100 replies to this topic

[CPUWIZ]

Mindfield said:

Besides all the great information that's been posted in the past, what would all the dumpster divers do for bumping ancient topics?  :-)

LOL

[Albert]

Mindfield said:

Bah.  20+ years of BBS history and you'd think they'd have figured out how to write forum software by now.  :-)

I know you meant that tongue-in-cheek (I ran several BBSs myself back in the 80s and early 90s), but keep in mind that most BBSs were single-user systems and we'd be lucky to have hundreds of messages online at any given time, to say nothing about 600,000+.  

Quote

Awell ... I did notice the long delays in many forums when editing posts and figured it had something to do with extended lookups 'n stuff, given the sheer volume of messages in the forums.  I really don't think pruning the boards is an acceptable answer.  Besides all the great information that's been posted in the past, what would all the dumpster divers do for bumping ancient topics?  :-)

Pruning the forums is not an acceptable answer to me, either, so that will not happen.  I spent a lot of time working on the conversion software from UBB to PHPBB (since the conversion software from PHPBB was rather incomplete and buggy), and you can bet I'll make sure every single message makes the transition to IPB, as well as all the attachments.  

I already updated the IPB 1.3 conversion program to add support for attachments (since PHPBB doesn't support attachments by default, therefore the PHPBB->IPB conversion script ignored them), although that work is somewhat moot now, since I'm waiting for IPB 2.0 to be finished.  As soon as IPB 2.0 is released, I will update their PHPBB -> IPB 2.0 conversion script to add attachment support and we'll be on the way.  

In the meantime, I'm going to see if I can patch the current software to improve the editing speed as a stopgap, as I don't like having to disable this feature for everyone.

..Al

[sigma]

appreciate all the work you're doing, and the loss of the edit button is just a small price to pay in the long run

[Cybergoth]

Hi there!

How about only pruning forums that don't hold "a wealth of knowledge"?

I'm thinking of all Off Topic forums, Auctions and Marketplace?

Greetings,
Manuel

[Mindfield]

Cybergoth said:

Hi there!

How about only pruning forums that don't hold "a wealth of knowledge"?

I'm thinking of all Off Topic forums, Auctions and Marketplace?

Greetings,
Manuel

That'll only speed up those forums.  I don't think it'll have any impact on the primaries.

[Mindfield]

Albert said:

I know you meant that tongue-in-cheek (I ran several BBSs myself back in the 80s and early 90s), but keep in mind that most BBSs were single-user systems and we'd be lucky to have hundreds of messages online at any given time, to say nothing about 600,000+.  

Yeah, I know -- though there were multiline boards back in the day, and the software existed to maintain the message boards in such an environment -- though none of them kept messages indefinitely, and some used a preformatted system that retained a maximum number of messages.

Albert said:

Pruning the forums is not an acceptable answer to me, either, so that will not happen.  I spent a lot of time working on the conversion software from UBB to PHPBB (since the conversion software from PHPBB was rather incomplete and buggy), and you can bet I'll make sure every single message makes the transition to IPB, as well as all the attachments.  

I already updated the IPB 1.3 conversion program to add support for attachments (since PHPBB doesn't support attachments by default, therefore the PHPBB->IPB conversion script ignored them), although that work is somewhat moot now, since I'm waiting for IPB 2.0 to be finished.  As soon as IPB 2.0 is released, I will update their PHPBB -> IPB 2.0 conversion script to add attachment support and we'll be on the way.  

In the meantime, I'm going to see if I can patch the current software to improve the editing speed as a stopgap, as I don't like having to disable this feature for everyone.

..Al

Cool!  The more transparent the transition is to us users the better it will be, I think.

[Shortly]

I'm almost up for taking the off-topic forums away, and spinning them off onto their own general chat site.  Especially one forum in particular.

[Bryan]

Shortly said:

I'm almost up for taking the off-topic forums away, and spinning them off onto their own general chat site.  Especially one forum in particular.

Well, we'll be getting this feature:

http://www.atariage....=31665&start=78

You click the magic button and it all goes away!

   -Bry

[Thomas Jentzsch]

Shortly said:

Especially one forum in particular.

Why? Just because you try to but cannot stay out of it?

[Albert]

Mindfield said:

Cybergoth said:

Hi there!

How about only pruning forums that don't hold "a wealth of knowledge"?

I'm thinking of all Off Topic forums, Auctions and Marketplace?

Greetings,
Manuel

That'll only speed up those forums.  I don't think it'll have any impact on the primaries.

It wouldn't actually speed up any of the forums, unless a rather significant amount of messages was deleted.  All the messages are stored in a single database table.  Although what's really causing the slowdown are the search tables, which are *immense* due to the design of the software.

..Al

[Shortly]

Thomas Jentzsch said:

Shortly said:

Especially one forum in particular.

Why? Just because you try to but cannot stay out of it?

Why...  No!  Of course not..  There are other reasons..  Likkeee....    Uh... Hmmm...

[Cybergoth]

Hi there!

Albert said:

Mindfield said:

Cybergoth said:

I'm thinking of all Off Topic forums, Auctions and Marketplace?

That'll only speed up those forums.  I don't think it'll have any impact on the primaries.

It wouldn't actually speed up any of the forums, unless a rather significant amount of messages was deleted.

The forums I mentioned hold almost 1/2 of the messages, isn't that a "significant amount"

Greetings,
Manuel

[Albert]

Cybergoth said:

The forums I mentioned hold almost 1/2 of the messages, isn't that a "significant amount"

Yes, and they are good candidates for pruning, but we'd have to prune a significant portion of them to make a big impact.  And the only way to do that would be simply to lop off huge chunks of each of these forums based on dates.  I don't want to go down that road just yet.  I do agree that there is much less incentive to keep a long historical archive of the Off-Topic and Marketplace/Auction forums.

..Al

[Big Player]

How much space does the bikini thread take up?  There are probably more posts in that thread than some of the forums here.

[MegaManFan]

I have to admit, as much as it might put my occasional typos and errors on display, I can't complain because the forums were really dragging for the last few days.  I was timing out trying to post 1 out of every 5 to 10 times, and that's on high speed cable!

[Albert]

Big Player said:

How much space does the bikini thread take up?  There are probably more posts in that thread than some of the forums here.

Ahh, yes, I forgot that is still there.  I will delete that later tonight.  

..Al

[Albert]

MegaManFan said:

I have to admit, as much as it might put my occasional typos and errors on display, I can't complain because the forums were really dragging for the last few days.  I was timing out trying to post 1 out of every 5 to 10 times, and that's on high speed cable!

Yes, and I haven't really seen the forum bog down at all since I disabled editing, so it definitely had an effect (although I knew this anyway, but the last 24 hours have helped strengthen that).

..Al

[Nukey Shay]

I'd be in favor of dumping the entire forum database (and all of the drama contained within) if it means a better BB system.  Important info can be reposted in time by those concerned (as seen following the Nexus changeover).

Any opposed?

[Ze_ro]

MegaManFan said:

I was timing out trying to post 1 out of every 5 to 10 times, and that's on high speed cable!

The speed of your connection isn't the problem here. It's the computers that are storing all the post data that are just getting overworked, and are unable to serve the page fast enough so your browser just gives up.

--Zero

[Albert]

Nukey Shay said:

I'd be in favor of dumping the entire forum database (and all of the drama contained within) if it means a better BB system.  Important info can be reposted in time by those concerned (as seen following the Nexus changeover).

Any opposed?

Me.    

The Nexus didn't have a historical archive, and it wasn't *nearly* as busy as the current forum.  It was just a simple web script, and a single page of messages that would eventually scroll off.  Contrast that to AtariAge, where we have over three years of message history, and it's extremely useful to go back and search through this content to dig up useful information.  I am not going to toss this aside just to make the transition to new forum software easier.  

I'll grant you there are many messages that could certainly be pruned with little harm (such as big chunks of the off-topic and some other forums), but as a general rule I would prefer not to lose anything.

..Al

[Nukey Shay]

That's just the "collecter" gene

Hey, it would keep the newbies from bumping up old dead topics...so I gave it a shot

[Albert]

Nukey Shay said:

That's just the "collecter" gene

LOL, at least the messages don't take any more physical space as they accumulate!!

Quote

Hey, it would keep the newbies from bumping up old dead topics...so I gave it a shot

True, that often catches me off guard.  

..Al

[SS]

Albert said:

big chunks of the off-topic

I don't think that anyone would miss a good majority of those.

[Albert]

SS said:

Albert said:

big chunks of the off-topic

I don't think that anyone would miss a good majority of those.

No, after a few months, except for the busier topics, most of Off-Topic could be pruned without any big loss.  Or at least archived.

..Al

[MegaManFan]

I'd be in favor of archiving Off Topic to save space.