[sticky entry] Sticky: Got Issues?

Nov. 8th, 2020 03:39 pm
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Here's a new sticky for Got Issues.  If you have an issue, post it here. 
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First of all, I'd like to ask anyone who's gotten access to do tag wrangling here on SquidgeWorld - we're still flailing from the AO3 downtime. We've got over 10,000 tags between Characters, Relationships, and Freeform tags still yet to be wrangled. And if you're interested in being a wrangler, let us know!

Second, we know there are quite a lot of people who not only write fanfiction, but original fiction as well - fiction that is not tied to a fandom. Because of this, we have created a standalone fandom of "Original Works", which you can think about more in the concept of "Movies and Film" and "TV and Streaming Video." This is the "parent" collection, and (as of Sunday when we perform weekly maintenance), will appear along as one of the lists of Fandoms on the upper left menu. Under "Original Works", we have created multiple types of works available for tagging purposes. When creating an original work, you have the following options available, along with a little explanation:

Original Works - Diaries and Journals: This is where you can create something with your own personal thoughts. Almost like a blogpost or such.
Original Works - Epistolary and Letters: Writing the letters between two lovers? This is where those would go.
Original Works - Essays and Meta: Think of this as the, "I'm here to convince you to watch more science fiction shows" or "Here is what action movies get wrong about female characters" and the like.
Original Works - Guidance and Instructions: I don't think this will get quite much use, but you never know. Things under this "fandom" are truly instructions, like "How to save money in THIS economy" or the instructions I wrote on how to implement the OTW code to bring a new archive online.
Original Works - Long Form Prose: Basically, something longer than a short story. A few chapters of a work you've created. Think "novella" which is one or more chapters, and 17,500 to 40,000 words.
Original Works - Lyrics and Music: As it sounds, maybe you've written some music and want the lyrics posted somewhere. Or you've rewritten the lyrics to a popular song. This is where you'd document it.
Original Works - Novel: If you've got an original idea and want to write a novel, use this one. These typically will be multi-chapter and have at least 40,000 words
Original Works - Poetry: Write some original poetry? Use this fandom.
Original Works - Screenplays and Scripts: Screenplays, scripts, and plays have very particular writing styles with dialogue, actions, and stage direction amongst other elements.
Original Works - Short Form Prose: This is a quick short story, or in terms of book size, a novellette. Those range anywhere up to 17,500 words.
Original Works - Others [Unlisted]: This is the catch-all if something else here doesn't fit. This is where most of the existing Original Works were documented under.

Per our policy on original works in the Terms of Service, point 7, these works CAN have Ko-Fi and Patreon links. Just FYI. All other links for Ko-Fi, Patreon, and the like that are intended for fanfiction-based works are not allowed.

If you have questions, please let us know! And as for now, back to tag wrangling.
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Because this is going around Tumblr, I thought I would address the issue.

An assertion by an individual on Tumblr is going around calling me/Squidge/SquidgeWorld a fascist organization that deletes works with no cares or such. That we're power hungry, etc..

Is there truth in this? If you know BOTH sides and not just the individual that's accusing us of this, you'll understand. I've gotten half a dozen trouble-tickets asking me to clarify, and so that's the impetus of posting this. Please make YOUR OWN INFORMED DECISION.

I've taken down exactly 2 works (works, not comments. Comments get deleted if they are commission spammers.). And the reasons are:

1) Person imported a work into SqWA from AO3. They didn't bother to clean it up at all - they left in all of the icons, kudos from AO3, etc. The formatting was a complete mess, and I got a couple of trouble tickets on it. I hid the work and was in the process of contacting the author when they emailed me, cussing me out, etc. At that point, I deleted the work because they decided "YOU'RE A FASCIST" and other lovely comments about my personage.

2) Person created one fandom work, and then the next day left 4 comments in 38 seconds (the Tumblr post I made for SqWA spam) saying they really connected with the 4 works they read in under a second. They attempted to commission spam, and as a result, we deleted their account. Including the one story that they posted.

Two works. With compelling reasons to have said works deleted, or at least hidden - but that is my opinion. And if you agree, that's fine. If you don't agree and want to call our organization a fascist organization for being respectful of archive users, well that's something for you to decide.  All I know is, the "hair on fire" screamers out there are really making it hard to want to continue giving to the community.


EDIT: About 18 months back or so, we had a transphobe who shit on trans people and wanted to force christianity on everyone - including SqWA users - and took every chance they could to stir up shit for the sake of drama. After 3 warnings and approval from the Squidge Board, they were banned, and all of their works were deleted. So it's actually more than 2 works if you could this douchebag that was banned.


Questions? Comment on this post or log a ticket.
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First off, SquidgeWorld didn't fully come up this morning, but that's because we've been working on Squidge Images. Our new anti-bot software didn't start as it was supposed to, but that has been found and corrected. So SquidgeWorld is up and running now.

Squidge Image Hosting went through an upgrade this morning and everything is working - with a limitation. Image hosting is there, and works like normal under the new code. Video hosting works as well, but for this we are relying on external storage (a cloud storage option) and THAT external storage isn't working yet. So, for right now we are still just hosting images. As soon as our hosting provider can figure out what's going on with our online hosting bucket, we will enable video uploads as well.

But for now - YOU CANNOT UPLOAD VIDEOS. Only regular images like normal.

EDIT: We NOW support the uploading and hosting of videos! But please be aware of a few things:

  • Videos are currently supported only if they are .MOV or .MP4 types. Other types such as .mkv are NOT SUPPORTED.

  • Videos must be 100 megabytes or smaller to upload.

  • Video upload can take up to 5 minutes to complete! Upload one at a time, and wait for your browser to respond.

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In just under an hour from the time of this post (at 08:00 Sunday Morning Pacific Time) Squidge Images will go down for an upgrade.

No official ETA on when it will be back up, but hopefully this afternoon.

Need a reminder why? Read the original post.
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Two very updates for Squidge Images.

The first update is we have opened up signup access for Squidge Images. Instead of having to leave us a ticket for an image hosting account, we have decided that it's been long enough, and the folks who were abusing image hosting have most likely moved on. So all that is done.

Second, and most important, Squidge Image Hosting will be down starting at 8am Pacific on Sunday, March 1st for an upgrade. Read that again.  I say this because we will inevitably get 8,000 tickets asking us why image hosting is down, and when will it be back up again. Seriously. We've seen this with FenRecs.com posts - they are completely ignored and people will log tickets asking when it will be back (later this week, we hope!).  This upgrade is important because will be transitioning from on-site hosting of images to remote hosting of images. Oh, and the upgrade should bring video support as well!  So if you have videos you need hosting and, like us, hate Youtube, you'll be able to host your videos on Squidge Images.

Again, Squidge Image Hosting will be down starting at 8am Pacific time on Sunday, March 1st for an upgrade.  We hope to be fully upgraded and back up within four hours, but we all know technology can be a giant pain sometimes.

Questions?  Leave us a message here, or leave us a trouble ticket by clicking here.
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From what I can tell, we were subject to some sort of attack that crippled the SquidgeWorld server. As such, we've banned the offending IP addresses that were sending thousands of requests per second (designed to overwhelm the server and bring it down), and have re-started the server. We went down about 11:30am Pacific Time, and should be up by 1pm Pacific Time.

Coincidentally, we got the usual "you rape fetisists and pedophiles!" abuse this morning, so more than likely the antis are behind the attack.
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In the last couple of weeks our image hosting seems to be being taken over by porn hosting and such. Everyone should know that we are here for fandom - whether that is NSFW or not. So yes, we allow nude images and such. But we seem to have been taken over by a few users who only post "porn for porn's sake".  What does this mean? They're screenshotting porn movies, etc., to use it for their personal or shared "spank bank."  NSFW image hosting is allowed - as long as it's fandom related.

Because we've had so many problems lately, signups for image hosting are currently disabled. If you want an image hosting account, you're going to need to fill out a request. Simply click on the link for support and let us know you want an Image Hosting account.  You need to submit the following in order for it to be approved:

  • Your desired username

  • Your desired email address (if it's not the one attached to your request)

  • Your role in fandom and/or just a statement saying you will use your Image Hosting account for fandom reasons.


Next, FenRecs.com is still down. We believe we have a hosting company, and they answered all our questions. Now it comes down to timing. I hope to have FenRecs.com back up and running by the end of the month.
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For those who have been using FenRecs.com - Squidge.org's fanworks recommendation site where you can rec your favorite fandoms, stories, pairings and such - thank you!  We've been going strong and sharing recommendations, which is what's needed in the fandom community.

Our host provider for FenRecs.com is shutting down in less than a month.  As such, we will be taking down the site and importing it into a new host.  It will probably take a couple of days so please if you do use the site, know that we are going to be down starting Friday January 16th, 2026, and will be down for a short period of time.  We need time to move the domain name and all of the data from one provider to another.

So get your recs in now, and know that starting this coming Friday, we'll be down until service is restored.  Questions?  Let us know.
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The SquidgeWorld Archive came back up successfully a few hours ago - but I was too focused and enraged on what's going on in the world instead of sending out an "up" notice like I normally do. So my apologies if anyone was waiting for me.

Basically, it was my own fault. I changed a backup structure without calculating the correct space needed, and ran up against all the available disc space on the server. Everything's been corrected, and barring something extremely odd, like SqWA becoming as popular as AO3 or something, we're pretty much good to go from here on out.  Backups are moved to their own 2Tb partition, and should never darken the doorstep of the server again.

Tell someone you love them today, even if it's just the cat. And know that you are loved and welcomed by the fandom community.
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I think we've finally uncovered the last issue ::knock wood::

First off, a couple of months back, some of the internal components of SquidgeWorld failed, and we had to move the drives and RAM to a new piece of hardware.  That hardware, while slower, was working fine until the internal disk drive became corrupted - so earlier this week we ran through a disk correction, which led to a database file corruption and then cleanup.

Then yesterday things started to go pear-shaped again, and subsystems like the search function started to crash.  After a bit of diagnosing, it appears that not only had that hardware fan gone bad, but it corrupted the RAM chips as well.  Those RAM chips seemed to work for the most part, but during some of the intense processing, would bomb the entire server.

So this morning we've replaced the RAM chips and brought the Archive back up.  And so far ::knock wood:: things appear to be working just fine.

Because we should (at least theoretically) be good now, I've also re-enabled Downloads.  Give the server a little try and let me know if you find anything hinky.
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As of right now, 11:53am on Tuesday, December 30th, 2025 SquidgeWorld Archive is back up and running!  If you see any oddities, please don't hesitate to let us know.

For transparency, here's basically what happened:

  • The server had a hard disk corruption that had to be corrected

  • Corrections were made, but there was an internal database that contained further corruption. The internal database was replaced with a backup so that the "redis" server (software that is required for SqWA to run) would come back up as well

  • With all corruption errors addressed, the system processed the data chunks like it normally does when it comes up.


We should be good to go from here on out. This does make a redeployment of SqWA a higher priority.  We're in the beginning stages of this.  More information will come about when we're ready to go.
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Currently, SquidgeWorld.org is down due to disk corruption.  We're running some processes to clean up the corruption. Hope to have things up and running within the next couple of hours.
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We're having an unexpected issue with our SquidgeWorld machine, and are actively working the issue. We hope to be back up asap. No current ETA.
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We've had a huge influx of people to SquidgeWorld in the last week or so, and it seems to come down to an incident at AO3 with underage fics.  This email is to respond to the half a dozen emails/trouble tickets that we've gotten asking us to clarify our stance on the issue.  Even though it's explicitly stated in the SqWA Posting Help section, we're pointing it out here, word-for-word.

Point 1 - Use of the Underage tag: The SquidgeWorld Archive does allow Underage fanworks to be added to the archive.
Point 2 - Use of the Underage tag with respect to fic ratings: Any fic that features the Underage tag and where the rating is Mature or Explicit, that fic must be locked to Archive users only. No exceptions.
Point 3 - Use of RPF tag: The SquidgeWorld Archives does allow Real People Fiction - RPF - to be added to the archive.
Point 4 - Underage/RPF tags on the same fic: If a user adds an Underage fic that is about RPF - Real Person Fiction - that fic must be locked to Archive users only. No exceptions.  NOTE: This rule is new, added in response to this very situation.

While some people may not agree, this is our stance.  We refuse to become gatekeepers of those who use the site; we will never tell you what you can and cannot post to the archive.  However, we want to make sure that people who use the archive and do not want to see those works are not inadvertently exposed to them.  This is why we have our locking policy in place.  If it's in the archive and meets the above points, locking must be completed appropriately.  And if it is not—and a recent quick check showed that people are not always respecting this rule—the locking will be done for you by the admins.

If you have any more questions, feel free to ask them.  But if you just want to sit back behind an anonymous keyboard and call us names, that's fine. We just don't need to know about it; don't send us a note to let us know you're calling us an asshole somewhere on the Interwebs. People already do this, and it's tiring.
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The SquidgeWorld Archive should be up before 3pm Pacific Time today, which means a total downtime of about 30 hours.

You should know, however, that while we were able to bring up the server on new hardware, that hardware is underpowered.  Not as much RAM as the old server, and the processor isn't as fast.  But in a way it's better to get things rolling again rather than having them sit around, waiting on a part that won't be here for a few weeks.

Thank you for your understanding!
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So we had an equipment failure for The SquidgeWorld Archive that makes the current machine unusable.  We're weighing options, but there will be no update available for the immediate future.  We will be back up, but it's going to depend on a few things.  First of all, we just ordered the necessary equipment as a backup, but we're going to attempt to move the "innards" of the server to a new machine that we have already on hand.

It will probably be Sunday before the server is back up and running again, though we cannot guarantee this.

The good thing is, with our judicious backup policy, we're sure no data is lost.  Indeed, the drives are working just fine.  We just now need to solve a few technical issues before we can come back.
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The SquidgeWorld Archive is currently offline due to a hardware issue.  We hope to be back up asap.
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If you're part of SquidgeWorld Archive, you may notice that the site will be down briefly throughout the day - today, October 26th, 2025.  This is because we are going to be adding a few things here and there to add links to Squidge.org's fandom offerings in the Community links/page, as well as additional clarification information for commenting.  The Community links additions will link to some of our pages on Dreamwidth where you can get additional information about Squidge and learn about challenges that are currently happening, and the additional information for posting comments is around discouraging commission spammers from posting.

As always, if you've got questions, don't hesitate to contact us!
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I'm over the moon to let everyone know that this year's annual fundraiser, the Summer Sleepaway Camp fundraiser has brought in $2,923.84.  That will definitely get us through the next twelve months of our hosting, legal, and other bills.  Thank you everyone who donated!  We could not be here without you all!

Over the next few days, the stickers will go out to anyone who donated more than $10.  And in the next week, the t-shirts will be printed and sent to people who donated $100 or more.
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First and foremost, while Squidge.org hosts the Jinjurly Podfic Archive, we do not control the domain name.  The domain name is still maintained by the original owner.  Having said that, the Jinjurly archive domain name expired - and all we can do is ask the current domain holder to renew it for us.  So we're waiting for that.  But, in the event this type of things happened, we preemptively registered the domain name AudioFicArchive.org for us to use.  So if you are currently trying to gain access to the Jinjurly Podfic Archive, please use this domain name for the time being:

https://audioficarchive.org 


Secondly, due to an influx of spam lately, I've made some changes to the spamassassin configuration.  There should be no negative side effects to this, so people using Squidge.org email should see a reduction in spam.  But if you notice anything odd - like you know you're missing email - then please let us know.  You can comment here or open a support ticket by clicking here.

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