What has this site done?

[IslandLover]

18 hours ago, mstevens said:

I imagine there is sympathy from users towards ThaiVisa for what has happened with this site. The problem is, just what has happened? Some say a hack. Some say migrating to a new server. Some say a server crash. Just come out an be straight with us and tell us what has happened and what the plan is to get things back to normal. Do that and you will probably find most people are supportive. But so far, that doesn't seem to have happened or at least if there has been such an announcement, it has been buried deep in some sub-forum and most of us have not seen it and are therefore not aware of what is going on. And that just adds to the frustration of it all and may cause us to look for other forums or Facebook groups to use instead.

Am I right in thinking that ThaiVisa and the company that owns The Nation newspaper have parted ways?  I see no announcement to this effect but noticed recently that there has been no content from The Nation posted in the forums.

On the day I found out the website was down (about 3 days ago) I received a notification through Facebook that the ThaiVisa Facebook page had changed its name.  I saw immediately that the ThaiVisa logo had changed and if you look carefully, you can just make out the previous logo underneath (I still miss the old dark blue & yellow logo).  So what is really going on here?

[nrasmussen]

On 3/12/2021 at 9:25 PM, Puccini said:

And it is now the third day of November in the year of the Lord twothousandandtwentyone:

"On 3/11/2021 at 6:34 AM, Bangkok Barry said"

Was the same time format used before the outage?

I don't remember what date/time formats where used here before, but since this is a forum read by people with backgrounds from all over the world it really would be most appropriate to use ISO 8601 everywhere instead of ambiguous date formats and AM/PM nonsense.

[IslandLover]

5 hours ago, nrasmussen said:

I don't remember what date/time formats where used here before, but since this is a forum read by people with backgrounds from all over the world it really would be most appropriate to use ISO 8601 everywhere instead of ambiguous date formats and AM/PM nonsense.

Looks like it is the American date and time format now - month/day/year and AM/PM.  As far as I can tell, this is how it's always been, looking back at some old posts I had saved for posterity.  

[tifino]

5 hours ago, nrasmussen said:

I don't remember what date/time formats where used here before, but since this is a forum read by people with backgrounds from all over the world it really would be most appropriate to use ISO 8601 everywhere instead of ambiguous date formats and AM/PM nonsense.

yeah I'd agree with that idea too...   having the Day and Month backwards MM/DD/YYYY gives me a headache

[owl sees all]

10 minutes ago, tifino said:

yeah I'd agree with that idea too...   having the Day and Month backwards MM/DD/YYYY gives me a headache

Indeed.

But in programming/code terms, it should be YYYY/mm/dd. This is auto-sorting based on date.

 

Edited March 14, 2021 by owl sees all

[Odysseus123]

I am still getting lots of "error 502"'s and "bad gateway"s

The security check certainly takes more then 5 seconds...

However full marks to those who are working on the problems as it is a good forum.

[IslandLover]

11 minutes ago, Odysseus123 said:

I am still getting lots of "error 502"'s and "bad gateway"s

The security check certainly takes more then 5 seconds...

However full marks to those who are working on the problems as it is a good forum.

Yes, I also got the Error 502: Bad Gateway a few minutes ago.  It was OK yesterday.

[CharlieH]

I would like to answer some of the speculation that has been posted recently.

The forum was subject to a DDoS attack., for those that dont know this is a "denial of service" attack, it is not a "hack" and no data has been compromised at any time.

The attack is believed to have been caused by a disgruntled former member who claimed resposibility for it via Facebook.

As a result of the attack increased security was required, that level of security  was not available on the current host so a move was necessary. The move to a new host and the subsequent rebuild is a time consuming process given the large databases involved and somewhat complex funtionality of the forum.

We are working to the best of our ability to restore and improve the forum and its security going forward.

So there it is, can we now please stop the speculation and rumours as we continue to work toward a better user experience. 

Please feel free to post any suggestions for improvements and notify any issues you may encounter.

 

Thanks for your understanding and  continued support.

 

[Lacessit]

I don't worry very much about things I can't do anything about.

[RobMuir]

On 3/11/2021 at 12:27 PM, colinneil said:

So you pity me? Can i ask why?

Sadly i do not have better things to do with my life, i only wish i had.

Next time before ridiculing others, stop, think, try asking yourself why that cranky old sod ( colinneil) spends so many hours on here.

Yes it is a shame that i am stuck in a bloody wheelchair, unable to walk/ move.

Have you considered learning the Thai language with all your spare time?

It would be more beneficial to your happiness and help you feel less socially isolated IMO. It would enable you to communicate with people in real life and give you a lot more out of life with real life relationships, something you won't get from social media/internet "friends"

Good luck

[faraday]

42 minutes ago, RobMuir said:

Have you considered learning the Thai language with all your spare time?

It would be more beneficial to your happiness and help you feel less socially isolated IMO. It would enable you to communicate with people in real life and give you a lot more out of life with real life relationships, something you won't get from social media/internet "friends"

Good luck

What level is your Thai at then, Robert?

[RobMuir]

3 minutes ago, faraday said:

What level is your Thai at then, Robert?

Speaking fairly much nailed it. I can always manage to ask for what I need or say what I want to say.

Reading, can read conversations, comments on forums, but still struggle reading news without referring to google translate often. Reading signs helps a lot.

Listening, fairly good keeping up with conversations, struggle if they talk too quickly or use a lot of slang.

Writing, can converse on LINE app etc, and just look up words I don't know.

It certainly makes life a lot more interesting and pleasant for myself and the locals. Gives me a lot of independence. I try to put in at least an hour per day.

How about you?

[IslandLover]

7 hours ago, CharlieH said:

I would like to answer some of the speculation that has been posted recently.

The forum was subject to a DDoS attack., for those that dont know this is a "denial of service" attack, it is not a "hack" and no data has been compromised at any time.

The attack is believed to have been caused by a disgruntled former member who claimed resposibility for it via Facebook.

As a result of the attack increased security was required, that level of security  was not available on the current host so a move was necessary. The move to a new host and the subsequent rebuild is a time consuming process given the large databases involved and somewhat complex funtionality of the forum.

We are working to the best of our ability to restore and improve the forum and its security going forward.

So there it is, can we now please stop the speculation and rumours as we continue to work toward a better user experience. 

Please feel free to post any suggestions for improvements and notify any issues you may encounter.

 

Thanks for your understanding and  continued support.

 

Thanks for confirming what some of us suspected.  It must be a mammoth task to get things up and running again.  Kudos to the tech people. ???? 

[RobMuir]

8 hours ago, CharlieH said:

Please feel free to post any suggestions for improvements and notify any issues you may encounter.

 

I wouldn't take any of the criticisms personally. I read that you all work for free?

The only improvement I can suggest is to discourage the constant negativity that plagues this forum. it is very off-putting, boring and so monotonous and seems to appear in every topic.

[CharlieH]

1 minute ago, RobMuir said:

I wouldn't take any of the criticisms personally. I read that you all work for free?

The only improvement I can suggest is to discourage the constant negativity that plagues this forum. it is very off-putting, boring and so monotonous and seems to appear in every topic.

That is correct, Moderators are volunteers and are not paid employees.

[Pilotman]

1 hour ago, RobMuir said:

Have you considered learning the Thai language with all your spare time?

It would be more beneficial to your happiness and help you feel less socially isolated IMO. It would enable you to communicate with people in real life and give you a lot more out of life with real life relationships, something you won't get from social media/internet "friends"

Good luck

I would rather hammer my testicles with a mallet. One of the most useless languages in the world, only spoken by circa 70 million people, in a World population of 7 billion.  Not a good use of anyone's time.  

[CharlieH]

3 minutes ago, Pilotman said:

I would rather hammer my testicles with a mallet. One of the most useless languages in the world, only spoken by circa 70 million people, in a World population of 7 billion.  Not a good use of anyone's time.  

I am sure many would happily do that for you !

555 some would even pay to do it....5555

[Pilotman]

7 minutes ago, CharlieH said:

I am sure many would happily do that for you !

555 some would even pay to do it....5555

Mrs P may yet do it for me today as I haven't taken out the trash yet. 

[josephbloggs]

34 minutes ago, Pilotman said:

I would rather hammer my testicles with a mallet. One of the most useless languages in the world, only spoken by circa 70 million people, in a World population of 7 billion.  Not a good use of anyone's time.  

If you live in that country of 70 million it's hardly useless is it.   What a ridiculously negative comment, even for you. 

Do you have a minimum number of people to speak a language before you think it is worthy of being learnt?  

[Pilotman]

17 minutes ago, josephbloggs said:

If you live in that country of 70 million it's hardly useless is it.   What a ridiculously negative comment, even for you. 

Do you have a minimum number of people to speak a language before you think it is worthy of being learnt?  

I have to say it again.  I am here for just 12 months, I may or may not get another extension, depending on the unpredictable immigration laws and officers.  I don't consider that I am here for any more than that 12 months and I certainly am not committed to staying here for the rest of my life. Like the vast majority of expats that I meet here,  I get by in this temporary situation with the amount of Thai I have picked up (my wife's family speak almost exclusively the Issan dialect, so its not much good for communicating with them). I lived for a few years in both Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan and I made great efforts to learn a language spoken by near on 2 billion people Worldwide. I mean Mandarin of course, not Cantonese.  It also aided me in my job. That was useful, learning Thai fluently , at least for me and many others, isn't a good use of time. 

As to your last question; why yes, of course.  The utility value to me of any language depends on the number of people I interact with who speak it and that don't speak English, my native language. There are very many languages that don't meet the criteria for putting any effort into learning fluently, unless learning languages happens to be your thing.  It isn't mine. 

Edited March 15, 2021 by Pilotman

[CharlieH]

With my previous post giving full explanation I think this topic can now be closed.

 

// CLOSED.