All,

I know everyone has been worried about the stability of this BBS. I can only reiterate that this BBS will continue to function indefinitely. The system does, however, run in Boston USA, and hence we in the UK are susceptible to connection problems caused by our UK-based ISPs and telcos. I can go into detail if people want and address specific issues with specific UK ISPs if people want to ask me individually.

My prime concern is keeping us all together on something that works, and (barring the above issues) is stable.

ITK and Scratchy have something going, but I can't (with my BBS admin hat on) recommend leaving these shores for another until I know the stability of the other system on offer. If ITK or Scratchy can provide me *detailed* information on the type of system running, on what server, hosted where, what bandwidth and what support then I can advise as appropriate. We must remember we're serving a global audience here 24/7....

Let's get a debate going and see what we end up with.

-- Anonymous, November 01, 2000

Answers

Dunx - happy with the service you have been providing on here. I know as well as most that service interuptions occur, and so far, this service has been PDG.

My only gripe (I suspect along with others) is the formatting, and the one thing I see going for the DT Forum is the format. As commented by DeB, and by many of us in the earlier tomes of crisis, a "business look" is very beneficial. Both DT and this BBS provide that. However, I do believe that the 3 panel layout, together with time stamps etc is preferable.

I believe you when you say Greenspun has the capacity, bandwidth etc etc. They seem to support (successfully) a lot of other BBSs. I also share your concerns (perhaps unfounded at this stage) about those aspects of DT. Now, if we could get Database shadowing going between the two of them.................

-- Anonymous, November 01, 2000

I like this format. It's a hell of a lot easier to read a thread in one go rather than having to access each posting individually. This makes sorting the Team Pick comp a lot easier.

Time stamps would be nice. The thread lists seem to be only updated every 5 mins or so???? .... so refreshing gives you the same list even though new answers are on a thread.

Apart from those very minor gripes, I think this board is excellent and I see no reason to move elsewhere.

-- Anonymous, November 01, 2000

Simple facts of the DT board regarding scalability are: probably pretty poor. Run from a free web space provider (also in the US but timestamps are modified on retrieval) and going against an Access database.....not a good thing.
For about $11 a month this can be upgraded to SQL Server on a dedicated server (ie not one with amatuers like me p1ss1ng aboot with) - but to do that everyone would need to buy at least one thing a month from amazon using the link on the dailytoon main page - who do you think I am John Hall?
I like this forum in terms of it's upness (ie last 2 weeks have been the exception - good work fella), but HMS Communicata had a lovely interface - can we change this (I have all the asp scripts if that helps?).
Let the mass debate continue....

-- Anonymous, November 01, 2000

Screach, I'm sure you'd be delighted to get a couple of S390s and DB2 syncing on a dedicated transatlantic link......not in my budget mate!

-- Anonymous, November 01, 2000

As I said on the `confusion` thread - I would much prefer to stick with this BBS. (:o)

-- Anonymous, November 01, 2000

Hey Dunx......Andy and I are not trying to usurp you, belittle your great efforts or drag people away from this forum......all we are trying to do is to offer a usable and identifiable option if this one goes down.

We have all had access problems over the last couple of weeks and from experience, we don't want to find ourselves in the same 'hole' that we did last year.

You rememeber it well I'm sure, we were flapping around not knowing where to go, losing half our 'friends' for a few weeks until we got messages through to them to let them know where we had gone. You came in with this one and did a bliddy good job with it.

I don't see why we can't run the two boards in paralell with each other.....I have been going in and out of this board and the Strawberry one (although I use a different name over there) for quite some time, as have several others from here.

Now I don't know how others feel, but since the Strawberry board has been deluged by Makems, and particularly head-me-dead twats like Krist, Herts, MK et al, I have stopped posting there. If I want abuse I can come here and be abused by my own (so to speak) people I don't need crap from arsehole Makems. Hence the reason I have suggested to Andy that we password protect our board as well. Keep the tw@ts out.

The password can be given to outsiders (like LR here for example) as long as they accept the rules and behave themselves (within reason) - I know a lot of people here don't like LR's wind ups, but at least his aren't abuse for the simple sake of it.

Anyway, this is getting off track now....bottom line, and I'm sure Andy will back me up with this, we are not trying to muscle in Dunx, we are trying to enhance what is already available, and if you have felt threatened by the DT Board then we are sorry about thet, it wasn't intended.

We want no dressing room splits here do we

-- Anonymous, November 01, 2000

As some other Geordies once put it:
"I want to go where the people go"

However, when I can't get on here (which does happen quite often at weekends) I need to know of an alternative that people will be using and the DT have provided just that. The similarities to the dearly departed communicata site make it the best alternative when this board is down and I get a chance to log onto the net at home (something I simply don't get as often as I used to).

I applaud all your efforts and will continue to use this site as the primary bbs and DT as a supersub when this one picks up a knock ;-)

-- Anonymous, November 01, 2000

Sounds like a good idea to me.

-- Anonymous, November 01, 2000

Ken,

I've no concerns about being usurped; I'm used to that at home where I come in somewhere below the cat in the pecking order ;-).

The concern is to keep everyone together reliably. Building large-scale reliable web community systems happens to be my area of expertise, so I'm in a pretty strong position to recommend the best solution, here or elsewhere.

Maybe it's time that I revisited my proposal to the club/ntl.......if we could bin the .cock site, and meld .com with this, we'd be the envy of football websites worldwide.

-- Anonymous, November 01, 2000

I'm very happy with this site and the formatting. Not being a techie I find it user-friendly.

-- Anonymous, November 01, 2000

NUFC.com certainly deserve the opportunity to run the Official site. Their dedication and amount of information makes most Official sites look a waste of time.

They really should be paid a salary for their time as well!

This BBS would also be a welcome addition to any new Official Site.

-- Anonymous, November 01, 2000

I'm happy to stick with this bbs - thanks again Dunx for all your work - and use the DT one if there are problems like over the past few days.

-- Anonymous, November 01, 2000

Same for me, happy to stay here as it is up *most* of the time, but will be very relieved to have a good back up for weekends. I was still having some problems accessing threads earlier, but seems to be running ok now. I do prefer the communicata-syle layout as it's easier than having to scroll through long threads. Plus I know which postings I've read by the change in hyperlink color. And very much miss the time stamps. But relatively minor annoyances. Rock on, Dunx! :-)

-- Anonymous, November 01, 2000

Dunc

When all systems are working, I prefer things as they are are now. The old Communicata system took longer because to each separate posting had to be opened. Present arrangements allow scrolling through the whole thread and thus save considerable time on a long thread.

-- Anonymous, November 01, 2000

Just like to add my thanks to Dunc for the work put into maintaining this site. Much appreciated. I too though have had serious problems getting on of late (via various Dutch ISPs). Can some kind soul enlighten me as to where I can find 'the DT one' as a back up. The Strawberry site just depresses me.

-- Anonymous, November 01, 2000

Stevo....you woill find it at http://www.dailytoon.co.uk

-- Anonymous, November 01, 2000

Many thanks ITK.

-- Anonymous, November 02, 2000

Stevo,

Have you got any views on Faber from PSV that we are reportedly interested in?

-- Anonymous, November 02, 2000