Ask the Moderators

[TameFarrar]

Okay....let's see if I understand this. When a poster quotes an image without removing the IMG tags in the quotes, it drains bandwidth...right? Well....could that cause the website to slow down?

Its not the *cause* of the web-site slow down in and of itself. What it causes is a redundant back and forth pinging to the servers requesting the picture to be called up over and over and over again. From the GW perspective it is a drain but not to the point that it would slow down the servers to the point that you just saw recently...UNLESS the pictures are being hosted on a server that is way below standard and like the AD server takes a long time to return the requested information.

What does happen though is we have a number of *Picture Heavy* threads, Thunk, Ship, Technical YES Technical they post actual ships and specs), Games (make a caption), post a picture of yourself, your pet, your car, and anything else you can think of So when folks keep quoting those pictures over and over and over ... the GW server does have to process those requests and they are redundant. So it does take some server space.

However, the second problem with it is not every member here has cable internet or DSL or other *fast* internet. We have many members that do still have Dial-Up and even though they are not even opening the threads the sheer size of GW is the first hurdle they have to surmount. Then if they do open any one of these picture heavy threads they can sit there for what seems like an hour waiting for the page to load all due to the pictures and the fact that folks just reposted those same pictures in quotes.

So to help alleviate the problem of dealing with slow servers on the other end of the redundant request, stop wasting server time creating redundant request AND to stop the massive slow down for our dial-up users.

We have stated that reposting pictures is no longer allowed.

The issue (massive slow-down) we just dealt with was caused by bad code left by an AD campaign and had to be removed from a server and in no way had anything to do with re-posting of pictures.

[Skydiver]

in addition to tame's wonderful answer....link to a 50K pic on at.com...and you download 50K for every person that sees it. then quote that pic 10 times in the thread and all of a sudden you not only have 50k times every person, you have 50K times every person TIMES ten.

bandwidth of the host site multiplies exponentially. and then you have people like at.com or rdanderson.com having to pay for gigs and gigs and gigs of bandwidth eveyr month, and 90% of it isn't visitors, it's hotlinked graphics

and that's in addition to the download issues Tame mentioned

[Thunderstorm]

Is anyone having problems with PMs?

Something weird just happened. I received a popup that said do you want to open in new window (no name of sender of mention of GW) so thinking it was possibly an errant ad or virus I just closed it. Then noticed an addition to my notifications. when I looked there was a message quoting a previous msg of mine but no response. About a minute later I received another popup - this time with the proper titles etc informing of a msg from another member. Again just a quote and no response. And when I looked in my private message list, only 1 of these messages is listed.

[TameFarrar]

To my knowledge none of the Moderators have indicated an issue with this so far.

If you would like feedback from members regarding this issue you may want to post this over in members helping members.

Also if you continue to experience this please take a screen print so if it is a a VB or GW glitch we have something to show Greg and Darren.

[jelgate]

This has been bugging me. How do you take a screen print?

[TameFarrar]

you can press the button on your keyboard that says print Scrn... some folks have to hold the *alt* key while doing that.

then you can open up a paint program or a word program and click paste and it will paste from your clipboard.

There may also be a way to do with *smart keys* but I do not know that way. Also there are programs out there that allow folks to do screen prints but they cost money :0

thie above is the free version built into your system

[ShadowMaat]

When was Chuck moved out of the SF&F folder? Had a confused moment tonight when I backed out of the thread and saw the "Ban this poster" thread somewhere below it. Was gonna get all outraged that someone had started one in the scifi folder.

Not bothered overmuch as it doesn't have a strong scifi element to it, I was just wondering how long I've been missing the fact that it was moved.

EDIT: Ah. I think it was JUST moved, right? OK, whew. At least it wasn't last week or something...

[TameFarrar]

When was Chuck moved out of the SF&F folder? Had a confused moment tonight when I backed out of the thread and saw the "Ban this poster" thread somewhere below it. Was gonna get all outraged that someone had started one in the scifi folder.

Not bothered overmuch as it doesn't have a strong scifi element to it, I was just wondering how long I've been missing the fact that it was moved.

EDIT: Ah. I think it was JUST moved, right? OK, whew. At least it wasn't last week or something...

It was just moved... We had a number of NON Sci-Fi or Fantasy shows showing up in the Sci-Fi and Fantasy folder and before they got to big they got moved to the proper folder.

many shows get talked about but they were started in Off Topic.. NCIS, CSI and the like... Chuck falls under that as well

[prion]

How does one delete a thread they started?

[Madeleine]

If you can't do it by fiddling with the buttons, it's best to report the thread and a mod can decide if it's delete-worthy.

[Alteran of Atlantis]

I don't know exactly what I did, but the threads with new posts aren't showing up as bolded. I think I accidentally clicked the Mark ALL Forums Read button. Will that return to normal next time I log in or do I have to do something to fix it?

Probably a stupid question... I have to stop screwing with computers.

[Skydiver]

it won't return to 'normal'

you're basically in 'start from here' mode....threads that were unread prior to your clicking that button will not come back bolded, even if you empty your own cookies.

sorry, there's no real fix for it. The button can't be unpressed.

[katya]

So, it means there's not such thing?

[Alteran of Atlantis]

it won't return to 'normal'

you're basically in 'start from here' mode....threads that were unread prior to your clicking that button will not come back bolded, even if you empty your own cookies.

sorry, there's no real fix for it. The button can't be unpressed.

Ah, thanks. Kinda figured that out after I really thought about it. I'm not that smart when it comes to computers.

[morjana]

What happened to the generic SGU News / Articles thread? It was moved earlier today from the Stargate Universe section:

http://forum.gateworld.net/forumdisplay.php?f=128

To the Stargate News section:

http://forum.gateworld.net/forumdisplay.php?f=15

And now when you click on the link:

http://forum.gateworld.net/showthread.php?t=60022

I get this message:

You do not have access this page. This could be due to one of several reasons:

1. If you've recently signed up, your new account may still be awaiting activation. Have you received your validation e-mail?
2. Your user account may not have sufficient privileges to access this page. Are you trying to edit someone else's post, access administrative features or some other privileged system?
3. Only advanced members may add items to the Calendar. Check the FAQ for more info.