There seems to be a trend recently which looks as if it’s causing some problems with the board. That is, the habit of posting “random noise” just to see how long a thread will become or how high one can get their post count to hit.
Case in point: the recent “Threadkillers” thread which hit over a thousand posts, pretty much all not saying much except for seeing if they could be the final post in the thread.
There’s not enough evidence to say that this is the specific problem, but during the last few days problems have been reported with board slowdowns. I closed the thread yesterday and almost immediately we got reports of things shifting back into high speed again. So the inference is there that this problem is what is causing some of the access problems for the board.
So, before we get to the point where we feel we have to take official action, I asking if you could please keep things under control. Speaking for myself, post counts mean absolutely nothing. (I jokingly mentioned to the other mods that if I saw one more “Post Count Party” thread, I was going up to the clock tower with a sniper rifle.) Quality is what we’re looking for here, not quantity. If you have something to say by all means say it.
But please also have some consideration for your fellow dopers who might also be trying to access the board.
Thanks,
Eutychus55 (who is more than a little cranky this morning)
for The Straight Dope
I understand. I’ve been noticing some odd slowdowns, and didn’t know what was up. That’s a reasonable suggestion.
In the UBB, when the boards were younger and slower, there were talks of trimming the fact by deleting or archiving some of the older useless threads, like what happens here or in ATMB. Whatever happened to those ideas? There could be several that could be good to eject via a courtesy flush of the boards, like “SterlingN’s eighth post party” or “SterlingN recks this thread.” Anyway, how much server space does it take to hold 55,000 threads, with about 100 or so active a day? It must be a lot.
Wait, now I’m going to be all paranoid before I post, thinking does this really need to be here? Do I really need to say this? Am I really contributing something of use? If I follow these new strict standards, I might never post again!
Sniff. Good thing I have other outlets for my mundanity. Friends of Tracy, watch out, your inboxes are about to be flooded!
I just licensed vBulletin for my site, and as I was reading through the documentation, I remember seeing something to the effect that searches were the most resource-intensive function. I can only imagine that the servers probably whimper when someone does a search on Handy.
I think you’re right about the “let’s get our post count up” threads - that should probably be kept to a minimum. Maybe archiving/deleting some of these old threads per Sterling’s suggestion would speed things up a bit? Also, I set up my vBulletin with a separate, dedicated server for the mySQL database. Granted, my boards just got started out, and they’re for a closed, private community, but they’re lightning-fast with the dedicated database server. Also, the manual says that it recommends running PHP as an Apache module - doing it any other way also slows things down. Maybe checking into how this is set up might yield some additional speed?
Correct me if I am wrong, but I don’t think they are saying “No more bellybutton or morning threads”. They just dont want anymore “Be the last poster to say something nice about my belly button and you win” thread.
Yup, nobody is saying that, this is my own idea. I’m just the only person on this board noble enough to give up her belly button threads so that others might have the opportunity to post ass crack threads.
Great. I spend the last year patiently building my post count up to a respectable amount and now I hear you want quality. I guess this is the last you’ll hear of me.
Well, here’s an idea, Eutychus55: Why not just reset all the post counts to zero? That’s right, zero everyone out, from Satan all the way down to, uh, someone who’s not even in the double digits.
And re-zero them every month or so. Then no one will be obsessed with building their post counts anymore.
I don’t think that would work, because then people would get obsessed with trying to post the most in that one month. Can you imagine? And the way it is now, most people seem to mellow out after the first thousand or so posts.
Blackclaw I am sorry, but my mind is made up. For the good of the board, no more tater-centric threads, ever. But I’m sure someone will post something about their belly button soon.
