Horrendous forum response times

[Déjà Bru]

Originally Posted by luckymann

Not at all. I'm quite pleased with it, actually.

The cavities don't get prevented is the point, even for dentists. OOTP appears to be trying to remedy this one. Admittedly, it seems like it might need some root canal work but I think they're doing their best. You and I both know things aren't quite as simple as just fixing something, especially with regard to tech.

I'm as frustrated as anyone that this problem is persisting. But accusing those in charge of neglect is a bit out of line, IMO.

No harm, no foul. Each to their own.

G

Hold on there, partner. I said nothing about neglect on the part of Matt, Lukas, or anybody else. As a matter of fact, if you scroll up toward the top of the previous page, you will see where I made the supposition that their hands may be tied by their business association with Com2uS.

When a small business is acquired by a corporation, many things change. One of them may be attention to customer service versus other priorities (hence the Bitcoin thing - it would be funny if that were actually the case). This I did say.

As a matter of fact, what I have been saying is that the website and forum computer appears to be commandeered for a sporadic major processing job. I'm not the one who brought up DDoS attacks, and I said that idea stretches credibility, giving OOTPD credit, if anything because they would have detected and remedied it by now.

All of this is speculation, of course, and I have had milder comments to make than some others here. Read posts more carefully and don't make me out to be a villain by putting words in my mouth.

[Westheim]

It's quite buttery smooth today!

There, I said it.

I hope you all live long and prosper if we never see each other again.

[Déjà Bru]

Originally Posted by Westheim

It's quite buttery smooth today!

There, I said it.

I hope you all live long and prosper if we never see each other again.

Which knocks the theory about DDoS into a cocked hat. Or perhaps the hacktivists/extortionists take weekends off? Unlikely. But people working for Com2uS may be off today, and the computers thus untrammeled.

[StLee]

The performance over the past week or so has been outstanding, so hopefully whatever bug, booger, or gremlin was in the system is now very much terminated, flicked, or sunshined.

[OmahaBaseball]

Originally Posted by StLee

The performance over the past week or so has been outstanding, so hopefully whatever bug, booger, or gremlin was in the system is now very much terminated, flicked, or sunshined.

Yes, it has been nice to have the forum running well again.

[kq76]

I credit Lukas. They seemed to get better just after he posted about them.

TIL: If you want something solved, get Lukas on the case.

[Déjà Bru]

Well, considering its free, and considering the fact that their hands are probably tied to some extent, we are unlikely to get any further information about this. I, too, am grateful that service has been restored but I wonder what happened and why it took so long to fix it.

It is free, yet I believe the forum is part of what I have paid hundreds of dollars for over the years. I will settle for them continuing their diligent upkeep and/or desisting from whatever they were doing with the host computer on the side that degraded the website performance so badly.

[Déjà Bru]

It's baaaack! Mining more Bitcoin, hmmm?

[kq76]

Originally Posted by Déjà Bru

It's baaaack! Mining more Bitcoin, hmmm?

You don't really believe that, do you? I'm sure they have dozens of other things they'd rather work on.

I just wonder when they say the heck with it and try a different forum software entirely. Or maybe just update to vBulletin 6. vBulletin 3.8.10, what we're using, released 9 years ago. 3.8 released all the way back in 2009. I hate to think of all the vulnerabilities discovered in all that time. I get it, they have systems in place that work with this version (namely, beta, the project tracker, and probably more), but at some point it's got to be awfully frustrating to keep coming back to working on this problem. I do think, "be careful what you wish for" as I type this out though. If they ever do update it, something will probably be lost or at least worse for a time.

[Déjà Bru]

Originally Posted by kq76

You don't really believe that, do you? I'm sure they have dozens of other things they'd rather work on.

No, I'm joking with that. Mostly.

But I do believe that, when it happens, it is the result of a special job being run. It has the earmarks; one minute, the website is quick as lightning; the next you start to see increasing slowdowns, culminating in 404 messages.

So, when the forum host computer is left alone, it runs fine. As soon as the other job(s) kick in, performance heads south in a hurry.

But, eh, they don't care. Or, to be more accurate, their parent company doesn't care.

[kq76]

I definitely think the devs care. Heck, some of them post just as much if not more than the most active of us so I can't see how they couldn't be as frustrated by the downtime as us. Plus, they get the extra benefit of feeling the pressure of it all when we don't, we just get the release of complaining about it. It just sounds to me like their resources are spread very very thin. And when you're owned by a big company I think it's a lot more difficult to convince the higher ups to cut into the profits a bit to fix a persistent problem. The best bet might be to just sneak into next year's budget, which would probably mean cutting out some other expense (or job).

[jpeters1734]

I just want the thanks button back

[Westheim]

Ya, it's pretty dire today...

[Déjà Bru]

Originally Posted by Westheim

Ya, it's pretty dire today...

And then, click, it's back to normal now. You see what I am saying? Somebody is monkeying with the machine and when the job is over, it reverts back to hosting this web site.

[David Watts]

Originally Posted by Déjà Bru

And then, click, it's back to normal now. You see what I am saying? Somebody is monkeying with the machine and when the job is over, it reverts back to hosting this web site.

Could it have anything to do with a new hotfix being out? Was the last time it acted up during a patch release?

[Westheim]

Originally Posted by Déjà Bru

And then, click, it's back to normal now. You see what I am saying? Somebody is monkeying with the machine and when the job is over, it reverts back to hosting this web site.

Screw it, I'll have to cover my furry tush should the place go tits-up in the near or distant future. I just printed to PDF the first couple of pages of the Raccoons thread (which is the only way I can think of to include the screenshots) and every page is 15 MB - and that's the first pages, with rather little text and few screenshots at all.

It's 236 pages.

Finally a task for that TB-sized external hard drive I bought a while back.

[Déjà Bru]

Originally Posted by David Watts

Could it have anything to do with a new hotfix being out? Was the last time it acted up during a patch release?

Hmmm. David, if that were the case, wouldn't you think the devs would relay that information? I mean, for that purpose, I think all of us could excuse momentary slowness and outages.

But what does that entail? Compiling a file and uploading it? You mean to say that OOTPD and Com2uS cannot afford a (separate) machine to do the job adequately and not continually compromise the performance of these forums?

And if it's hotfix downloading that you are talking about, the shift from bad to good is too abrupt for that explanation.

[Déjà Bru]

Originally Posted by Westheim

Screw it, I'll have to cover my furry tush should the place go tits-up in the near or distant future. I just printed to PDF the first couple of pages of the Raccoons thread (which is the only way I can think of to include the screenshots) and every page is 15 MB - and that's the first pages, with rather little text and few screenshots at all.

It's 236 pages.

Finally a task for that TB-sized external hard drive I bought a while back.

Heh. Say, YOU wouldn't be interested in using that beefy machine of yours to host these forums, would you?

[LD84]

Please use 0.01% of your PT revenue to upgrade your********** forum severs and software.

Please and thank you

[Westheim]

Originally Posted by Déjà Bru

Heh. Say, YOU wouldn't be interested in using that beefy machine of yours to host these forums, would you?

Bad pick. Those claws are not suitable for doing any sort cabling.

Also, if I flick a switch and the thing on the other end doesn't go "brrr", I usually just shrug and go out and stea- ... I mean, buy a new one.

Btw, it's even worse today than yesterday. Bleak times.