Can anyone who knows something about the internal runnings of the website possibly chime in? Until then, this argument is pointless.
Not that I don’t appreciate this or anything, but I’m officially flabbergasted. Since when?
If Agent Foxtrot meant that customers have a legal right to complaint, then sure they do, in the sense that plumbers have a legal right to sing Livin’ La Vida Loca. That is, it falls under free speech, but there’s nothing about being a customer/plumber that gives a right to complain/sing Ricky Martin hits, so the sentence itself is kind of meaningless. It just means “here and now, we have free speech”.
We have a fundamental disagreement here (as I’m sure you were aware). My view is that rights are ultimately arbitrary and only exist as long as we pretend they do, much like corporations, nations and marriages. I certainly think that we should pretend that certain rights exist, because we get a happier world that way. But I don’t see what would bring them into existence, provided we’re not talking about legal rights.
Agree.
You do have a point here. The administration does specifically extend us the right to complain. I took Agent Foxtrot’s statement to be a blanket one, not one specifically pertaining to this message board.
If it hadn’t been for Agent Foxtrot adding “And not a single one of you can refute that. G’head, try. I dare ya” I wouldn’t have said a word, but that was such a bizarre statement that I felt the need to respond.
Ponder, if you truly think I’m a troll, then you really should stop responding to me. I can only assure you that I am not.
There was a time when I got upset about the snarkiness from TD, the sloppy way the **Reader ** does things and the way the apologistas came in to defend everything, including, but not limited to sucking up to, and applauding mods and admins.
I’ve decided that the pros of the board outweighs the cons and live with that. Complaining and bitching isn’t going to change anything, as demonstrated by countless threads like this here and in ATMB.
I don’t feel like I’m part of a community, I don’t see myself as a Doper, though I’ve read the column for almost 25 years by now, have had a question answered by Cecil. I find that I can interact with people with a mindset like my own, in greater numbers, than I can do in my everyday life. I don’t know anyone, outside the Dope, who follows Battlestar Galactica, I know one (1) person outside the Dope that reads Pratchett. And I know that if I’m stumped about something, there’s always someone in GQ that can answer my question. Googling produces to much noise to signal ratio, but OTOH, so does almost all of MPSIMS and IMHO, which is why I rarely go there. Which in turn might be why I don’t feel like I’m part of a community.
Also - I’m really sursprised to see **PriceGuy ** accused of trolling. I’ve always had a deep respect for him, and think of him as one of the most level headed persons here.
Were the OP was crafted as an IMHO poll, I could understand all these repetitive ‘no speed issues here’ posts - but this is a complaint addressed to the administration. If you’re one of the fortunate ones who hasn’t been timing out, that’s great…the poin’t been made. But common sense dictates that every time you remind the OP everything’s just peachy keen, you’re diluting the valid complaints of those who are experiencing time-outs.
For example, last month Ed Zotti said he’s looking into addressing the newly restricted search issue - which apparently ties back to the server. He surely can’t send a link to this thread over to the Chicago Reader’s Appropriations Committee. If half the posts in this thread are any indication, the people who are in charge of authorizing server outlays are going to feel they can save the expense, for it’s only a few of the usual suspects unnecessarily bitching and moaning.
I once pushed this issue in a similar thread, and eventually got a terse mod response along the lines that the servers were nothing to do with anybody who owns or runs the board, so there was no point asking. In the time when the timeouts were just embarassing, many of us did ask the simply question ‘what are the basic specs of the current server?’ Apparently, even this is (or was) confidential.
That’s what happened to me!
Since I came to my senses. There has seldom been an opportunity between us to have a discussion like this, and I’m glad the time has come. I know I’ve been a real shithead in the past. And I’m still a shithead. It’s just that now I don’t feel compelled to taint everything I write with my shitheadedness. I’m actually coming to understand that there are real people behind the posts. I shouldn’t be so mean to people. It’s uncalled for. If I can’t insult someone in a classy way that can be taken as humorous, I’m just going to keep my mouth shut. I hate the reputation I have. I was compelled to mend some fences and make some changes. In doing so, I’ve discovered that I have an admiration for a wide variety of people that I didn’t even think about before. […shrug…] Maybe chalk it up to old age and poor health. Battles for the sake of fighting just aren’t important to me anymore.
Hey, nobody likes to reveal things that others can make fun of.
My WAG is that the server hardware is woefully inadequate. I myself have had a number of delays in the past few weeks, but I notice that the majority of them, especially when I post, have been when I simulposted with someone else. Issues of file access and such. On a fast server, the dealy might be noticeable but acceptable. No so here.
There’s always the possibility that they are violating the cardinal rule of DB operation, and allowing someone to use the server as their personal workstation.
I’m really happy about this. You know, once I promised myself never to respond to you anymore, as I didn’t believe you and I were capable of carrying on a meaningful conversation. If you hadn’t caught me off-guard by saying you were a fan of mine, I probably wouldn’t have responded now either. I will in the future, though.
Yeah, I’m getting sick of this bullshit too.
I don’t think the problem is an underpowered server. The server was upgraded a few months ago, and even though we don’t know the specs, the word from Ed & Jerry (from places like this thread:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=418641&page=3&pp=50
indicate the hardware is not the bottleneck. Neither is the bandwidth. The problem seems to be a well known problem in MySQL that hits larger databases, which we are.
In that thread, Ed says this:
and gives this link:
to a thread on vBulletin’s message board gives the details, and (if I’m remembering correctly) indicates the solution is a separate database engine for the searches. The problem with implementing this solution on the SDMB is a combination of factors, but seems to mostly be the manpower and time to do the various upgrades required before the solution will work:
Taking away visitor’s ability to view threads still wouldn’t help because as soon as they hit the site they are using up bandwidth whether they open threads or not. Now, if they somehow had a way to only allow paid users on this server, then that would greatly increase speed and uptime. Well, I guess… lol
Cool. 
Ed’s right about that. I served on a board that was sort of the opposite of here in terms of changes, upgrades, and such. There were a couple of skilled hackers who tweaked software routinely and a board owner who loved adding features and doing projects. Every couple of months, there would be a new upheaval and crisis. Previous tweaks would be lost and have to be restored. Sometimes it took days or weeks to normalize things. Of course, there’s probably a happy medium between never tweaking anything and constantly changing everything.
The problem with the board isn’t bandwidth, I don’t think. If it were bandwidth, there would be mid-page slowdowns and freezes, and I’ve seldom seen that happen. You know, loading a part of the page, freezing while the status bar shows incremental progress, then dumping a bit more, then freezing again, and so on while you’re shown how many items remain to be downloaded. That’s a sign that the pipe is too small, and that the server is feeding what it can in a given blob.
The problem is probably with SQL. Typically, the freezes I experience are at points of data fetching. Like when I try to open a page. Or do a search. Or click on a thread title. Or click Submit. These are points in time when the server is calling out to the SQL engine that it needs to send or get data. When the SQL engine doesn’t respond, the server waits until its timeout setting is reached, and then reports to the browser that it can’t send what was requested. The browser then reports a timeout error. A bandwidth problem often wouldn’t even allow that to happen. You’d just get a blank white page with a cryptic “Done” in the status bar.
There are all kinds of tools for examining the efficiency of SQL usage. There may be poorly designed indexes or badly defined relations. There may be a better way to store the physical database. There may be a bottleneck between the SQL engine and the server. At any rate, searching is far and away the most likely culprit. Things like cursor type, locking levels, and whether sets of records are static, dynamic, or forward only scrolling make a huge difference in efficiency.
SQL is an area of expertise all its own, and it may not be Jerry’s forte. It’s unfair to call him incompetent if he’s more of a network or hardware guy. In fact, it has been my experience that what he does he does very well. Upgrades and changes are a cakewalk compared to what I’ve seen elsewhere. If the PTB want to do something about the slowdowns, they should do a one-time hire of a SQL expert to advise Jerry what the problem is. He’s smart enough to carry it forward from there.
Thanks for the link, RJKUgly, didn’t know about that thread.
Well, shit, if it’s strictly a problem with the software, I say Open Source that fucker to the SDMB community. We have software people galore here. Spectre of Pithecanthropus and I are in the same MSE program as we speak. For the piddling sum of free board access for life (or similar) for a few dozen of us, we could have a custom solution that would serve the SDMB’s forseeable needs in a matter of weeks.
But if I understand the comments in the thread on the vBulletin message board the problem is a known bug in the MySQL software (and while I’m a programmer, I’m decidedly not an SQL guru, so I could be wrong).
Neither the developers at MySQL or anyone in the vBulletin community has been able to fix it yet, and I would assume that there are at a least a couple of SQL experts there.
According to them, the problem can’t be fixed by tweaking the SQL or table definitions. The problem lies in an error in the way MySQL does locking when the tables grow above a certain size. If that is the case, Jerry has done everything he can in that area, and an SQL troubleshooter won’t be able to help.
So we have to change to a different database engine or implement the work-around found by the vBulletin community. Both require a fair amount of time and trouble to plan and implement. Given that performance as a whole is much better than previously, I’ve got to guess that this is, unfortunately, an item lower on their list.
First, let me say that I’m not one to pass up a chance to bash the performance of the boards. But, since the upgrade, everything’s been a lot better and we’ve got a few new features.
The removal of older threads, which was my main concern, has stopped.
Aye, and help of all sorts has been offered in the past, but the powers that be feel it’s too complex (for legal, financial and privacy) reasons to allow outside help.
The Reader has also made clear that the boards are not, and never will be, their top priority.
Given all that information you just have to make your choice. If you think it’s not worth it then don’t pay.
I do think that you could do great things with more community involvement in the software, and I think there are other approaches to making money out of the site. But the boards are the way they are, and they ain’t changing, and I’ll save my (virtual) breath for the next time something bad starts happening with them.
SD
Oh, good lord no. How would this even work? Assuming you don’t just want a free-for-all, you’d end up with a hell of a job sorting out who has relevant qualifications, verifying who is trustworthy, who should be in charge, who’s got the final say on what gets included. Who’s going to do that? Do you really get the competent people, or just the ones with the most time on their hands?
Assuming you get that sorted out, then you need a separate development server, code management facilities, bug tracking, version management, some sort of code review process… the list goes on. Tackling a development project of this size is not simply a matter of giving write access to a bunch of people who “know computers”. That’s a recipe for utter programming carnage. Then testing; do you just stick it live on the boards? What if your group effort introduces unintended performance problems elsewhere? It’s unlikely anyone involved is going to have an intimate knowledge of vBulletin’s workings, so how will you really ensure that your changes are purely beneficial?
I mean, fine; you’re in an MSE program, but you say you don’t know SQL. How can you be so confident you’d make a dent in our problems, when they’re considerably more subtle than a “bug in MySQL”? I’m doing a PhD in AI, and have done a moderate amount of PHP when messing with my own website, but I wouldn’t want to touch this with a stick. Optimising database apps like this is not really a job for enthusiastic, anonymous amateurs.
I wasn’t aware of that. Jesus, I can’t imagine what sort of workaround there might be if indeed the SQL engine itself doesn’t work right, other than doing things to avoid accessing locked tables. I’m thinking utilities that run during some period of downtime, doing record insertions and updates. Not to mention on-server sort and filter routines for searching. That would all be horrible. But if that’s what the problem is, why all the coy bravado and slapdowns from TubaDiva? Why doesn’t she just say that there is a bug in MySQL that no one can do anything about?
I don’t know about Tuba, but Ed Zotti already said it in the thread JohnBckWld posted. Ed linked to the vBulletin thread where the issue (not really a bug per se) with MyISAM was detailed, the impracticality of changing the database to InnoDB outlined (no full text search), and two potential workarounds discussed (a parallel database, or this Sphinx modification). He acknowledged that the Sphinx mod seems promising (the 4th largest vB board on the internet has successfully implemented it), but noted that it can’t be applied until the SDMB is upgraded to a more recent version of vB. They’re looking into the options.
I’m not sure there’s much more information to convey, to be honest. As far as I can tell, TubaDiva isn’t directly involved with the technical stuff, so may well not be aware of what the precise problem is. Which doesn’t excuse any snarkiness, of course, but we shouldn’t really be surprised by now.