To the Moderators -- part two

H

Hueco

New member
Ok, wow. Moderators...what an incredible show of patience! I think I understand where you are coming from now, at least better than before. Thanks for putting up with me.

My gripe was that some threads were closed under being non-RKBA, while there remained tons of non-RKBA post unlocked. I now understand why though...not just because you "didn't want to get into it," or "it's not nice to talk about that." I agree with you more than not now. But (yes the but...), please from now on try to give a clear reason why you lock threads, and please please please don't use the excuse that it isn't RKBA related -- because that just isn't a solid reason for locking due to all the rest of the threads that are non-RKBA that remain open.

Other than just that -- I agree with you now.

Sorry for being a poop-head. :D

Hueco
 
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Go to ... old friend Spark's KnifeForums.com. What you'll find is that they actually delete all messages that are more than a few months old.[/quote]Spark is at BladeForums, since October 1998. They don't delete old messages. They periodically create archive forums for forums that have a lot of messages, but the messages are always accessible. They also use the multi-page feature....

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Gorthaur-
You hoist me on my own pitard. ;) Spark and Mike do not, in fact, delete earlier posts. They archive them where they can be read, studied, copied but not responded to. I'm not criticising them. But, TFL has a different way of maintaining bandwidth...a dedicated server, the cost of which General Motors probably doesn't experience (seriously); 100KB locks; 50 post locks.

Hueco-
Thanks for understanding. And thanks very much for the suggestion. I agree. The issue of explanation will be revisited with Staff.
Rich
 
God Rich, two mistakes in one post, what on earth are we going to do with you?

Like Rich said, there are different ways to do different things.... and different reasoning behind the different ways to do the different things. :D

For both sites, deleting posts are not something we like to consider an option.

BladeForums.com currently has 3.2 gB of information on it. That's a lot. When TFL was on our server, they had over 1.5 gB of information (we had around 2.1). Given the amount of traffic both sites generated, you can imagine the strain that this put on the server, our bandwidth costs, etc.

Anyhow, we were both getting hammered. So, we both decided to do what we could to save bandwidth and ease server strain.

We went with the "For every X number of posts in a thread, and the page splits" method. Rich went with the "100kb + and the thread is locked" method. Each has it's plusses and minuses. I prefer ours because it encourages the discussion to continue, and once the thread reaches multiple pages, you only have to download the first, then you can skip to the last page you've read. Rich likes his because it's more linear. There's more than one way to skin a cat.

Hopefully UBB will add the popular "display multiple page links on topics list" hack in the next release - that would eliminate the need for locking threads due to size here.

Regarding pruning of posts, like I said before, that's not something either site likes to do. Some sites, like the aforementioned GlockTalk have to continually prune due to server space constraints.

Since space isn't really a consideration right now for us (or TFL I'd imagine), our primary concern is server performance - huge, heavily trafficked sites drag down performance, especially with resource hogs like the UBB. So, when the thread / post count in our forums get to high (say around 30-40,000), we shut them down, and start a new forum - solving our performance problems. TFL moved off our server to a newer and faster one several months ago, so he's able to have larger forum thread / post totals than us without serious problems. Unfortunately, when they do happen, they are doozies to fix... but that's part of dealing with computers.

Anyhow, Rich and his crew do a great job... and there's more than one way to skin a cat.

Spark

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Kevin Jon Schlossberg
SysOp and Administrator for BladeForums.com
www.bladeforums.com
 
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>TFL has repeatedly stated that it is not the site for debate of religion, sexual preference or abortion....[/quote]
As one who is a regular waster of bandwidth on OT threads ( ;)), let me just say...THANK you!
These topics rarely (if ever) produce "fun" or informative OT threads, and I'd rather not see them discussed here for two reasons:
1)most people have their minds made up about these topics and are not going to change them.
2)Even if they haven't yet, these threads have the potential to quickly degenerate into something far worse than friendly debate. I don't like to see friends on TFL become enemies.
IMHO, good call. :) (so, MHO is worth about .02 in Y2K dollars, big deal! :p)
 
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