Author Topic: New NSF Feedback Thread (Read 477313 times)

WulfTheSaxon · « **Reply #600 on:** 12/29/2015 02:00 pm »

I have the same problem in Opera beta 35 with extensions disabled, and Firefox 43.0.3 with a clean profile.

Arb · « **Reply #601 on:** 12/29/2015 09:30 pm »

May have raised this before Chris. If so feel free to delete.

The Ignore List is a great way to raise the site's signal-to-noise ratio to suit one's personal taste. However, it has a limit of 54 entries. The workaround is to prune names that haven't posted for a few months but, as of today, all mine have posted within the last week (so that's no longer an option).

Is there an easy way for your sysadmin to make the list larger?

Chris Bergin · « **Reply #602 on:** 12/29/2015 09:57 pm »

Quote from: Arb on 12/29/2015 09:30 pm

May have raised this before Chris. If so feel free to delete.

The Ignore List is a great way to raise the site's signal-to-noise ratio to suit one's personal taste. However, it has a limit of 54 entries. The workaround is to prune names that haven't posted for a few months but, as of today, all mine have posted within the last week (so that's no longer an option).

Is there an easy way for your sysadmin to make the list larger?

Heh! I don't have anyone on ignore....but I guess I can't. Didn't even know we had such a thing!

Had a look in admin and the only option is:

"Enable buddy/ignore lists"

No setting for the amount, but that is likely a Mark level thing. Something for his to-do list.

54 people on ignore?

Hope I'm not one of them otherwise this was a waste of time!

Star One · « **Reply #603 on:** 12/29/2015 10:07 pm »

Quote from: Chris Bergin on 12/29/2015 09:57 pm

Quote from: Arb on 12/29/2015 09:30 pm
May have raised this before Chris. If so feel free to delete.

The Ignore List is a great way to raise the site's signal-to-noise ratio to suit one's personal taste. However, it has a limit of 54 entries. The workaround is to prune names that haven't posted for a few months but, as of today, all mine have posted within the last week (so that's no longer an option).

Is there an easy way for your sysadmin to make the list larger?

Heh! I don't have anyone on ignore....but I guess I can't. Didn't even know we had such a thing!

Had a look in admin and the only option is:

"Enable buddy/ignore lists"

No setting for the amount, but that is likely a Mark level thing. Something for his to-do list.

54 people on ignore? Hope I'm not one of them otherwise this was a waste of time!

Not surprised you don't know about as it's a feature that's often disabled on forums by the admins.

Kind of surprised in some ways that the forum software still includes the feature myself.

Arb · « **Reply #604 on:** 12/30/2015 01:14 pm »

Quote from: Chris Bergin on 12/29/2015 09:57 pm

54 people on ignore? Hope I'm not one of them otherwise this was a waste of time!

Undoubtedly a symptom of spending waaaay too much time on the site. And being a grumpy old git.

But NSF does have over 30,000 registered members. Not sure how many are active but would guess 54 is a vanishingly small percentage.

Chris Bergin · « **Reply #605 on:** 12/30/2015 01:29 pm »

Yeah, didn't know we had it, but won't be disabling it as clearly it's of use to at least Arb and probably others. We'll look into seeing why it has a limit and if that can be improved.

cosmicvoid · « **Reply #606 on:** 12/31/2015 04:23 am »

Regarding the topic of embedded video clips in the forums, they pretty much seem to be all Flash encoded. Since Flash has become such a pariah (security risk), and has such frequent patch updates, I have disabled it because I'm tired of doing updates. It would be really cool if videos could be submitted in another format, or have a way for the site to reformat Flash submittals. Is this even feasable?

Lar · « **Reply #607 on:** 12/31/2015 04:41 am »

First: I just want to say I like how likes are now. I really appreciate seeing how many likes I've given (and like some others, I would like to give out approximately as many as I receive, just because... when the feature first appeared I was pleasantly surprised to see that I was already approximately equal)....

Second: I want to ask other mods if they've come up with a good plan for handling losing one's place due to mod action. If I am several pages behind on a popular thread, and there's a mod report, if I go look at it, that resets the pointer of where I am in the thread. Meaning I might miss the latest Jim-bon-mot or whatever

All I've come up with is to use a different browser for mod action (I have three, FF, Opera and a not quite legit copy of Chrome, native, and three more if I open up a windows VM)... is that what everyone else does? or just not care about where they are in a thread?

Third: There's a few people I'd LIKE to ignore but as a mod, I cannot ignore anyone.

Even though I'm a grumpy old git.

Chris Bergin · « **Reply #608 on:** 12/31/2015 12:18 pm »

Quote from: cosmicvoid on 12/31/2015 04:23 am

Regarding the topic of embedded video clips in the forums, they pretty much seem to be all Flash encoded. Since Flash has become such a pariah (security risk), and has such frequent patch updates, I have disabled it because I'm tired of doing updates. It would be really cool if videos could be submitted in another format, or have a way for the site to reformat Flash submittals. Is this even feasable?

Certainly something to look into. Which we will.

Chris Bergin · « **Reply #609 on:** 12/31/2015 12:59 pm »

Quote from: Lar on 12/31/2015 04:41 am

First: I just want to say I like how likes are now. I really appreciate seeing how many likes I've given (and like some others, I would like to give out approximately as many as I receive, just because... when the feature first appeared I was pleasantly surprised to see that I was already approximately equal)....

Second: I want to ask other mods if they've come up with a good plan for handling losing one's place due to mod action. If I am several pages behind on a popular thread, and there's a mod report, if I go look at it, that resets the pointer of where I am in the thread. Meaning I might miss the latest Jim-bon-mot or whatever

All I've come up with is to use a different browser for mod action (I have three, FF, Opera and a not quite legit copy of Chrome, native, and three more if I open up a windows VM)... is that what everyone else does? or just not care about where they are in a thread?

Third: There's a few people I'd LIKE to ignore but as a mod, I cannot ignore anyone. Even though I'm a grumpy old git.

I think the only way is what some other forums do. Everyone has their own username (like right now), but all the mods use one login account called "MODERATOR" that deals with all the moderation. However, having seen that in action, it does look like some robotic monster running loose moderating the place without a face. Not sure if I'm a fan of that.

Personal touch is always better, even if it results in someone getting banned from swearing and questioning people's sexuality (yep, that has happened) before finding a warm welcome for that sort of thing on Reddit, allowing him to claim I'm "worse than Hitler" for removing his "excellent comments" (yep, that also happened).

fgonella · « **Reply #610 on:** 01/04/2016 06:38 pm »

Just a suggestion regarding launch threads titles.
Currently, they get renamed to LIVE a couple of days before the attempt. If the launch is scrubbed the thread is renamed SCRUB, if it fails FAILED. Successful launches just remain LIVE forever.
Could they be renamed SUCCESS after confirmation of correct orbital insertion?
It would be useful to see it at a glance, even before opening the thread. (E.g. I wasn't able to follow the live update, when I log in I immediately learn that everything was all right.

Chris Bergin · « **Reply #611 on:** 01/04/2016 09:23 pm »

Quote from: fgonella on 01/04/2016 06:38 pm

Just a suggestion regarding launch threads titles.
Currently, they get renamed to LIVE a couple of days before the attempt. If the launch is scrubbed the thread is renamed SCRUB, if it fails FAILED. Successful launches just remain LIVE forever.
Could they be renamed SUCCESS after confirmation of correct orbital insertion?
It would be useful to see it at a glance, even before opening the thread. (E.g. I wasn't able to follow the live update, when I log in I immediately learn that everything was all right.

Hmmm! That's not a bad idea!

miscme · « **Reply #612 on:** 01/06/2016 03:01 am »

Is it possible to fix the bug where users can not open a topic when viewing the 'Recent Posts' list in SMF4Mobile view?

NSF 'Recent Posts' as viewed via Mobile (posts can not be clicked)
http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?thememode=mobile&action=recent

SMF4Mobile 2.0 'Recent Posts' (posts can be clicked)
http://smf-media.com/community/index.php?thememode=mobile&action=recent

Dante80 · « **Reply #613 on:** 01/06/2016 10:31 am »

Have you thought about changing the forum software from the SMF platform? If yes, which platform do you see most applicable for the upgrade?

SkipMorrow · « **Reply #614 on:** 01/06/2016 10:47 am »

Quote from: Chris Bergin on 01/04/2016 09:23 pm

Quote from: fgonella on 01/04/2016 06:38 pm
Just a suggestion regarding launch threads titles.
Currently, they get renamed to LIVE a couple of days before the attempt. If the launch is scrubbed the thread is renamed SCRUB, if it fails FAILED. Successful launches just remain LIVE forever.
Could they be renamed SUCCESS after confirmation of correct orbital insertion?
It would be useful to see it at a glance, even before opening the thread. (E.g. I wasn't able to follow the live update, when I log in I immediately learn that everything was all right.

Hmmm! That's not a bad idea!

Or maybe take it a step further and have a separate dashboard with upcoming and recent launches. It could either be a stand-alone page, or a small table that is visible on all pages in the forum, similar to how the header is there. It could be something as simple as a small 6-10 row table with just a few columns such as event name, launch time, and status. Or it could be a full page with all of the juicy details, with status icons and links back to other threads in the forum.

mtakala24 · « **Reply #615 on:** 01/11/2016 01:20 pm »

Quote from: Chris Bergin on 01/04/2016 09:23 pm

Quote from: fgonella on 01/04/2016 06:38 pm
Just a suggestion regarding launch threads titles.
Currently, they get renamed to LIVE a couple of days before the attempt. If the launch is scrubbed the thread is renamed SCRUB, if it fails FAILED. Successful launches just remain LIVE forever.
Could they be renamed SUCCESS after confirmation of correct orbital insertion?
It would be useful to see it at a glance, even before opening the thread. (E.g. I wasn't able to follow the live update, when I log in I immediately learn that everything was all right.

Hmmm! That's not a bad idea!

Topic text has a maximum length, which brings on its own limitations. For example, one cannot add "&Cubesats" into the current Formosat-5 launch discussion thread, which I just renamed to be in line with other recent threads.

Maybe, just maybe, suitable tags could be presented with the topic listing with an SMF addon?

Rocket Science · « **Reply #616 on:** 01/16/2016 07:50 am »

I didn't see the "like" button in the Dream Chaser Discussion thread. Cranky new born baby?

inonepiece · « **Reply #617 on:** 03/05/2016 03:10 pm »

Good job keeping things running under load, despite the hiccup recently with SES-9.

Still, perhaps now is the time to consider not investing in new servers, but instead investing in the capability to scale rapidly and by a large factor in times of peak demand via a provider such as Amazon AWS?

Your demand is spiky, and the timing of the peaks is also very predictable, so you should be in an ideal spot to take advantage of "cloud" hosting. We use AWS at work to auto-scale our ecommerce site (when demand peaks, more resources are automatically provisioned), as of course do many other companies, but full auto-scaling may not be needed for NSF due to the predictable timing. If it is necessary/desirable I don't imagine it would be unfeasible to keep much of your current setup and use AWS just to keep things running during launches. At least in theory that should be cheaper than trying to meet peak demand with a fixed set of servers.

Because of my respect for NSF, I'd argue that there's also a missed opportunity that "cloud" hosting could meet: the ability to (affordably!) not kick out non-logged in users when things go crazy. I do fear inaccurate and misleading information will be spread about risks like microbes coming back to Earth from Mars, runaway orbital space debris, or nuclear reactors getting launched for Mars, so especially at times of peak demand, I'd love the general public coming to NSF for its information about space exploration as much as possible, and a little less to the Daily Mail or Fox News.

Chris Bergin · « **Reply #618 on:** 03/05/2016 05:29 pm »

Great and timely post as this weekend I'll be setting up a thread for people within our community who are professionals with web stuff to brainstorm such ideas as noted above, through to implementation....along with other site improvements. That's the bonus side of a large community, we have a lot of people who actually care for the site who are specialists in a lot of fields. It's the biggest reason for how we got to being a 10 year old site, no question.

Cloud scaling is absolutely on the agenda, because as you note the current set up is capable for 99 percent of the time, even SpaceX launches, but when something happens like SpaceX not knowing the fate of a returning stage, everyone hits the site to see if guys here know anything - and that was the massive spike yesterday. Even without the spike we were very, very busy, but coping. The spike was also added to by Wired (1.8 million followers) tweeting us, sending a second surge with the regular surge. Also, some sites like SFN were down for about an hour apparently, whereas we were four minutes.....meaning SFN regulars were hitting us too.

I watch the activity via the embedded google analytics page I have access to and last night was amazing to see how the spike grew. It was like the supermarket doors opening on Black Friday!

From the little I know (Mark deals with it and will be the final say on the brainstorming) it's not just bandwidth but disk processing etc. If cloud scaling could allow for that, then we'd do it.

Also worth linking this post - as it explains we want to keep this format for several reasons, as much as it's not an optimum design for massive events...but that could be potentially improved:
http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=39348.msg1499878#msg1499878

Proponent · « **Reply #619 on:** 03/08/2016 02:32 pm »

I get this message a lot when attempting searches. Am I doing something wrong?