Forum

[moparfarmer]

Seems when the other forum from the magazine that just stopped that some of our topics have gone stale..It might be me but it used to be that a comment was made a couple times an hour..Now some topics aren't used for a few days..The other site had one about pictures that hadn't had a comment for seven years..I know we welcome their old members but sure hope here doesn't go stagnent like it did there..

[moparfarmer]

If I posted this in the wrong spot would administration put it in the correct spot..Thank you..

[Anglia105E]

2 hours ago, moparfarmer said:

Seems when the other forum from the magazine that just stopped that some of our topics have gone stale..It might be me but it used to be that a comment was made a couple times an hour..Now some topics aren't used for a few days..The other site had one about pictures that hadn't had a comment for seven years..I know we welcome their old members but sure hope here doesn't go stagnent like it did there..

I am glad that you have raised this question, Wayne....... because something has been puzzling me for some time now. I used to get regular comments almost every day, and my long running topic in Dioramas (WIP) was steadily increasing as regards the number of views. Then, when the format of the forums changed...... suddenly I am getting hardly any comments at all, and the number of views is increasing at a huge rate. There can be 50 - 100 views per day, every day..... but no comments at all. Thought it was just me, so I didn't say anything !

David

[Anglia105E]

I forgot to mention in my post just now..... there are lots of very old topics being commented on, as Wayne pointed out, so a topic that hasn't had a comment for many years suddenly gets a comment..... such as " awesome diorama " or " very nice job ". Completely random comment, out of nowhere ?

David

[Xingu]

With a surge in new members signing up, many old topics may get resurrected as the new members search the site for topics that interest them. Many of the 'views' may be from search or advertising bots looking for keywords.

[Anglia105E]

2 hours ago, Xingu said:

With a surge in new members signing up, many old topics may get resurrected as the new members search the site for topics that interest them. Many of the 'views' may be from search or advertising bots looking for keywords.

Okay, thank you Michael......... but I am not the only member who is noticing a total lack of feedback on our topics, and the number of views increasing at a huge rate.

Thanks for your response, and I kind of understand ( sort of ) !

David

[Richard Bartrop]

Let's be honest, this is not always the most welcoming group.  If people are quiet, it's probably because they're afraid to say something.

[afx]

forum: 

a place, meeting, or medium where ideas and views on a particular issue can be exchanged.

"it will be a forum for consumers to exchange their views on medical research"

 

 

[blunc]

deleted

Edited October 25, 2020 by blunc
not content with the content

[doorsovdoon]

I find this site extremely busy. I read most topics but no way can I visit every new post, even after an hour or two away I come back and nearly all the topics are highlighted, either with a new comment or a new build update from someone. I sometimes "Mark site read" to clear everything, otherwise everything is highlighted and becomes overwhelming. Some areas of the site I don't even visit cos I'd rather spend that time checking out updates from peoples WIP or the occasional comment in Off Topic. If I don't comment on someones post it's not because I don't want to be critical, it's that I simply can't read everything that gets posted, I'd be on here for hours if not the whole day if I were to click on every new post. It could simply be that, like me, I just clear everything before too much gets posted, the longer I leave it the more I'll end up clearing and missing.

[bobthehobbyguy]

I agree. I have certain wips I follow, look at subjects that interest me. I  comment on some of the things I look at but its not practical to view and comment on everything. Using the recent activity feature helps me filter what I want to look at.

[Dave Ambrose]

And the amount of activity is increasing. We get 7GB of new content every month. I'm having to upgrade the backup drives to accommodate both the content backups, and server logs, which are kept indefinitely. 

I don't get to read or comment nearly as much as I'd like to. There's so much good stuff going on. Long term, it's a good thing. 

[peteski]

2 hours ago, Dave Ambrose said:

And the amount of activity is increasing. We get 7GB of new content every month. I'm having to upgrade the backup drives to accommodate both the content backups, and server logs, which are kept indefinitely. 

I don't get to read or comment nearly as much as I'd like to. There's so much good stuff going on. Long term, it's a good thing. 

Wow! The text in the posts uses very little server's storage space. Now if people would down-sample their images to less than 200 kB per photo,  we could still have the same amount of activity, but much less space being used up.  Who really needs a 12 megapixel photo uploaded here, just to view it on a computer screen or a  small smart-phone screen? It is not like we were submitting photos here for publishing in a magazine. We need to plan ahead. With increase of 7GB per month, backups will get more and more difficult.  And of course we don't want to lose all the knowledge contained in the forum either.

Any way to have photos resized automatically on download?  Another forum I frequent does that (down to 1280 pixels across, which is plenty large for viewing), although the uploader/resizer chokes on really large photos.

[Dave Ambrose]

18 minutes ago, peteski said:

Wow! The text in the posts uses very little server's storage space. Now if people would down-sample their images to less than 200 kB per photo,  we could still have the same amount of activity, but much less space being used up.  Who really needs a 12 megapixel photo uploaded here, just to view it on a computer screen or a  small smart-phone screen? It is not like we were submitting photos here for publishing in a magazine. We need to plan ahead. With increase of 7GB per month, backups will get more and more difficult.  And of course we don't want to lose all the knowledge contained in the forum either.

Any way to have photos resized automatically on download?  Another forum I frequent does that (down to 1280 pixels across, which is plenty large for viewing), although the uploader/resizer chokes on really large photos.

While you're correct about the text itself, but the information required to keep that text organized is big. Our current post count is somewhere around 2.2 million.

Images get down-sampled before delivery. I'm fine with the extra disk space. It's cheap, and makes our content more or less future proof. Even before we removed the image limits, we were running north of 200GB per backup. Now, we're at about 260GB/snapshot. Interesting thing about phone and tablet images is that they get zoomed into a lot. Typical strategy is to download a high resolution, low compression quality image. 

At the end of the day, this is all readily handled with our present infrastructure. The one big downside is that maintenance sessions take longer because it takes a couple of hours to back up the site. 

[Guest]

I wish an administrator or staffer would respond to my pleas for log in help.

[Dave Ambrose]

3 hours ago, steve.strauss@rocketmail.c said:

I wish an administrator or staffer would respond to my pleas for log in help.

I've sent you a couple of email messages. Are they coming through?