Pruninating the Goof-off forum

[Mithrandir]

Official Notice:

Effective immediately: Due to volume/use concerns, old data in the the goof-off forum will be cleaned out periodically. The first such cleansing took place today (10/19/2004) at around 7:00 PM Pacific time.

Bottom line, the data in it is not useful, and we are running into space concerns. Rather than delete indiscriminately from everywhere, we've elected to drastically reduce in one area. We are hoping that this cleansing will result in less lag time on the database.

Please note, "grave digging" to ensure your thread does not get canned will result in immediate deletion.

It is also worth noting that post counts will not be affected, which is to say this have no effect on them in any way. (Sorry, I had to do that for the english majors out there...)

[agasfas]

I don't know if I am allowed to post here, but that sounds reasonable. So if the data isn't being used you might as well purge what you can. You gotta do what you gotta do.

[Jasdero]

^^ That's a good idea. I hope it helps out with lag. : )

[TheMelodyMaker]

Good call there; I was becoming a little concerned about server space usage and loading times. (Off topic: I see you're an admin now, OldPhil. Congratulations! )

[Mithrandir]

Actually, we're doing some feasobiltiy studdies of some less drastic methods of pearing down the volume of traffic going through here.

As for the admin thing, I'm just psudo-noz right now.

[Jasdero]

Is there a problem with deleting the threads? People don't really mind them being removed do they? [Sorry if I sound stupid. ";;;]

Edit: Sorry, I thought it was permanent. X_X

[uc pseudonym]

To clarify, hopefully once and for all: oldphilosopher wasn't really promoted. As he said, he's pseudo-noz for the moment. We've all given him admin privilages so that he can fix and alter the boards to a greater extent, because he has a great deal more experience than most of the rest of us. It isn't permanent, it's just that we've given him so much to do at the moment that it wouldn't be fair to ask him to use the special admin account for everything.

[Dragon Master]

Lol, good call but I do think that you should delete all topics that haven't been posted in for like a year or even 6 months It would help with gravediggers and it would help with space, but thats just my opinion !

[uc pseudonym]

Similar things have been suggested. However, ultimately we feel that some old threads (that are not bumped or gravedug) still have value and should remain in the archives.

[Mithrandir]

UC's right. We nuked about 1200 threads and the database seems to run a little smoother now. Although we're still getting some "DB ERRORS" it's not at bad as it was.

[Ssjjvash]

yes, I have to agree, it definitely has gotten better.

To the mods real quick, since I don't know where else to post this, I've been telling my mom about you guys and what you do and she really thinks highly of you now!

^_^ just a little encouragement for you!

[SwordSkill]

It is also worth noting that post counts will not be affected, which is to say this have no effect on them in any way.

Just a bit of confusion for me here...I thought Goof-Off posts had no effect on posts counts in the first place?

[Ashley]

They don't; OldPhil was just reassuring everyone that no one's post count would plummet.

[Mithrandir]

Yep. Sorry for the confusion!

[Solid Ronin]

...Do accounts take up space?....if they do you should cancel out the 900 accounts that arent active.

[shooraijin]

Actually, we are looking at something like that. More details to come.

[Jasdero]

Maybe it's just for me, but I've changed from Internet Explorer to Mozilla Firefox just yesterday, and CAA seems to be a running a lot smoother on Firefox, than on IE. Yay!!

Mozilla Firefox ---> http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/

[Link Antilles]

Just curious, what about our profile pics.? How much lag in all do they cause?

[Stephen]

"Maybe it's just for me, but I've changed from Internet Explorer to Mozilla Firefox just yesterday, and CAA seems to be a running a lot smoother on Firefox, than on IE. Yay!!"




That would be because IE is crap. Last night a trojan changed my mind on IE forever. Long live Firefox!

[Mithrandir]

The profile pics in all, don't really cause much lag. It's the constant hit-hit-hit that the database takes when people do searching. Just loading the main web page can cause an easy dozen requests. Multiply that by the number of users who hit the site at the same time each day, throw in some spiders for good measure, and it really adds up.

More likely it's something wrong with the configuration our ISP has tendered. We are looking at potential work-around solutions, but nothing is anywhere near finalized yet.

[Jasdero]

"Maybe it's just for me, but I've changed from Internet Explorer to Mozilla Firefox just yesterday, and CAA seems to be a running a lot smoother on Firefox, than on IE. Yay!!"




That would be because IE is crap. Last night a trojan changed my mind on IE forever. Long live Firefox!

XDD Yeah!!!!

[Jaltus-bot]

You're running into space concerns? *is a little worried*wat would happen if there got to be too much and it wasn't just goof off?

[shooraijin]

Then we'd look at other options. However, Goof Off is far and away the largest consumer of space, and we had a tremendous reduction just by cleaning that up.

Other forums are being considered, but we're keeping it to Goof Off for now.

[uc pseudonym]

As shooraijin said, rest assured that we will manage, one way or another. There are still options available to us, and they should not be necessary given the current pruning. We've ran into space issues before, and we've managed. CAA will continue.

[Kaligraphic]

If the site had to get more space, it would cost more money. The hosting package might be able to be upgraded (which costs money), or the site could cough up another $5/month for an extra 500MB.

Much better to simply clear out some old stuff.

(I'm assuming the site is not running on a dedicated server)

[Mithrandir]

Space isn't the issue, it's bandwidth. With our site getting crawled all the time, the fewer links we have, the better.

Thanks for the idea, though.

[Dragon Master]

Um I hope you guys don't mind me asking, what is Bandwidth? Another site has closed its forums and another part of the site til the end of the month because of bandwidth concerns so what is it?

[uc pseudonym]

I am not the best person to answer this question, but:

CAA is online because we purchase bandwidth from a corporation. We use their servers. However, what we pay for is not the entire server, but a certain amount of use of those servers. Essentially, we have paid to transfer a certain amount of data through their servers (for example, 30 megabytes a month [hah]). If more data than this amount is transferred in one month, CAA will shut down.

[TheMelodyMaker]

How old does a thread have to be before it gets pruned? I recently pruned the Anime Angels boards of anything older than 180 days -- is that too old? Just curious, and looking for some advice. ^_^

[Ashley]

I think our limit for the moment is 3 months, although you need to confirm that with a certain philosopher here.