InsaneJournal Announcements

Site Issues

squeaky

7/28/08 11:52 pm

I know the site has had some issues lately. The main thing being that the site sometimes times out during peak times. I have identified what has happened, and to fix it, I am going to need to rebuild all of the webservers. This may take me a week or two to complete. I am going to continue doing what I can to keep things running (rebooting the servers every few days seems to keep it under control).

As far as the other issues, here is the list of known site issues. I will work on them as time permits.

* directory.bml hangs searching
* Comments still seem to be disappearing.
* Edit userpics page loading slowly for users with lots of userpics (Firefox is still slow but won't timeout and give an error as a temporary workaround)
* Adding friends via the admin console causes custom groups to get emptied
* Joining a closed membership asylum
* Timezones on update page not reflecting change in DST in United Stats
* align= and border= options in image tags being striped by the HTML cleaner
* lynx sitescheme warning
* blank preview page
* Sometimes not able to change custom colors
* stats/stats.txt not updating
* cannot log in with blackberry

Now as far as some of the criticism that has been posted here. I have simply not had the time to dedicate to the big issue of comment rot on the site. I know it is a huge problem, and I have done some tracing, and am getting close to pinpointing the problem, and once that is done, I am sure it will be something simple to fix.

Please don't feel that I have been ignoring these issues to work on other things like the sitescheme. The work on these has been done by our volunteers and takes only a few minutes of my time to implement them.

Also, do not feel that I have been ignoring all the comments, I have read them all but I just have not had the time recently to respond to comments. I will try to do better to make the time to do this.

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• pay_the_piper

  7/29/08 07:42 am (UTC)

  

  I just have a question, and sort of a mild complaint...
  
  my journals have been hit repeatedly with Anon comments that look to be from bots. I have three IP addresses that look pretty close to the same address.
  
  If it was one or two a few months apart it really wouldn't bother me, but is hasn't been. Just the last week 4 of my journals have been hit, and one up to 3 times. I know I can turn the anon posting off, but it sucks a bit because for my personal Journal some of my Livejournal friends can only post with Anon comments. (I've yet to convert them, but I keep trying).
  
  Is there anything we can do about this?

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  • orvan_ox

    7/29/08 07:51 am (UTC)

    

    I've just set anonymous comments to be screened because of that sort of thing. At least that means spammers won't get the reward of visible results. Unfortunately it also means that when decent folks comment anonymously or with OpenID that the comments will be screened until approved.
    
    I wonder, is it possible to friend an LJ OpenID account and let people log in to IJ that way? I know, it make migration even less likely, but it might at least allow friends to post visibly and keep spammer actions hidden.

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    • pay_the_piper

      7/29/08 08:46 am (UTC)

      

      I think I'll have to do that for everything, but it is just weird! And slightly annoying. I had at least three that were all "This is an excellent resource", and it just leaves you all 'wtf?'.
      
      It isn't going to run me off, I rather like IJ more than *couhg*HellJ*cough*. For one, the staff here is so much nicer, the ads aren't nearly as annoying (and not to mention in more tasteful places. Seriously, why does that crap need to be ON the journal and not like in the user info? Ug...disgusting.) But the whole spambot thing does, alas, get a bit old when you've been flooded with it.
      
      :/
      
      I hope we can come up with a solution though! :D I have faith in this place.

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      • orvan_ox

        7/29/08 09:04 am (UTC)

        

        Yes, I get the impression that it's either a spambot test run or a default used by the incompetent (big surprise, huh?) or else maybe it's just crap to get a search term all over the site in hopes of making it show up earlier in search engine results. Whatever it is, they don't get results from my account any more.
        
        I do far prefer IJ for all the reasons you cite.
        
        I have found that it is indeed possible to friend an OpenID account so long as it has been used to post to your journal. I haven't really seen how well that works yet, however. And so far only person has actually used OpenID to comment beyond a test.

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      • orvan_ox

        7/29/08 09:06 am (UTC)

        

        One more thing. DNS Tools might be useful to check on the IP's.

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        • pay_the_piper

          7/29/08 09:34 pm (UTC)

          

          Excellent. I'll have to try that.

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      • eftychia

        8/26/08 04:12 am (UTC)

        

        I'm mirroring my journal to multiple sites (so as to not feel trapped if one turns evil, gets bought, becomes too much for the owner to handle, etc.), and while it was only one or two sites at first, I'm now seeing these anonymous comments -- some random nonsense, others actual link-spam -- on most of the LJ-type sites I use. :-(
        
        As each site starts getting hit, I set my journal there to automatically screen anonymous comments, as was suggested here. I don't like it, but it's currently the most reasonable response.

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  • squeaky

    7/29/08 05:04 pm (UTC)

    

    I am going to be looking at this. I made a change to the spam blocking to make it so anon posters didn't always have to use a captcha to post. But this is allowing spammers through. I need to find a better balance in this.

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    • pay_the_piper

      7/29/08 09:52 pm (UTC)

      

      Well I hope it isn't something that drives you batty, and just an easy fix. Thanks for looking into the issue, too.
      
      Much love.

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    • blurred_mods

      8/3/08 05:03 am (UTC)

      

      It would be really helpful, I think, to be able to turn off anonymous commenting without turning off openID commenting - then people from other journaling sites could still comment, while spammers get blocked.

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