GrahamY wrote 23 October 2012 7:01:22 AM:

> Thanks for the WC3 checker link Tom. The forum scores badly, probably because it is very old and we haven't had the resources to do anything with it ... move ... to WordPress.

The problems reported by the W3C checker are mostly easily fixed. While WordPress is good, chaning to it would be a bit like buying a new car because you can't afford to change the spark plugs on your old one.

It is good to see such a diversity of OLO users commenting upon a technical support topic. It has long been my view that insufficient attention is paid by the ordinary citizen to the 'mechanical' aspects of their experience, be it their online communication and interaction experience, or their participation, both individual and collective, in the political process.

FWIW, this morning this tweet from Twitter '@Support' came up in my timeline: https://twitter.com/Support/status/260450898084511744

It would seem to confirm that Twitter thinks, or is at least comfortable with suggesting, that there may be online interaction problems related to Microsoft's Internet Explorer 8. Note its recommendation.

Be that as it may, although I may not have been posting on OLO as frequently of late as I have in the past, I too have experienced to a small degree this page loading freeze phenomenon while viewing OLO, which I have continued to do. I experienced it while using Mozilla Firefox as my browser, but that version of it that came with my Linux operating system, Ubuntu Linux 8.04, but without having downloaded and installed the various updates that have been made available since the O/S was first installed.

It is very interesting to see GrahamY say, in his post of Tuesday, 23 October 2012 at 7:01:22 AM AEST, that he cannot replicate this freezing behaviour of the site. It would be most interesting to hear from a range of persons who regularly view most of the discussions on OLO, but have never posted on the site, as to whether they have experienced these freezes.

Arjay, in his successive posts of Monday, 22 October 2012 at 5:51:00 PM AEST, and Monday, 22 October 2012 at 8:28:56 PM AEST, may have given some clues as to the nature of this phenomenon. It could be a USER-targetted phenomenon.

Belly indicated on 21 August that he was having browser freezes under IE: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=5317#145268

Belly's post here on Monday, 22 October 2012 at 10:24:31 AM AEST tells what fixed it for him, and thereby hangs a tale.

TBC

Thanks for the comments Tom, but I disagree about WordPress. I'd like to expand what is available on the forum. For example users should be able to email each other with permission, if they want to, but to do that using our current system would be very expensive, as we would have to program from the ground up.

I'd also like to be able to set some of our contributors up with access so that they can post articles themselves rather than waiting for me to put them in. WordPress will handle that better than our current system.

And we also need to move to a subscription model, which our current system again won't support without us investing major amounts of money.

Interesting.

My own experience of this started at some indeterminate date in the last few weeks. The symptoms on my system are an imperfect/incomplete page load, which I "fix" with a quick click onto a neighbouring tab, then back again. Takes less than two seconds.

It seems to happen on a number of web sites, but not all.

I fully expect it to be a random browser compatibility issue (I use Chrome) triggered by some combination of HTML on the page, and that it will disappear as quickly as it came, without anybody finding out what caused it.

Continued from post of Tuesday, 23 October 2012 at 8:36:26 AM.

I have already suggested these browser freezes may be a user-targeted phenomenon. Viewers who also have a Twitter account, as GrahamY does, will be capable of exploring my tweet timeline on Twitter, where I tweet as '@ForrestGumpp'. If any do, they will find tweets around the end of September and early October mentioning degraded Twitter functionality. For those without Twitter accounts, I post these links to specific tweets that you can view that encapsulate some of the problems I was experiencing.

https://twitter.com/ForrestGumpp/status/251868613739433984

http://twitpic.com/az9dac/full

The degradation of service that I experienced was progressive and cumulative. What may have operated one day would cease to operate the next. Had this degradation come about because my old and un-updated version of my Firefox browser had become incompatible with Twitter features, it would have been expected that all of the degradation should have occurred at once, as at some given date my browser passed into incompatibility with Twitter.

My Google search start page had displayed a warning for some time that my version of Firefox was not up to date and was vulnerable to online attacks. The progressive erosion of Twitter functionality seemed consistent with that having happened. After noting the Twitter degradation progress, and other freezes seemingly induced through other browser tabs from time to time, I finally updated my Ubuntu Linux operating system and browser with all the security patches on 3 October 2012. See: https://twitter.com/ForrestGumpp/status/253306078543101954

I think it worth noting that over the period during which all these problems manifested themselves I had been tweeting in relation to the Assange extradition, and posting on both OLO and the 'No Place for Sheep' blog on the same subject. As had others.

I believe OLO is seen as a significant vehicle for discussion outside of the 'embedded' media on topics like Assange. It is not beyond belief that certain interests would seek to disrupt the conversations that might develop. See: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=5317#144804 and continue scrolling and thinking.

I've experienced this on a few odd occasions. I use Firefox. It seems to last half a day or so, then rights itself.