Yes, Adam, there was.
As usual, instead, they have seen fit to serve up stoney silence.
But, if you listen very closely I think we can all hear what they are trying to tell us.
Interestingly, ever since the appearance of this thread, I haven’t had a single issue with downtime on here.
:dubious:
Neither have I. Doesn’t mean I don’t want searching given back.
They tried to post the update but it was eaten by the hamsters.
There was an update, follow this link: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=9595026&postcount=55
Because Search has been disabled. It does appear to be causing most of the issues. They need to accelerate whatever plans there are to fix the MySql database and get the vBulletin software updated.
No, what they need to do is speak up.
Ed Zotti and his ‘have no fear’ can kiss my ass, this is not a kindergarten class. This response is a non response at best. It’s just more of the same, stringing us along.
And “have no fear” is laughable and offensive to thinking, paying customers.
Jimmy, buddy, I’m not trying to be a dick, but that wasn’t an update. Just another “good things are in the future” promise. I won’t say it as an empty promise, because sometimes it has been good news. Just not as often as I’d like, but sometimes.
“Have no fear…”
“You may feel some discomfort…”
“Okay, now, just a little pinch…”
“This will sting a bit…”
Uh huh. 
ETA: If I hadda guess, my guess would be that “Have no fear” is secret code for, “Well, at least the Suits didn’t walk into the meeting and vote to shut the SDMB down pronto…”
I took it to mean the Dope would not be shutdown at least. Not much of an update and you can see my follow up post in the thread.
The point is they had a meeting and discussed.
This is what they shared with us, “Have no fear!”
This is the entire crux of the problem. They still don’t get it.
Oh, well. What a relief that is.
They went over the numbers everyone!
We still can’t do anything, and we know exactly as little as we did before, but some unspecified numbers have been gone over.
At least the obligatory “Gosh golly gee Mr Zotti sir, thanks for honoring us with your presence” posts got made. That’s the important part.
My email to Mr. Bigg at pennyloafersrus received a prompt response: shredded. I’ve resigned myself to the fact that they don’t give a shit, haven’t given a shit, and have established no plans to give a shit in the forseeable future.
But, on the bright side, numbers have been gone over! Translated, this means, a certain percentage of these shlubs will continue to pony up $ even if the service continues at a level between abysmal and embarrassingly bad. So, if zero investment is made in hamster chow, we make $$. Well done, gents.
No more timeouts for me and the boards are loading nicely. Screw the Search function.
Yes, let’s all pay for a right to post text to a message board and read it without search? What are you smoking?
What is this “unnamed place” that was mentioned above, because if there are already dopers there then I’m going there from now on.
Seriously, at what point do we not have to consider packing up and collectively moving as a group?
And, because it remains just as much crap today as it did yesterday, anyone interested might want to check out Dead Badger’s dissection of GomiBoy’s “analysis” in the original thread here. If you enjoy the feeling of deja vu, I suggest you start reading at post 73. Otherwise just skip ahead to post 74 where the refutation begins.
Good times…
The “unnamed place” is a message board devoted to making fun of Dopers and the Straight Dope. It’s like a board-wide pit without the few rules we have in ours. I don’t recommend it. The Administrators here have asked us to not post a link to it to decrease the chances of an inter-board war.
I DO recommend OpalCat’s fathom board. It’s not exclusively Dopers, but there are a lot of us there. It’s just…slow and small. There are only a handful of interesting posts (of course, we all have different definitions of “interesting posts”) a day, instead of a few dozen like I find here. But it’s free, with optional Sponsorships for more bells and whistles, and if more people posted there, the slow and small problem would fix itself.
I will agree with you, even though I am one of the schlubs that will re-up. Honestly, I won’t even notice $7.50. Principles aside, I’ll pony up again.
However, I think that there is something more important at stake than our dollars, strange as that may sound. I doubt if anyone would notice if I stopped posting, but think of all the classic members here who have moved on after every disappointment that this board has produced. Pay to post, google ads, banner ads, and fair to abysmal performance. Now search has gone away. As time goes on, you’ll see more of your favorite people moving on. Or rather, you won’t see them - one day you’ll notice that you haven’t seen them for awhile, and wonder whether it is worth posting anymore. The board won’t end with a bang, but with a whimper. And what is the value to anyone of a board where no one posts? It seems to be the worst sort of short-sighted behavior.
At no point. Seriously.
Because the thing is, we aren’t a “group”.
We don’t form anything even approximating a cohesive unit. We’ve got the whole spectrum of human existence here, except for maybe pedophiles and Third World garbage dump specialists.
And we can’t agree on anything.
Which is a major part of the SDMB charm. There is no groupthink, no herd mentality. We can’t agree on anything, let alone “which board should we all pack up and move to”. I would challenge you (in a nice sort of way as I’m speaking rhetorically here ) to come up with a GD topic or Pit thread on which total unanimity of opinion can be found. There is no troll so egregious, no RO so outrageous, that somebody won’t come in and go, “Awww…I dunno if it’s that bad…” So if we can’t even agree on the Troll Du Jour…
I was present at JREF when a sizeable portion of the membership decided to pack up and move to Skepchick’s board, and even then, even with the much more cohesive group at JREF, there were still people who couldn’t agree that “we should all pack up and move to Skepchick’s board”.
So how you gonna get Dopers to agree on where they should go, or even that they should go at all? Never happen.
But it’s a nice thought. If we could exercise any kind of boycott pressure on the Suits, that would be a Good Thing, but so far, I’m not getting any kind of vibe that says they’re even aware of the SDMB’s existence in anything other than a peripheral way, let alone that they’d be moved by a membership-wide boycott.
And, as pointed out previously, for a lot of us, they already have our money. If there were a monthly fee, then I’d expect TPTB to take notice of a consumer boycott the same way that Comcast or the power company would take notice.
But I wouldn’t expect that even with a consumer boycott of a monthly fee, that TPTB would do anything other than shrug and pull the plug, “Fine, then.” Because as has been discussed before, the SDMB isn’t a moneymaker for them, and most of the time, it’s a money pit instead, especially when new servers seem called for. So it’s no skin off their nose to pull the plug.
The next best place to the SDMB is JREF.
Then Skepchick’s forum.
Then BAUT.
Then Sciforums.
Those are all science-oriented, skeptic websites.
Then there’s the SomethingAwful forums, which are definitely an acquired taste, but which I find well worth the $9.95 single fee. I lurk way more than I post there, because it’s a wild and woolly place which is occasionally terrifying, but always fascinating.
And for those long, long Wednesday afternoons when you’re desperate to kill time in your cubicle, there’s the pre-eminent conspiracy theory forum, the one, the only, the inimitable Godlike Productions. Post at your own risk. 
I love donkey balls. Tast T!