branchandroot: Yuugi facepalming (Yuugi oy veh)
Branch ([personal profile] branchandroot) wrote2012-06-25 04:27 pm

*hairy eyeball*

Dear AO3 decision makers,

How can you be lying so much? Your noses should be growing. Shame!

No, tag filtering is not down because FF.N had a brief witchhunt for too-porny fic and all-caps summaries, and now everyone is coming to AO3. You might wish that, but no, and a good thing, too, considering the actual reason.

Tag filtering is down because that filtering menu was written so astonishingly thoughtlessly that that menu alone took up almost two thirds of the server load. Not new accounts, not new fic being posted, not too many notification emails being sent. No. That one menu was sucking down so much horsepower that even a modest increase in traffic, as for example from a new movie fandom coming to read on AO3, flatlined the servers even before FF.N had it's latest little round of "no hot porn, we really mean it".

The reason, the real reason, is not an increased load. It's the incredibly poor programming choices initially made for that menu. You put up graphs demonstrating this fact on your own blog, for pity's sake. So, please, stop lying through your teeth about how it's all because of how beautiful and popular you are, and incidentally how evil the competition is. That's really embarrassing to watch.

Also, if you want to convince people of how hard you're working to fix it, try not making experienced programmers jump through one-way-mirror paperwork and "training" hoops to help. Then you might manage to not burn out the few programmers who are still locked in, and possibly even avoid setting yourselves up for yet another clusterfuck down the road. Concept!

Yours in deep exasperation,
Branch

P.S. Repeat after me: "Blacklight", "Solr", "not reinventing the wheel". Honestly.
vom_marlowe: (Default)

[personal profile] vom_marlowe 2012-07-02 03:26 pm (UTC)(link)
The whole situation makes my stomach hurt. It does not have to be this hard! And there are reasons why people-managing and project-managing are discrete skills. They could buy a book or hire someone or even just listen to advice from people who have done things! ARRRRGH.

...maybe I need more tea. No, even tea will not help.
synecdochic: torso of a man wearing jeans, hands bound with belt (Default)

[personal profile] synecdochic 2012-07-02 03:38 pm (UTC)(link)
And I know there are people who have been trying to change things, Jenny in particular has had a bunch of conversations with me about the things that could be improved, but nothing ever gets fixed even once the flaws are identified. Which, you know, means there's something majorly, majorly wrong in there.