What mess? Just consider us grateful for all the time you (and the many others who maintain this site) contribute so that we can obsess over What's Really Important, even if we are less productive at work and less attentive to our families at home.

But what are forums? I got nothin' against 'em, but I thought this already was one.

What kind of stuff are you looking at from a feature perspective? Just curious and hopeful.

Thanks!

Speaking of late November, I believe the voting for the Hall of Merit election closes on November 28 (assuming it doesn't get pushed back to try and draw more voters). So that would not be a good day to shut the site down.

Thanks for doing what you do.

Jim, here's that site discussion thread I started back in August. There are offers to help with housekeeping.

Here's some suggestions from Harold:

* Customizable hot topics bar (automatically include/exclude threads by topic, for example).
* Mobile features (possibly dedicated mobile apps to handle certain use cases)
* Improved performance (caching, etc.)
* An API to “open up” the site’s data to third-party developers (i.e., the user base). This might be the best way to get mobile apps, by the way.
* Improved lounge interface
* Cleanup of generated HTML so that it is much more modifiable/customizable/scriptable on the client side

As usual, I’m very tempted to offer my time, but can’t really pull the trigger, as I know I’ll under-deliver. Maybe if a few of us build some critical mass to volunteer, that would have a better chance at success.

Gold Star, I'm looking over the forum thread right now. I missed it before or I would have joined in. Sorry. I'll comment here when I am done.

Thanks for the heads-up, Jim. Good luck with the updates.

I still believe there’s a great opportunity for growth by expanding into the other major sports - BBTF is a fantastic one-stop shop for baseball fans, and it’s a format I don’t see anywhere for basketball and football. FBTF and BKTF, anyone?

Jim, I think the number one issue with the site are these constantly arising periods where performance goes all to hell and page loads take forever. It seems to me that the top priority should be moving away from you personally maintaining a server to virtualized hosting.

Letting third-party developers get in and add features seems like a great way to add the bells and whistles.

Oh, and congratulations!

Hey Jim, thanks for dedicating the time to update/improve the site. I know you have a personal life, and you maintain the site pretty much single-handedly, so I don't expect ....

I am a big believer in (for lack of a better term) Web 2.0: if you can make BTF expose its data via an API, and render its UI in simple, logical HTML, then all sorts of developers can noodle around with the UI and create various capabilities. BTF has always been a community site: the value has always been primarily from people writing comments and posting threads.

I spend a ton of time on reddit.com. It's a very basic site. But they open up their data via an API, and generate very simple, semantic HTML -- which has created a whole ecosystem of UI add-ons, via browser/greasemonkey add-ins, mobile apps, etc.

I love Primer, and would love to noodle around with some code to make my Primer experience better -- and then share it with the community (I've done this a little already, but have found BTF's current tech implementation a hostile environment for this sort of thing). I'm sure I'm not the only one. Jim, please give us the opportunity to do this.

Hey Jim, thanks for dedicating the time to update/improve the site. I know you have a personal life, and you maintain the site pretty much single-handedly, so I don't expect ....

I am a big believer in (for lack of a better term) Web 2.0: if you can make BTF expose its data via an API, and render its UI in simple, logical HTML, then all sorts of developers can noodle around with the UI and create various capabilities. BTF has always been a community site: the value has always been primarily from people writing comments and posting threads.

I spend a ton of time on reddit.com. It's a very basic site. But they open up their data via an API, and generate very simple, semantic HTML -- which has created a whole ecosystem of UI add-ons, via browser/greasemonkey add-ins, mobile apps, etc.

I love Primer, and would love to noodle around with some code to make my Primer experience better -- and then share it with the community (I've done this a little already, but have found BTF's current tech implementation a hostile environment for this sort of thing). I'm sure I'm not the only one. Jim, please give us the opportunity to do this.

I believe you were looking for this thread, Harold. Clearly Jim's fault for reusing the same thread title!

Your upgrade path sound very good and well thought-out. I agree with the sequence of changes you have in mind and your reasoning. Letting us all know that this upcoming month may have the occasional squirrelly day or feature is a BIG help - I won't get frustrated; I'll just wait a day. Oh, and I am willing to offer help, but I may be too rusty for you. The last time I wrote code for a living was in 2000. If you would like help, let me know what tools you are using, and I'll let you know if I recognize any of them. I wouldn't have offered at all, but you mentioned tables and not relational DBMS. I've never written relational, but I have LOTS of experience with table structures. - Brock Hanke

My biggest annoyance is the cluttering up of hot topics with off-topic discussions. I do appreciate that there's a catchall soccer and basketball thread, but they seem to be continuously on the sidebar. Plus there's the occasional (ha) digression thread that I am not interested in. I would like an ignore function for topics, right up by the Bookmark link. I don't think an "ignore by topic" would work since people don't take the topics seriously when they submit the links.

First, Jim, thanks for the great site. Much appreciated.

The two things that come to mind re: improvements or feedback are:

1. BBTF tends to be inaccessible for about 30 minutes each night starting around 1:00 AM. If that can't be eliminated altogether, is there any way to schedule it for later, e.g., 4:00 AM, long after most people are offline for the night?

2. A longer Hot Topics sidebar and/or a sidebar that watches topics in which one has commented would be great. Hot Topics tends to be dominated by that day's threads, while some older threads remain active but fall out of sight due to less-frequent comments. I know the Bookmarks feature offers the capability to "watch" a thread, but bookmarking every topic in which one posts seems redundant.

Again, thanks for your time and effort here. Good luck with the upgrades.

Count me among those who would most like to see either a longer Hot Topics or to keep hot topics free from the OT stuff. I think it would help facilitate more discussion of baseball topics if more of those threads were readily visible and accessible.

Count me among those who would most like to see either a longer Hot Topics or to keep hot topics free from the OT stuff. I think it would help facilitate more discussion of baseball topics if more of those threads were readily visible and accessible.

A longer or customized Hot Topics bar would be great, but since half the "baseball" threads are either pinata posts ("Roger Maris should be in the Hall of Fame"; "Sabermetrics? What's That?"; "Cliff Lee Has No Heart"; "Murray Chass sez....", etc.) or the same topics over and over ("The Wild Card Is An Outrage"; "They're Screwing Ron Santo!"; "Jeff Francoeur Spotting!"), I'm not so sure that the overall quality of the site would improve. The best baseball articles are the ones linked to Hardball Times and similar blogs, and they usually wind up dying after a handful of comments, whereas the Jeff Francoeur fan club apparently can't get enough of him.

Thanks for your efforts, Jim, and best of luck on all this.

hi jim!!!

thank you for all your time and effort. if guys wanna do any complaining they best be coughing up some $$$ to help you implement all the stuff they want done.

I know I have offered on many occasions, but it doesn't hurt to offer again: I have experience as a developer and as a database administrator, and I think that after 7 years of posting here you can trust I am a loyal patron of the site. If you need any sort of help whatsoever with any sort of upgrade or maintenance, I would be more than happy to offer assistance.

BBTF is the greatest community online and being able to help improve its interface would be the least I could do for all the free entertainment it has given me. Just send me a note if I can be of any assistance.

Heh, wow. I was definitely in the other thread when I posted that...strange. This software is old....

bbc, years ago I vowed to put my money where my mouth is. When change is in sight, I'm good for my word.

My biggest annoyance is the cluttering up of hot topics with off-topic discussions. I do appreciate that there's a catchall soccer and basketball thread, but they seem to be continuously on the sidebar.

As to this and the other comments about OT threads - this is why I'm lobbying for an expansion of the Think Factory universe. BBTF has an accessible format I believe would work quite well with other sports. When that happens, then people can go argue NBA on BKTF, which helps BBTF stay baseball-focused.

I don't think an "ignore by topic" would work since people don't take the topics seriously when they submit the links.

They don't? Huh - I'll have to watch for that. When I submit news items, I'm rather fussy about the topics/tags.

People like to be funny like tagging articles about Adam Dunn with Obituaries. Stuff like that. I complained one time but was shouted down pretty quickly.

Bumping this up, and adding a couple things.

1. Loads of thinks to Jim.

2. How about a few more people hitting that "Donate" button on the upper right hand corner? That would help Jim a lot, and it's only fair.

My biggest annoyance is the cluttering up of hot topics with off-topic discussions. I do appreciate that there's a catchall soccer and basketball thread, but they seem to be continuously on the sidebar.

I'm a regular in the soccer thread but I'll second this. Now that there is an "OT" designation on those I think that should be a separate sidebar to itself. In other words you'd have "Hot Topics" then below it (or wherever) "Off Topic".

I don't think a STF or BKTF is necessarily going to start here. One of the things that is great about this place is that we have created a community here. I am genuinely interested in what people have to say and I find I often learn something in off topic discussions. The soccer thread for example generates about 700-800 comments a month so we're talking 25 a day, not a lot and it's more a function of "hey, within this group of people I share a baseball fandom with there is a subset that enjoys soccer" and that creates a nice diversion. I don't really want to go to an "all soccer all the time" site because my interest is not that high.

I don't see why there is a backlash against stuff people are not interested in. At any given time three of the last ten baseball-related posts are not going to be interesting to me. I don't think the soccer/football/basketball/hockey threads really take up that much space. This time of year obviously they get a bit more attention but the fact is there is not that much baseball related to discuss right now.

I just took a thorough look at my BTF page, and the current Hall of Merit discussion thread isn't there, anywhere. I'm pretty sure that's not intentional, so I'm noting it here so that whoever is in charge of such stuff can fix that. If we want to do things like recruit new HoM participants, that thread needs to stay visible throughout the process. - Brock

Is it possible for you to control the ads that are shown on the page? In particular, the ads for some game or something called Palisade Guardian cause my mouse cursor to flicker on the screen and it is a tremendous annoyance.

Is it possible for you to control the ads that are shown on the page? In particular, the ads for some game or something called Palisade Guardian cause my mouse cursor to flicker on the screen and it is a tremendous annoyance.

I came to this thread to mention the same thing. The cursor flickers not only on this site, but on all other open Firefox tabs as well. I usually have to refresh 4-5 times to get an ad that doesn't cause that.

I keep reading the title as "Please Excuse the Mets"

I came to this thread to mention the same thing. The cursor flickers not only on this site, but on all other open Firefox tabs as well. I usually have to refresh 4-5 times to get an ad that doesn't cause that.

Firefox's plugin container is an abomination. It's still leaps and bounds better than MSIE, but I'm starting to lean more towards Chrome because I'm tired of manually killing the damn thing.

Oh - and just in case any web ad folks happen to be reading this - you should know that I and many others continue to lobby for making usage of Flash a capital offense... I'm neither an Apple zombie nor an Apple basher, but Steve Jobs' pathological distaste for supporting Flash, I consider his greatest legacy.

I don't see why there is a backlash against stuff people are not interested in. At any given time three of the last ten baseball-related posts are not going to be interesting to me. I don't think the soccer/football/basketball/hockey threads really take up that much space. This time of year obviously they get a bit more attention but the fact is there is not that much baseball related to discuss right now.

I'll emphasize that I don't have a problem with the off topic threads. I just don't want them cluttering up the Hot Topics. Having an Ignore similar to Bookmark would work fine for me since many baseball threads that are properly tagged will turn into off topic posts. So unless the tags can be changed if the conversations veer off, it wouldn't help. And I don't think that kind of maintenance is practical anyway.

#10 I'd bet serious money that this is the backup. Databases and backups are at minimum tricky to manage, and I suspect that whoever is doing it wants to be able to keep an eye on the site (since it's probably shut down the database, back up anything that's changed, re-start the database. And sometimes those restarts fail)

There are products that can back up live databases but they're pricey. I'm a late nighter too but I can live with the way it works now.

You just need to move the site to a host that has a better backup system, then. There are hosts that have 99.9% uptime that are reliable and affordable.

That is the second time I have definitely commented in the JLN thread and instead had my reply show up in Sox Therapy. This will presumably be the third time. How the heck are people commenting in the other one?

Edit...Seriously...

There are products that can back up live databases but they're pricey.

Jim uses MySQL, right? Xtrabackup is free and can do live backups of MySQL no problem. mysqlhotcopy comes with MySQL and it works for some cases, too.

The backup of the database (specifically the comment database) is what causes the problem around 2AM. The issue will be minimized somewhat by a database server with more memory and faster processors. I will look into alternative backup solutions if that doesn't make the problem manageable.

On my To-Do list is customization of the Hot Topics menu. Logged in members will be able to select from a few different default snapshots (no off-topic, personalized, etc.). I will also try out some Ajax powered/iframe solutions. (A customized Hot Topics would remain on the page and would automatically refresh itself every few minutes.)

I will also be improving the bookmark system. Bookmarked threads would automatically be added to the personalized Hot Topics. Members will be able to update their Hot Topics preference using Ajax right within Hot Topics, which means you'll be able to switch between different snapshots at any time.

A rating system will also be added. Members will be able to rate the linked article and comment thread in a number of ways. You'll then be able to display the top rated articles/comment threads. It's important to me to make the rating system as easy to use (and unobtrusive) as possible so that the people who are interested in rating content (or seeing rated content) can do it easily, while anyone who is not interested can either ignore it or, if it's your preference, hide it altogether.

In any event, I am open to making site improvements.

I've been doing some of the backend work that needs to get done before the EE upgrade. So far, I don't believe what I've been doing has even been noticed. Hopefully that will remain the case.

Thanks for your input and patience.

I came to this thread to mention the same thing. The cursor flickers not only on this site, but on all other open Firefox tabs as well. I usually have to refresh 4-5 times to get an ad that doesn't cause that.
Firefox's plugin container is an abomination. It's still leaps and bounds better than MSIE, but I'm starting to lean more towards Chrome because I'm tired of manually killing the damn thing.

Just to be clear, I am using Chrome and still get the stupid cursor flickering from that ad and it also affects all other open tabs in all Chrome windows. Thankfully as of today, that ad doesn't seem to be around.

I will also try out some Ajax powered/iframe solutions. (A customized Hot Topics would remain on the page and would automatically refresh itself every few minutes.)

iframes are awful, you should really never use them.

Thanks for the great work, Jim. If I could make one small, technical suggestion regarding bookmarks:

I will also be improving the bookmark system. Bookmarked threads would automatically be added to the personalized Hot Topics. Member will be able to update their Hot Topics preference using Ajax right within Hot Topics, which means you'll be able to switch between different snapshots at any time.

Is it possible to move the location of the "DEL" link used to delete a thread bookmark? It's currently aligned directly below the "last thread page" link, and the close proximity of the two has lead to accidental deletions on more than one occasion. Even shifting the "DEL" link so that it is aligned flush-right on the same line would be a great improvement from a usability standpoint.

iframes are awful, you should really never use them.

Yup - spiffier plug-in, no more.

Don't bother and start learning HTML5.

BTW - just read the other day that even with Jobs dead, it appears Flash is giving up.

The more integrated HTML5 framework is the future -- I just hope browsers keep pace so you can easily disable intrusive or resource intensive scripting that people will inevitably be popping directly into pages. Otherwise -- in a year or 3 -- we're going to back in the old GeoCities world, but with more multimedia rather than just ugly aesthetics and CSS problems for a temporary bit.

Zonk, thanks for the HTML5 tip. One part of the site which certainly needs an overhaul is the design. It's the one part of the process that I dread, however as it's incredibly tedious and acts like a black hole for my time. This site's design is, at least, five years behind in usability.

One part of the site which certainly needs an overhaul is the design. It's the one part of the process that I dread, however as it's incredibly tedious and acts like a black hole for my time. This site's design is, at least, five years behind in usability.

Lord, yes.

Following a 90-minute outage this morning, I thought I'd bump this thread so it shows up on Hot Topics.

Jim, any updates you'd like to provide?

Gold Stars, an errant system process, that could not be killed, was running on the web server and using 100% of the processors. To fix this problem, I had to immediately restart the server. Unfortunately, the server did not come back online immediately and the data center was not prompt in fixing the problem which caused the server to not respond.

There are two HoM elections going on right now. I'd appreciate it if the site were up at ballot end times especially. We're trying to end the MMP election next Wed at 4:00 eastern.

If it is easier to create Hall of Merit threads at the end of this process I'll be thrilled.

UPDATE: 12/9/2012

This is another test. Did it work?

Needs new calendar.

UPDATE: 12/9/2012

This is another test. Did it work?

Needs new calendar.

What calendar?

I hope I get a lot of bananas for this!

I'd better.

I'd better get a lot of good stuff for this.

Is this working?