Seven, as one who has been watching since the fabled 99’s, I want to thank you for your kind, gracious and fantastic offer. SDMB needs something like it and you desperately. Unless an earthquake or tsunami hits, I hold the chances of acceptance at a very small value, but some of us are pulling for you and us. Something must change or this great board is doomed to mediocrity or worse.
God, that’s an awful lot, with or without the hosting.
You are offering them a way to figure out what the matter is, and how best to deal with it using the server/service they already have. Even though there isn’t much hope expressed here, I rather imagine that if Jerry gets wind of it, he will be an advocate. I know that in his shoes, I would be. You’re basically offering a pricey consulting and analysis service at no charge. It’s like getting a coupon for a free tune-up and oil change along with instructions on how to do future ones yourself.
I’m pulling for you, Seven, along with many others. Here’s hoping.
Bottom line is, the board needs it. But politics and business plans will certainly come into play. I believe, therefore, it is safe to assume that a rejection of your offer will be tantamount to an announcement that the board is being allowed to die.
That was me, and if, based on your knowledge of what is involved and your knowledge of Jerry & Co.'s knowledge and ability, there would be nothing particularly difficult in their taking the reins if you should leave, I too would welcome our new Seven overlord. 
What happens when anyone who does any important job is suddenly unavailable? What if your favorite guy in the world, Barack Obama dropped dead tomorrow? Or Steve Jobs? Or Joe CEO? Or the guy who currently does what Seven is volunteering to do? Or your plumber? Oh, how will the world go on??!?!???!
Why yes, Mr. Bees, Seven was banned. For a bit
Why would you want him in control of the behind-the-scenes stuff when he so obviously hates this place?
I hadn’t posted here because I didn’t want to cross wires with The Man Upstairs, but for Chrissakes, Liberal, would you tone down the apocalyptic drama? It’s useless. And if somebody took this seriously and thought you had some more information here, then they’d be worrying needlessly based on this commentary. Let’s wait for an answer, alright?
Please clarify. Its that a direction as a moderator, or just your personal opinion?
It’s common sense . . . which apparently is not always so common.
Nothing is ever well served by hyperbole and hysteria and certainly nothing involving what happens to this website. People have a great deal of emotional investment here and anything that appears threatening is worrisome. And needlessly so. Why get people all ferklempt with gloom and doom statements?
It’s not helpful to ratchet up the tension and make people worry and it’s annoying, too.
Let things happen like they’re supposed to do without the drama, please.
"
So, if 7 tries to help this board and gets struck by a meteor, and dies, how are we worse off?
Similarly, if 7 makes like he’s going to help this board, but, instead tries to fuck with it; how are we worse off?
Many people think that this board is doomed. When, exactly, will the line be crossed, where, new, unproven, solutions need to be be tried? How sick does the patient get? At some point, the "Fuck it, we’re done vs. at this point we’re willing to try anything line needs to be crossed, or for heaven’s sake drawn.
Well, all righty then.
My concern with regard to the consequences of Seven tuning up the board and then leaving were predicated on the fact that I know nothing about how knowledgeable Jerry and whoever else works on this board are. It could be that Jerry, capable and knowledgeable as he may be, is simply too busy with other duties to perform the work necessary to make this board run smoothly. On the other hand, it may be that the board runs the way it does because he is too busy with other things and has only learned enough about this board’s software to get it to the point where it is now.
If the latter were the case, I could see a scenario where Seven got tweaked the board and the software and got everything running great and then had to leave for whatever reason, and that Jerry or whoever then wouldn’t know what to do and the board could crash or get all hosed up for some reason and they wouldn’t know how to fix it, thus leaving us with a board that is much more hosed up than it is now, or perhaps not working at all with them having no time to do the research and get up to speed enough to know what to do to fix it.
Seven answered this question roughly ten posts upthread when he indicated that Jerry would have no trouble continuing in the event he left.
Nor do I actually.
The really cool thing about virtual environments is it allows us to play with systems first. We can make a duplicate config and get the system running the same as the live system, make a backup and test the hell out of things. If in the course of testing you damage the system you revert to the backup and you’re up and going again.
We use virtual systems all the time in our datacenter for testing and production. In fact, giraffeboards.com is running in a virtual environment and I have a copy of it is set aside. If I ever wanted to test something I can fire up the copy, give it another IP address and play to my hearts content.
If for some reason anyone at the dope (tech side) is concerned about making particular changes I can fire up a virtual environment on my end (or they can set one up over there) and Jerry or whoever can run through the documentation and verify all things are kosher before Jerry or whoever implements it on the live environment.
This tests both the documentation, the process and the results.
Like I said up thread I don’t even need server access to try and help.
Most server configurations aren’t really “trade secrets”. I’m willing to share any of my server configs in public. I may not tell you how particulars in the network are set up (access to the private network and which devices are allowed what access to which device), but the standard configs like how big a database is, how the webhead/s communicate with the database, how apache is configured, load balancing configs, etc, are safe to share.
Having said that, let’s lean a different direction. Perhaps, because this system is stumbling and there are a fair amount of us tech types around, it might be possible to have a think-tank type thread.
Jerry could share the details of the configs and we can as a group discuss best practices and how to create a more stable system. Several of us have the ability to duplicate the system locally (unpopulated with client data of course), rebuild configurations, throw a simulated load at it and see what it does. Configs can be documented in the thread and open to peer review. Jerry can preview the thread and see what makes sense for his servers and implement what will work best.
I’d even build the duplicated system on this end and give the think-tank thread people access to it to play with.
Just being able to share might prove noteworthy. My co-worker and I bounce ideas off each other all the time. More often than not when one of us is scratching our head wondering why it won’t work the other looks in and says “Dude… typo line 67. Comma not a period.”
Just a thought.
:rolleyes:
Pshaw. One banning-cum-suspension? Lightweight. I’ve been banned what? 19? 20 times?
I’m an underachiever. :sciencefail:
What you seem to be describing is a standard software development environment, where you can create a “sandbox” to play in without having any impact on the actual functioning to the board user (happening behind the scenes and all), a testing environment, where tweeks and changes can be run for weeks if necessary and put under rigorous “real world” scenarios, and the final production environment, which would be where the actual tested/de-bugged product would be, and would be the only software the users of the board would interface with.
This is a great offer. However, I do understand the concerns that some have posted. I assume that Seven is a real person with a real reputation, so I don’t believe he’d risk that to damage a message board that is in reality a hobby, diversion, a virtual family or whatever it is to most of us.
Don’t get frustrated over mods and admins not posting to this thread. The only two people I’d really like to hear from is Jerry and Ed. They are the two that can probably give us all the best answers because they seem to be the ones that are closest to the technical, day-to-day issues of the board. And maybe that’s really only Jerry, but it’s been stated numerous times that this is not his first priority at CL, and knowing that, it’s hard to get angry at him personally.
It’s also important to note (as many have), that this is not the first time a proposal of these types of services have been offered, usually free of charge, and there has never been any interest from TPTB. I doubt this offer will be any different, but I wouldn’t mind being surprised.
I think this offer could have been made to Ed, Jerry (or Tuba or whoever) behind the scenes, let it play out, and if Seven didn’t get a positive response, then I think that posting about it would have been fine. I wish he would have waited, though, until he got the thumbs up or thumbs down before discussing it; these types of threads do nothing more than frustrate most long standing members who have the desire to see the board stick around and improve performance. It’s not as if we all have never had many more positive experiences with message board websites all over the web, and can’t understand why this place can’t seem to get its act together.
From my own personal experience, this is the worst performing message board I’ve continued to use. The quality of posters here is what makes it unique IMO, but I don’t come here as much as I would if the board were running properly. I don’t think anyone has requested anything in the way of an outrageous or impossible performance improvement/upgrade. Most of these come from users who see how great a message board this could be if only it were more technically sound. And the more technically savvy folks out here know how easy and trivial some of these issues really are.
But I’ve never been given the impression that this is on anyone’s high priority list at CL. Perhaps it’s because they haven’t figured out a way to generate a real, sustainable revenue stream from it. And perhaps if we all went away, the problem would be solved from CL’s POV. They don’t really need a message board to supply the world with archived SD columns, posting a new question/answer every week. But one of these offshoot websites might actually stick, and when that happens, this place will go dark quickly (the message board, not the SD site itself).
Maybe this result would be the best for all concerned. CL would shut down something they can’t figure out how to run properly, and the teeming millions could go elsewhere for their daily digital coffee breaks.
Just my 25 cents.
This is, actually, a very good point. While my primary allegiance is to the SD, its collapse wouldn’t be the disaster it might have been in the past, because of the alternative boards that have been set up. It feels almost sacriligious to be typing this, but I do feel that this community could now successfully migrate elsewhere if necessary.
Really really good points, Stink. Not just this, but throughout your whole post. This stuck out to me, though. There’s no point in hearing Samclem’s opinion of it one way or the other. Even if he supports it, it is unlikely that the mods themselves will be called upon or polled about whether to accept the offer. You’re right. We should wait to hear from Jerry (or Ed speaking on behalf of Jerry.) I do still say, though, that sending this to Ed behind the scenes could have been a waste of time. Ed is smart, but doesn’t know a serial port from a USB port. (I exaggerate, perhaps, for effect.) The one to reach is Jerry, and it does help to have corroboration from people who have worked with Seven and/or with the technology at issue. At least, it should.
Common sense suggests that you are in a conflict of interest, and therefore should clearly state when you are speaking as a poster or as an SDMB offiial. This is a discussion board, and this is the forum on this board to discuss this board. Liberal was doing so. You and Marley, who are both in conflict of interest positions, have essentially told him to quit putting forth his opinon. What is common sense to me is that the two of you should clearly set out whether this is your personal opinion or that it is a direction by an authority for the SDMB.
I appreciate that defense, Muffin. 
But I really don’t think Tuba was taking a personal swipe at me. At least, I didn’t take it that way. Samclem was a bit over-dramatic, but it’s no big deal. I’ll still post my opinions. I’ll just try to be less doom and gloom about the consequences of rejecting the offer — which means that I won’t be discussing the rejection of the offer since there are no good consequences that could emerge from it.
As you know, the comments about your recent suspension have not really been relevant to the ideas you’re proposing. But I can sort of see the curiosity some might have as to why, after being treated the way you were, you are not only willing (eager, maybe?) to do this, but have offered it the first thing after you returned from your suspension.
For those who don’t know you from other boards, could you address that aspect of things?