Forum Disaster

[Cody]

You are all probably by now wondering what happend to the forums posts. Well they are gone. The Server which was hosting it started corrupting data, without much warning. Unforunately we hadn't gotten around to setting up the nightly backup on the forums mysql database either, since we spend the majority of our time keeping up with the fast pace growth we are experiencing right now. I apologize to those whom have been participating so well in the forums, and we hope this doesn't deter you from posting in the future and helping others. Going forward we now have the backups in place and hardware replaced.

Thank you,


------------------------------
Cody Burdick
IT Administrator
cody@bluehost.com

[bruphoto]

Thanks for the information, Cody! And apology accepted! :)

http://www.bruphoto.com/pics/mysig.png

[macgyver2]

No biggie. It's a shame those threads were lost, but stuff happens. It's better the backup lesson was learned now instead of six months down the road, right? :)

I think it might have been funny, though, if rando had posted something today that said, "Remember how we said Rails might not be feasible? Well..." :)

[cajun]

Thanks Cody ...
Well maybe this will help clean things up and help organize.

[macgyver2]

Thanks Cody ...
Well maybe this will help clean things up and help organize.
That's not a bad idea...get a better section structure in place early-on.

[rando]

Thanks Cody ...
Well maybe this will help clean things up and help organize.

Yeah, we see that as the "bright side".

We're also going to start picking moderators shortly.

[rando]

I think it might have been funny, though, if rando had posted something today that said, "Remember how we said Rails might not be feasible? Well..." :)

For the record, rails is coming along very well. I'm trying to convince matt to let us wait for the grand rollout until monday so we don't have to fix any potential problems over the weekend.

[Taresa]

I like the idea of breaking up the forums a bit. When I'm looking for help with mail settings I don't want to rifle through posts about Coppermine, you know?

Anyone have suggestions for sub-forums? I was thinking these:

CMS's
Image Galleries
Mail
Scripting (maybe break this down further into php, Ruby on Rails, etc)
Blogs
e-Commerce
BH updates and announcements

'Course we can't do without the off-topic and general BH sections either.

[bruphoto]

My suggestions:


CSS (Could go into the Scripting section, though)
Graphics (help with, tips & trocks)
Web design (as above)
Visit/review my Bluehost site

http://www.bruphoto.com/pics/mysig.png

[Andy]

yeah, at least wo should get a more organised forum now :) please spend some time on making appropriate forums, so you'll have less trouble later on as well. thx. (i was AndyZ)

[Dave]

Well I'll just wait until then. Once the forum gets back underway and some proper forum topics and rules are in place, I'll be back.

Dave

[jdh]

Ouch!

However, I guess we can all chalk up the last couple of weeks to a grand trial run and hopefully we can now move ahead onto better things.

The old forums were starting to get a bit cluttered, and I'd tend to agree that it would probably be a good idea to get some structure in place as early on as possible, as I concur with others who have suggested that we have too few forums and therefore the signal-to-noise ratio in each forum was starting to get excessive.

I don't know if the Bluehost staff have really had a chance to look at anything that occurred on the system prior to the disaster, but hopefully they've seen enough to provide some ideas for whatever the next steps may be.

Incidentally, is there anybody at Bluehost who is tasked primarily with the management and monitoring of this board? I've noticed several Bluehost staff lurking about and providing support, but so far I haven't really noticed any form of moderation, control, or even policies being put forth. While I understand and appreciate that Bluehost would not be the great service it is without the efforts put in by the staff on supporting their primary business (ie, keeping the customers servers and sites running), this forum has had the feel of being a little bit of an abandoned corner of the world, rather than the primary discussion and support mechanism that it's probably capable of becoming.

Regardless, I think we have a good thing going here and I look forward to seeing things rolling once again....

[dsch]

Ugh, that sucks :/ Glad it's back again :)

[rando]

The old forums were starting to get a bit cluttered, and I'd tend to agree that it would probably be a good idea to get some structure in place as early on as possible, as I concur with others who have suggested that we have too few forums and therefore the signal-to-noise ratio in each forum was starting to get excessive.

Matt wants to add at least one more forum, but we don't want to go overboard. I disagree with your correlation between signal-to-noise ratio and the number of forums, though. Good moderation is the answer to the signal-to-noise stuff. More forums are only needed when there's too many threads to be able to manage reading a subforum.

I do think that the wipe, although poorly timed, will have an overall good effect in the long run. There was a bit of cruft in the old copy of the forums, and now that we're ready to start putting some moderators in place, we ought to be in good shape.


Incidentally, is there anybody at Bluehost who is tasked primarily with the management and monitoring of this board? I've noticed several Bluehost staff lurking about and providing support, but so far I haven't really noticed any form of moderation, control, or even policies being put forth.

The plan has always been for this to be primarily moderated and watched by a few good moderators. We're going to start picking a few soon, and that should take care of that.

There are those of us who do read the forums, but we've got so much else to do at work that reading the forums too much will detract from the rest of bluehost service. :)

I think we are going to have someone whose job it is to just keep an eye on the forums and make sure our moderators stay active and watch for anyone else who we think should be a moderator (though of course, we'll also let our moderators have an opinion on new moderators).

[Dave]

Well I'll just wait until then. Once the forum gets back underway and some proper forum topics and rules are in place, I'll be back.

Dave

ok well I can't stay mad for ever! Accidents happen. http://www.edenite.us/jeddi/d/9081-1/oops.gif

[1darkangel]

Thanks for letting us know what happened! I liked to have fell over when I came in for a visit and it was all gone.

[Taresa]

In hacker jargon, cruft is redundant, old or improperly written code which needs to be fixed, but tends to stick around. Large software projects invariably accumulate cruft. The concept can be compared to Philip K. Dick's idea of kipple. Cruft is sometimes said to be the software equivalent of dust bunnies.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruft

:cool:

[jdh]

Matt wants to add at least one more forum, but we don't want to go overboard. I disagree with your correlation between signal-to-noise ratio and the number of forums, though. Good moderation is the answer to the signal-to-noise stuff. More forums are only needed when there's too many threads to be able to manage reading a subforum.
While I agree that we don't want to go *overboard*, I think a bit more structure would be in order. Of course, if Mods/Admins are willing to do the work to segregate topic-specific threads in the future, this is certainly something that could wait.

However, ultimately I tend to agree with those who suggest that if you're looking for a solution to a mail-related problem, it's far better to have a focused forum for that purpose.

While I certainly wouldn't suggest creating a forum for every possible little sub-topic, a few generic high-level forums could help to sort things out and keep individual users on the right track.

As a minimum, I'd suggest another forum for mail-related issues (and other stuff that could be tied into that), and perhaps to more clearly define a forum for general inquiries about Bluehost versus one for troubleshooting specific problems. We've got advanced scripting and applications covered, so just a couple more splits in the right place should help to keep things focused and from there further divisions could be created as the forums evolve, again provided that Mods/Admins are willing to do the work to sort out threads at a later date (which to be fair is pretty easy to do in vBulletin).

The plan has always been for this to be primarily moderated and watched by a few good moderators. We're going to start picking a few soon, and that should take care of that.
Well, I think that will go to great lengths to address some of these issues, although as I mentioned in a previous thread in the older forums some policies of some form also need to be put in place to ensure that these moderators have a reasonable set of guidelines to work with, and to ensure that the users themselves have some idea of what is expected of them. The initial policies can be reasonably generic (ie, no flaming, no warez discussions, etc) and then evolve from there. I'm not sure if this is something that Bluehost wants to establish corporately, or if it's something you want to involve the new moderators in, but either way it needs to be addressed.

There are those of us who do read the forums, but we've got so much else to do at work that reading the forums too much will detract from the rest of bluehost service. :)
This is kind of what I expected the case was, and certainly appreciate that you guys have enough to do with keeping Bluehost running. At this point I'm sure the forums aren't enough of a priority to dedicate a full-time resource to from a business-case point of view.

[rando]

This is kind of what I expected the case was, and certainly appreciate that you guys have enough to do with keeping Bluehost running. At this point I'm sure the forums aren't enough of a priority to dedicate a full-time resource to from a business-case point of view.

At least for me and steve, most of our posting here is off-hours and completely optional.

[MMJ]

I knew this was back up...I was just waiting to see if you'd bring the old stuff back. If you were going to pick mods based on their postings...I was second in place. Brandon K had around 150 & I had around 120. Then there was somebody else then Dave. Are you sticking with this or do we have to start over again now?

[BrandonK]

It wasn't so much based on post count, rather how helpful you were in your posts. You were pretty helpful but I think before they bring on any others they wanna see how popular the board is going to get. :)

[macgyver2]

I knew this was back up...I was just waiting to see if you'd bring the old stuff back. If you were going to pick mods based on their postings...I was second in place. Brandon K had around 150 & I had around 120. Then there was somebody else then Dave. Are you sticking with this or do we have to start over again now?
Usually, post counts alone aren't a viable way to determine much about a user when off-topic areas are included in the tally. That's not to say you weren't helpful, MMJ...just if you want to make a case for being a mod, don't clutter the issue with your post count when you have better items to refer to. :)

[MMJ]

It wasn't so much based on post count, rather how helpful you were in your posts. You were pretty helpful but I think before they bring on any others they wanna see how popular the board is going to get. :)

Thanks for the info. More importantly thanks for noticing.

[rando]

I knew this was back up...I was just waiting to see if you'd bring the old stuff back. If you were going to pick mods based on their postings...I was second in place. Brandon K had around 150 & I had around 120. Then there was somebody else then Dave. Are you sticking with this or do we have to start over again now?

For now we just picked the person who seemed the most helpful. For additional mods, I guess we'll let brandonk recommend some people.

Postcount really doesn't mean much.

[Curt]

sorry, posted wrong place

[JCsDesignz]

Well that explains why i couldnt log in LOL Glad to be back though :)

[Dave]

It wasn't so much based on post count, rather how helpful you were in your posts...
For now we just picked the person who seemed the most helpful…

By saying "helpful", are you referring to the most technically skillful? Because I was under the impression that technical skill would have less to do with the role of a moderator than the ability to deal with people and put out fires. Incidentally, this was where we left off in the previous (lost) forum about becoming a moderator.

(BrandonK you may want to split this topic at post #18 and re-open a new thread entitled "Becoming a Moderator" to continue the discussion on this point.)

[BrandonK]

Well, I have a ton of ideas as far as the forum is concerned. If rando, and Steve allowed it, I'd love to be able to create some visual styles for the board as well as new icons, member groups and so forth to make the board unique. I've worked with vB for about a year and a half, being a super mod on a popular gaming forum (vB), as well as my own.

I think perhaps there should be other member groups created like maybe windows/linux gurus, photoshop gurus, network gurus, etc. Possibly allowing multiple ranks, like me for instance, placing me in the moderator group as my primary group, and secondary would be photoshop and networking or something. :p

It's hard for me to explain it. Hopefully you understand what I'm getting at. It's 8am and I have the flu so bare with me. :p

[JCsDesignz]

Personally i think there should be both types of mods. Those that can deal with people and those that can deal with technical issues.
They dont always fall into the same category.
Im a forum holic and its always nice to have someone around to talk to on an even level as i am in no way technically minded :D

By saying "helpful", are you referring to the most technically skillful? Because I was under the impression that technical skill would have less to do with the role of a moderator than the ability to deal with people and put out fires. Incidentally, this was where we left off in the previous (lost) forum about becoming a moderator.

(BrandonK you may want to split this topic at post #18 and re-open a new thread entitled "Becoming a Moderator" to continue the discussion on this point.)

[BrandonK]

For now we just picked the person who seemed the most helpful. For additional mods, I guess we'll let brandonk recommend some people.

Postcount really doesn't mean much.

It'd be tough for me to pick someone else to mod, there's 3 or 4 people that really know what they're talking about, or seem to at least.

However I'd be honored to do so. :p

Until the forum gets really busy and I'm overwhelmed with moving posts, deleting, etc....there's really no need. You don't have to be a mod to help people. But when forum maintenance and pruning becomes a full time voluntary job, I'll definitely be calling for help. :p

[rando]

By saying "helpful", are you referring to the most technically skillful? Because I was under the impression that technical skill would have less to do with the role of a moderator than the ability to deal with people and put out fires. Incidentally, this was where we left off in the previous (lost) forum about becoming a moderator.

No, I was referring to the willingness to help a lot of people on the forums. There's not much else we can go on; you can't really tell how well someone will be a moderator otherwise without making them a moderator and seeing how well they deal with it.

The next best quality in a moderator is dedication and willingness to do their job, so that's what our major factor was.

[Gizmo]

Hi guys Glad the forum is back up and running.
Hopefully I will be able to contribute in some of threads this time :D