Forum Outages

NTJedi · #1 July 8th, 2008, 04:05 PM

Quote:

MaxWilson said:
The thing is, NTJedi, I don't think it was dishonest. Perhaps ShrapnelGames planned for the outage to be even shorter than it was, but it wasn't very long.

-Max

and

Quote:

Gandalf Parker said:
Being hopeful is not dishonest. You make it sound as if they knew that it would take all day. They were probably told that it would take very little time, and they certainly didnt foresee any possible problems or they wouldnt have tried it at all.

Well I actually work with enormous enterprise customers and have experienced small tasks suddenly taking much much longer. From my experiences when a small task develops into a serious problem which requires rebooting, verifying permissions and running repairs it reaches a point where the time for fixing the issue is "Unknown".

At this point the message should be updated, the same as you'd expect a mechanic to call you if he reached a point where the time to fix your vehicle became "Unknown".

MaxWilson · #2 July 8th, 2008, 04:13 PM

I hope that means you will apologize for calling Shrapnel "dishonest." What you appear to have meant is that you thought the message was "unprofessional." I still may not agree (it WAS a pretty short time) but I can at least see where such a sentiment would be coming from.

-Max

NTJedi · #3 July 8th, 2008, 04:19 PM

Quote:

MaxWilson said:
I hope that means you will apologize for calling Shrapnel "dishonest." What you appear to have meant is that you thought the message was "unprofessional." I still may not agree (it WAS a pretty short time) but I can at least see where such a sentiment would be coming from.

-Max

NO

If my mechanic kept telling me to "Check back soon" and he wasn't finished until 14 hours later I would also call him dishonest the same as ShrapnelGames.

HoneyBadger · #4 July 8th, 2008, 04:47 PM

What if your car was totaled though? And the mechanic was offering to rebuild it from the ground up, for free? Then how long would "soon" be? It's my understanding that the forum is either going to be soon, or is in the process of, being completely remade under new programming/code, from the ground up. That may be what's happening now. I got this from Mindi, by the way, so the information itself should be nice and accurate, even if my own understanding and ability to communicate said, is less than complete.

I've been online for longer than I'm willing to admit (my first internet experience happened at 2400 baud, so you do the math), and I don't stress about anything that takes less than 1 to 3 months to get done. That's "soon" to me. And as much as I post on here, I have lots and lots of other things in my life to occupy me.

JimMorrison · #5 July 8th, 2008, 05:06 PM

The "check back soon" part did bother me a bit (as a severe forumoholic), but geez, this is a bit of a severe reaction, you might want to put some lotion on it.

The worst part was, the second day, when it was the same relentless "check back soon" message, hope started to dwindle. And on sunday, when they did it AGAIN, I didn't even bother checking back soon at all. To me, "soon" in computer time has a sort of Attention Deficit imminence. Like, really, if you refresh the page right now it might work. No? How about now? I like unknown a lot. I can deal with unknown, it tells me not to concern myself with it, because I don't have enough information to understand, and no one who DOES have that info is going to take the time to explain it, rather than working on the issue.

BUT, on the third hand (yes I have three hands, AND??), I am extremely disappointed that after this 3 day goose chase of promised upgrades - there seems to be absolutely nothing changed whatsoever in the forums. However as Gandalf has pointed out, I am quite pleased and relieved to note that we seem to have all our data here still, so someone is doing a good job regardless of their erroneous and probably canned downtime message. <3

Gandalf Parker · #6 July 8th, 2008, 05:59 PM

Your mechanic would be unlikely to be spouting some default message.
For all you know (I wish I could remember from working with UBB) that message was not put there by Shrapnel. It might be like the default error messages that a browser gives you when it cant find something on a website, which is configurable but few ever bother to change it.

But it does bring a common complaint to mind from the system techs. "If I think Im about to fix it, why would I go to the user page and update the time frame? What would I change it to? Something like 'I know its been a couple of hours but I still think it will be fixed soon'?". I always hated leaving a job to update a wag time. Thats Customer Supports job to placate the whiners... umm... I mean users. The only time I ever updated a wag was to put "OK the easy quick update patch blew up, so now it will be 6 hours for us to recover the system back to what it was before we tried to upgrade it"

MaxWilson · #7 July 8th, 2008, 06:23 PM

Quote:

JimMorrison said:
BUT, on the third hand (yes I have three hands, AND??), I am extremely disappointed that after this 3 day goose chase of promised upgrades - there seems to be absolutely nothing changed whatsoever in the forums.

"On the gripping hand," you mean.

I dunno, it seems like the forums might be a bit faster to refresh when I post. It's hard to tell. Kind of like it's hard to tell whether shields work against missiles the way the manual describes or at half-strength.

-Max

NTJedi · #8 July 8th, 2008, 09:10 PM

Quote:

HoneyBadger said:
What if your car was totaled though? And the mechanic was offering to rebuild it from the ground up, for free? Then how long would "soon" be?

Find me one mechanic quoting to rebuild a car from ground up and advising it will take a "Short Time" and to "Check Back Soon". LOL LOL

That's like trying to find a doctor who would say quadruple bypass surgery is a minor operation. LOL LOL

I'll have what HoneyBadger is drinking.