Bandwidth

[teamsaint]

As I have said in relation to Wine, "Moderation" is the watchword at Château Caliban!

Well quite. But talk is cheap.....!

[french frank]

Wouldn't one solution to be have more moderators?

Hosts were allowed to act as mods while I was 'absent' recently. They still are (because I cannot keep up the hours as I used to). I'm aware that there was initially some discomfort having multiple mods acting unilaterally as being seen as 'undemocratic' and possibly leading to censorship. I think having one Administrator/Moderator who oversees any action should overcome objections.

I am confident that most members dislike the slanging matches. It isn't only that it reflects badly on Friends of Radio 3; it discourages serious debate - when people look at the What's New? list and then find there is just a stream of abuse or triviality when they were following what was a substantial debate, they just go away - at least, I do.

We have House Rules/Terms & Conditions as to what is not acceptable behaviour, and it is clear (permanently displayed on the Home Page) that, in posting here, members are accepting those rules: I don't see that people can disapprove if action is taken against those who then ignore the rules.

I am very gratified that in two and a half years we have created a lively, varied forum - a credit to you, the members who post here: I hope that continues.

[mercia]

Alphabet Association thread

if the AA thread is one of the causes of "busyness" I'm happy for it to be padlocked

[Nick Armstrong]

Well quite. But talk is cheap.....!

As long as the wine isn't... or at least, doesn't taste as if it is

[Petrushka]

We do have two Diversions forums, one of which is left open (and the url given) to allow participants to continue. Funnily enough, they seldom bother once the thread is invisible to the general public or to ordinary members who don't actively seek them out. But I feel ashamed at some of the language and behaviour exhibited: the other Diversions forum is closed, when I feel nothing could possibly be rescued.

I do feel Radio 3's original idea of Platform 3, and probably how they conceived it, was a genial (and géniale) one. It allows people to introduce all sorts of interesting topics (and Topics!).

I have to confess that my patience is not inexhaustible and people who persistently engage in hostilities (including 'mild banter' - as they see it), covert or overt, may find themselves in premod - and the system means that posts can lie there for a day or so, by which time, when they appear, they will have been buried by newer ones and no longer part of a current discussion.

I for one have got no idea how to access the 'Diversions' Forum.

Mild banter is a difficult thing to judge on a public forum. What might be mild banter to you and me might easily be misconstrued by other more sensitive souls as a personal attack. I would welcome a more rigid enforcement of the House Rules and a policy of placing offenders in pre-mod for a while. The message should then get through that their behaviour is not acceptable. That this will affect one or two seasoned and respected posters on the music threads is unavoidable but for the general good is necessary, I think.

By the way, asked to name the four most likely posters to go in the sin-bin I reckon the same four people would appear in most people's lists.

[eighthobstruction]

While I realise money is not an essential part of this discussion....can you point out how a donation be made....

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

While I realise money is not an essential part of this discussion....can you point out how a donation be made....

I was wondering about this too, though this could cause other problems. Generosity should not assume a right to control.

[Resurrection Man]

To answer a couple of questions posed, my understanding of the bandwidth problem is as follows.

It has nothing to do with the number of posts that are sitting there historically on the forum hard drive. That is simply down to a few GB of storage. The bandwidth requirement is based on the number of times that the forum is accessed by anyone or anything (the 'traffic'). People don't have to contribute by posting...simply reading a post uses bandwidth.

Now out there are quite a few sites that monitor this traffic and if a site has a lot of traffic then, as FF has said, it acts like a honeypot to spambots that try to register and post advertisements for manly enlargement or worse still viruses etc. Even though the forum software might have filters to prevent these spambots from opening an account (things like Captcha etc do this filtering), the very fact of trying to register by the spambots generates traffic...which eats up the bandwidth quota (which is the bit that costs the money) and as FF has said 2/3 of the bandwidth is being eaten up by these spambots. My understanding is that it is not the actual size of the posts (otherwise ahinton might be asked to pay a rather generous contribution to the forum bandwidth coffers )

You might be asking where these spambots come from. Generally speaking they are coming from a huge global network of computers (usually a PC) that have been compromised in some way by viruses etc and are running this spambot software in the background - unbeknowst to the PC's owner. One or more might even be running on your PC. The trouble is that many PC owners are too thick/stupid/lazy to regularly update their anti-virus software or even be running any anti-virus software and that is how the spammers can run these spambot networks. Personally if I had my way then anyone who got a virus and wasn't up-to-date with their anti-virus software would have their computer confiscated.

Lastly you might have noticed that the internet seemed to be running a bit slow of late. The reason for this is that there has been a bit of a battle between ...well, forum rules forbid me from calling them what I really think of them....spammers/criminals/hackers/idiots...sometimes under the banner of Cyberbunker and their self-styled Republic...whose spokesman is a jumped-up self-styled low-self-esteem misfit called Sven Olaf Kamphuis...and the good guys Spamhaus who work very hard to keep the internet working smoothly and free from the likes of Cyberbunker. The attack that Cyberbunker have been trying on Spamhaus is called DDoS which basically bombards Spamhaus's servers in an attempt to either make them crash, allow them to be hacked or make them unavailable to users. The downside is that all these attacks overwhelm the internet which makes life very slow for you and me. Cyberbunker carry out these attacks by using this huge network of spambots...which brings us full circle to the forum's bandwidth problems.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

if i read this right we should all adopt good manners and possibly contribute to the costs of greater bandwith etc to combat the spammers ... i am up for that on both counts ..

[Nick Armstrong]

if i read this right we should all adopt good manners and possibly contribute to the costs of greater bandwith etc to combat the spammers ... i am up for that on both counts ..

Hear, hear, Calum

I find this statistic amazing:

Right - the problem isn't the content of the forum (no of posts &c.) but the amount of traffic it generates. Currently about 67% of the visits are from spambots attempting to register (and failing).

At any rate... mercia:

if the AA thread is one of the causes of "busyness" I'm happy for it to be padlocked

fear not! AA is safe!

[teamsaint]

My preferred footy forum offers free access including 3 posts a day, or unlimited posts for £5 a year.

[mercia]

well thank you to RM in #23 for explaining things [to me] - seems to me that if "simply reading a post uses bandwith" the 'problem' is beyond anyone's control - how can you stop anyone or anything from reading a post ?

EDIT - on the subject of anti-virus software updating I certainly hope I'm not a guilty party - not a day goes by that my computer tells me it is automatically updating X, Y or Z - or should I be more proactive ?

[Resurrection Man]

well thank you to RM in #23 for explaining things [to me] - seems to me that if "simply reading a post uses bandwith" the 'problem' is beyond anyone's control - how can you stop anyone or anything from reading a post ?

EDIT - on the subject of anti-virus software updating I certainly hope I'm not a guilty party - not a day goes by that my computer tells me it is automatically updating X, Y or Z - or should I be more proactive ?

It's not people reading posts or even making posts - it is those wretched spambots that use up 2/3 of FF's bandwidth.

As far as your other question goes, I'm not really a PC expert, I'm afraid.

[MrGongGong]

By the way, asked to name the four most likely posters to go in the sin-bin I reckon the same four people would appear in most people's lists.

As long as they (or we ??) don't have to form a string quartet

[Nick Armstrong]

As long as they (or we ??) don't have to form a string quartet

More like a wind ensemble