Brother Tyler

Yes, it has been affecting everyone.

Since the game is in the wild now, the topic has been moved to the + OTHER GAMES + forum.

There is a combination of things going on. While our Techmarine, @WrathOfTheLion can provide more technically correct information, here's a rough roundup as I understand things. The main culprit is that the daily backups are taking up inordinate resources - far more than they should. While we have these scheduled for lower use times (relatively speaking), they are still taking far too long. We're looking at ways to reduce the strain they're causing, which may include reducing some of the achievements (the counting of achievements for each member appears to be a significant factor). The database and php also need to be fixed. We are also planning for an update to Invision 5.0. One of the things we need to do for that is improved hosting - our current servers aren't sufficient for Invision 5.0. So we're exploring whether or not to continue with self-hosting, albeit on improved servers, or switching to a cloud-based hosting service.

We've observed that Monday is typically the worst day.

That's not their original color scheme, though. That was from the 3rd edition Index Astartes article, and that was the only time they were depicted in the dark scheme, even in other images of them during that edition. Their original color scheme(s): (click it to see it larger)

Note that I split Adeptekon's query off from the Skins of the B&C topic (which was obsolete and has been removed). For those of you who may be wondering what the heck @Adeptekon is asking about (I had to search for it )... Note that what follows may be incomplete as I don't use any customized settings. There may be more effects that the various options described below have and some experimentation might yield interesting outcomes. The Customizer allows members to customize the theme to their liking. The effects are limited to whatever variations are allowed in the theme itself, so some of the options may appear to have no impact if the theme is so limited. The first option is for a member to use either the default background image for the theme or to cycle through random backgrounds. The latter option will depend upon whether or not there is a stable of backgrounds to choose from. Since we don't have any additional backgrounds, selecting "Random" won't have any noticeable effect. Fluid width? definitely has an effect if you select it. The default for the theme is a fixed content width, with the background image appearing on either side of the content, the amount of background image showing depending upon the size/resolution of your display. If you select the Fluid width? option, you'll see the content stretch across the entire width of your display area, assuming your display area is larger than the default maximum. Larger font-size for posts? will increase the font size of text that is left at the default font size (i.e., the member submitting the text content doesn't select a specific size). For example, if you select this option right now, most of this post text should increase in size whereas this section will not because I've set it to a specific size (14). This is especially useful for those of us whose eyes don't work as well as they used to. Sticky author panel? only appears to work in the Gallery feature (though it may work in other areas that I haven't checked yet). If you select this option, when you are looking at an album and scroll down, the author panel (baseball card) for the album will stick at the top while you control to scroll through the images in that album. Sticky sidebar? also appears to work only in the Gallery feature, though it will stick the sidebar (normally on the far right side) while you scroll down through the images. If you place the cursor over the sidebar and scroll, the sidebar will scroll (along with the images in the album). Selecting this option also works on the sidebar in other features, though it only sticks the sidebar for a little vertical scrolling then continues to scroll the sidebar. Flip sidebar? flips the sidebar from the right side of the content to the left side.

The link has been added to the Adeptus Astartes Rules category.

We've been looking at a number of things that will [hopefully] improve the site usability (in addition to the much-needed improved hosting solution, database fix, php fix, and software upgrade). While the more technical things are beyond my knuckle-dragging intellect (hence the need for sacristans techmarines (see below) and other technical experts), there are some things that I can effect. There are two areas that @Gillyfish and I have been looking at. One of them is still in development, but one area where we developed a solution and ran it by the rest of the staff was in the groups (or teams/roles - terminology depends upon which specific setting is being looked at ). The following changes were put into effect yesterday: The ++ MODERATI ++ group has been renamed ++ CHAPLAIN ++. The original + LIBRARIAN + group was removed and the ++ CHIEF LIBRARIAN ++ group was renamed ++ LIBRARIAN ++. The ++ LIBRARIAN ++ group responsibility was expanded from just the Articles feature to include the Blogs, Downloads, and Gallery features. The ++ SACRISTAN ++ group has been renamed ++ TECHMARINE ++. The +++ ADMINISTRATI +++ group has been renamed +++ ADMINISTRATOR +++. The ++ EMERITI ++ group has been renamed ++ EMERITUS ++. The team icons of all staff groups (+++ ADMINISTRATOR +++, ++ CHAPLAIN ++, ++ LIBRARIAN ++, ++ TECHMARINE ++, and ++ EMERITUS ++) have had the servitude studs increased in size. The team icon of the ++ CHAPLAIN ++ group has had the crux replaced by a gold crozius arcanum. The team icon of the ++ LIBRARIAN ++ group has had the book increased in height and horns added. The team icon of the ++ TECHMARINE ++ group has had an augmetic eye added. The team icon of the + FRATER DOMUS + group has had a single large servitude stud added. The achievement badges for the staff groups have been updated to roughly match the updated team icons. First, since our original plan for the Articles feature didn't pan out, we got rid of the old + LIBRARIAN + group and changed the ++ CHIEF LIBRARIAN ++ group to simply ++ LIBRARIAN ++. We also expanded their sphere of responsibility to include the Blogs, Downloads, and Gallery features; and they shared core responsibilities in common with the (former) ++ MODERATI ++ group, which is primarily (but not solely) focused on the Forums feature. In practice, many people include the librarians when referring to the "moderati." To avoid confusion, one might refer to both groups as "staff," but that then becomes complicated when distinguishing between the rules-enforcing staff (which also includes the administrators) and the non-rules enforcing staff (the sacristans techmarines). With two groups being identifiable as moderati, it was necessary to change the ++ MODERATI ++ group's name. In this, we returned to the site's Space Marine roots. While the moderators have often been likened to the Inquisition in the past, it seemed much more thematic to use chaplains as the model for that group. The updates to the icons for those teams seemed intuitive. If you look at the Staff Directory, you'll see that these two groups are both considered to be moderati. Changing the ++ SACRISTAN ++ group name to ++ TECHMARINE ++ followed the same logic. When we originally conceived that group, I was leaning towards the latter name. However, discussion with our sole sacristan (at that time) resulted in the former name, which is similar to a techmarine, but which comes from the Imperial Knights faction. Updating the group name to ++ TECHMARINE ++ allowed for all three of the main staff groups to have recognizable group names with strong associations to their responsibilities and the community's original Space Marine theme (and our Legio mascot). As the chaplains and librarians had their team icons updated to more closely align with the imagery, adding the augmetic eye to the techmarines was a no-brainer. We considered making the icon more closely match the machina opus, but the split black/white cog and the additional cables didn't work well at the 39 x 39 pixel display size, so only the augmetic eye was added. For the administrators and emeriti, we changed the group names from the plural to the singular. The reason for this is that using the plural form doesn't make sense in each member's "baseball card." The baseball card is the mini-profile that identifies the member who submitted the content (post, image, blog entry, etc.), providing basic information about that member. To illustrate, here is my baseball card: My display name appears at the top. Below that is my profile photo (or avatar), with my rank icon appearing in the lower left corner. Below that is the primary group to which I belong. Below that is the corresponding team icon. When a member has identified their preferred pronouns (I have not), those will appear immediately below their team icon. Members of the staff have their personal titles appearing below their team icons. Finally, the member's post count (or an approximation when they have a high post count) will appear at the bottom of the baseball card. While the plural words (okay, the pseudo-Latin versions we use) make sense when referring to the group, they might be a little confusing in the context of the baseball cards. I am an administrator, and when one is referring to both me and @Gillyfish, it makes sense to refer to us as either "administrators" or, in our pseudo-Latin, "administrati." If you see +++ ADMINISTRATI +++ below my profile photo, however, it looks I'm indicating that I am the administrati, referring to myself using the royal "we" as it were. Likewise with the emeriti - each individually is an "emeritus" while two or more can be referred to as the "emeriti." That plural form just seemed a bit awkward. Switching to the singular just makes more sense when looking at the baseball cards, especially for newer members who might not have caught on to the little bits of theming that we incorporate into our community's culture. For those who don't know, the emeriti are former staff members - members of the community who have served in one or more of the staff roles but who have since "retired." Many remain active within the community and it is very important to recognize their contributions to the community - all staff members are volunteers and the time and effort they devote to the community is time and effort that they sacrifice from more enjoyable aspects of the hobby. All staff members enjoy a bespoke title, but since they have retired, they no longer retain the permissions and authority they enjoyed while actively serving in a staff role. Each has earned the badge(s) for the staff position(s) in which they served. When we first switched to the skull-based team icons (from the icons that were based on the force organization chart), the concept was that current and former staff members would be identified by the red X. The exception to this was the sacristans, who were technical experts but who had no rules enforcement role. When a sacristan techmarine retired (and we currently have one retired sacristan techmarine), then, it wouldn't be appropriate for their team icon to include the red X. Neither the Frater Domus group nor the Frater Novus group (which came later) included any servitude studs on their team icons. We realized that the red X merely indicated rules enforcement authority and that staff membership was really indicated by the servitude studs. In this, the decision was made to remove the red X from the team icon of the emeriti. The problem with the servitude studs, however, was that they were barely visible. The skull icons were shrunk down from a larger image and the servitude studs appeared as single-pixel dots when shrunk. The result would have been that the team icon of the emeriti was barely distinguishable from that of the Frater Domus and Frater Novus members, and that didn't seem to be adequate recognition of their contributions. So we decided to further modify the team icons by increasing the size of the servitude studs from a single pixel to 4 x 4 pixels (actually 6 x 6 when the shading is counted). This makes them much more visible. In addition, we decided to add a single servitude stud to the team icon of the + FRATER DOMUS + group, distinguishing that group from the + FRATER NOVUS + group. It should be noted that we also have a Librarian achievement badge for those members who served in the old (pre-2014) Librarium. These members worked in a different manner, having no rules-enforcement authority, so they have retained the original badge without the red X or horns to distinguish them from the current (moderator) librarians. Some members may be wondering why we didn't switch the +++ ADMINISTRATI +++ group name to something more representative of the Adeptus Astartes. In short, it's because we don't want to be self-aggrandizing (I know some of you may snort at that ). If we used +++ HIGH LORD +++ or +++ CHAPTER MASTER +++ or +++ GREAT CAPTAIN +++ (the latter working best with the Legio them) or something else, we'd seem a bit poncy. In this, we felt it was far better to stick with a group name that clearly indicates our role at the site. The basic progression for the team icons is: Skull > 1 servitude stud (Frater Domus) > 2 servitude studs (staff) > other elements* depending on role + red X (for a rules enforcement role) * The other elements are thematically associated with the group name. So here are the new group names, their corresponding team icons, and the corresponding achievement badges for the staff groups (each image displays at 20 x 20 pixels, click on the images to see the full-size versions): +++ ADMINISTRATOR +++ ++ CHAPLAIN ++ (moderator) ++ LIBRARIAN ++ (moderator) ++ TECHMARINE ++ ++ EMERITUS ++ + FRATER DOMUS + + FRATER NOVUS + + UNSANCTIONED + You'll only see this when a member's account has been deleted by their request, with their display name replaced by "GUEST" (or sometimes "GUEST [account name]"). Their content remains so that other members' achievements (reactions) and content (quotes/replies) aren't affected by deletion. Actual guests (i.e., unregistered members) are not able to submit content. + RENUNCIATUS + You'll only see this when a member has requested that their account be deleted, and they'll remain in this group for 30 days, after which the account will be deleted and their content will appear as if they are in the + UNSANCTIONED + group. + EXCOMMUNICATUS + (no team icon) These are [former] members who have been permanently banned from the community for misbehavior.

We are looking into improved hosting, a software upgrade, and several more technical issues (database and php).

I'm a visual learner who needs pictures If you hold the mouse over each icon, a text explanation of its meaning will display (as with Like in the image above).

The artwork is all from the 3rd edition of the game. I don't know if it was official promotional material or if someone created that on their own, however.

@WrathOfTheLion will be able to provide much better answers to these questions. We are working on getting new servers, however, as well as some other technical improvements. Ultimately, I doubt that this member pruning will have a significant impact on our performance. Getting rid of 1/3+ of our accounts is of a little help, especially in cases where the system recalculates members' achievements, but these unused accounts provide almost no other demands on the system. And while my very limited sampling of these accounts showed no images, there's a chance that, hidden in the 650+ pages of these members, some might have had images in the Gallery. I think it's a very slim chance, if any. If any of these accounts did have images in our Gallery, that cleans out a little more of our database. That is probably insufficient to realize any real performance improvements, but it cleans up a little bit of noise. The real benefit that members have is that some display names that were previously used are now available again. The more important things that will improve our performance will be in other areas. This was simply one of those small things that I'm capable of (i.e., knuckle-dragger level work as opposed to work requiring real tech-adepts).

It was somewhere around 8,000 (we went from 22,000+ down to 14,000+ members). We won't know how much of an impact the pruning had until Monday (or @WrathOfTheLion is able to perform some analytics).

No, anyone with achievements other than longevity (e.g., ) has content, so they didn't meet all three criteria. This is the second time that we've done this sort of pruning. In all cases, the members had to meet all three of the criteria I listed. Indeed. Keep in mind, however, that members had to meet all three criteria for their accounts to be pruned. If someone had any existing content and hadn't been active in ten years or more, their account would not have been pruned.

In an effort to keep the database lean, a lot of accounts were pruned (i.e., deleted) over the weekend. Our criteria for these account deletions: Member has zero content* (e.g., no topics, no replies, etc.). Member has not been active (i.e., they haven't logged in) in over 10 years. Member is in the + FRATER NOVUS + or + FRATER DOMUS + group. All three criteria had to be met for the account to be pruned. If any of these were not met, the account was retained. Some members had zero content because they never actually participated, only creating an account and then lurking. Some of these members never participated at all, dropping out of the hobby/community in time; and others created other accounts later which became active. Other members had zero content because of the time the system crashed and our database was wiped out. That was in 2005 and we lost a lot of really great content. Still other members had zero content because of an old practice which has since been abandoned. When the site was first created, we (the staff) would periodically delete old discussion topics. That tapered off, though we occasionally deleted rumors and event topics once the products were released (or disproven) or the events had passed. When we were preparing for the software update in 2022, we deleted a lot of discussion topics in an effort to keep the database lean. However, we discovered that the removal of this content had a negative impact on members' achievements - the system could not count content that no longer existed. So we dropped that practice in 2022, instead creating a location for obsolete content which would remove it from public visibility while ensuring that the system would preserve the contributing members' achievements. So some of these members may have been active one time, but all records of that activity (i.e., the content they submitted) has been lost. Members in other groups that met the other criteria were not deleted for record-keeping purposes. Anyone who served as a staff member has both activity (even if you can't see it) and a unique title. Likewise, it is important to preserve the members who have been permanently banned for misbehavior so that we have a record and can refer to that content if they ever return to the site and we are able to associate the new account(s) with the previous misbehaving accounts, which has happened and will likely happen in the future. The pruning of these accounts is only one part of a larger effort that will include moving to new (and more capable) servers, fixing our database, updating to the new Invision 5.0 software (happening SoonTM, though TBD), and some other technical things that require someone who's not a knuckledragger (i.e., not me) to explain. In truth, this may have little impact on its own. If we repeat this pruning in the future, it will likely only affect members who join and then lurk. The only exceptions might be if we have a repeat of the Great Crash, but our backup process should mitigate that to the greatest extent possible (i.e., we'll only lose a fraction of content between the time of the most recent backup being taken and the crash). * Note that the "zero content" description may be inaccurate. While these members had zero topics, discussion comments/replies, blogs/blog entries, articles, and files, some may have had images/albums in the Gallery. Some definitely had avatars/personal photos and some may have had signatures/About Me pages. Since these members don't have any other content (topics, comments, etc.), however, any images they may have had in the Gallery were either used at external sites or simply resided in our Gallery (i.e., in our database) with no other use. If so, these images were populating our database and putting a pointless load on our server. In the limited sampling we took of the members who met the criteria identified in the bullets above, however, none of the members had such images. If you have any questions/concerns about this (especially if there are things we should incorporate for the future), feel free to post them here.