I'm Confused. Help Please?

[Sabrina]

[FONT="Tahoma"]Okay, I'll admit it, I'm confused. I've been following this thread here: [URL="http://www.otakuboards.com/showthread.php?t=59536"][U]3 years coming.[/U][/URL] since it seemed like a fun idea, even if the original record itself is inaccurate. So when I logged in and went to check, I saw that this: [URL="http://www.otakuboards.com/showthread.php?t=59600"][U]3 Years Coming: Official Attempt Thread[/U][/URL] had been closed.

This is where I get confused. According to the guidelines in that forum, you can create any event you want. And though it still says threads will be moderated, an announcement said that was lifted, so I assumed the sticky just hadn't been updated yet. So though the event wasn't official, why close it?

I know reasons were put into the closing post, but I still don't see that as a genuine reason for what looked like some silly harmless fun. If it had been left open, it would have been fun to see just how many people showed up. Plus, Gavin is wrong about there being no planning, the original thread was posted on the 11th and got lots of replies. It wasn't some spur of the moment, lets do this today deal.

So my question or confusion stems from the original poster getting lots of feedback and even the forum moderator saying that the convention center would work the best and yet they closed the thread the member created?

Honestly, this just confuses me to no end. I was looking forward to seeing how many people actually posted and tried to be a part of it. I'm sorry to be a bother, but I don't know where else to ask this. So I hope this is the right place.^^[/FONT]

[Boo]

[size=1]The plan was to break the record, but the record is not even a reasonable number at the moment. It would be pointless to try and break this. So, it is probably a better idea to reschedule this whole thing, with more planning ahead of stuff. (A bunch of people posting in a thread is not planning)

The idea is fun anyway, so a remake would be a good thing. It might be best to first make sure the counter is back to something matchable, though, and then announce the thing in a bigger way than just a thread somewhere.

Besides, did anyone even speak to Adam and get a reply? Was that not part of the big plan?[/size]

[James]

[font=franklin gothic medium]I think Gavin was pretty clear why he closed the thread.

I personally wouldn't mind it staying open (given that the thread could be used for the members involved to plan for the record and to discuss it with each other). But as has been pointed out, we really need to find a way to roll back that "most users ever" record, otherwise it's just not going to happen.

If you want the thread to be re-opened, I would suggest sending a PM to Gavin himself. If you intend to use the thread for ongoing discussion about how to break this record, then I personally don't see a problem, but it's really Gavin's choice at this point. So yeah, you might be better off making your case directly to him.

Other than that, as has been said, I think the reason for the thread closure was pretty clear.[/font]

[Sabrina]

[FONT="Tahoma"][QUOTE=Boo][size=1]The idea is fun anyway, so a remake would be a good thing. It might be best to first make sure the counter is back to something matchable, though, and then announce the thing in a bigger way than just a thread somewhere.

Besides, did anyone even speak to Adam and get a reply? Was that not part of the big plan?[/size][/QUOTE]True, we don't have to go for the literal date of so many years. That might have been part of the problem, not enough planning to get things rolling.

I can certainly mention it to Adam the next time I see him online. But before I do that, the issue of getting a more accurate record needs to be addressed.
[QUOTE=James][font=franklin gothic medium]I think Gavin was pretty clear why he closed the thread.

I personally wouldn't mind it staying open (given that the thread could be used for the members involved to plan for the record and to discuss it with each other). But as has been pointed out, we really need to find a way to roll back that "most users ever" record, otherwise it's just not going to happen.

If you want the thread to be re-opened, I would suggest sending a PM to Gavin himself. If you intend to use the thread for ongoing discussion about how to break this record, then I personally don't see a problem, but it's really Gavin's choice at this point. So yeah, you might be better off making your case directly to him.

Other than that, as has been said, I think the reason for the thread closure was pretty clear.[/font][/QUOTE]What confused me was Gavin telling them in the other thread that the convention center was the right place and then turning around and closing it after telling them that. But since the day in question is already over with, I suppose that is besides the point now.

Now I know the question has been asked about fixing the most users ever record, but has anyone actually looked into that? Obviously as a regular member I have no way to do that and I don't even know where to begin. Plus I assume that's something that only administrators can do.

At this point there's no need to re-open the thread since the original thread is still there so I'll take my concerns to that thread from this point on. I guess you could say that I'm just sad that it got shut down since even if breaking the record was unrealistic at this point, it would have been nice and useful to see if anyone was even interested in the idea... but I'm done here.

Thank you for taking the time to respond, I appreciate it. :catgirl: [/FONT]

[SunfallE]

[COLOR="RoyalBlue"][FONT="Lucida Sans Unicode"][quote name='Boo'][size=1]Besides, did anyone even speak to Adam and get a reply? Was that not part of the big plan?[/size][/QUOTE]I did talk to Adam in regards to this earlier this week. Unfortunately with the NYAF this weekend and Adam having his own panel and interviews to conduct, the timing was horrible. So that kind of made coordinating anything a bit of a pain.

Anyway, I can see how you got confused Sabrina since the other thread gave the impression that it was okay to go ahead with the event, but posting in a thread isn't the same as having so many members on at the same time. If an event is going to work, you need to make sure the preparations are complete. In this case, the counter issue hadn't been solved and no one was sure if Adam had been contacted or not, things like that.

I see no reason why we couldn't keep this in mind for say a future attempt though, but like others have said, we definitely need to get the deal with the "most members online" fixed or it won't have much meaning. Once that is done, then we can actually shoot for a date and start planning on how to get the word out.

If someone could get back to me with a more definite answer, I can bring it up again with Adam and you too James, for promoting the actual date that is. ^_~[/FONT][/COLOR]

[Gavin]

[SIZE="1"]You all have no idea how sheepish I'm feeling right now, really.

I'm more than happy to give my reasons for closing the thread, and honestly Sabrina, I'm really grateful you're the one who posted the thread, otherwise it could be someone calling for my sacking. :animeswea

If it sounded like I gave a false "go-ahead" in the planning thread then I do apologise, as that was not my intention at all. I fully support the event as an idea and when it is actually ready to go ahead, with everything that needs to be in place for it to work ready too, then I promise I will be there in the thick of things. Unfortunately the mandate of my job is to make sure that events are actually ready to reach a board-wide level and in this case I didn't feel that it was.

As Boo pointed out, as long as the old record is in place, I think any attempt to actually break it is futile, I'm not trying to be a Grinch and spoil everyone's fun, I just feel that it was sort of pointless to try when there was no chance in succeeding.

I know that a few weeks ago Drizzt did plan on using yesterday as the target date for trying to break the record, but I don't think that actually qualifies as enough planning for this event. I think Drizzt needs to take several other things into account, such as other members timezones (for instance I'm working off GMT), the actual active numbers we have on OB at the moment and whether or not that number is actually larger than the previous record which we'll hopefully roll-back to.

As I said, I'm more than happy to address people's concerns and questions to the best of my ability, I am admittedly new at this job and thus bound to make mistakes sometimes but I genuinely feel in this case this was not one.

Hopefully that answered all your questions Sabrina, if not, feel free to reply here, PM me or IM me and I'll try to answer them better.

[b][Edit][/b] Ah so that's why Adam hasn't got back to us with an answer, thanks Beth.[/SIZE]

[Desbreko]

[color=#4B0082]Like me and Petie mentioned in the planning thread, it appears the only way to reset the most users online record is to manually edit the database and change the field for it back to zero. So, unless we can find which table and field that value is stored in, resetting the counter won't happen.

I still think a better record to try for is most users logged in during one day. It's not publicly viewable but at least it can be accurately tracked in the admin cp and isn't influenced by search engine spiders. I mean, right now there's 6 members and 71 guests online and most of the guests are spiders—even if we reset the users online record and make a new one, it's hardly going to be accurate.[/color]

[Sabrina]

[FONT="Tahoma"][quote name='SunfallE][COLOR="RoyalBlue"][FONT="Lucida Sans Unicode"]I did talk to Adam in regards to this earlier this week. Unfortunately with the NYAF this weekend and Adam having his own panel and interviews to conduct, the timing was horrible. So that kind of made coordinating anything a bit of a pain. [/FONT'][/COLOR][/quote]I forgot about that. A busy scheudule would make it hard to set anything up.[QUOTE=Gavin][SIZE="1"]You all have no idea how sheepish I'm feeling right now, really.

I'm more than happy to give my reasons for closing the thread, and honestly Sabrina, I'm really grateful you're the one who posted the thread, otherwise it could be someone calling for my sacking. :animeswea[/SIZE][/QUOTE]I wouldn't feel sheepish, I just wanted more clarification so I'd understand it better. It may have been clear to those of you who are moderators, but it wasn't for me, at least not at first.

I certainly wouldn't ask for someone to be fired over a clarification of what happened. That would be silly. o_O Anyway...[QUOTE=Gavin][SIZE="1"]If it sounded like I gave a false "go-ahead" in the planning thread then I do apologise, as that was not my intention at all. I fully support the event as an idea and when it is actually ready to go ahead, with everything that needs to be in place for it to work ready too, then I promise I will be there in the thick of things. Unfortunately the mandate of my job is to make sure that events are actually ready to reach a board-wide level and in this case I didn't feel that it was.

As Boo pointed out, as long as the old record is in place, I think any attempt to actually break it is futile, I'm not trying to be a Grinch and spoil everyone's fun, I just feel that it was sort of pointless to try when there was no chance in succeeding.

I know that a few weeks ago Drizzt did plan on using yesterday as the target date for trying to break the record, but I don't think that actually qualifies as enough planning for this event. I think Drizzt needs to take several other things into account, such as other members timezones (for instance I'm working off GMT), the actual active numbers we have on OB at the moment and whether or not that number is actually larger than the previous record which we'll hopefully roll-back to.
[/SIZE][/QUOTE]I think the comments in the other thread are what got me confused, but then I don't fully understand what goes behind the scenes for running events, and the comments here have cleared up that confusion, so thank you, I appreciate it.[QUOTE=Gavin][SIZE="1"]As I said, I'm more than happy to address people's concerns and questions to the best of my ability, I am admittedly new at this job and thus bound to make mistakes sometimes but I genuinely feel in this case this was not one.

Hopefully that answered all your questions Sabrina, if not, feel free to reply here, PM me or IM me and I'll try to answer them better.[/SIZE][/QUOTE]I didn't think to use pm's or AIM to simply ask you directly, I'll keep that in mind should I ever have questions I need an answer too again. :catgirl:

Oh and thank you for the info on the counter Dessy. I guess until that's resolved, this idea is kind of dead in the water. [/FONT]

[James]

[font=franklin gothic medium]It's sort of unfortunate because I think that the Convention Center needs the activity right now. We've opened up events to all, but there's very little interest in it.

So I definitely encourage people to continue brainstorming and coming up with ideas. Events do not need to be massive endeavours - they can be simple competitions or challenegs (or even your own awards thread or something).

I will definitely be reviewing whether or not we need to keep the Community Events forum in the future and a lot of that will be based on whether people want to use it or not.[/font]

[Petie]

[quote name='Sabrina'][FONT=Tahoma]Oh and thank you for the info on the counter Dessy. I guess until that's resolved, this idea is kind of dead in the water. [/FONT][/quote]
[FONT=Verdana][COLOR=blue]I actually now know how to reset the "Most users ever online" stat but this isn't going to help us if we can't figure out a way to exclude search engines.[/COLOR][/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana][/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana][COLOR=blue]I think Des has the best idea in terms of making this work by simply trying to set a "most users logged in at once" record. I can even throw together a page that would make this stat publicly viewable if that would be desired (and the higher-ups approve).[/COLOR][/FONT]

[Gavin]

[quote name='James'][font=franklin gothic medium]So I definitely encourage people to continue brainstorming and coming up with ideas. Events do not need to be massive endeavours - they can be simple competitions or challenges (or even your own awards thread or something).[/font][/QUOTE]

[size=1]Agreed, even though in this case it was unfortunate that I had to close an event early for not being ready, I still really urge people to try out their skills as creating an event. As James said, it doesn't have to be flashy or large scale, if saw a bunch of people want to get together from a particular category (say the AV District) and hold a little event, for example something like the Oscars for anime for themselves I'm all for it.

I would like to say that I'm fairly close to releasing an event I've been working with liamc2 on, as well as the much sillier "[B][I]The Minion[/I][/B]" in which I will be searching for a lackey of my own, or if there's enough interest we might get a few of the staff getting their own flunkies, after all Des can't be the only one to have minions, even if half of them are fellow staff members. :p[/SIZE]

[quote name='Petie'][FONT=Verdana][COLOR=blue]I think Des has the best idea in terms of making this work by simply trying to set a "most users logged in at once" record. I can even throw together a page that would make this stat publicly viewable if that would be desired (and the higher-ups approve).[/COLOR][/FONT][/QUOTE]

[SIZE="1"]If this could be done I think it would certainly be a better alternative, as we're getting a much more genuine view than including the dozens of search engine users. If we could integrate it into the Otaku Records idea Sandy (at least I think it was Sandy) put forward a few months back it'd be a great start to a potentially consecutive set of record breaking events. [/SIZE]

[Petie]

[quote name='Gavin'][SIZE=1]If this could be done I think it would certainly be a better alternative, as we're getting a much more genuine view than including the dozens of search engine users. If we could integrate it into the Otaku Records idea Sandy (at least I think it was Sandy) put forward a few months back it'd be a great start to a potentially consecutive set of record breaking events. [/SIZE][/quote]
[FONT=Verdana][COLOR=blue]It definitely can be done. I have a vBulletin forum on my own domain for the sake of testing stuff like this and after digging through the tables a little bit, I can easily pull the maximum number of active users (and that's actual users, not bots) ever online at once.[/COLOR][/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana][/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana][COLOR=#0000ff]Oh, and for the record, the number of search engine users is better represented in the thousands, not dozens. Our current record for must active users here is 329 on August 3, 2004. This means there were no less than 2,730 search engine bots on the site at that time.[/COLOR][/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana][/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana][COLOR=#0000ff][FONT=Verdana][COLOR=#0000ff]One thing to note though is that this value (329 in this case) may reflect activity over the entire course of the day and not all at once (i.e. 329 unique users signed on to the forum at some point during the day that record was set). I'm not sure if this will affect things but it's something to think about.[/COLOR][/FONT]
[/COLOR][/FONT][FONT=Verdana][/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana][COLOR=blue]I'm not sure I remember Sandy's idea though. Where was it? Or, if you could link to it, that would be good too. All I need to know is what information I'm looking for and I'll be able to find it given a little time so this idea, whatever it may be, could have a lot of potential.[/COLOR][/FONT]

[James]

[font=franklin gothic medium]Yeah it makes more sense to record the data over a 24 hour period I think, because of time differences and such (although having one for "most users at once" is probably good too).

I wouldn't mind replacing our current record with either (or both) of those systems, if it's doable.[/font]

[Gavin]

[quote name='James'][font=franklin gothic medium]Yeah it makes more sense to record the data over a 24 hour period I think, because of time differences and such (although having one for "most users at once" is probably good too).[/font][/QUOTE]

[SIZE="1"]Agreed, it would be interesting to have the two sets of records. I just have one quick questions though, what timezone is OB actually set to for these records ? I mean obviously 11:10 on October 2nd for me isn't going to be the same time for James or someone in the States.

To answer Petie's questions about the OB Records thing, I think it was in the Event Ideas thread but it was more themed akin to the Guinness Book of Records. I'll check in a little bit just to make sure.[/SIZE]

[Desbreko]

[color=#4B0082]The default time zone for OB is Eastern Time (GMT-5). I'd assume the records are based on that.

As for finding a place to put the registered users online in a day record, if Petie knows where to pull the info from in the database I think we should just be able to stick it down in the little OtakuBoards Statistics table on the main page.[/color]