Looking Back into your u2u past.

I lost my unsaved U2Us about four hours before this post.

Everyone else?

Yeah, there was quite the history in mine too. Unfortunately, I wasn't around to see the final countdown warning...

For instance, I still had the u2u where I had just found the "Watch Jakarta" text inserted in a Jag post and I u2u'd him and had the initial discussion before contacting the mods. That was the whole "uncover the WITD" thingy...lol.

So you were banned under another name?
If that is the case shouldn't they ban your new name as well?
Nothing personal but what good is banning disruptive members if all they have to do is re-register?

Originally posted by CazMedia I know, its not all about the points....but those points represent an acknowlegement of a lot of hard work posting...250 pts might not seem like alot of points but it would take 50 5pt posts to earn those points....indeed i agree with others that said they miss having this record to referance (their back u2u's).

The increased quota you purchased still applies to your saved box. The total of all three boxes are charged against your quota.

I had such a history in mine too.

Thanks for the time to sort that out there.
Almost the entire u2u history with someone I...care for very much has now gone, it makes me very sad I didn't get any of them saved.

I made a backup of the U2U table before running the deletion script. Nothing is completely lost. It might take some time, but I'll see if there's a way to provide access to the old messages. The U2U table was over 200 megabytes, after deleting the old messages, it's now under 40 megabytes. There was a serious performance-causing problem with members who had very large in-boxes. Quite literally, those members were causing a majority of board performance problems every time they reviewed their U2U inbox!! The problem being... the query to check your U2U's requires a somewhat complex permissions check... and when there are more than 500 in your inbox, that one query takes too long, and causes all other board-related queries to become slow or fail. I simply can't allow the performance of the entire community to be poor because a few members care so little as to keep their inboxes reasonable. In the future, I may simply establish a script that auto-deletes in/out box messages after 15 days... forcing people to move their saved material to their saved box (which has a less complex permissions check in the query, and which also is access much less often than the inbox).

Originally posted by SkepticOverlord
I made a backup of the U2U table before running the deletion script. Nothing is completely lost.

It might take some time, but I'll see if there's a way to provide access to the old messages.

That would be appreciated, I really didn't get the time to save any
although I know there's alot I'd much rather not look at hehehe

I simply can't allow the performance of the entire community to be poor because a few members care so little as to keep their inboxes reasonable.

I'll tell you what my gripes are with the u2u inbox/outbox that have often turned me off in wanting to delete/save messages.

First, to make sense of often long u2u convo's you had with someone that went over many of them you have to start from the bottom of the list and work your way up. Now, as you figure out the ones you want to keep you save them then get returned to the top of the list again. For someone with a large inbox/outbox this can get very tedious and infuriating, returning back down to the bottom of the list and figuring out where you where. Unfortunately, this is the only way to really go about figuring out which ones you want to keep from long convo's.

Second, there's no tick box next to them. It's either delete all or one at a time, which as just stated if you're working your way up from the bottom is very annoying as you get returned to the top again. If there was a tick box next to them and you could just tick the ones you want to save/delete then do so at the end that would be much easier and great, or maybe I just need to stop making things hard on myself.

In the future, I may simply establish a script that auto-deletes in/out box messages after 15 days... forcing people to move their saved material to their saved box (which has a less complex permissions check in the query, and which also is access much less often than the inbox).

hmmm...instead why don't you have it automatically save after 15 days, it would yield the same results in the long run would it not? Once the save box was full the user would have to start deleting old ones that they didn't really want to keep otherwise they can't get the new ones, OR they purchase more u2u space which encourages more posting does it not?
I haven't had my coffee yet, I'm probably talking out of my arse, oh well...

Consider for a moment, the enormity of what happened. Only U2U's younger than 30 days remain in in/out boxes, yet there are still 39 megabytes of private messages stored in the database. This almost 5% of all data. Very few communities offer a "saved" box for their members' private messaging. What's wrong with automatically saving the messages you want as they come in? It's just one simple click. Creating a script that automatically saves member's U2U's would require a great deal more of code and processor overhead than simply deleting all records that fit a timestamp profile. Sorry, in this case, human cooperation is much more efficient than equivalent code. [rant from irked SO] We had one selfish ingrate member use the complain form to gripe about this need. That one member was directly responsible for two major board slow-downs yesterday (and ten other lesser slow-downs) as they opened their massive (1,300+ -- not Nerdling --) inbox several times (I know this because I logged queries to get a handle on the nature of the board slow-downs). This is a free community with a broad selection of perks and other options for members. But when the perks become more effort to maintain than is available they may go away. One of the easiest things to do is for members to cooperate and help the entire community by doing some very simple things: 1) clean old u2u's, 2) clean old uploads, 3) limit quoting, 4) don't create 1-line posts, and etc. [end rant from irked SO]

That's fair enough, but what about the tick boxes next to each individual u2u? I think it might be helpful but you're right, they should just be saved when they're recieved really, although often you don't know whether you want to keep them until later...

I have deleated all, but is said I have One left, its not showing?


edit; Stupid me it was a saved U2U.

[edit on 20-10-2004 by SpittinCobra]

SO, good job on finding out what slows down the boards and working it out. Question tho, since it had become a problem, it's probable it will also be a problem again in the future, so shouldn't u put a cap limit on numbers of U2Us? Instead of allowing members to by more U2U quota?

I mean, who needs to keep 1300s U2U anyway.

Or maybe, a clever and easy way for people to save them into .txt files?
(besides copying and pasting manually)

Dunno, just an idea.

[Edited on 20-10-2004 by m0rbid]

Originally posted by m0rbid


I mean, who needs to keep 1300s U2U anyway.

That is a huge amount. How far back did they date Nerdling? Did you still read them all?

SO,

I think the 15 day clock on the U2Us is a great idea..
Just delete them, It will only take a couple of times for a user to lose messages before they make it a habit to SAVE them...

maybe 20 days or 30, or whatever.

I've got folks I work with...Working on a file for like 8 hours or something,
without EVER saving..Then, hardware failure...After that? They get pissed at me, cause they didn't bother to click SAVE, and it's my fault!

They even turn off autosave, because it interupts their typing (yes, some of our computers are very old!)...

Save Save Save.....

When you get your snail-mail, you don't read it and leave it in the mailbox do you? You toss the junk, and save the good stuff...you know, the bills..LOL


SAVE SAVE SAVE.....

Thanks,
Space..

Originally posted by SpittinCobra

Originally posted by m0rbid


I mean, who needs to keep 1300s U2U anyway.

That is a huge amount. How far back did they date Nerdling? Did you still read them all?

Uhm, once year precisely. But with all the ones I deleted then the total comes to about 2000. Yeah I've read every one of them at some point and most are some worth keeping.

I guess some here were looking to have U2U contests on how many they could let pile up in their Member Centers?
I'm with m0rbid on this, with 1300+ U2U's sitting there, and knowing that you would never read them or delete them, steadily allowing them to pile up, what was the need for that?

I understand that some have read all their numbered U2U's,but there are some who just simply ignored them and allowed them to steadily pile up. As such, perhaps its was time someone took the initiative to clean your 'house' for ya? Taking up space I suppose....the motivation behind the taking up of space is the question.



seekerof

[edit on 21-10-2004 by Seekerof]

I get them.
I read them.
If I need them....I hit "save".

I don't think that process is so tough. Sure a few I don't need to save, stay in the inbox for a bit and then I delete them every couple weeks or so. I can't imagine letting them sit and pile up to 1300.

Quite simply, most people are unaware of what it takes to run a website...much less the cache of info and images and the space they require....those that do are more likely to keep things a little cleaner out of respect for the community's performence...

This is a case where ignorance can't truly be denied, b/c it's quite obvious that not everyone in the ATS community is computer-savy...

An update... This U2U clean-up has been the single-most effective performance adjustment in the past several weeks.... even more than converting the "recent posts" page to a static HTML version updated every 10 minutes. During the days leading up to this action, there were several dozen small slow-downs every day. After logging the database queries and comparing the slow-downs, it was clear that large u2u inboxes were the problem. And our action to remove old u2us not only decreased the size of the database by a significant factor, it also improved overall performance of the community.

Awesome SO...let's make it a regular thing - the 15 day policy sounds good to me

It's a rather strange habit that people have: keeping things.

I never understood it myself. I'm all for keepin things that are important, and may prove relevant at some point in the future. Or keeping an important conversation that you had. But to just insist on keeping everything altogether, knowing that you'll never read it.

In early 2001 my office decided to stop using Groupwise for email. All employees were instructed to delete their old crap because the Groupwise servers were going off and everyone was to backup what was important and let the rest day. We had one employee who insisted on backing up 400MB, that's right four hundred megabytes of old garbage. He said "they're all important". Bottom line: they told him to keep that junk off the server and were nice enough to make him a CD with them. Well, in the 3 and a half years since, he hasn't popped the damn thing into his computer even once. Typical huh? If it was important it was already saved somewhere else.

You shouldn't have to go through 1,000 messages in an hour and pick which to save. What you should do is right when you read it if it's important save it. It'll save everyone a lot of trouble and save SO's equipment a lot of heartburn.