Foo on 5/2/2003 at 00:12

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I guess since I dont spend a huge portion of my time here that some of these thoughts may be ill conceived, ignorant, or just plain dumb, but here goes :D

Given that TTLG and the network is suffering network bandwidth problems, one can only conclude that the bandwidth cant be upgraded due to financial constriction. I've also noticed the store opening and a donations system in place. All this leads me to beleive financial support for the maintenance of the servers is lacking.

Recently, I spent some time theorising about the alternatives for file hosting on the internet, and came to the conclusion that, provided enough fan enthusiasm is present, there are a number of alternatives to the traditional local file hosting methods availiable.

* Fileplanet - (www.fileplanet.com) (I may be ignorant to the fact that you already use this site, but just in case). It's true that their advertising methods are somewhat suspect, and their queue system somewhat frustrating; but they still provide a free service and it would be foolish to not take advantage of that....
* Peer to Peer - Not to be underestimated, especially with the advent of the EDonkey networks browser hyperlinking abilities. Hey, how often is it you come up with a legitimate use for a filesharing application? Exploit it!
* ISP Webspace - Most ISPs offer their users a small amount of web hosting space, be it 5 or 50Mb. A lot of users dont make use of this, most of them dont even realise its their for them! While it's not designed for high bandwidth hosting, provide enough mirrors to one file and each location will never become excessively swamped with requests.


But anyways, if I'm ignorant on these matter please feel free to educate me... I just see a quality site and network that isn't exploiting alternative hosting to its fullest potential ;) I'm not suggesting one of these alternatives is implemented as the main solution, merely musing that a 'eggs in different baskets' approach might solve some problems :thumb:

EDIT: Javascript list system made me its bitch. Fixed :D

Foo on 5/2/2003 at 13:49

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I suppose it depends on what the load problems are. I mean, this forum doesn't get a massive numer of posts per hour, but the archive of posts stretches back quite some way.

The last forum I frequented had some problems with the size of the index being far too big... there were so many threads, posts and usernames that the server they were on was swamped with unnecesary work.

The solution to that was pruning. The active removal of posts after a few months from the database. Triage of user accounts that had only ever made 1 post, or had been inactive for over a year.

Static archives were made of quality discussion material, although it seems that has been implemented here too.

All of that mounted up and provided a leaner, faster less processor (and space) intensive forum... Not knowing the specifics of the problem here I can only suggest general methods though :)

mopgoblin on 6/2/2003 at 23:35

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As sailoreagle said, removing inactive threads would not be a good idea. Losing all the information in the Editors' Guild archives or the FM forum, for example, would certainly do more harm than good - without the archive to search, there would be a lot more questions posted - achieving the opposite of what is desired. A lot of older fan-fiction, roleplay threads etc. would be lost from Thief Series General Discussion and Community Chat. If you only wanted to preserve certain types of material, then it would be required to read through the existing 381258 posts (at present - this number is obviously increasing) in these two forums and their archives, plus a large number for the other forums as well. Even if someone was trustworthy and willing to do that, how do you decide which posts are to be kept?

mopgoblin on 7/2/2003 at 13:21

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Well, I doubt many people would have a problem with moving all pre-2002 threads (for example) into the achives for the larger forums. On the other hand, the archives probably get more search queries than the active forums.

There was a fairly recent incident where all posts older than (approximately) one year were accidentally dissociated with the relevant user accounts. Some members who have not posted frequently in the last 18 months or so will have postcounts of 0-5, while they may have previously been much higher. The username/password point is not particularly relevant - I, for example, can easily recall usernames and passwords I have not used for more than three years.

However, someone else could register it and impersonate them. This is clearly best avoided.

sailoreagle on 14/2/2003 at 02:05

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Filehosting is not the problem, as was already said in this thread...