Looking around the board lately, I’ve seen some anomalies in the post counts:
In Test Post (ATMB)
I saw this:
kaylasdad99
Member
Registered: Sep 1999
Location: Anaheim, CA,
Posts: 92801
Posts: 852
And in It seems more likely that there would be aliens than there wouldn’t (GD)
Wackjob
Registered: Mar 2002
Location:
Posts: 0
I did search on this, but turned up nothing helpful. What’s up?
Hmm… the one on kaylasdad99 looks like it may actually be part of the location field… but perhaps not.
I think I’ll drop a note to kaylasdad99 and ask her/him to not include confusing descriptions on the Location field. IMHO the Location field could be used for a) your real location or b) some “joke” location (e.g. The Land of Oz, Mordor, Third Rock from the Sun), but not for text intended to confuse people and cause SDMB staff to have to explain someone’s location, or as a substitute sig.
That zero post count - our friend jdavis thinks that the database sometimes does not complete all the individual transactions involved in creating a post/thread, and so we end up with inconsistent. This is caused by (what else) the high demands put on the server. I should put something to that effect in our ATMB FAQ thread.
correction: “and so we end up with inconsistent data.”
Arnold, I was going to start a new thread, but this may be related. Earlier today I posted two responses (to two different threads) in the Cafe forum, one right after the other. When I hit submit, the pages in both of the windows I had open timed out. On the old board, I was used to this, and instead of going back and resubmitting, I’d open a new window and go to the forum page. I’d almost always see the thread sitting at the top, with me as the last poster. This method averted many double posts.
Today I tried doing that when my browsers timed out. The updated forum page had both threads in their old position, with the old names under Last Post. Clearly, my posts had not made it to the boards. Or so I thought. Just to make sure, I opened each thread, and go figure, there were my posts. I went back to the forum page, hit refresh two more times (opening the threads each time), and my posts showed up in the threads, but neither the Last Posts nor the thread positions on the page refreshed. I’m not sure about view counts.
Obviously, all of this took forever with the board speed. My question is, was this a fluke, or does this new board not refresh those things when it’s bogged down? I never noticed it happening on the old boards.
Not sure at this point.
BTW, what browser do you use, flyboy? If you use AOL you might be seeing cached pages instead of new views and that would account for your problem.
I think AOL (and hence, Compuserve too) are the only ISPs to rely on proxy servers – it’s faster for them to send you what’s on their server rather than query us for the most recent version of the page – however, I could be mistaken in this. If I am I’m sure some nice Doper will be along to correct me shortly.
If ever in doubt, hit CTRL + Refresh; this forces the browser to get the most recent version of the page in question.
Of course during the times of heavy demand on the board (which tends to be damn near all the time these days), you’ll have to wait . . . and might get timed out. Sorry 'bout that.
your humble TubaDiva
Administrator
Dipping my anecdotal toe in the pond…
I’ve noticed that the behavior of the network/server/software combination seems to be very unusual since coming back up on the “new” old server. Often times, I get lightning-fast responses, even on Searches, and then suddenly…nothing. It will time out again and again, and nothing will work. Then suddenly, everything works, and it’s fast again.
This seems to happen throughout the day, and doesn’t seem to be concentrated at lunch either.
I’ve done some thought experiments on why this might be, and cannot come up with any conclusions. If I can discover a hint, I’ll let you know. I’m more posting this to see if anyone else sees this odd “fast…stop…fast…stop” behavior.
TubaDiva, I’m not complaining, so please don’t feel like there’s something to apologize for. I know you guys have done all you can as far as speed goes.
I’m using whatever IE version comes with Win98. I don’t use nor do I have any AOL/Compuserve software. Not sure if this helps any. Next time I’ll try ctrl+Refresh, although looking at my keyboard I’m not seeing a Refresh button, so I’m not sure what this means. Yes, I’m an idiot. In any case, won’t opening up a brand new browser and accessing the page bring up the most recent info? Is there any time when this wouldn’t happen?
Anthracite, I’ve also noticed that, but have been assuming the problem is on my end. I use a 56k dial up which, whenever I check the status bar, runs around 45k. I assumed the problem had to do with my line or my isp (ATT Worldnet).
flyboy88 - when TubaDiva says ctrl+Refresh, she means hold down the ctrl key while clicking on the refresh button in your web browser. Or look in the View menu to see if a function key is associated with the Refresh command. For Internet Explorer 5.0 the F5 key calls the Refresh command.
I could think of many possibilities for the problem you describe. First let us know if the ctrl Refresh fixes the problem.
Anthracite - the fact that the board can be fast, and then slow, and then fast again, could very well be caused by the fact that doing a search can bring the server to its knees, so it could be that the server OK only one (or several people) do a search and lock a large table in the database (mySQL doesn’t have row-level locking.) When the search is complete, everything is back to normal.
An excellent point, and worth noting as it could explain some instances. However, in my case, I see something like this:
10-30 minutes of normal behavior.
1-5 minutes of no response.
Now, if the Board was really locking up for 1-5 minutes for everyone every 10-30 minutes, I would assume that more people would have mentioned it. So I assumed it was something interesting about my connection.
Actually, this has been happening to me, too. I’m not sure how long it is between lock-ups, though, because I’m not always here for very long. But yeah, a few minutes of slooooooow, then everything’s coming up Millhouse again.
Great Goddess…I was wondering when someone would finally use that specific Simpson’s quote. Nice one! 
The pattern as described is exactly what’s been explained to us by Jerry the Tech God as what happens when the search function locks up the system.
It happens this way mostly because you can’t hit a moving target; the system literally has to stop in its tracks to search.
And there’s so much demand, so much unrelenting demand, when the system stops, that means that all those posts being called up and being written and etc. hang waiting for the search to clear.
Not sure if this is fixable or what to do about it, but we’re looking at the situation.
your humble TubaDiva
Administrator
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