Stand by for that not really surprising Sound of Summer announcement...
and in the meantime...here's a word from our techy people who've been working very hard to sort some of the annoying messages we've all been getting.
"We're looking at the way our server is set up to try to resolve the problem you've described. Basically, what's happening is that when lots of people try to comment all at once, our blog application thinks it's coming under a spam attack and starts blocking comments, even those that are entirely innocent. This has been a problem for some time but the good news is that we have someone on staff who is looking at fixing this and other problems with the application.
We apologise and realise that it's frustrating to take the time and effort to write a comment only for it to be rejected for no good reason. We're hoping to resolve the underlying problem which causes this in the next week or two."
Here at PM we thank them for all their efforts. And we apologise again to you for the keyboard-thumpingly-annoying things that sometimes happen here. Now stand by for the big winner...
RSS feed
Email us
Listen to PM
Thanks techy bods, am not holding my breath but thought I should say something!
And Eddie/Team thanks for your efforts in trying to sort out and keeping us posted (when possible).
Fascinating. So for a year (and particularly as that year came to its end and we posted *dozens* of posts in order to reach a target) this problem didn't arise, but now it does, as a major issue, in less than a week.
Looking at what has changed to cause the wrongness seems also to be a good idea! 502s and "you may not post a comment" should not happen with such frequency in a blog of this reasonably constant size, and that they now do when they did not do so before indicates a change that needs to be discovered.
Sorry, that sounds hard on the techies, but it does need looking at, I would have thought.
Eddie, it isn't your fault.
But please! There was a week, remember it? when we posted *hundreds* of things between us, to reach a target by the anniversary.
I got no 502s that week, I got no computer stalling rather than post and having to be restarted, I got no "the ´óÏó´«Ã½ server is not available, try again", I got no "you may not post" messages.
Now these are all commonplace -- all during the past week. Not just for me, for dozens.
This has *not* "been a problem for some time": what we used to get was being told after a break of ten hours or more that we had been posting too often and were malicious. Not this mess.
Sorry, that says just one thing to me: something has been changed at your end, not ours. What we want is for whatever has been changed to be discovered and put right, not being told that it's a long-standing problem when it *hasn't been*.
My first response wasn't so fed up, but that was before I had to start again because the server refused my post. This will probably get a 502 or be malicious. I'll try anyway.
Sorry, but that is the worst, feeblest, most pathetic apology I've seen since Mister Blur said sorry but he honestly believed going to war was the right thing to do!
There's no more of us 'posting all at the same time' this week than last week. We were fed that line before ... remember "Try posting at times other than lunchtime to avoid the rush hour"? ... and it turned out to be something else causing the problem.
No doubt this won't make it anyway!
Fifi ;o)
(That was meant as a joke. Guess what? 502!)
I'm Sorry the sound of summer is here. What summmer?
The weather forecast is rubbish. Its freezing in Malvern.
I have just finished work and need some food for thought
Yours Bina
My posts at 2, 3, 4 and 5 were not posted four times, and certainly not two more than and hour after the first two. I was told that they hadn't been posted at all; that the ´óÏó´«Ã½ server was not available. Hence my post at 6.
If nobody has commented on some of the other threads, it may be because they fear this sort of thing, which makes us, the froggers, look stupid.
In a word, "Grrrrrr."
Chris Ghoti (6) Most of the time the comments go through even when they've been 502'd. I only make my comment once, then send it on its way. It can please itself whether it appears or not!
Gillian @ 7, but that was the point: as far as I knew I didn't post it at all! It didn't even get a 502: it claimed that the website had stalled, and then that it was unavailable. So I had to shut the blog and start again, and the comment of course was gone; so I wrote another one, which turned up here as 6.
Goodness only knows what may happen to this one...
(posted at 22.14)
Just for the record, when I wrote the comment that is now at 8, I also had the comment now at 2 appearing at 3, 4 and 5; someone has kindly got rid of the duplicates once it was pointed out.