PUBLIC-NOTICES: Forum Changes/Fixes. Any Questions?

[TheCotMan]

Re: PUBLIC-NOTICES: Forum Changes/Fixes. Any Questions?

If all goes well, DT is planning to work on the firewall tonight, and address some of the problems that have been found when trying to post to the forums.

Expect access to forums and other defcon.org sites to be unavailable for periods of time while these are diagnosed.

[TheCotMan]

Re: PUBLIC-NOTICES: Forum Changes/Fixes. Any Questions?

Got confirmation from Siviak that tacitus and pinguino are not leaders/organizers for the scavenger hunt this year, so I removed them as forum leaders/organziers for that forum.

[TheCotMan]

Re: PUBLIC-NOTICES: Forum Changes/Fixes. Any Questions?

Got confirmation from Siviak that tacitus and pinguino are not leaders/organizers for the scavenger hunt this year, so I removed them as forum leaders/organziers for that forum.

Eris and DaKahuna were vouched for by a mod, and entered mod-review process for status as "*Forum* leader/organizer" for any forum associated with any contest or event they run. Most reviews take 1-2 weeks. It only takes one mod to vouch for someone to start it, and once started, any mod can nix a nomination with their power of veto.

I talked with Nikita on twitter to see if she wanted HighWiz, Eris and DaKahuna listed as leaders/organzier for her contest, and she agreed to that, because they are judges. However, because only HighWiz was previously made a forum leader/organizer for his with with DC101, only he was initially added to that forum. Today eris and DaKahuna finish that same review, and retain this new status as forum leaders/organizers for thier contests, too.

Adding eris and DaKahuna to Nikita's Short Story contest forum judges.
Adding eris to the Scavenger Hunt.
DaKahuna added to the Wireless Village Forum.

They keep this status and won't need future reviews before being added to other forums for other contests/events in future years.

When we rolled this out around 4 years ago, the other mods told me I would have to stress the following, so I try to do this at least once a year:
Forum Leaders/Organizers are not mods, don't ban, and don't enforce rules. Their extra controls are to help them promote their contests/event, manage posts/threads in the forums associated with their events.

They can set/unset stickies, open/close threads, "prune" out posts from threads that they think do not belong to keep discussions on-topic, edit posts longer than the 24-hour window, and soft-delete posts. Many of these things can be disruptive to conversations. Because of the risk for problems, and more work for mods, the mods have a process for this. Any mod can "vouch" for someone they think won't cause more work for mods, then mods get about a week or two to comment.. Any mod can veto the process and deny the person the extra controls.

One more thing on this... this "Forum Leaders/Organizers" thing is experimental like all of the other changes we try around here. If we find an experiment fails, then we have no problem with stopping it. However, we have been doing this for around 4 years, and it has not been problematic yet; it has actually saved us work, since forum leaders/organizers manage the posts and threads in the forums associated with their events.

More updates on new forums coming soon.

[TheCotMan]

Re: PUBLIC-NOTICES: Forum Changes/Fixes. Any Questions?

Last night, early in the AM today, DT applied more changes to the Firewall to try to fix this problem where the Firewall would eat long posts,and it looks like that has been fixed.

For everyone that have encountered trouble and lost posts or PM, please try to repeat the process that lead to the ACL error and lost post or PM. If you find the problem till persists could you:
* Let us know it is not fixed
* Describe what you did to cause it to happen so it can be investigated

Thanks!

[Thorn]

Re: PUBLIC-NOTICES: Forum Changes/Fixes. Any Questions?

Last night, early in the AM today, DT applied more changes to the Firewall to try to fix this problem where the Firewall would eat long posts,and it looks like that has been fixed.

For everyone that have encountered trouble and lost posts or PM, please try to repeat the process that lead to the ACL error and lost post or PM. If you find the problem till persists could you:
* Let us know it is not fixed
* Describe what you did to cause it to happen so it can be investigated

Thanks!

FYI: I don't know if it's related to the firewall issues or not, but between 0000 and 0300 EDT, several old thread notification emails came through. By 'old', I mean about 4-5 hours after a given post being added to a subscribed thread, the "Reply to thread ..." email would show up.

EDIT: I just double checked. One of the messages was 18 hours after the post.

[TheCotMan]

Re: PUBLIC-NOTICES: Forum Changes/Fixes. Any Questions?

Pyr0 approved Contest from last year, and forum has been added:

[forum=603]Backdoor Hiding Contest[/forum]

Core Security's CoreTex Competitions team running 'Backdoorhiding' with 2 stages; choose one or both & most points wins! 1=[Hide your backdoors in plain sight], 2=[Spot all players backdoors]. (site), (twitter)

[TheCotMan]

Re: PUBLIC-NOTICES: Forum Changes/Fixes. Any Questions?

DJ GreatScott! asked to merge two existing DJ/Music/Entertainment forums into one, and this is happening right now.

First, all threads (except a single remaining announcement about this) have been moved from the old forum [forum=577]The DC19 "Chillout" Room and lounge (Room #1 of the Rio Pavilion)[/forum] to the remaining forum, [forum=576]DC19 Official Pool Parties // Music Action[/forum].

Next, the old forum [forum=577]The DC19 "Chillout" Room and lounge (Room #1 of the Rio Pavilion)[/forum] has been set to "closed" and hidden, meaning no new threads/posts can be created there (unless you are a mod/admin) and any new content there will not show up as new content. Eventually, it will be closed with access denied like other forums we have closed in the past.

Next, the remaining forum, [forum=576]DC19 Official Pool Parties // Music Action[/forum] will change names and description to:

"[forum=576]Official DEFCON Music and Entertainment[/forum]"

Pools, hackers, sunburns, dragons?, rappers, djs, musicians, spies & interactives! (twitter) , (facebook)

All changes should now be live. Good luck!

[TheCotMan]

Re: PUBLIC-NOTICES: Forum Changes/Fixes. Any Questions?

New forum created:

[forum=606]The Official #BloodKode Challenge[/forum]
Present Description (may change)

Q: What can you get a hacker that has it all?!?
A: How about some blood & bone marrow!
(Twitter: #BloodKode)

[TheCotMan]

Re: PUBLIC-NOTICES: Forum Changes/Fixes. Any Questions?

Trouble has been reported with email from the forums: it is not getting to the real world.

This has probably been broken since some time on the 18th of this month.

It was probably broken recently when work was done on the firewall. The forums tries to send mail to the mail server, but the mail server does not want to accept it for destinations in the real world.

Until it is fixed (and announced as fixed) if you need email account validation to get your account on the forums started,try contacting defconforums@gmail.com with your account information, and we'll conduct a simple test to see if you are a human and not a spam-bot.

I have notified DT.

Thanks for the report Chris!

[TheCotMan]

Re: PUBLIC-NOTICES: Forum Changes/Fixes. Any Questions?

Trouble has been reported with email from the forums: it is not getting to the real world.

...

I have notified DT.

This was fixed by DT as of last night. Please report if otherwise.
-Cot

[TheCotMan]

Re: PUBLIC-NOTICES: Forum Changes/Fixes. Any Questions?

Unexpected outage started at somme time around midnight last night and lasted until around 6:30am today. After 20 minutes of checking and work, the forums are back up and ready for service.

I don't know why the server that contains the forums was shut down... this was an unscheduled event. It appears to have been a graceful shutdown, however, as I have not yet found corruption inn the DBs used, yet. It is possible that the server needed to be moved, or UPS needed to be tested or something else. DT might have more information on this if people need to know.

A tweet from DT early this AM show it was a planned outage.

[TheCotMan]

Re: PUBLIC-NOTICES: Forum Changes/Fixes. Any Questions?

Changes applied to forums which will make some things more annoying. This is in preparation for leaving the forums up and running during Defcon.

[TheCotMan]

Re: PUBLIC-NOTICES: Forum Changes/Fixes. Any Questions?

Forums, pics, and more DB have been copied to an off-site location.

If there is a catastrophic failure to data, hardware, etc between now and next Monday, I can restore from all posts, as of 20 minutes ago.

[TheCotMan]

Re: PUBLIC-NOTICES: Forum Changes/Fixes. Any Questions?

An FYI for forum support...

As we get closer to Defcon, it will become less and less available.

Do not expect to get answers to questions posted on the forums, and the most experienced people on the forums while at Defcon will mostly avoid the forums until Defcon is over.

I might login once or twice tomorrow for my own reasons, and once on Wed., but don't expect answers from or me to moderate until I get back next Monday.

One other mod might be here while most of the rest of us are gone.

We will clean up whatever mess remains when we get back next week.

[TheCotMan]

Re: PUBLIC-NOTICES: Forum Changes/Fixes. Any Questions?

Scheduled down-time for forums, pics and test-forums starting at around 9pm pacific time, running up through until midnight or later.