[Easter Results] Sythe Spring Quarterly [Dunworry interviewed!][Admin Q/A]

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Sythe.org News

Staff Changes​

Dunworry → [color=#c3333]Dunworry[/color] (Market & Runescape Mod)

Brendan → Brendan (Support Center, Community & Market Mod)

THERSG0D → THERSG0D (Graphics, Community & Market Mod)

Blupig → Blupig (Off-Topic & Market Mod)

Blade → Blade

[COLOR=#c3333]R2Pleasent[/color] → R2Pleasent

[color=#c3333]SellerMan[/color] → SellerMan (Global Mod)

Jack Goff → Jack Goff → Jack Goff (Administrator)

[COLOR=#c3333]Travis[/color] → Travis​

Community Development Team Changes

Welcoming Bleuskittle, PureAddiction, Gracious, Excelont and FlyingToast to the Community Dev Team! We'll be working on a few new ideas for upcoming events that you won't want to miss!

Congratulations to [color=#c3333]Time To Buy[/color], who is taking over one of the Community Dev Team leader positions. We know you won't let us down!​

Other Changes​

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Bogdan → Bogdan (Official Middleman)

Moes → Security Team Leader

PureAddiction → Official Bond Holder

Meteor → Official Bond Holder
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Gaming News

[RS3] New skill | Invention

The long awaited Invention skill has finally been released. The requirements to train Invention are 80 Divination, Smithing and Crafting thus making it the first Elite skill in Runescape. Train the skill by disassembling your unwanted items and experimenting with their constituent materials at an Invention workbench. You can add special perks to your armory and gain new ways to quest, skill and fight throughout Gielinor.

Read more here​

[RS3] God Wars Dungeon 2

Watch the trailer here

Godwars Dungeon 2 was finally released this march, the original Godwars Dungeon has been around since '07 so it was time for some new Generals to battle! The dungeon is a mid-to-high level combat area, focussed strongly on boss battles against the Generals who are leading their troops through the dungeon chambers. It is very much like the original Godwars where you must raise your kill count to the required amount and enter the boss rooms.

The requirements for each boss are as follows

• Helwyr (Seren’s general) – 80 Magic
• The Twin Furies (Zamorak’s general) – 80 Ranged
• Vindicta & Gorvek (Zaros’s general) – 80 Attack
• Gregorovic (Sliske’s general) – 80 Prayer

Read more here​

[RS07] Deadman Invitational

Watch the full stream (The Last Hour) here

The top 2000 DMM players are eligible to participate in the Deadman Invitational. It commenced on Monday, March 21st and lasted six days. On the last day, March 26, starting at 6:30PM GMT "The Final Hour" began. During The Final Hour, poisonous gas was released, resulting in every participant having to fight each other to the death, with the winner being awarded $10,000.

An hour after the Deadman Invitational, Seasonal Deadman Mode (SDDM) was released. Seasonal Deadman Mode will last 3 months and will end with yet another magnificent battle between the remaining players. At the end of said 3 months, SDMM will be deleted from the game.


Read more here​

[CSGO] Esports Championship Series S1

Counter-Strike is gaining momentum. FaceIT announced together with Twitch.tv that they're starting a new League. The Esports Championship Series (ECS) will include a prize of a whopping 3.5 million USD (approximately 3,080,000 EUR), spread over two seasons.


Read more here​

Dunworry (Andrew) Interviewed!

Click here to listen to the interview!


If you have any more questions for Dun, ask 'em here -
http://www.sythe.org/meet-staff/1918052-dunworry-andrew.html​

Egg Painting!

We had so many great egg painting entries this year! All of them were so well done, we had a really hard time choosing the winners. Everyone that participated received a participation point that will be used towards a minirank, but only the top three receive cash prizes.
Thank you everyone for participating! Now onto the top three...

1st place JayiARTS with this unique entry. Congratulations on winning $50 and a prizebox!

Spoiler: Check it out!

2nd place uJesterwind with this beautiful entry. Congratulations on winning $30 and a prizebox!

Spoiler: Check it out!

3nd place Aklan with this well designed display. Congratulations on winning $20 and a prizebox!

Spoiler: Check it out!

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We had a lot of fun hosting this competition! Thanks again to everyone for participating.
Here are all of the other entries!

Spoiler: Check them out!

1.

Spoiler: Bus

2.

Spoiler: Poppa

3.

Spoiler: HanChulo

4.

Spoiler: JayiARTS

5.

Spoiler: befriend

6.

Spoiler: uJesternWind

7.

Spoiler: Aklan

8.

Spoiler: br4ndon40

9.

Spoiler: Dobi

10.

Spoiler: Lioness

Carrot Quest!

We had a hoppin' fun time with Carrot Quest!
Thank you to the Sythe community for participating and helping to make this a successful event!

In 1st place ($50 + a prizebox) we have PlanBUK

Coming in second ($30 + a prizebox) we have Dobi

In third ($20 + a prizebox) we have Drimble​

This was an amazing game! Thanks again to everyone for participating.
**Everyone that participated will be receiving a minirank​

Sythe/Matthew Xenforo Q&A

Spoiler: Click here for the Q&A!

Spoiler: Answers

Sythe:
Possibly as a high level perk

Matthew:
No. That isn't currently planned. Animated avatars may be possible though.

Spoiler: Answers

Sythe:
Xenforo is more of a forum/community development toolkit than complete forum software like vb3 is. It's designed to be highly extensible and secure, but it also lacks many of the features vb3 comes with. We've hand coded a number of things we had on vb3 which were missing on xenforo, for example: 'currently viewing' bar down the bottom of each thread/forum and beside the forums in the main page and a modcp.

We haven't come across anything that is impossible to port. Hopefully xenforo sticks around for a long time because we've invested a lot in setting it up.
Matthew:
Probably. Most of what you see in vBulletin is built in. In XenForo a lot is missing so we've ported a lot of things over by writing new code ourselves.

Spoiler: Answers

Sythe:
1. Still working out the style fixes, I can change this if it's undesirable.

2. Not immediately. Once we're settled into xen we'll refocus our attention on perks.

3. Yes this is going to be two rows for normal users and three rows for a certain donation level.
We're going to be implementing minirank collections. So for example you can get a pokedex to store your pokemon miniranks, and when you hover over the pokedex it shows a popover of your current pokemon miniranks.
We'll also be changing up the prizebox system so there'll be different types of prizebox as different rewards. Super rare only prizebox guaranteed to give you a rare minirank. Pokemon only prizebox guaranteed to give you a pokemon, etc.

4. I think the limit on the new software is 200x200 1MB. I don't think we've differentiated normal users from donors for avatar size yet, or if we intend to. I'll let Matt answer this. If the perk is lost we'll give you something else instead like slightly larger signature.


5. I've been thinking about this. We may tie random automatic minirank award to browse-time and number of likes received in certain forums. (Yes there are likes on xenforo)

Matthew:
1. For the username markup? Probably. We're carrying as much over as possible. This is a pretty minor thing though, so it may change.

2. Coloring won't change but perks will. XenForo allows all users to choose to have their online status shown/hidden, so that likely won't be a perk anymore. There also isn't support for additional post icons, so that perk may go away. I also don't think XenForo limits PM box size, so the larger PM box perk may go away too. We're still working out the kinks in this stuff. We'll look to add new perks where we can, but don't have any in mind yet.

3. Yes. The maximum displayed on a post will be limited to 20 or 30. I believe we're looking at going with 30 right now.

4. Not sure, Sythe is working on avatars.

5. We're looking at adding random minirank awards when posting but this will likely come after the initial transition to XenForo.

Spoiler: Answers

Sythe:
I'm not going to interact any of my bitcoin projects directly with sythe.org. Bitcoins are a magnet for malicious attacks. When we got hacked in 2014 the hacker was looking for bitcoins in the unfinished wallet implementation (fortunately there were none.) I haven't even looked at the bookshelved vb4 suggestions, but I will take a look.

I will be writing up game projects later this year after xen is out and after my move to NZ. Any direct interaction with sythe.org will be by way of miniranks such as poker chip.

Yes definitely. We are attempting (slaving in fact) to create an identical look and feel to the current theme. However this is a transitional step to make sure people are still comfortable with the board. We will be releasing some new themes shortly after xenforo comes out. Matt has been working on a flat dark theme for a while.

Matthew:
Not sure about Sythe wallet or the old suggestions. It would depend on the suggestion as XenForo is radically different code wise. We do intend to offer additional themes in XenForo but they'll be a pre-defined set you can choose from, not customizable.

Spoiler: Answers

Sythe:
1. Menu system at the top of the page is a lot more condensed and easier to navigate. They will probably then notice that they get alerts when people reply to or like their posts.

2. Absolutely. We're not going to leave donors high and dry.

3. The database and underside layer and the transitional theme.

Xenforo for all its pros has one massive con: it's not designed with large boards in mind AT ALL. We run multiple servers underneath the forum software to handle / distribute the database and page serving load. Xenforo wants to run on a single server with a single mysql instance and a single file system (which it stupidly uses to store avatars and other data). I've had to write a set of php wrappers to sit under the forum software and trick it into thinking its running on one super massive server when actually its on a distributed platform. I had to reroute all its disk IO read and write operations into a distributed blob database without directly modifying the forum code so that it can still be updated with routine patches from the vendor. Trust me when I say some of this code is at the bleeding edge of my ability, and I've been writing code for 16 years and have a degree in software design.

Unfortunately I was somewhat mislead by https://forums.digitalpoint.com/ who are an insanely massive forum running xenforo. Turns out they've had to modify it just as much as we have.

If you're interested in the fine details I've blogged about it extensively here: http://www.sythe.org/spam-forum/1916267-xen-dev-blog.html

Matthew:
1. The PM system is completely different and the alerts/notifications is very new and different compared to vBulletin.

2. I hope so, but we haven't been focusing on that yet. If you think of something after spending some time on XenForo, be sure to suggest it.

3. Definitely porting over the Sythe skin. Most of the features and tweaks for username images and whatnot are easy. The most time consuming thing BY FAR is porting the look and feel.

Spoiler: Answers

Sythe:
Vb4 is some of the worst forum software ever written. Slow buggy insecure, the list goes on. Jelsoft (makers of vb3) were taken over by Internet Brands. When this happened the lead programmers left and formed Xenforo. So vb4 is not really vb4. It is completely different software written by different people. Xenforo is effectively the spiritual successor to vb3... it is effectively vb4 if that makes sense. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XenForo

We need software which is still covered by vendor security updates first and foremost. We are not a large enough operation to cover every line of code ourselves and guarantee security on an outdated platform. It is much more secure to run routine updates/security patches from a vendor. That said, Xenforo is also designed around a more secure architecture. It avoids data execution wherever possible which means it is a lot less vulnerable to things like sql inejction and php injection.

Matthew:
VB3 is OLD and has a lot of holes in it we've had to patch. It's also not mobile friendly and not built for the modern web. Newer versions of vBulletin are crap, so we never really entertained the thought of staying with vBulletin. XenForo seemed like the best option for a forum as large as Sythe.

Spoiler: Answers

Sythe:
We were originally going to use a mariadb (mysql) cluster with each node also running a php/lighttpd instance and connecting and writing directly to itself. However this results in thousands of deadlocks even under light loads (in lay terms that's where two servers try to talk over each other). Mariadb uses what's called opportunistic locking and xenforo isn't designed *at all* to avoid deadlocks. In the end we still used the cluster technology but overlaid it with a master/slave database adapter. Essentially there is a designated* member of the cluster which only processes writes operations and the rest of the cluster only process reads. Effectively this is a surrogate master server. I disabled the lighttpd and php instances on that machine so it can have all the IO avaliable for writes. This was found to be the most effective way to avoid deadlocks.

Matthew:
Don't understand the question...

Spoiler: Answers

Sythe:
Pretty much everything we did turned out to be harder than expected, sometimes a lot harder. That's why we're so far behind schedule. I also had to learn CSS3 really, really, really well to make the transitional theme fit on xenforo. (It is an ongoing waking nightmare I cannot wait to be done with.)

*not a poop joke

Matthew:
Learning a completely new code base and methodology for coding. XenForo uses MVC coding which is object oriented and completely different from vBulletin. It also has a completely different skin/style system.

*** The answers above are accurate as of the writing of this message. Anything is subject to change as we continue to explore XenForo and transition things over to the new software.

User Accomplishments This Quarter!

Bleuskittle​

1. Readmitted to the CDT

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C0ngs​

1. Made Friends!

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Decimate​

1. $50 Donor
2. 50 Vouches

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Dropperz​

1. $100 Donor

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Excelont​

1. Joined the CDT

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FireZ​

1. #1 on Staff for most scam report handled all-time
2. 5,700 Bans Issued

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Gracious​

1. $500 Donor
2. Became a member of the CDT
3. Completed an OMM Application

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Gun Is God​

1. $50,000 worth of trades in the past year

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Hulk1x1​

1. 70 Vouches

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King Krab​

1. $300 Donor

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Mardoude​

1. 3,000 Posts
2. 200 Vouches

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Meteor​

1. 1,337 Posts

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Mootrucks​

1. 100 Vouches

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PureAddiction​

1. $500 Donor
2. 850 Vouches
3. 95 Referrals
4. 5,000 Posts
5. Became a member of the CDT

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Superfluous​

1. 10,000 Modscore
2. PMed first by Sythe
3. 1 Year on Staff

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Superman​

1. 30,000 Modscore
2. 50,000 Total Moderator Actions

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[color=#c3333]Time To Buy[/color]​

1. 1 Year on Staff

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Political Meme Competition
Thanks to everyone who took part in the competition!


The winner was Smoothx who will have his piece stickied in the spam forum for a week.
Here are some of the entries the CDT liked:

Spoiler: Entries

The Easter Egg Hunt
The Easter Egg Hunt results will be posted soon. Brendan had surgery and is still recovering. As soon as he can, we will post the results!

 

Congratulations to the winners and a big shoutout to all of the CDT members who helped putting this together!

 

Thank you CDT for working together to produce this newsletter. Thank you Sythe and Matthew for agreeing to the Q/A.

Sorry it took so long to post the (incomplete) Easter results. We will change how we run events in the future so something like this can't happen again. Most Miniranks should be awarded soon. When Brendan posts the egg hunt results, the rest will be given.

 

Congrats to everyone on the achievements.

The Sythe&Matthew Q&A was by far the most interesting part of this quarterly though, I'd like to see more of those.

 

Congratulations everyone and good luck with recovery Brendan!

 

This thread is excellent. Great work everyone! Thank you for contributing to the growing community here at Sythe!

BTW:
"PMed first by Sythe"
"5,700 Bans Issued"

Lmao.

 

yay i won cdt comp

 

Cool, thanks for putting this together

 

Good job everyone!

 

Nice but it says deadman invitational is new like that was one month ago lil

 

Great Job putting this together team ! <3

 

Thanks for putting together this event, CDT! Had a lot of fun drawing on a different canvas. Congrats to everyone that won!

Btw who should we PM to claim our prizes?

 

My question got skipped lol.

 

Great read, and congrats to everyone on the achievements and what not, listening to the Dunworry Sythe Interview right now really liking it so far.

 

Enjoyed reading "Sythe Spring Quarterly" good job CDT

 

Ay, this was actually a really cool thing to read, thanks.

 

Enjoyed listening to the Dunworry interview. That guy is hella succesful!

 

Interesting stuff.
The random miniranks from the dice rolls were not given yet?

 

Gotta say the interview was very interesting to listen to. Kind of like an mini podcast. I would love to see more

 

Well done to the CDT team. Nicely done, good read.

Thanks ^_^