As a semi-lurker, I don't come into these threads hardly ever, but I read others religiously. If someone (a stompy maybe?) could post the few things we could do now to help in Press or something, that may help reach others like me. I just reset my refresh to 0 and changed the number of posts per page to 25. Anything else that we can do now to help?

I don’t think legislating Buffista behavior is going to solve the overall problem, and will probably cause some resentment in the long run.

Nobody's legislating anything. They're making suggestions. If even some people take up Kristen on the suggestions she's made about steps to conserve usage, then you all are already ahead. By a huge amount? No, but by a little, which leads me to:

Trying to significantly reduce usage by outlawing numberslutting or limiting posts is going to have such a small effect on the overall problem that its social cost far outweighs its potential benefits.

I feel like some people are trying to find the magic catch-all, the big gaping wound in the Buffistas' side that, when cleared up, will totally do away with the problem. There may be some code issues that could help, but I think people need to consider that a couple of smaller things (combining threads, not numberslutting, responding to even just two posts at one time, rather than two posts with another three), when added up, could help the situation.

Also, re:

Whether that means raising money for a bigger piece of fangeek’s server

Just so we're clear, you can buy more space, but there really is no "buying a bigger piece" of our server. The problem is with the number of MySQL connections, and Buffistas.org is using up all of ours. Not one of the other clients we have uses MySQL on their sites.

A simple question, for one catching up: Will a dedicated server solve the problem? Yea or nay?

No simple answer at this point. It may solve some problems but create others.

Kristen "Buffistas Building a Better Board" Aug 20, 2003 3:47:26 pm PDT

DX, got it. Question, though - suppose we were able to afford a better, faster dedicated server? Without long answers, or making anyone work, would that lower the speed-loss problem occurrence?

Faster is generally better, but is also more expensive.

The catch is that if there are significant problems with the underlying code, they'll still be there regardless of how fast the server is.

I have a related question -- does Fangeek have its own server, or are we sharing with other IH clients?

Faster is generally better, but is also more expensive.

Understood, and figured into the question. Depending on the rate of how much more expensive, it might be doable.

The catch is that if there are significant problems with the underlying code, they'll still be there regardless of how fast the server is.

But - tell me if I'm not getting this - on a dedicated server, the programmer Buffistae would have the time and room to work on fixing the code?

But - tell me if I'm not getting this - on a dedicated server, the programmer Buffistae would have the time and room to work on fixing the code?

I don't know. I'd rather see us try to fix it on the less expensive option, than spend the dough and then have the system slow to a crawl under the load anyway.

I have a related question -- does Fangeek have its own server, or are we sharing with other IH clients?

Semidedicated. There are other clients, but I have no idea how many others.

To give you a frame of reference, moving to a dedicated server could cost you anything from $200/mo. - $1,000/mo. Admittedly, that's just me looking at one other host's site, but I think it's a fair assessment of the general dedicated market.