Sorry, this is meaner than David’s thread and should be treated accordingly.
Holy fuck, I’ve never seen such fuckin fear and pussyfooting around the fact that The Straight Dope website is run by incompetent morons. Feel free to felate your mods and admins as needed, you quisling cunts. The fact remains, this website is broken.
I love how a message board that is so fuckin lawsuit-fearful that it won’t allow more than one fuckin line of a song to be quoted would allow shitloads of timeouts a day. Assholes, I’m paying for fuckin service. Was there anything in my service agreement that said I’d be unable to access your board multiple times a day on a routine basis for no explained reason other than you’re either cheap skinflinting bandwidth fucks or your tech people are utterly incompetent? Isn’t this the exact reason why AOL got the utter fuckin shit sued out of them in the 90s when they were advertising service and and didn’t come through? Hmm, a class action suit for an internet entity that provided unreliable service. Something to think about, lawyers on the board. I’ll join your endeavor.
It’s pretty fuckin apparent that you don’t care who’s visiting your message board as long as SOMEONE is visiting your message board. Yep, the people that actually fuckin pay to keep this board running are supporting the lurker bandwidth vampires. Hey, here’s a solution. Since the Chicago reader, which last I heard wasn’t a non-profit organization, is absolutely fucking opposed to expanding your extremely limited bandwidth, why not do what the Fortean Times message board did? They let people explore the boards and see the subject titles of all the threads. But if you want to actually read them, you have to register. I can’t help but think how much dead weight that would eliminate if you imposed that deal here. Once registered, that 30-day shit or get off the pot deal might work wonders.
You’ve had many, many years to fix this thing and you haven’t. Get your fuckin act together, already.
Self indulgent sanctimoniousness, much? You know what they say, you only get one chance to make a first impression. Nice to know someone out there makes Paris Hilton look like a Rhodes Scholar.
On Edit: I would add I personally never have problems with the board myself. Apart from some of the posts.
I don’t know anything about lawsuits really, but what could you hope to gain? If you’re right, and the board is being administered poorly, and the service is unreliable, how have you actually been harmed? What actual damage have you suffered as a result of… I dunno… having to wait a few minutes for a post to submit, or whatever?
I mean, if it’s really that intolerable, next time the SDMB membership fee mafia break down your door and demand payment, why not just refuse to pay? - keep that $14.95 tight in your sweaty fist and just let them break your kneecaps instead.
The OP is obviously a bit crazy at the moment, but seriously, he kind of does have a point.
Why is it that we pay 15 dollars to subscribe, have ads, and still have a worse board with less features and worse performance than other similar ones. I’m talking about boards that use the same software.
There simply is no explanation for this. The economics don’t add up. If there were simply too many people then there ought to be enough in ad revenue. There are loads of boards that manage this without even having to be based on a subscription.
We aren’t even allowed inline pictures! Nothing! It’s all text! Whoever is in charge needs to seriously reconsider things. Not because I’m gonna sue, or I’ll go away, but because it’s unprofessional and looks bad. It’s true that this OP can’t be taken seriously, but I think we really ought to be honest here and say that yes, the board performance sucks compared to others. The search is terrible and only allows for one search every two minutes! There’s no way to search for things less than 4 letters so usernames like “Eve” create problems. Want to find about ADD? too bad.
Maybe they should find cheaper bandwidth. I’m hoping that the server is co-located. Otherwise it’s really dumb.
Seriously, who is making re-up your membership? Is Cecil coming over personally with a gun in his hand standing over you until you enter your credit card number? As a consumer you can always just choose to leave and take your money with you. You don’t have to put up this board.
And thank Og for that. Have you seen other boards with all their avatars and pics in the post? Horrible!
Sometimes threads just call out for a picture. My enjoyment of MeFi has been greatly diminished since they stopped allowing 'em. Kal needs his pissing elephants! And fucking chickens, but we won’t dwell on that.
In other news: If you think the board is shit for whatever reason, go somewhere else. Bitching about performance, moderation, lack of features and so on won’t get anywhere. Just remember that the SDMB is The Best Message Board Ever and that the Dopers are the smartest and most witty folk you’ll ever meet - a class above normal people*.
I haven’t had any problems with the board since the big upgrade a few years ago. If everyone isn’t having problems, then the problem isn’t with the board server, is it?
Nor me. When I started working nights I expected the board to suck royally during the hours when all the Yanks are up and posting, but it didn’t. I don’t know whence the whining flows, really.
I rarely have problems with timeouts, and those that do happen, happen here at the office where bandwidth usage (on our end) can get quite heavy at times.
And we don’t need pictures. You want pictures, go to some forum designed for teenagers.
Even though I have already taken something like the ‘If you don’t like it, why are you still here?’ stance (in response to the OP), I think Merkwurdigliebe’s more tempered, level-headed post has some merit. In most situations where something is less than satisfactory, there really ought to be more options on the menu than “shut up” or “leave”.
Great for all of you who have never experienced problems, but your own personal nirvana is not universal. Consider yourselves lucky. I myself experience board outages several times a day. And that’s from three different computers, at all times of day. And no other websites pose this many problems for me.
Sure, I could refuse to pay my $7.95 per year and visit other sites, but as a paying member, I have every right to complain about lousy service. Honestly, folks, if you paid good money to the electric company, would you brook nonsense from people telling you to just suck it up because your power went out every single day?
I’m right with the OP. I love this site, and am willing to pay for it, but would love it if it didn’t konk out every 20 minutes.
Johnny Hildo, I’m not a mod, but I know from my experience here that the SDMB and the Chicago Reader really, really dislike threats, including threats of litigation. From the Registration Agreement:
I’m not sure how your post fits into this clause, but I would think very carefully before encouraging lawsuits here in the future.
