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Date Posted: 14:44:45 03/16/00 Thu
Author: kenamom
Subject: Thanks for letting us all know whats going on. Don't feel bad, things happen, after all we are all human...........or are we.........NIM
In reply to: detoured 's message, "A message from Voy Forums for everyone..." on 01:07:55 03/16/00 Thu

> Voy finally has let us know what's been going on. They
> also are aware of the spam porn site posts. Someone
> has been spamming all of the Voy forums here, not just
> ours!
> Here's what they had to say about the recent problems
> that I thought I'd pass along to those of you who
> might be interested:
>
> Dear Forum Owners and Users,
>
> First of all, we would like to deeply apologize to all
> of you for the slew of problems we've been unwittingly
> plagued with recently. We are not going hide behind
> corporate jargon, nor give you a dry canned response.
> We'd prefer to be fully open and honest with you all,
> as not only do we feel you deserve it, we feel we
> should be one of the few companies that openly
> communicates with its users on a human level. What we
> do ask of you though, is your understanding and
> cooperation during this particularly trying time.
>
> To detail the problems: Initially it appeared there
> was a router failing. After finding the problem,
> fixing it, and restoring the system to apparent normal
> operation -- working through the day (...night, and
> morning), we rested (collapsed). The next day we were
> not even able to plan out our response when one of our
> remote routers (they route the internet traffic)
> became innaccessable. After limiting out line and
> other hardware problems (with the cooperation of our
> line provider and ISP) we found the remote router had
> somehow died and had to have our administrators tend
> to it. This took a while, but we did have a
> replacement router. As it turns out, after finally
> correctly diagnosing the problem, the memory in the
> router had gone bad and needed to be replaced; this
> router failure was the cause of the other prior
> outtage of a local router (which, misleadingly,
> continued to lose connection and had to be reset).
>
> After this, there was some upstream ISP maintainence
> which extended the down period as well. In the
> meantime, as you know, there were also some spam post
> problems -- we didn't yet have filtration utilities,
> so we had to get to work on that immediately as well.
> We were not hacked, but the spam seriously assaulted
> our systems, causing it to overload for periods at a
> time. We never took our servers or service down
> because of the spam, we only added removal of the
> horrible and innapproriate messages onto our already
> long list of things to do. Removal of the spam
> messages in all the forums is something we are
> currently working on. Help on removing it will be in a
> subsequent post.
>
> Now, it must be understood that VoyForums is just one
> of the services we at Voyager provide, and our
> connection being down means that all of our services
> are severed and we must tend to them all at once -- We
> cannot inform you prior to unpredicted downages like
> this and, in the last incident, had to take other
> measures in order to resolve things. Namely, many of
> the problems occurring with spamming are addressed in
> the new version of the software, thus much of our
> struggling was to tie up some loose ends and get the
> beta software online -- that's being finalized as we
> speak.
>
> Therefore, to sum it up, we had too much chaos going
> on for us to know what was going on and our full
> plans. Since we had nothing solid to formulate for you
> guys, and our hands were tied with computer
> administration and development, we had to delay in
> handling the responses to you guys. Keep in mind that
> the highest priority is for us to get things up and
> functional ASAP and, although we understand the need
> for an explanation, it had to wait until we knew what
> needed to be done to keep the system stable, which we
> were figuring out as we did it. Personally responding
> and interacting with you guys is something we've
> always enjoyed, so I hope you can understand and
> forgive us for our seeming indifference in coming up
> with a response -- rest assured, this couldn't be
> further from the truth.
>
> Now, when we do know about a planned downage (like the
> upgrade to the new version of VoyForums, probably
> today or tomorrow), we can inform you; therefore, this
> letter also is to notify you that the new version of
> the software is going to go in soon! We designed the
> new version so conversion of forums will happen while
> the system is up and live, but the main software
> upgrade will give only a few minutes to an hour of
> downtime [hopefully at the maximum].
>
> One last note, we normally update and fix bugs in the
> live version of VoyForums. The version you are using
> is really the first version which grew as we added on
> features and as users made requests. However, this new
> version unfortunately required a huge rewrite of the
> entire messaging engine which was not possible to do
> gradually on the live system. Additionally, there have
> been only a few of you who have done any beta testing,
> which incredibly slowed down the process of working on
> the new software. Of the many services we provide, the
> free services like VoyForums and VoyCabulary are the
> ones we personally enjoy, but when there is a downage
> like this, all our services are being sacrificed and
> we must scramble as we figure out what the problems
> are, find the priorities, and fix them.
>
> We are very thankful for those of you who have been
> patient and understanding and we hope you can
> understand and forgive us for our mistake in not
> providing you with news during this unhappy period.
>
> Keep your eyes peeled for the new version --
> converting over would be a very very simple matter if
> we were not faced with the conversion of the old forum
> message databases to the new format. The old version
> is buggy, and the conversion process is prone to
> choking on corrupt message databases -- be assured
> that we're working diligently on... well... everything.
>
> Lastly, we'd also like to thank those of you who write
> explanatory posts to clarify matters to others. Your
> support simplifies our struggle to keep your forums
> up, running, and evolving.
>
> We greatly appreciate the support of all our Forum
> owners and users.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Your very humble and tired Voyager Staff

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Replies:

Zzzzzzz Gads! -- c_shantal, 19:46:30 03/16/00 Thu