Forum outage resolved

[Orussia]

Really? If the entire site shut down forever, but the TGs would remain, you'd be fine?

Anything worth doing here is also possible other places.
This site just makes it convenient.

Correction, this site puts anything worth doing all in one place.
Except I can't find another MBT-design/critique thread that's actually worth joining anywhere else.

That would be a bummer.

[Blekksprutia]

Well, glad that's all resolved.

I didn't panic. No, I didn't. I can have a meaningful life outside of NS...

You do? I just spent 2 hours on IRC complaining.

Actually, I spent one hour freaking out at Horus, and then one hour eating Greek food.

[Bezombia]

Anything worth doing here is also possible other places.
This site just makes it convenient.

Correction, this site puts anything worth doing all in one place.
Except I can't find another MBT-design/critique thread that's actually worth joining anywhere else.

That would be a bummer.

NSDraftroom.

[Vandoosa]

YAY! It wasn't my fault! *was really worried there for a minute*

[Orussia]

NSDraftroom.

Meh. Tried it once, wasn't impressed. Only reason I go there anymore is because Sumer is easier to get a hold of on NSD.

[Horusland]

Well, glad that's all resolved.

I didn't panic. No, I didn't. I can have a meaningful life outside of NS...

You do? I just spent 2 hours on IRC complaining.

I just laughed, thought of how people would react, and remembered I had homework to do.

[[violet]]

When the forum was set up years ago (name redacted to protect the guilty) someone thought "oh, come on, 16 million should be enough for anybody! Surely our userbase will never post that much!" and then promptly forgot about that limit. And ever since then, post after post, year after year, we moved towards that upper limit.

Today we reached it. And we got reminded the limit was there.

It's not just that we thought our userbase would never make more than 16.7 million posts; it's also that the phpBB3 people (creators of the forum software) didn't think any userbase anywhere would. It's their DB schema. We have filed a bug against that, though, because it seems a little low.

[YellowApple]

When the forum was set up years ago (name redacted to protect the guilty) someone thought "oh, come on, 16 million should be enough for anybody! Surely our userbase will never post that much!" and then promptly forgot about that limit. And ever since then, post after post, year after year, we moved towards that upper limit.

Today we reached it. And we got reminded the limit was there.

It's not just that we thought our userbase would never make more than 16.7 million posts; it's also that the phpBB3 people (creators of the forum software) didn't think any userbase anywhere would. It's their DB schema. We have filed a bug against that, though, because it seems a little low.

That's rather surprising; is the NS forum really among the first phpBB-based forums to hit that many posts? I didn't see many other cases of this anywhere while searching the interwebz...

[Bezombia]

It's not just that we thought our userbase would never make more than 16.7 million posts; it's also that the phpBB3 people (creators of the forum software) didn't think any userbase anywhere would. It's their DB schema. We have filed a bug against that, though, because it seems a little low.

That's rather surprising; is the NS forum really among the first phpBB-based forums to hit that many posts? I didn't see many other cases of this anywhere while searching the interwebz...

NS is like the twelfth most active forum on the internet, you know.

[Uieurnthlaal]

That's rather surprising; is the NS forum really among the first phpBB-based forums to hit that many posts? I didn't see many other cases of this anywhere while searching the interwebz...

NS is like the twelfth most active forum on the internet, you know.

Fourteenth, to be specific.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_forums

[Bezombia]

NS is like the twelfth most active forum on the internet, you know.

Fourteenth, to be specific.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_forums

And only the third larges phpBB board.

[Uieurnthlaal]

Fourteenth, to be specific.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_forums

And only the third larges phpBB board.

The second, actually, if you sort the table by total posts.

[Horusland]

And only the third larges phpBB board.

The second, actually, if you sort the table by total posts.

It also says that NS was founded in 2008. Wasn't it 2006?

[Araraukar]

How...did...we...break the forum with 16 million posts?

After somebody posted #16777215, the forum database didn't have any more post IDs to assign. We had to move up to the next larger size, which is 4294967295.

Which (un)lucky post was it that broke the camel's back?

[Horusland]

After somebody posted #16777215, the forum database didn't have any more post IDs to assign. We had to move up to the next larger size, which is 4294967295.

Which (un)lucky post was it that broke the camel's back?

#16777215 was deleted. This is the last post before the outage:
viewtopic.php?p=16777214#p16777214

[Grenartia]

Which (un)lucky post was it that broke the camel's back?

#16777215 was deleted. This is the last post before the outage:
viewtopic.php?p=16777214#p16777214

And apparently, somebody's already updated Wikipedia. The previously linked article says we have 16,777,214 posts.

Also, just to allay everybody's fears, we're not going to reach 4 billion any time soon. 4chan only has 1.3 billion.

[The Blaatschapen]

NS is like the twelfth most active forum on the internet, you know.

Fourteenth, to be specific.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_forums

Damn, so I'm responsible for a decent, though still insignificant, part of the internet?

[Esternial]

Fourteenth, to be specific.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_forums

Damn, so I'm responsible for a decent, though still insignificant, part of the internet? :o

Wouldn't call you responsible, but yeah :p

[The Black Hat Guy]

NS is like the twelfth most active forum on the internet, you know.

Fourteenth, to be specific.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_forums

That's not really very accurate - it's missing a fair few, for instance, the Minecraft Forums, with over 22 million posts, is not listed.

[Aksun]

Fourteenth, to be specific.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_forums

Damn, so I'm responsible for a decent, though still insignificant, part of the internet?

Yes and you are also lunch sheepy *Gets his cooking light saber *

[TaQud]

16 million posts?

[YellowApple]

NS is like the twelfth most active forum on the internet, you know.

Fourteenth, to be specific.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_forums

We seriously have more posts than XDA-Developers? And more than xkcd, Steampowered, and Stormfront combined? Jesus...

Not bad for what appears to be the youngest forum on that list.

Based on that chart, we aren't the first phpBB users to max out a 24-bit post_id integer, though, considering that Gaia Online is apparently halfway to the 32-bit limit.

We're also the 12th largest in terms of membership, which is pretty cool, too; there are marginally more NationStates forum-goers than there are LinuxQuestions.org forum-goers.

And only the third larges phpBB board.

The second, actually, if you sort the table by total posts.

No, third. Gaia Online and Newgrounds are both phpBB based, and both with a larger number of posts (though only marginally; we could probably overtake Newgrounds by the end of the decade).

[[violet]]

Every list of big Internet forums I've ever seen has many omissions. There are tons of 20+ million post forums out there.

Some of the list sites are just scams; they invite you to be included for a "listing fee."

[Cogitation]

I did not realize that entire forums had their postcounts compared to each other.

--The Democratic States of Cogitation

[Usual People In Life]

Sorry, I'm confused.

how exactly can a forum 'run out of posts'????

I thought that a forum would be designed to take as many posts as the servers could store?