The Accurate Reloading Forums THE ACCURATE RELOADING.COM FORUMS Hunting African Big Game Hunting Re: Missing threads on the African forum?Go | New | Find | Notify | Tools | Reply | |
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| one of us |
Quote: Saeed- Could they not be moved to Miscellanous instead of deleting them? Some threads have good info that others would like to see. Sometimes threads are unintentionally put in the wrong forum, other times it's because the poster knows which forums get hit & which are dead... Or how about if it is done more consistently/timely, so that some aren't allowed to run forever, but others get nipped quickly? A consistent process would be preferable to "every now and then..." | ||
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Quote: CB, To add some clarity, the pruning is not being done as you have described it, at least not by most of the moderators. For the most part, we are not pruning anything current. The pruning I have done has started with threads at least three months old. The threads are also pruned according to a rough priority. First to go are threads like "Hey so and so, you have a PM", etc. Next are off topic threads that have little or no relevance and are not likely to be re-visited by anyone. If they are off topic but contain information that seems useful, I leave them where they are, or move them to a more appropriate forum. Pruning is absolutely necessary to keep this software functioning in the way we all have come to expect it. I think we are all trying to do it in a way that causes the least impact to the quantity and quality of archival information and to our members as a result. Cheers, Canuck | |||
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| Administrator |
What my friends George and Don said is absolutely correct. And we have to take that into consideration. We have been upgrading these Forums to keep up with their growth. We used to have them on a shared server. That did not keep up, so we moved them to a dedicated server with one CPU. After a while that kept getting slower and slower. So we added another CPU and more RAM. Which is where we are right now. If someone finds a thread of such importance, it is adviceable to copy it to his own computer. That way he can refer to it any time he wishes, even years from now. We are not doing this out of choice, but out of necessity. It is either that, or we have to either put up with a massive slowdown of the system or do a majot upgrade where more than one server is used. We might have to do an upgrade in the future, but if we can avoid it right now, we would rather do that. We have been asked by several concerns who are interested in advertising on AR. But, we would rather keep it the way it is, where the ultimate choice of how to run it rests with no one but us. | |||
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George and Don- I understand your points, but I still don't see why they are "deleted". If a good post is in the wrong forum, it gets axed, but a BS post in the "proper" forum stays?  Why not move it to it's appropriate forum, let it run it's course, and let it die out on it's own? Maybe move the stuff that is in the "wrong spot" to Misc, and put a shorter "shelf life" on that forum, so that stuff doesn't sit there as long? (I don't know if that's possible due to programming issues, I'm just kinda thinking out loud...). Say anything in Misc that's older than two weeks, or 30 days, or six months, or whatever the load can handle, without a new response, "dies off"? I just think arbitrarily killing/deleting threads cause they are in the "wrong forum" is wrong. We all know that some "misplaced" threads are left to run forever, while it appears others are weeded out. | |||
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| Moderator |
Moving them to another forum doesn't alleviate the storage issue. We can either save germane threads longer, or every thread for a shorter period. In the future, if you see a thread with information you consider valuable, print it (to paper or to a file on your own computer). George | |||
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Administrator |
Here are the post statistics. Post statistics. This only counts posts in the system. It does not give stats on deleted posts. Posted in the last 24 hours 1160 Posted in the last week 7551 Posted in the last month 31670 Total # of topics 65788 Total # of replies 553045 With judicious pruning we still have over 550,000 posts in the database with 31,000 per month being added. That means the software needs to constantly index this and when a global search is done search through all 550K records. We just can't keep adding to this without some management. Imagine if in the past 6 years we have never deleted a post? The database would be approaching 2.4 million posts and so slow that you guys would be screaming for our heads. Don | |||
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| one of us |
Saeed/Don, You will continue to "need" to do this to keep the database size within manageable limitations. Don, the build times for the PhP files seems to have sped up. Did you do additional work than those optimizations we discussed? | |||
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Canuck- Thanks for a little more in-depth info. I don't have a problem with the "You have a PM" notes being pulled after a reasonable time like you say. I also understand the need for looking at "total space" available. Your explanation at least takes away some of the randomness that it seemed was applied earlier. BTW, I hope nobody thinks I was putting you guys down, that's why I tried to offer some sort of solution or option. So, since this thread actually really has nothing to do with Africa, will it be gone in the morning?  | |||
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| Administrator |
Hi Carmelo. After we did the analyze and optimization of the tables as Simeon suggested, and after we pruned about 100,000 posts (and also blocked some IPs of some questionable DOS attacks) we seem to be back in business. We never needed to worry about changing the .cnf routines and freeing up the DBD cache. So far so good. Thanks again. Don | |||
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one of us |
First of all, I am quite pleased to be able to use this forum, for free, as it is run. Thank you. One observation I would like to make, though, is that it might be more feasible to create two seperate databases, a current one, and an "archive". Keep everything up to, say, four weeks in the current forum. Move everything else into an archive. If someone is looking for an old post, they can go to the archive. Obviously, some categories need not be stored long term (classifieds, etc). This would eliminate the pressure to "keep" old threads in this format, and might reduce the "labor" involved as well. Don't know if it is feasible (that's what we got Don for, right  ) FWIW, Dutch. | |||
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| Administrator |
Quote: Hi Mehul: You raise an interesting idea. Taking the top 100 threads on hunting or reloading and publishing them on demand. The people who run the AR store have a publishing on demand service where it can be printed after the order is submitted. We could constantly be updating it. The only question I have is how do we determine those 100 threads? Any ideas? Don | |||
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Why not just ge rid of the BS forum, oops I mean the Politics forum. You will halve the amount of posts each day and the number of threads and nothing of value whatsoever will be lost. (PS Sorry just joking  ) | |||
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| Administrator |
If we got rid of the BS forum the shit would migrate here. Anyway, all Political Forum posts are deleted after around 60 days so they are not the problem. Don | |||
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| One of Us |
Ah very clever. Divert their attention with mindless drivel. | |||
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| one of us |
Saeed, I am sure that I want the AR Book because it is certain to have the information and advice that some of today's foremost African hunters have to give us. Even if the threads are not reproduced, the source of the information would be the same - the minds of some of the most experienced hunters n the world! Now, wouldn't the printers hurry up a little! Good hunting! | |||
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| one of us |
DRG, Could it be the threads with the most clicks? Just a suggestion as someone else may have a much better view than this. Good hunting! | |||
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| Administrator |
That's what I'm thinking. Another guage is the ones with the MOST replies. Don | |||
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Oh goody, number of replies and views, the threads will be: Sierra Matchkings; the .45/70 and why it is ideal for cape buffalo; the .45/70 and why it is not suitable for anything; the .45/70 and why hard cast flat nosed projectiles at slow speeds are God's Gift to the world of dangerous game; and lastly, Who hates Carmello. Should make for stimulating reading.  There are some great threads, why not have a vote or survey of the greatest. | |||
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| Administrator |
Gentlemen, I don't it is feasible for us to do this, so what I suggest is you save any thread that you find of importance to your own computer. That is the easiest way to keep each one of you happy, as regardless of what we do in this regard, at least some of you are going to complain about it. Reality of life when you have so many opinions. | |||
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Thanks, Marterius, for posting this. I thought I was losing my mind. I am, of course, but at least now I know why I couldn't find the thread.  Russ | |||
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As I started this thread, I just want to say that I appreciate all the efforts made to keep this forum running, and without advertisements. Thankfully, there are more important things in life than some lost threads.  Russ, don't worry, you are as sane as a... eh... hmmm... Never mind. Russ, on a more serious note, there was some very classy responses on the thread you were looking for. I remember it, and it told me that there is a damn fine bunch of people here. Regards, Martin | |||
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That's why I'd saved it, but I understand the reasons for trimming the site from time to time. It's important to see the big picture. That's what I try to remind myself all the time. Russ | |||
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