mementovivere

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Member Back to Top Post by mementovivere on obsidalicious said: thedude3445 said: MSPA Forums went like 6 months once without a single ban (at least according to the ban log)



Plus, I suspect that 6 months you're referring to was in the middle of one of the larger pauses, when the forums become largely dormant, with the number of active users dwindling down to under a thousand. So it's debatable whether ban-dry-spell statistics are as meaningful if we're comparing against other forums that might have more constant usage. Ah, but is that because the people were well behaved, or because the forums were terribly understaffed, as was made evident in the Hackening.Plus, I suspect that 6 months you're referring to was in the middle of one of the larger pauses, when the forums become largely dormant, with the number of active users dwindling down to under a thousand. So it's debatable whether ban-dry-spell statistics are as meaningful if we're comparing against other forums that might have more constant usage. I mean, while the mods were generally understaffed, I don't feel like it was all that inadequate most of the time... it generally became immediately apparent when someone needed to be infracted, because people were (usually) pretty decent at reporting the posts that warranted it, and we got emailed when that happened. It's definitely possible that stuff slipped through the cracks, but for the most part I think the relative scarcity of bans/infractions was because people were generally pretty well-behaved and civil and on-topic and whatnot. The modmin team and the people in charge of the technical side of the forum are two different groups, so the "Hackening" was something completely unrelated to ban rates.

Arashi500

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Member Back to Top Post by Arashi500 on mementovivere said: obsidalicious said:



Plus, I suspect that 6 months you're referring to was in the middle of one of the larger pauses, when the forums become largely dormant, with the number of active users dwindling down to under a thousand. So it's debatable whether ban-dry-spell statistics are as meaningful if we're comparing against other forums that might have more constant usage. Ah, but is that because the people were well behaved, or because the forums were terribly understaffed, as was made evident in the Hackening.Plus, I suspect that 6 months you're referring to was in the middle of one of the larger pauses, when the forums become largely dormant, with the number of active users dwindling down to under a thousand. So it's debatable whether ban-dry-spell statistics are as meaningful if we're comparing against other forums that might have more constant usage. I mean, while the mods were generally understaffed, I don't feel like it was all that inadequate most of the time... it generally became immediately apparent when someone needed to be infracted, because people were (usually) pretty decent at reporting the posts that warranted it, and we got emailed when that happened. It's definitely possible that stuff slipped through the cracks, but for the most part I think the relative scarcity of bans/infractions was because people were generally pretty well-behaved and civil and on-topic and whatnot. The modmin team and the people in charge of the technical side of the forum are two different groups, so the "Hackening" was something completely unrelated to ban rates. I think Obsidalicious means the Hackening made evident just how badly the modmin team needed a code monkey.

jacquerel

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Member Back to Top Post by jacquerel on I don't think that can be what Obsidalicious meant, or if it is then they misunderstand greatly what each staff member's role would be.

Banning someone requires no interaction with code at all. The moderation team on their own would be perfectly capable of enforcement without need of anyone with server or technical skills.

Counter-hacking requires web management skills and also access permissions to the site server. This is what the team was missing, but would have had no effect whatsoever on the running or enforcement of the community, only its site security, maintenance, and upgrades.



A long period with few bans can only speak to the behaviour of the community, or the quality of enforcement. Unless the ban system was literally non-functional (and it wasn't) then neither of these would be an indicator of whether more web support staff were required, and Obsidalicious is falsely linking two entirely separate discussions.

Arashi500

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Member Back to Top Post by Arashi500 on jacquerel said:

Banning someone requires no interaction with code at all. The moderation team on their own would be perfectly capable of enforcement without need of anyone with server or technical skills.

Counter-hacking requires web management skills and also access permissions to the site server. This is what the team was missing, but would have had no effect whatsoever on the running or enforcement of the community, only its site security, maintenance, and upgrades.



A long period with few bans can only speak to the behaviour of the community, or the quality of enforcement. Unless the ban system was literally non-functional (and it wasn't) then neither of these would be an indicator of whether more web support staff were required, and Obsidalicious is falsely linking two entirely separate discussions. I don't think that can be what Obsidalicious meant, or if it is then they misunderstand greatly what each staff member's role would be.Banning someone requires no interaction with code at all. The moderation team on their own would be perfectly capable of enforcement without need of anyone with server or technical skills.Counter-hacking requires web management skills and also access permissions to the site server. This is what the team was missing, but would have had no effect whatsoever on the running or enforcement of the community, only its site security, maintenance, and upgrades.A long period with few bans can only speak to the behaviour of the community, or the quality of enforcement. Unless the ban system was literally non-functional (and it wasn't) then neither of these would be an indicator of whether more web support staff were required, and Obsidalicious is falsely linking two entirely separate discussions. Ah, see I thought the remark was less to do with the bans and more to do with how the Hackening affected things code-wise, thus indicating the need for someone who does know how to work with the underlying code in case of something like the Hackening, rather than simply staff the forums with modmins who are able to do everything but. Didn't think it had much if anything to do with the ban frequency on my first read. Guess we'd need Obsidiliscious' word to e sre, cause rereading it could read both ways.

Fish

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Member Back to Top Post by Fish on I think many of the admins did know how to work with the underlying code. I mean, Rincebrain was working on a new version of the forums for like years. ashdenej has also done some forum manipulation (you might be able to find his forum profile on web archive). But these changes were only made when they had direct communication with someone at Andrew Hussie/What Pumpkin, it seems - in the last year or so, they wouldn't have had access to what they'd need to make backups.



It's still a bummer that no one at What Pumpkin or from way way back seems to have never made any backups.

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Member Back to Top Post by obsidalicious on I think that there probably are backups*, it's just that all those staff who could qualify as 'code monkeys' had gone absent in one way or another by the time of the Hackening. And since we've a total communications blackout from WP, it would seem that none of those staff are available to go and retrieve the backups and put them back in place. It could be that the Hacker has managed to actually lock all the staff out of the Web Serve, but I can't imagine that would be a totally unmovable obstacle.



As for my earlier post: I do understand and appreciate the difference between the code monkeys who'd deal to the Hackening and the mods who deal to infractions. But from what I remember, when the Hackening was going down, the staff, of any sort, that turned up consisted of about 3 moderators and 2 ex-code monkeys who had no power. Obviously that moment of time, balls deep in a pause, is hardly indicative of a typical staff roster, but in all the years I spent on the Forum, the number of active staff members was seemingly always only a small fraction of those listed, with most having been absent for years, or only hopping on once in a blue moon.



*however they might be fairly old. But at the very least I would expect there'd have been a backup made during the server shift that happened in the gigapause(or was it omega?)

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Member Back to Top Post by gimeurcookie on Fish said: years. ashdenej has also done some forum manipulation (you might be able to find his forum profile on web archive). But these changes were only made when they had direct communication with someone at Andrew Hussie/What Pumpkin, it seems - in the last year or so, they wouldn't have had access to what they'd need to make backups.



It's still a bummer that no one at What Pumpkin or from way way back seems to have never made any backups. I think many of the admins did know how to work with the underlying code. I mean, Rincebrain was working on a new version of the forums for like. ashdenej has also done some forum manipulation (you might be able to find his forum profile on web archive). But these changes were only made when they had direct communication with someone at Andrew Hussie/What Pumpkin, it seems - in the last year or so, they wouldn't have had access to what they'd need to make backups.It's still a bummer that no one at What Pumpkin or from way way back seems to have never madebackups.

Sadly I do not think those 2 things (With Rincebrain and Ashdenej) were the type of coding that they needed. See there's 2 types of coding (Ok more then that but for simplicity sake we're going to say there's 2.)

Front end: Which is what I do. HTML, CSS, and a little of javascript. It makes things pretty, it changes things around and even edits placement. It's the "skin" of the site.

Back end: This is the tougher stuff. Php, python, C++, ect. It's what makes the site work.



Making a new forum layout or even forum manipulation is front end. Sadly working front end doesn't mean too much when it comes to backend. You can do what ashdenej did by having someone who did have access to backend, and asking them to place in some css and html you coded up.



That's not to say that Ashdenej didn't know backend, they could have, but the examples you are saying are nearly pure front-end work. Stopping what happened would have taken someone with backend knowledge. (Or someone to just look up the newest update of the forum software apparently.) I do believe Rincebrain does know backend though but as I believe what Rincebrain said before, they hadn't even been on the forums for a year or two before this incident.

Sadly I do not think those 2 things (With Rincebrain and Ashdenej) were the type of coding that they needed. See there's 2 types of coding (Ok more then that but for simplicity sake we're going to say there's 2.)Front end: Which is what I do. HTML, CSS, and a little of javascript. It makes things pretty, it changes things around and even edits placement. It's the "skin" of the site.Back end: This is the tougher stuff. Php, python, C++, ect. It's what makes the site work.Making a new forum layout or even forum manipulation is front end. Sadly working front end doesn't mean too much when it comes to backend. You can do what ashdenej did by having someone who did have access to backend, and asking them to place in some css and html you coded up.That's not to say that Ashdenej didn't know backend, they could have, but the examples you are saying are nearly pure front-end work. Stopping what happened would have taken someone with backend knowledge. (Or someone to just look up the newest update of the forum software apparently.) I do believe Rincebrain does know backend though but as I believe what Rincebrain said before, they hadn't even been on the forums for a year or two before this incident.

mementovivere

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Member Back to Top Post by mementovivere on thedude3445 said: Rincebrain is on Twitter but has a protected account... has anyone tried contacting them? Not LATELY, but he was one of the more active admins during the Hackening... at least, during the brief window when the main page of the MSPA forums website was inactive, but the forums themselves were still directly accessible if you went around that, and there was a topic to address the password insecurity issue. There's a skype chat for the MSPA forum modmins, but it's pretty dead as you'd expect. I'm under the impression that Rincebrain hasn't really been in direct contact with WP in a while, and he was pretty cynical about the future of the forums while all of that was going on, so I doubt he knows much that would help (or that hasn't been said numerous times already).