Welcome To Websleuths # 3

[FlossyMay]

I don't see how it would get closed "by accident'' since it takes Tricia or a mod to do that. But you can send a PM (converstion) to them to ask, I would guess.

Thanks, Spell. I was just wondering because there's no message saying it was closing. It happened just after a boy's body was found and it's been closed for about 12 hours now.

 

[cybervampira]

Thanks, Spell. I was just wondering because there's no message saying it was closing. It happened just after a boy's body was found and it's been closed for about 12 hours now.

I asked myself the same question and already alerted a mod.

 

[FlossyMay]

I asked myself the same question and already alerted a mod.

Oh, great. Thanks, cybervampira.

 

[Spellbound]

I think mods and Tricia are really busy and maybe short-staffed, Flossy. It may take longer than a day or two for them to go through threads. It may need some clean-up. A few times I have seen a thread close at the family's request.

One of my watched threads has been closed for a couple days so far.

ETA: I see what case you mean. I don't see a specific reason, so I am clueless. Sorry Flossy. I hope it re-opens

 

[Jasper52]

Thanks, Spell. I was just wondering because there's no message saying it was closing. It happened just after a boy's body was found and it's been closed for about 12 hours now.

Are you referring to the Jordan Vong thread by any chance as I was wondering about that one being closed?

Found Deceased - CO - Jordan Vong, 7, Denver, 6 Aug 2018 *endangered*

Could somebody explain why this thread was closed? TIA

 

[Jaanniss]

Dear Websleuths Members and Guests,


No one should be getting any points right?

So I've only been here a few days and I see on my 'member tab' I have 3 points ... at this rate I will not last long .... I need to at least know what offense I have caused... I've liked being here and I meant no offense. I am sorry.

 

[FlossyMay]

So I've only been here a few days and I see on my 'member tab' I have 3 points ... at this rate I will not last long .... I need to at least know what offense I have caused... I've liked being here and I meant no offense. I am sorry.

Trophy points are different than penalty points or whatever they are going to call them. Right now as far as I know, we don't have a way to see our penalty points. If you haven't received a message saying your post was removed, you are probably in the clear.

 

[Jax49]

So I've only been here a few days and I see on my 'member tab' I have 3 points ... at this rate I will not last long .... I need to at least know what offense I have caused... I've liked being here and I meant no offense. I am sorry.

You have 3 Trophy Points...that's not a bad thing!

Points for breaking rules are totally different, so relax and enjoy the site.

Click on the "3" and it will show you why you earned those points.

 

[Jax49]

1. 2
   Awarded: Sunday at 10:40 AM
   Somebody Likes You
   Somebody out there liked one of your messages. Keep posting like that for more!
   
   
2. 1
   Awarded: Friday at 7:41 PM
   First Message
   Post a message somewhere on the site to receive this.
   

 

[flute4peace]

It has been a tough week and a half. Keep in mind that the last time we had traffic like this (when The Killing Season aired) we were running not just the one server but 2
In other words
40 cores of processor (80 threads)
8 512GB SSD drives (these are the super fast hard drives) set in Raid 1+0 for extra speed and redundancy
256GB of DDR4 memory

at the time we were on vbulletin which only needs half the strength that xenforo does. So not including traffic, our needs doubled but our power halved. This is not a bad thing, trust me the one server still has lots of room for growth. The only reason we had doubled up on the server was because we just did not know what to expect with the TV show.

I guess what I am wanting to say, and you are wanting to hear, is the machine is now kicking butt and taking names. There have been no issues in 20 hours of solid traffic. There was a period last night with database errors, that was just me spending my sunday night doing some tweaking for perfection. This does not mean there will not be any more problems. A strong traffic peak can always happen and may require another 1 time adjustment. If that happens you are looking at another downtime of less than 5 minutes.

That is the good news now here is the bad news. over the last years there has been a ,major shakeup in the forum software community. We decided it would be best, instead of updating software versions back then, to wait and let the dust settle amongst the software companies. In other words the best way to plan for the future was to continue living in the past for just a bit longer than we would have liked. By staying on the older version of vbulletin, it meant we must also stay on the older versions of the server software that puts these pages together. This leads to further issues, for example when we switched to xenforo we could not go to the latest and greatest version we had to go with an older version. By making this change though I can now go update the server software to much more secure and much faster versions. Once the server software is updated, then I can bring the actual forum software to the latest version (depending on the availability of add ons that WS uses).

I am going to let our own dust settle before beginning any of the above mentioned steps. I will keep you informed each step of the way. Remember, when you see the forum down it is not because the sky is falling, it is only because we are moving ahead with our plans for the future.

Dave

Just want to say thank you for this information. It helps those of us in non-tech-land understand more of what's going on.

 

[FlossyMay]

Are you referring to the Jordan Vong thread by any chance as I was wondering about that one being closed?

Found Deceased - CO - Jordan Vong, 7, Denver, 6 Aug 2018 *endangered*

Could somebody explain why this thread was closed? TIA

I thought I had responded to this, but I guess I didn't click post, lol. Yes, that's the same thread. I thought it might have been done on accident, but it's still closed so I don't really know.

 

[Esse]

Tricia,

How can I get my member info corrected, I have 189 pages of likes, but it shows 0. Thank you.

Mercedes

Did we ever get an answer to this?

 

[Jax49]

Did we ever get an answer to this?

Yes. It is what it is. Only "likes" entered since the software changeover will show.

 

[CARIIS]

<modsnip: snipped quote that was removed>

IIRC I am not sure penalty points are in any way connected to trophy points.

I think its like an auto TO - if a threshold is hit .The number of penalty points is determined by the degree of the "offense" I think!

Pretty sure there are all sorts of options as to how the penalty points work on each website that uses the xenforo platform - kind like customizing a car!!

 

[1&2&3]

Does anyone know why we have Trophy Points? What is the reason for them?

From the example above where points where taken away from a member, do we have a list of those points? Is it a separate list of points from Trophy points?

Would someone please explain this new program? It looks like most of us are not aware of what is going on.

 

[Spellbound]

Does anyone know why we have Trophy Points? What is the reason for them?

From the example above where points where taken away from a member, do we have a list of those points? Is it a separate list of points from Trophy points?

Would someone please explain this new program? It looks like most of us are not aware of what is going on.

My impression is that trophy points are just an ego-status which determines what goes under your name. Like "Well-Known Member" etc.
the more points which are earned, the higher up the ladder they move, gaining the relevant user title as each threshold is passed. Trophies | XenForo

Trophies accummulate from categories: Trophies
You can see how they accummulate at WS by clicking the number of trophies you have received under your avatar.

 

[Lilibet]

Does anyone know why we have Trophy Points? What is the reason for them?

From the example above where points where taken away from a member, do we have a list of those points? Is it a separate list of points from Trophy points?

Would someone please explain this new program? It looks like most of us are not aware of what is going on.

I have no idea why we have Trophy Points. It must be a feature of the program and it seems a little juvenile to me.

That example above was apparently a joke. Points are not taken away from trophy points. It is a separate list. According to Tricia, you are given penalty points for various offenses that stay with you for 30 days. If you accrue a certain number (Tricia said 5) in 30 days, you get a TO. Tricia explained this in an early post on the first thread, however she said not to hold her to the numbers she gave as examples because she was going from memory.

In my own case, I got a mod message that I had received 4 penalty points for some posts I made. I thought it was a warning. There was no mention of a time out, but when I went to post, I couldn’t for 3 days. The only other TO I received on the previous platform was clearly stated along with the amount of time.

I’m not saying anything here that I haven’t told Tricia privately. And it’s been asked on this thread several times. We are all still waiting for an explanation and clear guidelines, and the fact that no one has taken a moment to answer indicates to me that there aren’t any. I guess the premise is that we should post according to TOS at all times and no explanation should be necessary. But we all mess up on occasion and if penalty points are going to be used, we need an explanation and guidelines.
JMO

 

[Tricia]

I have no idea why we have Trophy Points. It must be a feature of the program and it seems a little juvenile to me.

That example above was apparently a joke. Points are not taken away from trophy points. It is a separate list. According to Tricia, you are given penalty points for various offenses that stay with you for 30 days. If you accrue a certain number (Tricia said 5) in 30 days, you get a TO. Tricia explained this in an early post on the first thread, however she said not to hold her to the numbers she gave as examples because she was going from memory.

In my own case, I got a mod message that I had received 4 penalty points for some posts I made. I thought it was a warning. There was no mention of a time out, but when I went to post, I couldn’t for 3 days. The only other TO I received on the previous platform was clearly stated along with the amount of time.

I’m not saying anything here that I haven’t told Tricia privately. And it’s been asked on this thread several times. We are all still waiting for an explanation and clear guidelines, and the fact that no one has taken a moment to answer indicates to me that there aren’t any. I guess the premise is that we should post according to TOS at all times and no explanation should be necessary. But we all mess up on occasion and if penalty points are going to be used, we need an explanation and guidelines.
JMO

This is on my list of things to work on. In the scheme of what we needed to fix this has been low on the list but I'm getting to the point where I can look into the trophy points.
Thank you for your input.
Tricia

 

[Tricia]

Thanks, Spell. I was just wondering because there's no message saying it was closing. It happened just after a boy's body was found and it's been closed for about 12 hours now.

When a case involves someone under 18 we may close a thread for various reasons. There will be times that you will not get an explanation simply because we are, at times, talking with police or family members or both. The back and forth is confidential usually.

Sometimes we are not at liberty to say why a thread was closed.

To accidentally close a thread would be difficult to do but I guess it could happen.

 

[Lilibet]

This is on my list of things to work on. In the scheme of what we needed to fix this has been low on the list but I'm getting to the point where I can look into the trophy points.
Thank you for your input.
Tricia

Thanks Tricia.