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We are looking for a forum admin to replace jmakin. This person will be responsible for maintaining the server, and will also be able to do forum administration through the software. @olink has generously volunteered.
Here is olink’s post from the previous thread.
Given the recent admin shenanigans I think this is advancing pretty quickly (rightfully so imo, but quickly nonetheless). “No” voters, do you mind explaining why? Right now I just see @goofyballer and @boredsocial but I want to make sure those opinions get heard since I suspect this is on the fast track to approval.
I don’t know olink at all. If there’s one thing this whole mess has demonstrated extremely loudly it’s that the admin has a ton of real life power to do harm.
Yea, can’t argue with that. I don’t know of a way around it, though, given the current options. I know Victoar put his hat in the ring as a possible admin but I figure that’d be a polarizing choice despite him being a known entity.
I hope that folks are scrubbing personal info from profiles just in case.
I’ll be out of a couple hours but questions/concerns, ama.
Can we slow this down a bit and at least get olink to share his identity with a few current admins and mods first or something? I realize we’re in crisis mode here, but this vote is for handing over total control of every part of the forum to somebody. They will be able to see all of our IP addresses and all of our email addresses. They will have the ability to read every single unencrypted PM. They can nuke the entire forum if they want. They can point the DNS record to a hentai site.
This is in no way a vote against olink and if they can be the new admin that’s great. But we should spend at least a moment or two on due diligence first.
Does this have to be the case? I don’t have experience with Digital Ocean, but surely there’s some way to ensure that spidercrab ultimately has control over everything and then grants people permission to do admin stuff as needed? And does the Discourse admin role have to be the same person as the DO admin?
It seems like it might be easier to find people willing to fill the job if it was a few jobs consisting of reasonably well defined roles rather than “being the sole person responsible for everything.”
@olink are you comfortable sharing some real life info with @spidercrab, who has shared his real life info in various places (for example, you’ll be able to see his real name on the DO account).
No. It can (more or less always has and presumably always will be) the case that destructive, bad faith activity by an admin can be undone so long as another person has access to the backup and another owns the domain. But that would likely be days of work with no forum and up to a week of lost data, potentially more.
Whoever is a server admin through DO has full root access. They can do anything and everything, including full control of the forum even if they don’t have a forum account at all. There is no way around this.
We could just make a server admin without being DO admin, couldn’t we? Like I could just set up a new sudoer and he can ssh and do whatever he needs to that way. I don’t see why they have to be connected, unless there’s something about DO I’m really not understanding.
Can gregoreo or zikzak take the role on for 1-2 weeks…current admin needs to be relieved of duty like yesterday, but at the same time we don’t want to jump out the frying pan in to the fire.
Seems a tiny group with “power” are happy to let it burn at this stage?
The two most important duties of a server admin are rebooting the server to install server updates and rebuilding the forum to install app updates. Both of those actions require root permissions, either with direct access or through su/sudo. Anybody who can run commands as root is god.
Yeah, np. @boredsocial and @zikzak make a good point about trust, and I don’t mind being ‘out’ to a few people here. I’ll pm @spidercrab.
Everybody who has been an admin has already tried to stay out of the day-to-day drama and just do the tech stuff. We have all failed. It is not a technical issue or a matter of job description, it’s human nature. You’re asking people to have near total effective power over a community they’re a part of while simultaneously ignoring the worst things that happen in it. gl with that.
Hell, I quit being an admin over this stuff, will not do the job again, and I’m still in here spending time on it.
Yes, this is a much more knowledgeable explanation of what I was fumbling towards.
I think you’re basically proposing the mods (or somebody) be given (or take) more power at the expense of direct community democracy in all matters. I am in favor of this and made a similar suggestion yesterday. I have become convinced that our current model is not viable long term.
Again, I don’t think this is a technical issue. You’re trying to solve governance.
My role was never unclear to me. The problem, to be blunt, is that the community never developed into something I was willing to put any additional effort into or be formally associated with. If everybody else is going to take it for granted, I’m not going to be the chump who keeps busting my ass to keep the lights on.
This is a reasonable division of labor.
Almost certainly this can be done. But…
This is also so. Until we do something like formally incorporate unstuck, llc to own it and have a formal decision making process among the company members – even then you’re still stuck having to trust at least one guy with root permissions. There is no technical solution. We decide to trust each other or we go our separate ways.
This place isn’t so big (from a technical standpoint) that we need a terribly granular structure of authority. That said, separating admin from moderation is a very good idea. And while nobody in the Admin role will be able to just ignore the drama, it would be way better if it was somebody who doesn’t drive any of it and is capable of not getting drawn in and emotional about it.
That definitely resolves my concerns. Good enough.