[LAU] Linuxaudio.org server admin

[Ivica Bukvic]

Dear fellow linux audio/multimedia enthusiasts,

It's been some time since I officially addressed the entire la* community.
This has been in great part because things just worked. Robin, who has in
great part been the mastermind behind a number of initiatives currently
being hosted on the lao server has officially stepped down a year ago (even
though I still tend to bug him way too often ;-) as the sys admin and while
we have a couple additional volunteers helping man the server, it appears
that we really need someone who will step in just like Robin did to help me
carry the burden of maintaining this huge ecosystem of sites and pages.
More so, it appears that some pages have been covered with spam/non-working
content, and given the current state of lack of adequate manpower to manage
these, my immediate response is to shut down ladspavst page which is
currently in an awful state of disrepair, filled with non-working content
and spam. The very fact it's taken me this long to spot it speaks to the
fact that I alone cannot keep up with everything that is happening on the
site. This is particularly important because if this gets any further out
of hand, the University may decide that the content hosted on these pages
goes against the very grain of what a taxpayer-run site should be hosting
and we may lose what has been so far a very generous no-limits hosting. To
put this in perspective, we've been burning steadily 1-2TB per month. For
this reason, in the interest of our great multi-site ecosystem, I will be
pulling down any sites that are not actively maintained and that also have
submitable user content (read: ability to receive unfiltered spam). If
anyone wishes to step up and maintain any of these, in order to avoid any
further mishaps like the one with ladspavst, I would like to propose that
from now on all the admins submit monthly blurbs assuring me that
everything is indeed being managed as it should be. This will certainly
help avoid situations like the one currently with ladspavst which is also
not the first time we've had problems with that site. I can and will gladly
bat for us to get us more hosting space and processing power, but this will
be heavily contingent on ensuring that our site is not hosting anything
that is potentially offensive or outright inappropriate. This does not mean
that we should not have passionate discussions on our mailing lists, but at
the same time I think one would be hard-pressed to convince anyone that
links to questionable chemical substances or worse yet inappropriate
content is something that will help us continue to enjoy this wonderful
service.

You all have been a part of this wonderful community and you all have in
many ways helped shape it into something truly amazing. Let's make sure
that we don't lose this in this process. My hope is that we will keep most
(all?) sites intact. But the reality is that we simply currently do not
have the adequate manpower to maintain all of it. More so, the server has
had its instabilities that we're trying to address and on top of that soon
we'll be forced to upgrade to a new KVM system as our University's
infrastructure transitions to its new and better iteration. This transition
will be by no means a small feat if we are to maintain an uninterrupted
service and is something that will undoubtedly require your help. If anyone
is interested and willing to assist in this process, please do not hesitate
to contact me.

Best wishes,

ico
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