10 Points to Ponder. Or Kill TGRR.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

Come on, we are Discordians, we have no rules. We are free man.

There are always going to be rules of some sort.

[Khore]

Come on, we are Discordians, we have no rules. We are free man.

There are always going to be rules of some sort.

Ok. I prefer fewer rules and more free as possible.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Come on, we are Discordians, we have no rules. We are free man.

Who was talking about rules?

[Nephew Twiddleton]

Come on, we are Discordians, we have no rules. We are free man.

There are always going to be rules of some sort.

Ok. I prefer fewer rules and more free as possible.

I think you're really missing the point of the thread.

[Khore]

Dammit

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Lastly, I would humbly suggest that there might be a bit of a cult of personality that has developed around this place that makes the dynamics challenging at times.

Whose fault is that?  Should Nigel and I stop posting?  Should we maybe turn the mind control lasers down a bit?  What?  I mean, I'd think that someone worried about that might try to make this the board they want it to be.  I have never used my admin status to enforce my personal opinion, and I never will.  That being the case, there's nothing here that makes me any more influential than you.

Because whether you want to see it or not, that particular dynamic between those two is part of why, for better or for worse, the board is what it is today.  Look at the Discordianism v SubG thread.  Look at how they snarked at Cram for expressing an opinion.  Why the fuck would anyone want to discuss anything contrary to THEIR opinion if that's the way it's going to go?  It IS content killer. 

Um, so, Nigel and I are not allowed to an express an opinion?  Or are you suggesting that Cram can snark and we can't?  Or perhaps you are saying Cram can't speak up for himself?  I might have missed it, but I didn't see you diving in to take up his cause at the time.

Besides, as you have said at least twice, we exist only for your entertainment.  I fail to see the problem.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

YOU MAY FIRE WHEN READY!!!!!!

Whoops.  Missed this.

Nothing to see here.  Silly me, I thought you were actually trying to make a point.

It takes a bit of getting used to, this object of entertainment thing.

[Faust]

While pretty much everything posted in the OP is pretty spot on, the act of posting it can alienate people.
The comment about Nigel and roger dominating most of the board isn't entirely fair or accurate. The do have a disproportionately higher post count then others, but it hasn't changed. Not in years. What has happened is there has been a decline in the frequency others would post. If you click on the stats button on the front page you can see that the amount of new posts and the amount of new threads per month has declined steadily for almost a year now.

New people don't stay long, the people who were here have left or cut down on their posting, the simple fact of the matter is we need fresh blood for fresh ideas. In the past we've gotten members from place like MW, COG or the like, but with the recent T2 fiasco, all we've gotten are a couple of braindead bozo's who think they are trolling us.

I've been meaning to get some technology based discussion going because over the last year that is what my focus has been on entirely, I'll see if I can wrangle stuff over the next while.

9.  The board loading issues, search functions, etc.  This place hangs a dozen times a day, the page load time is outrageous, and half the time it times out.  Apparently, this only happens on the American side of the Atlantic, but it's gotten so fucking bad that I - the greatest PD junkie in its history - often leave for a weekend because I get really sick of timeouts and lost responses.  There has to be some solution for this...Trip & Faust, I've been asking around, and it's not just me.  Also, the search function thing...I know it's fucking bolluxed to hell and gone, but is there any way we can restore it or fix it?  

You think we haven't been working on this. TWO Years we have been doing our best to find sources of downtime.

Problem: The site is inherently unstable, prone to lagging or timing out.

Diagnosis: The database is too big to be used on a live forum, specifically the messages column. Certain features place more of a strain on the site then others, some have been identified, many more have not. The site operates optimally with no extra resources being needed when these glitches are not occurring.

Treatment: Any of the features that cause a systemic CRASH of the site such as the search function have been disabled, the feature could be re enabled but any time a person searches the site WILL go down. Over the next couple of weeks I will be watching for these queries and see if they can be modified so that they don't instantly hog all the resources, otherwise they can be disabled.

Quick fix: The problem is the size of the messages table, if we keep throwing large amounts of data overboard all features including search will resume functioning appropriately. The downside is that it means ejecting large segments of data from the forum.

I want to avoid quick fix so I will continue trying to find specific queries that cause these lags. But for the next two weeks I want to see can just the forum function when all other services have been disabled. So if anything doesn't work for the next two weeks such as the WIKI or the like, please don't freak out.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

While pretty much everything posted in the OP is pretty spot on, the act of posting it can alienate people.

Yeah, but drastic measures were necessary, IMO.

The comment about Nigel and roger dominating most of the board isn't entirely fair or accurate.

What's fair & accurate got to do with it?

The do have a disproportionately higher post count then others, but it hasn't changed. Not in years. What has happened is there has been a decline in the frequency others would post. If you click on the stats button on the front page you can see that the amount of new posts and the amount of new threads per month has declined steadily for almost a year now.

New people don't stay long, the people who were here have left or cut down on their posting, the simple fact of the matter is we need fresh blood for fresh ideas. In the past we've gotten members from place like MW, COG or the like, but with the recent T2 fiasco, all we've gotten are a couple of braindead bozo's who think they are trolling us.

I've been meaning to get some technology based discussion going because over the last year that is what my focus has been on entirely, I'll see if I can wrangle stuff over the next while.

9.  The board loading issues, search functions, etc.  This place hangs a dozen times a day, the page load time is outrageous, and half the time it times out.  Apparently, this only happens on the American side of the Atlantic, but it's gotten so fucking bad that I - the greatest PD junkie in its history - often leave for a weekend because I get really sick of timeouts and lost responses.  There has to be some solution for this...Trip & Faust, I've been asking around, and it's not just me.  Also, the search function thing...I know it's fucking bolluxed to hell and gone, but is there any way we can restore it or fix it?  

You think we haven't been working on this. TWO Years we have been doing our best to find sources of downtime.

Problem: The site is inherently unstable, prone to lagging or timing out.

Diagnosis: The database is too big to be used on a live forum, specifically the messages column. Certain features place more of a strain on the site then others, some have been identified, many more have not. The site operates optimally with no extra resources being needed when these glitches are not occurring.

Treatment: Any of the features that cause a systemic CRASH of the site such as the search function have been disabled, the feature could be re enabled but any time a person searches the site WILL go down. Over the next couple of weeks I will be watching for these queries and see if they can be modified so that they don't instantly hog all the resources, otherwise they can be disabled.

Quick fix: The problem is the size of the messages table, if we keep throwing large amounts of data overboard all features including search will resume functioning appropriately. The downside is that it means ejecting large segments of data from the forum.

I want to avoid quick fix so I will continue trying to find specific queries that cause these lags. But for the next two weeks I want to see can just the forum function when all other services have been disabled. So if anything doesn't work for the next two weeks such as the WIKI or the like, please don't freak out.

I appreciate all the effort Faust.  Is there any way you can post updates in the metaboards, as progress is made?

[Faust]

Will do.

[Triple Zero]

9.  The board loading issues, search functions, etc.

This is noted, important and indeed very much on my mind.

As far the loading issues go: Faust and I are busy tweaking the server configuration and forum code several times per week, every time either of us thinks of something that might improve performance, we shoot eachother a PM and try it out. Sometimes it improves a littlebit, but never any real big solid gains. It's also hard to test when everybody is apparently affected differently depending on access time of day and geographic location.

About the search function. Believe me, I want it back too, I just need to find out how. The angle I'm currently looking at, is to load the forum posts into a separate system, a specialized full-text search software that keeps its own optimized index of posts and search-terms, separate from the SMF database. That might mean it's not always up-to-date with the live forum, but even if it is updated only once a week, that's good enough for 99% of searches. There's several open-source solutions for this kind of software, I need to download one, install and see how easy it is to load SMF posts into it. And of course see whether it's lighter on the server than SMF's search.

Finally, a lot of these problems would be solved if we simply had a more powerful and dedicated server. I believe Faust has his eye on a certain deal, but I forget how or what or when. But better deals are always welcome, so if ANYONE READING THIS knows of a decent deal on a dedicated server, that is located in Ireland or at least in Europe we'd love to hear about it.

I find it a suitable replacement for the drawings I used to do (no longer have an audience), which admittedly were crude, but entertaining for both myself and the viewer. It was basically analog womp. Used to do it all the time with coworkers I was close with as of 6 years ago.

I don't think you have lack of an audience, but rather lack of a scanner to use to post your drawings? I'd love to see your drawings, especially if you draw us!

[Cramulus]

I have no problem having passionate exchanges on topics.  Lord knows I've been involved in many outside of the drug debates.  In fact, I still remember my first throw-down which was actually with LMNO.  It went on for pages and pages, and was pretty heated, but he didn't attack me personally and vice versa.  We survived and he's one of the posters I admire most on this site.  But where I do have the problem is when it gets personal and posters are attacked personally.  And I'm not just talking about me but I've seen it happen in other fights with other long-time members. 

So I think one thing we ALL can do to make things better around here is to acknowledge that we don't go THERE.  We put 110% into our opinion on whatever the topic may be but we don't go THERE and attack the person.  I think that could go a long way to making this place more conducive to information exchange and content. 

Khara said it well too:

the criticism ... to take it or give it with any grace or maturity

This, totally this.

I don't see a lot of helpful critique and useful feedback loops anymore. Well, people are really critical, but it is typically served with a side of mockery and judgment, which is pretty much guarantees the rest of the thread is an attack/defense and no information is exchanged.

It's not just Nigel and Roger, it's all over the board. Just the other week I was shocked to see LMNO drop a  (paraphrasing) "YOU ARE A FUCKING RETARD" on our old friend Iptuous over some insignificant difference of opinion. Or that trans kid explaining why he's thankful for his unique reality tunnel, and it turned into LOOK AT WHAT A MAGICAL AND UNIQUE SNOWFLAKE YOU ARE. It's really low quality "discussion", definitely not "jailbreaking". It's hard for me to read threads like that and go "Yeah, these are my people. I want to share all sorts of interesting things with them."

We can all agree this is a risky environment for unpopular ideas. Everything gets so intense and personal and judgmental. Quick on the trigger. If you're wondering why people don't post as much, a big factor is because of the hostile atmosphere. If it it weren't so pissy, I think there'd be more/better threads. It's made us insular.

A snapshot of the problem: Our eyes move in an F pattern when we read a post. (myself included) You read the first line, then you scan down the side, then you go back and pick out the one thing that you disagree with, and respond to that. That's not limited to PD, it's all over the internet, but it's gotten markedly worse here. Recently I've felt like a lot of our threads have the same tone as youtube comments, albeit with better vocabulary/grammar.




tl;dr summary:
           PD in 2011: "Get TUFF, Get ZEN, or GTFO
                                      ... where'd everybody go?"

[Nephew Twiddleton]

I find it a suitable replacement for the drawings I used to do (no longer have an audience), which admittedly were crude, but entertaining for both myself and the viewer. It was basically analog womp. Used to do it all the time with coworkers I was close with as of 6 years ago.

I don't think you have lack of an audience, but rather lack of a scanner to use to post your drawings? I'd love to see your drawings, especially if you draw us!

That is a fair assessment, I guess what I meant was that I don't have any coworkers to do that anymore, nor can I quite get away with drawing at work anymore since my position is no longer one that requires a pencil.

I do miss drawing sometimes, and I'll see if Pickles has a scanner, since that sounds like a lot of fun. I'm sure he does, he has a lot of computer equipment. Plus there is some stuff that I have made that I would like to put on here but have since lost the files to and only have them as paper copies. I could always redo them too, though.

[Cramulus]

10.  It is my opinion that it's time to revise the banning rules.  Someone like infinity shock or DECI4 who is obviously only here to shit all over everything should not be given the ability to do so just so we can be all self-righteous about our policies as compared to theirs.  I am not in favor of being allowed to go all Mol on people because they made me all butthurt, but neither do I see any point in allowing a shitneck to derail the entire fucking boards so we can wank off to our own virtue.  I'm not proposing a specific policy here, just proposing that the current policy isn't working well.  It's also something that should be discussed by the board at large, not just the admins.

I'm iffy on this because we often have trouble distinguishing actual trolls from people who just suck.


deci4 and infinityshock sucked, but they weren't a big deal, no? They made less than 75 posts (combined), right? And in all of those cases, if we just ignored them instead of flaming them (which is what they want), they'd lose interest and go away.


I also think the measures we've already taken against those dudes are, in the long run, more effective than banning.



Just my two cents.
  I could be convinced otherwise, and I'm open minded about changing our policy- but that's my opinion as it stands now.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Lastly, I would humbly suggest that there might be a bit of a cult of personality that has developed around this place that makes the dynamics challenging at times.  Whether anyone cares to admit to it or not, there is definitely a popular pecking order around these parts, and you can even see it demonstrated in this thread.  Now, perhaps the rest of the board is cool with this, I can only assume they are since it's happened.  ECH in another thread said something about changing this place to the TGRRandNIGEL.com board or something, and it was a one off joke, but there is a nugget of truth to that, I think.  

Sure, cast that criticism aside as "whining".  But it's the goddamned truth and I know I'm not the only one that has made that observation.  But, that's just the way the board has evolved, and I don't think that is something where you can just wave a magic wand and undo it, and I'm not necessarily suggesting it should be undone.  But it IS a characteristic of this board.  It just is.  

I've adapted, I can roll with it.  I personally don't give a fuck about Tucson, I don't give a fuck about Portland, I don't give a fuck about Mr. Language, or what happens at the power plant.  And I'm sure you guys could give a fuck about what happens in my office.  I originally came here for the Discordia, but that doesn't really seem to happen much anymore.  Now, I come for a little fun every now and again to break up the monotony of my day.  So I'll just make my own little Discordia.  

Anyway, take those musings for what you think they are worth.  

So... people with strong personalities, opinions and a high rate of posting should stop?

Yeah, that'll really improve the board.

Are people still allowed to criticize other people's behavior, or is that to be verboten too?

Oh wait, I almost forgot; we're just toys to you. A sociological experiment. Carry on.