ajm

What "routine" maintenance causes a forum to be closed at zero notice once a week for several hours with no explaination? [img]images/smilies/mad.gif[/img]

If its a technical problem then is should say just that, with a description of the problem and an estimated time to fix.

p.s. Apologies for the grouchiness, I have been forced to do some work and I'm not happy!

ajm

In retrospect maybe this should go in Scoobynet Policy....

tiggers

Yeah, so it can be ignored there too.

Would be nice to know the answer though wouldn't it?

tiggers.

ajm

Indeed it would.... terribly bad form to leave your users locked out with no explaination! [img]images/smilies/mad.gif[/img]

If I did that to my users at work I would be fired!

Paulo P

iTrader: (42)

Not a moan but it would be nice to know when it's back up again but maybe I should just get out more

Goochie

I too was also force to do some work earlier this morning

ajm

still waiting for an answer.....

Goochie

Surely the closures could happen 3am or something??

I know a scoobybof may have to get up to do it but surely thats a better option than preventing satisfactory use of the board? 1 scoobybof gets annoyed as opposed to 50 users.

NACRO

I would imagine they can close this board as often as they like as none of the users are paying for a service.
Sounds fair enough to me.

ajm

Of course they can do what they like, but since its the members that make the site one would think that they would try to keep them sweet!

I don't feel genuinely aggrieved, my comments were tongue in cheek, its just that it takes very little effort to change the standard notification to explain whats going on.

Reffro

.

[Edited by Reffro - 12/12/2003 3:53:14 PM]

Markus

I don't like SN being down, however, being in IT, and dealing with servers, I know that things can just "happen" and might take a little while to sort out, and there is nothing you can do about it. Yeah, a more technical explanation could possibly be given, but the time taken to write that explanation would be time taken away from the maintainance. The message is just a placeholder really, better than getting a 404 page not found or somesuch, at least you know vaugley what is going on.

As for maintainace at 3am or some other ungoldy hour, hmm, well, remember that Simon and Shaun do have jobs other than keeping an eye on SN, and thus they are probalby doing what I'd be doing at 3am, and that is sleeping, and the last thing on thier mind would be to run maintaince on SN.

Bottom line here, SN is up most of the time, so be thankfull that it is here, remember, it's run by enthusiasts, and you're not paying for it.

ajm

Same here, which is why I know that users would rather be kept informed of progress, even if it means taking an extra 5 minutes to put up a notice.

[Edited by ajm - 12/12/2003 4:38:22 PM]

Markus

Maybe a post in 'feature requests'? requesting such a feature be implmented.

Ian Griffiths

Maybe appreciate that keeping something alive 24/7 is difficult, 3am maintenance is out of the question and the less time spent wording the 'down' message, the more time fixing the problem?

ajm

I do appreciate that, its my job.

5 minutes in several hours is hardly going to matter is it. Especially when people are wasting more time than that having to check to see if its come back or not.

imlach

Ah, but it's not your 5 mins is it!
Remember, as someone else said, this is a free service provided by people who give up their own time for it. The 24/7 support you are giving is paid for I presume, and therefore people demand more.

The placeholder they have is fine - if they spent 5 more minutes detailing the problem, then mucked up and had to REword the message to give a revised time, they'd waste another 5 mins!!

Jeez.....some people.

imlach

Also, while it can be down for several hours, they may not be actively doing maintenance in that time.....it might be some task that is running away happily in the background for 3 hours while someone does something else.

So, to say, "5 mins is hardly anything in a few hours" is a bit naive, and I'm sure you know that from your support job.

Also, if there was a problem at midnight, and this was not my real job, there's a chance one may leave it to the morning to sort out....

ajm

As already stated, I don't feel financially or otherwise aggrieved by the situation, hence the fact it is a free resource is immaterial. I am simply saying that is accepted practice to put up some kind of explaination as a courtesy to your users.

I accept sometimes this isn't possible, and I havn't said anything on any of the previous outages. However, this one was over 12 hours and its hard to believe that no one could have thought to put out some communication during this timescale.

Just a bit of advise from me to Scoobynet - take it or leave it!

tiggers

Jeez imlach, you sound like you're in the wrong job - you've missed you're calling - IT support needs you

Sorry, whether the service is free or not is not the issue as it's still a service - that SN have chosen to provide for free. There really is no reason why something a little more informative couldn't be posted when this sort of thing happens.

Why not tell the truth even if it means saying they don't know when it'll be back up - my customers always get the truth from me no matter what and do you know what - they appreciate me all the more for it.

Just my 2 cents worth.

tiggers.

[Edited by tiggers - 12/13/2003 6:09:07 PM]

Ian Griffiths

ajm - good point well put, hopefully SN admin will take that on board.

ex-webby

Hi Guys

That's a standard message that comes up whenever the forum software is switched off, and the particular outage was due to a technical hitch whilst both shaun and I were were unable to get to get to a PC to sort it out, apologies.

Outages of that length of time is very rare indeed.

Usually if it is going to be down for that length of time we put up a more meaningful message, but it is also a safeguard system that switches the software off in the event of a restart or similar, so at times it happens automatically and cannot be switched back on until shaun or I can get to it.

Apologies again.

All the best

Simon

ajm

Thanks for the response Simon