SoylentNews

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.