Hello from sunny England! How was your morning?

We have a few updates on how things are running, and things coming down the pipe.

How things are running:

Migration to the new server

We are pleased to announce that this is now complete.

  • Everything is now a little calmer, and hopefully a little faster too.
  • Tom has been able to switch off the old server, and no longer has to pay for it, which I’m sure he’s very happy about.
  • I still need to knit in a few days worth of missing images. It’s a single command, but it deserves a time when I can give it full focus.
  • We have more CSAM protection
  • Custom interfaces for the site have not been migrated, as we wanted to rebuild them from scratch.
  • Due to the storage ballooning, sensible restrictions on images are now in place.
  • Email encountered a few hiccups, but should now be delivering password resets and verifications.

As always, if there are any other issues noted, drop us a line.
Either in this community, on the matrix channel, or by messaging myself or Emperor.
I would also like to take this chance to thank flamingos-cant for their hard work behind the scenes!

What’s coming next:

Financials and donations

We know people have been keen to support the community for a while, and we’re pleased to announce…that we’re aiming to announce it later this week.
We did not want to remove Tom’s link until he was able to pull the plug on the old server. That is now done.
We’ll go into more detail later this week, but we’re looking to offer both regular and one-off contributions, and lots of clarity as to how the money is used.

More moderators

We are keen for popular communities to have more than one moderator.
This is absolutely not a requirement.
Mods, if you would like new people, pop a post on the community, or message us for ideas.
Community members, if you think you could help, message the community mods.

Slurs and profanity

The best part of any moderators day: Wading through reported and unreported posts, then trying to work out what is and isn’t ok.
Especially since certain words are and aren’t acceptable depending on context, or intent of the poster.

We’re considering a 3 tier system. Yes, Maybe, No.

Yes: Probably 99% of the English language.
Also includes non-discriminatory expletives.
Things you might say after banging your shin.
The slur filter will not limit these words, and we will not be using autodetection.

Maybe: Words that are maybe OK, depending on context/intent.
The slur filter will not block these words, but use of a word will trigger a flag for review of the post/account.

No: Slur filter will just remove.

We’ll discuss this further in the future, if you would like to chat about it here, try to keep it to one thread :)

A few upgrades behind the scenes

We’ll be scheduling some downtime in the near future to upgrade the picture serving system, hopefully adding a few extra interfaces (old.feddit.uk, anyone?)

As always, any questions, suggestions, pop them in a reply to this post.

Cheers, GreatAlbatross.

    • ᴇᴍᴘᴇʀᴏʀ 帝@feddit.ukEnglish
      8·
      9 months ago

      Scunthorpe is only ever blocked when someone has done a poor job with their regular expressions.

      As the profanity can be an, admittedly eye-browing raising term of endearment, or the correct way of discussing a Tory minister it is in the “Maybe” column and we’ll allow it in context.

    • GreatAlbatross@feddit.ukOPMEnglish
      4·
      9 months ago

      That’s exactly why we’re considering this system. It allows us flexibility, while also not ignoring mis-use.

      (Although in that case, the word probably wouldn’t be blocked to begin with!)

  • ᴇᴍᴘᴇʀᴏʀ 帝@feddit.ukEnglish
    11·
    9 months ago

    I would also like to take this chance to thank flamingos-cant for their hard work behind the scenes!

    And I’d like to thank GA for their hard work as they were on point with flamingos riding shotgun. I was cheerleading from the sidelines and can attest to the fact that the transfer could very easily gone wrong without their knowledge and experience. Plus turning it on and off again, which does work. And that was just the moving of the site which, at a couple of hours, was relatively swift compared to shifting 300 GB of images which was chugging away in the background before and after the site move for over a week.

    So, like a duck, it looked smooth above the surface but there was some serious activity going on below.

    Everything should now be a lot more stable and, with the future assured we can crack on with making this a great instance and we’ll be looking into expanding what we can do because the new server gives us a lot more flexibility.

  • mannycalavera@feddit.uk
    11·
    9 months ago

    Again, so many thanks for the hard work you’ve put in. The site is running great and it’s super quick ☺️.

    Regarding slurs and profanity: filtering words is one thing but most of the time it’s tone that needs moderating. I often see replies that could have been worded in a different way but the posters double down on finding and using the harshest and most combative way of phrasing things just to get a rise out of people or simply make them feel small. What are your thoughts on how to improve the discourse here with respect to that? (I know that’s extremely difficult to achieve)

    • GreatAlbatross@feddit.ukOPMEnglish
      14·
      9 months ago

      Honestly? Other than training a LLM to spot people being asses to each other, I’m not sure.
      The up/downvote system is supposed to represent a combination of a post being correct, and adding to discourse.
      So if someone is correct, but being a complete ass about it, that doesn’t necessarily mean they need upvoting.

      The community can also help. If you see someone giving a shitty snarky technically correct answer, give your own more pleasant answer.
      It means that if we do have to clean up crap, the content is still there.

      I don’t want to have to delete comments because people steadily push the limits of civility, because working out when and when not to intervene is a complete grey area ballache.
      It’s like a sibling doing their damnedest to piss off another sibling, while trying to avoid their mum pulling them up on it.

      But if there are patterns, and it’s making the site shit, let us know, and we’ll probably warn/short ban, then ban if it continues.

      • mannycalavera@feddit.uk
        5·
        9 months ago

        Cheers for the reply.

        If you see someone giving a shitty snarky technically correct answer, give your own more pleasant answer.

        I’ll continue to do this 🙏. The usual response seems to be an even more attacking comment berating me for asking the poster to be civil. It’s maddening. But I do absolutely agree with you, moderating this is really hard. Thanks though, I appreciate the recommendations here.

  • Zip2@feddit.uk
    10·
    9 months ago

    Thank you folks for all of your hard work, it’s very much appreciated. It’s made a noticeable difference in reliability.

  • Vinnyboiler@feddit.ukEnglish
    7·
    9 months ago

    The London community is quiet at the moment so I wouldn’t mind moderating it myself for now, adversely I wouldn’t mind taking on mod duties for other communities until such a time where that would become unmanageable. I appreciate the work being done by the way, I can very much feel a contrast now vs when Feddit UK was essentially unmaintained.

    • ᴇᴍᴘᴇʀᴏʀ 帝@feddit.ukEnglish
      3·
      9 months ago

      Cheers - if there’s any community that matches your interests with an active moderator the best bet is to apply to them. If they’re inactive then drop an Admin a note and we’ll add you there. Otherwise, we’ll post the occasional list of communities with inactive moderators and you can see what takes your interest.

  • Fudoshin ️🏳️‍🌈@feddit.uk
    6·
    9 months ago

    Your SSH server banner is revealing the OS you’re using. I’ve mentioned it a couple of times because @[email protected] said they wouldn’t tell us what OS you’re using for security reasons. But you’re effectively revealing it anyway.

    Edit:

    /etc/ssh/sshd_config

    Change Banner to none

    • GreatAlbatross@feddit.ukOPMEnglish
      7·
      9 months ago

      After the last couple of times, I looked into it a bit more, and apparently fingerprinting using scanning tools is pretty easy, so it wouldn’t gain much.
      We might change it during the next maintenance window.

  • UKFilmNerd@feddit.ukEnglish
    5·
    9 months ago

    Thank you to everyone involved. It was touch and go for a while (quack) but I’m glad everything has now started to settle.