|
Forums Not Working Earlier Today
|
I got a couple emails about the forums crapping out entirely this afternoon/evening, and I'll admit that I was having trouble around lunchtime. However, checking in quickly right now shows the boards working okay for me. Is anyone continuing to have problems? Let me know so I know whether to go annoy Yuku support or not.
-- Bob --------- Then the horns kicked in... ...and my shoes began to squeak. 
I'm having problems posting. It appears that Yuku is sending something to outboundlink.me, and that site isn't answering in a prompt manner.
This may be why I wasn't able to log in at all between 8:00 AM and a few minutes ago. (Although I did also reset my DSL connection...) My workaround for the inability to post properly is to hit "Post", wait thirty seconds, open the forum in a new tab, and check that my reply actually is posted - if it is, then go back to the tab where I posted the reply, cancel the transaction, and close that tab. -- Rob Kelk "Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of the same sovereign, servants of the same law." - Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012
Were you still having problems even with that post? Just curious, as I haven't seen it so far since getting on tonight.
-- Bob --------- Then the horns kicked in... ...and my shoes began to squeak.
Okay, found out what's going on. http://support.yuku.com/topic/21372]Some overnight server maintenance took much longer than expected, and things still aren't back up to full power. We are far from the only board affected, and Yuku is scrambling to fix things.
-- Bob --------- Then the horns kicked in... ...and my shoes began to squeak.
Well, I can't tell if it's actually doing anything (or if it has anything to do with anyone's problems), but it looks like the DrivingRevenue script that is supposed to @!%$!% with links is now, in fact, being included in regular post pages.
-Morgan. 
Yeah, it cleared things up for me when I stopped blocking outboundlink.me.
I refuse to stop blocking Outbound. I have no idea what it is, but it messed with command-clicking in Firefox Mac in order to open links in new tabs, which put it into my distrust file once I figured out what was happening.
-- "You know how parents tell you everything's going to fine, but you know they're lying to make you feel better? Everything's going to be fine." - The Doctor 
Seems to be working now. Glad to know it got fixed.
I think we could use a "back-up" site. Like maybe just a basic Live-Journal page? Just to let each other know what's up when this kind of thing goes down? Because I gotta tell you, I managed to get pretty frustrated over this earlier. And I could have at least used a "Hey it's happening to me too" to let me know it's not my account screwed up or something. Can't help but wonder when the next boom happens though. To paraphrase Ivanova: No boom today. Tomorrow there'll be a boom. There's always a boom tomorrow. Bob Schroeck Wrote:Were you still having problems even with that post? Just curious, as I haven't seen it so far since getting on tonight.You had to have seen it; you replied to it with "Were you still having problems even with that post? Just curious, as I haven't seen it so far since getting on tonight.". And, yes, I was still having problems with that post. Somebody please tell Yuku to stop routing internal links through a third-party site... -- Rob Kelk "Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of the same sovereign, servants of the same law." - Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012
The "it" I hadn't seen was the problem, not the post.
As for outboundlink.me, I'm certain we can raise a stink about it, but that there's also something buried in the terms and conditions for Yuku that says they can do it if they want to. The question is, can we raise enough of a stink that they stop wanting to? -- Bob --------- Then the horns kicked in... ...and my shoes began to squeak. robkelk Wrote:I just use NoScript and AdBlock through Firefox to completely neuter outboundlink.me. The second a site makes it impossible to navigate without allowing that site access? I'm gone.Bob Schroeck Wrote:Were you still having problems even with that post? Just curious, as I haven't seen it so far since getting on tonight. As for stinking up the place, I think you'd need to get a large number of the boards here involved... certainly not a majority, but a sizeable minority of greater than 10% would get the point across. -- "You know how parents tell you everything's going to fine, but you know they're lying to make you feel better? Everything's going to be fine." - The Doctor
As a user of primarily government computers, I have no right to change settings or install programs. That said, if this outbound llinking thing is as bad as you guys make it sound, should I be worried that Yuku is gonna get blocked on my end?
As I understand things, while the whole thing might be considered at the least ethically questionable on the part of the people *doing* it, the code isn't dangerous or truly malicious. The most damaging thing that seems to happen with the current code is, if some of the links in the chain aren't working properly, clicking on links to certain sites won't work. (But since it doesn't edit the html of the page, you can still right-click, copy the url, and then paste it into a window.) I don't think I'd worry about Yuku being blocked.
Like I said before, this feels like something you're already paying money to have not happen. But apparently it's fairly polite about it now, so I don't know how much ground you could get on the issue. (Since it's supposed to not touch existing affiliate IDs in links and such.) Still, it's an annoyance factor, since even when it's working properly, it still *takes longer* to load some links as it goes through the redirect process. And then sometimes the server is down and it blows up. (Seems like the server being down is less likely to blow it up in the current system though.) The problem with just blocking outboundlink.me is that part of the code is located on Yuku's servers, so if you allow yuku to run javascript (which does allow several useful things*), it'll still be doing stuff and wasting time trying to do whatever whenever you hover over a link. A more proper solution would be to either block the loading of that script file, or redefine the function that sets the whole thing off before it gets executed. Not that I'm sure the latter is viable, and I don't know any way to do any of it without using either a greasemonkey script (or probably Opera's user scripts could do it), or running yuku requests through Proxomitron. *Like not having all the mod functions out disrupting the layout and inviting the possibility of me accidentally banning someone. Okay, so not everyone needs to worry about that one. -Morgan. 
Re: the 'backup' concept:
I've been contemplating possible backup scenarios for the forums for... well, several months, at least. I first looked into it more than a year ago, because I suspect I was skirting the TOS when I was compiling a list of thread links; I've been more aggressively pursuing it since the beginning of the year, for other reasons. I don't like speaking up and suggesting such a thing if I don't have a viable proposal, however, which is why I haven't said anything so far. Unfortunately, it appears that there is no easy migration path from Yuku to ... anything else. Hell, there's no path at all, and Yuku has sent cease-and-desist letters to people who have tried to develop solutions that would let you migrate your Yuku board to something else. And nowhere can I find anything from Yuku that even allows you to backup your existing forum -- their response seems to be "don't worry, we keep backups". Which may well be true but makes it difficult to engineer a migration solution that doesn't violate their TOS. So, an alternate communication channel might well be nice, but any sort of mirror as a backup is problematic, at best. That said, I have a domain, a webhost with plenty of bandwidth and webspace to spare, and am willing to offer same to provide an alternate, guaranteed ad-and-other-shenanigans-free, channel, if such a thing is desired. I'd offer to host the -boards-, at that, but as said, there's no easy way to do so. Re: the possibility of getting Yuku to change... call me a cynic, but, I don't think it'll happen. It took a year to get search fixed -- a feature you could reasonably say you're paying for, Bob -- and at that it required a few of us pestering them about it for anything to happen. And as Bob noted, their TOS basically says they can do whatever they want, and if you don't like it, tough. --sofaspud --"Listening to your kid is the audio equivalent of a Salvador Dali painting, Spud." --OpMegs
Well, I think what he was asking about wasn't so much a replacement board as a place to have "Are the forums down for you too?" "Yeah, they're down here too./Nope, it's probably just you."
An lj community would probably work pretty well for that relatively limited task. (EPU has one for much the same purpose.) -Morgan.
Idle thought - I wonder if the software that runs The Undocumented Features Forums would suit us?
If you visit the EPU forums for any length of time, you'll understand that the answer is No.
 DCForum is... um... not very good, by modern standards. Morganni: Oh, I get that. I was referring mostly to the notice page-like thing when I offered webspace and such. If I knew of a way to transition, I'd offer more, but... *shrug* --sofaspud --"Listening to your kid is the audio equivalent of a Salvador Dali painting, Spud." --OpMegs
Guys, is it really a good idea to discuss abandoning Yuku on a Yuku forum?
(Mind you, who knows everyone else's email addresses? It isn't as if everybody has their board handle at gmail.com as an email address...) -- Rob Kelk "Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of the same sovereign, servants of the same law." - Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012
You know, I'm something of a critical part to any determination about the board's future. And I'm not entirely convinced that there's a problem big enough here to merit so drastic a solution.
-- Bob --------- Then the horns kicked in... ...and my shoes began to squeak.
Bob, you of course have the final say in this matter.
(Quoting from last night's email) -- Rob Kelk "Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of the same sovereign, servants of the same law." - Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012 Bob Schroeck Wrote:You know, I'm something of a critical part to any determination about the board's future. And I'm not entirely convinced that there's a problem big enough here to merit so drastic a solution.This is one of the reasons I hadn't suggested anything yet. Again, as of right now I'm simply offering a secondary communications channel -- if desired -- that is independent of Yuku, for basic status information. I mentioned the backup/migration problems by way of explanation of my answer to Logan's question about backups. I meant no presumption; it's literally a situation of me seeing what I consider a problem and attempting to find a way to solve it before I bring it up, because I dislike pointing out problems if I have no solution to offer. This is the same attitude that led me to continue pestering Yuku about the search problem. I don't mean to step on toes. As rob says, you have final say, on anything, and if I've implied otherwise I'm sorry -- right now it's just a technical problem I'm fiddling with, and I don't tend to think too hard about the other aspects when I'm trying to solve a problem. --sofaspud --"Listening to your kid is the audio equivalent of a Salvador Dali painting, Spud." --OpMegs
Okay, fair enough. It's just that, from my side of things, I'm seeing a lot of folks who look like they're reacting a bit out of scale to what to me is a brief and acceptable hiccup in board performance. Eight to twenty hours of odd behavior and slow access is not a crisis. A week of it, however...
-- Bob --------- Then the horns kicked in... ...and my shoes began to squeak.
Let's just say that some folks like making contingency plans, and leave it at that...
-- Rob Kelk "Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of the same sovereign, servants of the same law." - Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012
I'm with Bob. There's a few things Yuku does that strike me as rather jerkish, but compared to a lot of other forums I've seen they're been very reliable. (And while the search not working for so long was a pain, now that it *is* working it's a pretty good one.)
That being said, I've got to wonder if I *would* be violating Yuku's TOS by telling people how to disable that drivingrevenue stuff on here... -Morgan.
Morganni --
I believe it would come down to a Yuku call on that, but, in my non-legal opinion, the applicable portions are here: Quote:m. Attempt to reverse engineer, disassemble, decrypt or decompile thewhereas the portion I suspect I would be violating using any method I can think of to backup the site is: Quote:q. Use any robot, spider, site search/retrieval application, or otherThough I'll note that the above would appear to make Google violate the TOS, since we know Google crawls the forums indexing content fairly regularly. Also, section 8, part c: Quote:You expressly understand and acknowledge that Yuku may, in its solewould seem to indicate that even though Bob is paying for certain things (like no ads), Yuku basically says it can change that at any time with no warning and no compensation. Finally, the Content section (section 3) has some very good points (Yuku does not claim perpetual, royalty-free license to your work like Yahoo! Groups once did, for example), but nowhere does it state that Yuku cannot modify your content. So there's not much recourse in that direction, either. All that said... while I still don't think we'll get Yuku to change -- it's going to be hard to convince them to stop making money, after all -- I don't think they'd take any action on what you've already posted. You've posted links to outside resources, that's it -- unless I've missed something. And there's nothing illegal about them; they just tell people how to block software from running on their computer. So, kinda gray, but I think you're in the clear, for what it's worth. --sofaspud --"Listening to your kid is the audio equivalent of a Salvador Dali painting, Spud." --OpMegs |
|
« Next Oldest | Next Newest »
|
