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[sound]

Great idea from above poster .... can we have a figure on how much it would cost for 12 mths to upgrade?...

[in progress]

It does sound interesting. Maybe if we get some information that someone is willing to arrange for the upgrade if we get x amount of $ together that might increase interest and contributions. Maybe a fundraiser thread with a big notice at the top of the forum home page to attract attention of all the members.

[Squatchit]

Count me in.

[Gem]

I guess we need a differential equasion to determine what x equals.

[Nameless]

True. I love this place and I admit sheepishly i have never donated. Since the server has been having issues, I have thought about it, but the wallet is over there and I am over here....no exuse.

So lets solve for X. If there are 300 active active members and if X is $300.00 per month, if you could get committments from 300 members to pay $1.00 per month (they could pay it all at once so its $12.00 per year) then you have a years worth upfront, so there are no worries for a year.

It would help to know what you are shooting for, number wise...

And if it is a space issue, let us know. Every server's data needs weeding out once in a while (at least where I work). I am allowed 300 PM's, I'm willing to negotiate :) and delete them. And some of the longer threads, the happy ones, that have a lot of posts, the old posts could go - Gem's who'll have the last word is an ongoing challenge but the first 20,000 posts probably could be deleted....sorry, don't know how long it is,... freeing up some space ...I am going to go donate now...sorry I didn't do it sooner, I really fully intended to...

[in progress]

Maybe we can delete threads after a certain period of time. After the crash in 2010 it makes it seem like it hardly matters if we keep old posts anyway since so much was lost.

And Kaere mentioned at some point that signatures take up a lot of space since they appear in every post a user makes. Maybe keeping signatures to one sentence or a phrase or just having it show up in the user's profile.

I'm not an expert on forum software etc so I'm just throwing out ideas.

Right now approx 380 members visited today. 400 / 24 hours = 17 members per hour. Assume that a member spends 2 hours in the forum and it means that 35 people are online all the time. Hardly a big number.

Repeat the exercise assuming all active members come here every day. 1570 / 24 = 64 times 2 hours gives less than 130 people online every hour. Double that to take into account uneven distribution and peak times and we get to 250. Even that is not a huge number.

And it is really no fun when the infernal message pops up when wanting to post a message.

Originally Posted by in progress

Maybe we can delete threads after a certain period of time. After the crash in 2010 it makes it seem like it hardly matters if we keep old posts anyway since so much was lost.

And Kaere mentioned at some point that signatures take up a lot of space since they appear in every post a user makes. Maybe keeping signatures to one sentence or a phrase or just having it show up in the user's profile.

I'm not an expert on forum software etc so I'm just throwing out ideas.

It is not a matter of space because that is an all or nothing thing, you either have space or not, although being very low on space may impact on performance.
It might be inefficient forum software which has to scan the messages rather than using an index. This would be unlikely.

My question is why does the server not just throttle the connections to a slower speed? Saying server is busy is a bit silly as people keep on trying to do what they want to do, keeping the server even busier than when it would just deliver the goods asked for.

I actually can't believe that a forum which is largely text based could overload a server in any way.

But assuming the server is hugely underpowered then throttling speed would be an acceptable means to manage shared resources, much better than what happens now.

[norseman]

One thing I find hard to understand is that, atm, people in general are posting far less than they used to. Check the posting by "old timers" like me and you will find the posting rate is much less than it used to be. Couple of years back pre-crash, this place was hectic whereas now it is far less used. Prior to the problem a couple of months back, we never had this problem which leads me to suggest that SF is not the problem but the Server is.

[p.s. if we are to donate, can it be for a server that knows how to spell the English language please ?]

"I could see Peace in this situation"

-A Course In Miracles