Forum outages  

RE: Forum outages

If I were to guess, they are unintentional DDOS caused by AI bots scraping content. Same thing is happening at the astronomy and model rocket forums I frequent. It like the Kessler Syndrome, only for websites. That is, it's getting exponentially worse. 

RE: Forum outages

from the Discord - they are working on it, be patient.

RE: Forum outages

Yeah, they "worked" on it last Saturday and Sunday too! And as you can see it didn't lead to anything. Or that system engineers are among the 15% of employees that Prusa is going to lay off?

RE: Forum outages

If I were to guess, they are unintentional DDOS caused by AI bots scraping content. Same thing is happening at the astronomy and model rocket forums I frequent. It like the Kessler Syndrome, only for websites. That is, it's getting exponentially worse. 

RE: Forum outages

from the Discord - they are working on it, be patient.

RE: Forum outages

It seems that the forum has started working. I'm just curious if someone responsible for the forum will come here and explain to us what caused the problems, how they solved it and what they want to do about it in the future. So, gentlemen, system engineers, who will be the first to come here?

RE: Forum outages

That's crazy—I haven't been able to log in since Saturday.

Now, on Thursday, it's working again.

What caused the problem?

RE: Forum outages

The internet is the problem 😋 

RE: Forum outages

Prusa really needs its own internet connection soon... especially since April Fools' Day was yesterday 😉

Posted by: @_kaszpir_

The internet is the problem 😋 

RE: Forum outages

All I can say is, with complete honesty... is that these forums are a joke.

The amount of crap it took just to get to post this... It's not worth it to post here.

Meanwhile Chinese chat bots are able to log in and do whatever.

RE: Forum outages

It is suddenly working much better for me today, does anyone else also noticed any improvements? 

RE: Forum outages

Hurrah! We seem to be back, at least for a minute or two. I haven't been able to log in or read much of anything for several days.

RE: Forum outages

Posted by: @miroslav-h4

It seems that the forum has started working. I'm just curious if someone responsible for the forum will come here and explain to us what caused the problems, how they solved it and what they want to do about it in the future. So, gentlemen, system engineers, who will be the first to come here?

Well since I am the admin for the forums, the overall responsibility falls upon myself.

And first off, a huge thanks to the devs for working on this and getting it fixed before a very long holiday weekend over here. 

For the what, how and why.... honestly, it was some internal things that was going on and the devs had to dig into things over here and see what the story was. A few people were saying it was AI scanning, bots or other things... personally, I had 10 bucks that Godzilla trampled the hosting center. 

As far as what will be done in the future, as publicly stated here before, there are plans to rework and update the forums and for the issues that happen here since Saturday, it will be gathered up and included in those requests for changes in the forums.

For the community members, I apologize for the prolong down time and I can assure you that every option was put into play to get this resolved as soon as possible. There was some updates on our discord server, and I would suggest people to join there as if the forums goes down, I can easily post updates there for people
https://discord.gg/yT4hDKpv

Thats about it from me. Enjoy the long holiday weekend for those lucky enough to have one and enjoy the forums. 

RE: Forum outages

RE: Forum outages

Are there any other places we can go for updates when the forums are offline?  I've only just got my first printer so I've been a bit stuck with nowhere to go for assistance.

Posted by: @same-old-shane

 There was some updates on our discord server, and I would suggest people to join there as if the forums goes down, I can easily post updates there for people
https://discord.gg/yT4hDKpv

Unfortunately Discord only works if you already have an account.  I didn't, so I tried to sign up for one and the sign up process is currently broken.  I spent a full two minutes answering a dozen "are you human?" questions about icecreams melting in water, then when I finally was able to log in I followed the link to join the Prusa area and it just logged me out, then when I tried to log back in again it told me my brand new account had been blocked!  I tried to open a support ticket under 'account problems' and they told me I needed to open one under 'age verification' instead, so I did, but that one never received a response.  So there's no way for new users to join Discord at the moment.

RE: Forum outages

Posted by: @malvineous

Are there any other places we can go for updates when the forums are offline?  I've only just got my first printer so I've been a bit stuck with nowhere to go for assistance.

Posted by: @same-old-shane

 There was some updates on our discord server, and I would suggest people to join there as if the forums goes down, I can easily post updates there for people
https://discord.gg/yT4hDKpv

Unfortunately Discord only works if you already have an account.  I didn't, so I tried to sign up for one and the sign up process is currently broken.  I spent a full two minutes answering a dozen "are you human?" questions about icecreams melting in water, then when I finally was able to log in I followed the link to join the Prusa area and it just logged me out, then when I tried to log back in again it told me my brand new account had been blocked!  I tried to open a support ticket under 'account problems' and they told me I needed to open one under 'age verification' instead, so I did, but that one never received a response.  So there's no way for new users to join Discord at the moment.

Rather surprising. Anyway, besides here and Discord, there is also Reddit: r/prusa3d

RE: Forum outages

And the way I see it, we probably have the problem with the shoes back! Unfortunately, the solution didn't last long. Wouldn't it be better to buy a new professional solution that is suitable for today's increasingly rude bots instead of maintaining an old forum that is obviously no longer suitable? Prusa engineers are good at developing printers, but here it would probably really require a professional solution to these issues. Prusa's system engineers are certainly doing what they can here, but as you can see, it's probably not enough.

RE: Forum outages

Posted by: @miroslav-h4

And the way I see it, we probably have the problem with the shoes back! Unfortunately, the solution didn't last long. Wouldn't it be better to buy a new professional solution that is suitable for today's increasingly rude bots instead of maintaining an old forum that is obviously no longer suitable? Prusa engineers are good at developing printers, but here it would probably really require a professional solution to these issues. Prusa's system engineers are certainly doing what they can here, but as you can see, it's probably not enough.

Ok, so I'm not going into the details as far as what was the cause, nor what was done to resolve the issue.
There was a problem with the forums that happen today (April 17th) and was reported and was resolved and patch put in place. 

People can speculate, but you guys don't see whats going on behind the scenes. The case was handled as a priority and was fixed and patched in about 90 minutes. I can understand and relate to the frustration from a user side, but I can assure people that we do take it seriously over here.

There will be changes coming to the forums soon and different steps will be put in place to help reduce these types of incidents.

Just keep in mind, while it is frustrating that you can't log in from your PC, there are people behind the scenes dropping tasks and handling these issues asap 🙂

Thanks 

RE: Forum outages

Thank you for the comprehensive answer! As I saw, the problem was really solved relatively quickly and hopefully it will be solved in the future. So thanks again for the answer and for solving the problem! Good luck!