Speeding up the site - where we are!

cheers for working so hard to get it sorted out. have come to depend on my fix here and was lost for a few hours there when i couldnt come on and report my spends and help others

My BB line has been a bit flakey last few days - think you might have stretched it a bit when you moved servers. Can you check it when you get the chance - it'll be the black one...

ahh cool at least we know whats happened :beer: thanks for all the hard work Martin and team its much appreciated :beer: and hopefully you will have it sorted in no time :beer:

thank you, martin! we appreciate it! :T

jmarko

blindman wrote:

Can I sugget you tackle the source of the problem and not the symptom?

Taking the TRAVEL FORUM as an example:-

There are countless duplicates\triplicates of posting asking the SAME QUESTION which must take up LOADS of SPACE and back up time etc.

Better moderation is needed to close duplicate threads (with a link to a main single thread).

Thoughts?

Blindman is absolutely right here. I have been slagged off on a recent thread for pointing out that it's a duplicate of something which has been raised loads of times before.

Having said that, it's very hard for anyone to search for things because the search functionality is so dire. I don't understand why "con" has to bring up "contract", "confusion", etc.

If you search for things and they are found within a 48 page thread, the search returns the thread's first post - a complete waste of time. You then have to do another search within that thread for the same thing you just searched for - why??? I didn't even realise the "search within" function existed until this month - I'm sure I'm not alone.

There are a few main issues here:

- newbies who don't follow the site rules, don't bother reading Martin's editorial, don't search, and hence raise repeated issues on a regular basis;
- oldies who post follow ups to their own threads as new threads because they are either stupid or too lazy to search or because they think it's better - newsflash - it's not;
the fact that the search is so bad that nobody can tell if they are raising a new issue or not; and
the fact that issues come up within threads which aren't clearly related to them, and which hence can't be easily identified from the thread title.

I could probably go on, but I won't.

Blindman's primary point is well made - most of the above issues would be addressed by better forum moderation. The fact that I keep noticing these points means that the forums are not being effectively moderated - it shouldn't need me to post "this issue has been raised before" when I am not a forum moderator and can't do anything to officially merge the threads.

Also on a peripherally related issue, a moderator deleted one post of mine (as part of a major thread post deletion) without telling me and ignored me when I PM'd them about it - is this the standard of behaviour we should expect from mods? Having posted thousands of (at least vaguely) useful posts, I don't think I should be treated in that sort of manner.