This was posted alllllll the way back in 04’. I found it after I had the same idea this morning and did a search to see if this had been addressed before:
It was never officially addressed. In fact, there was only one reply and it was some member chiming in to say “good idea”!
You guys seem to be very good at replying to questions about the board when asked nowadays, so I figured I would just bring this back up.
So, has there ever been an official thought about having a yearly board update? Or is this forum just kind of considered the ‘fluid’ equivilant of one where questions and concerns are resolved/answered all year around?
On the site I run (“On the site I run” is starting to become a cliche, I know), I just started to post monthly indicators such as members, number of posts monthly and daily, estimated date of Big Boards attainment (500,000 posts), unique visits, ranks from Google and Quantcast, and so on. Members are really interested in the stats, and they offer indicators of the site’s overall health and direction.
This is a great idea! I would also suggest a time series report, how many members joined each year, so we could see attrition of membership from previous years or how membership is accelerating through time.
The state of the message board is good. Subscriptions are continuing. Ads are supplementing subscription revenue. Expenses are manageable. A new server is about to be brought online to address performance issues and allow for growth. In short the Chicago Reader is investing in the SDMB and plans to continue doing so.
While I understand the desire to ask for more specifics I’m not going to be give out more detailed information. Sorry. I hope you can gauge how the board is fairing from the above broad strokes statement. Things are good and continuing.
A new server???
::morinic - er, moronic moose breaks into Snoopy Dance, slips on walnut shells left by inconsiderate roomie, breaks antler, spends six weeks convalescing, but declares it worth it::
Business as usual…Oh look over there, something shiny. :rolleyes:
Remember those things that couldn’t be talked about in detail but would make signing up again even more worth it that tubadiva talked about. Same same.
Buzzwords and bullshit, nothing to see here, move on…
I’ll add, if the load was actually spread over two servers then you need to look at what you did as the the board is running like a pig. Sometimes it’s grand but there are time out quite regulary.
If the content of the board wasn’t so worth reading you’d be dead. People are working around this shit, not with it.
It’s been said before, and probably will be again. However I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt and hope that we’ll get a new server soon and it’ll fix the problem. I have noticed that the board has been a lot slower over the last few days – holidays I guess.
If fact the only thing I’m really worried about is the missing threads. We’ve been offloading old threads to keep the database running for a while now. The official line has been “We’ll look into restoring them when we get the new server. No promises.” In other words, the usual. Hopefully the new server will at least solve the problem and halt the cull but I’m not sure we’ll ever see the older posts again (but I could be wrong).
It annoys me but there some good interesting stuff missing now and other stuff going soon. But the copyright policy of the board prevents me (legally) archiving the threads myself and they’re not archived anywhere else (i.e. Google cache or in the Internet Archive) as the board is closed to bots.
Like you said it’s the contents of the board that keeps people coming back – it’s just a shame that part of that is melting away.
I feel the same way. Technically it will be very difficult to get old messages back; it may involve merging portions of tens of old database backup files, and it’s not a simple copy-and-paste operation.
I went through a lot to convert mid-1990s-era messages from an ancient message board format (WWWBoard) to vBulletin, just to preserve old posts from the earliest days of my site. Is SDMB management willing to do the work that is needed to extract the old posts from backups and merge them into the existing database? I hope it won’t be another “low priority” operation as with what seems like everything else SDMB-related.
This is a first for me. I have never been part of any of the threads complaining about board performance in the 7 years I have been here.
Enough is enough, though. This is by far the worst-performing mainstream board that I know of. It will drive people away, if it has not already. It*s been going on far too long.
Also, I have to assume that one of the goals of the Reader in having the SDMB is the intangible goodwill and increased reputation it gains from being associated with a well-run, successful, useful site. The continued problems undercut that to a significant degree.