ApolloHoax.net

Off Topic => General Discussion => Topic started by: smartcooky on August 05, 2014, 01:59:51 AM

Title: Any JREF members here having trouble logging into their forum?
Post by: smartcooky on August 05, 2014, 01:59:51 AM
I cannot login to JREF. My login attempts are rejected with the message...

"Wrong username or password. You have used up your failed login quota! Please wait 15 minutes before trying again."

Even if I wait a couple of hours, the first attempt after the wait gets the same result. I even used the password reset then cut and pasted the new password into the login box (so there could be no mistake) and I still get the same result.

I have emailed them several times over the last 24 hours and I am yet to even get an acknowledgement from them

If anyone here is a member, and can still login, could they please find out what the hell is going on?

Thanks!
Title: Re: Any JREF members here having trouble logging into their forum?
Post by: Sus_pilot on August 05, 2014, 07:23:31 AM
I was able to get in via Tap-a-Talk just a moment ago.  There's an on-going thread in the JREF topics area called "Future of the Forum".  I haven't read the whole thing, but it seems that the hardware is overwhelmed and the software is outdated.  Member idoubtthat (she's give her name, but I forget it) has been retained on a part time basis to facilitate a solution.  User icerat, an expert, has agreed to volunteer his time to provide solutions.

More to come...
Title: Re: Any JREF members here having trouble logging into their forum?
Post by: Echnaton on August 05, 2014, 09:58:40 AM
I just logged in.  The forum is notoriously slow and buggy. 

Here is a post from idoubt it this morning.

Quote
Sometimes tough decisions need to be made.

There is no planned support for the Forum from the JREF. It will be detached from the org. I understand this may be confusing but the Forum is very much its own thing seperate from the org and currently does not fit into the narrowed mission. More will be clear when we formulate that new roll out and announce it. That the forum expanded into all sorts of other areas is normal, not anything bad. But it simply has outgrown the support of the org - like a child that has grown up and needs to go out on his own, if you will.

The current server situation will not work so it must be moved.

The proxy was allowing the site to run quickly. But then, for some unknown reason, refused logins. You could get through by bypassing the proxy server as noted above. I was able to login normally now to post this.

So changes are in the works, we just don't knew what those changes are to be yet.  As a casual user, I don't feel I have ay complaint about the admin, but hope the focus remains on fostering open discussion rather than controlling the range of topics.
Title: Re: Any JREF members here having trouble logging into their forum?
Post by: Abaddon on August 05, 2014, 05:55:13 PM
Nope. A shutdown is in the works. It remains to be seen what volunteers can salvage.
Title: Re: Any JREF members here having trouble logging into their forum?
Post by: BazBear on August 05, 2014, 06:02:04 PM
Smartcooky, I haven't been able to log in since yesterday, with the same too many log in attempts error message. It didn't matter if I used Windows or Linux, or whether the browser was Firefox, Chrome, or Opera, and the forum isn't even reachable right now. As Echnaton points out above, there's changes about to be made over there, so it's hard to say if the forum now being unreachable is a good (because someone is sorting out the technical issues) or a bad (because someone in the foundation administration decided to just kill it) sign. I sincerely hope it's the former.

ETA- It's back up now, and it finally let me log in :)
Title: Re: Any JREF members here having trouble logging into their forum?
Post by: BazBear on August 05, 2014, 06:10:30 PM
Nope. A shutdown is in the works. It remains to be seen what volunteers can salvage.
Are they still giving your offers to help the foxtrot oscar treatment?
Title: Re: Any JREF members here having trouble logging into their forum?
Post by: Ranb on August 05, 2014, 07:12:10 PM
Also unable to log-in.  When I could get to the forum website it would tell me that I had failed five log-in attempts and was blocked for the next 15 minutes.

Ranb
Title: Re: Any JREF members here having trouble logging into their forum?
Post by: BazBear on August 05, 2014, 07:35:33 PM
That's odd Ranb, it's working excellent for me right now.

I guess it's been decided that foundation is dumping the forum; however a user named Icecat is apparently taking it over, if necessary at his own expense, with very few changes, including keeping the same Admin/Mod team :)
Title: Re: Any JREF members here having trouble logging into their forum?
Post by: Abaddon on August 05, 2014, 10:08:22 PM
Nope. A shutdown is in the works. It remains to be seen what volunteers can salvage.
Are they still giving your offers to help the foxtrot oscar treatment?
Dunno. I foxtrot oscared. I am talking to icerat though.
Title: Re: Any JREF members here having trouble logging into their forum?
Post by: Ranb on August 06, 2014, 01:04:21 AM
I was able to get back on as usual a few hours after I posted above.  It seems to be working a bit faster now too.

Good to hear that the forum will live on; it's one of my favorites.

Ranb
Title: Re: Any JREF members here having trouble logging into their forum?
Post by: JayUtah on August 06, 2014, 11:00:58 AM
As many of you know, I spent a couple years recently contracting on the side as the interim chief engineer of my good friend's ISP.  We upgraded heating, cooling, electrical, and structure, and cleaned up a lot of the internal program code and infrastructure.  I actually stayed an additional six months to architect some key software (and learn advanced Python -- new favorite language, by the way).  This is the ISP that hosts the Clavius web site.

He hosts a lot of organizations pro bono, so I talked to him about hosting JREF forums.  Sadly he's had to scale that charity back due to economy, but the deal-killer was the number of times the forum has been sued.  He just can't undertake the liability at this point.  You may have seen it written up in Ars Technica a few months ago how that "little Utah ISP" doesn't honor warrantless subpoenas, which means he has to pretty much have his lawyers on danger money around the clock.
Title: Re: Any JREF members here having trouble logging into their forum?
Post by: Echnaton on August 06, 2014, 08:22:18 PM
I have been getting the following message this afternoon.

Quote
The Forum will be off-line for a short period - JREF Staff

I guess free speech may be free but a forum for free speech isn't free.  I'd pitch in for a forum membership. 
Title: Re: Any JREF members here having trouble logging into their forum?
Post by: smartcooky on August 06, 2014, 09:39:16 PM
I have been getting the following message this afternoon.

Quote
The Forum will be off-line for a short period - JREF Staff

I guess free speech may be free but a forum for free speech isn't free.  I'd pitch in for a forum membership. 

Here is an announcemnet related to that message

http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/jref-news/2384-regarding-the-jref-forum-status.html
Title: Re: Any JREF members here having trouble logging into their forum?
Post by: ApolloGnomon on September 07, 2014, 01:06:32 PM
Just thought I'd bump this as JREF forum is currently in 403-ville. This might be a good place on the internet to post a link to the new site when it comes up in 4 hours or so.
Title: Re: Any JREF members here having trouble logging into their forum?
Post by: Abaddon on September 07, 2014, 02:28:30 PM
Just thought I'd bump this as JREF forum is currently in 403-ville. This might be a good place on the internet to post a link to the new site when it comes up in 4 hours or so.
It's a planned outage to migrate to a new hardware platform from 14:00 UTC to 20:00 UTC. So supposedly back up and running within 1.5 hrs of now.

YMMV.
Title: Re: Any JREF members here having trouble logging into their forum?
Post by: smartcooky on September 07, 2014, 03:29:10 PM
Its up and running. Same url as usual, and it loads much faster than it used to
Title: Re: Any JREF members here having trouble logging into their forum?
Post by: Echnaton on September 07, 2014, 06:13:09 PM
I just got the fastest page load of a search in years.  Maybe it will slow down as traffic picks back up, but for now it is great.
Title: Re: Any JREF members here having trouble logging into their forum?
Post by: Echnaton on September 17, 2014, 05:25:57 PM
Maybe it will slow down as traffic picks back up....

The slowdown has happened.  I am getting outright refusals on searches with the message "The server is too busy at the moment. Please try again later." 
Title: Re: Any JREF members here having trouble logging into their forum?
Post by: BazBear on September 18, 2014, 05:15:58 PM
Maybe it will slow down as traffic picks back up....

The slowdown has happened.  I am getting outright refusals on searches with the message "The server is too busy at the moment. Please try again later."
That was probably related to the work the new tech team have been doing in preparation for the full changeover http://forums.randi.org/showpost.php?p=10226916&postcount=93 .
Title: Re: Any JREF members here having trouble logging into their forum?
Post by: ApolloGnomon on October 04, 2014, 11:25:01 PM
Quote
Notices
The server will be coming down at approximately 0000UTC Oct 5 (1800MDT Oct 4) for migration to the final server and domain name. The process should take a few hours but may take more. The new URL will be http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums.

Hopefully this will be a seamless transition. And hopefully I can remember which typographic variation of a theme password I used there.
Title: Re: Any JREF members here having trouble logging into their forum?
Post by: smartcooky on October 05, 2014, 03:06:28 AM
Seems to have worked fine

1. I logged in successfully with my usual user name and password. If you use Firefox, you can find your old password easily enough (Tools > Options > Security > Passwords > Show Passwords)

2. You cannot post or send a PM until you accept the new terms of service

3. Your private data have not been imported but you can choose to do so using their "private data import tool)

Title: Re: Any JREF members here having trouble logging into their forum?
Post by: ApolloGnomon on October 05, 2014, 02:19:58 PM
I've been posting exclusively from my phone for a year. My Firefox machine hasn't been booted for weeks. I use the same password formatted differently (pass_word, PassWord, Pass_Word) for different sites for this username. Meh, I'll have 5 tries before it lock me out. And I have wood to work.
Title: Re: Any JREF members here having trouble logging into their forum?
Post by: Echnaton on October 05, 2014, 06:21:48 PM
A painless transition.  Just a few short paragraphs to view as long as you are willing to skip the EULA.  And a few links to click to get things back to normal. So what will the JREF do now to get people to its site?  for some time, my visits have come as an offshoot from being on the forum first.
Title: Re: Any JREF members here having trouble logging into their forum?
Post by: BazBear on October 06, 2014, 06:27:49 AM
A painless transition.  Just a few short paragraphs to view as long as you are willing to skip the EULA.  And a few links to click to get things back to normal. So what will the JREF do now to get people to its site?  for some time, my visits have come as an offshoot from being on the forum first.
My only connection to JREF was their forum, and by that I mean I'd never have known who Mr. Randi is or about TAM (one of these years I want to make it) without the forum.

But then again, I'd have never known about the now-former-JREF forum unless I'd heard about it on this one (or it's direct predecessor).

It's all Lunar Orbit's fault (can't blame Lisa here).