# To the furs that run this joint



## Rencat (Sep 9, 2012)

I know you get a lot of flack from folks for various things about this site. People get in an uproar about what can or can't be posted. And y'all get flack for doing your job to keep this site up and running for everyone. Folks want to bitch when it gets slow or even goes off.  I just thought it would be nice to thank yall for what you do. I'm sure y'all don't hear it enough, but thank you for giving all of us a community where we can post our art, meet other like minded folks, and even have some fun.
So staff, mods, and other people that run this place Thanks.

Rencat


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## Evan of Phrygia (Sep 9, 2012)

D'aw. c;


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## BRN (Sep 9, 2012)

Thanks, I appreciate it


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## Wandering_Smoke (Sep 9, 2012)

*raises my glass to that* Yep, its not perfect but its home, and I very much appreciate the fact that FA even exists. I know everyone does their best to keep FA up and running smoothly. Screw the whiners lol.


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## nrr (Sep 9, 2012)

Rencat said:


> I know you get a lot of flack from folks for various things about this site. People get in an uproar about what can or can't be posted. And y'all get flack for doing your job to keep this site up and running for everyone.



For those of us who've been here for seven years and watched the trainwreck that was the 2005-2006-2007 spread, while the last almost two years have uncharacteristically not been mired in downtime, doing one's job would entail that certain things find their way as part of FA's infrastructure, like slave database replicas (even underpowered ones!) and a system for metrics gathering and alerting.

The RAID failure manifested itself as something distinctly not an HTTP 200 when hitting the root context of furaffinity.net, not to mention response times climbing up past three seconds for about three hours before the site actually tanked for good. I first started seeing alarms at around 17:00 GMT yesterday. Why wasn't anything mentioned to us until almost four hours after the fact?



Rencat said:


> Folks want to bitch when it gets slow or even goes off.


 
I want to, as the OP put it, bitch in particular because the incident response part of this is not a hard problem to solve. You get alarms, you set profiles on your phone to wake you up when high-priority mail comes in, you respond, and you're done. If you have a dayjob outside of maintaining the furry art thing that is FA, you make sure you can get enough operational coverage so that those who do need to go off and pay bills can do exactly that.

The fact that this fundamental problem still has yet to be solved after all this time really speaks volumes of the genuine commitment that FA's management has to the community. If you don't want the responsibility of running a high-traffic site that, after the seven-year run it's enjoyed, has become a staple of the subculture it serves, just go home.

(Yeah, yeah, it's a "free site," so I get what I paid for, right? Thanks!)


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## BRN (Sep 9, 2012)

nrr said:


> For those of us who've been here for seven years and watched the trainwreck that was the 2005-2006-2007 spread, while the last almost two years have uncharacteristically not been mired in downtime, doing one's job would entail that certain things find their way as part of FA's infrastructure, like slave database replicas (even underpowered ones!) and a system for metrics gathering and alerting.
> 
> The RAID failure manifested itself as something distinctly not an HTTP 200 when hitting the root context of furaffinity.net, not to mention response times climbing up past three seconds for about three hours before the site actually tanked for good. I first started seeing alarms at around 17:00 GMT yesterday. Why wasn't anything mentioned to us until almost four hours after the fact?
> 
> ...


When I click on things I load art


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## CerbrusNL (Sep 9, 2012)

SIX said:


> When I click on things I load art



And when you click some more you can even upload art!
Frankly, we should be charging for this site :V

Ontopic: Thanks, it's appreciated ^_^


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## Gryphoneer (Sep 9, 2012)

"It's free, so we can deliver as bad a product as we want.

It's not like people stopped giving us e-blowjobs either way or something."


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## Quilmeleon (Sep 9, 2012)

nrr said:


> For those of us who've been here for seven years and watched the trainwreck that was the 2005-2006-2007 spread, while the last almost two years have uncharacteristically not been mired in downtime, doing one's job would entail that certain things find their way as part of FA's infrastructure, like slave database replicas (even underpowered ones!) and a system for metrics gathering and alerting.
> 
> The RAID failure manifested itself as something distinctly not an HTTP 200 when hitting the root context of furaffinity.net, not to mention response times climbing up past three seconds for about three hours before the site actually tanked for good. I first started seeing alarms at around 17:00 GMT yesterday. Why wasn't anything mentioned to us until almost four hours after the fact?
> 
> ...



You know computers are made by people and thus are in no way perfect. Breakdowns happen. I been on FA for a little over 2 years now off and on and no sense complaining about it crashing. Stuff (prefer using other word but not allowed to here) happens



Rencat said:


> I know you get a lot of flack from folks for various things about this site. People get in an uproar about what can or can't be posted. And y'all get flack for doing your job to keep this site up and running for everyone. Folks want to bitch when it gets slow or even goes off.  I just thought it would be nice to thank yall for what you do. I'm sure y'all don't hear it enough, but thank you for giving all of us a community where we can post our art, meet other like minded folks, and even have some fun.
> So staff, mods, and other people that run this place Thanks.
> 
> Rencat




We greatly appreciate it. Love the site myself. Wish I found is 6 years ago but didn't.


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## BRN (Sep 9, 2012)

Gryphoneer said:


> "It's free, so we can deliver as bad a product as we want.
> 
> It's not like people stopped giving us e-blowjobs either way or something."


seriouspost:

Let's talk about WDN (Water Distribution Networks) in Africa.
See, water is a key resource. As a result, no matter how poor the infrastructure is for the network, the only thing that really matters is whether the water can be distributed. Even if it's a hassle, or requires work, if the W and the D of the WDN works, folks are satisifed.


Now how about Content distribution. :v
Let's talk about a CDN. Or, more specifically, FA's CDN, which is called FACDN. 

Art is a hobby and interest. Internet content is not a vital resource. But you know what? For more people, just so long as the CD of the CDN works, folks are gonna be satisfied. The tolerance for hassle and work are a lot lower, but using FA isn't a hassle or work at all. It's liquidly designed, and shit makes enough sense to work. I can report issues just as easily as I can check out statistics on all of my submissions. As a result, I'm perfectly satisfied with FACDN; my C is D'd.

It's fine to notice how things could be improved but the whole dogma that FA is a terrible site through circumstancial flaws doesn't stick to me. :u


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## Quilmeleon (Sep 9, 2012)

SIX said:


> seriouspost:
> 
> Let's talk about WDN (Water Distribution Networks) in Africa.
> See, water is a key resource. As a result, no matter how poor the infrastructure is for the network, the only thing that really matters is whether the water can be distributed. Even if it's a hassle, or requires work, if the W and the D of the WDN works, folks are satisifed.
> ...



Amen!


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## Fallowfox (Sep 9, 2012)

The ambivilence is too much.


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## ab2525 (Sep 9, 2012)

Can I just say: What the hell does "Liquidly designed" mean? And what "circumstantial flaws"??????????


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## Fallowfox (Sep 9, 2012)

ab2525 said:


> Can I just say: What the hell does "Liquidly designed" mean? And what "circumstantial flaws"??????????



Graphic user interface that's simple enough to get along with. Circumstantial flaws appear to be fancy talk for Glitches in my view.

On the one hand I am* very *grateful that I have a place to host and view art. On the other when glitchery and management means that art becomes inaccessible to me it feels like I've offered up a part of myself in trust and had it corrupted, or that I've made some awful mistake in selecting this website.


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## ab2525 (Sep 9, 2012)

Fallowfox said:


> Graphic user interface that's simple enough to get along with. Circumstantial flaws appear to be fancy talk for Glitches in my view.



Not having a failover DB when they have plenty of hardware to swing it? (albeit probably slower than the dedicated server, it would still result in not-downtime) Using get requests for things that should definitely be post requests, without a nonce? Having fucking symlinks between art, art1, art2 ->art46 or whatever the hell he's up to now because he reached the _max directory count_ in each folder?????? The list goes on and on. A glitch is something that makes the site behave in an unexpected way under exceptional conditions. Failure is the default mode for FA.


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## Fallowfox (Sep 9, 2012)

ab2525 said:


> Not having a failover DB when they have plenty of hardware to swing it? (albeit probably slower than the dedicated server, it would still result in not-downtime) Using get requests for things that should definitely be post requests, without a nonce? Having fucking symlinks between art, art1, art2 ->art46 or whatever the hell he's up to now because he reached the _max directory count_ in each folder?????? The list goes on and on. A glitch is something that makes the site behave in an unexpected way under exceptional conditions. Failure is the default mode for FA.



I'm very ignorant about computing technology so I'm afraid this sailed right over the top of my head. ._. Sorry.


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## M. LeRenard (Sep 9, 2012)

It makes me very suspicious that people only ever post threads like this when the site goes down.
Anyway, us SMods over here just moderate the forums.  We have literally NOTHING to do with the mainsite, unless of course we're users.  But thanks anyway.


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## Quilmeleon (Sep 9, 2012)

M. LeRenard said:


> It makes me very suspicious that people only ever post threads like this when the site goes down.
> Anyway, us SMods over here just moderate the forums.  We have literally NOTHING to do with the mainsite, unless of course we're users.  But thanks anyway.



Doesn't Summercat moderate both? I not sure if Dragoneer is here in the forums or not. I never looked


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## nrr (Sep 9, 2012)

Quilmeleon said:


> You know computers are made by people and thus are in no way perfect. Breakdowns happen. I been on FA for a little over 2 years now off and on and no sense complaining about it crashing. Stuff (prefer using other word but not allowed to here) happens



I am a systems engineer for a rather prominent North American broadcaster, and my primary responsibility is to make sure their services stay up. If my reason for one of our largest properties being down was because "sh?t happened," that would be possibly the biggest career-limiting move imaginable. This is why you have redundancy. This is why you have disaster recovery plans. This is why you have monitoring.

In 2012, these things are not rocket science. In 2005, the only entity that was actively working to move this knowledge out into the open was LiveJournal, and that was mostly because they were sharing what they were learning as they were learning it.


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## kayfox (Sep 9, 2012)

I actually kinda wonder if the RAID failure was not the cause of the slowness for the last few weeks.  It does kinda mesh, if the drive was failing there would be spikes in latency as everything waits for the controller to timeout or the drive to complete the operation.

Food for thought.


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## Quilmeleon (Sep 9, 2012)

nrr said:


> I am a systems engineer for a rather prominent North American broadcaster, and my primary responsibility is to make sure their services stay up. If my reason for one of our largest properties being down was because "sh?t happened," that would be possibly the biggest career-limiting move imaginable. This is why you have redundancy. This is why you have disaster recovery plans. This is why you have monitoring.
> 
> In 2012, these things are not rocket science. In 2005, the only entity that was actively working to move this knowledge out into the open was LiveJournal, and that was mostly because they were sharing what they were learning as they were learning it.




Thats a career job and is understandable. Your job is prevention and contingency planning in case the worst happens. I know you have a slew of scenarios for this problem.  This is a free site we all should be lucky we are able to use. Maybe FA was not monitored or an alert was dismissed or overlooked. Like I said its people building it, people maintaining it, thus there will be error. But yes that would end your career. I not work for a broadcasting company and never will work for such a corrupt media system so I just manage a few offices here locally. Our main office has been struck by lightning 4 times in last 2 months and we flooded in Isaac. Cannot prevent or monitor that now. We were up and running in 48 hours though I guaranteed that. 

It is rocket science to those not trained. I did not get my first computer till 1999. Parents and family called them the devils work trying to take over people's lives. So sorry I had ot go to school to learn what I learned plus trial and error. My shed is now dubbed the PC graveyard. 

Good points tough ^^


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## Quilmeleon (Sep 9, 2012)

kayfox said:


> I actually kinda wonder if the RAID failure was not the cause of the slowness for the last few weeks.  It does kinda mesh, if the drive was failing there would be spikes in latency as everything waits for the controller to timeout or the drive to complete the operation.
> 
> Food for thought.



Yes it would. Slow response time is big sign of a failing HD. But sometimes other causes overshadow it. Its trial and error to find the cause.


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## CerbrusNL (Sep 9, 2012)

Quilmeleon said:


> Doesn't Summercat moderate both? I not sure if Dragoneer is here in the forums or not. I never looked


Those of us that were "trained" through forum modship, then got the mainsite admin position, usually retain their forum-side access level.
Moderating the forum, however, is of a lower priority than the mainsite, for those people.



kayfox said:


> I actually kinda wonder if the RAID failure was not the cause of the slowness for the last few weeks.  It does kinda mesh, if the drive was failing there would be spikes in latency as everything waits for the controller to timeout or the drive to complete the operation.
> 
> Food for thought.


That'd make sense, yea.


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## M. LeRenard (Sep 9, 2012)

Quilmeleon said:


> Doesn't Summercat moderate both? I not sure if Dragoneer is here in the forums or not. I never looked



I haven't seen Summercat take any action on reported posts in the forums for ages.  There's not really any need; we have plenty of staff here to resolve everything in a fairly timely manner.  Unlike the mainsite, which is why his services are better focused there.
Dragoneer only uses the forums when he's trying to explain some recent disaster, more or less.  Or if there's some mundane question someone has that he's best equipped to answer (usually regarding ads or something).  Otherwise, the forums and the mainsite and two almost completely separate entities.  However, we have made the improvement that there's no longer steaming heaps of bad blood between forum staff and mainsite staff, which helps a lot.  This mainly happened through current mainsite staff having been vetted first as forum mods, so we've all worked together at one time or another.


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## Ashley Joy (Sep 9, 2012)

Gryphoneer said:


> "It's free, so we can deliver as bad a product as we want.
> 
> It's not like people stopped giving us e-blowjobs either way or something."



I have to ask, did you/would you pay for said hypothetical e-blowjobs?

Personal vendetta aside, and returning to the heart of this thread, I'd just like to take this time to personally thank every single hard-working technician for the excellent work they've performed so far.


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## Devious Bane (Sep 9, 2012)

CerbrusNL said:


> Frankly, we should be charging for this site :V


Making money of other people's work?

Yeah, I like to see how that works out. No, I'm serious.
*Do it.*


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## Punnchy (Sep 9, 2012)

It strikes me funny how many people have gotten up in a tissy about the site going down or they're not getting their way. I personally appreciate the site because it gives me a place to post my (crappy) artwork and commission (much much much better) artists to do the art that I can't (am to impatient to learn how to) produce myself.


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## Devious Bane (Sep 9, 2012)

I'm used to the site going down monthly, I'm actually more amused than disappointed that it took this long for it to happen once again.
Maybe we'll be lucky enough to have to wait months before the site gets restored, those were good times.


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## kaskae (Sep 9, 2012)

I like the site, and I like the staff. Even if the site isn't the most stable, at least the people running it are polite and good company. They've given me no reason to think otherwise, and from what I've seen, about 85% of the "unfair administration" claims end up falling short. Don't break the rules and we'll all be just fine.

(Note, I've had more fun while the site has been down than I've had with it up, so it all works for me.)


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## Kaeko (Sep 9, 2012)

i must say ive been on FA since 08. Ive never had a problem with mods/admins or too many users. 

I gotta thank all the faculty and staff that help keep it running! Yall are awesome!


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## Aldino (Sep 9, 2012)

When I saw the title I expected this to be a bash on the mods and forum staff. Good to know its not and OP seems very well mannered as well rounded. 

Why can't we have more like him!?


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## DarrylWolf (Sep 9, 2012)

But the fact is we need extended shutdowns like this one ( >24 hours) lest we ever forget what it was like back when FurAffinity was getting set up in the middle of last decade.


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## Redskyy (Sep 10, 2012)

Modding is a bitch of a job. So to everyone out there who gives you crap, I will gladly help you punch them in their face.


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## Dragoncat (Sep 10, 2012)

Punnchy said:


> It strikes me funny how many people have gotten up in a tissy about the site going down or they're not getting their way. I personally appreciate the site because it gives me a place to post my (crappy) artwork and commission (much much much better) artists to do the art that I can't (am to impatient to learn how to) produce myself.






kaskae said:


> I like the site, and I like the staff. Even if the site isn't the most stable, at least the people running it are polite and good company. They've given me no reason to think otherwise, and from what I've seen, about 85% of the "unfair administration" claims end up falling short. Don't break the rules and we'll all be just fine.
> 
> (Note, I've had more fun while the site has been down than I've had with it up, so it all works for me.)




Agreed.

fA may have its downsides, but it community makes up for it.

Its just too bad people have to have a bitch fest about how they would run the site differently. 
Yeah, I would want to run differently too, but I'm not an investor in said company. My words dont mean two shits.

At least the place exists. At least they let us upload the ridiculous fetish art we all love. At least the admins aren't psychotic ban hammering crazy people.

Keep up the good work <3
We all look forward to the site coming back <3


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## Armaetus (Sep 10, 2012)

OP, you sure are sympathetic despite all the dumb shit we all have had to deal through through over the years..

I have lost mine ages ago, the Sciggles admin promotion nonsense was the final straw.


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## TeenageAngst (Sep 10, 2012)

The users treat this site as if it's a charity organization, as if the people running it are doing it out of the goodness of their hearts and that's it. As a service provider, profit or not, they're obligated to provide that service, PARTICULARLY when their hosting services are used as income and especially when people are paying for ad space on the site. Could you imagine if DA or fanfiction.net had these kinds of issues? I'm honestly surprised no legal action has been taken for damages.


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## BRN (Sep 10, 2012)

TeenageAngst said:


> The users treat this site as if it's a charity organization, as if the people running it are doing it out of the goodness of their hearts and that's it. As a service provider, profit or not, they're obligated to provide that service, PARTICULARLY when their hosting services are used as income and especially when people are paying for ad space on the site. Could you imagine if DA or fanfiction.net had these kinds of issues? I'm honestly surprised no legal action has been taken for damages.


 After just two days, damages if any would be trivial. Professional artists have their unafflicted names and reputation as presence; advertisements can be extended in recompense.


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## CerbrusNL (Sep 10, 2012)

Glaice said:


> OP, you sure are sympathetic despite all the dumb shit we all have had to deal through through over the years..
> 
> I have lost mine ages ago, the Sciggles admin promotion nonsense was the final straw.



Then what in heaven's name is stopping you from leaving?



TeenageAngst said:


> The users treat this site as if it's a charity organization, as if the people running it are doing it out of the goodness of their hearts and that's it. As a service provider, profit or not, they're obligated to provide that service, PARTICULARLY when their hosting services are used as income and especially when people are paying for ad space on the site. Could you imagine if DA or fanfiction.net had these kinds of issues? I'm honestly surprised no legal action has been taken for damages.



Honestly, I'd wish you good luck attempting to sue a free site for being offline.
I'm not saying it's a good idea to do it, though.


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## TeenageAngst (Sep 10, 2012)

I'm not just specifically talking about this instance but pretty much whenever the site experiences performance issues. The advertisers must be getting compensated somehow or no one would pay to have their banners on such an unreliable site.


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## CerbrusNL (Sep 10, 2012)

TeenageAngst said:


> I'm not just specifically talking about this instance but pretty much whenever the site experiences performance issues. The advertisers must be getting compensated somehow or no one would pay to have their banners on such an unreliable site.



Advertisers usually have their ads extended by however long the site was offline (and / or more).


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## TeenageAngst (Sep 10, 2012)

Assuming FA does that, of course.


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## BRN (Sep 10, 2012)

TeenageAngst said:


> Assuming FA does that, of course.



And it does.


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## kaskae (Sep 10, 2012)

TeenageAngst said:


> As a service provider, profit or not, they're *obligated* to provide that service, PARTICULARLY when their hosting services are used as income and especially when people are paying for ad space on the site.



uh, no?

They could easily cut the site tomorrow, pay back the ad purchasers, tell everyone tough luck, and that would be the end of it. They have no obligation to keep the site running if they don't want to. I see all these people complaining on how badly the site is maintained, how they could do a better job, etc... but I have seen no attempts to create a new community that will be oh so much better than FA.

What I'm getting at is there's a lot of talk, but no action among a community that thinks it's entitled to a website supporting it's HOBBY.


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## CerbrusNL (Sep 10, 2012)

TeenageAngst said:


> Assuming FA does that, of course.



I'm not assuming anything.
In case you missed it, my name's blue. That means I'm on FA's staff.


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## Arcsol (Sep 10, 2012)

TeenageAngst said:


> The users treat this site as if it's a charity organization, as if the people running it are doing it out of the goodness of their hearts and that's it. As a service provider, profit or not, they're obligated to provide that service, PARTICULARLY when their hosting services are used as income and especially when people are paying for ad space on the site. Could you imagine if DA or fanfiction.net had these kinds of issues? I'm honestly surprised no legal action has been taken for damages.



They are not nessessarily obligated to do anything, they could just as easily shut the site down and end it right there. I have yet to see anyone else make a better site despite saying they have the ability to do so. 

Honestly In my opinion if you dont like whats going on here then stay off the site, you dont see any of the artists complaining about their time lost on the banners or anything so why should it worry you? But right now you're making this a hate post when it was intended to be a thank you to the admins. If you have a problem state it somewhere else, not troll/ignore what the admins are trying to say.


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## Devious Bane (Sep 10, 2012)

CerbrusNL said:


> Then what in heaven's name is stopping you from leaving?



FA is where all the morons and egotistical dickwads hang out. If you're looking for epic trollbait and a clear example of what the fandom mostly consists of, there's nothing like taking a few moments to dig through FA with what little bit of sanity you don't have.


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## TeenageAngst (Sep 10, 2012)

kaskae said:


> uh, no?
> 
> They could easily cut the site tomorrow, pay back the ad purchasers, tell everyone tough luck, and that would be the end of it. They have no obligation to keep the site running if they don't want to. I see all these people complaining on how badly the site is maintained, how they could do a better job, etc... but I have seen no attempts to create a new community that will be oh so much better than FA.
> 
> What I'm getting at is there's a lot of talk, but no action among a community that thinks it's entitled to a website supporting it's HOBBY.



So because the community is successful the technical and administrative flaws should be ignored? Sorry if I expect better from a veteran site. I'm beginning to wonder why I should support a website that is obviously just the admin's hobby.


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## Arcsol (Sep 10, 2012)

TeenageAngst said:


> So because the community is successful the technical and administrative flaws should be ignored? Sorry if I expect better from a veteran site. I'm beginning to wonder why I should support a website that is obviously just the admin's hobby.


 Exactly what I just said, if you dont like the site then dont go on it. Simple as that, dont waste your day complaining about it, it's going to get you nowhere.


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## TeenageAngst (Sep 10, 2012)

Because the squeaky wheel gets the grease. No community has ever improved because the people who wanted to see it be better left.


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## Elim Garak (Sep 10, 2012)

People cry a lot about the shit they get for free.
Honestly, if you don't like it use Inkbunny or some other craphole.
Develop your own site if you wish. Don't forget FA is run by volunteers for free. I am pretty sure it doesn't even run break-even.
You know its easy to complain about others people work, if you want to change things: Feel free to send some server grade hardware their way. 
However no matter what cash you throw at it doesn't make it fail proof, years of working with a certain multinational as a higher level administrator in charge of rather important things, I know things can fail.
Remember when the Amazon "cloud" went down? Lot's of sites stopped working, MAJOR sites. You can't say its a lack of money, hardware or knowledge. ISPs go down, all kinds of businesses have failures. You know how crazy you need to go to make sure it works properly? We transferred server with a lot of data to Europe from the US, the system cannot be down for a long time and the MOVE had to happen. If it went down, lot's of people wouldn't be able to do their job. There was no way the old server could be reactivated due complicated issues, the data was so large we couldn't move it through the internet. Let me repeat it, very very vital system. You know how we go the data to Europe? 2 people with the hard drives with the same info leaving at separate times going to separate airfields, board separate planes, arrive from separate airfields and arrive at the location at separate times. Sounds insane, but it had to happen.
That wasn't my planning though, different team. The most awesome I personally did was going to the south africa office and having security transport, the whole black SUV thing from the office/data center and my hotel and back.


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## TeenageAngst (Sep 10, 2012)

I'm sure when Amazon went offline the people who used those sites were completely understanding and didn't make any noise at all about future failsafes. You also can't set your watch by how often Amazon goes down. Switching FA to an Amazon host would be worth considering.


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## Kirune (Sep 10, 2012)

Fallowfox said:


> I've made some awful mistake in selecting this website.



yeah that about sums up how every fa user should feel


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## Elim Garak (Sep 10, 2012)

TeenageAngst said:


> I'm sure when Amazon went offline the people who used those sites were completely understanding and didn't make any noise at all about future failsafes. You also can't set your watch by how often Amazon goes down. Switching FA to an Amazon host would be worth considering.


It would probably increase the cost by a lot.
Also inb4 people link the cheap archive data archive program.


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## DragonTalon (Sep 10, 2012)

ShadowFur said:


> Honestly the servers should be doing replication. that way one fails there is a slave server that takes over till the main server comes back up.



That would mean duplicating all the equipment which is not cheap.  I have no idea how much money they have invested in there servers, but I bet they can't easily double it to have a live standby.  Plus the servers would need upgrades as replication is not free.  It eats CPU, drive and network bandwidth.  I can't blame them for not doing that.  Backups are good enough for a free site.

Not having a spare drive on hand... eh.  It happens.  Hopefully they ordered TWO new drives to replace the one that failed, and have one for the next emergency.


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## Accountability (Sep 10, 2012)

When does a hobby project become an obligation?

Is it when you have 6 million submissions?
Half-a-million plus users?
10,000+ peak concurrent users?

There comes a point where you have to let your site "grow up" and actually spend time and effort improving it. FA isn't down right now because of a dead hard drive, or a bug in the RAID card. FA is down right now because the administration treats the site like it's a hobby. Something that they can focus on when they _feel like it_, and not a minute more. 

Caring about your website means making sure you have back up parts _on hand_ and not having to order parts on a weekend and wait for them to come in on Tuesday. Caring about your website means making sure it can sustain itself and can afford to grow.

There's no excuses as to why this site isn't profitable. There's no excuse as to why this site isn't profitable and run with redundant servers and a cluster serving MySQL. I can give credit to the people (who mostly seem to be Yak) who are actually working on _getting the site back up_, but I can't run around blindly showering praise on the administrators simply because they exist, or giving asspats because _shit happens_. Yes, shit happens, but you need to be _prepared_ for when shit happens. That clearly did not happen here.



kaskae said:


> I see all  these people complaining on how badly the site is maintained, how they  could do a better job, etc... but I have seen no attempts to create a  new community that will be oh so much better than FA.





Arcsol said:


> I have yet to see anyone else make a better site despite saying  they have the ability to do so.



Right this way!


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## Kayla (Sep 10, 2012)

CerbrusNL said:


> And when you click some more you can even upload art!
> Frankly, we should be charging for this site :V
> 
> Ontopic: Thanks, it's appreciated ^_^



I'd suggest fixing up the site first before you guys even think about that.


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## Armaetus (Sep 10, 2012)

CerbrusNL said:


> Then what in heaven's name is stopping you from leaving?.



The people I watch and contacts I have.


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## TeenageAngst (Sep 10, 2012)

Accountability said:


> When does a hobby project become an obligation?
> 
> Is it when you have 6 million submissions?
> Half-a-million plus users?
> ...



This man deserves a cookie, or boobs on glass, or something.


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## kaskae (Sep 10, 2012)

TeenageAngst said:


> So because the community is successful the technical and administrative flaws should be ignored? Sorry if I expect better from a veteran site. I'm beginning to wonder why I should support a website that is obviously just the admin's hobby.



We're wondering why you're still supporting it, too. There's obviously enough of us who do to keep it running.


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## Ozriel (Sep 10, 2012)

The FA admins should be indoctinated as cyborgs so that the site would run at 100% effecency without human morals and ideals getting in the way...or become undead so that they can get rid of the annoying human biological functions. 

The biggest complant that the userbase would have with the cyborg zombie Admins is that their lack of human emotion would continue the purge of "underage" explicit works that are deemed "offensive" by hyooman law because Cyzombots can only be programed so much for perfection. The beauty of it all is that the tickets would be completely erradicated!

I volunteer CerurusNL to be the first of the grand army of Cyzombots.


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## Devious Bane (Sep 10, 2012)

Ozriel said:


> The FA admins should be indoctinated as cyborgs so that the site would run at 100% effecentcy...or become undead so that they can get rid of the annoying human biological functions.
> 
> The biggest complant that the userbase would have with the cyborg zombie Admins is that their lack of human emotion would continue the purge of "underage" explicit works that are deemed "offensive" by hyooman law.
> 
> I volunteer CerurusNL to be the first of the grand army of Cyzombiebots.



Or they could like... You Know... _Do their jobs?_

Actually no, most of the current administration needs to be dropped because they've already proven they can't handle the obligation.
So please, don't do anything at all.


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## Ozriel (Sep 10, 2012)

Devious Bane said:


> Or they could like... You Know... _Do their jobs?_
> 
> Actually no, most of the current administration needs to be dropped because they've already proven they can't handle the obligation.
> So please, don't do anything at all.



Do nothing would be better because the forums would be bursting at the seams with delicious angst and complaints. It would keep me from doing productive things for a good few hours.


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## Fallowfox (Sep 10, 2012)

Kirune said:


> yeah that about sums up how every fa user should feel



To be frank my opinions about the websites I use are very fickle, I don't want to put anyone down with what I said.


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## Devious Bane (Sep 10, 2012)

Ozriel said:


> Do nothing would be better because the forums would be bursting at the seams with delicious angst and complaints. It would keep me from doing productive things for a good few hours.


Mission Accomplished?


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## Ozriel (Sep 10, 2012)

Devious Bane said:


> Mission Accomplished?



Sit back and partake in the Vodka drink with me, comerade.


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## kaskae (Sep 10, 2012)

Ozriel said:


> Do nothing would be better because the forums would be bursting at the seams with delicious angst and complaints. It would keep me from doing productive things for a good few hours.



^me over the past two days.


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## TeenageAngst (Sep 10, 2012)

Ozriel said:


> The FA admins should be indoctinated as cyborgs so that the site would run at 100% effecency without human morals and ideals getting in the way...or become undead so that they can get rid of the annoying human biological functions.
> 
> The biggest complant that the userbase would have with the cyborg zombie Admins is that their lack of human emotion would continue the purge of "underage" explicit works that are deemed "offensive" by hyooman law because Cyzombots can only be programed so much for perfection. The beauty of it all is that the tickets would be completely erradicated!
> 
> I volunteer CerurusNL to be the first of the grand army of Cyzombots.



I won't speak for others but I'm not looking for perfection or even system autonomy, all I want is a professional and pro-active set of admins and a working hardware layout. Where's the topic where admins are openly discussing what the next move should be in how they handle the server so they can effectively prevent this from happening again? The forum has its share of industry professionals, are they being consulted for their opinions which I'm sure they'd freely give. Hell, most of the people here who know what they're talking about would likely walk the admins through setting up a more stable system. After a plan is agreed on, why not spell it out, inform the community, ask for donations, and give us a plan of attack to prevent future hardware failures?

These are basic things a professional staff would do. It shows they're trying to overcome the problem by attempting to improve.


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## Fallowfox (Sep 10, 2012)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-19549367

A load of other websites just went down, run by a pro firm. Thought it might make some discussion.


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## Taasla (Sep 10, 2012)

I like how people tell others to just leave if they don't like FA.  As if other sites hold the clientele that FA has.  People who buy art don't really exist on IB unless you're willing to do child porn.  Sofurry seems to be all about getting free art.  (The people there are super nice, though!)  I'm ok for now without FA up and running thanks to an extra paycheck from my irl job this month, but if FA doesn't come back by the end of the week... well, my car payment might not be ready.

Now don't get me wrong, I love FA and would like to see it grow.  I've invested in adspace in the past and most likely will in the future (hi, business expense!), but it's a terrifying thought that a person's supplemental income depends on one single site.

edit:  speak of the devil, FA is back up.  Read-only mode, tho.  My panic attack has ended.


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## Gryphoneer (Sep 10, 2012)

Accountability said:


> Right this way!


Huh, so it's probably this one and Inkbunny struggling for dominance once FA goes Geocities/MySpace.

Let the games begin!


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## Kirune (Sep 10, 2012)

Ozriel said:


> Do nothing would be better because the forums would be bursting at the seams with delicious angst and complaints. It would keep me from doing productive things for a good few hours.



glad to hear you enjoy your users being angry at you!


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## TeenageAngst (Sep 10, 2012)

I mean, if you're a webhost that supported SOPA then may your tubes forever be clogged.


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## Taasla (Sep 10, 2012)

Gryphoneer said:


> Huh, so it's probably this one and Inkbunny struggling for dominance once FA goes Geocities/MySpace.
> 
> Let the games begin!



My money's on Weasyl.  If only because IB still has the pedophile stigma despite all the nifty features.  Not to mention it's a pain in the butt to post anything there.


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## Ozriel (Sep 10, 2012)

Kirune said:


> glad to hear you enjoy your users being angry at you!



I am not an admin. I enjoy watching it and getting off to it. :V



TeenageAngst said:


> I won't speak for others but I'm not looking for perfection or even system autonomy, all I want is a professional and pro-active set of admins and a working hardware layout. Where's the topic where admins are openly discussing what the next move should be in how they handle the server so they can effectively prevent this from happening again? The forum has its share of industry professionals, are they being consulted for their opinions which I'm sure they'd freely give. Hell, most of the people here who know what they're talking about would likely walk the admins through setting up a more stable system. After a plan is agreed on, why not spell it out, inform the community, ask for donations, and give us a plan of attack to prevent future hardware failures?
> 
> These are basic things a professional staff would do. It shows they're trying to overcome the problem by attempting to improve.



The forums themselves are a separate entity from the mainsite and powered by a host site from what I understand. What the mods here do is help prepare the house before the coming tides of the storm. I am in agreement that there should be more on the coding and such. I can't say much because the mainsite isn't my department. 

Anything discussed by the admins is discussed somewhere else, or here in the mod section just in case.


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## TeenageAngst (Sep 10, 2012)

At the very least the admins of the mainsite have resources in their own community willing to help if they ask for it. If they announce a more pro-active approach to preventing future problems, preferably one with some details, that would also be a huge step forward. Giving us what essentially amounts to "We had a RAID, it failed because no one bothered to update the RAID controller, we don't have a spare HDD on hand, and we're ordering one" is pretty much admitting they put no forethought or took any active measures to prevent this in the first place.


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## Ozriel (Sep 10, 2012)

Taasla said:


> My money's on Weasyl.  If only because IB still has the pedophile stigma despite all the nifty features.  Not to mention it's a pain in the butt to post anything there.



Sooner or later, IB will meet the same "thought-crime" problems that FA has faced and had to enforce to make sure people weren't locked out due to the material...or the site closed down because of it.


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## BRN (Sep 10, 2012)

TeenageAngst said:


> At the very least the admins of the mainsite have resources in their own community willing to help if they ask for it. If they announce a more pro-active approach to preventing future problems, preferably one with some details, that would also be a huge step forward. Giving us what essentially amounts to "We had a RAID, it failed because no one bothered to update the RAID controller, we don't have a spare HDD on hand, and we're ordering one" is pretty much admitting they put no forethought or took any active measures to prevent this in the first place.



And so they should be rebuked, right?

I mean, that's where you're going with this :v


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## Subdivisions (Sep 10, 2012)

I can clearly see that FA wasn't prepared for this potential disaster, and it seems in the past they've been equally unprepared on several occasions.

I really don't think FA would become a dead-site however. (like geocites etc.)
I for one don't plan on leaving the site, I'd like to try out Weasyl because it does look pretty cool. I've seen IB and I don't like the user interface at all.
So that really only leaves me with FA, Weasyl or DA.
I have a DA account already, I find FA to be more entertaining and specific to my interests. Weasyl sounds like it's not going to be a furry-specific site, but a general art community like DA. 
In which case FA is still the only site that exists where furry-art is the central focus that I would actually want to make an account on. 
Maybe someone, someday will make something better, for now it's my choice and I'm sticking with it.

That being said two days for a site to be down is an awful long time. I've never seen anything like it. I hope it's fully functional again soon.


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## TeenageAngst (Sep 10, 2012)

SIX said:


> And so they should be rebuked, right?
> 
> I mean, that's where you're going with this :v



Yes they should be held accountable for their lack of basic prevention. I mean having an extra drive on hand when running a server... it doesn't take a network technician to know to do that.


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## BRN (Sep 10, 2012)

TeenageAngst said:


> Yes they should be held accountable for their lack of basic prevention. I mean having an extra drive on hand when running a server... it doesn't take a network technician to know to do that.



The problem wasn't the busted drive, that was incidental. The problem was the RAID firmware which was a global bug with the freeware, as shown by Yak.


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## nrr (Sep 10, 2012)

ShadowFur said:


> Honestly the servers should be doing replication. that way one fails there is a slave server that takes over till the main server comes back up...





TeenageAngst said:


> At the very least the admins of the mainsite  have resources in their own community willing to help if they ask for  it...



I wrote about this already.

The management of this site have done nothing but irritate and frustrate anyone willing to help in any legitimate capacity, with reasons ranging from trust issues (a number of us have, admittedly, not been the nicest folks to the site) to political issues (we're not popufur enough). Seven years have come and gone with some very competent people stepping up to offer help to have the offers fall on deaf ears.


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## Armaetus (Sep 10, 2012)

Then the site will crumble (if it has not already) starting from its base due to issues that nrr brought up.


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## TeenageAngst (Sep 10, 2012)

nrr said:


> I wrote about this already.
> 
> The management of this site have done nothing but irritate and frustrate anyone willing to help in any legitimate capacity, with reasons ranging from trust issues (a number of us have, admittedly, not been the nicest folks to the site) to political issues (we're not popufur enough). Seven years have come and gone with some very competent people stepping up to offer help to have the offers fall on deaf ears.



I know but it bore repeating, although now I'm thinking just about everything that could be said about the issues has already been said. I'm a man who enjoys beating a dead horse every now and again but I think I'm gonna just start linking FA's fanatical defenders to prior posts in this topic.


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## Taasla (Sep 10, 2012)

Ozriel said:


> Sooner or later, IB will meet the same "thought-crime" problems that FA has faced and had to enforce to make sure people weren't locked out due to the material...or the site closed down because of it.



It already has, actually.  At the same time FA lost it's payment processor, the major sites like SoFurry and InkBunny were reported as well.  IB maintained that they would not give up artistic freedom in order to appease their payment processor.  They lost the account, and still remain allowing cub porn.  SoFurry also still allows cub porn, irrc.  I have it blocked by tags, so I don't feel up to double checking.

At any rate, FA had a vote to allow cub porn or not.  Despite the users saying that they didn't want it, it stayed anyway until AlertPay axed the account.


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## TeenageAngst (Sep 10, 2012)

AFAIK FA doesn't have a robust filter system to help get rid of undesirable tags, so unless they implement such a thing, it's probably for the best that they keep the borderline illegal stuff off the site.


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## Rencat (Sep 10, 2012)

Hmmm, find it interesting where this started and now where it's ended up.


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## TeenageAngst (Sep 10, 2012)

SIX said:


> The problem wasn't the busted drive, that was incidental. The problem was the RAID firmware which was a global bug with the freeware, as shown by Yak.



Which shouldn't have even been an issue in the first place. Ray Charles could see the flaws in the current server setup and he doesn't even know anything about networking.


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## nrr (Sep 10, 2012)

Elim Garak said:


> People cry a lot about the shit they get for free.



Don't go down this road. Seriously. Don't.

The fact that the service is being provided for free is irrelevant when you actually look at how much of a staple to the community the site is. I'd imagine that, after almost a decade of being in existence, FA is pretty much one of the go-to places for furry community meanderings, and that means a lot. Particularly, it means that the community has placed a lot of trust in FA, and that trust implies that a certain level of responsibility must be upheld on the part of FA to do good by community standards. Am I wrong for thinking this?

In the same vein, what about CNN.com? Do you feel that you have some justification in complaining how the site performs when it performs badly? When images don't load? When a headline is mis-typed? How much do you pay for the news provided by that resource?*

Similarly, the fact that CNN's elections coverage is what it is and that so many individuals rely on it speaks volumes for the sheer value of having them around, and yet, you pay nothing as an end user for the information and news they provide. Is this analogy at all a stretch?



Elim Garak said:


> Don't forget FA is run by volunteers for free. I am pretty sure it doesn't even run break-even.
> You know its easy to complain about others people work, if you want to change things: Feel free to send some server grade hardware their way.



I offered to. I offered to spend countless hours fixing flaws between 2005 and 2008. I offered to get an operational plan in place for maintaining the infrastructure.

You know what? They wanted none of it. The only things that I got accepted were a couple of patches to resolve two small CSRF security vulnerabilities, and even that was after a lot of hemming and hawing.



Elim Garak said:


> However no matter what cash you throw at it doesn't make it fail proof...



That's pretty awesome.

* Disclaimer: I work for CNN on their application operations team. My opinions don't necessarily reflect theirs, blah blah blah. I play with really, really big infrastructure on a daily basis.


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## Tartii (Sep 10, 2012)

What I don't get is, if people hate the website so much or get so mad...why not just leave the site?


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## TeenageAngst (Sep 10, 2012)

We've been over that. We like the site's community. We're enraged that such an awesome community is tied to admins that are either technologically illiterate or aloof.


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## Devious Bane (Sep 10, 2012)

TeenageAngst said:


> ...admins that are either psychologically illiterate or aloof.



Fixed.
The issues with FA's administration is mainly based around its incompetence.


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## Kayla (Sep 10, 2012)

Tartii said:


> What I don't get is, if people hate the website so much or get so mad...why not just leave the site?



I think a lot of people don't necessarily HATE FA, but are severely frustrated with how it's been run the past couple of years. 
FA has the largest user-base of all the "main" furry websites. People are going to be hesitant to move when they've established themselves already on a website, where they have access to thousands of others that may think alike, or potential clients for commissions.


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## Ziggy Fox (Sep 10, 2012)

SIX said:


> The problem wasn't the busted drive, that was incidental. The problem was the RAID firmware which was a global bug with the freeware, as shown by Yak.



 So basically...

THEY WEREN'T DOING THEIR JOB BECAUSE THEY DIDN'T KEEP THEIR HARDWARE UP TO DATE

I guess.


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## PheagleAdler (Sep 11, 2012)

Weasyl will probably end up like Google+. It's still there, but entered late into the market, thus most individuals who had already established accounts on FA, DA, IB, and SF don't really see a need to get one on Weasyl. I might, but I'd probably never use it.


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## nrr (Sep 11, 2012)

Ziggy Fox said:


> So basically...
> 
> THEY WEREN'T DOING THEIR JOB BECAUSE THEY DIDN'T KEEP THEIR HARDWARE UP TO DATE
> 
> I guess.



So, to side with FA here (NB: This isn't something I typically do!), setting up a maintenance window for that kind of thing is excruciatingly difficult, especially when you...

(1) Don't have immediate physical access to the hardware

(2) Have a geographically diverse team that transcends national borders, making working as a team notoriously difficult

(3) Don't have another host to which you can fail over during the maintenance

(4) Don't have another host upon which to test the firmware upgrades

Frankly, in this case, I don't blame FA for being conservative and not immediately jumping through hoops to install the firmware upgrades.


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## Gryphoneer (Sep 11, 2012)

Accountability said:


> When does a hobby project become an obligation?


Is it when people gave you tens of thousands of donation dollars over the years to ensure the site runs smoothly?

If the express purpose of running said site is garnering adoration for the ones who run it?

That last one broaches enlightened self-interest, too.


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## Tartii (Sep 11, 2012)

Kayla said:


> I think a lot of people don't necessarily HATE FA, but are severely frustrated with how it's been run the past couple of years.
> FA has the largest user-base of all the "main" furry websites. People are going to be hesitant to move when they've established themselves already on a website, where they have access to thousands of others that may think alike, or potential clients for commissions.


Makes sense to me.


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