Raymond Brennan response to Jeff

April 30, 2015, 11:05 am

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Continuing the discussion from Welcome to the Discourse Sysadmin interview!:

sysadmin_job:

Thanks for applying for the sysadmin position at Discourse!

In lieu of a phone call to discuss specifics, we're asking applicants to privately reply to this message using Discourse -- so that we can get a better idea of how you work, and you can get an idea of how we work, too.

1. What online artifacts fairly represent your previous work? Some examples (but don't feel limited to this list) are:

- your technical blog
- your GitHub commits
- your Server Fault (or Stack Exchange) profile
- open source projects you contributed to, with specifics
- your online CV / resume
- anything else that was published online that represents you and your work
I don't have any open source contributions to hand, but here are some articles I have written over the years. They may give you a flavour of who I am as a person ad what I am like wot work with
http://ejmas.com/pt/ptart_brennan_0902.htm
http://ejmas.com/pt/ptart_brennan_0103.htm
http://ejmas.com/pt/ptart_brennan_0802.htm
http://www.hikuta.net/articles/brennan1/index.cfm

All of the above are referenced regularly in pertinent online fora and are viewed by some as valuable resources, while others see them as the deepest heresy

Share these URLs with us, so we can learn about how you work.

2. Let's install Discourse.

- Show us the URL of a Discourse install you produced, and made visible on the web, using servers you have access to.

This requires billing information to be entered. As someone with a European credit card, what guarantee do I have that my details will be kept safe ? I am not happy with this. Can I use somewhere/something else that doesn't require parting with sensitive information up front ?

- If you [browse the support category here](/c/support), you'll find that some people try to install Discourse, but then get stuck because port 80 is already occupied. How would you amend the install to prevent this problem and work the user through the solution, so they don't have to post a support topic here about it, and can figure it out on their own?
I would change it in Apache (or whatever web configuration is being used)and restart the service.

I would amend the install to offer a choice , something like -
Checking that port80 is free (using telnet to port 80 in the background with a timeout). If it is, then use it without bothering the user. If not, then selecting a higher number port an using that. I would try to automate this, so that the user is not bothered by this and has no knowledge of it in the first place.

- Name three other specific ways you would work to improve the [public Discourse install process][1]. What can go wrong here? What can users mess up, and how could we help them figure that out (or remove the point of error entirely) by improving the install? Describe the general steps you would take, and the general tools you would use, to make those improvements.
As I am reluctant to put billing information on that site, I defer responding to this question until you can provide me with a way to do this which does not involve me parting with credit card information.
If I were a customer-especially in Europe-this would be a big NO to me continuing with Discourse. I should be able to try software without having to enter payment details.

3. The new user sandbox

You may have noticed that all new users in Discourse are limited for safety reasons. If you have created an account, you're (probably) in the new user sandbox right now. How do you get out of it? How would an attacker abuse this system? How can the signals in this system be improved?

Note that you'll need to create an account and get out of the new user sandbox to privately reply to this topic as requested.

Jeff, thank you for directing me to this point I simply followed the directions by entering five topics and reading 30 or so posts. This made me a level 1 user, so I can reply to the post.

I am not sure what you mean by "signals".

If you mean "How can I make it easier for new users to understand that in order to reply to topics, they need to become Level 1 users", then I would respectfully suggest a floating box next to the text in question saying "To reply to this post, please become a Level 1 user" with the phrase "Level 1" rendered as a hyperlink to the relevant instructions.

If I am in error, then please accept my apologies and please elucidate the question , in order that I may respond correctly. Thank you.

4. Describe your hosting experience.

We feel that the strongest candidates will have sysadmin experience in a hosting environment.

I would agree with you. Hosting as an environment is very different to the traditional Unix Sys Admin world. In some respects, it is better and in other respects, it can be more problematic.

- Can you explain how your previous job experience maps to a hosting service, where we primarily sell $100, $200, and $1000 per month hosting plans to hundreds or thousands of customers?
Yes, indeed. My hosting experience spans a number of years and a number of companies. It is a mix of European and American, both of which have their strengths and weaknesses. My first exposure to Hosting in the sense of staging and maintaining someone else's kit was with Compaq in the late 1990s. Our customer base was primarily military and domestic retail companies. All servers ran Solaris or Tru64 Unix and was of the traditional "heavy metal" format. The costs involved ran from £59.99 per calendar month all the way up to many thousands of pounds Sterling.

My most significant experience of Hosting in the US was with Jive Software. This was an internet startup which quickly grew into a major player in the social business software field at breakneck speed. I was employee number 197, but by the time I left, there were over 600 employees with 30 of us in the EMEA region. At first, we had our hosting done by an external provider, but soon set up our own Data Centres-one in Phoenix, AZ(US) , one in London , UK(EMEA) and one in Kuala Lumpur (AsiaPAC). Vendor consultants were brought in to get it up and running correctly and properly according to best practices, then a team of us took over day-to-day management of the EMEA DC. It proved to be a very steep learning curve on many levels, but worth it in the long run.

With £100/$250 spends, we used VMWARE heavily to deploy customer instances from a Golden Image and FastDNS plus Akamai. This meant that we could get new customers up and running inside around 30 minutes-all they had to do was to respond to an email confirming their desired URL.

- What steps did you take to ensure great service for your hosting customers?
In a nutshell, two things-
1. Automate as much as possible.
2. Customer service was paramount.

- What processes did you automate using puppet, chef, or ansible?
We used Puppet, as the puppet head offices were a few streets away from ours in Portland OR. Also,a number of our American techies knew people who worked in Puppet very well and they were only too happy to set up Puppet in our DCs with the proviso that they could use us as a reference site.

- How did you automate provisioning new customers?
Driven by Puppet, we created a new VM via VSphere from a Golden Image, changed one line in the config file to map to the desired URL and then NAT'd the IP address to the URL mapping. It was very very simple, but very effective and very fast.

5. What do you like about forums?

That is a very broad question.

Off the top of my head, here is what I like about them -
1. They are a practical way for like-minded people to meet online and discuss subjects they have in common. Before the internet, this would only have been possible with great difficulty and considerable inconvenience.
2. They give everyone equal billing. Introverts have the same chance of being heard as extroverts and novices on a particular topic can interact with experts.
3. As they are location agnostic, they can often provoke debate and spark thought in new and original ways, which might not have been thought of otherwise.
4. They can be an excellent virtual shopfront and in that way, level the playing field for new , small companies to some extent.
5. They provide a social outlet for people who are housebound through no fault of their own-wheelchair users, people with Social Anxiety Disorder, people with the more extreme forms of Asberger's Syndrome to name but a few.
6. They can help people to find others who have similar interests and outlooks, over and above the raison d'etre of the forum itself.
7. They can speed up the discourse itself, such that conclusions can be reached much faster than in face-to-face discussions.
8. They are a great way to disseminate information fast and accurately.
9. They act as a historical reference-who said what, when, why and to whom

Discourse is an attempt to reboot forums for the next generation of the web. Did you ever run a forum? Do you regularly participate on forums? Do you participate on any current Discourse instances?

I am a member of Facebook (please see https://www.facebook.com/raymond.brennan.5815 ) , but that is the limit of my current involvement in online fora, I'm afraid.

In the past, I was an active member of DragonDoor.com(strength training) and e-budo.com(martial arts). I was very active indeed in both, but over time found that I was devoting far too much energy and resource to both. I also found that as I came out against kettlebells, the ad hominem attacks I had to endure became more frequent and more severe and it meant that dragondoor.com stopped being a useful resource for me. This happened a lot of people around that time and does reinforce the simple fact that a forum is only as good as the people using it.

With e-budo.com, I became a moderator and advised newcomers to the martial arts on what to look for in a club, what to look for in a teacher, which art(s) suited which type of personality and body...and many,many associated questions. I enjoyed my time on e-budo.com and stepped down simply because I had been doing it for too long. I had reached the stage where I had helped a lot of people find what they were looking and was ending up repeating myself over and over again. That told me it was time to go.

Nowadays, I confine myself to Facebook groups. The big advantage of this is that it allows me to see the person behind the post i.e. over and above what someone posts, what their interest are (film , books etc.), what sort of friends they have, what other groups they belong to...all of which makes it much harder to hide and harder to be a troll without consequences.
There are of course many disadvantages to this way of being online also. I am ready for something new and Discourse looks like "it".

What do you think Discourse, the software, does well? What does it not do well? What would you think discussion software could do better?
From what I have seen here, it does what it does very well indeed. It is clear, easy to use and works in real time. It lives in the browser, so is platform and browser agnostic. What is not to like ?

On the other hand, a small video or audio might help by way of an introduction. It isn't immediately apparent how a new person jumps in, so to speak.

If this seems like work, I apologize, it is not in any way intended to be a method of getting work out of people -- just a necessary and helpful step in the interview process, like multiple in-person interviews would be for a "physical, real world" job.

Not at all, not at all. In point of fact, it comes across like an excellent way to get to know what someone's online presence is actually like. Physical, real-world interviews are great for physical real-world jobs. However, for cyber-working where the bulk of interaction etc. is online, this is exactly the right kind of job interview. One can only hope that more companies follow your lead over time.

As a remote team, with members in Canada, USA, France, and India, we place a high value on written online communication, which is an essential remote skill -- and that's what Discourse is designed to encourage!

Good-that is exactly as it should be. Like the vast majority of Irish people, I do have what is known in the Emerald Isle as the "Gift of the Gab " and in Jive in particular, was noted for engaging with customers and dampening fires.
Here is one example of such a discussion :
https://community.jivesoftware.com/casethread/168802

You can find a summary of my customer-facing interactions while at Jive Software at https://community.jivesoftware.com/status/3101.

Please advise, should you require further examples of this.

Finally, my articles above-while not technical in content-do showcase my communication and writing skills and how effective I am as an online communicator.

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Separating Redis clusters. What’s sent into Redis? Cached views, Sessions, both?

April 30, 2015, 11:23 am

≫ Next: I suggest to make search round, time already avatars round

≪ Previous: Raymond Brennan response to Jeff

@renoirb wrote:

Hi all,

In my cluster I have two separate Redis clusters. One that stores session data ("sessions" cluster), and another that I send expensive generated objects ("objects" cluster). The idea behind this is that I can purge completely what’s in "objects" redis nodes without risking to kick out users.

My question becomes then, is there such separation?

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I suggest to make search round, time already avatars round

April 30, 2015, 11:26 am

≫ Next: Where can I ask non-technical questions around here?

≪ Previous: Separating Redis clusters. What’s sent into Redis? Cached views, Sessions, both?

@Pirat wrote:

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Where can I ask non-technical questions around here?

April 30, 2015, 11:59 am

≫ Next: Ordered list mis-numbering

≪ Previous: I suggest to make search round, time already avatars round

@john_mardlin wrote:

Community management oriented stuff like:

"What works for building communities"

"How do you usually handle a situation such as X"

"What are some ways to engage your best users"

This is the softer than software stuff that's at least as important to building a community. Where does that happen around here?

Everything I've found seems to be uncategorized, meaning I need to be extra clever with searching to find that stuff.
ie.

https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-to-build-a-community/13819/2

https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-im-building-traffic-and-retaining-users-in-a-new-forum/15260

https://meta.discourse.org/t/starting-a-discourse-community-about-science-and-maybe-skepticism/16734

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Ordered list mis-numbering

April 30, 2015, 12:35 pm

≫ Next: Twitter login option not showing after config

≪ Previous: Where can I ask non-technical questions around here?

@jayfella1 wrote:

I came upon a bit of a bug where if you use an ordered list and don't start from 1, discourse will start from 1 anyway:

Notice the numbers in the editor vs the posted reply. I kinda get why this occurs, but in this particular case, I couldn't answer his first and second question, so could only reply to questions 3 and 4 - which presents this corner case..

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Twitter login option not showing after config

April 30, 2015, 12:42 pm

≫ Next: Is the search supposed to include the letter 'a'?

≪ Previous: Ordered list mis-numbering

@PopsRocker wrote:

After setting up the new Discourse forum and configuring my login options to use Google, Facebook, and Twitter I'm not seeing Twitter as an option.

I have double checked the consumer key and secret, even reset them to see if that would work. I checked the Twitter application for anything that still needed to be done.

Am I missing something ?? (other than the obvious Twitter login LOL)

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Oh ... and I also did a search to see if there was any information on this, sorry if I missed it.

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Is the search supposed to include the letter 'a'?

April 30, 2015, 12:48 pm

≫ Next: How is security on gems used handled?

≪ Previous: Twitter login option not showing after config

@PopsRocker wrote:

While doing a quick search here at the meta.discourse forums I noticed the search results included hits for the single letter A ... is that normal, I thought the letter A is something not normally indexed in a search result.

I would have expected there to be more results too, if hits for A are normal.

Just curious, not a big deal

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How is security on gems used handled?

April 30, 2015, 12:55 pm

≫ Next: Request - Wordpress plugin, Publish to Discourse option to include category

≪ Previous: Is the search supposed to include the letter 'a'?

@rata wrote:

Hi,

If I don't misunderstand, discourse is using several gems installed things in the default docker installation 1. But how can I track security issues on all (and future) gems used by docker and update them as needed ?

Or how do others approach this problem ? How can I update gems when needed ? Or does docker release a new version if a new gem has a security bug?

Thanks a lot,
Rodrigo

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Request - Wordpress plugin, Publish to Discourse option to include category

April 30, 2015, 3:49 pm

≫ Next: First impressions of Discourse UX from a designer

≪ Previous: How is security on gems used handled?

@PopsRocker wrote:

First a question ... does the Discourse Wordpress plugin allow for posts to be published to Discourse in more than one category?

The following post is old and possibly outdated, but is it still true in that Discourse only publishes to ONE category as defined in the plugin settings?

AdamCapriola:

Today I decided I was tired of manually changing categories, so a made a slight customization to the plugin. If you are comfortable with modifying code, in the wp-discourse.php file add this to the sync_to_discourse_work function before the $data array: if ( in_category( 'wordpress_category', $postid ) ) { $options['publish-category'] = 'discourse_category'; } Change wordpress_category and discourse_category and add more clauses as needed. Pretty simple.

I noticed the Plugin structure is different since the post above, but I couldn't tell if the current code (found in /lib/discourse.php) would allow for multiple categories.

... code snippet closest to a match with the above post (in /lib/discourse.php)
$category = $options['publish-category'];
if ( $category === '' ) {
  $categories = get_the_category();
  foreach ( $categories as $category ) {
    if ( in_category( $category->name, $postid ) ) {
      $category = $category->name;
      break;
    }
  }
}
The feature I would like to see is category options that can be selected near or below the checkbox option to publish to Discourse. These categories would match those found at the Discourse forums.

Until then, I'll make do with manually switching the categories for now

Here's a screenshot to clarify what I'm looking for.

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First impressions of Discourse UX from a designer

April 30, 2015, 4:03 pm

≫ Next: Changing auto embed content

≪ Previous: Request - Wordpress plugin, Publish to Discourse option to include category

@Astralis wrote:

I'm looking for a new forum to use after many years using the old-school forums that are out there.

I've looked at nodeBB and mvcforum, among others (very cool minimal designs). Then I decided to look at Discourse and I must be honest: the design seems dated and clunky despite it being one of the first "next generation" forums.

It's awkward to find my way around. For example, I'm not sure how to make it back to the "home". And these pop-ups (upon pop-ups) are really annoying. The mystery links with the tiny drop-downs are also confusing.

And the topics with the bottom section that are packed full of icons and other links -- well, I don't know what that is for yet.

These are just my first thoughts and I'm sure I'll get the hang of it and might even love it, but as a designer, I hope these first impressions are useful.

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Changing auto embed content

April 30, 2015, 7:00 pm

≫ Next: Are gif animations currently turned off?

≪ Previous: First impressions of Discourse UX from a designer

@rhulse wrote:

Got the embed and create via RSS going on our site.

Is there any way to change the format of the story in the auto-post, such as change the link style/text or add an image?

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Are gif animations currently turned off?

April 30, 2015, 8:02 pm

≫ Next: Timezone issue in Autoclose topic

≪ Previous: Changing auto embed content

@purldator wrote:

I have noticed the last two gifs I have seen here on Meta are static images. It caused the animation to be a single frame, and thus create some very funny but also very disturbing freeze-face reactions.

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I'm running the latest stable Chrome and turned off all extensions to eliminate variables specific to my ux. Still the same behavior.

On further page-sourcing, I notice Sully is a png but sausage-slap lady is a gif, yet no animation (I am guessing animation was the intention; the ReplyGIF thread's context is a big tipoff that an animated gif was implied to actually be there.)

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Timezone issue in Autoclose topic

April 30, 2015, 8:34 pm

≫ Next: A lot of entries with "bla bla bla" string in translation files

≪ Previous: Are gif animations currently turned off?

@rhulse wrote:

On version 1.2.1 - commit 590b73e25e09bc6f8781585604b18738bc79fbdf

When setting the time for autoclose I enter a local time and press save.

When I reopen that same dialogue it is 12 hours later than expected. My timezone is UTC+12.

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A lot of entries with "bla bla bla" string in translation files

April 30, 2015, 8:58 pm

≫ Next: Custom CSS display on Admin pages broken - clarification please

≪ Previous: Timezone issue in Autoclose topic

@meglio wrote:

I've noticed in Transifex there are a lot of entries, all with the same content:
A single translation key should be used instead if such a content is intended for GUI?

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Custom CSS display on Admin pages broken - clarification please

April 30, 2015, 10:05 pm

≫ Next: Test server is slow at times when clicking on the button Latest Posts

≪ Previous: A lot of entries with "bla bla bla" string in translation files

@PopsRocker wrote:

Does custom css show up on the admin pages unless you refresh the admin page?

Is that correct and intended behavior? Just looking for a confirmation since most of the topics I found were old.

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Test server is slow at times when clicking on the button Latest Posts

May 1, 2015, 12:18 am

≫ Next: Dark, Simplified, and Slightly More Spacious Discourse

≪ Previous: Custom CSS display on Admin pages broken - clarification please

@gunrodeo wrote:

We are running a Bitnami VM with Discourse. It is just in a test phase so there is no load on the server and we only have about 50 posts. The server is setup with 2 Gig RAM and 4 CPUs and doing a vmstat shows the system is idle 99 plus % of the time.

Every thing seems to run perfectly and seems really fast when I am using it, but when I first open it or leave it set for 10 minutes and come back and click on the Latest button then it takes 15 to 20 seconds with a spinning loader circle. Once the page is finally loaded, if I click it again it is very fast.

I am worried that when we go live and it is under load it will come to a screeching halt if I don't find out what I have done wrong.

Is there a config item I missed, maybe with caching?

What is the best way to trouble shoot?

If I get stuck is there any resource for consultants that I could pay to solve this issue?

Thanks

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Dark, Simplified, and Slightly More Spacious Discourse

May 1, 2015, 12:24 am

≫ Next: Email failed on V1.2.3

≪ Previous: Test server is slow at times when clicking on the button Latest Posts

@JoeK wrote:

3 reasons for posting:

Dark themes can be much nicer on the eyes, particularly when you're working at night.

I noticed that "minimal" seems to be quite a big interest around here: I skimmed a couple of long topics recognizing the need to simplify the out-of-the-box version of Discourse here and here.

I think "lack of breathing space" is one of the biggest problems with the out-of-the-box UX.

To be clear: this isn't just a plug for my forum — it's going to be a (competitive) beat-making community, which is a pretty niche thing... so unless you (somehow) happen to be into beat-making, it's very probably not the community for you.

This is about the UX side of Discourse. I put a full day of work into clearing things up and making it all fit with the rest of our site, and I thought you might be interested to see and discuss the results. Most instances of Discourse probably don't look like this.

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So: good? / bad? / whatthe%@^£haveyoudoneyoufool?

http://talk.battleflips.com

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Email failed on V1.2.3

May 1, 2015, 2:46 am

≫ Next: Must refresh page to delete a post

≪ Previous: Dark, Simplified, and Slightly More Spacious Discourse

@rexkimta wrote:

sidekiq user mail job keep failing.
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error message:
Jobs::HandledExceptionWrapper: Wrapped I18n::MissingTranslationData: translation missing: zh_TW.time.formats.short

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Must refresh page to delete a post

May 1, 2015, 4:01 am

≫ Next: Styling for "This topic will close a month"

≪ Previous: Email failed on V1.2.3

@boomzilla wrote:

I've found that sometimes I cannot delete a post in a topic until I refresh the page. This just happened to me here. Screenshot of chrome's (Linux, Version 42.0.2311.135 (64-bit)) console with the error:

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Styling for "This topic will close a month"

May 1, 2015, 4:44 am

≫ Next: Login link expiry message could be better

≪ Previous: Must refresh page to delete a post

@iamntz wrote:

I'm not sure if this is a bug or a feature, but closing notification seems to be very ... un-noticeable.

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I'm suggesting to update the styling a bit, like so:
#topic-closing-info {
  height: auto;
}

#topic-closing-info h3 {
  border-bottom: 1px solid #e9e9e9;
  padding-top: 10px;
  text-align: center;
  background-color: #FFFCC1;
  padding-bottom: 10px;
  margin-bottom: 20px;
  margin-top:-10px;
}
The result looks to be a bit more noticeable:

2015-05-01@43_18.jpg1469x356 43.6 KB

What do you guys think?

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