Mild site ‘problems’

It sometimes feels as if I live between the Murphys and the Sods, as things seldom go awry when I am around and watching, but as soon as I disappear for a few days, or don’t have easy online access, then something happens. Perhaps the existence of both such circumstances at the moment was too much of a temptation for this pair.

While I’m not entirely sure of the cause, a couple of control files suffered some mishap a few days after I had to go offline for a few days, and while light activity within the Wiki means no effect (other than access), activity in the Forum seems to have lost the last day or so of activity (before it went offline).

I’m not sure when I will get around to fixing these, as I don’t currently have the time to spare, and with only a couple of queries (eventually) turning up in my inbox, there’s clearly no crushing demand.

In fact, given the time the site has been absent, and the volume and rate of response that followed, some parts will probably be wound down, to reduce the amount of time needed to monitor them, as they’re not sufficiently relevant or productive.

Clarifications

The additional ‘feedback’ provided by this unexpected blip in service seems to be a timely addition to the solitary comment offered after the short hiatus experienced a few weeks ago,  Meet the new Forum – Same as the old Forum.

There may be a few points worth following up on:

I completely disagree with the idea that the Admin and Moderators are separate roles, or that it is ‘very’ unusual for a forum to have an Admin that acts as a Mod. Mods act on behalf of the Admin, as deputies, appointed (or invited) where the forum is large enough to justify their numbers. There can, of course, only be one Admin, who sets the policies, and if the forum has hundreds, or even thousands, of members, needs help to maintain order and prevent abuse. For a forum with a handful of members, Mods aren’t even workable (the devil finds work for idle hands, and with little or nothing to do, they eventually overstep the mark, thinking they need to ‘do’ some moderating to justify their existence – I speak from experience).

Bring more than 100 active members, and the daily posts they can generate, and you’ll soon see Mods being invited.

I was a little dismayed to see that the inclusion of current content and topics was, or could, be interpreted as an “attempt to keep the site alive”, as the intent was really just to keep a ‘social’ stream running, and not make members feel that the forum would only welcome ‘relevant’ input. But the interpretation was fair, if incorrect.

Granted the apparent dilution of core content, this will indeed be dropped, and such writings will generally be confined here, in the Blog.

Changes?

Basically, most – if not all – content that might be deemed ‘unrelated’ to SeSco will no longer appear in the Forum. Where it does arise, to satisfy the author’s literary desires, then it will be found here, in the Blog, where comments may be added (subject to moderation), reducing (or effectively removing) the opportunity for time-consuming discussions of potentially irrelevant subjects in the Forum.

This means the boards and  content that used be available in the Member’s Area are not likely to re-appear, since the board was intended for unrelated content, and this will now just include information for members.

As noted before, there’s little comment or feedback to work with, and not that many members (and SeSco has no interest in chasing ‘numbers’), but as always, there is a comment area below.

Meet the new Forum – Same as the old Forum

After some discussion (with some old-hands), a couple of well-worn expressions surfaced, namely “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”, and “Least said, soonest mended”, and these seemed appropriate with respect to last week’s little slip in the Forum.

It should go without saying that the Admin seldom, if ever, considers that anyone in the Forum merits attention in the form of a ban – apart from some who have sought to use it for their own purposes, and quickly became history due to their behaviour, and have never been seen again.

However, this reluctance to take action is also a failing on the part of Admin, and over the passing of time, some aspects of the Forum’s rules have slipped, leading to the possibility of items that should have been ‘breathed on’ by way of moderation have remained, leading to the mistaken interpretation that they are acceptable.

By way of following the first saying referenced above, the Forum will go back to ‘The Old Days’ where the equivalent of a ‘yellow card’ will be issued by the Admin if something that is considered to breach the rules is noticed.

Dare I say the Admin is right in such cases, even if wrong, and the matter will not be up for debate or discussion.

This brings us to the second saying mentioned above, as one of the rules strictly applied is that of no public discussion whatsoever of any moderation. The reason should be obvious – to prevent the Forum becoming a war zone.

It also means that there’s not going to be any public post-mortem of anything that happened at the end of July.

And this bring is to the title of this post, which simply means that although there is going to be change, that change is really just to take the operation of the Forum back the way it was before the Admin let it wander away from being an extension of the Wiki.

Over the course of the next week or so the areas that are currently not visible should gradually re-appear as they are reviewed. This is just to allow their content to be gauged to see how it has changed – if at all – over time, and see if there may be a case for changing the boards made available, removing any, or adding new ones, perhaps breaking existing boards into a few more discrete boards.

This can only be done in spare time as it becomes available, and shutting things down to allow to be done undisturbed would just take too long, so the opportunity of having some of the boards offline for a moment provides a chance to look at them without the distraction of new input.

I’m tempted to ask for comments about sections that might be added, or of any that might be removed, or broken up perhaps, but since this seldom provokes a response, it seems pointless – although if anyone does wish to register a thought, this can easily be done by simply adding a comment to this post.

Thanks for your patience.

Wiki Discussions board open in Forum

Forming part of the Wiki under the current site organisation, the Discussion Tab on each Wiki page is linked to a matching thread in the Forum.

This therefore automatically defines the subject and expected content.

It’s purpose is to allow discussion of the page subject, and references to speculative aspects that may arise and be of interest, but which which may not be established in the general history of the subject. This helps keep the material on the Wiki page consistent, and able to be used as a reference, while the Discussion Tab allow unverified material and finding to be debated without diluting the value of the page.

The Wiki Discussions board only contains threads linked to existing Wiki pages, and any unrelated threads are automatically deleted from the board without warning.

Forum suspended

The Admin has placed the Forum in Maintenance mode to suspend its operation.

A few recent posts have strayed (a little)  into the area of political campaigning or related agenda, and this is one thing this Forum is not for.

Unfortunately, past experience has shown that when such posts are moderated, the owners take exception, generally citing censorship, and that it is ‘their’ forum and they have the right to say what they like in it.

As the Admin neither wishes to enter a discourse which usually terminates in abuse, or ban anyone (considering that ALL present member are valued  and welcome guests in the Forum), this leaves a bit of a quandary that deserves some quiet contemplation, and consideration of the future.

 

Normal service resumed in Forum

It looks as if some semblance of normality has returned to the Forum.

Forum… not back yet

Yup.

Looks like waiting for the nod from officialdom is wise, as I see that Forum access has gone again.

Forum access restored

Looks as if the Forum re-appeared during the afternoon of Wednesday 20th.

Not officially notified yet, so may not be secure.

But looks ok.

Forum down

The Forum went down around 22:40 tonight.

No clues at the moment, and the host as been alerted.

Forum note

Apologies for the sudden absence of the Forum.

The Forum itself is fine, so no worries about content or access, but there seems to be some sort of mild hiccup with the host, and this is preventing access to the configuration control.

Rather than have it appearing and disappearing as fixes are played with, I’ve decided just to suspend posting etc until this is dealt with, just to avoid interference, or the odd vanishing post.

Hopefully only a day or so.

Hosting meltdown

It’s a while since we’ve suffered any hiccups with our hosting which, by comparison with a number of comments made regularly in the support threads of our Forum code, seems to be largely disaster free, but we seem to be in the midst of some dramas at the moment, and both the Wiki and Forum have suffered.

For what it’s worth, it all started innocently enough, when I was denied permission to access a single file a few days ago. The support guys identified that problem, and it was soon fixed, but in what seems to have become a classic example of, If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it! - things seem to have gone downhill after I asked them to look at a couple of other little niggles, things that have not been quite ‘right’, but didn’t really justify the effort of a support call.

I have to admit that I find these episodes extremely frustrating. It’s bad enough when something breaks in the code itself, and it may take hours to track down and fix the cause, but at least this can be tackled. When the host hiccups, you can’t do a thing, other than report the symptoms, and wait.

Currently, issues with the Wiki appear to have been resolved after a couple of failures appeared earlier.

The Forum has not been so lucky, after I merely added a line to the News section (warning that there was some odd behaviour taking place), it imploded completely with internal server errors being generated, and is still outstanding as I type. This became yet more serious as it was followed by denial of access to the automated online backup system. Why this should have happened at the same time is not clear, as the two have no apparent connection, and even when it was restored, it was not ‘right’ – I don’t rely on this, but use it because it give quick access to any files needed for restoration. The real backup is still taken and stored locally, to keep it independent and separate.

(Sigh)

Update

The Forum seems to have re=appeared some time shortly after lunchtime on Sunday (August 01), but I seem to be jinxed, and couldn’t access this Blog (hosted by WordPress, not me) for almost two hours.

Unfortunately, when I tried to add a News item to the top of the Forum, which can only be done by the Admin, I was refused access to save the relevant file, so something is still amiss.

I should have known things were too quiet, and it had been too long since any gremlins had appeared, and can only hope that fixing this doesn’t break everything all over again – I almost decided not to follow this up, but had to, since access to the configuration options is essential.