Forums HORRIBLE March 14 2011

Report · Mar 14, 2011

Started 9AM West Coast USA - several "false" logouts
.
I had a message all ready to go, and between composing and clicking post... I was logged out
.
I have been a member of the Adobe forums since Premiere 6x days, to learn and help when I can
.
Now, due to either a lack of resources provided by Adobe... or the Jive software... the forums are part of the problem, instead of being the solution
.
It is really frustrating to take 30+ seconds to get to a forum, or a message inside a forum... and then find out I have been logged out when the screen finally opens
.
This problem has been here for several weeks, off and on, and it seems nobody is able to fix this problem... not a good public face for Adobe

Report · Mar 24, 2011

Where do they PUT 6,000 spam posts? Surely you don't have THAT many different forums.

If you're getting spammers making accounts at a rate fast enough that you can't keep up with them, doesn't that say that you need new account opening policies?

Surely there must be a method by which the "normal" behavior of reasonable participants can be monitored and differentiated from that of spammers. It certainly seems possible for a human to tell whether someone's makig a reasonable post or just a trash post to get an account established. I report all of those that I see.

-Noel

Report · Mar 25, 2011

Noel Carboni wrote on 11/03/25 06:09:

Where do they PUT 6,000 spam posts?

6000 was just one day, the total of that run was around 17000 in one forum.

If you're getting spammers making accounts at a rate fast enough that you can't keep up with them, doesn't that say that you need new account opening policies?

Yes.

Surely there must be a method by which the "normal" behavior of reasonable participants can be monitored and differentiated from that of spammers.

We have that, but it depends on a correctly working search function.

It certainly seems possible for a human to tell whether someone's makig a reasonable post or just a trash post to get an account established. I report all of those that I see.

As a forum user that is pretty much you all you can do. Click "Report

abuse" and stay away because for the larger runs it is quite likely that

a forum will be inaccessible during the cleanup. If you reply to spam

messages or in forums that are the target of an ongoing spam run you

should expect some of your messages to disappear as well.

Report · Mar 25, 2011

If you're getting spammers making accounts at a rate fast enough that you can't keep up with them, doesn't that say that you need new account opening policies?

Instead of changing the account opening policies, the simple solution is to allow only 5 messages within any 10 minutes time interval from a particular IP address. If this is exceeded then that IP should be blocked for 30 minutes before any new messages can be posted.

aioe <http://www.aioe.org/index.php?free-usenet-servers> uses this quite safely and their nntp-newsgroups rarely get more than 2 spams in a day.

Report · Mar 25, 2011

No, that's not good. I often answer many posts in a very short time. Such a policy would madden legitimate participants who accidentally run up against the limit.

-Noel

Report · Mar 22, 2011

I am only experiencing the login problem on the system where I am not logged in with the "Remember me" option.

Report · Mar 22, 2011

I tried to post these last two messages from IE8 (in which cookies are disabled) and the delay was about 30 seconds. So it appears that some progress is being made to rectify the problem that has affected us last week.

In FF 3.6.15 I have cookies to remember the login details so it should be faster though can't be sure about it.

Have to try FF4 released to day to see if it makes any difference.

Report · Mar 22, 2011

You guys have patience to hang out here. I have more or less given up. These 6,000 spam messages have done more damage than one would have expected. Does anybody know what sort of spam messages were these, and has Adobe not got enough technical resources to deal with spam messages?

Report · Mar 23, 2011

...and the responsiveness of the Adobe Forum servers is still much, much worse than any site I regularly use...

Alas, I see no signs of lasting progress.

Report · Mar 23, 2011

This is a "Saved" message that I tried to post here at 11:45AM EDT after getting a "an unexpected error has occurred". No,

it was not "unexpected" to me, since I saved it beforehand:

Different problems today on the Flash Player Forum, so far anyway. Thread opened, but not correctly. No way possible to type a message as the message are didn't open fully. Only showed the title of the thread and "Post message"

Different problems occur, so when one seems to be working, a new one pops up. Then if that one is "solved", then it starts all over again with something else.

Very frustrating, not only for those of us that help on the Forums, but the users as well. 18 to 20 minutes yesterday to get a message to go thru isn't working very well at all.

Granted I don't know what is causing these major issues, but we certainly see the effects.

eidnolb

Report · Mar 23, 2011

Just an update on my last post. After that starting glitch, it appears that the Flash Player Forum is working as it should. Everything going thru, so that is very nice!!

Sort of a strange experience though

eidnolb

Report · Mar 23, 2011

Ah, that's better. The responsiveness is in an unusual state: pretty responsive

Report · Mar 23, 2011

Bob,

I also seem to have the forums back, and functioning, as of Wed. 23, 2011, and 7:00AM PDT (-8 GMT).

The morning dawned clear and bright, so it's fitting that the forum is also "back." Man, it was a couple of really horrible days.

Hunt

Report · Mar 23, 2011

Just in case someone is interested: I have just installed Firefox 4 in my Mac, and loading times for all sites have shortened noticeably. In these forums, for example, they have gone down from the "normal" of about 5 seconds to a "blazing" little over 2 secons (all times measured with the second hand of a normal analog watch).

Report · Mar 25, 2011

It's taking me about 10 seconds to load any page of these forums, as compared with the little over 2 seconds of yesterday.

Report · Mar 25, 2011

Also, I've just noticed that the «Updated» flag normally shown on threads with unread new messages is gone in all forums at this time.

Report · Mar 25, 2011

Tai, you are not the only affected participant:

http://forums.adobe.com/message/3570542#3570542

I am getting it in Firefox/Mac and Explorer/Win.

Also, loading times today seem to be twice as long as "normal".

Report · Mar 25, 2011

Morning all, Well you can imagine my surprise. I had my email account open(minimized) and one thread. Logged in(first time today) 11:50AM EDT. I logged in on the thread, and ended up here!!!! That's a new one for me.

"As the World Turns"

eidnolb

Report · Mar 28, 2011

Forums gone for several minutes starting some 5 minutes ago...

Report · Apr 11, 2011

This forum system is just crap.

How is possible that a basic feature like research doesn't work... 😕

Even when it "works" the UI is ridicolous and lacks some basic functionalities.

From Adobe I'd expect something way better... What's happening there?

Report · Apr 11, 2011

>What's happening there?

Two plus years ago Adobe switched from their previous forum software to Jive

Report · Apr 11, 2011

Careful, you might catch heat for not noticing the Emperor's new clothes.

In all seriousness, I agree with you. Adobe puts forth a nice professional face with much of their software. This forum does not keep that tradition. It's woefully out of date and many features have simply been hacked off in the name of security or stability.

You will find many comments by well-meaning users urging Adobe to do better. That they do not (nor do they often even answer queries about why) suggests a lack of funding and/or the wrong folks in charge. Adobe does not realize how important this public face is, especially in light of the fact that the phone support people often send people here.

-Noel

Report · Apr 11, 2011

Noel Carboni wrote:
Careful, you might catch heat for not noticing the Emperor's new clothes.
In all seriousness, I agree with you. Adobe puts forth a nice professional face with much of their software. This forum does not keep that tradition. It's woefully out of date and many features have simply been hacked off in the name of security or stability.
You will find many comments by well-meaning users urging Adobe to do better. That they do not (nor do they often even answer queries about why) suggests a lack of funding and/or the wrong folks in charge. Adobe does not realize how important this public face is, especially in light of the fact that the phone support people often send people here.
-Noel

There have been people peroidically voicing these same thoughts since the first trial of the new version of the forums, more than two years ago. No answers, no changes, except for a few cosmetic ones some months ago that weren't a big improvement. And people looking for help come here not only because the phone support personnel send them here, but mainly because these forums have a reputation for providing very good and very timely solutions for free... Of course, the merit of this is not Adobe's...

Report · Apr 12, 2011

Hi, Is anyone else having a problem using the Report Spam Forum? I've had login issues since Sunday & that is fixed. There are about 30 threads of Spam on the Flash Player Forum and I cannot use the Spam Forum, no features except "report abuse".

I'm logged in but it's not working for me.

Thanks,

eidnolb

Report · Apr 12, 2011

Well, you can try this. I don't know if it will be kept, but it is obvious that JC is watching it...

http://forums.adobe.com/thread/837370

Report · Apr 12, 2011

Thank you for that info. I just came back from the Spam Report and see that any report I made does not even have "report abuse" on any of my messages. Completely blank, nothing to click on.

I've had login account issues twice this month, just have had that resolved again this afternoon.

I find it amusing the Spammers have no problem:-)

Thanks,

eidnolb