Problems with Metatalk Backtagging

January 29, 2009 3:38 PM

Presumed site-performance related glitch with MetaTalk Back-Tagging

I'm posting this rather than emailing as I imagine ongoing site performance issues may affect others doing this work and I'd like official advice about what to do with it.

I was back-tagging MetaTalk (per this and this) and when I submitted some tags it got hung up (stalled with message "saving'). I opened a new tab and found that I couldn't open MetaTalk, as has been happening from time to time since the recent exploit-related problems. But when Metatalk came back the tagging submission remained stalled. I waited a while, then reloaded the page, and ended up with a whole new page. This raised some questions for me:

1. Should I have waited longer? Finished the other threads on the page and hit "Give Me More?" Just hit "Give Me More" with what I had done?

2. Did the tags I'd already submitted get saved? At what points are submitted tags actually added to the threads? Do you have to hit "Give Me More" or does it register as soon as you hit the "add tags" button for a particular post? Is anything lost if you don't select "Give Me More?" Does it cause any problems to do only half of a batch of posts?

3. Any guess on when the performance stability issues are likely to be resolved?

posted by nanojath to Bugs at 3:38 PM (6 comments total)

Sorry you're having trouble with the backtagger. It's surprisingly resource-intensive, and in light of our server troubles, probably not great to keep running.

To answer your questions:

1.) No. Again, we're having server performance issues and the site restarts frequently, resulting in dropped requests, or requests that take longer than normal.

2.) Yes, the tags were probably submitted. They get saved right away. Unless the server is timing out at that moment. No, it causes no problems to tag/title a partial batch.

3.) We're in the process of moving to new hardware. That process should be completed early next week. Prepping everything for a move is time consuming, and we're working quickly to get it done.

Once we're ready to move to new hardware there will be issues with DNS propagation, and quirks that go along with any big move. So I'm inclined to pause this project until we're in a stable environment. Sorry about the hiccups. We'll be back on track soon.
posted by pb (staff) at 3:43 PM on January 29, 2009

Thanks for the information pb. I imagine there will be a general alert when the transition to the new hardware is done, if you guys can maybe remember to remind us that taggr is back in action then.
posted by nanojath at 4:21 PM on January 29, 2009

yep, that's no problem. I'll post here in MeTa when we're at full speed again.

I hate to take the backtagger offline because I know it takes a lot of time and energy to work on it. I've been in there myself tagging on several dark afternoons. But as you experienced, we're still on rocky ground and I'd hate to waste everyone's energy with titles/tags not making it to the db during a timeout.
posted by pb (staff) at 4:24 PM on January 29, 2009

Confession time: my "disappointment" at having to procrastinate on backtagging for however long is totally counterfeit so we're cool.
posted by nanojath at 4:31 PM on January 29, 2009

Something else that happens is that you add a tag to one of your old MetaTalk posts and after you click 'Add tag' it says 'No tags yet'. If you leave the page and then come back to it the tags are there.
posted by tellurian at 6:55 PM on January 29, 2009

If anyone's still tuning in here, the MetaTalk Backtagger is open for business again. We're completely at the new server now, and things are running much better. Sorry again about the downtime, and thanks as always for pitching in.
posted by pb (staff) at 8:24 AM on February 24, 2009