Have the SL forums been gimped?

Back in my university days -at a major research school - the IT/IS department wanted to migrate their main systems from TOPS-10 to VMS but there was a problem. They couldn't do a cutover one day because they knew there would be dozens of professors screaming "I have vital research grants depending on the old system ergo you must re-enable it". The solution was rather clever, over a year they continually reduced the performance of the old system so that people would choose to migrate voluntarily; by cutover day you had to be a masochist to still be using the old system.

The site forums.secondlife.com seems to be having lower posting traffic and worse performance than I'd ever seen before. Coupled with the recent report that LL wants to get rid of the forums, is it likely that the slowdown is intentional?

Contestants are reminded to phrase their responses in the form of a question.

Also, what would constitute a "most valuable DJ"* and who gets to make those jugements? Can we trust that evaluation? Aren't there topics more worthy of discussion? If a DJ is valuable, should he be taxed accordingly? kthxbai.

*/116/24/213400/1.html

What is up with all these 503 service not availible errors?

Well, that's one heck of a conspiracy theory...

Does LL really want to get rid of the forums? Why? That would be like shooting yourself in the foot. Is there a backup plan (like you're insinuating)?

Yes, the forums seem very gimped...if I see 503 one more time, I'm going to jump out of my office window...

The forums make the Lindens Feel bad - thats the old rumor.

Though theres always people who stick up for the Lindens whenever people complain, so I dont get it.

ps. I tried to send this...and saw the infamous number...twice. Doh!

But it actually sent still...so I had a double-post. And I had to edit this one. Double-Doh!

It's a paranoid sort of speculation, Mal...but certainly possible. I have noticed that I'm getting a lot of 505 and 503 errors the first time I try to access a thread or a new page. My mouse clicks have gone up maybe 30 to 50 percent, just navigating the forums.

But...do you believe the "report that LL wants to get rid of the forums"? Who said that and when? All I remember was some statement by one or another of the forum regulars.

And remember..."never ascribe to malicious intent what can be attributed to simple incompetence."

[edit] It's getting worse. It was occasional yesterday. Now I get about two or three errors for every successful navigation attempt.

A very good chance Mal. The forums have degraded over the years considerably. Whole forums gone. No more, or very very seldom, LL input to the forums.

Strife had posted somewhere here "resmods wanted(??)" that on his recent visit to LL, there was strong indication that LL found the forums too burdensome to support. That I believe to be true.

As for the gimping, I know that one shouldn't assume malice when ineptitude is a simpler explanation, but it just seems too coincidental to my eye as the load is not visably increasing but the 503s sure are.

I hope to see you all over at SLU.

Maybe so, Mal? I am not a big believer in conspiracies. But I do think some at LL prioritize the forums very very low indeed.

The Lindens discussed getting rid of them with Strife when s/he was just out there ... I'm sure it is often discussed. Hosting forums is an endless risk for a business like LL, god knows what such a large and diverse userbase gets up to on them.

The 10 or so users that we save from bailing out each week, the scripters and builders whose 'careers' in SL get accelerated, the knowledge base, the businesses that get kick started by quickly finding customers in the New Products section ... I don't know why LL would not want to preserve these. I find LL's forums to be the most useful of any I've encountered - the stickies alone are worth the price of admission. I think that is tied to the fact that the content in this world is user-generated.

Every Television show on the major networks have their own official discussion forums.

How is it a virtual world that exists entirely online doesnt rate enough that official forums are a given?

That would be very difficult, Michael, as the Lindens can't have that many feet left to shoot themselves in.

Hmm...shooting your self in the foot...that IS gimped. Ironic that I chose that saying.


"Bring out the Gimp."
"...but the Gimps asleep..."
"Well looks like you're just gonna' have to wake'em up!"

I just got a big white and black 503 on the SL client login screen which pretty much pushes it from conspiracy to ineptitude.

Sorry for suggesting otherwise.

503, 503, 503, 503, .....

unless they are trying to go out of business.

That was evil . . . So, who gets Bigwig's stuff?

<pretty much anything>.secondlife.com is giving 503 and/or 504

Would guess ineptitude or network issues over conspiracy

Considering what they have done in the last year, I think they are trying to go out of business.

it's on the front page that the entire website is having 503 errors. instead of spreading rumors, read the news.

Today's LL Blog:

Web Site and Splash Screen Slowdowns
Friday, September 28th, 2007 at 8:37 AM PDT by: Teeple Linden

[8:36 a.m. PDT]

A number of residents are experiencing slowdowns or 503 errors (”Service Unavailable”) when attempting to surf to secondlife.com. Similar slowdowns and errors are appearing on the HTML panel which comprises the upper portion of the Second Life login screen. Our engineers are working to diagnose and resolve the issue as quickly as possible.

The login process itself is not currently impacted by the slowdown.

We’ll keep you posted as we work this issue out.

Yes, posts on the 503s and the problems with the phone service prove that their blogging fingers aren't broken...yet still no mention of VAT.

I can't get to the front page, so all I can do is spread rumors. Sorry.

It's Friday, and I'm feeling a bit more evil than usual. *sends Mike a case of Duracells*

Okay, so this intarwebz thing is kinda new and confuzzling, but telephony is 125 year old tech, how oh how do they manage to have it fail so frequently*? Has anyone ever known any firm that has that kind of trouble with such a mundane service? Did they decide to write their own PBX from scratch?

Or is "Issues with our support phone lines are causing some, but not all, inbound calls to fail." just code for "we stepped outside to smoke ourselves a J" and I'm just really behind on slang?

*http://blog.secondlife.com/2007/09/28/partial-support-phone-outage/

From my perspective, I think tha503 Service Unavailable
The service is not available. Please try again later.

Everytime I read the new replies to this thread I get the 503 error when I try to get back to the Resident Answers link.