# Problems with FA not fixing problems.



## runwiled (Jan 16, 2006)

So the pageviews and picture views haven't been working for about a week now, there are still a large number of MySQL errors that people are getting and in general the site is full of bugs. 
Now, this is understandable to an extent. The site is relatively new and needs some time to get everything sorted out...only i'm not actually seeing anything being done. Occasionally we'll get a little notice on the mainpage about a problem being recitified or identified, or a helpful moderator in the forums listening to problems people are having; but i'm not seeing any actual movement to correct these problems.
I could be wrong, maybe there is a lot of work going on begind the scenes to address these issues, but if so _nobody's telling the users about it._ I know a lot of people are getting fed up with FA being broken, whilst the admins are talking about art contests and introducing an oekaki board. I think we need to see that the folks in charge are prioritising fixing existing content, not thinking about introducing new features onto an old system which doesn't work as it should.
So what I'd like to see is the issues in FA actually being addressed and the users being more informed of any action being taken. Right now we know nothing other than it doesn't work and nobody has been telling us what is being done about it. For all we know the folks in charge don't even know there are some errors that need attention. There's not much information getting through.
And whilst this forum is a place to post concerning these problems, the moderators here can't actually do anything about fixing them, so in the end we're still stuck in the same situation, only now the moderators are wondering what the heck is going on too. 
What _is_ going on exactly?


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## Grave (Jan 16, 2006)

I got a MYsql error just today now ya mention it.

But yeah i think the administration need to pull their thumbs out of their asses again and realize if they dont do shit their site will bomb like it did before.

There are alot of bugs that need fixing and all they say is "we're woking on it" or "it has been noted"

Well how about actually FIXING the problems?

I think the admins need to learn how to communicate with each other better and get some priorities...


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## Kitteh (Jan 16, 2006)

yeah, i'd be more emphatic about introducing fun new features if so many glaring little things that affect userpages/submissions every day were sorted out - namely hit counters, the 'registered since' date, the gender/species info for a submission.. :/
i suppose we have to trust they'll be fixed as soon as the admins can find the time, which is presumably now occupied by more important things that need attending to. i adore fa, but these little bugs evident when i'm going about the most common tasks are really starting to.. bug me.


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## Pico (Jan 16, 2006)

I'm no code expert (certainly don't have 12 years of HTML experience like Jheryn!!!), but some of these problems, like registration date, hit counters, submission/fav/comment counters, type of artist, mood, auto-generated thumbnails for .gifs and .pngs, etc. seem like they would be pretty easy to fix.  As in, would take a few minutes of writing a few lines of code.  Hell, they USED to work, so what's the deal?  That's another thing; the old FA actually seemed _less_ buggy in some aspects, but that might have been because of the work of a certain exadmin that I won't be naming here.  Anyway, some information about what's going on, from someone who might actually know what's going on *coughjheryn!* would be fabulous, seriously :*)


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## wut (Jan 16, 2006)

Jheryn? interacting with the userbase as an admin?

WHAT


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## nobuyuki (Jan 16, 2006)

Jheryn's too busy for the likes of _you people_


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## Litre (Jan 16, 2006)

lieses !


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## Arshes Nei (Jan 16, 2006)

This is true, it seems that the lack of communication between staff seems to be a large problem with FA. People who really should not give out tech support solutions are giving them, and often the wrong answer and frustrating the user.

Dragoneer is gone for a week, and basically users were left with a "Good Luck" instead of people who can properly address the issues. Although Jheryn is a coder, I take more faith in the fact that Dragoneer is more of the head of relations and delivers responses reasonably.

It would be rude to push the coders, especially if people don't know who's doing what and aslo what is going on.


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## uncia2000 (Jan 16, 2006)

wut said:
			
		

> Jheryn? interacting with the userbase as an admin?
> WHAT





			
				nobuyuki said:
			
		

> Jheryn's too busy for the likes of _you people_


Stick to comments that are largely constructive, please.
Agendas to disrupt should be stated rather than inferred.

Have either of you tried contacting Jheryn informally?


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## uncia2000 (Jan 16, 2006)

runwiled said:
			
		

> And whilst this forum is a place to post concerning these problems, the moderators here can't actually do anything about fixing them, so in the end we're still stuck in the same situation, only now the moderators are wondering what the heck is going on too.
> What _is_ going on exactly?


Well, there's only one moderator (now); and he's in the same boat.

I agree, the communication is sucky and neither is it possible to constructively manage situations "in a vacuum".
The coders have been made aware of the issues to the best of my knowledge, not that many/most of those aren't generally glaringly obvious.

@Arshes: Yeah, other measures could've been put in place whilst Dragoneer is off for a week.
I think he's needing that much, much more than he realised.  
Trying to get stuff like this up-and-running- especially when a large fraction of it is outwith your control- can be stressful.

I'm sending a note up to Jheryn, slightly later than planned (between _hoping_ for progress/communication and involuntary delays owing to migraine), looking for reassurance on various matters.

=
I'm more than happy for people to keep stating what issues they would like to see fixed as priorities (or indication as to when they will be fixed) in a constructive manner so long as that doesn't splurge out onto dozens of threads. Please keep on sending those in.

Would appreciate your patience (_*sigh... again*_), even though frustration is only fair.
I note there's over 700 users online, just now, and that vote of confidence/support in the community as a whole is so good to see despite those glaring negatives. Thank you, y'all.
*
_(Just no comment here about the response times near-peak, owing to lack of server RAM on the backup server... Very much looking forward to when the system whizzes along under that load and the most glaring bugs- such as the pageviews- are fixed)._

Best wishes to all.
David/u2k


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## Xax (Jan 16, 2006)

uncia2000 said:
			
		

> wut said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Contacting Jheryn informally (via AIM, email, whatever) implies a certain level of familiarity with him that, uh, I don't have. I think I've spoken with Jheryn /three times/ and two of those were via IRC, and the other one was very short and surprisingly boring.

And generally we say "hey tell Jheryn to GET ON THE IRC" to people who do know him, and I think last time that happened Dragoneer said... oh wait let me get the log.

```
Jan 07 21:32:19 xax	Hey, everyone involved has done stupid stuff. It should be pointed out! And drilled in.
Jan 07 21:32:23 Dragoneer[EQ2]	Bear: We're working on it right now.
Jan 07 21:32:47 *	Bear twiddles thumbs, having restrained himself from breaking the primary recently
Jan 07 21:32:57 Bear	(again)
Jan 07 21:33:06 Dragoneer[EQ2]	Xax: Everybody has done stupid shit, but sometimes the point is to help them prevent making a second mistake, not rubbing it in so hard they never want to attempt to even try again for fear all that will happen is the mob will job out to trash and ridicule them.
Jan 07 21:33:38 *	ArrowTibbs agrees with Dragoneer.
Jan 07 21:34:24 Bear	Dragoneer you do realise the /main/ problem is that jheryn is totally incommunicado, if you cant talk to the coder, you end up venting frustrations.
Jan 07 21:34:33 Bear	I notice that the settings page is /still/ broken.
Jan 07 21:34:34 xax	I kind of do both. The latter esp. when people show they have very little moxy.
Jan 07 21:35:00 Dragoneer[EQ2]	Bear: Talk to TOS. Message him directly. And yes, I do understand that...
Jan 07 21:35:17 Bear	He needs to be in here, out in the open
Jan 07 21:35:30 Bear	I dont know TOS or who he is, I know who you and jheryn are
Jan 07 21:35:32 Dragoneer[EQ2]	Why should he come in here when all that happens is he get trashed?
Jan 07 21:35:49 Bear	Thats the point, he wouldnt be trashed if people could just talk to him
Jan 07 21:35:56 xax	Dragoneer: Because if he doesn't it will just keep building up?
Jan 07 21:36:03 Dragoneer[EQ2]	It's a damned if yer do, damned if you don't case.
Jan 07 21:36:12 Bear	I disagree with that totally
Jan 07 21:36:23 nrr	Hey, whatever.
Jan 07 21:36:30 nrr	Y'all are fuckin' doomed if you keep running this same codebase.
Jan 07 21:36:31 xax	Think of it as a learning experience.
Jan 07 21:37:03 ArrowTibbs	Jheryn reminds me of a friend of mine. It seems like everytime he gets on, he's mobbed either by people talking or bashing.
Jan 07 21:37:27 Dragoneer[EQ2]	Nrr: Far from it, sorry.
Jan 07 21:37:36 *	James-Sarrowtail (~ManaWalia@rdsl-0130.tor.pathcom.com) has joined #furaffinity
Jan 07 21:37:37 *	ChanServ gives voice to James-Sarrowtail
Jan 07 21:37:39 Bear	If he comes out into the channel as a regular visitor, he'll see half the damned stuff, people can explain potential problems all over the place and maybe if he starts fixing things by asking people questions, he'd gain respect
Jan 07 21:37:58 Dragoneer[EQ2]	Then ask him on the forums.
Jan 07 21:38:10 Dragoneer[EQ2]	Who the fuck cares of he comes into chat, but the forums...
Jan 07 21:38:11 Bear	The fact he keeps running away doesnt do him any favours at all.
Jan 07 21:38:15 xax	He posts on the forums?
Jan 07 21:38:22 Bear	haha, xax, no
Jan 07 21:38:27 Dragoneer[EQ2]	Just because he's not fucking around on the chat doesn't mean he's running away
```
(right after that Dragoneer left and the conversation kind of halted)

The idea is that Jheryn really is not a part of the FA community at all, which means he misses out on loads and loads of stuff.

I don't remember if I quoted the part (shut up I'm lazy) where I say "yes Jheryn has been getting better about the whole SUCKING thing" (for example no longer banning people for finding bugs!) but he's still not really a community figure. And being a distant mod doesn't work well when all the bug-finders and coders and stuff are a part of the community at large instead of in his circle of friends.

I think it would be a great boon to the site if Jheryn (and the other mods I guess, I have no clue who else is or is not a mod now) would actually interact with the community in a major way-- post to the forums, idle in IRC, whatever.


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## uncia2000 (Jan 17, 2006)

Xax said:
			
		

> I think it would be a great boon to the site if Jheryn (and the other mods I guess, I have no clue who else is or is not a mod now) would actually interact with the community in a major way-- post to the forums, idle in IRC, whatever.


*nods*. I know exactly what you mean. Especially just now.

The idea, afaik, was that Jheryn (and any other tech/s) would be able to step back from being "in the firing line" and all the stress that entails in order to focus on issues on a prioritised basis.
However, it would be very, very good to get updates/contact from time-to-time, especially when there are key issues requiring resolution. Both in terms of actual progress and confidence.

The techs are still part of the community, although they're not as free to "socialise" as most other people therein, owing to "work" issues.

So basically, I'd agree w/Dragoneer and ArrowTibbs in IRC extract... even though nothing happened as a result of that.
Just my understanding, anyhow.

Thanks for that constructive observation and clips, Xax.


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## *morningstar (Jan 17, 2006)

I think the thing that's the most irritating is that new features are being proposed when the time could be better spent improving (read: fixing) the site itself. Some of the little things that are broken haven't been working since the site came back up. And we still have no rudimentary text formatting ability for journals. And I still don't know how to post those little icon links to people's pages, because as far as I know, it's not written anywhere.

But all we here is news about an art contest and an idea for a new oekaki board. What's going on? Are there steps being taken to fix the site? Do the admins know? ... Do they care? 

Personally, I'm afraid of this version of FA failing for the same reason the first one did - neglect.


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## uncia2000 (Jan 17, 2006)

Thanks, *morningstar, for taking the time to voice those.

My non-defensive understanding/thoughts in return, anyhow, fwiw.

> I think the thing that's the most irritating is that new features are being proposed when the time could be better spent improving (read: fixing) the site itself.

We're only logging suggestions for improvements, just now.
ArrowTibbs was making sure those weren't going to get lost by grouping the bulk of those together into a single index (thanks!) and more work was going to be done on that, not impacting the techs.

> Some of the little things that are broken haven't been working since the site came back up. And we still have no rudimentary text formatting ability for journals.

That's a "nice to have" definitely, for many people.
Not a show-stopper, I'd trust, and certainly wouldn't want to ask any of our techs to look at that just yet.

> And I still don't know how to post those little icon links to people's pages, because as far as I know, it's not written anywhere.

:uncia2000:  (colon either side, lower case, if I read correctly)
Give that a try and let me know, please.

> But all we here is news about an art contest and an idea for a new oekaki board. What's going on? 

The art contest doesn't take any effort tech-side. I _presume_ the oekaki board was only a suggestion, rather than actually in the process of being implemented?
I certainly wouldn't be too happy if the latter, to the detriment of other existing issues.

> Are there steps being taken to fix the site? Do the admins know? ... Do they care? 

The admins know. Dragoneer certainly did.
Hopefully one of the techs will be able to add in their 02 cents, in reply to my note, or on their own initiative.

> Personally, I'm afraid of this version of FA failing for the same reason the first one did - neglect.

There were other, larger issues there, IMO.
A lot of those still apply though, I think, although lessons have been learnt in some areas.

Yes, I'd certainly _fear_ that it might fail after the energy everyone has put in (the community as a whole, that is).
Keep it positive, despite the fact the two most obvious issues (slowdown owing to insufficient RAM and page count freezes) shouldn't be too difficult to overcome. Well, not as far as I know, anyhow...

Thanks.


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## runwiled (Jan 17, 2006)

Xax said:
			
		

> I think it would be a great boon to the site if Jheryn (and the other mods I guess, I have no clue who else is or is not a mod now) would actually interact with the community in a major way-- post to the forums, idle in IRC, whatever.



Actually there are only two official mods out there anyway and, uncia2000 in particular, are very good at listening to and responding to people's concerns. Only thing is, the mods aren't 'admins' and they can't fix any problems directly, so despite the good job they do at registering problems, all they can do is pass them on to someone higher up (re: someone who has access to the site's code). 
The admins just don't seem to be that apparent though. Everyone is just kind of left in the dark.


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## Xax (Jan 17, 2006)

uncia2000 said:
			
		

> Xax said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



The problem is that he's stepped out of the community (the run-up to the chat snippet was about the 'Alkora' vs. Jheryn thing and how it was apparently about Jheryn wanting to avoid e-popularity?) and yet the bugs are still not getting fixed even  though they're being reported with increasing amounts of verbosity, and now there's even less of a mod presence on the site.

My main issue with it is in part because Jheryn has pretty much earned the attitude he's getting from people and to try to avoid that without fixing the problem strikes me as highly avoidant, and also in part because his behaviour (or rather, lack therof-- if you don't want to deal with the site, hand it over to someone else or let it die) is running the site into the ground.


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## *morningstar (Jan 17, 2006)

Thank you for taking the time to reply how you did. If nothing else, I'm glad that at least the forum mods respond :wink: 

I understand that an art contest and discussion about adding an oekaki board (in Dragoneer's journal) doesn't have anything to do with bug fixing, but it's kind of PR issue. It just _looks bad_ that there's a lot of known, documented issues and the admins are off doing something totally unrelated. It makes it seem like the admins either don't know, don't care, or aren't doing anything while this very well may not be the case.

Again, thanks for replying, and I hope this thread is a wakeup call of sorts so the userbase can get more information about the state of the site.


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## uncia2000 (Jan 17, 2006)

Can't deny that's the gut-feeling I get to a fair degree, Xax; not for the first time. And I'm more long-suffering than most.
Lack of comms hurts that, no doubt.

Let me get this email fired off.

"Running this site into the ground" might be slightly overstating that, but I hear that concern... Most people are happy with the 90-10/80-20 rule, but we need a few key fixes to get to that 10 or 20 in the first instance, IMO.


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## uncia2000 (Jan 17, 2006)

*morningstar said:
			
		

> Thank you for taking the time to reply how you did. If nothing else, I'm glad that at least the forum mods respond :wink:


No probs. And thanks for raising your concerns in that manner, too.

Sorry 'bout the bit of the vacuum on the forum recently.
Migraine and other issues for three days, here, but working 12-16 hours most days on-and-around the FA forums before that.

And I know Pinkuh's PC has blown up, too 

> I understand that an art contest and discussion about adding an oekaki board (in Dragoneer's journal) doesn't have anything to do with bug fixing, but it's kind of PR issue. It just _looks bad_ that there's a lot of known, documented issues and the admins are off doing something totally unrelated. It makes it seem like the admins either don't know, don't care, or aren't doing anything while this very well may not be the case.

Yep. Agreed.

> Again, thanks for replying, and I hope this thread is a wakeup call of sorts so the userbase can get more information about the state of the site.

Most of the userbase seem to plough on regardless! But that's something certainly not to be presumed as an infinitely deep well of goodwill.


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## uncia2000 (Jan 17, 2006)

fyi, only; [PM/note sent]


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## ArrowTibbs (Jan 17, 2006)

I think there are currently only two coders for the site, and I think one of them has a job (I don't know for sure, I just know Jheryn was trying to find work and couldn't from glacning at one of his art pages). Two coders for a fairly decent sized site is a lot of work to do. Dragoneer said, a while back, he was trying to learn code in order to assist in the process.

I think the PR part needs to be slightly reorganized with more moderators and more free communication between mods and admins. Maybe seperate factions would work for this site; ie the help section who communicate with the tech section when needed, the TOS enforcement section which would communicate with the admins when needed.


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## dave hyena (Jan 17, 2006)

ArrowTibbs said:
			
		

> Maybe seperate factions would work for this site; ie the help section who communicate with the tech section when needed, the TOS enforcement section which would communicate with the admins when needed.



Separate? That doesn't sound good.

I think that the whole team needs to be integrated and in constant communication, with a central hub to enable that.

That way, everyone knows what everyone is about and the team is bound together, and everyone is united in FA’s service.

Perhaps what can be done is for Jheryn to create a locked & stickied post, wherein he updates us on FA’s programming progress, once a week or something, and it’s contents can be discussed in another thread, so he can ease himself into interacting with the community, without an immediate rush of “LOL FA LOL LOL LOL.” 

Or Jheryn could prepare a statement and have someone else on the team post it in a specific thread.

This at least would keep people updated

Perhaps greater detail could be gone into in posts on the bug forum, such that they would draw on all the expertise and knowledge assembled hereof and give the people gathered there a stake in FA.


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## ArrowTibbs (Jan 17, 2006)

Yeah, seperate doesn't sound good, but if you have, say, five people taking care of submission violations and five people taking care of helping users, then it would be easier for the five people in the same group to communicate than the admin team as an entirety. There are different time zones to worry about, such as Uncia being in the UK.

I do like the idea of having a thread being updated weekly about coding activity.


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## *morningstar (Jan 17, 2006)

ArrowTibbs said:
			
		

> Yeah, seperate doesn't sound good, but if you have, say, five people taking care of submission violations and five people taking care of helping users, then it would be easier for the five people in the same group to communicate than the admin team as an entirety. There are different time zones to worry about, such as Uncia being in the UK.
> 
> I do like the idea of having a thread being updated weekly about coding activity.



You mean delegate work so you have specific groups of admins dealing with specific things, like how DA does it? A few people dealing with submissions, a couple other with user accounts, dedicated coders, etc.

That would make a lot of sense and would make communication a lot easier, since everyone would have a specific job to do and they could just get that done. The only admin I know of that has a specific job is Dragoneer (PR) - I have no idea what the rest of the staff does.

Ideally, regular weekly annoucements on the site would be best (having to crawl through forums for answers and register another account to post is rather inconvenient), but a thread would be great too.


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## Arshes Nei (Jan 17, 2006)

Dave,

You can have seperate departments, but as you noted it is key that those departments *talk to each other* there should be active heads in those departments that related information, and piece together their staff.

Say what you will about the anal retentiveness of other archives, such as DA but at least there's some sembalance of intelligence where you can get a response that relates. That doesn't mean DA is perfect, but they seem to have less of this problem than FA.

It seems the mentality is, "hey this site is for free, stop complaining, stop trolling, and you should be thankful that a site like this exists" Yeah, until someone builds one better, less buggier which is an eventuality and people will migrate there, and your $1500 on a bunk server, and $400 dollar a month server payments are wasted.

I however, do not blame Dragoneer for taking a vacation. I just think things could have been scheduled more smoothly.

Also to answer your question about username links Morningstar it is :iconusername: just like Deviantart, however be warned it only works one time in a submission and breaks afterwards, because I tried to use it a few times.


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## TORA (Jan 17, 2006)

I know FA's admins *eventually* get to the problem. They fixed the "Current mood" and what the person is.


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## uncia2000 (Jan 17, 2006)

Arshes Nei said:
			
		

> It seems the mentality is, "hey this site is for free, stop complaining, stop trolling, and you should be thankful that a site like this exists"


Absolutely 1000% *NOT*.
Well, that's my take on _that_ particular point! 

Certainly no-one has said that here and it makes me pretty sick any time I read that explicitly posted statement, elsewhere.

It doesn't matter whether the community's users have "paid" or not, they have still have shown a commitment (however small or large) and there's a reciprocal obligation from the site's owners, in my book, to show that commitment was not misplaced.



			
				Arshes Nei said:
			
		

> I however, do not blame Dragoneer for taking a vacation. I just think things could have been scheduled more smoothly.


Is no joke.

We may be getting TOS across to discuss the tech stuff soonish, but Dragoneer didn't quote me a date and cannot "promise" on someone else's behalf.
*fingers crossed*


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## uncia2000 (Jan 17, 2006)

TORA said:
			
		

> I know FA's admins *eventually* get to the problem. They fixed the "Current mood" and what the person is.


It's still spelled "Currrent", though! :roll:

Yes, small mercies, not what should be the primary focus. (Admittedly those were both fixed before the pageview bug started or the RAM/pageswapping slowdown became a /major/ issue to the community (even if the effects of that been "spotted" earlier)).


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## Arshes Nei (Jan 17, 2006)

uncia2000 said:
			
		

> Certainly no-one has said that here and it makes me pretty sick any time I read that explicitly posted statement, elsewhere.
> 
> It doesn't matter whether the community's users have "paid" or not, they have still have shown a commitment (however small or large) and there's a reciprocal obligation from the site's owners, in my book, to show that commitment was not misplaced.



I absolutely agree, however I have seen it on the FA journals sometimes by admins and other times from other users to use as a point to squash other people's legitimate complaints.

People working on things, has value, time has value, so users spending their time here is value, and it needs to be respected.


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## Arshes Nei (Jan 17, 2006)

TORA said:
			
		

> I know FA's admins *eventually* get to the problem. They fixed the "Current mood" and what the person is.



Will they, and also when? This needs to be addressed. If you say "sometime next week we may be updating the system" Your users understand.

One of the biggest irritations is that the updates are random and without notification to not only the users, but other admins.

I've seen Vitae's irritation when she wasn't notified as well as uncia. 

It's courtesy to your staff to do so. In case there are any problems people have a resource to talk to someone who knows that is going on. There is absolutely NO reason to ever make an admin or moderator look stupid when you can let them know what is going on.


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## dave hyena (Jan 17, 2006)

ArrowTibbs said:
			
		

> Yeah, seperate doesn't sound good, but if you have, say, five people taking care of submission violations and five people taking care of helping users



Oh right, delegation and division of labour et al. Yes that makes perfect sense.

The communication is of critical importence though, since from that flows everything else.

I am only outside looking it, but I wonder if the FA admins at this point are still mining seams separately and in the dark.


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## Dragoneer (Jan 18, 2006)

runwiled said:
			
		

> So the pageviews and picture views haven't been working for about a week now, there are still a large number of MySQL errors that people are getting and in general the site is full of bugs.


I had Jheryn and TOS look over Pageviews the other day, and they were unable to find what caused it on the first investigation. Nothing had changed codewise which would have attributed to that, so we're checking into if something changed server/db wise.

The MySQL errors should be fixed the moment we roll over to our primary server which is in just a few days.


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## Dragoneer (Jan 18, 2006)

Arshes Nei said:
			
		

> It's courtesy to your staff to do so. In case there are any problems people have a resource to talk to someone who knows that is going on. There is absolutely NO reason to ever make an admin or moderator look stupid when you can let them know what is going on.


This is true, and it's a reason I have requested more updates and information be made clear and available.


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## TORA (Jan 18, 2006)

Very good point, Arshes Nei. ROWR.


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