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Site Updates (Site News)
Site News will be posted here. This means news about changes and enhancements to the web-site itself, not news of other Group activities nor general news/information about the KSFIoM situation
Please refrain from comments that are not directly related to the topic. If you have ideas for new features which should be added to the site, or changes to be made etc, please post them in this thread.
Please read the Site Updates from time to time.
(21 votes)
Google search
I've added a link Search this site with Google to the menu block in the top right. The same will be accessed if you click Search on the top menu. Google search is much faster than the system's internal search feature (now disabled.) We have not been using the Google search here previously because much of the content was set to be visible to logged-in members only and so not visible to Google (that's still the case for some content).
ksfiomdepositors.org web sites - a quick update
I'm on the site infrequently, mostly just checking that everything seems to be working. There's a security update needed for the Drupal framework, but it's not urgent as the security loophole in the current version does not affect us due to our site's access configuration. The underlying operating system (LAMP stack) is now up to date, after updates I installed a few days ago.
Comment viewing options
In response to a few requests on the subject, I've now switched on "Comment viewing options". This feature can easily be turned back off if it proves unpopular. It enables you to alter how comments are displayed, whether date order, reverse date order, "flat" or "threaded". The "threaded" and "newest first" view is what we have had been using by default, and is probably the most convenient setting - it allows you to see which comments are responses to other comments in the thread. However, some people my prefer the "flat" view in order to see all comments chronologically.
Scheduled down-time this week
The sites will be down some time between 22:00 GMT Wednesday 2nd and 01:00 GMT Thursday 3rd December, probably only for a few minutes, but possibly longer. This is due to maintenance to be performed by the hosting company.
We will be upgrading the Xen hypervisor and linux kernel on the host,
which requires a host reboot. We will shut your VPS down cleanly prior
to the maintenance, and start it back up afterwards.
Maintenance window start: 22:00 GMT Wednesday 2nd December 2009
Maintenance window end: 01:00 GMT Thursday 3rd December 2009
Visibility of posts and access to comments
It should now be possible to read entire threads in the All members area without logging in. This means that content there should also appear in Google (etc.) results. Previously comments were not visible (only the original post.)
Posting of comments by non-members (or members who are not logged in) is now permitted. Such comments will appear as posted any Anonymous. Posters still have to pass the captcha code test, which will hopefully prevent spam from being posted as anonymous comments.
Why have these changes been made?
Some people do not want to register, but do want to read general information and comment on it. Also because some people may be unable to log in due to problems with their account here (perhaps unable to access their email and have forgotten their account password here.)
Originally, visibility of posts and the ability to comment was restricted so as to encourage people to register on the site so that we could get a better idea of the number of depositors affected. That is probably no longer necessary.
Which areas of the site are affected?
The above applies to all non-group posts and to posts in All members. Posts in other group areas are generally only visible to members of that group, unless posts are specifically made public which is a restricted feature.
Notes
Forum site was unavailable today
The forum (chat) site was unavailable for much of today due to a technical fault at one of our hosting providers. Connectivity was restored around 15:49, but still seems a bit hit and miss. Hopefully ther problem will be fully resolved by tomorrow.
Notifications emails
Over the past 3 days (approx) notifications emails were not being sent out. You should now have received them. This was due to the cron service being stopped as a result of OS upgrade - now restarted.
Planned upgrades
Over the next few days I plan to install various necessary updates (primarily security updates) to the site's underlying CMS and operating system (they are long overdue.) As always, there is a small chance that something might break or cause undesired side effects. If you notice anything, please use the site contact form to let me know, providing as much detail as possible.
Updated privacy policy
Updated for clarification, no actual change in policy. The following added in the Important exceptions section:
Some basic and non-sensitive information is made visible to other site users. This information includes your registration date, your subscription expiry date (if applicable), your status as a depositor or non-depositor (if specified) and a list of which groups you have joined on the site. Other non-sensitive information may similarly be displayed to other site users if specified by you, for example your chosen "About me" text.
Any information you choose to provide in a forum post or comment is visible to other site users, potentially to the public in general.
Regarding the second point, in practice I try to remove any personal data that I see that someone posts in a forum post/comment - people occasionally post things like their telephone number, physical address, etc. This practice is just an attempt to protect those who don't realise that posting such information is probably not a good idea - I can't build it into the privacy policy, nor guarantee that it will happen.
As always, if anyone has any questions about what happens in practice, please ask.
INVASION OF PRIVACY
A DAG member has the right to have his/her privacy & private life protected.
A member posts with an alias to protect his/her privacy.
It is a breach of a member's privacy if another member publically names another member & discloses infomation about them (where they live, what they do, e-mail address, their occupation/employment etc) that has absolutely no bearing whatosoever on their membership of the DAG, & the role they fulfil in securing its aims & objectives.
This sort of behaviour should not be tolerated and hitherto where such breaches of confidentiality have taken place on the Forum the member has been warned that if he/she persisits then they will forfeit the right to post.
Furthermore, there is a rule that posting in the Forum should be consistant with the aims & objectives of the DAG.
Members have the right to expect the Forum Administrator & sole Moderator to be impartial & objective and uphold the important issue of confidentiality to protect members' privacy. A failure to do so will lead to a total breakdown in TRUST and this will be the certain death knell of the Forum.
@ng .. privacy & confidentiality
posted in wrong place
Privacy/personal data
I repeat my earlier requests: Please stop making exagerrated and unsupported claims. Please stop presenting your opinions and interpretations of events as if they were hard facts. Please suitably update the information about you which is publicly visible elsewhere rather than complain about references to it being made here.
LJ, you have personally made it clear here that you run http://www.kaupthingiom-dag.co.uk and anybody can see the registered name for that domain via a simple whois lookup (more information) - and as you well know I have already advised you to address that issue by updating your domain registration data.
Yes, I try and will continue to try to protect members' privacy here, however I am not responsible for any information available elsewhere about members and really cannot justifiably object to other members referencing such external information here, unless doing so were clearly contrary to DAG's mission (whilst you might think so in this case, numerous others would not agree - put it to a poll if you want.)
In summary - if a member chooses to make his/her personal data available elsewhere that is entirely outside of the scope of site privacy policy (surely this is stating the obvious!?)
It is a breach of a member's privacy if another member publically names another member & discloses infomation about them (where they live, what they do, e-mail address, their occupation/employment etc)...
If that were the case, then would you advise that numerous references to people like Gordon Brown, Alan Bell, etc, would have to be removed if those persons simply signed up as DAG/site members?
Members' Confidentiality & Privacy
@ng .. thank you for kindly responding to my request to protect my right to privacy. I have nothing to hide but I defend my right to disclose anything about myself to whom I chose, & my biography on this Forum & on my blog is all that I chose to share as nothing else is relevant to what I do on behalf of the DAG.
I have been swamped with supporting e-mails, with many members saying "now you see why I don't post on the Forum". EVERY member here has the right to their privacy and it is your responsibility as Administrator & Moderator to ensure that it is not compromised.
Privacy/real names - my final statement on the topic
EVERY member here has the right to their privacy and it is your responsibility as Administrator & Moderator to ensure that it is not compromised.
That is not the case, at very best it's a gross over-simplification. It is not even feasible for me to do what you are suggesting!
It seems you are misinterpreting the site privacy policy which relates only to information actually collected by the site/me (in some cases by DST). So to make it clear: It is each member's responsibility to ensure that they do not provide personally identifiable information to others, here and elsewhere, if they wish to protect their identity.
The administrator's (my) chosen responsibility extends to taking appropriate measures to protect data obtained by and/or stored on our system, primarily where that data has been obtained for administrative purposes (e.g. your IP address, email address, password, etc.). Put simply, I do not provide such data to others (unless required to do so by applicable law). There have been a few requests in the past for IP information of specific members to be provided - those requests have been and always will be refused.
Beyond this, I try to discourage people from posting their own personal data, nor personal data of other members. However, that is a simple practice, not part of the privacy policy, and certainly not a right of the individuals concerned.
An example:
If you send an email directly to another member, then you disclose various bits of information to that person - your email address, possibly your name, possibly the name of your employer, and almost certainly your IP address (from which your broad geographical location and ISP name can be obtained easily and fairly reliably.) If that person then comes on the site and refers to the fact that you (apparently) live in the south of France, it is not my job to edit or remove that post! It was your responsibility to have properly considered the privacy issue/risk before sending the email.
Another example
Here on the Manx Herald site there is a comment posted by someone whose given name matches the given name of the person who registered kaupthingiom-dag.co.uk - Of course, these may not be real names, and they may or may not be the same person. However, if another member here refers to that information in a post here, such an action is not contrary to site privacy policy and categorically does not infringe any "rights" anybody might have by virtue of being a site user/member here.
Conclusion
In this case the source of identity information was your own domain registration and various blog and similar posts on other sites unrelated to this one.
Jim, with respect, you screwed up - you put your name in your domain record and made it blatantly obvious here that you run that site. You then made matters worse for yourself, because you kicked up such a fuss, thereby effectively confirming that FightTheft's assumption about the name and other data elsewhere was indeed about the one-and-the-same LuckyJim Until that point, there was little solid evidence to indicate that FightTheft's conclusion was actually correct - but you provided it yourself! Now you are apparently trying to distort truth and imply that there has been some kind of breakdown in trust or infringement of privacy policy here!? Can I suggest you think twice before posting anything else on this topic? It must be getting kind of hard for people to ignore by now, and they may start questioning just why you seem to be looking for a scapegoat.
An aside
You say "I have been swamped with supporting e-mails, with many members saying "now you see why I don't post on the Forum" - So what? It seems you are referring to a large number of people (swamped with emails) who may not post but do use the forum and/or notification service (how else would they know that this topic had even come up?). We have always known that many members read but do not post. So I am mystified as to what point are you trying to make here. Nonetheless, I do invite all those same people to send me email and on the basis of matching input from such a large number of people I will of course re-consider whether my stance on this topic has been correct.
And finally
I've already said, please stick to facts and don't post hype, exaggeration and unsupported claims presented as facts - it kind of tends to backfire in the long run.
re invasion of privacy
Totally agree. Naming of others should simply not be tolerated.
Real names
Sure, but the real issue is that members should not allow themselves to be identified - that's why I have warned about that point on numerous occasions. If a member provides his/her own identity information, here or elsewhere, to other members, then its not my responsibility to try to fix a leaking bucket!
Furthermore, any obvious censorship of such information here is most likely to simply contribute to the Streisand effect - the recent wikileaks post about the Kaupthing hf loans was a good example of that (hardly on the same scale as our topic here, obviously.)
So, my advice to those concerned is to stop kicking up a fuss, accept that responsibility lies elsewhere, and get back on with the real task.
Breaches of confidentiality for malicious intent
ng said: Sure, but the real issue is that members should not allow themselves to be identified
I want to make it perfectly clear that a condition of being registered with Nominet (the agency that registers the .co.uk suffix) is that a registrant of a domain name has to be listed. Thus it was never a question of me 'allowing' myself to be identified.
My confidentiality was breached by a member deliberately accessing my name from the Nominet register & then scouring the internet for information about me for the sole purpose of posting it here with malicious intent.
My final FINAL comment on the privacy/identitiy thing
LJ: "...a registrant of a domain name has to be listed. Thus it was never a question of me 'allowing' myself to be identified."
The first part is true, but does not imply truth of the second part because you chose to register the domain name! Or, are you saying that it was not your decision? Were you forced into it? Did somebody else register it using your name but without your permission? If none of these, then simply by registering the domain name you allowed yourself to be identified as the registrant.
Yet again, LJ, please stop posting exaggerations and distortions. I really don't think it's doing you any favours.
'Malicious Intent'
I did deliberaratley access your name from your publicly available DNS record. Fact
I did then scour the internet for information about you. Again all publicly available. Fact
I did not do it with 'malicious intent'. My assertion.
I did it, and shall continue to, for what I beleive is a very legitimate, and actually 'anti' malicious intent, reason. And I hope my fellow depositors will recognise that, while my methods may be somewhat heavy handed, they have more than server their purpose - to expose your good self as perhaps someone who is NOT serving us with the best of intentions.
You sir have hoisted yourself to being one whom claims to represent us. From this position you have made a great deal of public noise which could - and most probably will - affect all us depositors for good or for bad. Up until now you have been so while hiding behind a bush with zero responsibility or comeback. That is not right. I do not for one moment deny that the privacy of fellow depositors is fundamental and should be observed - losing ones savings something many would, quite rightly, not like being in the public domain. However, fellow depositors have to pay for the consequence of their actions, quite literally, and so share a responsibility. At the moment sir, you are not taking any responsibility for your actions whatsoever and at the same time claiming to represent us. I protest.
Increased maximum file attachment size
The max sie of a file you can upload/attach to a post has been increased to 16MB. This will allow short videos to be posted here.
Note that there is also a limit of 32MB per user for total files uploaded. If you need more space you can (a) send me a message or (b) move to Texas :).
Threads moved out of All Members
None moved yet, but some threads may be moved out of All members for reasons described here. If a thread seems to have disappeared, please look for it in an appropriate group.
Replaced the "Forums" link on the top menu
On the main menu (shown near the top of every page) the link to Forums has been removed. This does not actually change any functionality.
Added a Projects link on the menu. Likewise this does not change any functionality. In fact, the Groups and Projects links just take you to differently filtered views of the entire groups list. A Project is a type of group, and a Group is a generic name. For historic reasons, the generic name Group has been used for geographical groups and others. I appreciate this is somewhat confusing but at the moment I kind think of a better name to use - suggestions welcome
So in summary:
And as reminder, all groups have at least one manager who has additional privileges, including the ability to send email to all members of the group. In the future, group managers may be allowed moderator type powers as well, but that would be restricted to their group, and probably only where the members of that group had previously agreed to allow a level of moderation (censorship) within the group.
Possible need to join some "groups"
Just a reminder that if you've never joined any groups you almost certainly should. See the groups list. As newer forum posts become made in groups other than all members then if you are not a member of relevant other groups it's likely to appear to you that everything has "gone quiet".
Just to illustrate (not a recommendation!) - if you joined all groups then you would see all forum posts regardless of which group they were posted into. Until now, most forum posts have been made in all members which everybody is a member of (that makes sense, right!?) so you have tended to see all posts anyway. That will no longer be the case.
In short, make sure that you've joined all groups that you're interested in.
Moved "new groups" list
I've moved the New groups list to the left of the page, so that it's now immediately below the My groups block, which seems more sensible. As a reminder to anyone who doesn't know, almost all of the blocks in the left and right side-bars can be "minimised" by clicking in their title area.
Forum and Groups integration
Significant changes to Forums
All Groups now have their own Forum area. Initially there is only one Forum per Group but more can be added if needed. Functionality and purpose remain the same, but structure and visibility change.
Why is this being done?
What do you need to do?
Nothing, other than make sure you are in the correct Group area before making a new post. Further changes will be made to make that easier and generally streamline the process.
Questions?
I will post further information in due course and in the meantime please see this blog entry which goes some way to explain in more detail.
Subscription expiry date
In case I've not made it clear, please note that your subscription expiry date needs to be entered manually. You can use the following link:
Contributions
Note, if you're reading this in a notification email the link won't be shown - read here instead.
The expiry date can (and one day will) be set automatically when PayPal donations are made. For now though, that would be a case of technology overkill, since I trust you to put in the correct date yourself!
Just kidding
Wow ng - you're definitely expecting us to be here for the long haul with an expiration date of 2020! I was rather hoping we would get our money back before then, but this is the IoM we're dealing with so 2020 it is!
Likewise I'm hoping it won't
Likewise I'm hoping it won't take that long! Working out my own "subscription expiry date" isn't easy, but I've just done a quick calculation and it came out at 417 years, which should be enough time :)
Recent server upgrade has had a marked effect
The above graph shows how server loading has dropped dramatically since the server upgrade last week. A load average of 1.00 (indicated by the horizontal red line) represents a situation where the server is 100% utilised. Higher than 1.00 means that the server is overloaded (things would be running slowly).
The individual lines on the graph represent the average load over periods of 1, 5 and 15 minutes - black, red and green respectively. So, it's clear that until the upgrade, the server was overloaded for much of the time, but now has spare capacity for most of the time.
SITE PROBLEM
The forum topic "DAG IT/ web funding......" shows briefly on the screen and then disappears with just a blank page - is this my machine or is this a problem??
"shows briefly on the screen and then disappears"?
This one works fine for me http://chat.ksfiomdepositors.org/forum-topic/dag-itweb-funding-quarterly... -- if you're referring to some other, please post the link -- there are no issues that I'm aware of with viewing forum topics.
@ng
It was a problem on my computer - It appears that the security settings in windows 7 are ultra cautious!! sussed it now and all is working well.
Thanks
"shows briefly on the screen and then disappears"
That's the one. It still doesn't work for me - so i assume it must be soething to do with my computer. Maybe it doesn't like windows 7?? I will try later on a different computer...
Thanks for checking.
@codpeace
Just to confirm - it works fine for me (but am not on windows)
@anrigaut
thanks for looking - i am concerned that a subscription was paid but is not reflected.
Appreciate all your posts (and banna) - I agree with you all the way - such a shame to see division when we need to be united
@codpeace
For now, I think it's up to you to indicate until when you have paid; there is not yet a check on this.
Click on your name, then edit/contributions - then fill in yourself the expiry date in the appropriate place. Then I think it should appear on your posts.
Request free access
Members' account profile page now includes a check-box to request free access. Please note that the offer is open only to bona fide depositors and those helping close family members who are bona fide depositors. If ticked, the member summary which is displayed on forum posts and comments will show: Expires: n/a (free).
The check-box is under the contributions section of your account profile. Note, that link won't work if you're reading this via email notification, instead go to your account then select, Edit and then Contributions.
Member information now shown in forum posts and comments
In forum posts and comments, where member name and join date were previously shown (on the left of the post) additional information is now included. Example:
Expires: 31/05/09
Status: a depositor
The first item is the date of site subscription expiry and will be 31/05/09 for anyone who has never contributed to IT/web funding or who has never set the corresponding date in their account profile. The second item is their depositor status which will be one of a depositor, not a depositor, not prepared to answer or undefined. The latter case means that they have never entered that information in their account profile page.
The purpose of showing this extra information so as to more easily be able to see who's who. The same (and more) information can be seen by clicking on a user-name where shown as author of a post.
Email templates
Further changes to email templates - all notification messages should now be appearing properly formatted, though there may still be minor issues.
Why all the effort?
If anybody has suggestions for for further improvement to messages please let me know. I am thinking that perhaps all messages should include a summary of key posts/threads on the site. But first we need a way of determining which posts/threads might be regarded as key.
Message templates improved
Message templates for subscription notifications are generally better format and so easier to read. They now include a more complete set of links in the message footer to help people know how to change their subscription settings - particularly relevant to those who don't visit the site often or worse still have no idea why they're receiving the mail (they tend to email me to ask!) The messages also now include links to the original, and links to the author's profile page.
I have tested the generated links and they seem to work, but since they are necessarily all different depending on who the author and who is receiving the message, the testing done is limited.
The notifications for Group-based notifications posts are still however, as they are a completely separate set of templates.
Notification messages
Please note I am re-configuring the templates which are used to generate subscription notification emails to try to improve ease of reading and fix a few minor glitches. However, since it's quite difficult to test and there are many combinations with different types of update and different types of content, it's possible that some messages may arrive wrongly formatted. No need to inform me as I receive them myself too, but until I see them I won't know that it's wrong.
When adding "news Item" posts
To avoid duplicate posts as News items, the system now checks to see if that item has already been posted. It does this by checking the content of the url (link) field entered against all prior entries. It does not check urls which may be entered into the text description of the item.
This is done because the News item feature is very useful, but members had no easy way of knowing whether an article had already been posted other than manually checking title/description or the target page.
Public site / forum site mixing fixed
Fixed a misconfiguration (in cache settings) which was resulting in some mixing of the public site and forum site.
Upgrade completed, welcome back!
We now have 1.5 GB of server memory. This alone should make things run a bit quicker, but we will make further tweaks now made possible by extra memory to improve performance further.
Scheduled downtime today
Site will be down today at around 14:50 UK time for about 30 minutes for a memory upgrade. I am hoping that the upgrade will significantly improve server performance and solve the issues we've been having (overload and occasional crashes.)
Server crash
Our server appeared to have crashed tonight at around 20:44 UK time. It was completely dead, not even responding to ping (a very basic test, something akin to checking for a heartbeat.). A forced reboot was required to recover (never a good thing) and that was around 23:00 UK time. It is possible that there may be knock on effects such as loss of posts (especially those made immediately prior to the crash.)
Subscription notifications working again
Notifications (automatic email when new posts are made on the site) are now working again. They had not been for the past 12 hours approx, so you may see a large number of emails arrive at once.
Hi, ng. Too many emails, too
Hi, ng.
Too many emails, too little time, I regret!
Please excuse me not playing any more - the IOM will give me my remaining £1,600 at some stage by some method, I'm sure. Although the recent wad of paperwork is as incomprehensible as ever!
I can only offer my moral support for those remaining in deep poo, but sadly this has all got FAR too complicated ... and I simply cannot afford the time to read all the various counter-points, let alone analyse them properly.
Best wishes, Sir. I'm still willing to contribute to the IT fund until - whenever.
https connection
It seems there are some issues with the secure (https) connection facility. I am trying to find a solution.
Updated privacy statement
Site privacy statement has necessarily been updated. Related post HERE. Updated policy statement HERE. Not so much a change of policy but a better description of reality. The significant changes are in the section Will we disclose the information we collect to any other party?