Has the "who is online?" at bottom of screen been made redundant?

BossArky

where has it gone?

Karoma

It was disabled to improve performance.

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=51915839&postcount=1

Ruu_Old

I think the admins are disabling things to find out whats causing the server load, so its been turned off for now I guess(think it has been for a week or so).

PullMyFinger!

Speaking as a long term user - Boards is an absolute pain in the bollix to use lately.

Karoma

Speaking as a long term crank: Shut up! That's why.

Seriously, compared to a few months ago - it's zipping along for most parts of the day. The admins are working on fixing it - this is one step they've taken. Credit where credit's due.

PullMyFinger!

Karoma wrote:

Speaking as a long term crank: Shut up! That's why.

Seriously, compared to a few months ago - it's zipping along for most parts of the day. The admins are working on fixing it - this is one step they've taken. Credit where credit's due.

Its not "zipping along" ...... lets be honest. Its a "wee bit faster" at best.

At the cost of:

No more searching your own posts

No more searching other people's post to see what else they've .... ya know - posted?

A horrible Menu interface when you're logged out

When you DO log in it lasts 5 mins before you're logged back out again

No seeing who's online in case ya wanna drop someone ya know a PM




Again I have to ask - what in the blue fúck Cloud etc does with the money they get from Vodafone etc. Cos it sure as bejaysus isnt reinvested into the site lately.


PS: Im copying this cos the odds are I'll be logged out automatically by the time I click to post.

Nick_oliveri

Well i like it, search by thread has come back. But im not a sub so i dont know what ye had!

Karoma

It's relative.

No more searching your own posts

I never understood this use of Search - maybe they're not worth reading if you have to search for them?

No more searching other people's post to see what else they've .... ya know - posted?

Fair point. We have some of the functionality back though.

When you DO log in it lasts 5 mins before you're logged back out again

It doesn't log me out, so..? What OS/browser/etc.?

No seeing who's online in case ya wanna drop someone ya know a PM

They just removed it from the bottom of the page. You can still see who's online in a few places: the green light (If they choose to enable visibility), or http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/online.php?order=asc&sort=username&pp=20&page=1 ...

PullMyFinger!

PullMyFinger! wrote:

Its not "zipping along" ...... lets be honest. Its a "wee bit faster" at best.

It comes and goes, but it is definitely a huge improvement. Boards has almost 1,200 people viewing at the moment, and it is speedy.

At the cost of:

When you DO log in it lasts 5 mins before you're logged back out again

No seeing who's online in case ya wanna drop someone ya know a PM[/B]

Last point - see here: http://boards.ie/vbulletin/ (bottom of page.)

If you wish to continue your stalking, you can see who is online and then send them a PM.

Alternatively, there's this page: http://boards.ie/vbulletin/online.php?order=asc&sort=username&pp=20&page=1

BossArky

ok, thanks for the info.

I agree that boards is a pain in the past few months. I've been around on an off since the last century and never found it so annoying.

The bad performance must not be doing much to retain or attract new users.

Yup, the logging out very quickly is tiresome.

I'm no expert on how these type of board runs, but how about just dumping all the user ids over x months old and sticking with the active ones? Same with threads from years ago. In the future the threads which are 4 or 5 star rated could be kept whilst the rest dumped.

Nick_oliveri

BossArky wrote:

ok, thanks for the info.

The bad performance must not be doing much to retain or attract new users.

Its great on my end compared to a few months ago..

BossArky wrote:

Yup, the logging out very quickly is tiresome.

That used to happen to me quite a lot after i'd submit a post, would have to copy and paste it for fear of losing everything. Hasn't happened this year at all!! Maybe you guys have something wiping cookies after x minutes on your end.

BossArky wrote:

I'm no expert on how these type of board runs, but how about just dumping all the user ids over x months old and sticking with the active ones? Same with threads from years ago. In the future the threads which are 4 or 5 star rated could be kept whilst the rest dumped.

I agree with dumping inactive users over x months old but the thread rating thing? I never rate threads and usually its the few who do. I could be wrong though.

BossArky

BossArky wrote:

The bad performance must not be doing much to retain or attract new users.

Most users ever online was 1,512, 28-07-2006 at 15:02.

I remember a few months ago it was c.1,200, I think?

Stark

I never get logged out of boards.ie. There's another vbulletin site that I'm regularly logged out of though when browsing at home but not when at work. Might be a vBullletin bug that pops up under certain scenarios.

Nick_Oliveri wrote:

I agree with dumping inactive users over x months old but the thread rating thing? I never rate threads and usually its the few who do. I could be wrong though.

No you're right. The thread rating feature is one that's not often used. It would be crazy to dump unrated threads.

By the way, I noticed with search when it was enabled, the default was to search through all threads from when boards.ie was first setup. Maybe we could tweak search so it only goes back a few months by default and the user has to explicitly choose to go back further. Especially as the bulk of people are only interested in recent posts when they search but the server has to crawl through years of threads in order to find those posts.

Karoma

I'm no expert on how these type of board runs, but how about just dumping all the user ids over x months old and sticking with the active ones?

This gets suggested an awful lot, so don't take any criticism personally...
One of the primary reasons people want search functionality is 'to see when someone posting something' and satisfy a need or curiosity. By removing users that appear to be inactive, or banned - you've removed the someone part. What would you do with threads and posts in existance because of these users (The 'something' loses meaning, or disappears, context in other threads lost,etc.)? In short, things are very messy.

Same with threads from years ago. In the future the threads which are 4 or 5 star rated could be kept whilst the rest dumped.

The rating system is not used that often, and even when it is, inconsistently. It should never ever be used as a means of determining the validity of a thread.
If anything, the rating system could be turned off to improve performance.

However, maybe something could be done with older posts: Like moving threads X to a dedicated server (archives.boards.ie), which has its own dedicated search. If people want to search "any date" or a 'X or older'-this server gets referenced?
Where X = cut-off point (Month, 6, year,etc.)

BossArky

Hey folks, my thoughts were purely shooting from the hip and I wasn't advocating actually dumping user-ids and threads, etc... I know for one that I would be gutted if someone deleted my crap from 7 years ago :rolleyes: It is sort of an online diary of the stupidity from years gone by;)

I know that hardly anyone uses the thread rating functionality... I was using it merely as an example of somehow filtering out stuff that processing power should be spent on.

If people were forced to rate threads having posted in them a few times, and if this went on for 18 months... some analysis would be possible. Of course, not right now as there is no data.. or not much.

Anyway my thoughts were merely pipe dreaming / thinking aloud through my fingertips....

DMC

Karoma wrote:

I never understood this use of Search [your own posts] - maybe they're not worth reading if you have to search for them?

I use this function a lot to remind me of I where I posted recently, especially in a forum thats not on my subbed list. Say if I have been off boards for a few days, and you remembered that you posted something somehwhere recently, but were not sure exactly where. Very useful.

Either that or its dementia setting in.

pp_me129

It is a real pain in the a$$ not having The menu at top

Endymion

PullMyFinger! wrote:

Its not "zipping along" ...... lets be honest. Its a "wee bit faster" at best.

No more down time, so yes it's allot better, and yes it's allot faster. You preception may not have changed, being the flaccid person you are .

Again I have to ask - what in the blue fúck Cloud etc does with the money they get from Vodafone etc. Cos it sure as bejaysus isnt reinvested into the site lately.

How much revenue do boards get from the vodafone adds? I don't know, do you. Only then can you wonder where all the millions of euro's go.

Wrt inactive users, why on earth would anybody think thats thats a performance hit? All it is is some file somewhere on some harddrive with a lists of names and states. How will that affect processing time?

Also forcing people to use a function they didn't use before in an effort to reduce performance over heads. Hmm, thats doesn't make sense. Also it would be annoying as hell

PullMyFinger!

Carnivore wrote:

No more down time, so yes it's allot better, and yes it's allot faster. You preception may not have changed, being the flaccid person you are .

"Flaccid"?

Excuse me?

Endymion

PullMyFinger! wrote:

Excuse me?

Ok, your excused, but try to be more careful about what you say in the future. The admins have feelings too, yea know.

DeVore

Pullmyfinger, (and others)
1. we are testing fixes before buy new hardware if its needed.
2. I dont think in the light of recent events we'll have much trouble spending money in the near future. Not that you gave us any.
3. User accounts dont make for processing problems.
4. Getting logged out of boards is your machines problem. Clear your cache. If it was our problem, this forum would be lit up with whingers.

Its this sort of crap that makes me happy I'm taking a sabbatical from adminning.

PMF,what have *you* done to help?

DeV.

PullMyFinger!

DeVore wrote:

PMF,what have *you* done to help?

Short of subscribing what would you like me to do?

Stark

Ask not what your website can do for you

Get some PHP wizzard to look at post caching.

Also very large theads will kill your database.

Oh and have you done the thread views hack?

[Jackass]

Throw in an 'ould subscription...always said I'd do it when I sorted a credit card...think about it, you could spend 50 bills on a book, but you'd never get as much reading time out of it as you do boards (unless it's for college ) It's a donation that will help get rid of all the things you want to bitch about...the readings free.

But anyway, back on topic, I miss the bit where you can see who's looking at the same forum as you. It just dosen't seem worth posting unless you're CERTAIN pig head is there to ridicule it.