There is an excellent community here on the Paizo fora discussing interesting topics and great products and the interaction with Paizo staff is very good. The fora, however, are horrible technically:
1) There seems to be some kind of bug that eats almost every thread I try to start and even many posts in already existing threads. This is particularly frustrating, since I have lost many hours of typing to this. I have, of course, now taken to copying the post before submitting it, but I still forget sometimes, particularly if I have been typing for long, say a playtest and then lose everything.
2) If I repost the same thread several times in an effort to get it to work, sometimes more (but not all) of the threads appear although they didn't appear initially.
3) The search function of the fora, searches everything on the Paizo website, but the fora.
The post/thread eater is a known bug. Sometimes it spits the post back out later, sometimes not.
The nerfed search is temporary.
Gary (The Postmonster) is working on it.
He's working on LOTS of things.
Poor, overworked Gary.
I blame the smurfbolds.
Too true. We'd better give Gary respect. His songwriting software will one day control the world and we, the human race, will be its slaves.
Oddly, I have never come across the whole eaten post bug and searching has been working just fine for me.
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I've had many a post eaten by the monster. And I have given up searching. I used to use the Google site: search but that seems to be nerfed also. You also can no longer use Google site: to search for images. I guess they secured the site too heavily.
But I figure since it doesn't cost me any $$ I can live with it. If I were paying for it, say like DDI, I would be upset. Let's face it, the site still works better tna the WOTC site.
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Oddly, I have never come across the whole eaten post bug and searching has been working just fine for me.
The eaten post thing happens in one of two instances (or at least used to, one might have gotten fixed)
1) if you have the window to edit a post open for a long time
or
2)you are using tabbed browsing
Let's face it, the site still works better tna the WOTC site.
And with 75% less pixel barf and unnecessary margins.
As a frequenter of many messageboards, there are things to recommend about these. The largest recommendation is the community and the close connection right to the Paizo folks though! If Gary is that busy, wouldn't it make sense for Paizo to get him some help for these boards? The numerous downloads of Pathfinder Alpha suggest that Paizo has a huge internet presence and the boards could be disincenting continued participation by many.
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If Gary is that busy, wouldn't it make sense for Paizo to get him some help for these boards?
They're looking. Have been for a while.
If anyone is interested, see here.
Let's face it, the site still works better tna the WOTC site.And with 75% less pixel barf and unnecessary margins.
Well said!
Terrible? No
Could be better? Yes
My guess is that forum traffic has expanded in volume by about 10 times or more since pre-Alpha 1. It is really challenging coping with that kind of growth.
Has a post eating monster? Yes, unfortunately. "eats almost every thread I try to start and even many posts in already existing threads" -- Sounds like an exaggeration but ymmv. I do have issues with it, maybe one out of five long posts.
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I think it was Vic who said the post eating monster only comes out when there are moments of high band usage. Normally occurs on a long reply that has been open a while. In essence, to save bandwidth, the server cuts you off due to high demand.
Can be annoying, but I prefer that over paying for these forums.
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Let's face it, the site still works better [than] the WOTC site.
And with 75% less pixel barf and unnecessary margins.
Amen to both of these sentiments. These boards are not terrible by any means. At least the threads are not jumbled messes with endless vanity signatures. It's all straight-up information on these boards.
The thread monster has struck in my neighborhood a few times. It is usually because I've kept a tab open for a long time. They always show up, though, so I am patient the few times it happens.
I did notice the search function was a bit strange this week. For me, I'd select Messageboards and get results for Everything. No problem, though.
Don (Greyson)
West Jordan, Utah
I blame the sm*rfbolds.
Yes...yes, it must be the, uh...the sm*rfbolds!
Nom, nom, nom...
I have had too many web sites/applications eat my posts. I always type everything up in a good word processing application first. Plus, I get instant spell check as I type with most.
Chief Technical Officer
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I think it was Vic who said the post eating monster only comes out when there are moments of high band usage.
That's old, and no longer true. There are a number of reasons why posts get delayed or eaten, and we haven't figured out solutions to all of them yet, but high demand is not usually one of them.
Has a post eating monster? Yes, unfortunately. "eats almost every thread I try to start and even many posts in already existing threads" -- Sounds like an exaggeration but ymmv.
I wish it were an exaggeration, but unfortunately that is not the case. It literally does what I said. In fact, I cannot recall a single thread that I tried to start that was not 'eaten', so I inserted the 'almost' qualifier just as a fail safe that my memory is not perfect, so some threads might not have been eaten. They do generally appear after multiple postings of the same thread and sometimes they then even appear twice (although I frequently have to repost them more then twice and I don't ever remember the thread appearing more than twice).
It is true, that I do use tabbed browsing very extensively and I tend to start threads with very long posts that take a long time to type and thus keep the 'typing window open for a long time'.
The title including the words "technically terrible" may have been an exaggeration, but the technical problems are rather serious. Mind you, now that some posters in this thread revealed that tabbed browsing and long opening times for a 'typing window' contribute to the thread disappearances, I can take steps to mitigate the issue.
As a frequenter of many messageboards, there are things to recommend about these. The largest recommendation is the community and the close connection right to the Paizo folks though!
Agreed - the community and Paizo involvement are big plusses in favor of these messageboards and even outweigh the technical issues - after all, I still keep on coming here.
Let's face it, the site still works better [than] the WOTC site.And with 75% less pixel barf and unnecessary margins.Amen to both of these sentiments. These boards are not terrible by any means. At least the threads are not jumbled messes with endless vanity signatures. It's all straight-up information on these boards.
Well, apart from the daily scheduled downtime that was in deep night for the U.S. users, but during the day for us Europeans, the WotC boards were technically pretty good. I did mostly stop coming there after the Gleemax rollout, however, which changed things for the worse and created a more confusing layout and structure of the boards. With 4E coming along, I stopped visiting their boards completely, as I have very little interest in that edition.
I have to agree with you about the signatures, however, I do appreciate the fact that Paizo boards don't these page-long signatures that clutter up space like on the WotC boards.
What if the Pathfinder Goblins have crossbred with the server Smurfs?
That's where the psionic Blue Goblins come from!
-10,000 bonus points for using a Latin plural to describe a singular whole.
I like the forums, and I don't expect technical perfection from a free service, even when that service serves to promote a brand. All things in time.
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Chief Technical Officer
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Vic, was you or gary that said that part of the problem is that while the hardware is more then capable of handling the stress on the site, the software used for it isn't?
It's not a load issue... it's just a bug. Basically, we have a bunch of applications that are supposed to communicate with each other about when things are changing, but some posts just don't get communicated properly sometimes.
Vic, was you or gary that said that part of the problem is that while the hardware is more then capable of handling the stress on the site, the software used for it isn't?It's not a load issue... it's just a bug. Basically, we have a bunch of applications that are supposed to communicate with each other about when things are changing, but some posts just don't get communicated properly sometimes.
Interesting - thanks for the explanation.
Ow! It just bit me! Bad bug!
Ow! It just bit me! Bad bug!Sorry.
We will vanquish you some day!