Experimental removal of pinned topics

[Maf 32,300]

Hi everyone!

Ever since the forum upgrade that happened in November 2019, a number of people reported that the Game Discussion section takes a long time to load and often gives an error during loading. After a long investigation, we came to the conclusion that the issues are caused by presence of three very large pinned topics in the section, which accumulate to almost 8000 pages altogether.

As an experiment, I moved those topics to the Resources section, to test if this improves loading times of Game Discussion. I will monitor it for a few days, and afterwards we'll decide on a more reasonable way to do it.

In the meantime, please vote on the topic's poll to share if you had the same loading issue in this section and whether moving the large topics improved it.

Just in case, here are the links to the moved topics:

 

Sorry for the inconvenience.

[Guest]

Ironic because this topic itself is pinned.

[Ninja 10,468]

1 minute ago, Ap3xA1pha said:

Ironic because this topic itself is pinned.

The issue is related to the sheer size of the aforementioned topics, not the fact that they were pinned. 

[Guest]

Just now, Ninja said:

The issue is related to the sheer size of the aforementioned topics, not the fact that they were pinned. 

Exactly, so it's adding to the total list of pinned topics.

[Maf 32,300]

1 minute ago, Ap3xA1pha said:

Exactly, so it's adding to the total list of pinned topics.

As said in the first post, the three pinned topics had almost 8000 pages of content combined. They were moved and now there's one pinned topic, with less than 1 page of content. That's 8000 times less 

[3dL 454]

Excellent for the forum.

[iMoneyMaker 4,500]

For me Parkour Topics take a while to load. Mostly the Parkour Clubs section. 

[3dL 454]

7 minutes ago, iMoneyMaker said:

For me Parkour Topics take a while to load. Mostly the Parkour Clubs section. 

yaaa

[Maf 32,300]

20 minutes ago, Adriel.RB said:

Neat, now I can load this section with no problem

but now the off topic has the same issue as what this has

Did off-topic always have that issue for you? Because it also has a couple of topics with a ton of pages.

[3dL 454]

10 minutes ago, Maf said:

Did off-topic always have that issue for you? Because it also has a couple of topics with a ton of pages.

I think on all pages there are no custom pages

[DieselPlatinum 5,121]

So that's was why it was taking so long to load? And Damn 8000 pages? Thought my tablet was just getting too old to be loading such things.

 

But anyway, the game discussion sections almost loaded instantly for me now.

[mjmj5558 2,346]

For me, sometimes, profiles fail to load.

[Viking4s 10,791]

weird stuf fin the forum "Read more" tag that do not work

[coconuttree 519]

Works for me

[Viking4s 10,791]

9 minutes ago, coconuttree said:

Works for me

It is for some of the quotes that have like 3 lines quote only, the option shows up (but it should not), but there is no more to read.
It works on quote is more line.

[Maf 32,300]

57 minutes ago, Viking4s said:

weird stuf fin the forum "Read more" tag that do not work

Yes, new plugin was added recently to help deal with "overquoting". Now, when someone quotes a whole massive announcement topic only to reply "nice", it will just show the first part of the quote.

28 minutes ago, TSY_the_crazy said:

Don’t you dare do this to off-topic.

Why not? It could greatly improve loading times. Besides, we can compromise by archiving the large topics and recreating a new identical version of them with a link to the old topic somewhere. I think that's the best way to go about it.

[Viking4s 10,791]

27 minutes ago, Maf said:

Yes, new plugin was added recently to help deal with "overquoting". Now, when someone quotes a whole massive announcement topic only to reply "nice", it will just show the first part of the quote.

[Maf 32,300]

11 minutes ago, TSY_the_crazy said:

Anyway, I blame the forum update. If you hadn’t updated it, we wouldn’t have had all this trouble.

The forum update has a lot more disadvantages than we anticipated, but the benefits are quite good too. I mean, previously I was literally unable to do a number of very important tasks due to various bugs and errors.

As for what to do with pinned topics, I agree with you. We'll revise potential options.

[coconuttree 519]

Is it possible to archive those topics except the last 10-20 pages?

[DieselPlatinum 5,121]

5 hours ago, coconuttree said:

Is it possible to archive those topics except the last 10-20 pages?

Same should happen to the topics in the "turrets and hulls", "game mechanics", and probably "resources" subforums.

[Joeguy 941]

if it speeds things up for some forum users, it's probably a good thing to do the pinned topics like this.  But, I suspect that when they are slightly less visible like this that the number of posts and views will diminish dramatically.

 

Might there be a way to keep the topics pinned for maximum exposure, but archive 95% of the older posts somewhere else?  Provide a link to that storage/archive section from within the topic...like a header post at the top of each page like I have seen in several posts from moderators.

 

 

Edited May 31, 2020 by Joeguy

[DieselPlatinum 5,121]

So as you may know, @Maf posted this topic in the game discussion.

So now the administration is figuring a way to fix the long loading issue of when we enter the game discussion section.

 

@coconuttree, had a great suggestion of archiving all the posts of the topics except 10-20 of the most recent pages.

 

For now, the sections that need to be cleaned out the most are Game Discussion and Communications And Feedback.

[Toby 2,938]

12 hours ago, DieselPlatinum said:

 

Thread merged.

---

We'll consider all of the possibilities.

[DieselPlatinum 5,121]

So, any update on what you're planning to do with this situation?

[Maf 32,300]

6 hours ago, DieselPlatinum said:

So, any update on what you're planning to do with this situation?

We will create new copies of the topics with original authors and move the last few pages of content into them. The old topics will be archived and linked in the first post.