So. Where are we.
On the one hand, we have a group of people honestly offended that FA is down. At best they lament it; at worst they bash the admins and the site and anyone who gets in their way. Rationale is that a month of downtime is flat-out unacceptable, period.
On the other hand, we have a group of people who don't give much of a damn whether FA is up or down. At best they shrug and wait another day; at worst they spend their time trolling the forums and snapping at the above people. Rationale is that it's free so nobody can complain.
Well, you're all right. Which also means you're all wrong -- and the more vocal of you on both sides are kinda being dicks.
Yes! It is completely unacceptable for a service to be down for a month. Great, we agree. Now what? This has been said quite a bit in various forms over the past month, but I don't know what exactly anyone expects to be done about it.
This service is run by a small limited number of people, only a few of whom can be of significant help in this situation. Those few people have limited time and can only work at a limited speed. Just insisting that work be done faster isn't going to make it happen, or even make it possible.
Yes, the deadline has been broken several times. This is why I hate deadlines. They aren't being given by some PR department with a wide margin of error; every deadline so far has been a regular person estimating when FA will be ready if nothing else disastrous happens. Surprise; disasters happen. Does that really make the staff worthy of scorn or accusations of dishonesty or greed or incompetence?
Yes! FA has no cost to use. That doesn't make it free of blame, nor does it mean that it is worthless. People store art and notes there, and sometimes nowhere else. Artists rely on it for work. Friends have notes left there. These people all depend on this system, keep it alive by their mere presence, and in exchange expect some degree of reliability. They have been let down. They do not deserve snide remarks on top of that.
Yes! It would be very nice if FA had a little horizontally-scalable server farm, a 24/7 devoted team of sysadmins, a robust codebase, triple backups, and whatever else has been used as ammunition for calling the staff inept. Very nice indeed. Unfortunately, FA is gigantic but almost entirely unprofitable. More machines cost money. More rackspace costs LOTS more money. Finding knowledgeable sysadmins willing to work for free on a clunky setup at all hours within the furry community is difficult. Ferrox takes time. Everything takes resources, and they are very limited.
FA is currently held together by duct tape and hope. It has gotten a lot better (used to be Scotch tape), but there is no magic wand that can bump it up to anywhere near its ideal setup immediately and at no cost.
Be bitter if you want, but don't expect people to work harder the more you claim to doubt them.
Be cynical if you want, but delays do happen.
Be angry if you want, but nobody is out to get you.
Be defensive if you want, but yelling at people with legitimate concerns will not alleviate them.
Be critical if you want, but do not use a lack of resources to make wild conjectures about the ability of the people using them.
yak had been taking advantage of the downtime and doing work on the message center. This was on the old server, as it was the only machine with an environment capable of running FA at all. A couple days ago the RAID card finally gave out, ruining most of his work, and he has to do it all again. He has been up for two days working on it. This is the man you are haranguing. Congratulations.
Yes, FA will probably be up tomorrow, much like it would probably have been up several times over by now if something else hadn't gone wrong. This is how estimates work, how they have always worked, and how they will continue to work as long as FA does not have failover for absolutely everything.
On the one hand, we have a group of people honestly offended that FA is down. At best they lament it; at worst they bash the admins and the site and anyone who gets in their way. Rationale is that a month of downtime is flat-out unacceptable, period.
On the other hand, we have a group of people who don't give much of a damn whether FA is up or down. At best they shrug and wait another day; at worst they spend their time trolling the forums and snapping at the above people. Rationale is that it's free so nobody can complain.
Well, you're all right. Which also means you're all wrong -- and the more vocal of you on both sides are kinda being dicks.
Yes! It is completely unacceptable for a service to be down for a month. Great, we agree. Now what? This has been said quite a bit in various forms over the past month, but I don't know what exactly anyone expects to be done about it.
This service is run by a small limited number of people, only a few of whom can be of significant help in this situation. Those few people have limited time and can only work at a limited speed. Just insisting that work be done faster isn't going to make it happen, or even make it possible.
Yes, the deadline has been broken several times. This is why I hate deadlines. They aren't being given by some PR department with a wide margin of error; every deadline so far has been a regular person estimating when FA will be ready if nothing else disastrous happens. Surprise; disasters happen. Does that really make the staff worthy of scorn or accusations of dishonesty or greed or incompetence?
Yes! FA has no cost to use. That doesn't make it free of blame, nor does it mean that it is worthless. People store art and notes there, and sometimes nowhere else. Artists rely on it for work. Friends have notes left there. These people all depend on this system, keep it alive by their mere presence, and in exchange expect some degree of reliability. They have been let down. They do not deserve snide remarks on top of that.
Yes! It would be very nice if FA had a little horizontally-scalable server farm, a 24/7 devoted team of sysadmins, a robust codebase, triple backups, and whatever else has been used as ammunition for calling the staff inept. Very nice indeed. Unfortunately, FA is gigantic but almost entirely unprofitable. More machines cost money. More rackspace costs LOTS more money. Finding knowledgeable sysadmins willing to work for free on a clunky setup at all hours within the furry community is difficult. Ferrox takes time. Everything takes resources, and they are very limited.
FA is currently held together by duct tape and hope. It has gotten a lot better (used to be Scotch tape), but there is no magic wand that can bump it up to anywhere near its ideal setup immediately and at no cost.
Be bitter if you want, but don't expect people to work harder the more you claim to doubt them.
Be cynical if you want, but delays do happen.
Be angry if you want, but nobody is out to get you.
Be defensive if you want, but yelling at people with legitimate concerns will not alleviate them.
Be critical if you want, but do not use a lack of resources to make wild conjectures about the ability of the people using them.
yak had been taking advantage of the downtime and doing work on the message center. This was on the old server, as it was the only machine with an environment capable of running FA at all. A couple days ago the RAID card finally gave out, ruining most of his work, and he has to do it all again. He has been up for two days working on it. This is the man you are haranguing. Congratulations.
Yes, FA will probably be up tomorrow, much like it would probably have been up several times over by now if something else hadn't gone wrong. This is how estimates work, how they have always worked, and how they will continue to work as long as FA does not have failover for absolutely everything.
