Quote:
Originally Posted by photon
Thanks searches were scaled back because the code of the thanks feature itself was not designed well enough to scale up with the number of users and posts we have, regardless of what kind of server you throw at it. You can only compensate for bad design so far.
As an aside, that's a significant downside of community written plugins for software; they are frequently done by volunteers that don't have the time or the knowledge to build code that will handle the large scenarios (this is actually a common problem with developers in general hence the emergence of DevOps).
If someone wants to step forward to rewrite the thanks plugin to allow for those searches I'll gladly install it.
I'm not sure what you mean by post history searches (search was only turned off for a short time as a test to see if it was a significant contributing factor), but users viewing threads and forum lists are, like thanks, only temporarily disabled until we get on the new servers.
As said previously in the thread, the features aren't being rolled back, only temporarily disabled until the migration to the new servers is completed.
As said above, it's not being scaled back, it's being disabled until the new servers are ready to host the site. And the root cause has pretty much nothing to do with demand (or increase in demand anyway, if the site had 5 viewers it would perform pretty awesome).
EDIT: Reading back over that kind of repeating myself there, sorry I should have maybe combined all those into one response.
With respect to any advertising or sponsorship, those are Bingo's domain and I don't even know if he's aware of this thread so if anyone wants their input to be seen by Bingo then they should probably let him know directly, or at least point him to your post. You mentioned cc. Bingo so I assume you already did that, that last part was for anyone else.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by photon
Safe to say I never claimed the cause was the thanks feature.
Also safe to say not everyone has been a jackass about it, good for you on bucking the trend.
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Photon, I will agree that some of the responses do have an edge to them, but I don't think that you should take it as a commentary on the work you're doing and your efforts. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I do sense a bit of sensitivity that way. The work you put in is clear to most anyone that spends some time on this forum, and I don't think anyone is upset with the explanations you've given, nor the efforts you continually make. Speaking for myself, it's appreciated, as are the quality of your replies like your reply to me above.
My post was mostly intended to speak to long term issues with the forum, that are likely beyond your capacity or control and into the realm of investment in infrastructure as well as ongoing operations and direction. I can appreciate that some of the features were disabled on a temporary basis only, but many of them are disabled often (busy times of year such as trade deadline, etc.), nevermind that the crashes and load times that spur these measures happen frequently in the first place. The loading and crashes are the main source of most people's frustration, I'm sure.
To clarify with the post history searches, I mean the search that is performed when you click on a user's name and the option to view that user's past posts. It used to return, I believe, 5 times the number of results than they do now. Noticed that change a couple weeks ago maybe.
Also, I did indeed PM Bingo with my post above, although I do have to echo the concerns of others above that the owner doesn't peruse the Help/Suggestions section of the forum, especially in light of a persistent technical issue such as this one. Surely you shouldn't be left to answer for everything. I haven't received a reply yet.
I wouldn't otherwise presume to be so entitled, but the era of sponsored forums especially has ushered in a different paradigm where the users might come to expect some reinvestment in the community and experience after having their patronage and involvement sold as a commodity. I'm sure the new servers will be great and all, but that it has gotten to this point (and likely will again), raises some questions.