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Britmodeller getting too big? Should it be pruned?


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Britmodeller keeps getting bigger and more expensive to run resulting in migrations to new servers and requests for donations. Short of a Covid induced meltdown of the world’s economy this is not going to stop so perhaps it is time to consider doing something about it.

Is time to think about some pruning? I realise that this might cause howls of dismay as the site is regarded as source of invaluable references but there must be a lot stuff which is no longer relevant. I am referring to posts which have been rendered useless by the Photobucket fiasco and the vast number of posts containing comments of the ‘lovely’or ‘well done’ variety. Perhaps posts which have not been read for a certain number of years could be safely deleted? This might be inconvenient for the odd modeller in the years to come but would stop BM becoming too bloated to survive.

The above might be considered heresy, selling off the family heirlooms or just the ravings of someone who has spent too much time on his own recently but…

 

John

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I was literally just reading a couple of build threads from 2013 for an old kit I just acquired, by running a google search. While one did have dead photo links which was inconvenient, the other fully populated and was extremely useful; I'd be loathed to see BM pruned by simply deleting old threads that haven't been read for a while - goodness knows when that thread was last accessed.

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Selective pruning, or deleting, is a massively time consuming task; those who have tried to do this just on their own PC's and laptop hard drives will know what I mean.  To ask the team, which only consists of a few guys, to go back though thousands, or is it more, threads and posts to decide which can go and what should stay would be a gargantuan task.  Culling a particular forum, say Space or AFV's etc., could be achieved easily; however, selective deletions from individual posts would involve a great deal of time and effort.   Also, who decides what is relevenant or what is wasting space? 

I'm sure @Mike would also let us know that it is not just the size that's causing these high costs, which I believe is what you are leading to, but also the technology of the platforms, that allows us to do what we do with such ease on this great site.

 

cheers

 

Mike

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The Mods already do a limited amount of culling

I suspect this is mostly in the off-topics 'Chat' section. Especially the likes of old four-word story threads

Even very old WIP build threads can be useful to many.

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49 minutes ago, bootneck said:

Selective pruning, or deleting, is a massively time consuming task; 

Nail firmly smashed on head Mike.  That, I suspect, would be the biggest problem. Each comment read, considered, decision to delete or not made and then actioned followed by protests when everyone including the poster thinks it should have been left up. 
 

Potential for a very large :worms:

 

I could see chat, funnies and non modelling threads being culled en masse though without too many issues

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1 hour ago, bootneck said:

Selective pruning, or deleting, is a massively time consuming task; those who have tried to do this just on their own PC's and laptop hard drives will know what I mean.

 

Mike

I didn't think it would be easy or quick - just that it might be necessary

John

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Given that posts don't contain images - just text - the amount that would need to be culled to make any significant difference to file store issues would be in the tens if not hundreds of thousands. Perhaps the only way to make a significant, onging impact would be the removal of all peripheral forums. But

 

1 - I think the social element of Britmodeller is one of its charms, and removing this would make it a very different space

2 - the more social forums do a lot to keep the 'core' forums on topic 

 

Sure, we probably don't need all the well dones and broken photo links - but they would be eating very little physical storage.

 

Cheers,

 

Colin

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As photos are upload from your host in most cases they dont affect the server.

 

We invested in the last server to go more than we needed so its got some life in it yet. Plus the help from the members with donations is most welcome to keep it going. 

 

Yes culling old threads is a massive use of time we dont have. Between running the place, letting in new members, reviews and walkaround that is a lot of work. We do keep an eye on old threads but what might be considered useless to one member as a few pics dont load may actually help someone else as there is often tips etc in these older threads. 

 

Julien

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As Julien and a few of the others have alluded, it's not actually the threads and individual posts that cause the server to bloat and require replacing, although we have a comparatively MASSIVE database because of our 3 million+ posts (congrats us!), it's still well-within the capabilities of the server to dish out copies of the pages that our myriad memberss request, and it still has plenty of grunt to spare in the CPU department.  The next requirement is memory, which we specced on the high side to allow the server software to spread itself out a bit and respond quicker to requests, again keeping the members happy.  Then we have the SSD storage, which has been historically one of the main reasons we've had to move servers in the past.  The drives have to cope with the software loaded on them, the software scribbling on the disks all the time, the database requests, all the photos that we load for the reviews and builds that are part of the site.  In addition, since lazy Loading was introduced and we went to SSL and https for security reasons, we've been running a cache of all the images that have been served in the last 24 hours, again to speed up the experience for the members, so they're not tapping their fingers and rolling their eyes in frustration. :waiting:

 

So yeah - in the grand scheme of things the odd "well done" posts isn't using up too much of the site's webspace, neither is the occasional orphaned post.  While we're on the subject of that, if you see a thread that's become useless for that reason, Report it and we'll assess it and remove it if we agree :)  The Chat, Buy/Sell and other areas are already being culled after a number of months to reduce their overhead, more because we know that those areas become irrelevant once people stop posting there than to reduce the dbase's footprint on the disk TBH.  We can jibber-jabber with the best of 'em, of which there's no doubt :lol:

 

In summary, the reason the server costs so much is all those aspects.  CPU, memory, storage, all of which have a monthly cost associated along with the black box they're sat in.  It's not cheap having a dedicated server, and sometimes it hurts my brain having to manage it, but it gives the members and the lurkers the best service, so it's what we do. :yes:

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And we all appreciate everything you, Julien and the others do to keep the forum running.

I just don't know what I'd do with myself if it wasn't for Britmodeller! I'm sure my wife would have me offed somehow if I wasn't distracted by the forum. 

 

 

 

Chris

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Yes. It’s clearly a big commitment keeping this site running as well as it does and for such a long time (since 2007 IIRC?) Thanks to the mods and admins etc who keep this place running. It’s greatly appreciated.

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Would the site be able to resell the review copies of decals and models etc.  that haven’t been built in the “For Sale” section to help bring in some revenue to help support the site or do the supplier conditions forbid that?

Edited by LostCosmonauts
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Gidday All, I wish to add my thanks to those of Bandsaw Steve above to all who keep this site running. I've been a member for just over two years, active for about twenty months of this time and I have greatly enjoyed it.

     My knowledge of the technical aspects of a site like this is just about zilch. I find much of the terminology mentioned above gobbledygook and freely admit to being a technological dinosaur, who makes a neanderthal look like Albert Einstein. Something I have noticed in threads however. When a member wishes to comment on a post in a thread often the entire post they're referring to gets repeated, pictures and all, sometimes three or four times in a thread. I sometimes wonder if this is necessary, when it is possible to quote just a very small relevant portion of the post they're referring to. Would limiting the amount of a previous post being repeated make much difference to the size of Britmodeller? I think it could shorten the length of some threads a little.

     This is just an observation of mine, I have no wish to criticize anyone. Again, I express my thanks to those that run the site. Regards, Jeff.

 

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1 minute ago, ArnoldAmbrose said:

When a member wishes to comment on a post in a thread often the entire post they're referring to gets repeated, pictures and all, sometimes three or four times in a thread. I sometimes wonder if this is necessary,

Gidday Jeff - you're not alone in hating that, mainly for the amount of extra scroll-wheel/swipe action it causes.  I think it's caused by people not scrolling down to the "reply to topic" area, or not realising that they can both select which text from a reply they quote, or delete some of the pics themselves later by click/tapping on the pic so the little + pops up in the top left, then hitting delete.  It works better on desktop in my experience, but it does get a bit annoying.  It doesn't however cause much increase in the size of the database, as I'd imagine it's tokenised and the software just sees "ok, print that part of that post again in this box", rather than copying it all verbatim every time.  At least that's what a non-lazy coder would do - if a non-coder like me can think of it being an efficient way, hopefully it's been done that way for years by now ;)

 

:yes:

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6 minutes ago, Mike said:

I think it's caused by people not scrolling down to the "reply to topic" area,

Gidday again, I simply highlight the text I wish to quote, up comes a "quote selection" box which I click on, and the rest gets done for me. Anyway, I've said my bit, I'll get off the airwaves (or whatever 🙂). Regards, Jeff.

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23 hours ago, Mike said:

  Then we have the SSD storage, which has been historically one of the main reasons we've had to move servers in the past.

Thank you for the reply but what is SSD storage, please?

 

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2 hours ago, John R said:

Thank you for the reply but what is SSD storage, please?

 

I’m not sure, but I think it’s either something to do with submarine warfare or an unpleasant condition one might aquire on a Saturday night. 

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How about creating a baseline time? For example, the admins could delete/archive all posts prior to Dec 31st 2013. Just a suggestion. And I cant say thank you enough for admins who keep this great source up and running. 

Edited by stalal
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7 minutes ago, stalal said:

How about creating a baseline time? For example, the admins could delete/archive all posts prior to Dec 31st 2013. Just a suggestion. And I cant say thank you enough for admins who keep this great source up and running. 

An understandable thought but running my own business I can say that we have to keep emails as knowing if anything pre a selected date is important and needs kept precludes a blanket all data deleted before date X. 

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59 minutes ago, stalal said:

How about creating a baseline time? For example, the admins could delete/archive all posts prior to Dec 31st 2013. Just a suggestion. And I cant say thank you enough for admins who keep this great source up and running. 

I've found posts from years ago to be very helpful so if @Mike is happy to keep things as they are, why are people suggesting trimming the site down? I don't understand.:confused:

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The part I dislike about really old posts is that the original posting date isn't included on the topic title. 

I see a new post on a subject that looks interesting, only to find out someone has " LIKED " something from a dozen years ago. Most irritating!

 

 

Chris

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7 hours ago, stalal said:

How about creating a baseline time? For example, the admins could delete/archive all posts prior to Dec 31st 2013. Just a suggestion. 

I will simply say I would be strongly opposed to this suggestion.

 

It might be unrealistic at many levels,  but I would like to think that our substantive posts (Eg WIP and RFI logs) will persist for some significant time into the future. I will almost certainly never write a book on modelling, but it would be nice to think that someday, someone might look back at one of my projects and get some guidance on how things ‘used to be done’

 

Furthermore there is already some absolute gold in the older posts!

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There are a large number of unfinished build threads around, not sure how much space they would be taking up but one idea would be to delete any that were started, say more than 2 years ago. When I have searched for info on a kit it is annoying when you find something only to then see it has 3 posts and the person never went any further with their build. So to me having those threads taking up space is a waste.

 

If photos are taking up too much space it might be possible for people to just post a link to the source instead of uploading the pic to the forum?

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16 hours ago, ArnoldAmbrose said:

Gidday again, I simply highlight the text I wish to quote, up comes a "quote selection" box which I click on, and the rest gets done for me. Anyway, I've said my bit, I'll get off the airwaves (or whatever 🙂). Regards, Jeff.

I use cellular exclusively, am a Neanderthal when it comes to tech and if I can figure out quoting then there is no excuse for it.  

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