MetaChat - Throw hardware at the problem?

fuck that.

posted by puke & cry 05 June | 00:58

bleh, whatever. I'd be willing to pay $100 or so to keep mefi up, purely to avoid my own aggravation when it goes down like a $2 thai hooker.

posted by delmoi 05 June | 01:00

I was trying to post an awesome recipe for a strawberry dish in that AskMe thread, too.

Oh well.

posted by invitapriore 05 June | 01:02

I think the code is the issue. I work with some cool coders in Russia who could probably rewrite thing s from the ground up for not much more than a couple of servers.

posted by arse_hat 05 June | 01:04

thing s or things. It's all good.

posted by arse_hat 05 June | 01:05

Depends on what the problems are. Windows 2003 Server and CF with Apache is itself not a very robust platform to build upon. And there's no doubt that when Matt coded MeFi he didn't do so with the kind of reliability requirements of a site with as much traffic as he gets. Even so—again, depending upon the problems—throwing hardware at it might help a great deal. But it would be expensive hardware, not commodity, OTS hardware.

Better would be to rewrite the code to be more robust, since it's usually the CF portion that's dying. Best would be to ditch Windows and CF, switch to a tried and true high-traffic, high-reliability platform, and code for robustness. But that's the last thing he wants to do, I think. He's emotionally wedded to his site's architecture more, it seems, than its design and the community.

posted by kmellis 05 June | 02:15

The problems are probably ColdFusion, poor/old code and code creep. Configuration is probably about as optimized as we could hope for. More hardware might help, but not likely.

I think we can safely assume that there's adequete hardware behind the Mefi code. Perhaps it hasn't been fully tested. Faulty or suboptimal memory, logic boards, hard drives can obviously cause server unreliability, but we wouldn't be seeing the JRun error, CF error pages, or even apache errors nearly as often. We'd just be seeing nothing at all.

Someone could just build a better MeFi and give it to Matt, or conversely, promote it and take away the MetaFilter userbase. It would only take a small percentage of the core userbase shifting before the majority followed over.

Or you could build a stronger MeFi and have it work in lockstep and tandem with MeFi itself. An active, dynamic MeFi mirror of sorts - but MeFi could also mirror it. But for that to happen bidirectionally there would have to be a ton of co-operative integration with both servers.

Stranger things have been done.

posted by loquacious 05 June | 02:50

>Maybe we could all pitch in so matt can buy a new machine.

>>fuck that.

'fuck that' indeed.

We've gone from -- what? 18000 or so? -- up to damn near 25000 users since he started charging 5 bux a pop to get in the door.

For those hard of mathing, that's conservatively 6000 people x $5 each which makes $30,000 or so. Good on him, I reckon. More power to him, 'cause many of the new people are actually smart and articulate, and the rest are quickly shamed into silence, which is as it should be, and things were gettin' pretty stale there for a while.

But that's more than I make in a year. He's not hurting for cash, or if he is, he needs to stop buying shit.

posted by stavrosthewonderchicken 05 June | 07:41

There are several very cheap things he could do to improve this situation, not long term fixes just basic things to get the server going again when it crashes, but he seems to be uninterested.

Matt is kind of like the guy driving the car who won't stop and ask someone for directions even though he's lost. You could suggest that we'd pitch in for a new server but I doubt he'd be very interested.

posted by dodgygeezer 05 June | 07:58

Maybe we could all pitch in so matt can buy a new machine.

maybe we could all pitch in so he could go on a recumbent bike photo tour of iceland.

posted by quonsar 05 June | 09:59

Maybe we could all pitch in and buy quonsar a less obvious form of pitiful jealousy.

posted by whateveryoulosers 05 June | 10:14

6000 people x $5 each which makes $30,000 or so.

stavros, has been explained many times that you get a username (and number) for free, you pay 5 bucks to activate it. only 1 in 5 people who got a username did actually pay the 5 bucks, so you should massively cut your figures, he got about 20% of what you think he got.

the site's reliability is nonexistent and makes it a bit of a joke, really. but then, I wouldn't recode all that shit myself only to make the site more reliable. I cannot really blame him. the site started as a little personal project and was coded as such. unless he wants to make MeFi his fulltime job (and make a good steady living out of it), I can understand why he is reluctant to code it all over again

posted by matteo 05 June | 10:18

I can understand why he is reluctant to code it all over again

That shouldn't be necessary. What I can't understand is Matt's apparent reluctance to put his weight behind the idea of a small group of folks who would work to make a clone of the site. I know he's said organizing even a handful of folks is a huge task, but it seems to me there are more than enough smart Mefites who could self-organize to create a clone with all the features users encounter in the old one - without needing Matt's help until the first one is done for showing him. The only thing that's missing, really, is Matt using his #1 bully pulpit to say, "Please, go for it." Perhaps I oversimplify, but far more savvy folks than I have repeatedly said the same thing.

There are several very cheap things he could do to improve this situation, not long term fixes just basic things to get the server going again when it crashes, but he seems to be uninterested.

The best guess is that it's an ownership thing; he can't stand the idea of anyone else tinkering with it. But that's an increasingly unsatisfying answer, to me, anyway.

posted by mediareport 05 June | 10:46

It doesn't take the amount of time equivalent to a fulltime job to keep a website the size of metafilter from crashing on a daily basis.

posted by djc 05 June | 10:48

stavros, has been explained many times that you get a username (and number) for free, you pay 5 bucks to activate it.

No shit? I never heard that before, at least not for the most recent floodgate-opening fivedollanewborama.

If so, well, then, dot dot fuckin' dot.

posted by stavrosthewonderchicken 05 June | 10:56

my guess is it's a combination of two things:
1 - he doesn't want to work with other people. i'm an insular bastard and i understand that completely. other people can be a real drag.
2 - he doesn't enjoy mefi much/doesn't have the time (two side of the same coin, in that if he still loved it, he could probably make the time, kid or not).
so you've got a personal project with someone disinclined to share, that has grown to the point where it's more hassle than it's worth.

how do you deal with that? you could make things so miserable for him that he changes - perhaps finally buckles under and gets outside help. that *might* be what's happening with this "coding friend". or you force the issue and set up an obvious, direct clone.

the clone might not be such a bad idea. on the other hand, as soon as he hears about it, he'llpromise a load more stuff and maybe half-do some of it. so things could get kind of uncomfortable.

could we scrape what's there before things get nasty? that might be a good start.

posted by andrew cooke 05 June | 12:05

Maybe we could all pitch in so matt can buy a new machine.

My understanding is that its professinally "served" now, and that the problem is with the code and not the server.

Frankly, I'm sick of people bitching and bitching about the uptime here, and its making me not want to come to Metachat because I know that half the posts on the front page are going to be bitching about Metafilter. What make me even more frustrated is that virutally all of the people who are making sarcastic pops about Matt's huge financial windfall from the $5 sign ups are people who got in for free years ago

Matt has said recently that he is getting outside help and that "The uptime of MeFi is something I lose sleep over and I'm currently trying to get a hold of someone at Macromedia to see what is causing some of the problems and I'm looking for outside programmer help to do a review and optimization."

Speaking as someone who administered a very small pesonal website project for other people, I can tell you how hard it can be sometimes just to find the extra time to do updates, never mind the complete CSS overhaul I know my site needs. I can't even imagine how much harder it must be to find time to recode something as big as Mefi -- never mind finding the desire to do it when everyone is bitching at you for the cool toy you gave them for free.

I'm thinking that a little more appriciation and a little less whiny bitching would get results. We bought him a trip to iceland and we got AskMe, after all.

posted by anastasiav 05 June | 12:31

i think there are a pile of different things here:
- being disappointed/frustrated that a good site is failing regularly
- directing that same emotion at matt
- doing something to make things better
the first and last of those seem perfectly ok to me. what upsets me is the second. i suspect that's what upsets you too? if so, please don't get angry with people for considering the third.

matt may be fixing things - i hope so. but it's clearly not his style to involve the community and i don't see anything wrong with the community splintering off a clone. it's a pity, but it seems understandable, to me.

posted by andrew cooke 05 June | 12:53

buy quonsar a less obvious form of pitiful jealousy.

i'm afraid you have mistaken my blistering attacks on matt's 5 year bout of selfish laziness while enjoying free material goods, a career and the veneration of the ignorant as pitiful jealousy. a freaking moron would have swapped this puny application to a reliable platform some 60 months ago.

posted by quonsar 05 June | 15:59

...but tell us how you really feel.

posted by scrump 05 June | 16:12

anastasiav - The point of this place is that people can post stuff here that they may not normally post at mefi. If people are venting more of their frustration here rather than in Matt's face on mefi then I guess that's in some ways a good thing. I also think that most of the people complaining mean well, but I think it can sometimes come across as competitive or, dare I say it, macho. Just a guy thing I suppose. Anyway, I hope you do stick around.

posted by dodgygeezer 05 June | 16:35

*TAKES OUT JUNK, BEATS KMELLIS WITH IT*

posted by quonsar 05 June | 17:02

Fuck off. No, really. I think the thing most annoying about you--and I bet others will agree--is that you say the same things over and over and over. Whether it's the three or so jokes you make about me, your complaints against Matt, your corruption of various usernames, faux computing expertise, or in that you have a few favorite targets...you just repeat yourself in comment after comment. Once or twice is funny. Repeating something ad infinitum is just tedious.

posted by kmellis 05 June | 17:54

we have to agree on the most annoying thing about quonsar?

in fact, i'd argue otherwise - the most annoying thing about quonsar is that sometimes he's quite human, and so you end up trying to defend him when he's pissed off someone else...

this could be a long thread.

posted by andrew cooke 05 June | 18:44

"the most annoying thing about quonsar is that sometimes he's quite human"

Yeah, that's true. He can be likeable went he wants to.

posted by kmellis 05 June | 19:58

quick, find mlis. he's buying. ;o)

posted by andrew cooke 05 June | 20:07

so are we agreed? we throw Quonsar at the problem?

posted by dhruva 05 June | 20:20

Maybe we could all pitch in so matt can buy a new machine.

What, another one?

posted by dg 05 June | 21:54

Repeating something ad infinitum is just tedious.

no, really. you've no idea how gratifying it is to know that it bothers you so much, arcane as that RFC in your mouth may seem from behind Zell Miller.

posted by quonsar 06 June | 02:29

"no, really. you've no idea how gratifying it is to know that it bothers you so much"

Nope, I have no idea. I can't imagine what it's like to be you.

posted by kmellis 06 June | 07:09

now isn't the mlis the militant branch of librarians?

what's funny is how someone harping on repetion relibably rises to the bait every time

posted by ethylene 06 June | 15:50

05 June 2005