Last post within 90 seconds

[Bob Day]

Roy is correct. It is flood control. I'll elaborate one more time...

I understand your position and I'm thankfull for your effort on CelticsBlog.

But, I don't think you understand what I was trying to say: when I try to post when I'm not allowed to I get a warning, OK. Then I wait and try to post again, but for some reason I misjudge the time passed (let say I posted after 80 sec.), I get the warning again, and wait for second time. BUT now I have to wait for a FULL 90 sec, not for that 10 sec! So you could click to post again and again you would not be able to post like that until the next year or so! Because it calculates time from my last WARNING not the LAST POST. That is what is so frustrating! And lot of people is experiencing that problem, especially ones who don't know about this issue.

I understand perfectly well what you are saying, Hrvoje. Let me try to explain all this a little more clearly to you and any others here who may not understand fully yet what the posting limit entails. As Roy said, what this SMF forum considers a "post" begins when someone logs into this website. SMF considers logging in as a form of posting. SMF also considers every attempt to post as a post as well. That means every time someone tries to post, the clock restarts. That's why I said in my previous post...

the time required between user actions in the forums

I realize that's frustrating but that's just the way it is and actually from a flood-control standpoint, it makes perfect sense. What doesn't make sense and something I've complained heavily about in the past is how SMF confuses people with the messages it gives them when it is executing its flood-controlling. It tells people that they need to wait before posting again and people think that is referring to them making a forum post. Well, that's not what SMF is talking about but SMF does not make it clear that posting means any kind of form submission. ANY kind.

SMF doesn't tell people, "You can't make a forum post yet because you need to wait until at least 90 seconds after you've been logged in.", or "You need to wait for 90 seconds starting again from now before trying to post again." I think that's the sort of thing that makes the flood-controlling even more frustrating for people and I can sympathize with them over it. No software is perfect though and all in all, SMF has served us pretty well as a forum system in spite of its shortcomings in some ways. I guess about all I can say about it is that it is better than what we had before it, but not as good as what we'll be moving to in the future.

I'm sorry you and some others didn't know this about this but it has been discussed around here before on a number of occasions and just recently again somewhere. These playoffs are not the first time we've imposed posting limits and talked about why we needed those on CelticsBlog at the time.  We've dealt these issues of server overloads, posting limits, flood-control, trying to explain it all to people, get them to slow down their activity levels as well as do what we can on the server end to keep things going for close to two years now.

[Hrvoje]

Thanks for the explanation.

[Bob Day]

Thanks for the explanation.

You're welcome. Like I said, I can sympathize. I know the limitation is frustrating and I hate the way SMF confuses people by throwing up one stupid message for every flood control action. Right now I don't know how long we are going to be using SMF but possibly not very much longer -- not because of this issue, but others.

The fact is though I'm tempted to hack the current software to at least maybe provide people with a better flood control message than what they are getting now while we have that posting limit set so high. I'll see if I can make some time for that this afternoon. I imagine the warning is located in one of the forty or so language files the forum uses.

[Chief]

I'd rather wait my 90 seconds and be able to read other people's posts than be locked out and see this:

[Bob Day]

I agree about how annoying the once in 90 seconds thing is - but it only really happens to me when I am posting one line replies in quick succession (I think it is 90 seconds after you hit the "preview" you hit the "post" or whatever).

When I am writing a more thoughtful, more detailed reply, it does not tend to happen.  Moreover, if you are posting within the 90 second window, you are probably not reading the other posters anyways.

Bob, is it possible to adjust the 90 second timer so that it does not read "preview" as "post." That seems like a legitimate beef.

Otherwise, I think the staff does a good job...  If we want things to go faster we will have to up our clicking... ...on the ads around the blog.  New servers do not pay for themselves...

Jake, Unfortunately I have no control no more discrete control over how SMF handles flooding that just determining how long its posting limit will be set. As with a few others, lood control is an area of SMF that is rather primitive and underdeveloped at this time. And yes, you are most definitely right -- servers don't pay for themselves. Advertising does help some, but what we get from it is not enough for even half the costs of running this website. The rest comes out of pocket. Rather than clicking on ads though, I would encourage anyone who may wish to truly help pay the bills around here to consider buying something from our store. That's a lot easier than clicking ads all the time and you would get something back for yourselves in the process.

[Bob Day]

Ok, the forums are hacked to provide a better flood control message. It is somewhat longer than the original so hopefully whatever window your computer pops it up in will be large enough to accommodate it. Let me know if it isn't and I'll try to chop it down some.