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Topics - xasop

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161
Announcements / Change of copyright terms for the homepage and wiki
« on: April 22, 2014, 02:21:28 PM »
We intend to change the copyright terms for the homepage (http://www.tfes.org/) and wiki (http://wiki.tfes.org/) from unspecified (essentially "all rights reserved") to the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International licence. You may wish to refer to the licence summary and legal text when considering this change proposal.

Of course, much of the content on the wiki (and a small amount on the homepage) is contributed by the users of this website and not just the admins. Therefore, I want to give you the opportunity to raise any objections or concerns about this change, and explain why we want to make it.

The reason for this change is simple: We want to spread Flat Earth Theory far and wide, and leaving ambiguous and non-specific copyright terms on our published material is contrary to that goal. By giving anyone the right to share, modify and even sell copies of our works, we maximise opportunities for people to hear about us and what we do. By using a ShareAlike licence, we empower them to share that with others in turn.

I plan to add a notice signifying this change no earlier than 2014-04-27 at midnight UTC (this Sunday if you're east of the Greenwich Meridian, or this Saturday if you're west of it), assuming no objections are raised. Please reply to this thread if you have contributed to the wiki or homepage and have any objections to your content being placed under this licence.

162
Announcements / IRC moved to a new server
« on: April 13, 2014, 01:20:08 PM »
Some of you may have missed the earlier discussion in the IRC thread, but due to problems with RelicNET's availability, we've migrated onto our own server. If you're already connecting using irc.tfes.org, you won't have to change anything. Otherwise, please connect to irc.tfes.org on port 6667 (no SSL yet) to access the new server.

163
Status Notices / Scheduled maintenance, 2014-04-12
« on: April 09, 2014, 03:00:17 PM »
The forum and wiki will be going offline for about five minutes on 2014-04-12, between 07:00 and 07:15 UTC.

For convenience, this means:

EDT (USA east coast):
2014-04-12, 03:00-03:15

BST (UK):
2014-04-12, 08:00-08:15

AEST (Australia east coast):
2014-04-12, 17:00-17:15


The intent is to install security updates on the server which hosts the forum and wiki. A particularly critical security fix has just been released for the OpenSSL package, which is not used for the forum or wiki, but may impact other services on the server. These will be non-disruptive to functionality, as the server is running a stable OS release that gets critical fixes only.

164
Announcements / New backup system
« on: March 14, 2014, 04:53:39 AM »
Today I got bored and felt like improving FES's backups, so we now have the database backups being committed into a git repository instead of being dumped out to an ordinary file. (Don't worry, it's not a public git repo; your PMs haven't just been opened up to the world.)

One benefit of this is that we now have 1-minute increments on backups. git's excellent delta compression algorithm means that we can effectively take backups as frequently as we like without significant diskspace penalty, whereas before we only had 2-hour increments due to the enormous amount of diskspace needed to store lots of database dumps.

Another benefit is that we have persistent history; previously, we were expiring old backups after about three months. I've imported all our old backups into git, so we will always be able to restore the forum as far back as 7 December, 2013 if the need arises.

The final benefit, and the one that really tickles my fancy, is that we can now easily see exactly what changes were made to the database, and when. git makes it very easy to get diffs between commits, and since we're doing a backup every minute, we can get down-to-the-minute information on when someone's signature changed, or (perhaps more usefully) when SMF did something stupid with the database that we want to fix (and exactly what it did).

I'm leaving the old backup mechanism in place for the time being, just in case we find some problem with the new one, but it seems to be working well so far.

165
Technology & Information / New home network hardware
« on: March 09, 2014, 03:06:16 PM »
So, it's about time I spruced up my home network a little. This is going to be done piecemeal, as the amount of equipment I want to buy is plentiful enough that I won't be able to afford it all in one go. I need some place to track my current plans, and a thread seems like as good a place as any.

My infrastructure domain is sjm.la and my public-facing service domain is sjm.so, which is a bit of a pun on the way shared libraries work in Linux. All infrastructure hosts on my home network will therefore have names under home.sjm.la.


bdr1.home.sjm.la (border router)

Intel Atom D945GCLF2 board (given to me for free, 45 W)
2 GB of DDR2 RAM (also given to me for free)
Antec ISK110 case ($99.00, incl. 90 W power supply)
Kingston V300 60 GB SSD ($69.00, 2 W)
OpenBSD 5.4 ($0.00)

Subtotal: $168.00, 47 W


dsl1.home.sjm.la

ADSL2+ modem (TBC)


dist1.home.sjm.la (distribution switch)

D-Link DGS-1100-08P Gigabit PoE switch ($159.00, 8 W)


wifi1.home.sjm.la (WiFi access point)

TP-Link TL-WA901ND Access Point ($49.00, 3 W)


Total so far: $376.00, 58 W


That will suffice for now. I'm going to add some more detail on my planned storage cluster later, but this is the minimum necessary to reproduce my current functionality with the flexibility of a real UNIX-like router OS.

166
Status Notices / Scheduled maintenance, 2014-03-10
« on: March 09, 2014, 05:29:15 AM »
The forum and wiki will be going offline for about five minutes on 2014-03-10, between 08:00 and 08:15 UTC.

For convenience, this means:

EST (USA east coast):
2014-03-10, 03:00-03:15

UTC (UK):
2014-03-10, 08:00-08:15

AEDT (Australia east coast):
2014-03-10, 19:00-19:15


The intent is to install security updates on the server which hosts the forum and wiki. These will be non-disruptive to functionality, as the server is running a stable OS release that gets critical fixes only.

167
Announcements / Status update, March 2014
« on: March 08, 2014, 03:37:41 AM »
I know it's been a while since we talked about where this forum is going. The Zetetic Council and Tintagel have been doing a nice job of driving the Society forward, but due to time constraints from work (for me) and study (for pizaaplanet), fixing and improving the forum has largely stagnated recently.

For this month, this is unlikely to change for me. I'm moving house in a couple of days, which means I'll have very little time to spend on FES, and then it's back to work which is going to be very hectic for the rest of the month. However, I'm hoping for some time off in April, at least some of which will be spent improving the site.

The first order of business will be to get a bug tracker up and running, because that will allow more efficient tracking of problems, including allocation to specific people, setting of priorities and more granular updates on individual issues. I'm probably going to use RT for this, due to a combination of familiarity on my part, and simplicity of the software itself (most bug trackers out there try and fail to be comprehensive project management suites).

From there, I'll put all the current issues in S&C into RT and assign priorities. The bug tracker will have unrestricted public read access, so everyone will be able to see what's being worked on and what priorities have been assigned to which issues. Then, based on that, we'll start picking other tasks to work on in order to improve FES for everyone.

This will also make it easier for any of you to get involved with the technical side of things, as it will be clear which issues haven't been assigned to anyone yet.

As always, if you have any suggestions on how we can better move forward, feel free to raise them in S&C.

168
We need some consensus on what it means to ban someone, and which triggers should be applied. SMF allows us to ban based on username, e-mail address, IP address and/or hostname.

When a ban is issued, we wish to limit or restrict forum access for some identity. The subject for discussion in this thread is how we define the identity that is to be banned; for example, is a username sufficient? Is an IP address part of the identity we are banning? Once we have clearly defined an identity, we can apply ban triggers appropriately.

I am raising this in S&C because I think all members should have a say in how bans are orchestrated.


My view on this matter stems from the belief that a ban is always intended as a means of rehabilitation, not retribution. The purpose of a ban is to, where prior warnings have failed, discourage violation of the rules and encourage contributive posting. It is never to punish someone for past actions; nothing is to be gained by punishing someone for an offence they are no longer committing.

I propose that, for a first offence, an identity is always limited to the user account, not the IP address. That account is the thing that has been causing trouble, and it may be uniquely associated with a username and an e-mail address, but not necessarily an IP address. Therefore, a first ban should always make use of only the username and e-mail address triggers.

Suppose, then, that the user makes another account. There are two possibilities; one, that they use the same IP address as before; two, that they use a different IP address. In the latter case, an IP address trigger would have been useless anyway, so we shall only consider the former case. We can subdivide this into two further possibilities; either they create an account and continue to violate the rules as before, or they start posting in a contributive fashion and adhering to the rules.

If they are continuing to violate the rules, then we can consider the IP address as an identity that is causing trouble, as it is now creating multiple troublesome accounts. We may then apply an IP address trigger to resolve that problem.

The final possibility is that the user creates an account and starts contributing to the forum. It follows from the belief that bans are not for retribution that we do not care what the user has done previously; they are contributing now, so we don't need to restrict their forum access. On the other hand, if we had applied an IP address ban earlier, we would have prevented them from taking this positive step to recovery and lost a contributing member.

I conclude that, if you agree with my statement that bans are never for the purpose of retribution, using IP address triggers on the first offence is harmful rather than beneficial to the forum. I therefore propose that IP address (and hostname, which is almost the same thing) bans are never used unless it can be shown that they are chronically associated with troublemaking accounts.


Thoughts and comments welcome.

169
Arts & Entertainment / Frank Zappa 1979 tour 35th anniversary extravaganza
« on: February 12, 2014, 08:58:21 AM »
Yes folks, it's time for another full-tour listen-through with a review per show! This time, we jump back to 1979, a year when Frank spent unusually little time performing due to overseeing the construction of his home studio, the Utility Muffin Research Kitchen.

Nevertheless, he did spend about seven weeks on the road in Europe during the early part of the year, producing some of the wildest improvisation a Zappa touring bands has ever seen. Just listen to Shut Up 'n' Play Yer Guitar, Tinsel Town Rebellion and the rendition of the Yellow Snow Suite on You Can't Do That On Stage Anymore, vol. 1 to get an idea of what this band could do.

Sadly, these insane performances were balanced by having almost exactly the same set list for every show, something that isn't really conveyed in the official catalogue. The result is a series of good shows that all sound mostly identical, except for the odd spot where somebody would get to do something spectacular, and then the stage would seem to come alive for one brief, joyous moment.

Looking on the bright side, this monotony should make it easier to keep up with reviews this time around, since there's much less variation to cover for each show.

At this time, Frank didn't yet have his own mobile recording equipment. Unlike the two tours I've reviewed previously, only the four London shows from this tour were recorded onto 24-track tape, so that's where most of the official releases are concentrated. It is also noteworthy that most of the guitar solos on the Joe's Garage album are from this tour, recorded onto 4-track tape with the guitar on its own track and later placed onto studio backing tracks -- a technique Frank called "xenochrony", meaning "foreign time".


Meet the band

Denny Walley (slide guitar, vocals)

Denny originally joined Zappa's touring band in 1975, during the short time that Captain Beefheart was a part of the ensemble. While most of that band stayed with Frank after he and Beefheart parted ways, Denny instead joined Beefheart's own band. He finally returned to tour with Frank in 1978, and is here with us again for the 1979 tour. This would be his last time as a regular performer in the band, though he would continue to work with Frank on occasion for years to come. His slide guitar shaped the sound of many songs for this tour that would lose something special in years to come.

Ike Willis (vocals, guitar)

A relative newcomer to the group, Ike joined up in 1978, but had to leave the band before the end of the tour. Evidently, Frank was impressed with his abilities, as he asked him to return here in 1979 as lead vocalist. Ike would continue to work with Frank right up until his last ever rock concert in 1988. As the vocal representative for this band, he does a smashing job: it says something about his abilities that Frank was happy to release plenty of vocal material from the last London show, when Ike had a sore throat.

Tommy Mars (keyboards, vocals)

Tommy joined the band in 1977, and thereafter made an appearance for every single tour up to 1982. One of the most dedicated and versatile keyboardists ever to decorate a stage with Zappa, his presence never failed to liven up a tour. Here in the late '70s, his vocals are also a much more prominent part of the band's sound than they would be in the '80s.

Ed Mann (percussion)

Ed joined in 1977 at the same time as Tommy, but would continue to work with Frank up until 1988. His contribution to the band's sound is subtle; the bands without him (both 1980 tours and 1984) are missing that bit of sparkle that flew from his various percussive devices. This band's sound would have been very different without him.

Peter Wolf (keyboards)

Peter Wolf was another 1977 newcomer, although this would be his last tour with Zappa. He and Tommy complemented each other to the point where it's sometimes not easy to tell which one is playing a particular keyboard part, and Peter had a real knack for improvisation. However, the two keyboardists seem somewhat underused on this particular tour, so it's no wonder that Frank would settle for just one hereafter.

Vince "Vinnie" Colaiuta (drums)

Vinnie is perhaps the most technically competent, the least sane and the most underachieving drummer ever to tour with Frank. He joined the band in late 1978 and accomplished a lot in a very short time, but left at late notice before the first 1980 tour. After making a comeback late in 1980, he departed the band forever in 1981, to be replaced by Chad Wackerman. Had he spent more time on the road with Frank, he could have achieved so much more. Nevertheless, his accompaniment to Frank's guitar solos on this tour (see Shut Up 'n' Play Yer Guitar) displays some of the most incredible musicianship I've ever heard.

Arthur "Artie" "Tink" Barrow (bass)

Arthur Barrow, the man of many nicknames, was one of Frank's personal favourite musicians. He initially joined the band in 1978 on a one-week probation period, but after hearing him play with the rest of the group, Frank told him he didn't have to wait until the end of the week. Initially hired as a bass player, he has also played keyboard and guitar parts for Zappa, as well as the occasional vocals, and served for a number of years as "clonemeister", the job of running band rehearsals when Frank was absent. As you might expect after such an introduction, the bass parts on this tour leave nothing to be desired.

"Sophia" Warren Cucurullo (guitar)

This is both Warren's first and last tour with Zappa, and as far as I'm concerned, he couldn't have departed too soon. It's not that he's a bad guitarist, he just doesn't bring anything special to the band. He can play the parts as well as any sequencer could, but when it gets to his solo spot in Cosmik Debris, he produces some of the worst meandering tripe my headphones have ever had the misfortune to reproduce. I generally think of his presence on this tour as a guitar-strumming robot. Perhaps I'm being a little unfair. He did do a pretty good poem recital at one of the London shows (which sadly got cut from the Stage release).

Frank Zappa (guitar, vocals, conducting)

The one and only guitar champion. Just listen to Shut Up 'n' Play Yer Guitar to understand why this tour holds particular appeal for me.


I am now listening to the first show of the tour and will post a review later. I'm also going to come back and post pictures of the band members once I've collated some that don't suck. This particular band is very difficult to find any promotional material for at all.

170
Announcements / The Flat Earth Society Manifesto, version 2
« on: February 07, 2014, 03:01:51 PM »
Due to the original Manifesto having invalidated itself, here is a revised version without the self-invalidation clause. This has already been implicitly agreed to by all forum staff.

Canonical link (will always point to current Manifesto revision): http://forum.tfes.org/manifesto


                      Flat Earth Society Manifesto
                      The Flat Earth Society Forums
                         http://forum.tfes.org/
                      =============================

Author: Parsifal <parsifal@tfes.org>
Version: 2


Definitions
-----------

 1. "Forum" means the Flat Earth Society forums hosted by Parsifal
    at http://forum.tfes.org/.

 2. "Member" means any user account on the forum.

 3. "You" means any member entrusted with privileges to modify, delete or
    otherwise influence any other member's posts or account status on the
    forum.

 4. "Situation" means any circumstance which is being considered as
    justification for exercising your privileges on the forum.

 5. "Rule" means any individual directive in a thread on the forum which
    has been made sticky and clearly marked as a rules thread.

 6. "Offence" means violation of a specific rule. Multiple instances of
    violating the same rule are the same offence, but instances of
    violating different rules are different offences.

 7. "Manifesto" means this or any later version of this document, as
    published by Parsifal on the forum.

 8. "Publication", "publish" and "published" refer to the act of posting
    a document in any publicly visible place on the forum.



Terms and conditions
--------------------


1. Amendments to the manifesto

Amendments to the manifesto may only be made with the express
authorisation of both "Parsifal" and "pizaaplanet".
Every new revision must be given a new version number, which
shall be an integer that is numerically greater than every
previously published manifesto version.


2. Perpetual agreement to the manifesto

When you agree to abide by the terms of this document, you also agree to
abide by the terms of any future version of the manifesto for as long as
you are in a privileged position on the forum.

At any time, you may revoke your agreement to this or any other version
of the manifesto by resigning your position on the forum.


3. Validity of old revisions of the manifesto

This version of the manifesto shall be null and void in application to
any events which take place after the publication of a newer version.
However, no future version of the manifesto may apply to an event which
took place prior to its publication.


4. Deference to the forum rules

There shall be, no more than 30 days after the publication of this
version of the manifesto, a set of rules posted on the forum. In all
decisions, you shall defer to the rules as written rather than relying on
your personal judgment.

For clarity, this is not to prohibit the invocation of personal judgment
in your interpretation of the rules. However, situations should be
handled according to the written rules first, and according to your
judgment of them second.


5. Equivalence of all members

You shall apply the same rules equivalently to all members on the forum,
without invoking your personal opinion of a member, their posting history
or any factor other than the rules and their behaviour in the situation
at hand.

There is one exception to this, which is that prior warnings for the same
offence may be considered as context in the situation. However, note that
prior offences without warning are not to be considered, and nor are
prior warnings for other offences.


6. Moderator discretion

There will inevitably be situations which the rules have not accounted
for. In such circumstances, you may use your own discretion, but you
should consider that the ultimate objective is to maximise the enjoyment
of the forum for all its members.

171
Technology & Information / Valve offers free games to Debian Developers
« on: January 22, 2014, 07:26:48 PM »
Looks like Valve is interested in contributing back to Debian, which is what they're basing their new console platform SteamOS on:

https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2014/01/msg00006.html

They're giving free access to all their games to Debian Developers, and apparently discussing other ways of giving back to the community.

This is really great news, particularly as certain well-known vendors have a history of leveraging open-source projects while giving back as little as possible. It looks like Valve is actually interested in cooperating with the Linux community, which is only going to make Steam run even better on Linux.

172
Arts & Entertainment / Star Trek
« on: December 22, 2013, 05:06:34 PM »
I have just finished watching These Are The Voyages..., which marks the end of my Star Trek journey. I have now seen every Star Trek film and episode in existence.

Just thought you ought to know.

173
Status Notices / Forum and Wiki maintenance, 2013-12-22
« on: December 21, 2013, 08:54:22 PM »
The Flat Earth Society Forum and Wiki will be down for maintenance for up to an hour, starting at 08:00 UTC on 2013-12-22.

For convenience, this means:

EST (USA east coast):
2013-12-22, 03:00

UTC (UK):
2013-12-22, 08:00

AEST (Australia east coast):
2013-12-22, 19:00


I don't expect to use the full hour, but I'm scheduling this window to allow for the unforeseen.

The intent is to switch to using our git-tracked forum source in production, which is going to be hosted under a separate account on the same VPS which is better-managed for deployment. This will also enable us to test changes before deploying them, resulting in less unexpected downtime when things break.

Since SMF is really dumb about the way it stores its configuration, this will involve dumping, editing and re-importing the database to change a bunch of stuff to account for the new setup. I'm also taking advantage of this window to install OS security updates on the VPS hosting the forum and wiki, which is why the wiki is also affected.

I will be putting up a static maintenance page during the cutover to inform visitors of the situation and when the website is expected to be operational again.

Thank you for understanding.

174
Announcements / FES forum source is now on GitHub
« on: December 19, 2013, 07:27:21 PM »
It took me a while to wrangle the massive blob of changes we've been making to SMF into logically separate git commits, but I've pushed our source to GitHub:

https://github.com/theflatearthsociety/forum.tfes.org

The GitHub source is slightly different from what the forum is currently running on, as I've made small fixes where appropriate. We'll be migrating to a new and better-managed deployment system based on the code in git Real Soon Now.

175
Announcements / Forum rules
« on: December 18, 2013, 07:46:35 PM »
Unless otherwise specified, the below rules apply to all fora except Complete Nonsense and Angry Ranting. They will be enforced to a more relaxed degree in The Lounge, but are still enforceable as necessary.

Where an associated penalty for a rule specifies that it applies after a certain number of warnings, that means you will have that many warnings without that penalty. For instance, if a rule says you will receive a ban after two warnings, then you get a second warning without a ban, and on the third offence you will be banned.


1. No personal attacks

Keep your posts civil and to the point, and don't insult others. If you have run out of valid contributions, simply do not post. The exception to this rule is in Complete Nonsense and Angry Ranting, where personal attacks are par for the course. If you do not like this, then don't post in those fora.

Anyone seen personally attacking another member will be immediately warned. After two warnings, a ban with length determined by moderator discretion will be issued.


2. No harassment of other members (applies in all fora)

If another member makes it clear to you that your behaviour toward them is making them uncomfortable, take that as a signal to back off. If you continue to harass that member after being made aware of this fact, you may be officially warned by forum staff. After two warnings for this offence, you will receive a week-long ban, with increasing ban duration for repeated offences upon your return.


3. Stay on topic

If what you're discussing isn't related to the thread's opening topic or a natural progression thereof, it's off topic. Minor derailments will be handled by splitting the off-topic posts into another thread (possibly in another forum); repeat offenders will receive a warning. Depending on the frequency and severity of derailments, a short ban or restriction from specific subfora may be imposed after at least three warnings.


4. Do not disclose personal information (applies in all fora)

Do not post any personal information relating another member without their express consent. Any post containing such information will be deleted immediately and a warning issued. A second offence will result in a ban, the length of which is up to moderator discretion.


5. Post in the appropriate forum

Read each forum's description and ask yourself if your thread fits. Are you here to investigate and question mainstream authoritative claims? Post in Flat Earth Investigations. Are you looking to critique the Flat Earth Theory? Flat Earth Theory is the board for you! Want to talk about Breaking Bad? That goes in Arts & Entertainment. Have casual discussion in The Lounge and rant about how your day went in Angry Ranting. If you have a suggestion or a concern to do with the forum, such as possible improvements or bugs, post it in Suggestions & Concerns—we'd appreciate it! See? That wasn't so hard.

Many boards come with a stickied "read before posting" thread to help clarify their intended use. If you have any doubts, just ask!

For the purpose of handling offenders, this rule will be treated as a special case of the "stay on topic" rule.


6. Avoid including material which does not contribute to the point you are making

This is a fairly vague rule, and as such, it will not be strictly enforced on a per-post basis. Rather, members who repeatedly make posts with a large amount of extraneous material will be asked to stop, and if they fail to do so, given a warning. After no less than three warnings for this offence, members may be restricted from posting in certain fora in order to prevent their verbosity from cluttering up debate threads.


7. Do not post NSFW material (applies in all fora)

Do not post material which is overly pornographic, shocking or otherwise inappropriate for being viewed without warning in a public or work place. As much as we would like for you to be able to post freely, we also want to keep this website a safe places for people of all professions and ages to use.

Material of this nature will be removed on sight, and the offending poster warned. On your second offence, you will receive a month-long ban, with increasing ban duration for repeated offences upon your return.


8. Keep alternate accounts within reason

We will be taking a very relaxed policy towards alternate accounts ("alts"), provided that people do not force us to take a stricter stance by abusing this policy. Alts are allowed, and will be permitted free reign across all fora, provided that they follow the rules for the forum they are posting in. FES has a history of alts that contribute to discussions in addition to the usual complement of spamming and trolling alts, and it would be a shame to try to restrict this.

There are two exceptions to this policy: one, an alt that is used for the purpose of furthering a main or another alt's argument without itself contributing a unique point of view on the situation ("sockpuppetting") will be immediately banned; two, an alt that is intended to impersonate a member either here or on the old FES will be immediately banned, and deleted if it is occupying the username of an old FES member, as otherwise it would bar them from registering here.

An alt breaking any rule that would ordinarily result in a warning can (at moderator discretion) be handled by immediately banning the alt account, and instead warning the main account of the person controlling it.


9. Use appropriate channels for seeking help

If you have concerns about a member, a thread or specific posts, you have a few options. You can use the report post feature to alert the moderation staff to your issue; you can PM a moderator directly if you'd rather have a discussion with someone about the problem; or you can create a thread in Suggestions & Concerns if you'd rather open the situation to public discussion.

Posting complaints directly into the thread in question is only going to escalate the situation, and this will be treated as off-topic posting.

176
Suggestions & Concerns / Forum rules: Draft 1
« on: December 15, 2013, 06:54:55 PM »
This took longer than I'd intended to get around to. Sorry, work has been fairly busy lately. I'd also like to thank Supertails for coming up with an initial draft of this stuff, which I've then edited somewhat to produce the below.

I'm trying to keep these minimal. We can add more rules as we come across situations that highlight the need for them, but I'd rather not start with rules covering every possible circumstance under the Sun, as nobody is going to read them and they will be difficult to enforce. Let's start with some obvious ones and go from there.

Please post any comments or suggestions regarding these rules. I don't want to implement rules that aren't going to be for the benefit of the community, so feedback is definitely something you should err on the side of giving more rather than less of.



No personal attacks.

The Flat Earth boards are a place for debate, and debate is often heated and tense, but don't handle this situation by lashing out at others. Keep your posts civil and to the point, and don't begin insulting others. If you have run out of valid arguments, simply do not post. The exception to this rule is in Complete Nonsense and Angry Ranting, where personal attacks are par for the course. If you do not like this, then don't post in those fora.

Anyone seen personally attacking another member will be immediately warned. After two warnings, a ban with length determined by moderator discretion will be issued.


Stay on topic.

If what you're discussing isn't related to the thread's opening topic or a natural progression thereof, it's off-topic. Minor derailments will be handled by splitting the off-topic posts into another thread (possibly in another forum); repeat offenders will receive a warning. Depending on the frequency and severity of derailments, a short ban or restriction from specific subfora may be imposed after at least three warnings.


Do not disclose personal information.

Do not post any personal information relating another member without their express consent. Any post containing such information will be deleted immediately and a warning issued. A second offence will result in a ban, the length of which is up to moderator discretion.


Post in the appropriate forum.

Read each forum's description and ask yourself if your thread fits. Have a question about Flat Earth Theory? Post it in Flat Earth Q&A. Want to talk about Breaking Bad? That goes in Arts & Entertainment. Have casual discussion in The Lounge and rant about how your day went in Angry Ranting. If you have a suggestion or a concern to do with the forum, such as possible improvements or bugs, post it in Suggestions & Concerns—we'd appreciate it! See? That wasn't so hard.

For the purpose of handling offenders, this rule will be treated as a special case of the "stay on topic" rule.


Keep alternate accounts within reason.

We will be taking a very relaxed policy towards alternate accounts ("alts"), provided that people do not force us to take a stricter stance by abusing this policy. Alts are allowed, and will be permitted free reign across all fora, provided that they follow the rules for the forum they are posting in. FES has a history of alts that contribute to discussions in addition to the usual complement of spamming and trolling alts, and it would be a shame to try to restrict this.

There are two exceptions to this policy: one, an alt that is used for the purpose of furthering a main or another alt's argument without itself contributing a unique point of view on the situation ("sockpuppetting") will be immediately banned; two, an alt that is intended to impersonate a member either here or on the old FES will be immediately banned, and deleted if it is occupying the username of an old FES member, as otherwise it would bar them from registering here.

An alt breaking any rule that would ordinarily result in a warning can (at moderator discretion) be handled by immediately banning the alt account, and instead warning the main account of the person controlling it.


Use appropriate channels for seeking help.

If you have concerns about a member, a thread or specific posts, you have a few options. You can use the report post feature to alert the moderation staff to your issue; you can PM a moderator directly if you'd rather have a discussion with someone about the problem; or you can create a thread in Suggestions & Concerns if you'd rather open the situation to public discussion.

Posting complaints directly into the thread in question is only going to escalate the situation, and this will be treated as off-topic posting.

177
Announcements / Plans for improving the site
« on: December 10, 2013, 10:27:25 PM »
So, for a quick run-down of our current status:
  • The forum is up and running (obviously) with a decent complement of moderators.
  • The wiki is up and running, under the benevolent dictatorship of pizaaplanet.
  • Our new homepage is up, and has been submitted to Google and Bing.
  • The Flat Earth Library is up temporarily with an nginx-like index.
Plans for the future:

Forum
  • Serve static assets using CloudFlare to improve loading times.
  • Supertails has drafted up some rules that I need to review and then formalise.
  • Get MathJax or similar support installed.
  • Get the SMF source into git, with each of our patches properly tracked as a separate commit.
Wiki
  • pizaaplanet???????????????
  • Serve the wiki using CloudFlare as static content, except for people who need to edit it.
  • Get the MediaWiki source into git.
  • I want to look at moving to something which doesn't suck like Gitit, but this isn't a priority.
Homepage
  • I'm hoping to get more people involved in writing up posts for the homepage. Hopefully we can turn it into a regular blog feed and get some subscribers to the RSS.
  • Rethink caching strategies. The homepage is currently served using CloudFlare, but this can be tweaked to provide the best balance between performance and flexibility.
Library
  • I'm going to rethink the way this is hosted entirely. I'll probably move it from Sydney to somewhere in the US, for two reasons: first, I can back up the contents to here and have intercontinental redundancy; second, it's (on average) nearer to everyone in the world who might want to upload content.
  • Once this is stable, I'm going to offer IAM credentials to upload files to the Library for anyone who wants to contribute. There will be some form of automatic indexing using S3 metadata to describe and maybe categorise documents, so we can fairly easily produce lists of available content in the Library.
Miscellaneous
  • Set up monitoring for all of the above.
  • Set up a bug tracker so that these issues can be tracked more easily.
  • Get a wildcard SSL certificate for *.tfes.org for secure forum/wiki logins (and possibly other purposes).

178
Status Notices / Sorry about the brief downtime
« on: December 09, 2013, 09:01:42 PM »
For a couple of minutes, the forum was unresponsive, returning a plain white page. This was caused by a dodgy SMF mod uninstall; PizzaPlanet has been playing with mods to improve our Google ranking, and this one didn't uninstall itself properly.

Sorry for the inconvenience, and I'm hoping to set up a staging copy of the site for us to play with this sort of thing on this week, so that such things don't take the forum down.

179
Announcements / Our new homepage is now live
« on: December 09, 2013, 07:10:37 AM »
In an effort to speed things up a little, I've written a short introductory blog post and flicked the switch to redirect http://tfes.org/ to our new homepage, http://www.tfes.org/.

It's not very long or detailed and gets right down to the point, which I think is what's needed upfront. However, if you've been writing something you'd like to be featured, feel free to send it to me and I'll publish it on the homepage. The more content we have up there, the better it will be for our new community.

180
Announcements / The Flat Earth Society Manifesto, version 1 [DEPRECATED]
« on: December 08, 2013, 03:18:00 PM »
Note: This version of the Manifesto has been deprecated!

The current version of the Manifesto may always be found at http://forum.tfes.org/manifesto.




In the same way that users of this website are to be accountable for their actions in accordance with the rules, admins and mods should be accountable to the members in accordance with some code of conduct. Historically on the old FES, this "code of conduct" was very loosely defined, often amounting to whatever Daniel had said the last time he visited the website.

On this new FES, we are making an attempt to codify the way forum staff should act towards members. To that end, I have written a manifesto which all newly appointed staff will need to agree to, and which all of our current staff (finalised as of today) have already agreed to. Myself and pizaaplanet are also bound by this document; it is not simply imposed by us upon the moderators, it is something we have all agreed to.

The manifesto is designed to protect the rights of the members who post here; to encourage defined, consistent behaviour in the form of published rules rather than moderator discretion wherever possible; and to facilitate updating the manifesto with new revisions without fear of those newer revisions applying to past events. Currently, new revisions can only be published by mutual agreement between myself and pizaaplanet, but there is a clause which will render this revision null and void 30 days after the formation of a Zetetic Council, to force us to update it at that point.

And so, without further ado, I present The Flat Earth Society Manifesto, version 1:


                      Flat Earth Society Manifesto
                      The Flat Earth Society Forums
                         http://forum.tfes.org/
                      =============================

Author: xasop <xasop@tfes.org>
Version: 1


Definitions
-----------

 1. "Forum" means the Flat Earth Society forums hosted by xasop
    at http://forum.tfes.org/.

 2. "Member" means any user account on the forum.

 3. "You" means any member entrusted with privileges to modify, delete or
    otherwise influence any other member's posts or account status on the
    forum.

 4. "Situation" means any circumstance which is being considered as
    justification for exercising your privileges on the forum.

 5. "Rule" means any individual directive in a thread on the forum which
    has been made sticky and clearly marked as a rules thread.

 6. "Offence" means violation of a specific rule. Multiple instances of
    violating the same rule are the same offence, but instances of
    violating different rules are different offences.

 7. "Manifesto" means this or any later version of this document, as
    published by xasop on the forum.

 8. "Publication", "publish" and "published" refer to the act of posting
    a document in any publicly visible place on the forum.



Terms and conditions
--------------------


1. Amendments to the manifesto

Amendments to the manifesto may only be made with the express
authorisation of both "xasop" and "pizaaplanet".
Every new revision must be given a new version number, which
shall be an integer that is numerically greater than every
previously published manifesto version.

This version of the manifesto shall be automatically invalidated 30 days
after the formation of a Zetetic Council recognised by the forum. This is
intended as a mechanism to force either transfer of authority to the
Council, or another decision to be made for producing revisions of the
manifesto.


2. Perpetual agreement to the manifesto

When you agree to abide by the terms of this document, you also agree to
abide by the terms of any future version of the manifesto for as long as
you are in a privileged position on the forum.

At any time, you may revoke your agreement to this or any other version
of the manifesto by resigning your position on the forum.


3. Validity of old revisions of the manifesto

This version of the manifesto shall be null and void in application to
any events which take place after the publication of a newer version.
However, no future version of the manifesto may apply to an event which
took place prior to its publication.


4. Deference to the forum rules

There shall be, no more than 30 days after the publication of this
version of the manifesto, a set of rules posted on the forum. In all
decisions, you shall defer to the rules as written rather than relying on
your personal judgment.

For clarity, this is not to prohibit the invocation of personal judgment
in your interpretation of the rules. However, situations should be
handled according to the written rules first, and according to your
judgment of them second.


5. Equivalence of all members

You shall apply the same rules equivalently to all members on the forum,
without invoking your personal opinion of a member, their posting history
or any factor other than the rules and their behaviour in the situation
at hand.

There is one exception to this, which is that prior warnings for the same
offence may be considered as context in the situation. However, note that
prior offences without warning are not to be considered, and nor are
prior warnings for other offences.


6. Moderator discretion

There will inevitably be situations which the rules have not accounted
for. In such circumstances, you may use your own discretion, but you
should consider that the ultimate objective is to maximise the enjoyment
of the forum for all its members.

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