Edit:

We are done with the major work. Now we just need to see how it goes.

This evening around 5PM Pacific we will be doing a few things that will require taking Voat down for an hour or two.

We are going to scale down some hardware as we think we’ve found one of the current issues with some higher CPU usage (this has been our holdup on not doing this sooner) as well as adjust some indexes on the database.

Let’s all cross our fingers that we can scale down Voat without a negative result, and if we do see a negative result we will fix it because that’s what goats do. The road may be a bit bumpy but we will get there.

These changes are being done to make room in our budget to bring up the new Voat code base (aka The Port) so we can start testing. While re-coding Voat to run on Open Source platforms we have refactored some larger areas in the code base that lay the framework for some really cool things going forward such as distribution and scaling. We are very excited to get this code in play as soon as possible as it means we can start implementing some of these larger enterprise features as well as new features we need such as "Voats" (Hmm... What could this mean?)

Also, I apologize for my drive by presence as I have real life things going on right now that require my time, such as moving. Moving is horrible. Needless to say, I am now a minimalist. On a personal note, I had 6 desktops computers and 2 4U servers I kept around for no reason at all, what is up with that?

Question: What should I do with old hard drives? Shred?

Edit:

Attn: v/guns, the number of votes on the Canary post

Canary:

https://voat.co/v/announcements/1330806

General Summary

It’s been about a month since the last GOAT statement (1) so it’s time for another one and we have some exciting things to share and some challenges to mention.

I have not gotten back to all the emails Voat has received so if you haven’t heard back from me please note you are on the list.

.NET Core Port (Cross Platform Voat)

We’ve been pushing very hard on porting Voat to .NET Core, as this will give us the most opportunity to cut costs and get more hands and help from the development community.

Today we have major news:

Voat has been successfully ported to .NET Core! (2)

Today’s commit took care of the last few failing unit tests. What originally was estimated at three months of work was accomplished in less than a month.

What a great day for this milestone to take place as today is my 3 year anniversary since I registered and then shortly afterwards started “working” for Voat. (3)

Anyways, it’s official, the upcoming version of Voat can be run on an entirely open source solution.

Unit Test Runs Using Various Configurations

Voat Core Port - Sql Server on Memory Cache

Voat Core Port - Sql Server on Redis Cache

Voat Core Port - PostgreSql on Memory Cache

Voat Core Port - PostgreSql on Redis Cache

The next step is to get Voat running a preview build so we can start having users test what works and what needs fixed. This should happen this week sometime. Please pay attention to v/voatdev for updates on this.

Finances

Revenue: 2017-05-22 – 2017-06-19

Store Revenue: $2,628.00 USD

Expenses: 5/1/2017 – 5/31/2017

Hosting: $7,005.23 USD

Monthly Misc: $200.00 USD

Yearly Misc: $105.00 USD

Please note that I did not scale down Voat’s hardware as I previously stated because at the time of that announcement reddit’s r/The_Donald was rumbling with discontentment and I couldn’t justify doing it during a potential growth opportunity (4). After this awkward advance and retreat, I still held off because Voat’s primary webserver CPU during peak times is maxed out.

While all my attention has been put into the .NET Core port, I will be spending this week figuring out where to cut costs in the short run.

Processor Shut Down (Why BitCoin Matters)

Voat’s primary credit card processor has decided, for reasons unknown, to discontinue their relationship with Voat. While they did claim that it was due to “risk”, I can only speculate as to the reasons. This means I will have to spend time looking for another processor which brings up all my memories of what PayPal did to Voat. On July 14th 2017 they will stop processing our store orders.

And thus, I am going to make a proclamation that each of you as Goats need to be educated on digital currency. Decentralized digital currency such as BitCoin shifts the power structure from large conglomerates to you as an individual. It will increasingly become more and more important as our society moves to an entirely cashless model.

Bitcoin and related technologies provide a financial freedom that we should all embrace and exercise as much as Freedom of Speech.

All merchandising is put back on hold until we regroup from this setback.

Footnotes

1. I will get on a regular schedule after this month by posting a GOAT statement on the 1st (or closest business day after) starting next month. First GOAT Statement if you missed it.

2. This means all the unit tests are passing which is a close indicator that the majority of the code is correctly running and reliable. There are still functional issues and bugs, mostly with the UI, that need to be tested and fixed.

3. Thank you everyone for the well-wishing on this day. I posted a comment about this earlier here: https://voat.co/v/OneTruePutt/1943481/9567603

4. I want to apologize for asking you Goats to be nice to the new kids. While I don’t agree with scaring the hell out of new people to Voat, I also see why it’s important to not compromise on the values we hold. So, for those that I upset, I do apologize.

Canary

https://voat.co/v/announcements/1330806

During the past 24 hours we have witnessed a large influx of new users. Current stats show that Voat has been visited by 168,213 people in the last 24 hours alone, making 9,571,200 requests and burning through 117 GB of bandwidth. We are currently running at 300% our normal volume. You can see the spike very clearly here.

Because of this, we were forced to scale up our hardware to accommodate the new users, but this will incur significant costs which we won’t be able to cover without your help. Voat gets money primarily from your donations and ad-sales, but ad-sales have so far been unable to cover the expenses. In the past 24 hours, we have received $1,085 in donations and ad-orders through our store http://store.voat.co, and $180 through bitcoin. This is amazing and we sincerely thank you for every dollar you contribute to keep Voat online, but our past experience shows that donations and ads combined can no longer cover Voat hosting fees.

Voat also has a major flaw: we have no fulltime staff. Voat is currently managed by two people who have full time jobs “on the side”, which makes things very complicated. Voat needs fulltime staff to monitor the servers, respond to support and abuse emails, process donations and keep the wheels turning. With donations alone, this has not been possible so far, resulting in poor site performance and user experience.

We have all witnessed in one way or another how a website which takes on investors can slowly degrade and become outright unusable. Given our commitment to Freedom of Speech, we have to be very careful about who we partner with. Because of this, we have rejected several offers from investors who we believe would not be compatible with Voat’s core philosophy. For the record, we have had investment offers from all over the world during the past 2 years, many of which we were either too busy to entertain or too concerned with underlying motives of the parties involved.

So, what do we do?

We want to keep Voat alive. We want to be able to work full time on what we love and do best. We don’t want to change what Voat stands for or Voat’s core principles, and thus we need your help. If you have contacts or relationships with potential investors who also believe in and support our Freedom of Speech commitment, please let us know and please let them know that we need their help.

Until we have a permanent solution, we need you to donate, buy ads and merchandise (to be announced soon). Every bit helps.

Edit 1: typos

This is just a quick message for anyone visiting Voat for the first time.

We have a known blocking issue in our code base. This means that the site is being a spoiled rotten no good son of... often will toggle off for about 10 seconds and then turn itself back on.

It truly is the most annoying bug you can imagine and we are just so happy to have it along for the ride. To make matters worse, response times are very poor do to traffic.

So heads up, it's a little like a goat track around here right now.

For two guys with fulltime jobs it is not easy to dedicate the time to find such an obscure bug. As we often do, we have to apologize.

Many apologies everyone. We hate it too.

What we don't have at Voat:

• Server Farms
• Engineers (or even employees for that matter)
• Infrastructure budget
• Marketing department
• Salaries ;)

What we do have:

• Freedom of Speech
• Annoying bugs
• Goats

Anyways, just wanted to say welcome to any new people and we hope that what we have outweighs what we don't have.

If you have the means, please consider donating. Every bit helps and means a lot to both of us. https://store.voat.co/donations

https://voat.co/v/announcements/1330806

Today Voat pushed an update meant to address three things: Vote manipulation, Archiving Data, and Feature Prep. I will keep this announcement as short as possible.

Vote Manipulation

I have been researching vote farming and brigading for about a month. And honestly, I’m pissed off. What I have found is simply unacceptable. These actions destroy Voat’s credibility and value and will be actively developed against. The following actions have been taken to increase vote integrity:

• Users no longer earn CCP in Private Subverses (Common farming technique)
• Users no longer earn CCP in Subverses with Minimum Downvote values greater than zero (Common farming technique)
• User deleted comments have their positive CCP removed (Common farming technique)

Archiving Data

• Voat is now archiving old submissions (current set to 3 months).
• Archived and Deleted Submissions, and their comments, can no longer be voted on.
• Vote counts are using individual vote counts instead of the up/down totals on comments/submissions*
• Users with High SCP/CCP should see an improvement accessing Voat when data isn’t in cache

* Please note that all point values will drop because of this new logic. Prior logic counted up/down totals on submissions and comments instead of the individual votes themselves (it was more performant this way). When a user deletes their account, their votes are removed but the up/down totals are not adjusted. Since new logic uses individual vote counts everyone’s points will be dropping unfortunately. Just heads up. @Atko was hit the worst of all, poor guy.

Future Feature Prep

• Schema changes were made to prepare for the re-release of Sets (grouping of multiple subverses). Voat will begin set development next week as we have designed many upcoming features upon this basic structural concept including categorization, new user centric functionality (more info soon), expanded and more functional blocking capabilities, and the concept of “following” users who publish feeds (more info soon).
• Naming conventions and indexing has been cleaned up in database.

Warning to Vote Brigadiers

I will shortly be banning hundreds of obvious alt accounts used to farm/brigade at Voat. While researching this problem, I noticed that no one is really innocent, meaning that we have both obvious farming/brigading going on but we also have this behavior from good solid users too. It is for this reason that I am not retroactively banning any accounts other than the obvious ones mentioned above.

From this point forward, if you brigade another users’ content your account will be banned.

Consider this fair warning that brigading and manipulating votes is no longer tolerated at Voat.

There is a new Sheriff in town.

Canary Notice:

https://voat.co/v/announcements/1330806

EDIT:

Crystal Ball contest is over. People who correctly answered #3 or LOL have been badged. I sure did get a lot of you to say LOL, Lol.

We get a lot of blackmail attempts here at Voat, perhaps one every two weeks. Nearly all are security related threats. This one though, well this one is a first. It is Voat's first DDoS threat and the first time we've seen lmgtfy.com used in the email body, so we have decided to share it for historical preservation.

If this "group" is serious (serious groups use lmgtfy.com) expect to see downtime. If they are mid-grade expect to get reacquainted with the having your bits checked by the one and only Voat Goat and/or some features turned off. If they really suck expect to see nothing.

I'm kind of excited. Let's take bets to make this interesting.

Anyone that correctly predicts tomorrow will get badged with a brand new shiny "I'm a Blackmail Wizard" badge.

ENTRY RULES: To make it easier on me, use the following text for your prediction and use only one of the phrases:

1. Downtime (Voat burns)

2. Voat Goat (Voat turns on DDoS protections and/or reduces functionality to deal with a DDoS, but stays alive for the most part)

3. LOL (Nothing happens because their moms took away their iPads)

What happens tomorrow Voat?

Edit: And no editing your entries cheaters. I know what you are thinking!

DDoS Email Threat:

FROM: xmr-squad@gmail.com

Sent: Monday, May 1, 2017 12:12 AM

To: admin@voat.co

Subject: Ransom request: DDOS ATTACK!

---

FORWARD THIS MAIL TO WHOEVER IS IMPORTANT IN YOUR COMPANY AND CAN MAKE DECISION!

We are xmr-squad. https://lmgtfy.com/q=xmr_squad

All your servers will be DDoS-ed starting tuesday (may 2) if you don’t pay protection – 3 Bitcoins @ 16qkhjMBqXCtZHF7wwLmBA4ShmKECHqpHB

If you don’t pay by tuesday, attack will start, price to stop will increase to 20 BTC and will go up 5 BTC for every day of attack.

One bitcoin costs about 1.3k USD at the moment.

You can buy bitcoins easily here: https://www.coinify.com/

This is not a joke.

Our attacks are extremely powerful – sometimes over 600 Gigabits per second.

So, no cheap protection will help.

Prevent it all with just 3 BTC @ 16qkhjMBqXCtZHF7wwLmBA4ShmKECHqpHB Do not reply, we will not read.

Pay and we will know its you. AND YOU WILL NEVER AGAIN HEAR FROM US!

Bitcoin is anonymous, nobody will ever know you cooperated.

Canary:

https://voat.co/v/announcements/1330806

Results are in and the Rogue Moderator has been removed.

Below are the percentage counts of what Voat decided was the correct course of action**:

1. 87% (The Purge)
2. 11% (Free Market)
3. 2% (Dissolution)

**Note that this is a very rough count as I simply looked for numeric values in parent comments.

Context: https://voat.co/v/announcements/1551024

Personally, I’m quite impressed with the consensus on this issue. It means that we understand the bigger picture when it comes to protecting the values we hold. This gives me hope that Voaters want to protect all speech, not just the speech in which they find agreeable.

I was prepared to follow through with Option 1 from the beginning, but I’m glad we used this opportunity to get feedback.

I also thought the Anon post allowed us to more freely voice our opinions and we might continue to use them for decisions in which the community should be involved with (which is most of them btw).

As for this subverse, I will handle the hand off shortly after I look into subverse transfers and see if any are valid.

Later this week Voat will be adding a few new site wide rules in order to handle this exact situation and hopefully a few others to help in related scenarios.

Thanks Voat.

Edit:

We will propose new rule changes before any additional transfers occur, new anon sticky will be posted tomorrow to get feedback.

https://voat.co/v/announcements/1330806

As many of you know, we had another “Rogue Moderator” incident at a subverse with a history of problems. This is now the second time this subverse has thrust itself into the spotlight and required admin intervention. It most likely will not be the last either, which is why I am writing this message.

As you know, Voat faces many challenges with the No Censorship and Freedom of Speech model we stand behind. Whether we like it or not, v/niggers is a major factor in the future of Voat, entirely due to its name and not necessarily the content. It is the first thing investors have a concern with and it tarnishes Voat’s public image.

I have read countless comments from users that they disagree with its existence but will fight to allow it as Freedom of Speech incudes both the good and the bad.

As we’ve said before, Voat is yours, it isn’t ours and as such, I want to put this to the community to get your opinions.

We have three options:

1. We can again handle the situation by purging moderators and handing this subverse off to another user. (Rinse and Repeat)
2. We can do nothing and let this particular subverse die.
3. We can disable this subverse and transfer content to a replacement.

Every option has its pros and cons and we may even have more options that I haven’t listed.

I already know what I would do, but this is a topic that I think the community should weigh in on, as we are all in this together.

So, let us know your thoughts.

I’ve marked this thread as anon so we can freely communicate on this matter.

https://voat.co/v/announcements/1330806

Just wanted to give advanced notice that we will hopefully be pushing one of Voat’s largest updates yet this weekend.

This update will feature a new underlying system for organizing subverses which we are calling Sets (grouping of subverses). If you are an old time whoaverser/OG Voater you will remember that Voat used to have Sets but we had to turn them off for performance reasons.

This update will reintroduce Sets, but as opposed to being an add-on feature as previously implemented, this update involves completely replacing the underlying system of Voat with a Set based infrastructure.

I will provide more information on the specifics of these changes later; how they benefit Voat currently and how they fit into our future plans.

The release of this update depends on the progress of testing but we are really pushing hard for a release this Saturday or Sunday.

Also, I need a few dedicated users who would like to spend some time testing this new code. If you have an interest, please PM me. I will only send out info to a handful of people, so first come first serve.

Thanks Voat!

P.S. I know there are some situations that need admin attention. I will deal with these when this update is released.

Canary

https://voat.co/v/announcements/1330806

Now that I have your attention, I have a confession to make: I lied.

Well sort of… because Voat 2.0 doesn’t exist yet, but it will in the future, and this thread is the first in a series of Quarterly Reviews we will be doing to get your feedback on what we need, what we need to improve, and the direction we need to move as a company and as a community.

I can finally announce that Voat’s features (software-wise) are now in the ballpark of a semi-functional platform. I’m not saying Voat is perfect, nor am I saying the features are mature, rather I am saying that we are nearing "acceptable" as a basic functioning platform.

But a basic functioning platform was never our end goal, it was just the first milestone we needed to hit. Now that we are approaching this milestone we need to lay out our future direction.

Voat doesn’t want to be a “clone” any longer. We want to stand up and proclaim our uniqueness. We want to put our differences on display and stake our future on them. Voat can’t survive without redefining ourselves, without evolving into something bigger, something better, something unique and new.

This is the post where we get to dream big, have no boundaries, no constraints, and live in world where everything is possible.

Hypothetical

You have an army of programmers, mountains of cash to burn, and you are the only board member: What does Voat 2.0 look like?

Thread is marked Anon

Canary

https://voat.co/v/announcements/1330806

Just a quick announcement to all subverse owners that Voat will be changing the default menu in less than a week (target is the 15th of this month).

Some subverses need to fix their CSS as the underlying HTML has changed. Cashmere on Light Theme is a known problem for example.

To change your menu from the current one (legacy) to the new one (dashboard) you can simply use a query string on any url on the site.

What we are talking about:

Picture of Dashboard Menu

Turns on new Dashboard Menu:

?menu=dashboard Turn On New Dashboard Menu

Turns on Legacy Menu:

?menu=legacy Turn On Legacy Menu

The HTML of the menu has been changed (top bar as well as drop down), even though we did try to make it as backwards compatible as possible by including as much of the old css attributes as possible. Please see comments in HTML.

Now is the time if we need to make any improvements or fixes to anything related to the new dashboard menu or html. Please post dev related stuff to the existing thread here: https://voat.co/v/voatdev/1689138

Thanks Voat.

Canary

https://voat.co/v/announcements/1330806

Voat is experiencing an influx of spam in various subverses so we are issuing an open call for Janitors (Mod Level 3) on all system subverses. We will be taking on 3-5 right now on every default sub.

Terms and Conditions:

1. Janitors are to delete obvious spam only. If it isn’t obviously spam, let it be.
2. Do not delete anything that violates the rules of a subverse. Removing rule violations is the moderator’s job to determine, not the janitor’s. (Many of these defaults have good moderators that have been there a long time and this is their job to determine such things).
3. Be respectful of all existing moderators. This job is about lending a helping hand (giving mods an army of spam fighters), not creating conflict. Voat will remove any Janitor that can’t mesh with the current moderators.
4. Subverse transfer requirements 1, 2, 5, and 8 apply. Please read before submitting a Janitor request.
5. Janitors will make an effort to report spammed domains, subverses, and users to /v/ReportSpammers. @Cynabuns and @First_Post_King have been doing remarkable things to help Voat in this area and reporting spam is the first step that starts this process.
6. Janitors will have access to Subverse Mail (Smail) to see the reports of spam that come in. Only "mark as read" those items you have handled as a spam issue leaving the remaining mail for the moderators to address.

If you can fulfill all of the above conditions, Voat may promote you. This is a great way to get involved for those of you that want to be part of Voat’s future.

System Subverses:

v/AskVoat v/aww v/books v/funny v/gaming v/gifs v/IAMA v/introductions v/movies v/music v/news v/newsubverses v/pics v/politics v/programming v/science v/Showerthoughts v/sports v/technology v/tv v/videos v/whatever v/Worldnews

How to Apply:

Click the link below and change the subverse in both the URL and TITLE and then submit it.

If the site does not let you submit the request (because of a similar link check), change the number 1 at the end of the url to a different number and try again.

https://voat.co/v/subverserequest/submit?linkpost=true&title=JANITOR%20REQUEST%20FOR%20v/Subverse&url=https%3A%2F%2Fvoat.co%2Fv%2Fsubverse%3Fjanitor%3D1

Together we can make Voat an unattractive target for spammers

News on the most annoying bug in history ever

We have identified a key bottleneck in the system. Now we are working on addressing this. Thank you so much Voat for being patient with us and our issues. I know it’s super annoying and we apologize sincerely.

https://voat.co/v/announcements/1330806

Just a quick announcement that we will be pushing an update to the site today sometime. This process will require database changes and thus we will have to shut the site down while this work is done. We estimate up to 1-2 hours of downtime.

This update is making changes we need to build in new features we have planned and thus is more architecturally focused so no big changes in User Experience (yet). Exciting times to come though!

We will post an announcement announcing the changes afterwards.

Canary Notice:

https://voat.co/v/announcements/1330806