Does anyone look at OLO threads page by page? My first action when I open a thread is to display all the pages at once. If that's what most people do, it should be the default setting.

Agree or not?

Well yeah, but I don't really care. It isn't a biggie. How much time does it take out of your day to click 'All'?.

I do the same but do not care if its default setting

This aspect of OLO has been discussed before in the technical support area. From memory an explanation given for not making the 'All' choice the default was that, for the benefit of users having only dial-up connections, it avoided the need for an otherwise excessively slow access to viewing posts.

Would it help if the last page in any given thread (as presently paginated by the OLO software) was made the default?

If one came late to a discussion having only a dial-up connection, one could still view the thread one page at a time if earlier posts had not yet been seen. For those that have remained up to date with the topic (presumably the majority of viewers, but only OLO would know), the amount of data served by default by OLO each time a user monitors a thread would be minimised. For those who prefer it, the choice of 'All' remains.

Has anyone been experiencing a greater than usual number of 'Server error' messages when attempting to load OLO pages?

Or has the speed of page loading decreased?

Arjay indicated a problem in posting on this thread: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=2625#59296

ForrestGumpp:

I had just finshed complaining to Graham that I had recently spent at least half an hour on 3 seperate occasions recently, compiling, correcting spelling and composition, plus removing excess words and sentences to meet the Forum requirements, only to find that upon clicking the "post discussion" the submission seemed to simply vanish into the ether or I was greeted with "Server Error".

Another simple but frustrating happening occurs when after creating a submission and "previewing " for mistakes etc, one is viewing the "preview revision" copy and indavertantly "clicks" on a mis-spelt word, instead of the "original" compilation and voila it again disappears into limbo and is obviously non-retrievable!

As I am one of the happy campers who resides in a country area and at this time does not have access to Broadband, I find the whole deal very annoying due to the painfully slow (26.4kbs) performance via the Trujillo Superannuation Scheme.

Cuphandle

"Another simple but frustrating happening occurs when after creating a submission and "previewing " for mistakes etc, one is viewing the "preview revision" copy and indavertantly "clicks" on a mis-spelt word, instead of the "original" compilation and voila it again disappears into limbo and is obviously non-retrievable!"

I know exactly how you feel. I've done this myself many times. It's easy to do when you're a little tired or in a hurry. It would be great to have some sort of retrieval back up.

I've noticed though, that you don't always lose your work when you do this, only some of the time. Often it will just jump you down to your original copy. That's when it's being co-operative!

I have experienced a little of the problems mentioned, but rapidly found that if I type my responses on a doco-page, BEFORE hitting "new post", then copy it across, as advised clearly here, then it doesn't happen. Even though I'm on broad-band I don't bother with "all", as a rule, because it just wastes my time, I don't often need to re-read the entire thread, so making it the default would be a put-off for me. It may be different for others, or those on dial-up, but I can't speak to that, only for myself.

Cuphandle,

I've just experienced an example of the loss of a post due to a 'Server error'. It only inconvenienced me slightly, however.

Here's the way I guard against loss of a post to cyberspace. First, I open my text editor, which in Ubuntu Linux is Gedit. (If you are using a Windows operating system I think you could use Wordpad. Such word processing application only need be quite rudimentary for post composition for OLO, so you don't need to use Word unless you want to.)

I then compose my post, check its word count in 'Document statistics' in the 'Tools' menu, make any alterations required, and then save. Selecting all, I then click 'Copy', and then change desktop to the one on which my browser, Firefox, is running, and upon which the OLO posting pane is currently displaying.

I click in the posting pane, then click 'Edit' and select 'Paste'. The copy of my post displays instantly in the OLO posting pane, along with all the little wriggly red lines (which I largely ignore), and I immediately click 'Preview'. If, like what just happened when I first attempted to post to the 'Conspiracy theory' thread recently, I get a 'Server error' (Incident number 747-4710 at 1148 AM EDST), I just click the 'Back' arrow, click in the now empty posting pane, click 'Edit' again, choose 'Paste', and try again. I succeeded on the second attempt, at 10:49:00 AM EST, one minute later.

I don't lose my post because its still on my clipboard (and is a saved Gedit file anyway), whereas Bronwyn, who likes to live dangerously on OLO, does this many times.

CJMorgan has just given me a paranoid idea, here: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=2625#59390 . I wonder whether it is possible for server errors to be targetted to occur to specific OLO users? I'm not suggesting OLO itself doing this, but if the site was to be hacked from outside? Thanks for the heads-up on this one CJ. Hadn't thought of it.

Forrest

"I don't lose my post because its still on my clipboard (and is a saved Gedit file anyway), whereas Bronwyn, who likes to live dangerously on OLO, does this many times."

Ah yes, Forrest, that must be why I do it. Actually, I'm a fairly risk averse person in most situations. I much prefer to play safely, though I know it doesn't sound nearly as interesting. :)

I do use Word sometimes, especially if I'm halfway through a post and run out of time or can't make it work for some reason, then I save it to Word and come back to it, or quite often never come back to it. Most of the time when I go to post though, I have in mind that I'm making a quick little response which wouldn't be much of a loss anyway, so I just click straight onto New Post. I invariably end up writing a lot more than seemed obvious at first, and yes that's when I can get caught out.

I'll try to remember your 'living dangerously' quip from now on in, Forrest. I think it could just save me from my own slackness! :)

People are using dial-up? In 2009?

Anyway, I have an ulterior motive. I just got a phone with web access, and OLO discussions will only show the first page when the HTML is rendered for display.

That's more the reason I'd like a full-comment default, but the extra clicking and loading is still annoying.

It seems all is now quiet on the problems front? But over the past few days I have been experiencing the "error" message when posting a comment...Every single time. I hadn't read Cj's comment but I have to admit that such a thought did flit through my mind.

Also, I don't use the All choice because it is rather slow to load. But for the past week clicking onto the next page takes so damn long I often lose interest completely and trot off to another forum.

Strange that I am only experiencing these glitches now. Maybe there is a time-delay mechanism for China!

Sanchez:

Yes! There are still people on a dial-up service! We are known as country dwellers and unfortunately do NOT have a Broadband Service because Trujillo`s Severance Pay and Bonuses took care of those funds!

I am now operating on a permanent dial-up speed of 26.4 kbs and believe me waiting for the Forum pages to download is excruciating!

I think that as Forrest suggested maybe we should get Graham to set the default as "All pages"....that way we get the "lot" loaded first time up, and we can still view each individual contribution as required!

I have found from experience that one needs a bucketfull of patience to become a regular contributor to the Forum, due to the ongoing problems both internal and external!

Something is crippling the OLO site, Graham.

I use Firefox as my browser, and Ubuntu Linux is my operating system. I have just changed ISPs from bigpond (notionally 256/64) to Internode (notionally 1500/256) and have been getting dramatically improved speed of OLO page loading.

But not this morning.

The status bar at the bottom of my screen has been telling me that, variously, either the transfer of data from www.google-analytics.com , or au.effectivemeasure.net is hanging OLO out to dry. I have been waiting MINUTES at a time for a page to load.

In posting the 19th post to the topic 'Blind fury or emotional blackmail' I experienced these minutes-long delays in loading in first refreshing the index page, then bringing up the default topic page, then bringing up the 'new post' page, and finally bringing up the 'preview' within the 'new post' page.

I did not experience anything like these sort of delays even on my previous slower bigpond ADSL service.

My impression is that either the servers at these two sites are letting OLO down, or there is insufficient bandwidth in the connections thereto from OLO. Other sites like Twitter or Gmail are loading in a flash.

Just wondering whether other OLO users are having similar experiences.

BTW, in the process of changing to an improved service, I have saved myself $10 per month for a broadly comparable 10Gb limit before encountering throttling or 'shaping'. A major consideration in making the change was that Internode officially supports Linux, whereas when I last heard from them, bigpond did not.

Forrest

"I experienced these minutes-long delays in loading in first refreshing the index page, then bringing up the default topic page, then bringing up the 'new post' page, and finally bringing up the 'preview' within the 'new post' page."

Yes, I had the same problem this morning. Don't know if it was quite a minute but it was very much slower than usual. Seems okay again now though.

Don't know if it's related or not, but yesterday morning I couldn't get onto OLO at all. Kept getting the Server Error message. Gave up and tried again later and it was okay.

Bronwyn,

Thank you for your response on this issue. As you may be aware, I am particularly sensitive to any issues that have the appearance of threatening the workability of sites like OLO. The traditional proprietorial/editorial control that was once the monopoly of the MSM has been largely overthrown by blogs and fora on the internet. Attempts at censorship can come from many directions.

In discussion with nerd geek son over yesterday's apparent OLO problem, the prospect of a denial of service (DOS) attack upon OLO was raised. Apparently such attacks, in which the servers of particular sites are flooded with requests from many computers at once, can be mounted with the aid of 'back door' viral programs that can effectively 'zombify' many home and small office computers such that those computers all place requests upon the target site without the real owners even being aware their machines are being hijacked to this end. OLO could easily qualify as the target for such attacks, which might mean that its own servers might be targetted, or, alternatively, the servers of sites upon which the OLO site is known to depend (such as www.google-analytics.com or au.effectivemeasure.net) may be attacked.

The fact must be faced that our own government has an expressed interest in being able to censor the internet. Its stated interest is in being able to remove "unwanted content". This is not necessarily the pornographic and paedophile sites that it would have the public believe are the targets of its intended censorship, but could well be sites like OLO that are capable of giving expression to public opinion, and enabling discussion upon subjects THE PUBLIC want discussed. Our own government, or interests outside it that support it, could see DOS attacks as a way to achieving suppression of 'unwanted content'.

As the day progressed, it seemed more and more sites, with which OLO interacts when serving its pages, were the points at which the loading of pages was hanging, rather than the two mentioned in my post.

The problem resolved itself late in the afternoon.

Forrest:...and all:

It appears that we have one or three situations currently affecting the OLO site:
1) The site is being hacked from outside by an "interested" person or organization.

2) We are concidentally having the same access problems at the same time, but not all are affected, which suggests the selective targetting of certain individuals via their Internet connections.

3) The Forum/OLO is itself suffering technical problems or alternatively has been compromised by outside "interests"

I am on a Dial-up connection which 12 months ago operated at the staggering speed of 32.4kbs, it gradually deteriorated, (probably due to increasing line congestion) to 28.4kbs and I am now permanently on 26.4kbs....I was at the beginning suffering very irregular "line drop-outs" which at the end of the day was costing me small fortune in reconnection calls ...the line drop-out rate seems to have amazingly ceased, however a better Broadband system is not available via the phone network, due to the poor local exchange qualities....I am now currently considering alternative methods of access!....I have "the" Fibre-Optic cable running past the front door, which has been there for around 17 odd years, but nobody seems to know exactly what it is for or exactly who owns it,....very democratic!

If the OLO site has in fact been compromised, I would suggest that it is a sad day for our so-called Democracy when and if our few remaining opportunities to voice our opinions openly have been removed under the guise of "censorship"!

We are approaching a very "exciting" time in our political history, as the ongoing "refugee/asylum seekers" issue hots up, so we need "clean" access to voice our own individual opinions on the subject, which itself is going to have far-reaching effects upon the whole population in the coming months and possibly years!

2 de..[4 th]
try to post the topic
ERROR MESSAGE;

ONE POST ONE COMMENT...lol its a joke.5 articles /5 posts..now go away

5 articles [new] posted per day
5 article posts per day[limit]

5 responses[then go blog some other place

how to respond to other responses [to yesterdays 5 new topics]
are we willfull kids who are to be limited because we already ate our 5 posts for today?

dont eat all your todays posting lollies jeffry...lol

should we limit comment on new topic or limit responmse to old topics?
5 per day...lol
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/index-articles.asp

lets get rid of posting articles and
just post links from general section

yeah im having the constant error thing as well
cutting and saving is vital

am frustrated by the delay [and waiting to download the dumb first page to click the all button[but i figure the income comes from the adds, and every click the add revenue bill/credit adds up

we all should be clicking a lot of pages..[that way we dont need a new athiest sponcer], who just might take over the site with their fellow athiests swamping the ever fewer poster's trying to defend our various faiths

another issue is SOMETIMES my words erase as i correct the missspelled posts[i thus abandon my edit to correct spelling]..ok it looks sloppy but its clear when it happens, because there is more error than normal

anyhow i have commenmted all i can on the few current topics[so go to blog elsewhere [for 9 hours lol. there are some[many unable to respond to posts[in the articles section,. but im sort of fed up with a computer telling me i cant post[so much for the 50 clicks per day my clicks add to the click total, thats lost income gray

that 5 post limit is stealing cash from your pocket, as we go and click elsewhere