I pronounce “athletic”, “library” and “nuclear” the way they are spelled. I even pronounce “February” the way it it spelled. I do not, however, pronounce “Wednesday”, “sophomore”, or “colonel” the way they are spelled.
And, uh, thanks Jerry for leaving the board up while working on it. These are some important discussions we’re having here.
The read-only archive server is still a work in progress and probably will be up within the next few days. I have it about 50% built. Don’t ask!
You’ll find all threads with a last post date prior to 08-01-2000 no longer appear on the SDMB. They’ll eventually reappear on the read-only archive server when I get it completed. About 36% of the contents of the database are now gone so we’ll see if it has any impact on the overall speed of the SDMB. If not, we’ll have to try other things but it’s a start.
Thanks for working on this. We know the Chicago Reader isn’t exactly coining money off of this message board, but it has become important to a lot of us. (Well, I guess a lot of us need to Get A Life, but we don’t want a life.)
Thanks for your efforts, both Jerry and Chicago Reader. The board has seemed quite a bit zippier this weekend; I guess the true test will come when all of our 9-to-5ers report back in.
You guys have been cribbing from the new Milky Way commercial, right? I’ve only heard it once, so this is only vaguely like it:
female operator:“Sir, what color would you like for your sweater, periwinkle or caramel?”
male customer:“Carmel.”
“You mean caramel.”
“That’s what I said.”
“I’m sorry, sir, you didn’t. You said ‘carmel’, not ‘caramel’.”
“What’s the difference?”
etc.
Narrator: “No matter how you say it, Milky Way’s got the best!”
OK, 2:16 PM EDT, and it’s a little slow, but it works every time. This is usually about the slowest time. Around noon it was really slow for a little while. Either way, a vast improvement. Thanks ever so much.
I can’t believe how much faster the Boards are! On behalf of all of us (there must be at least, what, two?) who post during banking hours, THANK YOU. This is fantastic.
If old threads are split between a “live” and “archive” database, why have the cutoff point as long ago as 12 months? I’m not sure about other users, but when I use the search command, I use it either for a) finding an interesting thread that slipped off the front page within the last week, or b) looking to see if anyone’s previously posted a GQ (or IMHO question or whatever) that I want to ask.
In the first case, a “live” archive of only a month or so would be sufficient; in the second case, the split time wouldn’t matter, since I’d search both live and archived threads. The only other reason I can see for having a substantial live thread base, resuscitating old threads, seems like a mixed blessing.
So, if this works, why not set the cutoff date much lower than 12 months?
SOMEWHAT UNRELATED:
Will the format of the archive be the same as that of the live version (i.e., there are forums with x number of threads on y number of pages in reverse date order)? If it’s similar, I have a suggestion: Can we archive copies of a few selected threads (the one on how to use vB codes comes to mind) with the date of the last post fairly recent (so it’s bumped to the top of the archive forum)? Then some of these threads that are constantly cited would be easily availble without even having to search for them. Whaddaya think?
Maintenance to the SDMB is now complete. The underlying database structure has been redesigned to remove most of the bottlenecks caused by searching. A RAM upgrade from 512 MBs to 1.0 GBs has been performed as well.
Since performance has been so positively effected we’ve decided for the time being there is not as much need for the read-only archive server. That project is now on hold and most likely will not be implemented. All threads with a last post date of prior to 08/01/2000 are now once again available for viewing and searching on the SDMB.