General Forum

Re: Apologies for not being able to post today

9 LEE — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 07:25:59 GMT

joeyboygolf:

Good one Mika!

.... and answered by Keith

Re: Apologies for not being able to post today

joeyboygolf — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 07:09:56 GMT

Good one Mika!

Re: Apologies for not being able to post today

Keith Saunders — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 06:47:16 GMT

Gentlemen,

There are a few improvements we are making in the very near future to improve the service to members and one of the improvements which will be available is called "Verify Answer"

So, someone asks a question and when an answer is posted which is seen as the complete and final answer, then that answer is marked as a "Verified Answer" by the person who raised the question (or others) and it is clearly hightlighted. Also when you do a search for a problem with a "Verified Answer" then these will show first and the question post and the "Verify Answer" will be at the top of the list so you don't need to go through a long thread to get to the information you need.

A full announcement will be made in the coming days/weeks.

Re: Apologies for not being able to post today

tournedos — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 06:30:56 GMT

Good points Graham. The problem with the search function - in addition to being a bit hidden - is that it's technically close to useless. Try to search for something and you get 500 links to 50 threads that may or may not be relevant.

I personally use Google search limited to the forum site (like this) and it is already much better. Perhaps we could consider adding the "embedded" Google search on the forum? I've noticed that many forums suffering from similar built-in deficiencies have switched to it nowadays.

Case in point: try searching for "Beomaster 5000 remote" using both options, and compare the clarity of the results.

Re: Apologies for not being able to post today

joeyboygolf — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 06:18:33 GMT

How about we limit the number of times we answer the same question!!!

The digital displays on my new speakers won't work?

My MCL2P/some other similar black box amp won't switch on?

I have a Beocenter 9000 and the CD has stopped working, what could the trouble be?

Can the Beomaster 5000 be controlled with another type of remote?

How much is "X" worth?

There are loads of others which have all been answered many times. All the questionner has to do, is engage in a tiny bit of self help, instead of firing off a long and rambling question. This usually gets an equally long and rambling answer, preceded by the salutation "Welcome to Beoworld"!!!!

I have now taken to posting a link to to a forum answer, with the short and sweet instruction to "Read This". This must save on a bit of disc space!

Maybe the search function should be more obvious on the page?

Or do we now live in an age where self help is a thing of the past and we should all rely on others to spoon feed us the information we require?

What happens when the time comes and there is nobody left to do the spoon feeding??

I'm close to being 61 years of age, am I correct or, as my son Brett says, am I just a grumpy old git!!!

Don't answer that, I already know.

Re: Apologies for not being able to post today

tournedos — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 05:30:25 GMT

Keith Saunders:

Thank you for your suggestion, but NO images are included in the SQL database. The 3.6 GB size of the SQL database is JUST the postings in the forum. All attachments, images etc are held on a seperate web server which has lots of space (hundreds of GB) and has a fixed monthly charge.

I see, no room for improvement there then.

By the way, is the scaling of inline images for display a simple on/off option somewhere? I personally liked a lot more the old behaviour, where too wide images were scaled down to the normal column width and you could just click to open them full size in a separate window. Those horizontal scroll bars are useless when trying to figure out what is represented in a 5000x3000 pix image...

Re: Apologies for not being able to post today

Keith Saunders — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 04:59:13 GMT

tournedos:

Would it be possible to limit a bit the size of the images that can be posted, or have them automatically reduced if need be while posting?

I certainly do not miss the 100 KB limit or what it was in the older days, but nowadays people seem to spill their 12 megapixel images straight from the camera all over. Most of the time that just means that without additional work I only see the leftmost 10% of a picture that mostly consists of noise. Not to mention the download time and bandwidth...

Mika,

Thank you for your suggestion, but NO images are included in the SQL database. The 3.6 GB size of the SQL database is JUST the postings in the forum. All attachments, images etc are held on a seperate web server which has lots of space (hundreds of GB) and has a fixed monthly charge.

The bottom line is that on average members of Beoworld generate TEXT in their posts which increases the SQL data by around 50 mb per month.

Re: Apologies for not being able to post today

tournedos — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 03:27:46 GMT

9 LEE:

Graham, whilst i appreciate your frustration i don't think the downtime is actually all that bad! I'm not going to roll out the old chestnut of 'it's miles better than the 'old' BeoWorld' but please realise we're not rolling in cash and we try to simply rent the space we think we'll fill. If it leaps forward unexpectedly, this happens - and we respond by increasing (which means paying more money for) storage space. If we rented much more than we needed, that'd be a waste of money and wouldn't make sense..

Would it be possible to limit a bit the size of the images that can be posted, or have them automatically reduced if need be while posting?

I certainly do not miss the 100 KB limit or what it was in the older days, but nowadays people seem to spill their 12 megapixel images straight from the camera all over. Most of the time that just means that without additional work I only see the leftmost 10% of a picture that mostly consists of noise. Not to mention the download time and bandwidth...

Re: Apologies for not being able to post today

Jonathan — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 20:07:17 GMT

Lee, I think you left your running gear in the Wedthread!!

Great job Beoworld Admin, without you guys there would be no Beoworld...

Re: Apologies for not being able to post today

9 LEE — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 18:45:35 GMT

Graham, whilst i appreciate your frustration i don't think the downtime is actually all that bad! I'm not going to roll out the old chestnut of 'it's miles better than the 'old' BeoWorld' but please realise we're not rolling in cash and we try to simply rent the space we think we'll fill. If it leaps forward unexpectedly, this happens - and we respond by increasing (which means paying more money for) storage space. If we rented much more than we needed, that'd be a waste of money and wouldn't make sense..

I think we're doing fine - and not every issue is linked to the same problem. Computers are Computers, Servers are Servers - they encounter problems. If we didn't want that to happen, we'd all be running Macs..

(runs for cover...)

Lee

Re: Apologies for not being able to post today

Jandyt — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 18:36:34 GMT

joeyboygolf:

Alternatively we could delete the Wednesday thread on a weekly basis which would make a big dent in the required storage space!!!!

We do.

Re: Apologies for not being able to post today

joeyboygolf — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 17:37:36 GMT

I don't log the forum downtimes but my impression is that they are more frequent in recent months than they were last year. maybe there are stats available that can prove or disprove this.

The forum was certainly down early on the evening of the last prize draw and on another occasion quite recently when you were in flight to Aus or somewhere.

I make no criticism of you, Keith.

I find any computer system that relies upon manual intervention quite annoying. If this database space needed increasing then surely it can be made to happen automatically and not rely on Keith Saunders being online every minute of every day?

Alternatively we could delete the Wednesday thread on a weekly basis which would make a big dent in the required storage space!!!!

Re: Apologies for not being able to post today

Keith Saunders — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 16:26:44 GMT

Graham,

Nothing is getting less reliable, we just ran out of SQL disk space.

Re: Apologies for not being able to post today

joeyboygolf — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 15:54:45 GMT

Keith Saunders:

My apologies for that fact that since about 11am this morning members had not been able to post messages on the forum which I was not aware of until Lee e-mailed me this evening.

The problem was that we had run out of SQL database space which I have now increased.

Haven't we been here before and made changes or bought new software so it couldn't happen again???

It would appear that forum software or something is getting less reliable again. Any idea why??

Apologies for not being able to post today

Keith Saunders — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 15:01:43 GMT

My apologies for that fact that since about 11am this morning members had not been able to post messages on the forum which I was not aware of until Lee e-mailed me this evening.

The problem was that we had run out of SQL database space which I have now increased.