Messaging Bug Fixed

I'm sure everyone has noticed that annoying little bug in which RateItAll personal message threads reverse the names of who is saying what.

For example, when people send me hate messages, the thread might read something like this.


AngryUser69: I'm sorry you feel that way. We do the best we can.

Lawrence: RateItAll Sucks! My pet monkey could do a better job moderating this site!

When in fact, the exchange was really like this.

Lawrence: I'm sorry you feel that way. We do the best we can.

AngryUser69: RateItAll Sucks! My pet monkey could do a better job moderating this site!

For obvious reasons, this could get confusing. I'm happy to say that it's fixed now.

Database Clean-Up (with some collateral damage)

Guys,

I'm sorry to report that any ratings / reviews / and lists posted yesterday are gone. We had to revert back to our backup db that was updated through Monday at 1AM.

Here's what happened:

A long time ago, we set up our system so that non registered users could rate and review things. These reviews would not post live on the site until the person registered, but we had to save user information about EVERYBODY - registered or not.

Well we quickly realized that people found this system confusing, so we scrapped it. However, we did not scrap the process that "remembered" anonymous users. So every day, we were accumulating thousands of these "anon" users in our database, that were just taking up space.

So as of yesterday, we were up to MILLIONS of lines in our database of worthless anon info. We kept putting it off, and putting it off, because a clean up of this magnitude is a big exercise.

RateItAll's CTO last night made the call that it was time to clean this stuff up. In the process of removing all of these anon listings, there was a problem with the db. We were forced to go back to Monday morning's backup (this is why we do backups every single day).

The good news is that all of those ANON listings are out. The bad news is that we lost a day's worth of data.

We're making a concerted effort to get our technology in order, to make the site faster and better. This was a very unfortunate side effect, of an initiative that in the long term will improve site experience.

Couple of Fixes Went Live Today

• We added the HOF link
• We darkened the link color a little more (yes, I know I said I wasn't going any darker)
• We've added "add description" and "add image" links to Rate-O-Matic / SpeedRate. So if you're speed rating, and an item doesn't have a description or a photo, you can add one. This sort of editing is really helpful for your fellow Weblisters (and RIA)
• We've added the Yahoo! shopping ads to the right side of the Speed Rate pages. This is one of those instances where I think ads actually make the experience better, because of the photos. For example, I was speed rating an actor list today, and it was helpful to see photos for the folks I couldn't identify from their names.
• We fixed a bug so that the text is now showing up besides list and item page images, as opposed to below
• We blended the AdSense ads into the site better (this actually happened two days ago)
• We fixed an annoying bug where none of our Drama Movies were showing up in the search results. Now they are.

Thanks to Jan and Peter for their hard work in getting these fixes out today. Next week we're making some fixes to our FB app and hopefully, rolling out a Bebo app.

* Oh Yeah, one more: It is again possible to post YouTube videos, and other Flash widgets, in reviews (as long as you're posting from the item page."

Database Update

.... site will be down for a few minutes.

- OK, step one of two is done. We're still going to have a little more downtime though. Please don't post any reviews until we've finished the last step.

Time Stamps

It seems that one of hour servers thought the time was an hour ahead of the others, and another was off by 3 minutes or so.

This resulted in the order of reviews on the recent reviews page to be all screwed up, with newer reviews sometimes appearing under older reviews.

This should be fixed now.

(we'll put this one in the "only if you're REALLY paying attention category.)

Images

Some of you may have noticed strange stuff going on with profile and item images. Sometimes they're there, sometimes they're not.

This has to do with when we went to a mulitple web server configuration a few weeks ago. Because the images are saved locally on either one server or the other, you will see or them or not see them depending on what server you're hitting.

We have a fix in the works that will sync all images across all servers - this should be up some time next week.

Login Status

I'm hearing more reports of reviewers who are getting logged out on the fly as they browse RateItAll. We know what is causing this issue and will be working on it today and tomorrow.

Upon Further Review...

... The slow loading recent comments page is only happening for logged in members, and is the return of a bug we've seen before. It has something to do with how the system "remembers" which reviews have been marked helpful / not helpful by each member.

We had this bug before. We fixed this bug before. We now just have to remember what we did to fix it. Stay tuned, and sorry for the slowness of this critical page.

Time Stamp Bug Fixed

Is it just me or was the daylight savings switch more of a hassle then usual this year? My phone showed the wrong time for about 2 weeks, and now two of our various servers were displaying different time stamps.

Anyway, this bug should be fixed now.

Return of the Time Stamp Issue

I've noticed that the time stamp issue is back. Reviews posted from the item page are showing up as one hour older on the recent comments page than they should.

We should have this issue taken care of by tomorrow.

Site Search is Down

I'm getting reports that searching on RIA is down and returning errors. The search provider has been alerted, and hopefully this will be resolved shortly.

Time Stamp Bug - Fixed

New reviews posted via the item pages are no longer getting buried deep in the recent comments page.

Time Stamp Problem

A number of folks have reported a problem with the time stamping of reviews submitted via the new HTML editor. These reviews are showing up with an older time stamp than they should, pushing them down the recent comments page.

We're aware of the issue and are working on it.

Photo Editing Problems

*Update: This Should be Fixed Now*

Some folks are reporting errors when they try and change their profile photo. We're aware of the issue and are working on it.

Thanks to HKK and aWiseguy for bringing this to my attention.

Best. Bug Fixing. Day. Ever.

Your feedback was almost unanimous about how we governed the reposting of a review. You wanted the ability to edit and repost reviews without losing helpful votes, and also pointed out a couple of bugs in the process. Here is what we've done:

In the last fix of the day, we've switched up the rules regarding reposting of a review. Before, this is what happened when a review was reposted:

- all of the helpful and not helpful votes were cleared

- anyone who has voted a review helpful or not helpful was not able to vote again

- all comments associated with that review got erased


Here is what now happens when a review is reposted:


- the review retains its helpful / not helpful votes

- people are free to change their helpful vote to not helpful and vice versa

- comments associated with the review are retained.


Thanks for all the feedback.