Mefi Photos broken?

December 3, 2008 5:40 PM

Recent Photos From All broken for me. I get an instant "connection timeout" and no pictures. Is it just me? I love that page! Make it come back.

Safari. Mac. Newest versions of all that stuff. Firefox, too.

posted by Devils Rancher to bugs at 5:40 PM (13 comments total)

Not just you.
posted by BeerFilter at 5:42 PM on December 3, 2008

Lots of issues lately. Is Metafilter applying for any bailout money?
posted by gman at 5:46 PM on December 3, 2008

For me, no error message but also no pictures.
posted by exogenous at 5:55 PM on December 3, 2008

got "connection timeout" error too.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 6:47 PM on December 3, 2008

I'm pretty sure this is a result of a Flickr timeout, but pb or Matt would be able to say more I suppose.
posted by cortex at 7:00 PM on December 3, 2008

Yep, it's a timeout. We have 1,648 (wow) Flickr accounts to check to assemble that page. Around 2am when the page is assembled it takes about 30 minutes to check all those accounts and grab the details of the latest photo, sort by date, etc. But if that 2am run fails, it can take a long time to run it and assemble everything during US daylight hours. I assume it's because there's more traffic to the Flickr API during our waking hours, so it's much, much slower.

This idea of assembling everything all at once worked well when we only had a few hundred people with Flickr accounts. But we'll have to find a new, more distributed way of assembling everything with so many accounts to check. That might mean less up-to-the-minute photos from everyone, but a more reliable page overall. In the meantime, I'm trying to assemble the page as we speak but it's slow going. If you need a Flickr + MeFi fix to tide you over, check out the MetaFilter Group (meetup central), or the most interesting "metafilter" photos.
posted by pb at 7:24 PM on December 3, 2008 [1 favorite]

The only real solution is for everyone (except for me) to get rid of their Flickr accounts.

So please have that done by tonight so that the 2am scrape isn't affects. Thanks.
posted by KevinSkomsvold at 7:55 PM on December 3, 2008

... 2 hours later..... Wow. Thank you pb. I was randomly flipping through metatalk and read this. I had no idea there were Metafilter groups. These have been the most relaxing 2 hours of my week (it's been a rough week).
posted by silkygreenbelly at 9:35 PM on December 3, 2008

And we're back.
posted by pb at 11:53 PM on December 3, 2008

It's still not loading for me. However, it's 2am here so the time may be a factor. ..?
posted by carsonb at 1:52 AM on December 4, 2008

Woot! Thanks, PB! My meta-satisfaction index had increased 89%!
posted by Devils Rancher at 4:00 AM on December 4, 2008

OK, scratch that; it works!
posted by carsonb at 6:51 AM on December 4, 2008

Just for the record, that new style of assembling the page that I mentioned is now happening. The page will be updated more frequently, but it won't necessarily be completely up to date each time it's updated. It should be more stable though, and the page isn't necessarily depending on being completely up-to-the-minute to work.
posted by pb at 10:47 PM on December 4, 2008