Any JREF members here having trouble logging into their forum?

[smartcooky]

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!

[Sus_pilot]

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  I haven't read the whole thing, but it seems that the hardware is overwhelmed and the software is outdated.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...

[Echnaton]

I just logged in.  The forum is notoriously slow and buggy. 

Here is a post from idoubt it this morning.

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.

[Abaddon]

Nope. A shutdown is in the works. It remains to be seen what volunteers can salvage.

[BazBear]

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

[BazBear]

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?

[Ranb]

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

[BazBear]

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

[Abaddon]

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.

[Ranb]

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

[JayUtah]

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.

[Echnaton]

I have been getting the following message this afternoon.

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. 

[smartcooky]

I have been getting the following message this afternoon.

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

[ApolloGnomon]

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.

[Abaddon]

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.