Insimenator.org

Hi all

Can I suggest that we can have more messages in our inbox. If that is not possible could that the person we are trying to mail that's inbox is full, get some sort of message warning them that someone is trying to sent them a message and they should empty their inboxes. I think our limit is 10 at the moment.

*Pierre your inbox is full, tried to sent you the link to your request outfit*

Be glad you're given an inbox at all, slave! :P

Humor aside, the tiny inbox size is by Pescado's decree. Something about saving room in the DB or the like.

 ::) Yeah, with no beta testing I kinda forgot I was a slave....having all this lovely freedom at the moment  ;D

Thanks, I will remember to empty it out as soon as it is about 50%, so that people can still pm me while I am sleeping LOL  :D

How long before the site gets its own server and can go back to being like it was meant to be?  Are we having a donation drive or what?

we don't have a definitive eta on servers yet Inge, however we are gathering information so watch this space!

I know it's slow going but bear in mind that most of us have never dealt with having to sort out our own hosting and servers and whatnot - never even dreamt that we would need to! - so this is a HUGE learning curve for us!

The inbox space isn't gonna get much larger. The previous Kathy regime devoted a massive amount of space JUST to the junk-storage of a kajillion useless PMs. And there is simply no reason why anyone would ever get that many PMs! Seriously, what are you people *DOING* with all that inbox space? Receiving THAT many PMs within the span of a single visit is kind of absurd, don't you think? I have never gotten more than 3 or 4 between visits, and that is when something is on fire!

As for another server, at the moment, the site is already on its own server, so moving it to a different server at this point in time would simply result in pointless downtime and be a waste of resources. I could always use another server, but there is simply no point in racking up an additional bill that no one needs when present resources are adequate for the task.

It may be that on the prior site, deleted PMs stayed there. I got messages from Kathy alerting me that she was getting rid of messages that I had deleted some time back. Perhaps if the delete would actually delete the PM instead of simply hiding it while retaining the things and taking up space.

Could some regular admin-led purging of old PMs be done, rather than limit new ones to quite such a low allowance?  I can't remember seeing the option natively in SMF, but maybe there is a mod for it?

Also consider vaping old chatter and game threads - anything that really isn't of interest once the time is passed.

SMF does not include such a mod that I am aware of, and also, blind admin-purging of PMs might wipe out the one thing you're actually keeping because it's useful or relevant to some long-running project. The fact of the matter, however, is that 99% of user PM content is utterly vapid and there is no reason a normal user should retain that many, and indeed, allowing them to retain it will simply teach really bad habits. Do not retain old messages. Read them, respond to them, delete them. PMs stored in DB add weight to the DB and slow down all DB operations. If you MUST retain the old messages, save them to flatfile on your personal hard drive.

We did.

Can't argue with that. My world is the world of mainframes and that pretty much is exactly what is done there.

Surely you could do that the other way round, save your important project-related PMs to flatfile on your own disk?

Pros and cons:
IS might have several thousand members.  Many or most of these might have 10 useless old PMs stored up, as opposed to the 10 or so users who might have an important project-related PM.  Many or most of the users with 10 useless old stored PMs will not have logged on in months.  Why leave 10,000 useless old PMs lying around when you could turn that number to 0 instantly?

The person who is receiving important project-related PMs may have more than 10 of those important PMs sent to him/her during their sleep hours.   The 11th and 12th will never be received.  Isn't this worse than the project-modder having to save his PMs to disk before they become old enough to purge?

Good point. I neglected to say that the purging I am most familiar with does not relate to number, but to age, after 90 days, they are gone if not saved. To modders/creators, 10 might be too few.

Why, indeed? If you can find a mod for purging crap specifically from dead users, let me know. Otherwise, they'll probably be purged when the users themselves are purged.

The Creator group has a somewhat larger inbox for that reason. Still, who the hell gets that many PMs at once unless they are soliciting spam in some way?

What's the flap? I mean, on PMBD we're damn lucky to have space for five PM's in total, so really folks, what's the big deal? Delete is your friend, because as some folks have found, Private Messages are not private once they are sent. Read, respond, screen cap if you want, then delete.

Paden, why are you making a comparison with PMBD?  WTH does this site have to do with PMBD?   So now we have the rule of 6 in age like MATY, and the rule of 10 in PMs like PMBD.  And I am supposed to go on believing the plan is to NOT run it like another Pescado site?

It's not a problem for me personally, as I am not historically a frequent user of this site, or the site whose data it sprang from.  And I have certainly learnt to cope on other Pescado sites anyway.  But if the idea was to keep the old ambience and style so as to fool the old users (some of whom were here because they were deliberately trying to stay away from either MATY or MTS2) into thinking they were still at home on the new site, it's a bit PHAIL.

Is there a point to this other than to try to cause trouble? Do you WANT to go back to Walt? Not that you CAN, since Walt ineptly blew up his site, but still. The fact of the matter is that the inept technical management is NOT part of what is being carried over, and if sensible numbers are inputted into the entry blanks by people who know what they're doing makes it "look like MATY", well, then, too bad: These numbers are used because the same technical constraints exist everywhere, not because of a specific desire to make the sites the same. The limitations exist because if none were set, users would retain EVERY SINGLE PIECE OF JUNKMAIL EVER RECEIVED. Believe me, this happens. It's a massive mess. On other sites where I've seen the DBs, some users have retained OVER 9000 PMs, nearly all of it utterly meaningless blather with absolutely no value. Half the DB was this crap. This is what we're aiming to prevent.

While your proposal for additional junk management features, such as the removal of dead PMs from dead users, is good, such features supplement, not replace, the existing policy on mailbox bloat.

It's not so much the mailbox limits, which you have devised due to experience of running forums.  (although I do not accept that 6 year age intervals have any efficiency merit at all - that is purely a Pescadoism)

The issue for me is the discrepancy between expressed intention and outcome.  For many people, your apparent promise of not imposing a Pescado influence on the site was decisive in whether they would support you or Delphy.  And yes, if that's being a troublemaker, then that's what I am.  I am not the only person who is disappointed in you not keeping your word, but I tend to be the one who sticks my neck out furthest.

I am saying this because I am thinking of the people, "lambs" if you like, who latched onto Insimenator.net because they were intimidated by both you and Delphy in different ways and it was a real alternative, where you didn't have any power over them or the staff.  Kathy and Eric may be disgraced scammers, but they produced a forum that was running just like hundreds of people liked it and there was no reason the ambience and visible leadership needed to change so drastically while it was being tidied up.
 

I drew the comparison because from what I'm told, the inboxes are twice the size here as on PMBD. The old InSIM site had way bloated PM boxes, I can say that from personal experience. Mine had two hundred all total, which was silly and I don't know why I did that. Now, with as many members as were at the old place, imagine if they also had that number or more. That's quite a lot of space, when you think about it. There's nothing wrong with running a leaner, less bloated forum when there are many users registered. Smaller sites can get away with bigger PM box limits, but it's silly to believe that a bigger site can.

Ummmm....


Come on Pescado, you know as well as I do that that statement is complete and utter BS.  More PMs only affects the size of the PM table itself.  It has absolutely zero bearing on the rest of the database or the site.  The only thing that more PMs could possibly slow down is the actual PM inbox listing itself.  The vast majority of members on MTS2 have less than 5, and all told the entire PM table is 412,657 rows.  Does it slow the site down? Nope.  Only if you have a very badly configured mySQL could this even *possibly* have an impact (and even then it's extremely limited)... and we both know that my mySQL skills are a hell of a lot better than yours. 

I don't mean to be difficult but using this as an "excuse" to have miniscule PM inboxes really doesn't fly.  I thought that this was going to be a clone of Insim and setting excessively small PM inbox sizes really isn't anything to do with that. Cutting back the limit really has no bearing on make the site faster - it's just something the so-called "leader" decided.

For creators, having such a small PM box (which is used for both sent and recieved messages) can make it very hard to organise things, or to allow them to be asked permission, etc for items.  You know, things that PMs are actually valuable to be used for and stored.  Putting your own artificially low limits (with a damn poor excuse of why to boot) isn't the best thing to do for this site.

Oh Thank you for that Delphy.  When I read this, I went and had a look at my own site set up.  I am no site wiz, but that's what I thought when I looked at it. 

I've been coming to all of these sites for a long time, and I'm sorry to see that the attitude here is going to be the same as Maty and PMDB.  I'm a jaded old gal, I can deal with it, but you know it really gets old reading negative, pushy thread posts.  For all the problems at the old Insim, we had Joy (who lives up to her name), and daily updates, and new young modders spreading their wings.

I would like to see that back.  I'm with Inge on this.  I see people here who used to seem to nice sounding, well, sort of nasty.  We don't all have to play follow the leader into the worst parts of their personality.

Oh, there's definitely an impact. When the typical user is hoarding up 9000 PMs and it takes 5 minutes just to dump the entire PM table, YOU DEFINITELY NOTICE. Plus, I've operated mailbox limits before MySQL ever existed. Just because your fancy schmancy new methods allow you to generate more bloat without dragging the server to a crawl doesn't mean you SHOULD. This kind of slovenly attitude is exactly why half the TS2 datafiles consists of dead weight that could be purged with no loss of functionality.

The creators have a larger inbox for that reason.

That's just a side effect of the fact that the MATY source code was imported to get this place running. Removing it would make it harder to keep the code synchronized, though.

As far as I know, we still do. I don't tell people how to behave, so if the "attitude is the same", it represents an actual shift in thinking, and not anything *I* did. After all, MATY and PMBD have factions which hate each other, despite that I run both sites, and I certainly didn't create THAT. Since I have not changed any of the admins here, if people are becoming nasty, that's something that's up to them to deal with. I just run the code. And while Delphy believes that the PM bloat has no effect, and he may even be mostly right, it hasn't ALWAYS been that way. Just as you don't go spending more money on junk merely because you got a pay raise, you don't increase the level of bloatware just because you can.

I mean, just look at the newsbox:


We have El Presidente in line one, and typical MATY lolcatspeak in line 2, neither of which featured in the old insim.net

This is not going to have the majority of old users feeling "oh good I am home again!".  The site was meant to have been saved for the old members, not for the glory of the revolutionaries!

Pescado, I *know* you didn't instruct them to write that, or to keep that there.  I am just saying maybe the staff should consider thanking you warmly and sincerely in private messages or chat rather than by flying your flag all over the site!

Okay, yeah, the news is a bit old now. Admittedly, not everyone has gotten the message.

Inge, if you would actually look around the site you'll see that the ambiance is STILL here. Yes, we have some features now that are inherant at MATY and PMBD however as this site is technically supported (run) by Pescado then there are a few things that we have to accept

None of the staff, to my knowledge, have run a site as big as insimenator.net was and indeed, none of us were permitted in anyway to help with the back-office running of it. I know shit about servers and DBs and all that crap so I have to take Pescado's word that a lot of the stuff Kathy was doing at the old site was what contributed to it constantly running like thick treacle. If it means reducing things like PM allocation to keep the site running at this great speed then I would think that a lot of people are more than happy to up with that?

Other than the rule of 6 and the pm thingy (and all the damn BLUE everywhere!) this site feels nothing like MATY or PMDB to me. Paden just happened to be making a comment that other sites have less PM space. She could just have easily picked a different site to compare with but she didn't because PMDB is a site that she's familiar with, so WTH are YOU getting your knickers in such a twist?

If you think this site is PHAIL then that's your prerogative but there are plenty here that don't and are more than happy just to have the site back

Ali, I don't think you have been reading my posts in detail.  I haven't called the site "phail", I was talking about one stated aim of the operation.  I have also addressed the issue of your understandable gratitude to Pescado and how that, as well as his very kind continued help, doesn't require PMBD or MATY influences, or Presidential stamps to be in evidence as soon as one connects to the site.  Pescado himself does seem to understand what I was saying.

Pescado, it is highly unlikely that every user would have "over 9000" PMs in thier inbox.  At MTS2 I am the person with the most PMs and I have some 4000 odd.  Like I said the vast majority have less than 5.  The point here is not neccesarily technical (although people seem to believe whatever you say blindly with no asking of whether it's actually true, and you admitted yourself that it doesn't really affect things).  The point is that you are applying your own "explanations" onto things to "justify" them with faulty logic.  Just becuase you *may* have run a mail server in the past really has little comparison with running a large site.  Some things apply, but you said yourself that mySQL is "my" thing and not yours - but somehow I am in the wrong when I point out the flaws in your argument?   If you wanna talk security, fine, but leave the actual technical database knowledge transfer to somebody who knows what they are talking about, please.

You said that utting the PM limit too high would affect the *entire* site and slow it down, but then you said it would only affect the PM inbox.  Which is it?  I know full well that a large PM inbox doesn't slow anything down other than, well, the PM inbox.  It has no effect on the other tables at all, especially not with good indexes and well written SQL code.  Using it as an excuse that it would slow everything down is, quite frankly, incorrect.

Instead of putting your draconian miniscule limits on everybody, you should have actually kept it at the levels they where at before - after all, this *is* supposed to be a clone and not another instance of Pescado-land.  Isn't it?

Ali, let me tell you this - reducing the PM inbox will have little to no impact on the site "speed".  What *wouild* is optimising the mySQL configuration parameters and having good database indexes, key buffers and so on.  Your "esteemed" leader really doesn't know much about all of that - but thats fine, his server, your site. 

If, however, you want some *actual* expertise, feel free to ask.  Otherwise, carry on.

*4000*?!? Are you mad? What POSSIBLE reason could you have to retain 4000 messages?

No, I didn't. YOU said it wasn't true. I expressed some guarded skepticism at this view, as it most certainly DOES have a perceptible effect on how long it takes to dump the DB, but you have more experience in the specific MySQL implementations. I WILL, however, point out that your claim has NOT been historically true in regards to how excessive PM accumulation affects database efficiency.

So you claim. I argue that the "mailserver" functionality is simply a subset of the functionality involved in a site with additional functionality, and if users retaining 9000 messages was enough to significantly impact the performance of the mailserver back then, it will similarly continue to impact performance now. Perhaps not to same degree, given that computers 20 years ago were significantly less powerful, but this does not matter. Just as a only fool increases his spending merely because he has managed to acquire more money, what represents a good personal expenditure policy for a beggar is as solid an expenditure policy for a billionaire.

The fact remains that if we were to allow users to retain, say, 1000 messages, the amount of DB space devoted to storing useless PM garbage would exceed the amount of DB space used for the actual USEFUL forum by an order of magnitude! You can't possibly be denying that this has NO effect, and the effect on dump time will NOT be insignificant.

The fact remains that you can argue that the impact may be negligible, and I am willing to believe you, but it is entirely immaterial. The impact woul most certainly NOT be negligible if every user behaved as you did. And, as I pointed out, there are clear security ramifications on a global level to encouraging this sort of irresponsible mail behavior. I'd know. You want to know how I managed to even get this in the first place? A SIGNIFICANT part of this can be blamed specifically on IRRESPONSIBLE MAIL RETENTION. Irresponsible mail retention is perhaps the second-largest security threat to a site, second only to "morons for admins". Of course, the two tend to go hand-in-hand...

No, you said that. What I WILL point out is that if the PM inbox is bloated, the site will take that much longer to dump and transfer during routine backups and maintenance. And, in fact, large PM counts DEFINITELY impact the time it takes to run the SMF DB maintenance, and that sufficient volumes of DB bloat will turn it from an operation that is atomic to an operation that takes several seconds to complete. THAT part is clear empirical fact.

Suffice it to say that I believe there are plenty of technical reasons for clamping down on mailbox bloat policies, and I *KNOW* from direct, personal experience in exploiting such that allowing and encouraging mail retention is a massive security threat. You wouldn't believe the stuff people conveniently leave in their bloated Gmail inboxes. An anti-PM-hoarding policy has historically been technically sound and remains EXTREMELY sound from a security perspective.

What have the amount of PMs per box got to do with security exploits?  You could allow just one PM in one box and it could be the one that has the problem.  Sorry, but I am calling waffle on this :D

However, this wasn't my point; my original point is now largely satisfied.

All I was trying to say is that staff and president alike should remember *who* they saved this forum for, and it wasn't for people who already have their primary online home at MATY or PMBD.

Certainly, that one PM could be the significant one. But if that one message blocks the user's inbox, he will be forced to delete it soon enough. It will no longer be a bomb we are holding. Any decision about security is a tradeoff against usability: The most secure computer is the one that you reduce to component subatomic particles. But it is not very usable in such a state. The PM limit is chosen as a balance between usability and reduction of security threat: A 10 PM limit for standard members should be adequate enough for any NORMAL purpose that doesn't involve hoarding tons of pointless nattering interpersed with dangerous information. By forcing the user to be concious of the limits, he becomes concious of exactly what he is keeping. Call waffle all you like, but let's not forget that I KNOW security exploits. Security is my life.

Certainly: Some of the behaviors are simply artifacts created by the importation of the forum code. There is no specific reason they are retained, other than the lack of replacement, and the fact that using the same codebase makes it easier to maintain. Others are strictly technical and security concerns, like the PM limits, and do not specifically pertain to the codebase. The staff are already working on different themes, anyway: I myself have no involvement in this because I do not really comprehend aesthetics. Suffice it to say if you don't like the look, someone else will probably make a different one soon enough. It just won't be me, because to me, everything looks the same. :P

Just a little tip that I have found to be useful.  The outbox has unlimited capacity.  If there is a message you want to save, you can click quote, send it to yourself, click to save it to your outbox, then delete both the original and the one you sent yourself from the inbox, and you will have a quoted copy of the original message in your outbox.  :cool:

Thank you for the Info

Pierre :cool:

Wait, your doing backups using mysqldump? *points and laughs*

Also yes that "security" justification is total crap.

But hey, the "leader" has spoken and is content to run a site that has *less* features than the original... so who am I to say anything?

Carry on.

For the record, you still have me :) Still Joy, just a busy Joy, with it being the holiday season and me getting ready to fly off to Nova Scotia in only four more sleeps. *dances*

Yeah, we still haz the Joy and we got her a brand-new industrial coffee-maker, so she's even more caffeinated than ever! :D

Um, I'll probably be stoned for this, but just my two cents on the matter...to be blunt, I'm a little put off by the fact that all of these "Pescadoisms" are suddenly being implemented on the site. The tiny little inbox (10 PMs only? Jesus Christ!), the Rule of 6, the sudden increase in lolspeak. Correct me if I'm wrong, but Pescado was never really part of Insim before this revolution, right? I thought that this saving of the site was done in the name of its members and family. Shouldn't we get the final say in this inbox issue, not simply because Pescado doesn't believe in having larger inboxes or views it as a matter of security? Honestly, I'd have to go with Delphy on this issue. D:

Insim isn't MATY, nor is it PMDB. While I fully support the pirates and download from the Booty like mad, I don't really think that it's right for Insim to be a new means of projecting Pescado's personal beliefs. .____.; I like my large inbox, plain and simple. I highly doubt that it is going to have much of an effect on the rest of the site for the same reasons that Delphy already stated. It was a feature of the old site, and I'd like for it to carry over here. I really don't give a <snip> if MATY only lets you have five PMs in your inbox -- we aren't them.  :confused:

Watch you mouth and edit your post before I do it for you. The rule on swearing is still in force. We are on one of Pescado's servers and until we get our own, we will roll with the changes or get run over. Yes, Pescado was a member of InSIM before the revolution. He helped out on a few things when K&E had trouble, same as Delphy did. And before you tell me that no one ever talked to you the way I am now at the old site, bullsmeg, I was there too, and was a supermod, so get your knickers out of the twist and quit stirring the pot. Your thoughts have been seen and taken into consideration. Now edit the cussing in your post before I do.

Yes, Pescado was a part of insim, not an overly active poster, but that can actually also be said for quite a few other people in this thread, but most definitely an active member and he helped out K&E with issues, as did Delphy

Not sure where Pescado has projected his personal beliefs?? Does Pescado actually HAVE any personal beliefs??!! :D

Sudden increase in lolspeak? Where would that be then? Ohhh, you mean my thread about the new site - We can haz new site NAO? Well, that IS just one thread out of the many hundreds that are already on this site

now, I realise that people are unhappy - no-one likes change - but change we must if we want the insim community to continue. And as paden said, peoples' thoughts on this have already been taken into consideration as the inbox allocation has actually been increased to what it was when the site was first set up. The staff explained to Pescado that people did in fact need a bigger allocation and that's what we got. Granted, it's not much bigger but it is bigger.

and yes, the outbox does seem to be unlimited, so there's a work round for you right there

And if the technical people in this thread could please NOT stoop to childish playground behaviour it would be most appreciated ;)

I don't get it. People were Kermit flailing about wanting a site, and now that we have one, they're Kermit flailing because it's not exactly just like the old one instead of being happy that we're up and going. People, get your Kermit flailing in order, would you please, and make up your mind about what to KF about, would you please!? Just remember that we're here now and without Walt... thanks to Pescado.

Though, being without Walt may not have been the most important issue for the majority of normal members.  For many of them, being without Pescado may have felt the more important. 

I think we can get the best of both worlds by trying as far as possible not to ram an annexation to PMBD and MATY down their throats.   

Pescado is quite capable, of being technical admin to, and owner of, the site without necessarily having a load of lolcatting and stompinating everywhere to make him feel at home.  It's not actually him doing the cutlass waving.  It's one or two(?) other people who I would have thought might have made their first concern their ordinary longtime users that they are meant to be making feel at home at the new location.  Not to point any fingers directly, you understand ;)

*scritches head* Er, what swearing? I just read over my post three times and don't spot a single cussword, so I'm not exactly sure what you mean by that.  :confused:

OH.You mean d*mn? Honestly, I did not even count that, but yes -- I'll edit that right out, sorry.  :p

And I apologize Paden, I wasn't aware that I couldn't express my opinion. I'll shut my big fat mouth from here on out. :]
 
Thank you very much, Ali! I really appreciate the kind reply. It's wonderful that the inbox has been increased a little bit, and thanks for notifying me about the no limit on the outbox. I'll get in the habit of saving messages there instead.

And LMAO @ personal beliefs! Hahaa, yeah. I was mainly referring to the inbox thing and the rule of six, but since you've cleared that up for me, it's all fine and dandy.

Fake edit: Inge, you are much more articulate when it comes to expressing things than I am. Kudos!

Oy. I'm locking this thread before it erupts into flames.

I'll say this much: deal with the limit on your inbox, mild language has never been an issue, and people are free to state their opinions; even if someone else may disagree and/or interpret them differently. End of story.

ETA:
Starfishy-chan: it's the phrase "Jesus Christ" Paden was alluding too. Doesn't rub me the wrong way personally, but it's not considered PG-13.