So 2:00 minutes delay is OK. What about 1:59? 1:58? Would those screw up the server? How do you know if you don’t try?
Along the lines of Joey P’s comment, how about shortening the wait time by one second per day until something really screwy happens? Or nothing happens? Then you would have a possible good/bad value to apply. Otherwise, you are just guessing without any attempt to find out what the problem is, or if the search timeout is a factor at all.
Since other message boards don’t have this problem, my guess is this is a red herring.
Honest to god, it would take less than a minute to make the change. If things really went to crap, which I very highly doubt, it would take less than a minute to change back. Worst case, we have one day with lots of timeouts and we change things back. Big damn deal.
Be that as it may, rudeness to the staff will likely yield poor results. Civil criticism is always fine, and while I do not demand any apology, I do caution you against doubling down on abusing the staff.
Well, first of all, I’m not the one you need to convince. I have absolutely no control whatsoever over that timer. A lot of people seem to think there’s no down side to changing the timer. I’m just pointing out that potentially there is.
I defend it because a lot of people seem to think the only reason the delay is still in place is because the IT staff here is a bunch of idiots. From my point of view, I see periodic complaints about server problems that seem to be due to overloading, which (and again, I don’t have access to actual server statistics, so I’m guessing) indicates to me that we don’t have any spare server overhead. There are times when this board is busier than others. When the board is at its worst, things don’t seem to work well. If we’re already having problems, then adding more load onto an already overloaded server is only going to make the problems worse. So I keep defending the timeout because it makes an awful lot of sense to me to keep it in. The folks that manage the servers aren’t the idiots that some folks here think they are.
That said, we haven’t had too many complaints in the last year or so. Siam Sam’s zapping (which doesn’t only affect him, he’s just the one that reports the problem most reliably so I associate his name with it) still occurs, and while that apparently isn’t directly related to server loading, it does seem to get worse when the server is performing worse. If the subject had come up a year ago (and it probably did, it comes up often), there’s no way I would have agreed that it was time to change the timer. We had just experienced a spat of server problems not long before that. Now though, maybe it is time to try lowering the timer value. We’ve gone a decent amount of time with fewer problems.
I’m not saying it’s not time to try it. I’m just pointing out that it’s not without risks, and that the timer has had a good reason for staying where it is, up until very recently.
If it were up to me (and again, it’s not), there’s no way in hell I’d do it right now. They are making too many other changes. Let those settle out for a month or so, then change the timer. If we change it now and the board has loading issues, are the issues caused by the timer or are they caused by the other changes? Better to change things one at a time. That way if something breaks, you know what broke it.
If it were up to me I’d also banish viglink to the fiery depths of Hell, but that’s something else that I have no control over whatsoever.
As for me always telling folks how wonky the search engine is, let’s face it. The search engine is wonky. The search engine is tied into the version of vBulletin that we use, and as long as we continue to use this version, we’re stuck with our wonky search engine. If people complain about it, I can’t tell them how to fix it. The best that I can do is tell them that it’s broken (so they know the problem isn’t on their end) and point them to google because sometimes that works in cases where our search engine doesn’t. It’s the best that I can recommend under the circumstances, so that’s what I do. I’m trying to be as helpful as possible.
Sorry if you don’t like me using the word wonky. I picked that word up from Stephen King many years ago and it’s stuck with me. I like the word.
Nevertheless, in the absence of evidence, and using your logic, making the timer 2 minutes plus one second might blow up the whole board, or it might make it work faster. There’s nothing magic about the 2 minute value; it was just a number someone plucked out of their…hat.
ECG, I am assuming that the board software uses a database engine based on SQL Server or Oracle or MySQL or whatever. Have you guys got a database administrator who does tuning and optimization?
That’s just silly. I’m not saying anything close to that.
My best guess, based only on the frequency of board performance issues in the past, is that making a significant change to the timer like setting it to 1 minute or shorter will mostly work, but we’ll have a bunch of folks complaining about things not working right in periodic spats every month or so. But I don’t know if we are still running on the same servers that we were a year ago and earlier, and I don’t know what other changes are being made during this current upgrade other than the mobile skinning.
But like I already said, if I were in charge of the timer (and I’m not), I would be willing to give it a shot at 30 seconds just to see what happens. I just wouldn’t do it while other changes are being made.
vBulletin uses SQL. We have an admin but he’s not dedicated only to the SDMB. He has other duties as well. He is very responsive when we have issues, but I don’t know how much time he has to fiddle with things like tuning and optimization.
Indeed.
And while you’re doing this how about getting rid of the ‘Last edited’ bit ? Which is profoundly ridiculous since they meanly only allow 5 minutes for editing, which is not enough time for Stalinist revisionism.
A hint, if one has 1440 minutes for editing, a day, one can make the last editing option exactly the same so it never appears.
The reason 2 minutes works so well is that it discourages people from searching at all.
I have used search say a dozen times. 10 of those times I abandoned any hope of help from this after being bullied around by a system which is designed to troll you. I have been repeatedly timed out when I haven’t begun searching. I suppose if the new posts is a search that might have been relevant. But now I don’t care. You are not supposed to be able to search, as I see it.
And BTW anyone who really needs to search for something needs to be able to make multiple searches in a reasonable time frame. That’s what science is about, that’s what fighting ignorance would be about, if it were.
That’s the question, isn’t it? We only know who the moderators are. Presumably, they know people who know people who know who could make the change. Saying, “It’s not my department” is fine, but how about “I’ll pass on your request to the appropriate person and suggest they try this”
OK fine. Are “other” changes being made right now? If so, is there an expected end to them, when we can try other things? Or are the “changes” going to drag on indefinitely, preventing any other options from being explored?
All those who want ** engineer_comp_geek** to be in charge of the timer, raise your hand!
Just out of curiosity what are people doing that benefits from using search more than every 2 minutes?
I use “new posts” pretty regularly, but not more than a few times a day. Other than that I only use the board’s search function occasionally and when I do it’s just a one-time search.
It not being of any value to me doesn’t mean I don’t think those who want it shouldn’t have it. I’m just curious how people are making use of the feature where every 2 minutes isn’t enough.
Seriously? I would have thought it obvious that the big problem is doing a search that fails for whatever reason and then have to sit twiddling your thumbs waiting for another chance to try.
Spell the word you wanted to search wrong, sit and wait. Picked the wrong word to search, sit and wait. Select the wrong option in your search, sit and wait. Board glitches out, sit and wait.
Nobody has time for that rubbish, not when most other vBulletin boards let you search away to your hearts content.
