Posted on 10/23/2012 3:58:44 AM PDT by PittsburghAfterDark
The 4th and final of the Presidential and Vice Presidential debates have come and gone for 2012.
Here are the three things we can walk away with.
- Romney can't lose a debate coin toss, going 3 for 3. Which of course means nothing.
- Obama gets more moderated debate time, going 3 for 3 in the time column. Which of course means nothing.
- Free Republic crashes before any debate and doesn't get back to normal until dawn the next day.
I would like to state that I have been here since the 2004 election season. I can't lay claim to being an old timer here compared to some of the posters here. I can safely say though that I am not a spur of the moment account meant to come here and spam, insult and run away.
Here's my point; Free Republic is in danger of not being relevant and it's purely because of technical reasons.
I know your technical team or advisor is trying like mad to isolate why this site is unavailable for hours on end surrounding the debates this year. It's not working.
This debate season for Free Republic has been the equivalent of having a TV network go out for a wild card round, divisional round and conference or league championship. The network knew the times of the contest, they knew tons of people would be watching, they knew where the technical problems might arise yet failed 4 times over the course of every scheduled event.
Now the Super Bowl of American politics is 2 weeks away and the same team that has aired loading screens for every head to head political contest this year must realize this simple fact; if you're not up and running on election night 2012 you might as well close the door on any thought of continuing your political relevance.
Online communities do not build themselves overnight but they can collapse overnight. As inconceivable as it may be this could be a swan song moment that you were warned about, tried to prevent yet ultimately could not control. If your traffic can't get to your site, you have no site.
If you fail in giving voice to this community during what should or could be a glorious night for America your role in history will be noteworthy, just like print edition of Newsweek's coverage of the Presidential inauguration in 2013. Non-existent.
History will indeed be made on November 6th because of the nature of the event. The question Free Republic needs to determine is if it is going to report history or become part of it.
Good post and ideas from you n many others. Many here might not know that there is an OFFICIAL Facebook page for FR and it had as active discussion “thread” last night. JimRob n Syncro are the administrators. FR offers news and information opportunities but to me it offers more importantly friendship. Oh and yes BTW. Go team Romney!
Thanks for the ping and reference to #97. BTW, 14 hours after the debated and FR is running slow but stable for me with no time-outs.
I’m obversely frusturated and senically obscenic on this point.
There’s lots of competition out there. Twitter, Facebook, blogs, comment sections of news articles,etc.
What they lack, however is FR’s sense of community. That, IMHO, would be the real loss.
When this (a Facebook page is available) was pointed out on last night’s thread, there were many who commented they don’t do Facebook primarily for privacy reasons. My reasons also include that I have other forums I frequent (mainly hobby forums) that satisfy my social needs and I don’t need to involve myself with another.
But we shouldn’t have to look for other alternatives for posting — this is a conservative forum, I contribute with articles and opinions, and financially, and expect it to function as the founder intended. That it does not is not a reason to abandon it, but to aid in finding solutions as Ol’ Sox has suggested.
What is "ROI"?
‘I suggest they start with a database performance consultant’
I have no idea what backend platform this site uses, but it would be advisable to fully understand the performance of the DB system before throwing more money at hardware. If the problem is due to poorly written DB code, poor table indexing or improper configuration of the DB application, then no amount of money thrown at hardware will help the situation.
I have to believe that Jim and the other administrators are aware of this and have removed database performance as a cause of this sites’ inavalibility during big live threads.
Are you logged in?
Yum!
Broken glass!
My favorite!
It seems like it would be straight-forward to determine the general area of the problem, if JohnRob was on-site at the server, diagnosing with a PC direct-connected to the server's ethernet.
1) If people complain things are slow, but John connects fine, then it's a problem with the network upstream from the server.
2) If John experiences the same slowness, then the problem is within the server.
3) If it's the server, then look further as to whether it appears to be memory, IO-bandwidth, thread limitations in the database software, whatever.
There's lots of software people on FR. Perhaps if John would open up more as to what he's seeing, there would be people who could offer suggestions.
Step away from the computer while the debates and election returns are on.
ROI is Return On Investment. In this case, does FR need to be funded, designed and built to handle the highest possible use scenario? What about all that excess processing capacity during the rest of the year when usage might be 25% of peak? Basically, it is a business decision, not a technical one.
Where are the new servers (”equipment”) that has been promised to us for years?
(In Before This Thread Gets Pulled)
Don’t know how long this thread will last... ;-)
Well said. It maybe time to allow advertising into the discussion. I would assume that JR could control who and how it’s done. Revenue generated could be applied to costs for “big events”.
Or not and things stay as they are. I just want to be able to use FR during heavy usage events. No crying or whining here, just want it to work.
BTW is is slow going as of right now as well
Well dude...there has been enough money donated to this site to do this many times over. Other sites don't have this problem...they have the same volume...and a lot friendlier user interface...you know...one which allows you to EDIT and insert a picture without having to know basic html formatting.
It ain't the lack of money. An audit would prove that...
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