Rants, Raves & Opinions

[LookingX]

Yeah, I don't get the complaints. I work in tech so I know it's not even close to easy to get a reliable host that houses this type of content and guarantees anonymity for the admin, so I get why it would take so long. It seems a lot of users fail to realize that this hobby we engage in isn't something you can just go to HostGator or some bs and host it there.

The site rocks. Even better with the upgrade. Thanks.

[JayXzed]

Is everything perfect? No.

Does this site provide a great service for FREE? Hell ya.

Thank you!

Yeah, I don't get the complaints. I work in tech so I know it's not even close to easy to get a reliable host that houses this type of content and guarantees anonymity for the admin, so I get why it would take so long. It seems a lot of users fail to realize that this hobby we engage in isn't something you can just go to HostGator or some bs and host it there.

[Admin2]

Just offering some feedback, not trying to criticize or start an argument.

I'm sure that the strict moderation of the site keeps out a lot of bullshit, fake shill reviews, posting of people's private identifying info, etc. , I'm just pointing out that it comes at a cost, and that cost is timeliness and speed of conversations. Trying to have a conversation with someone at the speed of one message per day can be excruciating. Other forums solve this problem my moderating retroactively, meaning that posts are visible immediately (maybe only to logged in users), but those posts might be deleted later if the moderator deems it necessary. I don't know if that's the ideal solution or not, and I don't claim to have any clue about what I'm talking about, as I've never run a forum like this myself.

Just offering a perspective from one user of your forum. Obviously it's your site and you'll manage it as you see fit.

You say you don't want to criticize then you criticize us for something you clearly know nothing about. How do you think our system of moderation and regular member / senior member started? Do you think we woke up one day and just decided to give ourselves a shit ton of more tedious work? Or do you think that there were like a thousand instances of somebody registering then spamming us with a thousand posts advertising their forum? Why do you think that there is a limit to the number of PM's you can send in an hour or a day without triggering a review of the PM's sent? Because in an uncontrolled forum assholes abuse it to the detriment of the users.

I get it, you're pissed off because you got put back on moderation for being a dick and now your posts have to be moderated before they go live. You should have thought of that before you decided to be a dick.

You said "I don't claim to have any clue about what I'm talking about, as I've never run a forum like this myself. " and then you try and tell us how to run this forum. WTF is that? You have no idea what you're talking about. If we moderate retroactively and some asshole posts a picture of some chick who they don't like and posts their address then that could be live for hours without us knowing it. Or if some drunk asshole decides it's amusing to start fights on 50 threads then I have to go clean up fifty threads.

Man just shut the fuck up about this because you have no fucking idea what you're talking about and just accept the fact that you need to suffer the consequences of your own stupid decisions.

This is it for me, I'm going to delete any posts you make in the future about this and if you do it a lot I'm going to do the taking out the trash part of my job and get rid of you.

A2.

[RayKurin]

We have no volunteers. I personally moderate all the posts on this forum and that part of my job only takes about 2-3 hours a day and I will never give it up, it's how I stay in contact with our users, my time doing moderation in invaluable and informs everything I do during the rest of the day. So far the only thing you have been correct about in this post is that it is indeed 2026.

A2

Is everything perfect? No.

Does this site provide a great service for FREE? Hell ya.

Thank you!

[BeavertronDoug]

We have no volunteers. I personally moderate all the posts on this forum and that part of my job only takes about 2-3 hours a day and I will never give it up, it's how I stay in contact with our users, my time doing moderation in invaluable and informs everything I do during the rest of the day. So far the only thing you have been correct about in this post is that it is indeed 2026.

A2

Just offering some feedback, not trying to criticize or start an argument.

I'm sure that the strict moderation of the site keeps out a lot of bullshit, fake shill reviews, posting of people's private identifying info, etc. , I'm just pointing out that it comes at a cost, and that cost is timeliness and speed of conversations. Trying to have a conversation with someone at the speed of one message per day can be excruciating. Other forums solve this problem my moderating retroactively, meaning that posts are visible immediately (maybe only to logged in users), but those posts might be deleted later if the moderator deems it necessary. I don't know if that's the ideal solution or not, and I don't claim to have any clue about what I'm talking about, as I've never run a forum like this myself.

Just offering a perspective from one user of your forum. Obviously it's your site and you'll manage it as you see fit.

[Admin2]

New server seems much improved, breathing new life into the forum, nice work..

Thank you very much. It was too long in coming. The new ads we are offering are going to allow us to update a lot of stuff.

Next issue to solve: manual review of every post. I'm sure there was a good reason why it was decided that every post must be manually reviewed and approved before it becomes visible. But it makes conversations here move at a glacial pace. Posts can take a day or two to be reviewed in some cases. Let's say person #1 makes a post, person #2 reads it and asks a clarifying question, and then person #1 sees the question and answers it, and person #2 reads the answer. That entire exchange can easily take a week to unfold. Some providers don't even stay in town for a week, so this whole system seriously limits the usefulness of the forum for exchanging timely information.

You are misinformed. We don't manually review all posts. We moderate posts made by Regular Members, Senior Members who didn't get through the probation period or Senior members who have taken advantage of not being moderated to repetidly violate the TOS, Advertisers, and Forum Sponsors. All normal Sr Members, all 35,035 of them are not moderated. We only moderate about 1/3rd of the posts.

I realize that the moderators are probably just volunteers, and I'm not suggesting that they need to work faster or work harder, they're all doing a great job. Just wondering if there's a better solution to whatever problem originally prompted this system to be put in place. It's 2026, I'm sure there is a better way to skin the cat. Fully moderated forums are kinda unheard of these days.

We have no volunteers. I personally moderate all the posts on this forum and that part of my job only takes about 2-3 hours a day and I will never give it up, it's how I stay in contact with our users, my time doing moderation in invaluable and informs everything I do during the rest of the day. So far the only thing you have been correct about in this post is that it is indeed 2026.

A2

[BeavertronDoug]

New server seems much improved, breathing new life into the forum, nice work.

Next issue to solve: manual review of every post. I'm sure there was a good reason why it was decided that every post must be manually reviewed and approved before it becomes visible. But it makes conversations here move at a glacial pace. Posts can take a day or two to be reviewed in some cases. Let's say person #1 makes a post, person #2 reads it and asks a clarifying question, and then person #1 sees the question and answers it, and person #2 reads the answer. That entire exchange can easily take a week to unfold. Some providers don't even stay in town for a week, so this whole system seriously limits the usefulness of the forum for exchanging timely information.

I realize that the moderators are probably just volunteers, and I'm not suggesting that they need to work faster or work harder, they're all doing a great job. Just wondering if there's a better solution to whatever problem originally prompted this system to be put in place. It's 2026, I'm sure there is a better way to skin the cat. Fully moderated forums are kinda unheard of these days.

[Ampallday]

New server is awesome guys. Shit loads so fast now!!

Thanks, we think it was a good move. It's nice for me as well because I do most of my work on the forum.

A2

[Admin2]

With all due respect to management, operating a website with less than 10 k concurrent users shouldn't be this difficult in 2026. Sure, vBulletin is going to scale like a pig, and yes, they're going to be under constant DDoS, but both of these problems have been relatively well solved in the past decade. Probably the biggest insult is the scheduled nightly database backup cycle that takes the entire site down for now several hours a day. The 80's called, they want their disaster recovery procedures back.

It sucks too because no self-respecting professional who's also a user is going to offer to help them solve these problems, nor should they accept help from any of their users.

With that being said, we're (your users) are rooting for you guys.

This has been going on for an extended period time for sure. I'm grateful I'm not paying to advertise or a membership, I'd be pissed and not just annoyed. I used to contribute quite a bit under a different username until that account suddenly quit functioning, one day just got a notification the my user name wasn't valid. I had signed in just the day before. It's more a hassle and a pain than much of a resource any longer. Between the really good contributors not dealing with it any longer, extended delays in connecting, unable to connect, random crashing, and randomly getting logged out, etc. Is what it is, too bad, what a waste.

You both decide to be dicks on the day we hand over the site to the new server.

Log in issues, gone. DDoS attacks gone.

I don't mind criticism, we had it coming but you are right Slope, you don't pay for the site so why be dicks about it. I checked, there wasn't anything wrong with your senior account Sloperdoper58, my money says you forgot the password, no worries, I banned it as well. So fuck you two.

For the rest of you guys I'm sorry, running a site like this used to be pretty easy but it's not anymore. We think we got it into a good home that should be fine for the next five years or so but considering the AI revolution who fucking knows. I'd also like to thank the core for the patience you showed us and would like to ask a favor, if you run into any issues with things that used to work but now don't (minus emails, we are still working on that) please drop us a note with the contact us link using the "other" button and label it as "new server problem".

Thanks again.

A2.

[Slopedoper]

This has been going on for an extended period time for sure. I'm grateful I'm not paying to advertise or a membership, I'd be pissed and not just annoyed. I used to contribute quite a bit under a different username until that account suddenly quit functioning, one day just got a notification the my user name wasn't valid. I had signed in just the day before. It's more a hassle and a pain than much of a resource any longer. Between the really good contributors not dealing with it any longer, extended delays in connecting, unable to connect, random crashing, and randomly getting logged out, etc. Is what it is, too bad, what a waste.

With all due respect to management, operating a website with less than 10 k concurrent users shouldn't be this difficult in 2026. Sure, vBulletin is going to scale like a pig, and yes, they're going to be under constant DDoS, but both of these problems have been relatively well solved in the past decade. Probably the biggest insult is the scheduled nightly database backup cycle that takes the entire site down for now several hours a day. The 80's called, they want their disaster recovery procedures back.

It sucks too because no self-respecting professional who's also a user is going to offer to help them solve these problems, nor should they accept help from any of their users.

With that being said, we're (your users) are rooting for you guys.

[NachoCheese]

The site has been down a lot, hard to post on or use. Have already been waiting a few minutes to get this to load so I can respond. So hopefully will pick up when its fixed. But yes lots of people asking for deets and few people telling about their experiences, so its losing steam.

With all due respect to management, operating a website with less than 10 k concurrent users shouldn't be this difficult in 2026. Sure, vBulletin is going to scale like a pig, and yes, they're going to be under constant DDoS, but both of these problems have been relatively well solved in the past decade. Probably the biggest insult is the scheduled nightly database backup cycle that takes the entire site down for now several hours a day. The 80's called, they want their disaster recovery procedures back.

It sucks too because no self-respecting professional who's also a user is going to offer to help them solve these problems, nor should they accept help from any of their users.

With that being said, we're (your users) are rooting for you guys.

[TryHard]

The Portland forum has been dead, dying as the summer progresses. Nobody posts their experiences. Even I have slowed up as there is no participation. I regret not seeing Zavi, he's not even posting regularly. Hopefully folks come back for the fall.

The site has been down a lot, hard to post on or use. Have already been waiting a few minutes to get this to load so I can respond. So hopefully will pick up when its fixed. But yes lots of people asking for deets and few people telling about their experiences, so its losing steam.

[Sugar Daddy PDX]

The Portland forum has been dead, dying as the summer progresses. Nobody posts their experiences. Even I have slowed up as there is no participation. I regret not seeing Zavi, he's not even posting regularly. Hopefully folks come back for the fall.

[Ampallday]

I've been having trouble getting pages loaded for a couple of days.

The host we have had for years stopped supporting enterprise hard drives so we are trying to run the site on the same kind of drives you would have in a desk top and they can't keep up.
We have already paid for a new server that will be a massive upgrade from the last one and are planning on migrating this weekend.

A2

Good to know, thanks for the update!

[Admin2]

Is it just me or is the server to this site like on a 2400 baud connection from AOL? Lately, I have not able to connect and when I do the buffer is so bad it takes 20 to 30 seconds to a thread to open. I think the site is wealth of mongering info.

It's the host, they stopped supporting enterprise drives so we are stuck with the same kind of drives you have in your desktop. They are simply overwhelmed with the traffic. We are currently looking to migrate to a different host.

We hope to have this resolved in a few days.

We appreciate your patience.

A2