally made to restore to yesterday's snapshot, but this comes with a downside. All the stories, comments, and journal entries since that snapshot was taken (approximately 2019-08-14 22:02:36 UTC) have been lost. This is regrettable but under the circumstances unavoidable.
Some of you joined us on IRC and provided real or moral support to those carrying out the recovery task. Others sent us emails informing us of the outage and we also received offers of help. For this we thank you. We also thank our community at large for your patience while we carried out the work that needed to be done. The investigation into what happened has still to be done and will take some time to do. The site is now up again, but as we are not 100% sure what caused the problem we cannot guarantee that the site will function properly and we will have to wait a day or two to be confident that we have resolved the issue.
We tried to keep everyone updated on our progress on our IRC channel but, if you could not get there, then there was little else we could do to update you on our progress. Displaying a short 'Site Down' message actually exacerbated the problems so we decided that it was better to leave the database alone until the problems had been resolved.
Finally, I would like to say thank you to the guys who did all the work under difficult circumstances. Their efforts are appreciated. We used the usual piece of software on IRC to find out who should bear the blame for this debacle (~blame) — it responded with the only name it has in its choice of staff. Bytram!
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On July 5th of 2014, SoylentNews was officially given approvals for its letters of incorporation as a Public Benefit Corporation.
This is a good opportunity to take stock of where we are. Read on past the fold for coverage of:
- Fundraising
- Site activity
- Folding@Home
- Journals of Spam Accounts
- Submit Stories
- Thank YOU
Fundraising: For the first half of 2019, the community came through with room to spare! Not only did we attain our goal of $2000, but we also received approximately $549.38 towards our stretch goal of $1000 more. I'll leave the current totals in the Site News slashbox for a few more days before resetting for fundraising for the second half of the year. Please feel free to Subscribe as any new amounts received will go toward our next funding period. In case you were wondering, we had about 100 subscriptions during this period with the largest amounts being $200(x2), $120, $100(x3), and $80; all the rest were for $50 or less. Though this is an all-volunteer organization, we do have to pay for servers, domain registrations, and a CPA to file our taxes, so these subscriptions are key to our being able to "keep the lights on". THANK-YOU!
Site activity: A quick look around the site reveals some interesting statistics. As of my writing this, our story count stands at 27,861 stories. To that, add the 4,178 journal entries that have been posted by the community. We currently have 858,117 comments posted. We have had, however, comparatively few comment moderations: 586,164. We have 8,225 registered users, too!
In case you did not see the follow-up story, we have not performed moderation bans for excess up/down moderations in well over a year. Any moderations by user1 of comments by user2 that exceed 4 per day are reviewed and are simply reversed if it is determined than a mod bomb or sockpuppet moderation is happening. This is in lieu of our implementing code that will automatically handle this in the future when our dev team can scrounge up some spare time to implement it and merge it in. I had my information incorrect in a story posted a while back and want to set the record straight. Remember, there are a few thousand other users on this site, it is not necessary for you to single-handedly moderate all the comments that need it; if it really is that bad or good, then surely someone else will share your perspective and be along before too long to do the same. And, if not, it is not the end of the world; this is a place to discuss stories; not to set the entire world on the right path. In other words: Login to the site and Use your mod points!
Folding@Home: This has not been mentioned in a while, but we do have a SoylentNews Folding@Home (F@H) team... currently ranked #231 in the world! (Based on current trends, we should be #230 within a couple days.) This is purely voluntary by members of the community who saw an opportunity, banded together, and just got things started. Hat tip to SirFinkus for the original impetus and early organizing that has helped us get to where we are today. The F@H client automatically takes advantage of idle time on your CPU/GPU. Once installed and set up, it requests a work unit, processes it, and return the results. These calculations help support research into fighting maladies such as Parkinson's disease.
Journals of Spam Accounts: We have observed accounts being created which have posted no comments, made no story submissions, performed no moderations, but have made postings of a commercial nature to their journal. These are currently blocked from appearing in the "Most Recent Journal Entries" slashbox that appears on the main page until the user has accumulated at least 10 Karma. This reduces their visibility to the casual reader of the site, but could be leveraged to help boost the search engine rankings of the affiliated enterprise.
Some numbers: Out of 4178 journal entries posted to SoylentNews since the beginning, 528 were posted by users who have less than 10 Karma. Of those 528 journal entries, only 26 have a Karma greater than zero. Further, the most recent journal posting from those 26 was in March of 2018 — well over a year ago.
My take on this is that the good name of SoylentNews is being used to advance the standing of commercial enterprises. We strive to be impartial in our coverage and have never taken any remuneration from any outside enterprise lest it give even the appearance of favoritism to what we publish on this site.
Rather than make an edict from on high, I prefer to hear what the community thinks. What, if anything, have I forgotten to look at? Is this even a problem? If it is a problem, what, if anything should be done about it? Require a minimum Karma of 10 to even post in a Journal?
Submit Stories: It is summer time in the northern hemisphere and most research facilities are running with reduced staffing so folks can take advantage of the weather. Also, most schools are on summer vacation, as well. The result is that much less research is performed now than would be during the normal school year. This period is sometimes referred to as the "Silly Season" where on-line publications (many of whom are also running with fewer staff) tend to run more fluff pieces. Please bear with us as we try to find and provide the community with stories of interest with an emphasis on STEM.
This is also a good opportunity to try your hand at submittting a story to SoylentNews. Please see the Submission Guidelines. If you have any questions, feel free to pop into the "#editorial" channel on IRC (Internet Relay Chat) and ask for help. As some of our staff may also be taking a vacation, there may not be someone there to immediately respond, so please bear with us. I well remember the thrill I felt when I first saw a story submission of mine accepted and posted to the site!
If the best you can do is submit a link, then do that. If you quote any text directly from the story, please enclose it in <blockquote> ... </blockquote> tags. Of course the closer the submission is to publication-ready, the less work is required of an editor, and the better chance that one of us will run with it. Most importantly, have fun and don't be afraid to try. We all had the experience of making our first story submission and are willing to help you get comfortable with the process, as others did with us.
Thank YOU: We are the little site that could. Splintered off from the non-listening corporate overlords at Slashdot, a bunch of PO'd folk got together and bludgeoned an out-of-date code base into a solid and responsive system. The community that has formed here... I regularly see people looking to find what they can give to the community rather than what they can take from it. We could not have done it without YOU. Providing story submissions. Writing comments and journal articles. Moderating comments. It is a group effort, and this is a group I am grateful to be a part of.
In addition, there is the unheralded work of a small staff who volunteer their time to (try) and keep everything up and running smoothly. For example, Linode (our webhosting provider) recently rebooted 5 of our servers to handle an exploit that was making the rounds. Thanks to the excellent design and implementation, the site kept right on running uninterrupted. There was a minor glitch this morning that a restart of varnishd took care of. And that was it. No muss, no fuss. I count myself most fortunate to be working with such capable and talented people who give so selflessly of themselves to keep this all running so smoothly.
It has been a privilege to serve this community over the past 5 years and it is my fervent hope that we have many more years to come!
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Updated (20190704_023935 UTC) Server reboots have completed. I am unaware of any issues from these reboots; please reply here and post to the #dev channel on IRC if anything is amiss. Original story follows with minor updates to mark all servers have been rebooted. --martyb
For those who might not be aware, SoylentNews operations run on servers from Linode. I have recently become aware of their plans to reboot servers:
To complete our mitigations against the recent MDS (ZombieLoad) CPU vulnerability, we will be performing maintenance on a subset of Linode’s host machines. This maintenance will update the underlying infrastructure that Linodes reside on and will not affect the data stored within them.
Here is the schedule for our affected systems:
| fluorine (*) | 2019-06-25 05:00 AM UTC |
| beryllium (*) | 2019-06-27 09:00 AM UTC |
| helium (*) | 2019-06-28 03:00 AM UTC |
| boron (*) | 2019-06-28 04:00 AM UTC |
| hydrogen (*) | 2019-07-02 09:00 AM UTC |
| sodium (*) | 2019-07-03 02:00 AM UTC |
(*) Completed.
Historically, there is a two-hour window for reboots to occur, but it usually takes far less time than that.
We will attempt to minimize any impact on site operations, but want to let the community know what was coming up.
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Also, Linode is planning some server reboots over the next week or so. We will try to give advance notice and keep downtime to a minimum.
Update: Everything seems to have quieted down. Many many thanks to NotSanguine for jumping in and lending his expertise to help identify and isolate where things were borked.
Indications are that a bad BGP (Border Gateway Protocol) route was published causing a relatively small AS (Autonomous System) to have all traffic to/from a large fraction of the internet attempt to go through its routers.
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As many of you are aware, SoylentNews uses Let's Encrypt certificates to protect the vast majority (all?) of our networking connections.
Under the watchful eyes of The Mighty Buzzard and SemperOSS I have updated our certs and deployed them across our servers and services. At this point, all seems to be working fine. That said, I have a well-earned reputation of being able to break nearly anything, so it would not entirely surprise me if you find something awry. If so, please let us know! You can comment on this story and/or jump over to the "#dev" channel on IRC and let us know there.
For completeness' sake, the updated certs were rolled out at 20190611_140630 UTC.
NOTE: Do be aware it takes time for updated DNS records to work their way across the internet, so if you do encounter a problem, try clearing your cache and trying again before assuming things are borked.
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