I’m posting this here to let you know that the board is very slow today, and there is a good reason. This board is currently being “slashdotted”. For those unfamiliar with the term, slashdot.org is a technology-oriented newsboard with hundreds of thousands, if not millions of devotees. When they post a newstory that contains a link to another website, that website gets bombarded with thousands, hundreds of thousands, even millions of hits with in a short period of time (we’re talking less than an hour after the story is posted). This much traffic will more often than not bring said server to a screeching halt.
I don’t have the link, but the story posted was the Cafe Society thread about the rewrites of the LotR in different styles.
I’ve just saw that we were serving more than double our all time previous high of “current users” (that is the number of “people” active on the message board in the last 15 minute period). We just did 1626. I now have a pretty good idea what our maximum limit is.
I feel stupid for being impressed by the viewcount boost of threadspotted threads.
That doesn’t look right if you don’t surround it with [Mr.Burns]…[/Mr.Burns] or at least add some thunder and maniacal laughter.
From the Jargon File’s definition of the slashdot effect:
If these appear to last long periods of time would it be benificial in the end to stop threadspotting or is it a large addition to the “recrutment” of new members?
I don’t know about here, but at off-topic.net (a board my friend moderates), they had a thread mentioned on Opie and Anthony, and ended up with about 300,000 hits in a short time. They had to turn off guest viewing temporarily.
Is that something the staff is considering here, or would that be counter-productive to the mission of bringing in readers to the column?
Well, Jerry? It’s over! So, what was it like, being the target of the /. effect? The hamsters kept running in their cages. Weighed down, but it wasn’t really any worse than the same time last year, before the hamsters got new chow. How’d you keep us going?
I am totally impressed that these boards held up against that…people over at Slashdot seem quite proud of being able to bring a server to a standstill!
One thing that bothers me, though, is that my SO was reading the Slashdot thread about the LoTR rewrites, and someone cut and pasted in a bunch of the “better” ones, and didn’t give credit to a single poster! I suppose it isn’t that big of a deal, but it is a little disrespectful, isn’t it?
As of this moment I see 336 members and 530 guests online (most of whom are viewing the LOTR thread). So we still have quite a bit of traffic but no real bottlenecks. Yay! I’m gonna go move a thread in celebration.
Since the effect was temporary - today the board seems OK again - I don’t think we need to make any permanent changes such as have been suggested in this thread.
I saw a lot of posters in that thread with only one post to their name and a registration date of Jan 2003 - I wonder how many new members we gained in the last 24 hours?
