Forum getting too popular?

[BravoV]

I hate forums, they are too addictive, they suck my life away! HELLLLLLLLLLP!

Dave.

Looks like this forum intensifies the sucking ..... 

Just to pop out with latest data on 1st Aug started at Aug 2010, a complete 2 years data, my few comments :

- Page views growth definitely shows a healthy sign, congratulation Dave !
- New members are declining, sign of saturation maybe ?
- New posts (reaching 300/day) and new topics (approx 20/day), definitely shows the life sucking is getting stronger ..... 

[Mint.]

Personally for me I have lost interest in the forum a bit recently, ever since the shout box disappeared, the forum seems to be so "lifeless" and dull.

[EEVblog]

Nice compilation, thanks.
The recent posting of the forum thread in the Youtube description is probably helping.

Dave.

[HSPalm]

Weren't you struggling with spam bots a while back, and that might be the sudden peak in new members you see on the graph?

By the way, this forum loads pretty slow right now, and I just lost a whole post because I requested another captcha image, and the damn thing reloaded the whole page and wiped my post!

[T4P]

What happened to the shoutbox anyway?

[EEVblog]

By the way, this forum loads pretty slow right now, and I just lost a whole post because I requested another captcha image, and the damn thing reloaded the whole page and wiped my post!

It shouldn't. Server bandwidth looks fine since the bot attack.
What's with the captcha image? That's only during registration, not for posting.

Dave.

[OndraSter]

It shouldn't. Server bandwidth looks fine since the bot attack.
What's with the captcha image? That's only during registration, not for posting.

Dave.

And for first 5 posts or so (if nothing has changed since the date I registered).

[Mint.]

What happened to the shoutbox anyway?

Got taken down since the spam bot spammed it... I think

[jucole]

Forums to me should be like component selectors so I can filter out the noise from the useful nuggets of info; If the system allowed people to tag / group their replies and posts, these could be filtered on viewing. It would be interesting to see what difference such a system would make to long threads and the latency of the server response time with relevance filtering of posts.

[bradleytron]

There can come a point where a forum becomes so popular that you just can't keep up, the interesting stuff gets so buried in the noise or everything gets swamped by dumb newbie questions.
However I think the subject matter of this forum is sufficiently specialised that I can't see that happening anytime soon.

It may be worth splitting some of the more popular categories - on which subject maybe a test & measurement section might be worth adding, as there isn't currently really a section for test topics other than reviews.
Perhaps also FPGA/CPLDs, maybe more to stimulate discussion than move the minimal existing traffic on the subject.

I agree with everything you wrote here except the silly comment about dumb newbie questions. Eventually newbies become experts and I am sure at one time you asked your share of stupid questions! Please refrain from insulting people.

[bradleytron]

I'm strongly convinced that the forum popularity is (mostly) a good thing. It will bring knowledgeable people, interesting subjects to discuss and with some luck, expert ears to hear your troubles and distress calls.

I'm usually reading all new posts daily (as technical appetite and affinities allow) and I'm finding this task quite manageable at this point. It's a perfect opportunity and place about learning new stuff even if it's not directly relevant to your immediate interests; everything it's bound to be useful at some point. Thanks to all the forum members for this!

The only challenging aspect is how to keep your calm when you read appallingly stupid, boneheaded, un- or mis-informed things from people who don't care for spending 5 minutes on learning by themselves and prefer bothering people instead. It's difficult to not go BaW-ing on their ignorant asses.

Best wishes,
Dan

Funny I was thinking the same about you!

[HardBoot]

I've noticed the forum/site goes a bit slow at times and doesn't load at all from time to time.

Is all of eevblog.com running on the same web server or do you have multiple separate instances running on your ded to speed things up? Since you have cPanel you could have multiple accounts with WHM and have one for forum and one for the frontpage, helps uptime since one can't bring the other down.
eevforum.wahtever would make things easier.

Also, deds aren't the best way to go for hosting a website unless you have a good hookup and fast RAID array, RAID0 is actually slower than a single drive unless you have a buffered controller.

HostGator's cheapest ded is $175 a month... for that kinda money you could get a smaller host to customize you a server specifically for hosting.

[Chet T16]

I'm getting an error now, seems like a good place to report it 

[T4P]

It's findchips's issue again ...

[Zad]

Do Findchips do the advert at the bottom too? I'm getting:

"Struts Problem Report

 Struts has detected an unhandled exception:

Messages:

•Unable to load class for JSP"
 

[T4P]

Do Findchips do the advert at the bottom too? I'm getting:

"Struts Problem Report

 Struts has detected an unhandled exception:

Messages:

•Unable to load class for JSP"

yes ...
But oddly i'm not getting any issue

[EEVblog]

I've noticed the forum/site goes a bit slow at times and doesn't load at all from time to time.

Is all of eevblog.com running on the same web server or do you have multiple separate instances running on your ded to speed things up? Since you have cPanel you could have multiple accounts with WHM and have one for forum and one for the frontpage, helps uptime since one can't bring the other down.
eevforum.wahtever would make things easier.

Also, deds aren't the best way to go for hosting a website unless you have a good hookup and fast RAID array, RAID0 is actually slower than a single drive unless you have a buffered controller.

HostGator's cheapest ded is $175 a month... for that kinda money you could get a smaller host to customize you a server specifically for hosting.

Yes, it's all on the same cPanel instance for eevblog.com
The bandwidth and access requirements are way below the capacity of the current server.
HostGator has worked great from day one I installed it, so there is no need to move servers.
It was lighting quick when installed, and should be lightning quick now, it is for me here in Oz. If anyone is seeing any slowness then it's probably their end, or some other obscure problem, not the server.

Dave.

[BravoV]

Updated chart with latest data on 10th of Jan 2013, looks really good, especially from business point of view imo. 

Btw, since this thread was started at Feb 2012 when Dave complained that it was too many new unread posts to catch up, well that was around 200 per day, now its reaching new height at 400 posts/day.   

Dave, looking at the spike on "New Member" starting from mid Nov 2012, is that only genuine normal members or spammer's accounts included ? 

New chart attached below.

PS : Fixed some error, chart updated, refresh your browser.

[dr_p]

Dave, looking at the spike on "New Member" starting from mid Nov 2012, is that only genuine normal member or spammer's accounts incuded ? 

There are similar ones in 2011 and 2010. It almost looks like a reversed FFT. ))

[JoannaK]

300-400 new posts and tens of new threads daily.. No wonder I feel like I can't keep up. 

[PostaL]

Glad I could help

[EEVblog]

Dave, looking at the spike on "New Member" starting from mid Nov 2012, is that only genuine normal members or spammer's accounts included ? 

There has been a massive increase in spam registrations.
Currently it's sittign at 2185 new members awaiting approval, and I onlt cleared ti a few days ago!
All of them are spam of course, as genuine ones respond to the email confirmation and do the human test.
So almost all get flagged as spam, and never actually get through to post anything or register an account.

Dave.

[chickenHeadKnob]

 I follow three technical forums this one, CNCzone and endless_sphere (electric vehicles) all are very good and are sucking my life away! They all have similar structural problems. They all feature very long threads chock a block with valuable technical information spread (buried) through-out the forum. An example: Tinhead's Hantek/Tekway hack that brought me here. I don't expect the thread originators to put in the work and time to summarize and maintain a wiki like entry at the first post although Tinhead is doing so (double plus hero!). The same happens at the other forums and I don't see a solution.

[Simon]

I suppose the forum popularity is not a bad thing but brings it's own problems with it. When we were smaller the quality was higher as there was a higher portion of knowledgeable people. We now have many more "home work" threads and there are a lot more arguments that need moderator intervention and spam is probably up. But there is nothing that can be done and ultimately the more the merrier, the downside is purely due to human nature.

As for the find chips bar I only see it when I am logged out and frankly for anyone outside europe they are useless because despite buying someone out to make it a money making tool they have not really improved it one little bit, I only get RS and farnell for UK suppliers and no one else. and i have to keep clicking links to make prices for larger quantities to appear and really I'm only going to bother to look at find chips when I need thousands of parts and a slight price difference can mean a decent saving and buying from abroad becomes worth while, if I'm buying 10 of something a 1p difference is not going to bother me.

[Mechatrommer]

When we were smaller the quality was higher as there was a higher portion of knowledgeable people.

please send my regard to Hero999 if you happen to meet him. I hope he's doing fine. i dont know how his face looks like but he is a good member.

We now have many more "home work" threads

so what do you expect? the worst thing imho is this forum is going to be a nonsense, religious and political discussion. just to hang in wasting time having fun while "bored at work".