Sure, the board lags sometimes, but there are a lot of members, and who knows how many visitors browsing here at any given time. Sometimes it is gonna slow down, but the information and level of discourse found here are worth the wait.
There is another board I go to that is for crafters, and it is huge. The owner of that board upgrades all the time, and is constantly tweaking her site to make it run better. Guess what? It still times out a lot. Sometimes from sheer demand on the server, sometimes because she is working on it. So even if the powers that be here did their very best, there will likely still be time outs and lags.
Do I like that? No, but just like I’d wait in line to see a movie that interests me, I can wait a bit to view a thread. It ain’t perfect, but I can deal.
FWIW, I have lurked on this board from all around the world and have noticed a great number of timeouts, which is one reason I won’t be paying to join. I don’t have much sympathy for someone who did join though - you must have noticed!
As a practical solution which does help, might I suggest you adjust your browser to make less concurrant connections to a server (or do I mean more)?
Even if it was “a little slow” a couple of nights ago, that is pretty damn good service. I’m seriously thinking about paying the $14.95 (only if Jerry gets the commission).
I have no sympathy for small British shop owners. I notice they are frequently busy helping others thereby forcing me to wait in a long line and accept the best they can offer. They don’t want to stay open 7/24, forcing me to look elsewhere in the big world for my entertainment. Besides, they seem a bit bitchy to me, rather snobby.
Why did I bother telling everyone I’d never shop there again? Like anyone really gives a shit. (speaking for myself of course.)
My advise Mr. World Traveler, next time you’re in Australia, ask the waitress for a napkin to wipe your face with.
Really?! Got a cite for that?
Amazon and Paypal kept timing out on me yesterday. I couldn’t access Paypal all afternoon. Probably not their fault but my ISP. I’ll sue them all three. There’s gotta be some deep pockets there.
Any Doper lawyer wants to take my case on a contingency basis?
And i keep saying to you Aussies who make posts like this that the majority of the timeouts occur during peak US usage periods, for example, around noon Eastern US, when everyone from the east coast and the midwest is already online, and the folks on the west coast are just firing up their computers.
Noon here is 2 a.m. in Sydney (4 a.m. during the northern winter), and most of you folks are in bed around then. And when you guys are at work, we’re in bed. The post of yours that i quoted was made at about 3 p.m. your time, or about 5 a.m. our time. It’s rather unsurprising that the board is not running slow when you post.
Johnny, since the last server upgrade, time-outs only occur when the majority of the membership (the House of Posters) agree to give a certain member a ‘Time out’. Evidently you have been voted several, yet you still have not gotten the hint.
In such a case, the House of Posters would then entertain a vote to have the poster in question’s case brought before the upper level (the House of Mods) for a more stringent ‘Time Out’. :eek:
But if you promise to read ‘Roberts Rules of Order’ and post in a more polite and civilized manner towards your fellow posters, its possible that they may forget the whole thing. Should that site be busy, please feel free to read from these three mirror sites.
If it’s been “going on for fuckin years” and membership is an annual basis, wouldn’t it make sense not to renew after the first year if this is a problem?
So, for what it’s worth, and with all earnesty… shut the fuck up.
I time-out on occasion, but not enough to make a fuss. However, my Roadrunner high speed internet connection goes bad several times a day. Or perhaps it’s my wireless router.
Since I’m too techno-impaired to know who I should blame, I’m going to sue them all.
That is the best idea I’ve ever heard - posters voting time-outs for other posters.
The OP - you’ve been inconvenienced occasionally for five months now. Either you will get used to it (and go do other things when the SD times out, as it always has and probably always will), or you will not re-subscribe at the end of your year. You need some perspective, though; ask a question or two per year that requires specific, expert knowledge, have the questions answered promptly and accurately, and you’ve gotten your money’s worth right there. I use the Dope as my interface to the complicated world of technology - the entertainment value is just a plus.
Hey, did you know that Charter Members pay only $10.00 per year? And once the Canadian dollar is worth more than the American dollar, I’ll be paying even less than that? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
ETA -No, wait, I’ll still be paying $10 USD, it’ll just be less than $10 CAD, which is all that matters to me. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
The problem is that some of the members (hehe … members) here have a habit of engaging in contests of dick measuring. A lot of this take place in the are of the board where the gears that turn the servers live. As such things go, what ends up happening is that occasionally, one of those members (hehe … members) gets their … uh … member (hehe) caught in one of the gears, which brings the whole thing to a grinding halt until such time as the EMTs can extricate said (hehe) member from the works.
Rather than screech indignities, have pity on the poor misguided members.
Same here… random slowness, some timeouts. It definitely doesn’t seem like a bandwidth issue, because http://www.straightdope.com comes right up. I’m guessing that they do database maintenance too often and it kills the database. Even if this database has a few million rows, there is no reason it’s this slow. How many people are reading it at a given time? Maybe 200 at the most? How many are posting? 15-20 at the most? There is no way that should cause the database to underperform.
Either that, or it’s just crappy thrown-together code.
