[residentEvil]

if you are going to be down for an entire day, can you make a notice on www.macnn.com?

[Stradlater]

kthx

[SSharon]

Agreed. It would be appreciated.

[Rumor]

Would be nice. I had nothing to do here at work without posting here except *gasp* work!

[turtle777]

What dowtime ?



-t

[mkbhatia]

As far as I can tell we were down for 2-3 hours (sorry, it was a complicated db crash). I saw the first notice at 9:30 am PT. What time did you see it go down?

m.

[Simon]

Originally Posted by mkbhatia

(sorry, it was a complicated db crash)

Again?

[besson3c]

What was the cause of the problem yesterday where the forums were temporarily replaced with Nintendo pics? (I have a screenshot of this).

[Chuckit]

Originally Posted by mkbhatia

As far as I can tell we were down for 2-3 hours (sorry, it was a complicated db crash). I saw the first notice at 9:30 am PT. What time did you see it go down?

It was down when I tried to visit this morning at 7:30 or so. But I mean, I wasn't really too bothered, though.

[residentEvil]

i could get to the main forum pages at/around 7:50am EST then nothing shortly after 8:00am...then i only got on when i posted...3:36pm EST. that was my entire work day

edit: well, i was in to work at 6am, but didn't get a chance to check macnn until almost 8am. and then i left at 3pm. i didn't check then though. so it could have been working then.

[hickey]

could you post that nintendo screenshot?

[BlueSky]

Yeah, I got a fully-functioning "Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap" game myself. 'twas awesome.

[Rumor]

Originally Posted by besson3c

What was the cause of the problem yesterday where the forums were temporarily replaced with Nintendo pics? (I have a screenshot of this).

I gotta see this.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by Rumor

I gotta see this.

http://netmusician.org/~joe/MacNN_Nintendo.jpg


This was exactly how forums.macnn.com looked for a good while.

[Rumor]

Originally Posted by besson3c

http://netmusician.org/~joe/MacNN_Nintendo.jpg


This was exactly how forums.macnn.com looked for a good while.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by Rumor

MacNN was pwned by Mario!

[Peter]

[mkbhatia]

That was a router issue. The dns was pointing to our router for about 20 min while we changed the network settings and rebooted. Somehow this showed the "Nintendo" page and also got cached for a long while (not sure why). Should be all good now.

m.

[rickey939]

[Stradlater]

How many rickey posts does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by mkbhatia

That was a router issue. The dns was pointing to our router for about 20 min while we changed the network settings and rebooted. Somehow this showed the "Nintendo" page and also got cached for a long while (not sure why). Should be all good now.

m.

Your router has a built in web server that serves Nintendo pages? I don't get it...

[rickey939]

Originally Posted by Stradlater

How many rickey posts does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

Nice.......very nice.

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by hickey

could you post that nintendo screenshot?

http://forums.macnn.com/showthread.php?t=303559

-t

[besson3c]

What I don't understand is this, and I don't mean to sound like a prick or a ball buster...

You (MacNN admins/owners) have an amazing wealth of resources in this community that many people would be envious of. However, instead of utilizing what you have, you seem to go with what I'm assuming are close knit friends and buddies for assistance with various tasks.

As a result, we have a website redesign that many people weren't happy with that had little of our feedback taken into account (feedback like should have been viewed as a Godsend to you, some companies have to pay for it!), you have frequent forum crashes, Nintendo pages replacing forum pages, a forum redesign that has been put on hold for 20983 years, rules that many people seem to dislike, forum advertising techniques that offended some people, etc.

You clearly have some great content, and that is absolutely vital. However, if you don't work with the resources you have available, not ony does this seem silly to me, but your MacNN audience (forum and main site) could really begin to slip away from your grasp.

Again, I don't mean to sound like a dick. Trying to be constructive here.

[Simon]

besson3c, I'll second that. Couldn't have said it better myself.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by Simon

besson3c, I'll second that. Couldn't have said it better myself.

Maybe it shouldn't just be said to the mods here, but to the actual MacNN big wigs (who may not be reading this).

[Gossamer]

Originally Posted by mkbhatia

As far as I can tell we were down for 2-3 hours (sorry, it was a complicated db crash). I saw the first notice at 9:30 am PT. What time did you see it go down?

m.

I checked it right when I got to work, and it was down (8ish probably), and I spent all day checking it every 15 minutes to half hour (I'm freakin bored at work, okay?) and I came back up mid-afternoon for me.

[mkbhatia]

Gossamer: thanks for the feedback. If you do see the db go down, feel free to email me directly (although we do monitor, it is hard to tell when problems come up with this specific database).

besson3c: The Vbulletin corruption is something that that remain elusive to us. We have a very busy database server and a very large database--though by no means record setting, as there are many forums that are bigger.

The outage earlier this week was due to a database crash--the first 'major' one since mid-June (90 days). There was about 3 hours of downtime associated with this repair. (It would have been shorter, but we decided to do a full repair on the tables, as the first few attempts were successful to a limited extent). There really has not been a lot of downtime.

The IP migration is something that is done from time time. Unfortunately this resulted in about 10 min of downtime and a mis-cached/redirected DNS. While the error was quickly fixed (within 5 min of troubleshooting), it seemed to persist beyond our control due to caching. I don't know why the Nintendo images were showing up, but the caching was my *guess*. I never saw it and it certainly it is not showing any more. It seems fruitless to try to track down a problem that was caused by human error (mis-entering an IP during the transition, so we have moved on).

>>>However, instead of utilizing what you have, you seem to go with what I'm assuming are close knit friends and buddies for assistance with various tasks.

I'm not sure why you are assuming this. Its certainly not true. Sure we consult people we think our knowledgeable and a lot of people have a lot of different opinions. Even "experts" differ on the setup/handling of databases, servers, etc. I'm not sure there is one-perfect way, but we have been slowly (and finally) improving the situation (separate forum server, database replications, nightly backups without interuption, etc.).

>> MacNN redesign:

There are thousands of people with differing voices and differing volumes. Those who provide feedback, rarely do so with constructive comments. Those who do provide constructive coments, we take them seriously. While certainly we take into account feedback (and admittedly probably rolled out the new design in haste), we have continued to evolve/improve it based on feedback.

>> Forums Redesign

This has been a very difficult task. The cost of such a task would likely be prohibitive if Frank didn't offer to do it for a budget that was within our range (in fact, the forums generate very little revenue directly, but consume a disproportionately large share of resources--not saying that they are not valuable, but they take a lot of work--a lot of work!!). Indeed, this is still a free resource to all our members and we continue to search for ways to help support the servers, staff, and bandwidth it consumes.

On that note, I was told that the forums redesign was nearing completion and we had hoped to roll-out with the wide-version of macnn (due very shortly), but it does not look this is going to happen.


>> Sip Away

I really hope this doesn't happen and don't really expect it to. There always is some give and take with all business decisions. We certainly try to consult the people we believe will provide the best guidance. Sometimes this is the forum community, sometimes not--although I do admit that it is a much larger/better resource than we realize and has been under-utilized in the past. I have actually take a much more active role in helping maitain the forums, answering problem emails and inquiries 1-2 times per day. We work diligently to resolve all problems and endeavor to make accomodation for as many view points and preferences as possible. Obviously this is not possible for everyone and obviously there will be business decisions that conflict with what some people's preference. While we try to minimize these, it is simply not possible to accommodate everyone.

If you feel like there are improvements or enhancements that could be made, I encourage you to post them here or send me an email (much more timely responses from email). I can guarantee that we are listening.

m.

[besson3c]

mkbhatia: why don't you start by doing a poll or survey of some sort to find out what sorts of skills people have who might be open for consultation, so that you know what you have to work with, and can assess the strengths of these aptitudes?

Then, when a decision has to be made, you have lots of different opinions to consider (and can weigh them using your own discretion). I'm not suggesting that MacNN needs to be run by a committee, it's clearly a business, but it doesn't take very much time to receive information and advice from people, I'd bet that most people would be willing to share - it's actually finding the people to do the work that will be trickier, particularly if on a pro-bono basis. However, in my experience, having an extremely well thought-out plan is more than half of the battle.

Once you are confident that you have a bulletproof process and technical foundation in place, you can work with what you have.


This only addresses technical issues. As far as rules for the forum and such, I'm sure these will always be debatable. I think many don't understand that MacNN is a business and not some sort of happy Mac charity place. Most people have absolutely no clue what sorts of technical resources are involved to run a forum like this, and more importantly, what they cost.

Still, even thinking of the forum as a business, there are many decisions made that are constantly puzzling to me. If it were my place, I wouldn't allow people like Pachead to post videos and endorse (or even imply) Muslim genocide, or threads where women are objectified and featured wearing thongs or see-through clothes and stuff - this is dangerously close to soft-core porn, and is probably not a good business-like vibe to set off. I'm not at all a prude and wasn't at all offended by these images (in fact, I enjoyed them), but this just doesn't seem consistent with what I think the goals of MacNN are. Maybe I just don't know the business model of MacNN though, I don't think it has been publicly shared.

As it stands, you'll have whiners and other crap, but I think by listening you'll also find people with some solid and constructive feedback you can rely upon. I really don't care what decisions you make regarding forum rules, but I would suggest quite emphatically that we are not all on the same page as to what the purpose of the forums are, the goals, and what sorts of consistency you wish to enforce.

One might say "just read the rules", and sure the rules are useful for saying "don't do a or b or c", but I think that by getting a better handle on the much larger picture, the moderation can take place in a manner where people won't jump up and down about the forums lacking consistency or justness.

If you want my personal opinion on how I'd conduct the forums, I'd be happy to share.

[Demonhood]

Originally Posted by besson3c

...
Still, even thinking of the forum as a business, there are many decisions made that are constantly puzzling to me. If it were my place, I wouldn't allow people like Pachead to post videos and endorse (or even imply) Muslim genocide, or threads where women are objectified and featured wearing thongs or see-through clothes and stuff - this is dangerously close to soft-core porn, and is probably not a good business-like vibe to set off. I'm not at all a prude and wasn't at all offended by these images (in fact, I enjoyed them), but this just doesn't seem consistent with what I think the goals of MacNN are. Maybe I just don't know the business model of MacNN though, I don't think it has been publicly shared.
...

i can handle part of that.
the mods/admins remove material that is deemed inappropriate. while i know this is a vague and nebulous description, that's all i can do for you. we try to keep the forums as PG-13 as possible. something that might be deleted/locked when handled crassly could go on to become a 30 page thread if there is an intelligent discussion about it. it's all very subjective and it would be impossible to put it into words that would work (not only for the many different mods/admins, but because then people would bitch and moan about the semantics of it).
if you don't like something, report it. simple.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by Demonhood

i can handle part of that.
the mods/admins remove material that is deemed inappropriate. while i know this is a vague and nebulous description, that's all i can do for you. we try to keep the forums as PG-13 as possible. something that might be deleted/locked when handled crassly could go no to become a 30 page thread if there is an intelligent discussion about it. it's all very subjective and it would be impossible to put it into words that would work (not only for the many different mods/admins, but because then people would bitch and moan about the semantics of it).
if you don't like something, report it. simple.

Inappropriate material? How were my examples considered appropriate material?


It kind of goes beyond this though when we get into discussions of what posts have "real content" and what not.


A lot of this sort of rule bickering could be avoided by simply sharing with us the purpose of these forums. This way, it is easy to step back and look at the broader picture and whether the content fits within MacNN's goals than it is to be pedantic with arguing about rule A, B, or C...

Then, once we are all clear and on the same page as to the purpose of the forums, enforce rules and behave in a way that is consistent with these sorts of goals to avoid sending mixed messages.

Part of me thinks that maybe that jackass Rob would go away if somebody were to tell him

"Listen Rob, these boards are about the Mac, the Lounge is only a virtual hangout, but is not and will never become the primary focus of these boards. MacNN is a business that strives to make money. Running servers to host these forums cost $____/year in hardware and several hours of system administration/maintenance.

If we feel that a member is not reflecting upon our business very well by not representing the sense of community the Lounge is designed to convey, we will ban the user. This is nothing personal, we have nothing against you, this is purely a business decision. It seems as if your needs here are simply incompatible with what MacNN is setup to be (or try to be).

As a business, I hope you can appreciate the basis in which these sorts of decisions are made. We are not a charity. We do not "owe" anybody the usage of our services. No one person has the right to use our services if this goes against our wishes.

Please understand and respect our decision, or let us know that all of this is understood and you are willing to change your behavior if you are still interested in participating in our forums".


Maybe this wouldn't change squat, but this is personally what I would do.

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by Demonhood

something that might be deleted/locked when handled crassly could go no to become a 30 page thread if there is an intelligent discussion about it.

-t

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by besson3c

Part of me thinks that maybe that jackass Rob would go away if somebody were to tell him

I want to believe...

-t

[Person Man]

Originally Posted by besson3c

Part of me thinks that maybe that jackass Rob would go away if somebody were to tell him

Nope.

Rob's never going to go away.

He has had some constructive posts in the past, when nobody is talking about one of his "hot button" issues (SUVs, etc), or baiting him.

If he didn't respond so strongly to the baiting, people wouldn't do it any more. And, if people didn't bait him, he could possibly be more constructive. But that still doesn't solve the issue of his hot button topics.