Thank you again Ed. I hope all goes well and that you’ll give us small updates every once in the while.
Can you talk at all about contingency plans if CL folds? I assume the SD & SDMB would and could be sold as a viable asset. Again I understand if you cannot talk about at this point.
Nobody here is thinking that way. We’ve got a plan we think will help restore solvency and we’re trying to implement it with constrained resources. That’s all I can say right now.
That’s fair, and a reasonable response. I’d suggest that you would be well served to continue working towards coming out of bankruptcy with the SD column and SDMB a valuable asset of Creative Loafing Enterprises, marketed aggressively to help alleviate the cash crunch – while holding in the back of your corporate minds the idea that that there are Dopers with the wherewithal and motivation to underwrite the board and see it continue if worse comes to worst for CLE.
With regard to upgrade issues, I don’t believe anyone – or at least anyone sensible – is suggesting you go out and accept help from past or present amateur BBS operators. But you do have competent resources here:
[ol][li]Elmwood, who has volunteered his services several times and been rudely quashed (IMO) is a professional urban planner who administers a vBulletin board for professional planners. I don’t know him personally, but I’d guess his skill level is above that of the kid whom Christian Forums hired to administer that board, at minimum, and he may be of service if you and Jerry take him seriously.[/li][li]Una Persson, SDSAB member and a longtime supporter of yours, is to my personal and certain knowledge an expert administrator and tweaker of vBulletin, running a smaller board with great competence – and a known quantity to you.[/li][li](Just because I can’t resist it in making this list), OpalCat has experience with UBB, though not, so far as I know, with vBulletin – and has been a supportive part of the SDMB community since AOL days.[/ol][/li]
I’m not saying you should call them in to consult. I’m saying you have people who actually know what they’re talking about who have offered to be of help, on any reasonable terms acceptable to CLE. If Jerry is swamped, as I’m gathering is the case, you might be well advised to at least consider it.
Excellent, that’s the spirit. As always I appreciate what you do and let us know what we can do to help, even if it’s to just shut th…err…go quietly into the gentle night regarding things like new forums or changes that are forseen coming to keep this place open.
Ed, no doubt the uncertainty is frustrating and discouraging. Wishing you and the rest of the staff luck in the coming months.
Thanks for all you do, Ed & staff. I was an avid reader of the printed Creative Loafing when I lived in Atlanta. It was the only local paper I read. It sucks twofold to hear of their financial woes.
Viva la Dope! Viva la Loaf!
CL might have been an OK paper at one time, but whomever runs the show is either evil or incompetent. What is, exactly, the excuse for buying up a bunch of other papers, and then within the space of a few months, going bankrupt? Either somebody was stupid enough to think CL had anywhere near the resources to be making that kind of move, or they were evil enough to make some sort of deal where they get to take the money and run, leaving the place in ruins. It’s really unfortunate that CL’s poor decision had to drag down some other papers with it. Maybe somebody ought to be looking into CL financial practices; something smells here.
Not at all.
I’m in the same game they are and I can see quite a few scenarios that would lead to this sort of thing. Some stem from bad decisions, yes, but some others stem from factors outside of the control of CL management.
I have NO inside knowledge at all on this matter but I felt a need to point out that it can be FAR more complicated than you’re making it out to be.
Maybe I am oversimplifying; however, I fail to see a level of complexity involved that would justify making a number of sizeable acquisitions when bankruptcy is either imminent beforehand or likely to occur given a large outlay of capital.
Suppose you take this discussion to a thread that has a title other than “Current Status of SDMB Upgrade.” Possible? 
I’m not saying the discussion is generally inappropriate, nor am I arguing the merits of your statements, but I hope you can see that it’s not really on point for this thread.
Gfactor
Moderator
I’m not trying to start any trouble, but it’s rather patently obvious that CL’s financial difficulties are directly related to and driving the current (lack of) status of the upgrade, therefore are entirely on point and fair game.
That’s what this thread is for. It’s not a general referendum about CL’s business practices, its for news about the upgrade and the reporting of problems with the upgrade. If you want to start another pit thread about CL’s bankruptcy, go for it. If you continue this hijack, you’ll get a formal warning.
Gfactor
Moderator
Sorry, like I said, I’m not trying to cause any trouble, and I will not post again in this thread, period.
Have turned on vBulletin’s functionality to use Master and Slave MySQL databases. This is to offload some of the database query load to a slave (read-only) database. Hopefully working around some of the database lockup issues we experienced after the transition to the new server in September. To stop the lockups I had to hack the forum display code which limits how many threads you can access from the past to a maximum of the 200 most current.
I don’t know yet but suspect this configuration change will allow me to remove that hack. We’ll run the board a few days in this new configuration and if all goes well I’ll see what I can do with the hack on Monday.
Jerry
There are some issues with running a Master/Slave MySQL database configuration but in general the board seems fine. We’ve been running in this configuration since Thursday afternoon.
Since the board appears stable I’ve removed the forum display hack which I had to put in place in early September. That hack limited the number of threads you could navigate within a forum to the 200 most recent threads. It was put in place to stabilize board performance after the vBulletin upgrade.
With the hack removed you should now be able to navigate your way back to the earliest threads in each forum. We’ll see if the dual database configuration is better at not locking up compared to the single database configuration. If board performance does become an issue again the forum display hack will be re-enabled.
Thanks, Jerry!
Thanks Jerry.
On the old board, TubaDiva had made a few small tweaks to the advance search function. I believe she added a Last 2 days, 3 days and 4 days and I think she was defaulting the search to 6 months instead of Any Date.
I don’t know if that is on your list or not but I hope you can return them and it should actually take it easier on the search function.
I keep noticing that the Quick Reply function keeps changing its behavior (mostly in ways I like), so I take that as a sign that someone is in there making things happen.
(If nobody is working on those, let me know and I can tell you what has changed so you can chase those gremlims, I guess)
The only welcome change I would like to see in it is to default to not show the sig.
Yayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!
Jerry: would it be possible to have an update on how much more you feel is left to be done?