Outage or non-availability...

[TheBigZaboon]

Am I the only one??? These forums have been unavailable to me, at least, for about 48 hours. This is probably the third time in the last four to six months. But when I'm able to access the site again, there's absolutely no mention of the problem at all, no mention by anyone.

 

Usually I get a "something went wrong" message like "access denied" or "connection failed." Once I got a supervisory web app that analyzed each step of the connection from my computer to the forum gateway, telling me my part was OK...

 

But it's like there's a parallel universe, and I'm not in it...

 

Anybody else have this problem???

 

TBZ 

[roddy]

You are not the only one. The hosting has been flaky, and I'm not online as much as I used to be (or at least not checking in here) so it's easy for problems to go unnoticed. Then there's a bit of ping-pong with the hosting support, then even when the hosting comes back up there might be a database table needing a repair or something. 

[Moshen]

Quote

You are not the only one. The hosting has been flaky,

 

Roddy, maybe you can give several of the regulars who do check in here often an email address where we can send you a notification that the site is offline?

[suMMit]

Aslo something off with the blog views numbers I think, mine has:

• 650,467
  views

?

[abcdefg]

On 9/5/2023 at 2:10 AM, TheBigZaboon said:

Anybody else have this problem???

I've noticed it too. Every few days. "Something went wrong" message. Then my browser gives up trying to open the website. 

 

May not be related, but I've also noticed the last several months that tasks inside the forum website seem to proceed much slower than I would expect. Posting a reply, for example. The website hesitates and struggles before carrying out the task. 

[zhouhaochen]

Things didnt work at all for me for four days. Now works again, but everything is pretty slow.

Last week I spent half a day writing a reply to a thread and when I pressed sent it took like 15 minutes until it was submitted. Got pretty scared that the internet had just eaten the whole thing. It worked in the end though and was posted correctly.

 

[zenzero]

Lurker here - same on my end. Full disconnects seem rare, but the lag for page loading and searching is very visible.

[TheBigZaboon]

Last coupla days, it's been "on again, off more often," so if anyone's taken any steps to improve access, they haven't worked...

 

TBZ 

[abcdefg]

On 9/9/2023 at 8:04 AM, TheBigZaboon said:

Last coupla days, it's been "on again, off more often," so if anyone's taken any steps to improve access, they haven't worked...

 

Doubtless there's some good explanation, but it does give the impression that management no longer takes an interest in the health of the forum. 

[Jan Finster]

Dear Roddy,

 

thank you for working on improving the forum's performance and doing all the maintenance work.

 

Is there any chance you could find a way to communicate what is going on in case of long outages? E.g. send an updates by email, post on Reddit (Chinese Language subreddit), etc?

 

This forum is not my life, but I found the recent long outage a bit disconcerting and was wondering if:

a) you had health problems or were even alive?

b) if you closed down the forum due to financial issues

c) if we should organise a new forum

d) etc

 

Do you have a continency plan in case you were to be unvailable due to illness? Can Imron take over in the meantime? 

 

[Tomsima]

Same concerns from me, very happy to find the site back up and running, but these last few weeks made me realise there are so many people here that I could no longer contact if the site were to remain down indefinitely, not to mention the invaluable archive of Chinese learning resources and advice for future students. 

[abcdefg]

I'm very glad the forum has returned from the dead. Thank you to Roddy for getting it going again. 

[PerpetualChange]

On 10/12/2023 at 4:11 PM, Tomsima said:

Same concerns from me, very happy to find the site back up and running, but these last few weeks made me realise there are so many people here that I could no longer contact if the site were to remain down indefinitely, not to mention the invaluable archive of Chinese learning resources and advice for future students. 

I think maybe a thing to do would be having a Discord Channel. Not sure who all would be interested in something like that, but I found that a few other forums I frequent have some kind of auxiliary Discord server that does not really take away from the form activity but also provides a secondary point of contact and also a venting room for small talk and things like that.

[nicklinjm]

I for one that the forum has been revived, I don't post much but it is one of the few resources I used when I first started learning Chinese 20 yrs ago and love that it is still going - thanks Roddy!

[Magelita]

On 10/13/2023 at 9:11 AM, Tomsima said:

Same concerns from me, very happy to find the site back up and running, but these last few weeks made me realise there are so many people here that I could no longer contact if the site were to remain down indefinitely, not to mention the invaluable archive of Chinese learning resources and advice for future students. 

Yes, I was also concerned about what was happening with the site. I click onto Chinese Forums routinely and the outage left a vacuum. I was definitely concerned about all the high quality content built up over so many years. For me the website was offline for nearly a week.

Perhaps we could have a mirror website on which updates could be posted. 

I don't know whether the website has been backed up at all, but I would imagine that the web hosting service would have at least one version. Unless it is a question of finances? 

 

@roddy thank you for keeping care of the website. It is really important to many of us, even if we don't post often or at all. I wonder if the burden can be shared out. I understand there is a core group of moderators and long time members that might even know each other outside of the forum.

 

Edited October 13, 2023 at 07:58 AM by Magelita
wanted to add thanks to Roddy

[markhavemann]

Nice to see that it's not just regular posters that missed the site.

 

+1 for some kind of site mirror/Discord channel/WeChat group as a backup. Maybe creating a Chinese-Forums subreddit could be an option too, since it would be much more findable through Google?

 

On 9/5/2023 at 5:32 PM, Moshen said:

Roddy, maybe you can give several of the regulars who do check in here often an email address where we can send you a notification that the site is offline?

On 10/13/2023 at 2:22 AM, Jan Finster said:

Do you have a continency plan in case you were to be unvailable due to illness? Can Imron take over in the meantime?

What about seeing about getting some more regulars involved in admin/moderation of secondary channels and having a bit more of a direct line to Roddy/Imron? to ensure continuity and stability in case admins don't have time or means to carry things on?

 

Seeing about hosting a mirror of the site would also be great, since there really is a lot of really valuable information on the forums.

 

If admins didn't have the time for creating a sub reddit or whatever, and nobody else wanted to, I'd be willing to volunteer to set things up.

 

Edit: 

Here you go: https://www.reddit.com/r/Chinese_Forums/

I'll be happy to hand this over to the site admins, just let me know. 

[Singe]

Good to see all the positive comments/concern here. I was surprised how much I missed the site recently during the recent outage. I guess I'm checking in a lot more often than I used to. I really appreciate those who make such an effort to keep sites like this running.

[abcdefg]

On 10/13/2023 at 3:59 AM, markhavemann said:

Maybe creating a Chinese-Forums subreddit could be an option too, since it would be much more findable through Google?

Sounds like a good idea, @markhavemann.

 

I create less content than when I lived in China and was actively learning the language. Still, I find myself returning several times a week to look things up or see what others are doing. It's a very useful resource. Would be unhappy if the forum were to just vanish. 

[Lu]

I think one of the (many) valuable things about these forums is that it is independent, so not dependent on a large corporate site like Reddit or Discord or what have you. There's this line of the internet these days consisting of "five giant websites, each filled with screenshots of the other four", unlike in the 00s, when all kinds of forums flourished. Of course, the downside of that independence is that the forum's survival depends on Roddy and Imron keeping up with the technical side of things, and they are only two people, with their own things going on.

 

I sincerely hope that Chinese-forums can continue to survive as the independent site it is, without moving to Reddit or needing members to also join Discord. Incidentally, the forums' admin email address is admin@chinese-forums.com, but a reply of course still depends on Roddy or Imron having time.

 

On 10/13/2023 at 10:59 AM, markhavemann said:

What about seeing about getting some more regulars involved in admin/moderation

If any regulars are interested in this, please do let me or the admins know! I'm happy moderating, but I don't have the knowledge to run the technical side of things.

[abcdefg]

@Lu-- Just wanted to comment that I appreciate how you have stepped in to keep the forum conversations and discussions on track day to day.