Topic closed Topic closed because it surpassed the maximum number of pages.

[shought]

DKT, so you wanna post around the interwebz with your social media accounts to tell everyone about the new topics? :lol:

If a topic gets closed because it reaches the max. no. of pages, where is the difference in queries when browsing a non-closed topic and a closed topic having the same amount of pages or replies, does it make any difference for the forum? The closed topic still can be browsed like any other topic. A better solution would be preserving the OP and moving all replies to it into the newly created topic and close that instead, for the archive, so everything would stay where it is. Or maybe the success and popularity of those topics is the bigger problem because they generate negative attention, aka M$ is knocking on the door or is it just too much to moderate them, moving replies? :P

I'll tell you where the difference is: because we have enabled tracking of topics where you posted (a topic in which you posted shows with a star in front of it instead of a dot) the forums has to search all posts from all topics on the first page of a forum every time you load that forum. Loading a forum is generally very fast, but because in the Software Chat it had to look through 2 times 20000 posts (>100 pages) and 2 times 100000 posts (>500 pages) to find out whether one of those posts was yours now it only has to look through about 4000 posts to find out (which is 1/60th of what it used to be).

In addition to that when a large topic is viewed (one with more than 100 pages) the query to find the appropriate posts for a page takes a long time and because this query needs to combine post information with profile information (member names, groups, gender, interests, image) this query locks the table. Which means that as long as this query doesn't complete all other queries will have to wait. When a query has to wait for too long eventually the webserver says "screw you guys, I'm going home" and sends out a 500 error. Now these slowdowns (obviously) appear gradually: our server is pretty fast, so at 100 pages there won't be a problem. Even at 250 pages it might still be fine, but that's just considering one topic. When there's two or three topics that size it becomes a problem and you'll start seeing slowdowns and at some point the errors will start appearing.

So there are two problems:

1. loading a forum takes a long time because it needs to look through all the posts to find out whether you posted in a topic or not;

2. viewing a large topic takes a longer time and places a lock on the table causing other queries to pile up and eventually return errors.

Now if there was just one visitor looking at these forums and topics that would not be an issue at all. On peak times we have over one pageview every second (on average) and every pageview executes anywhere between 5 and 25 queries. Most of these queries are very fast because the tables they query are small, but the ones I mentioned above are slow. Suppose a locking query is executed on the posts table and it takes longer than a second this means that 15 (avg 5-25) other queries will have to wait. If these queries don't finish before the next round comes in then the next ones will need to wait as well. Now suppose, a situation which is very likely, that 2 people are viewing one of the large topics within the same second, now one of them will be last an has to wait, when the first one finishes the second one will execute, but in that next second someone else might also view the topic. Now the queries pile up at if this cascades and one query takes too long to answer you get an error.

Problem 1 has now been "fixed". By creating the topic anew the old topic moved to the second page of the forum (which is rarely viewed, relative to the first page). Even when people are still viewing the topic (from links, or search engines) this doesn't matter as much as it did before because the forum queries aren't executed which fixes problem 1. But closing the topic also fixes problem 2. You might think this is only in the long run, when people shift from viewing the old topic to the new topic, but this isn't true. Because most members (who posted in the previous topic) will quickly move to the new topic and the query to view the topic is the same for every guest. As you can see in november's screenshot mostly guests are viewing the topic. Because these guests all have the same permission it's really easy for the database to cache this query and simply serve the result from the cache instead of querying the database.

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Moving all past posts to another topic (with a different URL) would be MUCH WORSE than what was done now. These posts have keywords in them which are crawled by search engines and these search engines link to the old link. When these pages start to return errors (because they no longer exist, if we move them to another topic) the search engine will downrank these results until they completely disappear (because they aren't accessible anymore). The new topic will be found relatively quickly, but it won't appear as high as it used to in the results because simply not as many people have visited this link before (and there aren't many links to be found to this new topic on the net).

What was done now makes sure that (1) the old posts remain accessible at the URLs where they are expected to be. And (2) people are informed that the topic is closed and they can continue their discussion in the new topic. There is only one thing I can see which could improve the situation and that would be to add a notification/announcement at the top of the topic which states the same (but I haven't been able to find a modification to the forum software which provides this) Still, if people find what they are looking for on the second post of a page they will have never seen the top of the page or the first/last post of the topic because they found their answer and are content). When people really do have a question and find so much knowledge gathered in one topic they will find a way to ask it, I assure you ;)

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So there's two things at play here: the reason for the limit on pages and the way it was handled. I just attempted to explain both.

[shought]

what made me laugh was that and a few other big topics got closed but stuff in "the chat bar" mini games and spam stuff survived and is still surviving lol

If you want me to explain why these topics cause slowness and errors I'd be happy to do so, but not unless I'm asked with at least a little bit of respect.

I enjoy comming to nsane and am new here. The last thing I want to do is make waves. BUT I am very curious to know why then there are topics like 'The Final Countdown'? You could delete the entire thread without even looking through it and not have to worry about deleting anything important. It would take minimal time/effort and especially if it causes slowness IMO its a no brainer. Thank You for your time and consideration.

The limit of 100 pages is arbitrary. Problems don't magically start appearing at 100 pages, but when multiple topics (especially in the same forum, especially in a forum which is viewed a lot) have more than 100 pages slowdowns will occur and in the end errors will appear. Please read my post above for a more comprehensive explanation, but I'll try to do it in short here:

The Final Countdown is just fun for members and we do close these topics after 100 pages as well. However I looked into the slow query log, which is a log on our server in which all queries which take longer than 5 seconds are stored, and found that when viewing the Software Chat forum there were considerable slowdowns (> 10 seconds to execute a query). The same occurred when viewing these mega topics (two of them had around 500 pages of posts). None of these queries pointed to the Final Countdown Threads simply because there are not a whole lot of posts in that forum (so if there is just one large thread in one particular forum this doesn't automatically lead to issues).

The exact workings and implications are too difficult to catch in a simple rule (if there are more than two threads in one subforum with more than 100 pages each then both threads are closed, but then if there is one with 1000 pages do we not care or if there are 10 with 80 pages), but the limit on the number of pages a topic can have is certainly a great approximation which is used in many forums. And for a good reason: it works. However, as said in my other post, the number is arbitrary and really nothing more than a best guess.

[SnakeMasteR]

I'll tell you where the difference is:

Excellent reply, thanks. ;)

[rkkdjb]

we could offer a solution : how abt an exclusive thread where all the links and info stuff that NR(or others alike) deals in is put up and closed(temp) & another where we can discuss issues or gather any other info we want pertaining to that particular thread in a separate one. So for e.g. 1- Thread for download links, backup,etc. 2-Thread for any queries, or activation questions,etc.This is just an e.g

Any problem in this method?

[shought]

we could offer a solution : how abt an exclusive thread where all the links and info stuff that NR(or others alike) deals in is put up and closed(temp) & another where we can discuss issues or gather any other info we want pertaining to that particular thread in a separate one. So for e.g. 1- Thread for download links, backup,etc. 2-Thread for any queries, or activation questions,etc.This is just an e.g

Any problem in this method?

What is the benefit of this approach?

The main topic will still be closed (causing people who are looking to ask question to leave if they can't find a way to ask the question, if it is mentioned in the topic that they should ask questions elsewhere then it's simply the same as the current situation).

If anything I think this solution might be worse because it spreads the people looking for general answers and specific answers into two different topics, hurting the search engine performance of the topic (causing less viewers).

[rkkdjb]

we could offer a solution : how abt an exclusive thread where all the links and info stuff that NR(or others alike) deals in is put up and closed(temp) & another where we can discuss issues or gather any other info we want pertaining to that particular thread in a separate one. So for e.g. 1- Thread for download links, backup,etc. 2-Thread for any queries, or activation questions,etc.This is just an e.g

Any problem in this method?

What is the benefit of this approach?

The main topic will still be closed (causing people who are looking to ask question to leave if they can't find a way to ask the question, if it is mentioned in the topic that they should ask questions elsewhere then it's simply the same as the current situation).

If anything I think this solution might be worse because it spreads the people looking for general answers and specific answers into two different topics, hurting the search engine performance of the topic (causing less viewers).

put the two threads one after each other also the two threads may contain link to each other.(which wont affect the search engine- u just have to mention for further queries go this this thread and provide link,easy for readers and for staff to maintain threads)

Also the utility of this is that the main thread will remain(bcoz of less no. of posts) while the discussion thread as and when it reaches a certain limit may be removed/ closed.

The OP could modify his first thread if there is some general info.

[BrendJohn]

I don't know what is wrong and what is right but one thing I know very well is that 'november_ra1n' and his 'topics' are among the main 'attractions' in this forum.

[toashishonly]

I Think Moderators should not delete NR's Topic,it's the most successful topic ever on web..........

My Thought....

[Lite]

I Think Moderators should not delete NR's Topic,it's the most successful topic ever on web..........

My Thought....

Nothing has been deleted. I don't know where you got this idea from.

[rudrax]

General note:

Problems are there to force us how to find a way to solve it. Things goes better after a problem is solved. Having a constructive argument regarding a situation is always helpful.

About dcs18's point of not having enough staff for moderating business, well, they are enough but problem is with their uptime. Admins should not tolerate that because whatever the goal of this forum is, to achieve that, all responsible person should do their part of the responsibility.

Am I drunk?

-hell no!

[manu]

most successful topic ever on web..........

My Thought....

i have no intention to enter this area, unless i read a childish thought

grow up and expand ur limits of thought

[Abbasi]

I don't know what is wrong and what is right but one thing I know very well is that 'november_ra1n' and his 'topics' are among the main 'attractions' in this forum.

I agree with you

[don2]

I have discussed this approach with november_ra1n beforehand and explicitly stated what the problem is. I also offered to explain in detail how long topics cause a slow forum (including errors).

We used to enforce a topic limit of 50 pages. When get got a faster server we felt it was no longer necessary to enforce any limit, but we've learned the opposite is true. Now we've increased it to 100 pages and we can do so because we have a better server and more optimized queries than before.

If you want me to explain why these topics cause slowness and errors I'd be happy to do so, but not unless I'm asked with at least a little bit of respect.

there is a forum where i can see zillions of pics and videos with thread of 3000 pages and still going on in the same thread (as admin team says dont open different threads for the same topic-here ur opening 2 threads of same topic -is it very funny or insulting november_rain :P).i can see hundreds of such 3000 pages threads in that forum.in fact posting pics in full HD in those 3000 pages thread doesnt slow them then how can normal chating and solution threads of november_rain will slow down this forum ,totally insane ,i 100% appose your view and actions .

other thing is those 3000 pages thread forum had zero donation

see the following image which had 9000 pages and still going on :o

Current month's budget: US$ 5000

Collected: US$ 0

threads open up very fast just with in blink of eyes........Page generated in 0.08912 seconds

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! If u cant handle IPB then move to vbulletin !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[don2]

I certainly agree with Shought/Lite & other site admins on this topic, the threads with a bunch of repetitive questions are crap tbh & only the OP, Rain mainly, & a few other posters have made good contributions while the rest (like 99%) of the the thread is littered with a bunch of no grateful hit & run (ab)users who're here just to ask for a free license :angry:

i badly fuck your opinion as that there is a forum had thread non sense chit chat thread with zillions of pages just only crap of smileys used that too making it "live thread'' makes easy to post faster and even though site runs faster and smoother and here you are making non sense and hurting great member november_rain :angry: :angry: :angry:

see the following image which had 9000 pages and still going on :o

[tarekma7]

the long topics are full of unnecessary replies, although it needs some effort to clear it but it can be reduced and reopened then merged with the new topic

I think this will solve the problem

[clubhouse]

There's no doubt november rain was a valuable member and contributor to nsane. But he also proved that he was vain and expected to be given privileges for his popularity. When he found out that throwing his toys out of the pram didn't work he continued his hissy fit to the point of leaving. Many asked him not to but he did.

The most important thing we (members) have learned from this is that than none of us are unique or essential for nsane to be one of the best sites of its type....If anyone decides they no longer wish to be a member the site continues to thrive and rolls on unabated.

I'm glad the page restriction is in force, along with the now defunct 'thanks' bloating them, they were a nightmare to look through to see if a question you had was already answered....I strongly believe the new rules makes the site easier to navigate through.

[jilowjacob1990]

There's no doubt november rain was a valuable member and contributor to nsane. But he also proved that he was vain and expected to be given privileges for his popularity. When he found out that throwing his toys out of the pram didn't work he continued his hissy fit to the point of leaving. Many asked him not to but he did.

The most important thing we (members) have learned from this is that than none of us are unique or essential for nsane to be one of the best sites of its type....If anyone decides they no longer wish to be a member the site continues to thrive and rolls on unabated.

I'm glad the page restriction is in force, along with the now defunct 'thanks' bloating them, they were a nightmare to look through to see if a question you had was already answered....I strongly believe the new rules makes the site easier to navigate through.

Leaving the forum just for closing old thread and opening new one is not good,kids behave like that.

[don2]

Leaving the forum just for closing old thread and opening new one is not good,kids behave like that.

when admin team behaving like kids then there is no reason to panic by november rain to act as kid :lol: :P

[Alhaitham]

Guys,

This was the response of wilderssecurity admin LowWaterMark to a request to split the ax64 thread

To let you know my thought process on the issue of splitting out versus continuing on in this thread...

Monster threads work really well for us here. There are many of them on the forum, if you haven't noticed. The other anti-malware section has several running just like this one. They also index quite well in Google, which is another benefit.

For product development threads, we like to focus the main support effort, when there is very active developer participation, into a single thread whenever possible. Since these threads typically have excessive growth rates, even a second thread would already be many pages long, and within a month, likely a second monstor thread.

Since a direct link is possible to the v2 beta activity, which cleanly starts at the top of page 308, this link can easily be used by anyone "new" to this product:

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/threads/introducing-ax64-time-machine-hybrid-imaging-snapshot-software.339999/page-308

That said, I do see that things are a bit different here with changes both in the company and the development approach. There appears to be some changes planned, from what I read here as for product name(?) and maybe company name(?), from the original AX64 branding. And if the staff is also changing(?), when v2 is actually released, I suspect it'll totally negate the foundation of this thread that Isso started last year. And then, v1 disappears from the world entirely(?).

So, what I think we should do is wait until v2.0 goes from Beta to Release, and start a new thread with that. At that point, I imagine the massive development discussion post rate will terminate, and the product talk will move into a more casual "usage" based dialog. Also, I suspect whatever company, name, URL and whatever other possible changes are planned, will be fleshed out by then, as well.

Requested by TheRollbackFrog: To make it easier to direct people to the v2 Beta, the first post in this thread has been modified to state that a beta is underway and the announcement link has been provided there.

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/threads/ax64-time-machine-software.339999/

__

http://www.wilderssecurity.com/posts/2376941/

[iih1]

Leaving the forum just for closing old thread and opening new one is not good,kids behave like that.

when admin team behaving like kids then there is no reason to panic by november rain to act as kid :lol: :P

besides this, there is another problem..is hard sometimes to understanding NR, his unique person.

[clubhouse]

He's left, get over it...If he's posting his tutorials and solutions on another forum join that as well....For every problem there's a solution.

[dcs18]

@ shought and @ Lite

Hello guys - trust both of you are doing fine.

Just happened to enter this thread as the strange name of the topic attracted my eyes and, after being met with a fully deleted OP, questioned november_ra1n who explained that his topic has now been shifted to a low-traffic section which offline folks cannot see.

Hey, why can't we just leave november_ra1n and his topics, alone - he manages his thread diligently and peacefully. The only one point I notice out-of-place at his threads is that there are a lot of unnecessary replies which do bloat the thread.

Seeing that november_ra1n is fully dedicated and ever-present, at nSane - why can't we just grant him some semblance of moderating rights. To start with, we could test him out at one given section and I am sure that very soon, you will want him to have global moderating rights, too. He is a personable character with the largest fan following, here and I can't think of anyone else who can be a better asset to this site - let's allow him the privilege of cleaning-up his own mess.

Please don't consider the above as a suggestion or an idea - it is just a personal observation. Both the parties involved, november_ra1n and the staff have the same objective, in mind - the welfare of the site.

Placing both the affected parties in the same boat, Archimedes exclaims - "Eureka" (I mean "problem solved.")