Yeah we’re backsliding.
For a good 2 months, I was only having problems on the weekends; it’s pretty constant now. Every day I’m getting 502’d and 504’d.
I’m really trying not to gripe, but it’s become completely untenable.
Why can’t anything be done?! Do they even know that things are this bad now???
Cant they at the very least cut down some of the long threads, see if that works? No harm in that- easy to do.
It didn’t help with the Trivia Dominos thread, iirc.
Nine times out of ten I can’t load a page these days. It’s really sad. I know it’s free and all but so are most forums and they don’t have these problems. I sure wouldn’t pay for this.
504 Gateway Time-out
Lots and lots and LOTS of error messages lately. And it often tells me my post hasn’t gone through… when it actually has. Gosh, there’s just nothing better than trying over and over again to @#$%^! double-post.
**Error: Server Error
The server encountered a temporary error and could not complete your request.
Please try again in 30 seconds.**
And worse than ever, so far today.
This board is going to die if this doesn’t get fixed.
I completely agree, and have been saying this for months. I got a “Error: Server Error” followed by “504 Gateway Time-out” followed by “Error: Server Error” again just trying to reply to this.
On the bright side, the number of posters still (so far) willing to put up with this speaks to the value of the board, but it’s trying everyone’s patience and people are gradually going to drop out.
The bad news is that it’s obvious that there is an anonymous cadre of upper management that just doesn’t really care very much, or to put it as charitably as possible, fixing this problem is just not a priority for them.
Another site I’m a member of had a serious problem a few years ago. It was bad enough that they had to enlist outside help, and then had to do some tricky database fixes. The site was fully operational again in about three days. This problem has been ongoing here for at least six months, and it’s eventually going to kill the place. I understand the need for a robust solution for the long term, but this is so bad right now that even an imperfect temporary solution would be far preferable.
Yup. Around the time of those last four posts, my error-page-to-successful-page-load ratio was at least 4:1. Reading, not posting. And now, suddenly, it’s fine again. Presumably the server gets into a mood (memory leak or something), but a reboot fixes things for a little while.
I’ve been happy to support the SDMB with a Charter Membership, mostly because I just think this place should Be, but this is getting a little ridiculous. It should not take this many months to figure out an upgrade.
It’s been tried, and it doesn’t help.
There are times when I feel like dropping out, out of frustration. I wonder how many members we’ve already lost.
The board is basically unusable and the response from those in charge is effectively just thoughts and prayers for months on end.
Message boards in 2020 are already a relic but a message board in 2020 that doesn’t work? Where threads don’t open and you can’t post because of constant time outs? Yeah, good luck with that.
Inertia will only keep people visiting for so long, it has been months now so I would imagine a tipping point is very close for a majority of members.
I’ve paid for a subscription for years, figuring it was a way to support the board. When it comes time to renew in a couple of months I’m going to pass–not going to give money to people who don’t care enough about the users to fix the problems that seem to have a very obvious solution.
Could that be the plan?
Got a new one today, “Straight Dope Temporarily Offline for Maintenance”.
I normally go to New Posts, open approximately 10 tabs, read those, and repeat. In the first repeat I got the message. Got it on the I’m going to virtue signal right now: BLM thread, which I had never opened before.
eta: none of the other 10-ish tabs had the same message.
[Apologies to EP up there, but I don’t want a warning for changing a quote]
**Error: Server Error
The server encountered a temporary error and could not complete your request.
Please try again in 30 millenia.**
OK.
Im glad the site is doing as good as it can be…
Has anyone else experienced having posts disappear? This has happened to me three times in the last week or two that I’ve noticed.
I posted in a thread (all different ones). Because of the regular board problems, I’ve gotten into the habit of making sure my posts actually appear and these did.
But later when I came back to the thread, my posts weren’t there.