Site was dead/comatose for me for at least 2 days... General forum

52 replies. Last post: 2016-08-20

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Site was dead/comatose for me for at least 2 days...
  • unique at 2016-05-16

    anyone else?

  • David J Bush ★ at 2016-05-16

    Yes I got “504 Gateway Error” and when I checked downforeveryoneorjustme.com I was told it's just me.

  • Ray Garrison at 2016-05-16

    yes, lost a vacation day due to down time.

  • William Fraser at 2016-05-16

    I was unable to access it, too.

  • Hunter C at 2016-05-16

    Same here…

  • Tommah at 2016-05-16

    LG wasn't working for me, either.  I never got an error page, though.  So I think the server was up but the site wasn't running.

  • Paul Wiselius at 2016-05-16

    Same for me. Got the 504 error too.

  • orvieto at 2016-05-16

    I was also unable to access both littlegolem.net and 188.166.30.209. There was no error message for me, though, but the pages did not load for some two days.I lost a couple matches as I checked in only two hours after the site came alive again…

  • unique at 2016-05-16

    (T)he(y) should rewind game clocks 2 days and return lost vacation time.

  • terrance806 at 2016-05-16

    The site has been down for significant periods a couple of weekends per month for a large part of the year, including in Australia. Interestingly, sites such as “Down For Everyone Or Just Me” say that the site is still up. It certainly is getting frustrating.

  • wccanard at 2016-05-17

    The site has been like this ever since I joined it nearly 10 years ago. It's run by one guy (Richard), in his spare time, as a hobby. Would you rather have it like it is, or would you prefer a site full of ads (and a little feature that stops you from being able to make a move if you have an ad-blocker on)? Or a professionally-run site where you have to pay to play? Once Richard went on holiday for a couple of weeks and the site went down and so it just stayed down for a couple of weeks. That's what we have, and that's how it works. Without money there is no way to employ a team full-time to keep the site up, and there is no money to be made in this site, in fact it _costs_ Richard money to keep this site running because he has to pay hosting costs. Sure it's annoying, but I would rather it were like this than a professional service charging me $20 per year. It's just the financial realities of the world that the site goes down sometimes – you get what you pay for.

  • Carroll at 2016-05-17

    I agree with what wccanard wrote. I would like to add that you can contribute to make it better by contributing financially not by paying $20 a year, but just 19€.

    You then get additional vacation days so that you don't lose any game when there are outages like the previous one.

    What I would like in case we can not connect on LG, is that there is a page where we could get some info. I went on he LG facebook page but last news were from february.

    Is such a page somewhere that I don't know of?

  • richyfourtytwo at 2016-05-17

    Maybe we should have a 'little golem status' thread on some approriate public forum?

    (This forum would be very appropriate of course, but disqualifies for obvious reasons …)

  • urmaul at 2016-05-17

    The hexwiki (wow! I didn't expect any recent changes!) seems like an appropriate place for a “little golem status” page, to me. But perhapsI'm a little biased.

  • Austral at 2016-05-17

    I agree with wccanard…

    Thanks for what you are doing Richard ! !!

    Have fun ; )

    Matthieu

  • David J Bush ★ at 2016-05-17

    LG does have a Facebook page and a Google group which nobody used this time.

  • ypercube at 2016-05-17

    Someone posted an issue at LittleGolem's tracker (at BitBucket) on Sunday.

  • Rbpompeu at 2016-05-17

    I absolutely agree withh wccannard.!!! I guess 99% of the players dont pay a cent for LG but demands as it was paying fot it!

    Richard is doing a great job building up a great communnity of abstract game palyers: let's help and support.

    Don't ask what LG can do for you, but what you can do for LG!

  • William Fraser at 2016-05-17

    And didn't the Morelli championship get reset?

  • gamesorry ★ at 2016-05-18

    +1 for the Morelli Championship

    BTW, I used https://www.uptrends.com/tools/uptime to check the availability of the LG, after I found out downforeveryoneorjustme.com didn't work.

  • Richard Moxham at 2016-05-18

    The Morelli thing was because a bug had caused no Group 2s to be created, and apparently Richard couldn't fix the one without resetting the other.  But I don't think anyone was more than a handful of games in, so he doubtless figured it wouldn't be a calamity.

  • Richard Moxham at 2016-05-18

    I don't mean games in, I mean *moves* in :)

  • Hunter C at 2016-05-19

    I would become a paying member if Cannon and Unlur were added just saying :)

  • Austral at 2016-05-19

    Unlur would be great ! !!

  • Ray Garrison at 2016-05-26

    Site was down again most of the day yesterday.

  • gamesorry ★ at 2016-06-04

    Lost another vacation day last night… about 5/7 of vacations were lost through the down time this year, so I guess I have to ensure there're 48 hours left in the games before going to bed…

  • Hjallti ★ at 2016-06-04

    I fully agree with wccanard (except for the 10yrs, I have been here 14 years :-) )

    I just love the way Richard does what he does.

    Itsyourturn was the site I was playing before I came here (in 2002) (I am getting old) but they jumped from small to very big (the internet boom just before the millenium) and made it look like they were a big company.

    Then they also get a downtime (some nasty database corruption they coudn't get fixed) and all those paying got angry. The site owner had to admit he was on his own by that time and made it bigger than it was.

  • Chaosu ★ at 2016-06-05

    Couldn't access yesterday and timeouted 10 games (lost my vacation days earlier).

  • Austral at 2016-06-07

    I still have 20 vacation days,

    Life's short, play fast…

    But I do lots of stupid moves by playing too quickly :(

  • Chaosu ★ at 2016-06-15

    I have timeouted many times and mostly it was my own fault, but these (just got another 7) are making me extra-bitter.

  • Dvd Avins at 2016-06-15

    Really, I understand this is a hobby for Richard (the designer/webmaster). So it would be completely unreasonable to expect five 9s of up-time. (Being up .99999 of the time.) But is taking for granted a single 9 to much to shoot for? For Richard to expect of himself?

  • Tommah at 2016-06-15

    I'm really curious to know what's causing all the downtime.  When LG goes down and I try to go to the site, the browser stalls for a minute and then shows a blank page.  I would expect some sort of error page.

  • christian freeling at 2016-06-15

    It would suggest that the blank page is not an error.

  • Kobus at 2016-06-15

    I think these down times are a blessing.

    Getting rid of games that linger for months because of players waiting till the last hour to make a move.

    That is, in case Richard doesn't restore vacation days…..

    If you just speed up your play, there's nothing to complain about.

  • Kobus at 2016-06-15

    For further reading:

    http://www.littlegolem.net/jsp/forum/topic2.jsp?forum=1&topic=2750

  • Chaosu ★ at 2016-06-16

    Easy to judge others, Kobus.

  • Tommah at 2016-06-21

    It happened again.

  • Paul Wiselius at 2016-06-21

    Yep :-(

  • Tommah at 2016-06-30

    Just so everyone knows, the vacation days seem to have been reset.

  • wccanard at 2016-07-01

    I remember when I used to wait impatiently for the next dots and boxes championship to start, and statements like “the vacation days seem to have been reset” used to fill me with sadness. It meant that the one game that the entire community was waiting to finish would now take 2 weeks longer to finish…

  • Ray Garrison at 2016-08-02

    On June 30, Tommah pointed out that everyone had vacation days reset, then, all of July, the site did not go down once that I noticed, so I was thinking Richard fixed the problem that was causing it to go down once or twice a week.  However, I was not able to get on all day yesterday.  Same for everyone else?  Hopefully it is a one time downage

  • Dvd Avins at 2016-08-02

    Yeah, it was down for me, and I assume everyone else. I think it was giving a Bad Gateway error, which at least would be different, but I might be remembering a bad link I followed from another site.

  • isometry at 2016-08-02

    Yes, it was down, and I was worried that my only remaining opponent, who was due to lose on time today, would get 20 new vacation days!!

  • Ed Collins at 2016-08-02

    If it were up to me, I'd drop the entire “vacation day” concept entirely.

    We already have ten days to make each move.  That's already far too many, in my opinion.  (I know many will disagree… especially the people who are playing a zillion games at once.  I'm happy and content just to have a dozen or two games going on, assuming they all move at a reasonable pace.)  Seriously, who needs ten days to make a move?

    Nowadays, don't most players have access to the internet even when they are away from work and home, via their smartphones?

    Waiting 10 days for my opponent to make a move, and then having 20 days of vacation kick in, means I could be waiting a month for a reply from my opponent.  If I wanted to wait that long I'd go back to correspondence chess by mail, something I haven't done since the early '80s.

    Of course, maybe I'm just used to IYT.  There, I set up my games so that me and my opponent have either 3 days or 7 days to make each move.

  • mtbikesman at 2016-08-02

    I wentover and beat my neighbor up because I thought he was stealing bandwidth from me again.  Perhaps I should go over andapologizeto him.  Or perhaps not and keep him on his toes.

      I should note my neighbor is an 87 year old lady.

  • mmKALLL ★ at 2016-08-03

    Ed, perhaps the assumption of most people having smartphones with Internet capabilities - and the time or willingness needed to use them all the time - is a bit too much to make. I'd rather pay not 20 but just 19 euros per year to keep the site more available, rather than pay for a phone upgrade that is in a whole different order of magnitude with regards to the cost. ;)

    In all seriousness, though, it's great that you never need more than 10 days to play your games, but there are various circumstances that may not allow others to do that. In my case, one such circumstance was being extremely busy for two weeks with high-priority projects, while for another it may be that they may actually be on vacation in an area with no carriers compatible with their phone, and no 3G/4G reception. Or perhaps there are carriers, but the data exchange costs much more than usual. Or perhaps they want to enjoy their time off with no electronic disturbances going off every 10 minutes. Needless to say, there are many possible circumstances and a safety net like this allows people to continue enjoying games they have invested a lot of time into, regardless of any expected or unexpected circumstances. I would hate to lose on timeout a game that I have been playing for a year actively, just because of a somewhat random occurrence.

    Regarding the downtime and costs, I wonder whether using ads would make the site any better. If it does provide Richard with some kind of constant buffer that will enable him to upgrade plans or switch hosts, that might be a good idea honestly. As long as they are not moving, I'd say that it's a minor inconvenience - but perhaps in that case it will also be a minor gain and thus not worth it.

    The site makes a lot of requests of full data to the servers - I'm wondering if that drains a lot of bandwidth and if it wouldn't be worth it to optimize.

  • Ed Collins at 2016-08-03

    Yes, but if circumstances arise that cause you to time-out (because of the shorter time limit AND because you used up all of your vacation days), the world won't come to an end.  It's just a game, and you can start another one.

    Playing is what's important.  Over the course of a year I'd rather play four different games that each take approximately three months to play, and time-out in one of them because of unforeseen circumstances, than to play just one game that took the full year.

    With a long time limit, many of my past opponents don't make a move for the full ten days…regularly!  So lots of time was just spent between moves, waiting.  Waiting… waiting… waiting.  I'd rather play than wait.

    Vacation days that kick in should take care of ordinary circumstances where you are extremely busy and can't make your next move within the time limit.

    Ten days to make each move together WITH 20 vacation days (or is it 15 for non members?) is just too much.  Step back and look at it from a new-members perspective.  They wait ten days for their opponent to make a move.  He/She makes their move and they reply almost immediately.  Now they wait another ten days for the next move.  20 days have gone by and during that time they made ONE move in their game.  Seriously?  This is fun for them?

    I understand it's a turn-based server… but still.

    But again, this is just my opinion.  I believe the 10 day per move time limit has been here since Day One.  Because of that, many long-time members here are most certainly so used to it they would not at all be happy with a faster pace.  (But they WOULD be happy with the faster turnover rate for tourneys!)  But if you ask the average non member who hasn't yet joined and is thinking of joining, I'll bet you they would opt for a slightly shorter time limit.

  • ypercube at 2016-08-03

    Ed, I agree in general but there is no 10 day per move. There never was.

    The time is for the whole game:  10 days + 1.5 day per move. That's it, if vacation days don't kick in.

    My agreement is regarding new players to the site who may be frustrated by the low pace, when they only have 5-10 games. I find it very slow myself, now that I have removed myself from championships and cups and I am in about 20-30 games.

    I used to find OK when I was between 50-100 games and there was always some game that it was my move to play, every time I logged in (1-3 times per day).

    (By the way it's 20 vacation days for no-members and 30 for members.) The issue in my opinion with vacation days, is that in the last 2-3 years and due to the site havimng connection problems, Richard decided that it was good to reset the vacation days to 20 (or 30) after a site “problem”. This might be ok, if it happened once in a year or two. But this year, I think that my vacation days were reset 3 times. I don't think I used them but I could probably use - with special attention - about 90 vacation days (20+20+20+30, I paid my membership in June). And we still have half a year to go …

  • Ed Collins at 2016-08-03

    Ah, thanks for the correction!

  • mmKALLL ★ at 2016-08-03

    Is it 36 hours? I thought you only gain 24 hours from moving. At any rate, I find the pace quite appropriate.

    By the way, I must have used at least 60-70 vacation days already this year - just the standard membership advantages. ;)

    (I play 98% of my games fairly quickly, but there are always one or two which lag behind due to an extremely complicated position…)

  • mmKALLL ★ at 2016-08-03

    Oh, looks like it certainly is 36 hours. My bad.

  • Dvd Avins at 2016-08-20

    “ It’s just a game, and you can start another one. "

    That's easier to say about games requiring 15 moves per player than it is about games requiring about 100 moves per player. Richard made Little Golem as a somewhat serious Go player (and chess, but go is more relevant.) The longer the game and the more one has put into it, the more it's frustrating when an opponent becomes non-responsive, but also the more disturbing it is to have a life event cause yo to forfeit.

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