[Split From] Forum issues split from: What does the JREF Do?

[Cuddles]

the reaction isn't "we're going to figure out the problem and fix it!"

Bollocks. Have you even bothered reading any of the threads in Forum Management or Support? That's exactly what the reaction has been, and although it's certainly not been completely solved, I think you'll struggle to find anyone who claims it's anywhere near as bad as a month or two ago.

 

[tkingdoll]

I think you'll struggle to find anyone who claims it's anywhere near as bad as a month or two ago.

No struggle. I think it's much, much worse than a month or two ago. Half the time I can't get onto the forum (too many requests message). When I do get on, yes it zips along faster than it used to, but about one message in eight gets eaten by the same requests message thing, and I lose it, causing me to yell at my screen.

Previous to that I'd lost a forum post maybe three or four times in my entire history of posting here.

People are obviously getting frustrated, I'd be amazed if the metrics weren't bombing, and some people are being really productive and starting fundraiser threads and such. I'm really surprised that anyone, particularly a mod, would respond to a member's genuine concerns and politely-written questions with swearing and no actual information (such as links to the posts you refer to).

 

[The Man]

I usually compose my posts in word then paste them; it leaves me free to yell at other things.

 

[lofgoernost]

What Teek said. The Search lag is what I find the most irritating - researching threads has been too slow to really bother with for months, and has not improved much if at all by my reckoning.

 

[fuelair]

Bollocks. Have you even bothered reading any of the threads in Forum Management or Support? That's exactly what the reaction has been, and although it's certainly not been completely solved, I think you'll struggle to find anyone who claims it's anywhere near as bad as a month or two ago.

Sorry Cuddles but at least for me (and obviously teek) it is worse - I have had that new screen come up over twenty different (not counting when I would wait a minute or two, try and it would pop up again on the same item). I have gotten to the point where I control C every post before I hit submit reply so I don't lose them like teek did - and frequently (at least twice a day for the last week) when I click to go to Forum - or way worse, to pull up my specific posts under members list - it takes over a minute (members is rarely under two minutes) to go there (when the new thing doesn't pop up first). Yet, to compare, Snopes almost never (I understand there is less similar activity and don't know what their hit rate is, but...) has a problem of any real duration.

That really is worse (especially the new screen) than before. I assure you I do not blame mods or Terry for this - I'm not really sure there is anyone to "blame" at all. But, it is reaching the point where I am less inclined to get on because I want to be reading, learning and commenting rather than waiting, waiting, reading, learning, waiting, commenting, hitting control C, waiting, waiting, pulling up Quick reply, hitting contol V, waiting.................

 

[fuelair]

PS: in all fairness - because sometimes this happens - this morning it has run fine - if it was like this a majority of the time, I doubt anyone would be making the complaints.

 

[Dunstan]

Bollocks. Have you even bothered reading any of the threads in Forum Management or Support? That's exactly what the reaction has been, and although it's certainly not been completely solved, I think you'll struggle to find anyone who claims it's anywhere near as bad as a month or two ago.

I've read several of the threads in Management and Support, though I concede I haven't read them all. The last I've seen "officially" on the issue is that Terry has made some recommendations to the JREF, and it's up to the JREF to decide what to do.

From what I've seen, the mods and admins have been very responsive on these issues, and I'm sure Terry in particular has worked quite hard on these issues. This thread was in no way intended to be a slight on any of them. But, as we're so frequently admonished, the mods and admins are not the JREF. I put this thread in this section for a reason.

Perhaps I've missed some official response by Jeff Wagg or someone else, but if it's buried in a 12-page FM thread, that kind of supports my point, too. In my admittedly biased opinion, the Forum is an important part of the JREF's mission. The smart thing to do would be to have a prominent announcement stickied to the top of the forum stating what's going to be done and when it should be finished.

While the forum issues are important I hope we don't just focus on that as Dunstan has raised an important question. "What does the JREF do?"

I haven't been tremendously impressed with what they have done recently and no longer give to them. I give to the Freedom From Religion Foundation, The Skeptics Society and the American Humanist Association because they seem more actively involved with church/state issues, organizing frequent lectures, actively lobbying, producing magazines and DVDs, etc.

I was a member of JREF for three years and honestly didn't have a great idea what they did. I would gladly give them money though but only if I knew it would go to run the forum as I certainly use it enough.

Thanks, Harry, for addressing the larger picture.

 

[Monketi Ghost]

Cuddles, the problem is awful. The only forum I've ever been booted from or lost posts from, and I've been wondering the same things as the OP lately. Bottom line, if you compare this forum to others on the nets, we're uniquely messed up.

 

[Darat]

Sorry Cuddles but at least for me (and obviously teek) it is worse - I have had that new screen come up over twenty different (not counting when I would wait a minute or two, try and it would pop up again on the same item). I have gotten to the point where I control C every post before I hit submit reply so I don't lose them like teek did - and frequently (at least twice a day for the last week) when I click to go to Forum - or way worse, to pull up my specific posts under members list - it takes over a minute (members is rarely under two minutes) to go there (when the new thing doesn't pop up first). Yet, to compare, Snopes almost never (I understand there is less similar activity and don't know what their hit rate is, but...) has a problem of any real duration.

That really is worse (especially the new screen) than before. I assure you I do not blame mods or Terry for this - I'm not really sure there is anyone to "blame" at all. But, it is reaching the point where I am less inclined to get on because I want to be reading, learning and commenting rather than waiting, waiting, reading, learning, waiting, commenting, hitting control C, waiting, waiting, pulling up Quick reply, hitting contol V, waiting.................

(not as admin)

There are two issues intertwined here - one is the over all performance issues that have been going on for months and the "busy" screen.

Terry reduced the number of database connections because what was happening is that when the server (or rather MYSQL) started to stall more and more requests were getting queued and that overwhelmed the server and it couldn't recover so the box was having to be re-booted time and time again. With the limits Terry has put in place the server hasn't needed to be re-booted anything like it did, but we see the busy screen. Overall this has meant that the site and the Forum hasn't been unaccessible quite as much but it is more apparent when people can't get a connection.

Which of course doesn't mean that it isn't bloody frustrating!

 

[Darat]

Cuddles, the problem is awful. The only forum I've ever been booted from or lost posts from, and I've been wondering the same things as the OP lately. Bottom line, if you compare this forum to others on the nets, we're uniquely messed up.

Not true - whilst we are having terrible problems they are not unique to this forum.

 

[Gravy]

I think you'll struggle to find anyone who claims it's anywhere near as bad as a month or two ago.

It's much worse. Then it was slow and sometimes down cmpletely. Now I often can't get on at all. Several times I've composed a post, then gotten the "busy" message when trying to enter it. One learns to save the text so it isn't lost, but having to re-try five or six times is extremely annoying and destroys the flow of discussion.

People often want to post when it's busy, because that's when lots of interesting things are being said. Being told to come back later feels like a slap in the face. I'll probably be quitting the forum until the problem is resolved.

As for the rest of the OP, good questions.

 

[Gravy]

PS: in all fairness - because sometimes this happens - this morning it has run fine - if it was like this a majority of the time, I doubt anyone would be making the complaints.

That's because it's morining (in the U.S. east), a time of lower usage. Try it at noon or 1 eastern.

 

[billw]

...Yet, to compare, Snopes almost never (I understand there is less similar activity and don't know what their hit rate is, but...) has a problem of any real duration.

As your parenthetical implies, this is probably an apples-to-oranges comparison. I believe Snopes is mostly, if not entirely, static HTML - lacking the resource-intensive PHP application layer, and the resource-intensive MySQL database back end of vBulletin. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong.

 

[Darat]

I can bet that in about 30 minutes time (4pm GMT), I'll find the Forum pretty much unusable for a few hours - can't you USA folk start working shifts!?

 

[fuelair]

That's because it's morining (in the U.S. east), a time of lower usage. Try it at noon or 1 eastern.

Actually, this morning is not normal for me - I generally am on around 8:30 but the last week + a bit it has been slow then or I wouldn't have noted the distinction this morning. And you are quite correct, most 11:30 + is bad. Night not as much so - but often enough I still back up each post I make until I know it has gone through/has been re-sent.

 

[Terry]

I have records of when people are being denied connections. I don't see much of a pattern, really other than weekday afternoons (server time, US-Central) being slightly worse than the average.

 

[Cuddles]

OK, looks like I was wrong on that point at least. It's much better for me, but apparently not for everyone else.

However, the rest of my post stands. It's completely unfair to accuse people of ignoring or not addressing the problem, given the huge amount of work that has been put in to try and fix it. Not by me, I should add. I'd wager there weren't many forums being worked on on Christmas day.

 

[Miss_Kitt]

I recognize that this is a database-related issue. As someone who used to work in electronic banking (ATMs/POS/regional, national, and international network connections), I know that there are solutions, and that they generally aren't cheap. Hence my, "How many would chip in?" thread, to try to give JREF technical staff some idea what level of directed giving they can expect.

As several posters have said, what Inquiring Minds want to know is, Do we have a solution path? And if so, in overview, what is it and how long might it take. I realize that you can't make a firm delivery date commitment, but could we please get something along the lines of:

"We are analyzing our usage patterns and hardware configuration to see if we are getting maximum performance out of our equipment, or whether we will have to buy new and 'port the data over. We expect to have an answer sometime in March."
OR,
"We know that the problem is in the software, and the best guesstimate of how long it will take us to get our testing done, our data reloaded, and the new system up is about 5months. Sadly, this also means we will have a period of about 14 hours where we will either have to shut the site down, or users will have to accept that anything they post in that interval will be lost..."
OR,
"We are giving our ISP ulcers, and threatening legal action if they don't actually start working with us..." (okay, you wouldn't post that one)

Just give it to me straight, dude. I want to know what we know.

If the answer is, "We don't know," then the next question is (and I mean no disrespect to anyone currently working on the problem), Do we need someone else looking into it? Lord knows, in this economy, you should be able to get someone pretty quickly. For that matter, there is probably someone in the JREF community that has the background and would consult for cheap, as long as they get Randi to make their watch stop and start for them...I know of an SQL guy in LA, for instance, who is an IBM minicomputer hand. Etc. etc.

I don't want to come off as a lady dog here, but I know that a commercial site would have a solution path ID'd, or the method of determining the solution path in process, and would be providing that information to its users, ASAP. Informing the user community is not only courteous, but needful. We represent valuable resources that the JREF should tap for the Forum's betterment.

Just my opinion, but not without applicable background, Miss Kitt
former Production Database Manager
Exchange/Accel networks

(yeah, former -- we got bought by EDS, and I didn't like their business philosophy. If you spend 12 years with Nordstrom, you can't play nice in Wal-Mart's administration.)

 

[cj.23]

It's been better for me, but only in whereas before I got a "server not found" or loading times where i could compose one of my posts - and you know how long they can be - while it was still loading, and half the time it failed -- now I get a "too many connections, please try again in 2 minutes" - and rather than hours of downtime, it usually works in 2 minutes.

cj x

 

[The Central Scrutinizer]

I have records of when people are being denied connections. I don't see much of a pattern, really other than weekday afternoons (server time, US-Central) being slightly worse than the average.

That should be the least busy time, because everyone is at the office.