See, that's why I feel discussing the worst case scenarios (well, near worst) isn't doing as much benefit as it might.

For every "let's ditch Bitches/Natter" or "lets do odd days only", even if said lightly, a hackle somewhere twitches up, a bit, and it gets tenser.

Not usefully tenser, either.

Anyway, enough of what might look like topic nannying.

Possible changes are being tested right now. New people are looking at the code. Changes have been implemented.

And I will lead a fundraising charge myself, to prevent Natter/Bitches being closed. But Allyson and Sean will have to take forks to the neck as a fundraising event.

But I'd recommend heartily against changing everything all at once. We'd never know what made a difference, and what was just panic.

Agreed. One of the first rules of problem solving is to try not to change too many variables at once. The best way is to change one variable at a time and see how that goes. For example, we have yet to see whether removing the random quotes has made a difference, and if so, how big a difference. We think it will, but we have no proof yet, and whatever the result of that change is will effect the things we have to look at for further changes.

But do you think it would be worthwhile, right now, to put a post in Press asking people to (a) turn off auto-refresh and (b) cut down on the number of one-line/content-free posts they make? Unless we just want to get rid of auto-refresh completely -- I mean, really, people can't hit the refresh button when they're ready to see if there are new posts? IJS.

Edit: My point being that both of those things are relatively painless, and one of them would make the board a better place anyway, IMO.

Question: Are we sure "O minutes refresh" works the way it's supposed. I've always been leery of it. I know it is supposed to mean it won't refresh. I've never been confident that it would work, so instead, I set mine to 30 minutes, because I don't stay on message center anyhow, even if I have two windows open to b.org.

And I will lead a fundraising charge myself, to prevent Natter/Bitches being closed. But Allyson and Sean will have to take forks to the neck as a fundraising event.

And hell yeah. I bet we could all frigging retire.

put a post in Press asking people to (a) turn off auto-refresh

If we think it's a good idea to turn off auto-refresh, then it should be turned off in the coding. It's a simple change to make.

Question: Are we sure "O minutes refresh" works the way it's supposed.

Yes.

If we think it's a good idea to turn off auto-refresh, then it should be turned off in the coding. It's a simple change to make.

If it were up to me, then, I'd say do it. If you're away from your computer or whatever, you can just refresh your damn self when you get back. The more I think about it, the less I see the point.

Are we sure "O minutes refresh" works the way it's supposed.

If you have any evidence that it doesn't, please report it in BBaBB. It's worked flawlessly for me, but such is the nature of a bug.

If not ... well, I guess it does, doesn't it?

The best way is to change one variable at a time and see how that goes

I think that's what this is. We're discussing the variables, heading towards consensus on which variables will be next on the chopping block if we need to take that route. Better to do it now, while we're waiting to see how the RQG and closed MySQL tags are working towards board health. If it's not enough, we'll have something set in place, immediately. If it is enough, no harm done, and we'll likely still have done some needed clean-up in the process, anyway.

I don't think that discussing it in an 11th hour scenario would do much to quell a feeling of panic.

I think it's fortunate that the host is working with us, so that we can say, "we've done X, Y, and Z, to solve the problem. Is this working? No? Okay, we're going to grab A, B, C, and D, please let us know if that brings us to an acceptable level."

Thanks, Jon B.

But I'd recommend heartily against changing everything all at once. We'd never know what made a difference, and what was just panic.

We're blessed with the ability to talk with our web hosts. Let's take advantage of this, and tweak, and do this strategically..

I'm all for this, over all. For example, I think we should wait to code out the auto-refresh, until we've gotten webhost feedback on how much difference stopping the Quote Generator made. But here, I'll add a qualifier of much of what Fred said. Technical tweaking may take care of 95% of the problem. I'm all for doing that methodically. It's the only way to tell what's helping and what's a useless change.

But in the future, I don't want our ability to adapt (like say add a new thread, after our reason for being (in the first place) has ended) to be shot down, because we don't want to overload the server again. So we need to modify our behavior as well.

If there are behavior modifications we could make (e.g. no number slutting, no "Timelies" only posts), and if there are things that will save us small bits of server pingage (like the "target=_blank" suggestion I made in BBaBB), I think we can do that, too. I think it makes sense to attack the problem on both ends - technical and user habit - particularly if one of the temporary solutions to our problem is to not let people open new threads if/when they're not superfluous.