hey dsinnpy, thanks for stopping in to say hello and give us an update. It must be frustrating to deal with these errors. Hopefully they get worked out soon.dsinnyp wrote: ↑ I'm taking a risk by sticking my head out here considering where my paychecks come from, but after the nth time I feel that the community deserves to know something...
The forum staff unfortunately can't do much, but we've been yelling at people every time this happens, even before reports come in on the forum (because they're down during those times ). It's slowly escalated to the point that the brass is on it, so we may see significantly reduced downtimes soon.
I'm sure this will surprise many, but the numbers were pretty positive last time I checked.
Regarding the numbers... well... I don't have the stats in front of me, but it's clear to me that there's been a slow down over the years. I had some time on my hands so I went and checked out archive.org and looked at the overall number of posts over the years and divided them roughly by the days between periods to come up with a "posts per day" count. While this is not scientific (posts get deleted etc) I think it's a pretty good representation overall of the decline:
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Not that it is scientific or anything, but I did a quick check and:
Jun 21 2017 = 22,431,425 posts (4039 posts per day)
Jun 25 2016 = 20,973,269 posts (4494 posts per day)
Jun 26 2015 = 19,337,210 posts (4970 posts per day)
Jun 17 2014 = 17,478,343 posts (5287 posts per day)
Jun 22 2013 = 15,564,789 posts (5228 posts per day)
Jun 21 2012 = 13,555,865 posts (4949 posts per day)
Jun 26 2011 = 11,774,099 posts (5354 posts per day)
Jul 29 2010 = 9,980,192 posts (5547 posts per day)
Sep 27 2009 = 8,288,262 posts (5319 posts per day)
Sep 25 2008 = 6,346,728 posts (4785 posts per day)
Sep 25 2007 = 4,600,006 posts (2550 posts per day)
Sep 01 2006 = 3,605,149 posts (4247 posts per day)
Sep 01 2005 = 2,054,841 posts (2959 posts per day)
Jul 10 2004 = 826,784 posts
Again, I don't know if this is an RFD only problem. Most of the forums I visit are declining in traffic. But the login issues definitely don't help the problem, is all I am saying What's worrisome is that for a forum of this type (hot deals) that relies on an active userbase, if the daily post count drops below a certain mark the site could die very quickly and suddenly. I've seen it happen with other forums. Just don't want to see RFD die (and I'm sure neither do you, since you're employed by them!). I've been here for 13 years and would be sad to see it go.