*hairy eyeball*
Jun. 25th, 2012 04:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
branchandrootDear 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.
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.
no subject
Date: 2012-06-26 03:29 am (UTC)Once upon a time I planned to start a rare fandom exchange that would take place in summer as a more convenient time for many people for such a thing.
I contacted shalott to see if she would be willing to share her matching script and the modifications she had made to Automated Archive to host Yuletide. I said it was fine if they were a technical mess, I am pretty savvy and had a husband to volunteer into helping me get everything up and running.
She declined, saying she was too busy to package it up. In fact, she indicated she was busy coding the replacement archive! And really the fastest way to solve the problem would just be tothe send my helpful tech savvy coder over to help code on the OTWarchive software. One presumes precisely to her specifications of the road map.
I did not pass on that offer to my husband, no.