Anthracite is a her, and she’s always right in her assessments.
I’d be willing to pay, if needed (assuming it’s not too much, of course!)… but if the SDMB became a paid site, it would DEFINITELY be a different experience!
I’d pay once, and try it out for the length of the subscription period, and then re-evaluate when it came time to pay again… I think a lot of others would do the same.
And there would be very few new members… a lot of the enjoyment I get from this board is due to the input of the newbies (both good input and idiotic input). That part of the SDMB experience would be forever lost… I can’t think of any way in which someone could have pursuaded me to join the SDMB if it had been a paid site when I first was directed here (I don’t even pay for my porn!). Of course, now that I’m hooked, I would pay… (just say NO kids!)
But it seems to me that making this a pay site would be the death-knell of the SDMB. I think it would linger on for a while with a few thousand paid members, and gradually dwindle. Memebers would drop out one by one until there was nothing left but the memory.
Man, I am SERIOUSLY bummed out here!
Isn’t there any other way? Couldn’t we PLEASE at least try a volunteer donation basis for a while to see if that would work? I would send in some cash (probably more than I would be willing to pay for a subscription to the SDMB, odd as that may sound…), and I know that MANY others would do so as well. That would alleviate the issue of “can I afford $20 for this?”… even those among us with little money could afford to send in a buck or so! And a lot of us would be willing to donate $20, $30, $40, etc. to keep this community alive and kicking!
I also see potential legal issues if this becomes a paid site… banning a**holes, closing threads, etc. could become a legal nightmare if someone has paid for the right (as opposed to the priveledge) of posting to this message board.
What if the SDMB became a separate entity entirely? Can it sever its ties with the Chicago Reader and become a entity in its own right? Then maybe operate on a donation basis? I don’t know what might be involved in this (and right now I’m hopped up on pain meds… had a wisdom tooth yanked a few hours ago) but can this be considered as an option?
In short: I would pay should the SDMB become a pay site… at least once, but I think it would kill this community! There must be some way to do it differently…
Please try to find some other option, I need you guys!!
The December 2000 Smithsonian has an article about the guy who runs the Word A Day thing at wordsmith.org. It mentions that he has to pay $400 a month to use a server out in California.
$400 a month is $4800 a year. For the SDMB to be able to afford this, they would need to sign up 240 subscribers at $20 a year. Are you telling me there aren’t 240 Dopers out there who would sign up? And are you telling me that only the most boring Dopers would sign up? I would think just the opposite, that the most highly motivated Straight Dope junkies would be the ones to pony up. How much does the SDMB server cost per month/year, anyway?
Yes, the boards would change. But it’s normal for organisms, clubs, groups of people to grow and change, and it’s normal for those groups of people to express nostalgia for a Lost Golden Age. Hey, just in the last few months, we’ve had people express Nostalgia for the Golden Age of Spring 2000, when we had only 7,000 registered members. And I can remember a year ago, when we had 7,000 registered members (everyone said, “wow! Seven thousand members!”), there were people expressing Nostalgia for the Golden Days of the AOL message board, when there were only a few hundred posters. And I’m sure that before that, on the AOL MB, there were people expressing Nostalgia for the Golden Age when it was just a lowly local BBS that somebody ran out of his bedroom.
So. Forward into the future. Advertising ain’t gonna pay for the Internet–we are. And I’m sure that at some point down the road, we will be expressing Nostalgia for the Lost Golden Age of the Free SDMB, when wild sock puppets roamed free in the forest, and part of every morning’s ritual was to log on and find out how many trolls had registered and already been banned while you were sleeping.
One problem DDG is that the Reader or the SDMB is legally unable, security-wise unable, or simply unwilling to tell us in general:
- Exactly how much does the Net access cost, and what bandwidth the SDMB actually uses.
- Exactly what server hardware and software the Board runs on.
- Exactly how much, overall, the SDMB costs.
If we knew these things, it might give us a better handle on what the situation is, instead of spending 10,000 posts guessing how we can help the Board. I have asked these things in the past, and similar things, and not ever received an answer to my e-mails. So evidently it’s either me, or they either cannot or will not give this information out.
15k posters and not one eccentric billionaire. Of all the rotten luck . . .
my suggestions for improving board performance:
- <Emphatically> SEPARATE THE SQL SERVER AND THE WEB SERVER!!!
These need to be on separate machines, for performance (not to mention security) reasons. This is killing the performance just by itself. Surely SOMEBODY can produce an extra machine??
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How recently has the database been condensed? Records are deleted all the time, right? Does MySQL even need condensing?
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No Opal jokes allowed.
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Is MySQL the right database for the job? Maybe. Is there something else that might be better? It’s not the only free DBMS out there. If something else has less memory & cpu overhead, maybe the Reader could look into it. Since the site is written in PHP, it wouldn’t be difficult at all to modify the code to use a different DB.
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Are there enough RAM and Hard Drive space on the server?
Performance has gotten REALLY bad the last few days, to the point that I have waited 15 minutes for a thread to load.
Like many others here, I’d be happy to make a donation, or even volunteer time to help optimize the server, if “THEY” would allow it.
I don’t think that deleting threads is a good idea, unless they’re archived someplace else.
OK…what is the relative overhead difference between doing continuous SQL queries over a network, versus on the same machine?
Do you know of some special security concerns with the way their server is handling the database?
Yes, but on large databases this is a…how shall we say, “time-intensive operation”? And not without risk. I can’t count the number of SQL Aywhere and Oracle databases I’ve seen become corrupt during the compaction or import/export process.
Have you read the MySQL documentaion? Have you seen the benchmarking tests of MySQL versus other databases? MySQL is pretty darned fast. And don’t even mention some shambling atrocity like Oracle. The Reader likely could not afford the setup cost and tech support.
Do you have some experience with this, or are you just asking someone to find out? For free database engines and clients, MySQL is at the top of the heap. And it appears to be faster than the Commercial databases I run on my machine too.
Would you like to start on that today, or do you need some time? I suggest setting up your own Board, downloading PHP, MySQL, Apache, and vBulletin lite, and then hack the PHP scripts to use a different engine. Go for it, I’ll be damned impressed if you do it.
It has been posted before…CPU and bandwidth. Two words. OK, an acronym and one word. Whatever.
You get pages to load? Some days I cannot connect between 10:00 am and 4:00 pm CDT. 
I noticed that you have the “Posts per Page” set to “50” on the SDMB. This sometimes leads to pages, especially in GD, that are more than 160 kB, and I swear I have seen a 200+ kB page before.
Since a lot of people often are only clicking on the last couple pages, what happens to performance if you change the setting to “40”, or “30” posts per page?
It would be a simple test - you only have to change one number, and can change it back quickly - and you can see if it allows more, shorter connections to the DB and the webserver.
Am I completely off base here? Has this been tried? The reason I suggest is on my Board, since I am very bandwidth limited, I can notice a difference going from “40” to “20” posts per page.
Is it worth a test even?
It’s not you. Hell, I don’t know these things, and I’m not sure who to ask.
As for the number of posts per page, we’ve tried various numbers. 50 seems to work the best, though we might want to try a smaller number again.
Most of the threads that I’ve deleted have been test threads, where someone is trying out coding or a sig. No real information is lost, don’t worry! I don’t know when or if we’ll ever start archiving stuff. TubaDiva worked very hard on archiving a lot of threads with the old UBBS, and when we made the switch, they disappeared. Since she had archived the very best threads, this was quite upsetting. IF we start archiving again, we will want to make sure that we can transfer the data.
I’d like to echo others’ concerns here about going to a subscription service. Sure, I’d pay to subscribe, and a lot of others would too. But many wouldn’t. Some who might have become really valuable members, had they been able to stick around and get “hooked” on SDMB. Being able to still read the boards for free would be fine, and sure, that would be something. But in order to get really “hooked” on a board you need to make your presence known, and interact with other Dopers. And that takes a little time. Time a lot of people won’t get, because they’ll be put off by the subscription, and won’t stick around.
There would have to be some sort of alternative. Either, as has been recommended, have non-paying members get a cap on how many posts per month. Maybe 50? 100? 20? I don’t know. (Can any board software do that?) That would allow someone to get hooked, and at the same time be frustrated enough by their restrictions to eventually want to pony up the subscription fee. Or, just have some sort of “LE” or “Lite” membership for non-pay members, and for a fee, you can be a “Deluxe” member - with more perks, access to more forums, something like that. But I think you’ve gotta give potential new members a real taste of why this board is so special, and I’m afraid that having it be read-only would end up not being enough.
No, I’m not saying that there wouldn’t be enough people who would pay (remember, DDG, that I’m one of those who would pay, if I had to!).
My point is that I’d like to see something else tried first! If we need 240 people to pony up $20, I think that we can find 240 people here who’d be willing to DONATE that amount of money (I’m one! I’ll go to the bank tomorrow if someone will tell me where to send it! Hell, I’ll donate $100 if that’s what it takes to keep this a free site!), and thus avoid changing the environment of this message board.
I just think that some other things could be tried first, before simply jumping to the conclusion that the only solution is to make this a pay site, that’s all…
If this DOES become a pay site, we will lose a LOT of people, and a lot of the vitality that makes the SDMB fun and interesting. My opinion, take it for what it is…
OTOH, if it were a donation-based site, there would be no problem with banning or deleting objectionable people/content… “Your donation was voluntary, so you have no right to complain about how this message board is regulated!” I really dobelieve that there will be enough of us willing to donate to keep this a free site.
DDG your point about the site evolving is a good one! And the boards will evolve on their own with no help from us… that’s the nature of evolution… But IMHO, this kind of forced evolution is dangerous. We have a unique and very special thing going here, and I want it to continue (as do you). I truely think that making the boards a pay site will be very dangerous to the health and well-being of the SDMB. Maybe the SDMB will survive and prosper, and maybe it won’t… why take the chance? I can too easily see a lot of the hard-core dopers sending in money the first time, and all continues much as it was… then the next time, a few drop out… and all continues much as it was… a few more drop out the next time, and all continues, but slightly off… the next time many more drop out because it just isn’t the same… the next time more drop out…
If this goes on for more than a few pay-periods, it’s over.
I hope that there is SOMETHING else that we can try first. Making the SDMB a pay site should be a LAST option!
Not trying to usurp the abilities of the technical staff at the SDMB, but I don’t think vBulletin could be programmed easily to limit the number of posts per time period. Making certain Forums only available to paying members can work, although it requires some significant womanpower overhead. Either you need a couple volunteers with Admin rights and nothing to do for a while, or there will be some hiring costs involved.
Ya know, I was just reading a thread full of “me too” style posts and it crossed my mind that what this board really needs is for members to have to pay per post…
::sighs contentedly::
pan
Well, there’s our solution. handy will pay for the new server, T3 connection, and full-time administrative staff all by himself in two months. :rolleyes:
No, I’m not aware of any specific security concerns, but I do know that the machine handling the SQL is directly exposed to the internet, and running several other services, like ftp, ssh, telnet, smtp, and samba. IMHO, the SQL machine should be on a private IP, invisible to the internet, so that nobody can have direct access to it except the admins and the machine doing queries. What happens if the sendmail or the ftp server on that machine were compromised by some kid with a disk full of exploit scripts? I’ll tell you: Exactly what happened a couple years ago. Stuff gets compromised. And if the little bastards want to be destructive after the machine is compromised, it only takes one command to delete the message board’s contents (DROP DATABASE <databasename>, or if you think that’s insufficient, rm -rf /* & will work just as well). To be honest, I’m not qualified to do a full security audit, but things like that are just basic common sense when you’re setting up a high profile site like this one.
As far as performance, I admit I don’t have numbers to back this up-only experience and observation. SQL, on a database with over 14,000 users and over 1.2 million records, is memory intensive and hard drive intensive. I don’t know about the processor, but I think it’s safe to assume that the machine in question is not a Cray XMP. Considering the fact the Reader’s reluctance to put money into the SDMB, I think it’s a fair guess that we’re not running on multi-processors, either. Serving up all those pages, even if the php were not being parsed, but just spit out to your screen, takes up mounds of cpu time and causes lots of disk thrashing, since (I know you know this, but I’m repeating it for emphasis and for anybody else that doesn’t) each page view is a program executing on the server, complete with SQL lookups.
Between the two, it makes bad sense to have the SQL and http services together on one machine. At least for this particular usage.
I was asking for an educated opinion, since mine is not one when it comes to databases. I don’t know the differences between different engines, and just tossed out an idea that popped into my head. I have heard similar negative thoughts about Oracle and MS SQL, though. I know some big sites use MySQL, like Slashdot, but they had 8 big servers and millions of dollars to pour into it last I heard. It makes a big difference, I suspect.
I’d be happy to, if the Reader would accept my help, and if somebody more knowledgeable with databases than I am determined that MySQL was not, in fact, the right tool for the job. The catch is that, until I move next month, I’m stuck at a paltry 15KB/sec upstream. Once that’s fixed, will you be volunteering to test the jCoolBoard software?
Hrm…Something I hadn’t thought about: What’s the license on vB? Are we allowed to make modifications (such as using a different database)?
I’m purposely not addressing bandwidth. For that, there’s exactly one solution: Buy more. I’m looking more at less expensive and configuration changes that can improve performance without upgrading to a T3 or whatever. Anyway, with all the processing overhead I talked about above, I really believe bandwidth, while important, is not the major concern here.
Yeah, I know. I’m one of the lucky ones. I can actually view 3 or 4 threads per day. 
Joe - you have some good points.
Some research here at work today (we have an IT Division of about 500 people) seems to show a general feel amongst DBA’s that MySQL is the fastest, or one of the fastest databases out there, but is crippled from being used by lack of features, lack of tech support, and lack of general use in the industry.
For specifics, we can look at an “unbiased” source( ), the MySQL documentation:
For example, (run on the same NT 4.0 machine):
Reading 2000000 rows by index Seconds
mysql 367
multithread mysql 249
mysql_odbc 464
db2_odbc 1206
informix_odbc 121126
ms-sql_odbc 1634
oracle_odbc 20800
solid_odbc 877
sybase_odbc 17614
Inserting (350768) rows Seconds
mysql 381
multithread mysql 206
mysql_odbc 619
db2_odbc 3460
informix_odbc 2692
ms-sql_odbc 4012
oracle_odbc 11291
solid_odbc 1801
sybase_odbc 4802
In the above test MySQL was run with a 8M index cache.
Also, please note these very detailed benchmarking results (mind you, supplied by the MySQL people) at this location.
Note though, that it is difficult to find benchmarks for some databases, because:
[fixed a code --Chronos]
[Edited by Chronos on 05-12-2001 at 10:37 AM]
Yeah right. Our poor techs would then be reduced to Customer Service Reps. People would be, “I demand the right to post insults in GD,” or some such nonsense.
And I know, I could not POSSIBLY afford it. I can’t even afford medical insurance, now that I’m no longer a full time student. And I know that paying for this place will ruin it. Think about it-you would have a hard time banning people-people threatening their money back-wouldn’t you need a Customer Service Line? Or Tech Support?
barb-my parents pay the hookup and monthly fee. Or some people get access through college. Yes, there are people who cannot afford 20 bucks a year. THey’re in college, and they use the SDMB from school, they’re on loans and scholarships and 2nd jobs…not pretty.
I’d miss you guys.
Another thing-perhaps eliminate certain things-like sigs?
Would that help?
Because I can tell there will be a lot of problems with subscription. I mean, I love the SDMB, but I am so fucking poor it’s not funny. I mean, in comparison to other things-there is other stuff I would put above paying for a message board-books, cds, food, bus fare, etc etc…clothes-random stuff like that.
Another thing-people branching off to start their own forums. YOu’d have Opal’s Fathom, and perhaps other people starting their own rival things up?
BTW, what about Cecil’s books? the autographed book idea thingy?
I just had the funniest vision:
Me: I need 20 bucks
Jaime:Why?
Me: For the Straight Dope
Jaime: No
Me: Why not?
Jaime: Because we need groceries, the rent is due, the bills are due, and we might lose our phone.
Me: But it’s 20 dollars.
Jaime: Ok, well, I hope that the SD provides some sort of food, cuz we only have 30 for food.
LOL…wait, re-reading that, it doesn’t seem funny at all.
Several thoughts:
[1] I read http://www.FreeRepublic.com They are at least as big as this site (I actually think they are several times bigger) and they operate as a free forum. I realize that their goal and style is completely different from the SD’s, but you might be able to find some ideas by looking at how they finance their site.
This is from their starting page:
[2] Sell memberships, but don’t restrict posting rights specifically to members. Either come up with something small to add to distinguish a member from from a free surfer, or just put a little asterisk next to paying customers’ names.
I don’t know, just send me a stupid little card that tells me I am an official member of the SD anti-ignorance league. I could really care less.
[3] I think it is important to keep the service free for those who just wander on, and free for those who can’t afford it. This isn’t because I am some huge hearted guy who just loves everybody, it’s because those people make up a huge chunk of what makes this place interesting.
[4] If you tried to restrict the number of free posts a perosn could make, I think you would see sock puppets multiplying like bunny rabbits.
[5] If you have to charge, I would sign-up for the year, but I would be wondering if I was witnessing the beginning of the end.
[6] The dot.com bubble has burst. It sucks to find out we can’t get everything for free. If we bail out of this forum, I think it is only a matter of time before most of the free forums out there start closing up shop anytime they start getting popular. I’d rather suck it up now and try to make this forum work.