Due to a massive underground explosion in Baltimore, MD (story in Washington Times http://www.washingtontimes.com/metro/20040920-111426-6516r.htm ), the datacenter lost power. The battery backup solution was immediately activated with the loss of power. Our secondary power feed, which comes directly from the city grid, was initialized. After the emergency power cutover, the city ordered the immediate shutdown of the power grid. This grid spans for 26 city blocks and disabled our redundant power solution. We immediately went to our third solution and brought in our generator.

Because of concerns from the Baltimore Fire Marshall that there could be further repercussions of the explosion in the area, it was decided to bring the servers down and wait until we were 100% confident in the power supply before bringing them back up.
 

you can always completely trust everything you read on it. 

i 

should discussion threads require the same moderator approval that news threads do? 

That would require a lot more moderating, and could get very tedious. I think its safer just to let a mod close a thread that really doesn't belong. But, I've never moderated, so I can't really know what it's like. 

but i'm not a moderator, so i don't know how much mrore work that would be. it would certainly help though. 

I'd imagine it would cause a lot of arguments over what constitutes a worthy discussion topic.

You should start by only allowing registered users to post new threads - that would cut out most of the bullshit anyway. 

You should start by only allowing registered users to post new threads...

That seems like a better solution to me.

P.S. And let me add my voice to the many who want the Reset button moved or removed. 

actually, if i had thought of that, i would have suggested allowing only reg'd users to post as well. so, there's a vote for that then.

ditto on the reset button. 

so voila! Other stuff may come later. But I wouldn't mind more opinions on that other stuff.

One thing i'm worried about with the registered user thing is that i don't want people registering bogus accounts just to post one stupid thread... that would just result in yet another table (the user table) containing garbage data.

Hmm, unless i made it so that you needed to wait some time (two weeks? a month?) after joining before you could create threads. Most random jerks passing through wouldn't care enough to wait around. Anyway, discuss please. 

One thing i'm worried about with the registered user thing is that i don't want people registering bogus accounts just to post one stupid thread... that would just result in yet another table (the user table) containing garbage data.

Not a problem if you ban/delete troll accounts 

That's just more work for poor metlslime, though. :(

And I'd rather not give that responsibility to the mods. 

moderator approval is cool, but with that we'd need a specific bit in the faq or at the top of 'create new thread' that explains the purpose of threads and what guidelines mods will use for deciding yay or nay.

I watch the site religeously, so threads wouldn't normally wait TOO long for approval. 

well, yes, banning dudes is work, but a forum comes with a bit of work, that's a given...

i think the waiting time after registering is a good idea, but too long a delay will probably stop good people from registering as well. maybe like 24 or 48 hours, 2 weeks is excessive. you'd register then forget about this place. :P 

banning and such should be handled completely by metlslime and done by an ip ban for any real abusers of the forum, not of whom we've seen here before.

delayed thread creation after registering doesn't help much when registered users make bad threads (see both food threads as a good example). 

banning and such should be handled completely by metlslime

Exactly. 

[nt] 

the two week delay would only be for threads, not posts. And I still think anonymous posting is worth keeping.

Re: deleting accounts -- this creates orphaned threads/posts which is a data integrity problem. But more importantly, it encourages people to just register another account. Banning by IP is better. 

because it's easy to register again. 

Has anything really happened that a couple of warnings to fuck off hasn't yet solved? 

but what's wrong with having the capability?

even if you never turned your stereo up past 1/4 volume, wouldn't you rather have some pretty decent and powerful speakers so that that one day, where you throw a party, you can crank it up? 

IP bans for actual rogue abusers would be a metlslime thing and really aren't something that needs to be 'implented' as a simple script for blocking IPs to the /board/ directory of celephias.net is easily dropped into place.

I like the idea of approved threads best, so all things could be regulated let that, while still allowing everyone to make a new thread. With this, I'd also hope for the funtionality to create new threads from any old post, so that if one mod decides a thread isn't good but everyone disagrees, you could easily 'upgrade it'. And things like the food thread won't happen where the idea for the thread is an idea by many, and we end up with multiples. 

and not dependant on the moderators. 

so, i write an algorithm that can tell when someone should be banned, whether a thread is worthy of being news, etc? 

But I understand that your time is limited due to your pursuit of glasses-wearing Asian babes, so I would settle just for requiring a timelimit of 24 hours before allowing a new user to post threads.

I'm betting that most people who want to make a useful new thread have probably been visiting the forum for a while, and thus would not mind waiting 24 hours to start a thread. They'll be coming back to check on the forum anyway, so waiting a day will not cause them to forget about the topic.