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Hi guys
Hope you're all doing well, and congratulations again to all those who recently matched.
I was hoping for some feedback regarding your user experience, namely with page load times. We had a pretty significant increase in server load last Friday, peaking at 100 active users at one instance. Did anyone notice slowing or page load issues?
The server the site on is dedicated and has a high bandwidth connection with good peering. I personally did not notice any issues, but wanted to see how it performed for you guys.
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(03-21-2017, 04:40 PM)socrates Wrote: Hi guys
Hope you're all doing well, and congratulations again to all those who recently matched.
I was hoping for some feedback regarding your user experience, namely with page load times. We had a pretty significant increase in server load last Friday, peaking at 100 active users at one instance. Did anyone notice slowing or page load issues?
The server the site on is dedicated and has a high bandwidth connection with good peering. I personally did not notice any issues, but wanted to see how it performed for you guys.
I've not noticed any appreciable decrease whatsoever. Smooth sailing for me all weekend.
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No issues that I've seen.
Only issue I noticed over the weekend was that I would refresh a thread and there would be no new posts. 5 minutes later, I refresh again and there is a new post that was made 30 minutes ago that didn't show up the first time. Not sure if it has to do with people deleting/editing posts. Also, I'm interested in your reason behind starting this forum. It seems like using an established forum like SDN would be a much better option. All it would take is people being more active on the neurosurgery sub-forum instead of posting here. The main reason I'm suggesting this is because using a forum like that makes it easier to determine what information is credible and what isn't. Here, we've seen people trash programs purely to eliminate competition, breach of confidential applicant information, etc. It would also be easier to moderate because we could find some more moderators so you don't have to do everything yourself.
Care to elaborate why you're saying no? I'm not trying to be confrontational or unappreciative, just genuinely curious what the pros of having a separate site are.
not the person above
Unregistered
(03-21-2017, 10:25 PM)Guest Wrote: Care to elaborate why you're saying no? I'm not trying to be confrontational or unappreciative, just genuinely curious what the pros of having a separate site are.
SDN has a reputation of being chalked full of trolls. Yeah there are a few here but these people following this forum are really interested in neurosurgery, enough to seek this site out. If this was on SDN any one may stumble upon a neurosurgery thread and shit post it.
I'm assuming that's what the post above was referring to
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03-22-2017, 03:50 AM
(This post was last modified: 03-22-2017, 04:30 AM by socrates.)
(03-21-2017, 09:37 PM)Guest Wrote: Only issue I noticed over the weekend was that I would refresh a thread and there would be no new posts. 5 minutes later, I refresh again and there is a new post that was made 30 minutes ago that didn't show up the first time. Not sure if it has to do with people deleting/editing posts. Also, I'm interested in your reason behind starting this forum. It seems like using an established forum like SDN would be a much better option. All it would take is people being more active on the neurosurgery sub-forum instead of posting here. The main reason I'm suggesting this is because using a forum like that makes it easier to determine what information is credible and what isn't. Here, we've seen people trash programs purely to eliminate competition, breach of confidential applicant information, etc. It would also be easier to moderate because we could find some more moderators so you don't have to do everything yourself.
I found SDN very useful as an undergraduate applying to medical school. After that, though, there it was less useful. Neurosurgery had NSmatch and Uncle Harvey. I liked the wiki and cases on Uncle Harvey and hope to develop those more here. While we do have a fair amount of traffic, it isn't difficult to manage. The issue with nsgapplicants was the spam, and inability to change the forum because whomever started it abandoned it. I'm looking over the folks who offered to help me with this site and will choose additional moderators to help. In any case, the reason people don't go to reddit or SDN are exactly what you mentioned in that we historically have had our own forum, and want the ability to speak freely. True, like you say this can be abused, but as a group we tend to self police and offer enough varied opinions that the middle, where reality of the situation lay, is discernable. Finally, as others have mentioned, moving to SDN or reddit would require agreeing to their TOS and having non-neurosurgeons overseeing things. Perhaps they would do a better job, but I somewhat enjoy making a venue for this discourse and am happy that you guys find it useful. If you'd prefer to move to another site, that's perfectly reasonable,but for now I'll keep this up and running.
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To the OP re: this site vs. SDN, reddit, etc, for what it's worth we did have a discussion about these very topics back on nsgapplicants before jumping ship, and the consensus was that the small size of the community made anonymous posting one of the only ways to get real info out there without being way too easy to identify people. It's obviously annoying that we seem to have a really small handful of trolls, but non-anonymous posting doesn't magically resolve this (as evidenced by SDN), and of course users are free to make profiles. From my perspective, the reduction in spam alone has been more than worth the switch, and it's great to have an admin like socrates who is able and willing to implement changes the community wants.
(03-22-2017, 03:50 AM)socrates Wrote: (03-21-2017, 09:37 PM)Guest Wrote: Only issue I noticed over the weekend was that I would refresh a thread and there would be no new posts. 5 minutes later, I refresh again and there is a new post that was made 30 minutes ago that didn't show up the first time. Not sure if it has to do with people deleting/editing posts. Also, I'm interested in your reason behind starting this forum. It seems like using an established forum like SDN would be a much better option. All it would take is people being more active on the neurosurgery sub-forum instead of posting here. The main reason I'm suggesting this is because using a forum like that makes it easier to determine what information is credible and what isn't. Here, we've seen people trash programs purely to eliminate competition, breach of confidential applicant information, etc. It would also be easier to moderate because we could find some more moderators so you don't have to do everything yourself.
I found SDN very useful as an undergraduate applying to medical school. After that, though, there it was less useful. Neurosurgery had NSmatch and Uncle Harvey. I liked the wiki and cases on Uncle Harvey and hope to develop those more here. While we do have a fair amount of traffic, it isn't difficult to manage. The issue with nsgapplicants was the spam, and inability to change the forum because whomever started it abandoned it. I'm looking over the folks who offered to help me with this site and will choose additional moderators to help. In any case, the reason people don't go to reddit or SDN are exactly what you mentioned in that we historically have had our own forum, and want the ability to speak freely. True, like you say this can be abused, but as a group we tend to self police and offer enough varied opinions that the middle, where reality of the situation lay, is discernable. Finally, as others have mentioned, moving to SDN or reddit would require agreeing to their TOS and having non-neurosurgeons overseeing things. Perhaps they would do a better job, but I somewhat enjoy making a venue for this discourse and am happy that you guys find it useful. If you'd prefer to move to another site, that's perfectly reasonable,but for now I'll keep this up and running.
Fair enough, thanks for taking the time to explain. Are you currently an attending?
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