# New Thread on Board Performance **URL:** \ **Category:** About This Message Board\ **Created:** [July 30, 2014, 7:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-thread-on-board-performance/694442 "2014-07-30T19:59:11Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2014, 7:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-thread-on-board-performance/694442/1 "2014-07-30T19:59:11Z")
RE: Stupid Republican thread Well, sure, with over 15,000 posts… But it seems to take an awful long time for a “New Post” window to open. Maybe it’s time to archive the old thread and start a new one? (For “Bragging Rights” perhaps the post count could be artificially initiated at the current count +1.) ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2014, 8:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-thread-on-board-performance/694442/2 "2014-07-30T20:22:19Z")
The thread opens instantly for me. ---
**Author:** ![Grrr](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/grrr/32/146_2.png) [@Grrr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grrr)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2014, 8:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-thread-on-board-performance/694442/3 "2014-07-30T20:26:00Z")
See! The GOP fucks up _everything_! ---
**Author:** ![Jonathan\_Chance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jonathan_chance/32/701_2.png) [@Jonathan\_Chance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jonathan_Chance)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2014, 8:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-thread-on-board-performance/694442/4 "2014-07-30T20:36:19Z")
I know it was obvious, but let’s keep the partisan jabs out of ATMB, please. ---
**Author:** ![Frank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Frank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frank)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2014, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-thread-on-board-performance/694442/5 "2014-07-30T21:01:41Z")
“New Posts” is a search, and search has always–I mean _always_–been weevily on the SDMB. ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2014, 9:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-thread-on-board-performance/694442/6 "2014-07-30T21:06:05Z")
I’m noticing increasingly frequent slowness in opening lots of threads, not specifically that one. That generally implies that the board is due for some maintenance. A well-built database application should not slow down as the amount of data increases, at least not noticeably. Records are indexed, and can be accessed quickly no matter how many records there are. The typical knee-jerk go-to first diagnosis is “the indexes may be corrupted; must re-build.” I always wondered about that – why would a bad index slow things down? I would thing a corrupt index would simply totally break the database. However, I do understand how indexes can get slower as the data increases (has to do with keeping it “balanced” as new records are added). Re-building the indexes is supposed to fix that. I’m also noticing increasingly often that I must log in several times before the log-in is successful. I’ve complained about this in the past, and others have too. It seems to be loosely correlated with slower access times too, judging by the complaints here in ATMB. So I’m think it’s time to re-build some indexes. As for the Republican jab, yeah, it _was_ just tooooooo obvious, wasn’t it. ETA: See: Recent upsurge of board performance complaints [here](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=692185). ---
**Author:** ![TroutMan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/troutman/32/6721_2.png) [@TroutMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TroutMan)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2014, 9:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-thread-on-board-performance/694442/7 "2014-07-30T21:24:40Z")
> [@Senegoid](#): > > The typical knee-jerk go-to first diagnosis is “the indexes may be corrupted; must re-build.” I always wondered about that – why would a bad index slow things down? [HIJACK] Say your “index” is two filing drawers, one A through M and the other N through Z. After a year, the A-M drawer has 50 files and the N-Z drawer has 5,000 because of all the Smiths. Searching the N-Z drawer will be slow. You’d be better off “rebuilding your index” to more equally distribute the files among the drawers, and even better off adding more drawers. That’s what a rebuild usually addresses - it’s not that the index is “corrupted”, but that its statistics are out of date. If the index is truly corrupted, then it probably simply wouldn’t be used in searches (also effectively slowing down the searches). It shouldn’t break the entire database. As for saying a well-built application shouldn’t slow down with more data, that’s kind of pie-in-the-sky. It shouldn’t slow down with the amount of data it’s designed for, but pretty much any system can be made to slow down if you put enough into it. [/HIJACK] ETA: and now that I read more closely, you pretty much said the same thing I did about rebuilding indexes. :smack: ---
**Author:** ![orangeapples](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/7993a0/32.png) [@orangeapples](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/orangeapples)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2014, 11:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-thread-on-board-performance/694442/8 "2014-07-30T23:19:30Z")
May or may not be relevant to this issue, but I often have to click twice because I get tired of waiting for something to open. Generally the second click will open in ordinary fashion. Sometimes it’s a thread, sometimes it’s a forum, or backing out to the main page to select another forum. Has also happened when I’m trying to post. Not entirely related to the OP’s question about an oversize thread, but perhaps there’s some correlation there. ---
**Author:** ![Rick\_Kitchen](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rick_kitchen/32/522_2.png) [@Rick\_Kitchen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rick_Kitchen)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2014, 11:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-thread-on-board-performance/694442/9 "2014-07-30T23:51:27Z")
I just had a problem with getting to the most recent post in a thread so I clicked on the litle “x” to stop the attempt and re-attempted and it opened immediately. I have no idea why this happens, but I do see it happening occasionally. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2014, 12:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-thread-on-board-performance/694442/10 "2014-07-31T00:00:59Z")
> [@orangeapples](#): > > May or may not be relevant to this issue, but I often have to click twice because I get tired of waiting for something to open. Generally the second click will open in ordinary fashion. Sometimes it’s a thread, sometimes it’s a forum, or backing out to the main page to select another forum. Has also happened when I’m trying to post. > > Not entirely related to the OP’s question about an oversize thread, but perhaps there’s some correlation there. Me, too. Has nothing to do with the OP’s thread. It happens regularly across this MB-- I’d say at least 10% of the time. Maybe 20%. ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2014, 12:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-thread-on-board-performance/694442/11 "2014-07-31T00:11:00Z")
> [@TroutMan](#): > > ETA: and now that I read more closely, you pretty much said the same thing I did about rebuilding indexes. :smack: To be sure, I didn’t write my post very coherently. I was thinking and typing somewhat asynchronously there. I have re-built plenty of indexes, too. At my former job, it was – wait for it – always our first knee-jerk fix when customers called in with problems. That solved the problem surprisingly often, too. We recommended re-building indexes daily, and in fact wrote that into the batch file that started the app. It only took a minute or two. Our in-house joke was, whenever a customer called in a problem with the app, our first knee-jerk response should always be “FDISK!” ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2014, 12:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-thread-on-board-performance/694442/12 "2014-07-31T00:16:54Z")
> [@orangeapples](#): > > May or may not be relevant to this issue, but I often have to click twice because I get tired of waiting for something to open. Generally the second click will open in ordinary fashion. Sometimes it’s a thread, sometimes it’s a forum, or backing out to the main page to select another forum. Has also happened when I’m trying to post. > > Not entirely related to the OP’s question about an oversize thread, but perhaps there’s some correlation there. I get exactly this too. But upon doing some experimentation, ISTM (but I’m not really sure), that in the time it takes you to wait a while, give up, close the tab and try again, the page would have appeared by itself anyway. Sometimes I’ll try to open a page in a second tab while still waiting for it to load in the first tab, and wait a while, and then both will appear at once. I think the server is just overloaded or sumtin. An index in need of re-building (as **TroutMan** described above, better than I did) is a common cause of this. Or that they’re using the server machine for other unrelated tasks too, like running the weekly payroll or print-edition subscriber billing or nuclear simulations or something. I think they run SDMB on a multi-server environment; maybe one of the servers is malfunctioning, leaving a higher or off-balance load on the others. From past similar situations, I expect it will just get gradually worse until the added load of all our complaint threads goes critical. Then Jerry will take the whole board down for a few days, just like last time, and rebuild stuff, and all will be as good as new for another six months. ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2014, 12:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-thread-on-board-performance/694442/13 "2014-07-31T00:30:27Z")
There’s already [another long-time thread about board performance problems](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=692185), which has somewhere around 600 posts already. I’ve suggested to the mods that _that_ thread be closed now, with further discussion to be directed to _this_ thread. And also, suggested re-writing the title of this thread, as we now understand it to be _not_ specifically related to anything that Stupid Republicans are doing. ---
**Author:** ![rsa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/839c29/32.png) [@rsa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rsa)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2014, 12:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-thread-on-board-performance/694442/14 "2014-07-31T00:38:02Z")
> [@Rick\_Kitchen](#): > > I just had a problem with getting to the most recent post in a thread so I clicked on the litle “x” to stop the attempt and re-attempted and it opened immediately. I have no idea why this happens, but I do see it happening occasionally. Me too. Any time I open a post or new page and I don’t get an immediate response, I just click the “x” to stop loading the page and then refresh. Usually opens right up. ---
**Author:** ![RaftPeople](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/6f9a4e/32.png) [@RaftPeople](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RaftPeople)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2014, 12:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-thread-on-board-performance/694442/15 "2014-07-31T00:48:53Z")
My symptoms are a little different. Sometimes, when there is a long OP, it seems like it takes a long time to get to the good part. I usually just skip to the end of the paragraph. Is there anything you can do about that? ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2014, 4:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-thread-on-board-performance/694442/16 "2014-07-31T04:36:00Z")
I’ve not noticed any of these problems. ---
**Author:** ![AaronX](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/7bcc69/32.png) [@AaronX](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AaronX)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2014, 5:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-thread-on-board-performance/694442/17 "2014-07-31T05:21:09Z")
> [@Frank](#): > > “New Posts” is a search, and search has always–I mean _always_–been weevily on the SDMB. I thought he meant “New Post”, not “New Posts”. ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2014, 9:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-thread-on-board-performance/694442/18 "2014-07-31T09:32:16Z")
New thread but old problem. I’m still getting zapped sporadically upon login including just now. ---
**Author:** ![Knorf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/58956e/32.png) [@Knorf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Knorf)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2014, 10:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-thread-on-board-performance/694442/19 "2014-07-31T10:00:30Z")
No issues for me. Sometimes the board as a whole loads slowly, but once it’s up, the threads load just fine. ---
**Author:** ![Digital\_is\_the\_new\_Analog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a88e4f/32.png) [@Digital\_is\_the\_new\_Analog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Digital_is_the_new_Analog)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2014, 1:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-thread-on-board-performance/694442/20 "2014-08-01T01:13:02Z")
I’m seeing the new problems. I was going to dig up the old thread about it, because not only was I zapped again, but I’ve been seeing more slow-loading threads. That’s what happened last time, a little bit before it got really bad. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-thread-on-board-performance/694442.md?page=2)