Statement as to recent site slowdowns and related issues

[Dangersaurus]

The value of this place is first and foremost to provide a counter-dose to the hype and bought reviews of major gaming sites, and to the fanboyism and herp-derp next-gen that has come to replace rpg fandom, driving the other 99% of our former crpg gaming brethren out of the genre completely, to be replaced by fans of shooters and action games. Why support the very thing this place exists to combat? Why act like the dex is here to provide a 4chan spill-over rather than a counter to the gaming decline? Why let the Codex sink or require extra funding to pay for the very fuckers that cause the decline, or for a bunch of randoms who couldn't care less about the whole thing anyway? If we have to donate, or scrap search functions, or limit threads, or shut down forums, or require registration before viewing, or ANYTHING that inconveniences or costs one fucking cent, WHY SHOULD WE DO IT FOR THAT LOT?

 

[laclongquan]

What is causing the abnormal amount of hits on the servers are all the tranny references in there.

Porn is the single most searched thing on the planet. Anything regarding transsexualism will point here as well and with SMA and Kaiserin posting pictures, it will show up as a result.

Holy fuck! "trannies attention whore" on Google got us at 3rd position .

 

[Frau Bishop]

Holy fuck! "trannies attention whore" on Google got us at 3rd position .

Fifth position for me some seconds ago.
Anyone with a clean cache or even IP around? :

edit: Is it already rising?

 

[fizzelopeguss]

I love how the autists keep trying to force GD to the sidelines, it's the only thing that's kept this site alive over the years.

GD has to stay. It is the dark underbelly of the Codex experience. It's where I go to see that there are far worse people than me in the world. It's where all my positive assumptions about the world and the people in it went to die. It is what makes the rest of the internet butthurt about this place. Without GD this is just another website with jrpg LPs.

oldmanpaco
Forum Posts %
General Discussion 1,639 56%

So GD is not only integral to the Codex experience, but is also what makes it unique? FFS -- what makes the Codex unique is its uncompromising stance on RPGs and its relentlessly pessimistic outlook on the genre. If anything, GD undermines the Codex's elitist, monocled culture as it's a hive of dumbfuckery.

Who the fuck are you?

the rpg genre is a fucking corpse and its forum is filled with aspies and larpers having the same old shitty arguments that were beaten to death years ago.

 

[LusciousPear]

Have you considered compiling your PHP code down to C for moar efficiency? The bros at Facebook do this with good levels of success. Ping me if you want help.

Also, are you loading images form something like S3? May help a little.

I'll toss in some more cash.

 

[LusciousPear]

Have you considered compiling your PHP code down to C for moar efficiency? The bros at Facebook do this with good levels of success. Ping me if you want help.

Also, are you loading images form something like S3? May help a little.

I'll toss in some more cash.

Oh... HipHop is what it's called now. gg nooblet

Are you bound on disk I/O? CPU?

One of your problems is that it's shitton of joins in the DB to render a page on the forums. And joins are DEATH. Is your DB machine separate from the web server?

De-normalization is good. Disk space is cheaper than CPU.

I'd suggest something like MongoDB, but I donno if phpBB runs on it...or if it's quite stable enough for the hive mind.

 

[RK47]

What is causing the abnormal amount of hits on the servers are all the tranny references in there.

Porn is the single most searched thing on the planet. Anything regarding transsexualism will point here as well and with SMA and Kaiserin posting pictures, it will show up as a result.

Holy fuck! "trannies attention whore" on Google got us at 3rd position .

we're no.1 on "lithuanian hitman"

 

[curry]

If you make GD and Retardoland registered users only, you'll get plenty of new users. They won't know what they've just signed up for until it's too late.

 

[Tycn]

VD for moderator. Purge the nazi filth.

 

[DarkUnderlord]

Personally, I think the problem you're experiencing is one of efficiency. Something you're doing in site operations is simply massive inefficient. You pay $400 a month for a site half the size of ones I run, on half the budget you run it on. That's an obvious problem right there. Find a cheaper host that offers more for less. Odds are you will: If this place has been hosted here for awhile, your server is probably an antique and you're paying rates as of however many years ago you last moved. This site is simply not that big: 9K-odd users and an average usercount of maybe 200-ish on a typical day. If you're running into load issues, it's not because you need to drop functionality, it's because you need to improve efficiency. What are you running this on, anyway? Because 15K visits a month and 2M pageviews is nothing and shouldn't have any significant effect.

Erm... It's 15k¹ visits and 2M hits per day. Per month we're pushing 700k+ visits and 50M+ hits.

I assume that changes this statement you made some-what "You pay $400 a month for a site half the size of ones I run, on half the budget you run it on". If you're on 30k visits per month... You're right, that's nothing.

¹GoogleAnalytics. As I said in the post Webalizer is saying 26k per day. The difference is just down to how they count unique visitors +how many people block GoogleAnalytics.

 

[deus101]

I really think getting rid of GD would be a bad idea. It's not like all the GD posters would just leave, they'd just start posting in other forums. And then we'd have to deal with racism, nazis, etc in GRPGD.

Don't we already

In all seriousness though...there is the "chat hard" mentality on codex i mean...we rage and we love to, and the internet culture sorta takes over.
There are ways to know what can be taken seriusly and what cannot, but mostly i just run on good faith.

In short...i pass of as anti-semitic because referring to jews is so "EDGY".

http://www.rpgcodex.net/phpBB/viewtopic ... 24#1292624

well...at the time i was also dealing with that Zeit retard and thought was Tungusake was really just acting.

yeah... not my proudest moment.

This is not a place for reflection or meta commentary on yourself.

Nobody cares.

FUCK YOU JEW!

 

[evdk]

how much capital do I need to invest in this to get some profit out of it, DU?

DU only deals in souls.

 

[Merkwürdigliebe]

I've got a question about donations, it seems the donations through Paypal are through US currency however the Codex is based in Australia correct? So does this mean you have to have the money exchanged for AUD losing part of it in the process due to fees etc. When you take into account that many people like me and other people living in Europe would not be paying in USD initially this would result in double currency conversions for double the loss. Or do you perhaps fund the server in USD? Just wondering.

 

[PorkaMorka]

This site doesn't have that many active posters so it is probably outsiders eating your bandwidth, make GD members only for sure.

Making GD members only and adding a disclaimer that it is an area where people can speak freely but doesn't reflect the official Codex opinion would probably go a long way to improving the reputation of this prestigious magazine as well.

 

[Azael]

Holy fuck! "trannies attention whore" on Google got us at 3rd position .

Fifth position for me some seconds ago.
Anyone with a clean cache or even IP around? :

edit: Is it already rising?

#2 for me...

Anyway, sent $15 your way. I'm sick, so can't spend it on beer this week anyway.

 

[Excommunicator]

The performance of this site is, indeed, going to shit.

The number of times it fails to load, takes too long and/or logs me out is really becoming too much.

Do what you must to fix it

 

[Hegel]

If you want, DU, I can help you list the Codex on NYSE.

Provided the 50.000 $ fee, and the necessary private capital, I'm sure you'll find the money once you start getting the royalties from Prosper's game.

 

[Heechee]

+1 for dumping/limiting access to GD, Hosted subforums, and retardo

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

Something possibly worth considering would be Skimlinks or Skimwords... Skimwords for unregistered visitors only. That's the advertising that makes random words into advertisement links. Skimlinks only automatically converts various links posted on the forum to sites like Amazon, Newegg, etc. into referral links.

From what I've seen/read Skimwords is pretty controversial as it looks like someone made a link in their own post.

The main reason why I use adblock is that most of normal ads tend to be intrusive, use psychomanipulation techniques or slow down my comp. My general policy when it comes to ads is:
If it moves, contains erotic content (like most of MMO ads), shit like "You won!", slows down my computer, etc. it gets blocked.

One interesting thing that I saw is a system that highlights certain worlds in post and hovering above them displays a text ad. It wasn't as intrusive as most of graphical ads and it was obvious that it's an ad. I don't remember where I saw it and what was its name, though.


One nice thing that could be done would be adding different degrees of patronage with different tags and maybe stuff like custom avatars, etc. to encourage donating 15$ multiple times during year when someone can afford to do so.


One thing that I find problematic about the disabled search is lack of ability to search user's posts/threads. I liked to browse posts of old users like Rosh that way.

See here's the thing. It's called GD, and yeah they and I got that it's for posting about stuff other than crpgs. I even said how a place to do that can be kind of nice. The trouble is that this is still the RPG-fucking-codex, not the I-got-banned-from-everywhere-else-and-no-one-on-the-net-will-be-friends-with-me-so-I'll-post-here-Codex. I've got no problem with having a GD place for rpg fans who post in the rpg sections as well. But if the 'dex is sinking because of those fuckwits, who are here purely because they can't find anyone else who will pretend to listen to them, with no fucking interest in gaming at all, then fuck them. Why should we let ourselves sink due to fuckers who (a) are part of the gaming decline, or (b) aren't into gaming at all.

That would be Sub and Liberal. Sub is new and Liberal has an alt that posts in gaming discussions. And people who are the part of decline are spamming RPGD with threads about the new shit. Fans of pre-decline cRPGs have very few reasons to post in RPGD and Workshop nowadays. Not only new undeclined cRPGs are very rare but also most of sensible discussion about RPG design already was done to death and is listed in the Project Monkey thread.

I posted this as a joke, and an impulsive/stupid joke at that, a couple of weeks back, but if folks really want to dump GD then I'd actually suggest this seriously: make it so that your proportion of posts in rpg discussion/workshop must outweigh the % of your posts in GD, while enforcing rules on forum-relevance (random checks and bans, or just occasionally checking suspicious posters, if it can't be automated). Keep GD as a minor side-forum for off-topic posts amongst folk who are mainly here for the rpgs.

So, what exactly would we debate on the RPG forums? "BG is shit thread part 234"? "Food in RPGs part 27?" "Arcanum has shit combat thread part 1458?".

One thing that could be done with those who spam GD would be adopting a donate or GTFO policy for them.

 

[DwarvenFood]

I like the idea of blocking some forums unless you login. Also what if you had a shitload more ads for anyone not logged in?


What about porno ads in the tits thread?

yeah a bit more targeted marketing, also the library lends itself for this with links to stores with the dvd or boos discussed.

 

[Carlos' Bitch1]

From what I've seen/read Skimwords is pretty controversial as it looks like someone made a link in their own post.

....

Taluntain wrote:
Something possibly worth considering would be Skimlinks or Skimwords... Skimwords for unregistered visitors only. That's the advertising that makes random words into advertisement links. Skimlinks only automatically converts various links posted on the forum to sites like Amazon, Newegg, etc. into referral links.

 

[Jaesun]

What is causing the abnormal amount of hits on the servers are all the tranny references in there.

Porn is the single most searched thing on the planet. Anything regarding transsexualism will point here as well and with SMA and Kaiserin posting pictures, it will show up as a result.

Holy fuck! "trannies attention whore" on Google got us at 3rd position .

we're no.1 on "lithuanian hitman"

I actually thought you were joking, and then I checked.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

From what I've seen/read Skimwords is pretty controversial as it looks like someone made a link in their own post.

....

Taluntain wrote:
Something possibly worth considering would be Skimlinks or Skimwords... Skimwords for unregistered visitors only. That's the advertising that makes random words into advertisement links. Skimlinks only automatically converts various links posted on the forum to sites like Amazon, Newegg, etc. into referral links.

So? Unregistered visitors would still see links in your posts and could think that you made these links. From what I've read, a lot of people had problem with it on other forums and posted examples that I've seen looked undistinguishable from links made by users.

 

[DarkUnderlord]

So? Unregistered visitors would still see links in your posts and could think that you made these links.

And..? To be fair, I couldn't give two shits about unregistered visitors and whether their IQ is so low it's incapable of picking out an ad. Registration doesn't cost much is free after all.

Still, Taluntain's point remains. We even mention ads and we get pages of bitching about it. There'll come a point pretty soon where we'll no longer care even less about your opinions. And you'll get those fancy div based pop-ups, interstitials, ads within the forum (that look like posts made by an "AdBot" user) and maybe even a bit of scripting that denies access to people who block ads. Then we'll go full Nazi and silence all dissent.

 

[potemkin]

Then we'll go full Nazi and silence all dissent.

You decided to use PHP which is very slow and buggy, don't blame users for your own dumb decisions. I still believe Google App Engine can handle this website just fine within the limits of free quota. Optimized shit is still shit after all.

 

[el Supremo]

So, you're blocking ads, aren't you J1M?

Are you aware that in IE8 you get blank white space, instead of ads? No, I'm not blocking anything, and have Flash plugin installed. When googling for a solution, all possible causes of this behaviour I have found, were related to the errors in java-script.