My resignation, and some background of events lead to.
Posted: 07 Oct 2015, 21:19
It is with a heavy heart that I am resigning from my mod post, and the forums entirely. I have been burned twice now.
There have been several reasons leading up to this, but most notably, it is the new management structure, how it operates, and the lack of proper server practices.
Long story:
It seems we just replaced polyethene with Tank and Joedf. Tank in particular must have full control, and if someone doesn't agree with what is going on, they can go to hell. This can be seen with what happened over the past 48 hours. I was given server access after pointing out several security issues (which are still present.) This led to me finding really big ones, such as a forum wipe, default credentials, open ports... I made a report in the staff section after three hours, outlining seven issues that needed attention.
Instead of Tank or Joe taking care of them, Tank asked me to take care of them. There is no point in me taking care of the issues if whoever responsible for them, doesn't learn from the mistake.
Here is a log of the events on my thread in the staff section since ~12 hours ago: http://removed
It should be noted, I was not attacking Joe, nor trying to. I was trying to state the fact that the cause of a mistake was not taught, or learned, and as the saying goes, "History will repeat itself."
It is funny how I and the one to blame for finding these things, when they shouldnt have been there to start with, and with more operation oversight, could have been taken care of in a matter of minutes as opposed to possibly months. Operation oversight was one of the points I tried to make early on so the larger mistakes would be less likely to happen.
Backups are not (and have never) been properly taken. Backups of the system, or just the database. They were never taken, and there still are zero offsite backups (Tank believes that an offsite backup means another instance on the same provider.)
DB backups are important and Joe learned this the hard way (though learned is not the word, because DB backups are still not taken) as he messed the database up, and had to pay money to have it restored.
Last night (10-6-2015) I had a talk with Tank about some of these issues, those logs can be found here: (in raw form with mirc formatting) http://removed
This morning, the databse died, which made autohotkey.com unaccessable for a little bit. Joe was the first to get a notice of it, however didn't do anything to fix it. Instead, I had to fix it, because either Joe didn't know how, or didn't know what was going wrong to start with.
This prompted a conversation with Tank this morning. That log can be found here: http://removed
This conversation turned dark pretty fast.
I have came to realize that Tank has been protecting Joedf ever since he has became admin, even after he makes mistakes, Tank does nothing to teach him how to avoid it in the future. Tank is letting Joe use AHK as a playground. Unlike under a development environment where changes are reverted and have no consequence, what Joe was able to do did have consequence, whether that ge messing up the database to leaving the install directory for the forums in place.
It was brought to my attention that other members of the admin team went to Tank and told him to change the way things were done, including that Joe was not capable of administrating the server, however they were shrugged off, or just ignored and told off.
TL;DR
I am resigning because the administration does not have the slightest clue about security, basic sysadmin principles, and now, I have been accused of being paid by polyethene to make Tank mad, which is just outright incorrect.
http://ahkscript.org/foundation/history.html is repeating itself, except instead of poly, it is Tank. As such, I am leaving because I cannot be a part of this again. AHK is too great to have power hungry egos floating around.
I love AHK, and have loved it, and always thought the community nice and mature. However because of the people who put themselves in charge, it makes the whole thing stink like rotten eggs.
I have also gotten word that there are a lot of personal attacks on me on the private side of the Trello board (https://trello.com/ahkscript/) (which is closed and where apparently the server updates are posted, not done publicly.) I wanted the forum updates to be public, and give notice. Tank did this on the last update, and I hope he continues to do so.
I'm done, and don't really feel like finishing the rest of this post. It's sad to see what AHK has come to, and sad to see the community caught in the crossfire with at least 3 turnovers of forum software, 3 owners with different ideals, and now a community which can't bear the brunt of a forum migration/archive going wrong.
If you really need me, you know where to find me.
There have been several reasons leading up to this, but most notably, it is the new management structure, how it operates, and the lack of proper server practices.
Long story:
It seems we just replaced polyethene with Tank and Joedf. Tank in particular must have full control, and if someone doesn't agree with what is going on, they can go to hell. This can be seen with what happened over the past 48 hours. I was given server access after pointing out several security issues (which are still present.) This led to me finding really big ones, such as a forum wipe, default credentials, open ports... I made a report in the staff section after three hours, outlining seven issues that needed attention.
Instead of Tank or Joe taking care of them, Tank asked me to take care of them. There is no point in me taking care of the issues if whoever responsible for them, doesn't learn from the mistake.
Here is a log of the events on my thread in the staff section since ~12 hours ago: http://removed
It should be noted, I was not attacking Joe, nor trying to. I was trying to state the fact that the cause of a mistake was not taught, or learned, and as the saying goes, "History will repeat itself."
It is funny how I and the one to blame for finding these things, when they shouldnt have been there to start with, and with more operation oversight, could have been taken care of in a matter of minutes as opposed to possibly months. Operation oversight was one of the points I tried to make early on so the larger mistakes would be less likely to happen.
Backups are not (and have never) been properly taken. Backups of the system, or just the database. They were never taken, and there still are zero offsite backups (Tank believes that an offsite backup means another instance on the same provider.)
DB backups are important and Joe learned this the hard way (though learned is not the word, because DB backups are still not taken) as he messed the database up, and had to pay money to have it restored.
Last night (10-6-2015) I had a talk with Tank about some of these issues, those logs can be found here: (in raw form with mirc formatting) http://removed
This morning, the databse died, which made autohotkey.com unaccessable for a little bit. Joe was the first to get a notice of it, however didn't do anything to fix it. Instead, I had to fix it, because either Joe didn't know how, or didn't know what was going wrong to start with.
This prompted a conversation with Tank this morning. That log can be found here: http://removed
This conversation turned dark pretty fast.
I have came to realize that Tank has been protecting Joedf ever since he has became admin, even after he makes mistakes, Tank does nothing to teach him how to avoid it in the future. Tank is letting Joe use AHK as a playground. Unlike under a development environment where changes are reverted and have no consequence, what Joe was able to do did have consequence, whether that ge messing up the database to leaving the install directory for the forums in place.
It was brought to my attention that other members of the admin team went to Tank and told him to change the way things were done, including that Joe was not capable of administrating the server, however they were shrugged off, or just ignored and told off.
TL;DR
I am resigning because the administration does not have the slightest clue about security, basic sysadmin principles, and now, I have been accused of being paid by polyethene to make Tank mad, which is just outright incorrect.
http://ahkscript.org/foundation/history.html is repeating itself, except instead of poly, it is Tank. As such, I am leaving because I cannot be a part of this again. AHK is too great to have power hungry egos floating around.
I love AHK, and have loved it, and always thought the community nice and mature. However because of the people who put themselves in charge, it makes the whole thing stink like rotten eggs.
I have also gotten word that there are a lot of personal attacks on me on the private side of the Trello board (https://trello.com/ahkscript/) (which is closed and where apparently the server updates are posted, not done publicly.) I wanted the forum updates to be public, and give notice. Tank did this on the last update, and I hope he continues to do so.
I'm done, and don't really feel like finishing the rest of this post. It's sad to see what AHK has come to, and sad to see the community caught in the crossfire with at least 3 turnovers of forum software, 3 owners with different ideals, and now a community which can't bear the brunt of a forum migration/archive going wrong.
If you really need me, you know where to find me.