We're working to resolve the current site/server issues causing load problems and will keep you posted.

That little spammer this morning didn't help, I'm sure.   What do you want to bet he's playing hooky from school.

Must be the Secret Service combing the site for hate speech, lol. 

I suspect the lagginess might have been due in part to our little Nigerian scammer being blocked from posting but not banned from accessing the site (e.g. dropping all packets coming from the scammer's IP address). Assuming our scammer was in fact a bot, bot programs can get mighty confused by such things and freak out in unexpected, and lag-inducing, fashion. The lag seemed to start right when the scammer was blocked from posting, so that's my theory.

Shwaine, when spammer accounts are identified, we block the associated IP address as well as suspend the account.  So if a human or bot spammer tried to reach the site after I suspended and blocked that user, they would have gotten a "blocked IP" message.  I don't know what kind of effect that might have had on the server load (as you know, I'm not a techy). 

Oh!  I feel so violated.

If they get a message from the server, that means the server is responding to them in some fashion, so yeah, it could affect server load. The sort of blocking I was talking about would get no message from TBC servers, just that "Could not connect to website. Try again later." default page that IE and Firefox bring up when they can't connect.

ditto, what

said on Mar 18, 2009 at 11:03 AM

Darn. I read this blog too late. I done cursed and kicked my computer for being a piece of junk. (Again.)