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Correction On My "growing Concern" Thread


burkey

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I have been with TCH for a little under a year and have been extremely happy. As a matter of fact, far happier than I've been with any other hosting company. I have referred them everyone who I ever talk to about web hosting and even have a nice referral on my site about them.

 

HOWEVER, I am growing very concerned. Less than a month ago I had my SSL capabilities disappear from my site and just today my entire site disappeared. It is back now, but was apparently completely gone for around 12 hours. This site is my business and the only source of income I have. 12 hours is a big deal for me.

 

The service, once a problem is reported is still very very good. What I am becoming increasingly uncomfortable with is the seemingly sloppy operations. Both of these problems were human error and not the result of any piece of hardware failing. In the former someone apparently pointed my cert at another site, and in the latter someone routed my ip address to the wrong server.

 

Now, I have no insight to what is going on and that is the reason I am here asking. All I can do is report what I feel and perceive as a customer. Perception is, after all, reality to the uninformed.

 

As I stated before, I have a sinking feeling that things might be slipping for one reason or another.

 

Please help me to understand.

 

Chad Burkey

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I am sorry you had two problems in the past month but I do disagree with your assessment. I went back and looked up the tickets for the two problems. The first, where SSL was down, was answered in 10 minutes. I see nothing in the ticket to suggest that it was human error. It was more likely a software glitch as the most common reason for SSL not working is when it fails on an apache restart. As soon as we were made aware of it we restarted apache and it came back up.

 

I did not answer the ticket today so I cannot say for sure what happened. Your dedicated IP got reassigned to another server so your site would not resolve as it was not on that server. I have been working here for over a year and I have only seen that happen two other times. Once it was our fault as a dedicated IP was given to an account by error and later reassiged when an SSL certificate was installed. The other time was a case out of our hands, the provider of the IP address installed it on a second server that was not one of our servers.

 

We are human and make mistakes. We do strive to correct them as quickly as possible. I don't see that as having changed at all in the year and a half I have had an account here.

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I hope our bilge pumps are working.

 

What Rick said!!!!!

 

I investigated the issue with your down time, and it was not the fault of humans, but that of cPanel.

 

If you would like to discus your service level please drop me a email. However, I 100% disagree with your assement and will not debate this issue in our forums.

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TCH folks,

 

Please accept my sincerest apologies for a mistake I made in the title of my thread. It should have read "Growing Concern Regarding tch: Reliability Dropping?" I didn't take the time I should have for proofreading. When I read the followups to my post, I couldn't understand what the references to "my assessment" meant. Then I realized the typo in the title description. I would never make such a proclamation with only two data points. Not only would that be unfair, it would be ridiculous as well.

 

I did not want my posting to sound like an attack or complaining. Rather, I was hoping for an open discussion about my recent experiences. I was interested in finding out if I was the only one or if more of these types of problems have been happening.

 

If I was truly unhappy I certainly would not voice it here. I would write directly to Bill and would work it out. This is not such a situation. This is just an instance of a person trying to understand a situation.

 

Thanks for understanding,

 

Chad Burkey

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Hi Chad, the Open Discussion really doesn't mean "open discussion" if you have anything to say that maybe negative toward TCH. I've noticed alot of topics being locked lately and have scratched my head wondering why, they have not broken any of the guidelines as far as I can tell. But its "their ball" and you gotta play by "their rules".

 

[wonders how long this topic will remain open because of this statement]

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Bob, these are my thoughts about this and not TCH's, meaning TCH, Bill or his staff have nothing to do with these. They may share the same opinion (and I think they do) but these are my thoughts.

 

Open discussion really is open discussion uness one of two things happens:

 

1 - People start talking about sensitive subjects, like politics or religion, which can become extremely hot topics, which we do not want in a family forum.

 

2 - Someone starts talking about TCH and telling lies. And note that the threads are not deleted, meaning that Bill/TCH has nothing to hide[/b]. They are simply locked so that the stupidity is not allowed to endure.

 

Since you're talking about the second case, let me tell you something: you have no ideia of how many trolls from other hosting companies go to their rival's boards and try to denigrate them with false accusations. I'm sure you've seen some of those around here.

 

I hope I made my point clear.

 

 

About your post, Chad, I understand your concerns but think about it this way: TCH has grown insanely fast in the past year. By "insanely fast" I mean buying like 30-40 new servers and fill them all up with new clients.

What this means is that there are more chances of something going wrong when you have almost 100 servers then when you only have 20. It's a matter of probability.

You have more chances of finding a defectuous part in a "pool" of 100 computers than you have in a pool of 20.

 

 

Let me say once again that these are my thoughts not TCH's, meaning TCH, Bill or his staff have nothing to do with these. They may share the same opinion (and I think they do) but these are my thoughts alone.

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Thanks for the reply and a possible explanation. There are always two sides and I understand this, its hard sometimes sitting on this side of the fence and only seeing the one side. We can not tell which posters are customers and assume that they are if they are posting here.

 

It just bothers me when a discussion is stopped before it ever gets started and I can't see any guidelines being broken...it looks like censorship. Yes the topic is still there so you are not hiding it but its a two way street, you are stopping the free flow of ideas with no more replies which is censoring.

 

Maybe its me and the way I have been doing things. I have been a moderator for over 10 years on BB's and IRC and stopping a discussion is a last resort and there must be a clear infraction. We will first try and clear the issue with warnings and point out the guidelines, if it continues we will look at further actions.

 

So with this said I'll go back to reading and helping where I can, thats all I want to do anyway. Thanks again for a possible explanation

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We censor NOTHING. In fact i take offense in your comments that we do. We bust our backside for you guys and for you to make a comment like that really ticks me off. Censorship is removing comments, or deleting them. That was not done, the thread was simply closed as there was no more useful information available. The next thing that would have happened is 30 TCH customers would have came in the thread and bashed the client, and I did not want that to happen. I wanted the poster to know we took his comments and that we would look into them. I did not want the thread to turn out to be a bash thread.

 

I will now go off and punch some drywall. Mad!!! Mad!!! Mad!!! Mad!!!

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I really should just walk away, but madman's comments have really peaked my emotions.

 

Time to put up or shut up madman.

 

Since I am the ONLY emplolyee of TCH that is allowed to approve and or close threads, I would really like you to list the closed and censored threads that you have noticed of late. I have just spent the past 15 minutes reviewing the boards, and I am unable to located a topic that was closed without justification.

 

Did you know that our mods have a section of the forum that is just for them to use? Did you know that we in almost every case, we discuss the closing of a thread before taking action?

 

Anyways, please give me a list of the censorship you so strongly speak of. I mean afterall you called me out and here I am.

 

Bill

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Wait, you call us on the floor over that post?

 

I am without words atm.

 

We are NOT A LINKING FARM as that thread suggests. That is not what the family forums are about. That thread was closed and a explanation of why it was closed was posted along with it.

 

AND yes I will attack anyone, customer or not, that misrepresents or in general does not give the factual response on what we are doing here on the forums or at TCH.

 

I am not afraid to lay it on the line Bob.

 

If your going to trash talk in my forums, please at least bring the trash with you next time.

 

I think my point is clearly made. We do not censor anything in the forums and never have.

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I dont exactly want bring myself in to this discussion since im a little afraid to speak at all in these forums lately...

The link Mad man refers too is placed in Website promotion forum, which have a description:

Search engine ranking, optimization and other site promotion.

Do you too see the and other site promotion.

Of course people will think they can ask for linking to each other there, since the description says what it does. People will think they can do this as long the forumdescription exist.

 

However, in thread (from feb 7) http://www.totalchoicehosting.com/forums/i...?showtopic=7547 these descriptions are being discussed and why not have a look if some forum descriptions may need a rewriting?

 

Just my .02 cents...

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I guess I'll jump in too since I was part of the thread in question. Obviiously, the posts there were a bit self-serving (some more blatant than others), but I didn't think they broke any rules or did any harm. I think it's great that the family members want to come together and support each other and I think that's a fine role for the forum to play in further helping TCH customers. We do feel like a family, after all, and the forums are our dinner table where we gather to talk and connect. What bothered me about the closing of the thread was the fact (as stated) that it was being closed out of "fear" of what may (or may not) have happened with future posts. This is similair to HG's statement about closing a thread because of "what would have happened" with customers coming on and bashing the client who spoke negatively. Anticipated client-bashing or anticipated trolling doesn't seem like reason enough.... none of us can accurately predict the future 100% of the time.

 

The other closures that have caught my attention were all regarding negative comments about TCH. I agree with Bill that at some point there is nothing further to be gained by debate and no further useful information to be gleaned. The question is when do we reach that point? Someone has to decide and in our situation that someone is Bill. Some days, I guess, he's more sensitive to criticism than others. Some days he's just too busy to carry on such discussions on the forum, and some days he's probably just too tired to repeat what he's said numerous times before (why don't people search earlier posts for their answers instead of asking the same questions that have been answered time and time again???). Most of the time, I agree with him about closing the thread as I am tired of hearing the same gripe repeated endlessly. He could do it a little more tactfully, but then he wouldn't be the HG that we all know and love! ;)

 

Yes, there is heavy-handedness at times, but in general I think the forums are wonderful and for the most part very well moderated. I think those of us who post are well protected from personal attack, profanity, and the like. I have seen things get way out of hand on other forums. "This is better."

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These are the threads I could find that were closed recently, I wouldnt exactly call that censorship. We are not compuserv or sbc, or wherever it is you are a moderator so we do things differently.

 

The only thread closing I can see anyone having questions about is the two link exchange threads. TCH does want your site to succeed, the forums simply arent the place to coordinate your link exchange. A perfect example of this is jkrantz's web ring. He asked Bill about it, Bill thought it was a good idea and jikrantz posted a link OFF SITE with more info.

 

Another thing, if you are doing a link exchange for more backlinks to your site, unless the sites linking to you are relevant to your site your doing yourself more harm than good.

 

 

closed because it was going nowhere, and had/has been answered over and over.

http://www.totalchoicehosting.com/forums/i...topic=8865&st=0

 

closed because it was going nowhere, and had/has been answered over and over.

http://www.totalchoicehosting.com/forums/i...showtopic=10682

 

both of these closed and alternatives given

http://www.totalchoicehosting.com/forums/i...?showtopic=7298

http://www.totalchoicehosting.com/forums/i...showtopic=10442

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Not to get myself involved in a heated discussion or anything, but I have to say this.

 

One of the reasons the TCH forums are such a great place is because the heated discussions are kept to a limit...addressed and then finished. If you go into any respectable business, you will not find the manager or assistant managers out on the floor debating the quality of their service with a customer.

 

These forums are similar to the "sales floor" of a retail establishment where there should be no bickering, bashing, scene causing, solicitation, etc. Major problems/concerns should be taken directly to one of the moderators or Bill himself. I know for a fact that Mike is almost always available and will happily try to resolve/answer any problems!!

 

I recently saw two moderators on a forum carrying on about whether or not one of them hijacked something from the other...it was very unprofessional and it went unaddressed by the admin. Bill would NEVER allow that to happen here, and I for one am glad! All forums should be so lucky...

 

Now...everyone needs to get busy having a really good day!!!!!!! <_<

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Look everyone knows that we here at TCH are a honest group of people. I have built my life around honesty. I treat others like I would like to be treated. I give more to charity then most people spend on Gas. I bend over backwards every day, day in and day out to make this company what it is today.

 

The bottom line is imho madman was WRONG. Really wrong to call to say the things he said about our forums. Was I wrong in my replies? Maybe, however I was insulted and was very upset that someone would call TCH "censors".

 

Something everyone forgets, this is not a democracy. As much as people like to think TCH is a public entity. It is not.

 

Thing is, look thru these forums. They are WIDE OPEN.

 

Virtual Imager, could you please point me to the threads that I have closed that are related to "Bad Reviews" about TCH. I just do not agree. Here are a couple of posts to support my pposition.

 

http://www.totalchoicehosting.com/forums/i...?showtopic=7511

 

http://www.totalchoicehosting.com/forums/i...?showtopic=9652

 

http://www.totalchoicehosting.com/forums/i...=11&t=9390&st=0

 

http://www.totalchoicehosting.com/forums/i...?showtopic=4962

 

http://www.totalchoicehosting.com/forums/i...?showtopic=3030

 

I spent 30 minutes reviewing the boards and found one thread that I closed that was a negative post about tch, the thread had dragged on for 18 replies and it was just time to end the coconversation.

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Well Bill, we need to agree to disagree.

 

So far most the topics listed have not been closed because they broke anything listed in the guidelines and I feel closing topics needs a valid reason. Some were closed because they were going nowhere and others were closed because of what might be posted. The one that started this thread was critical of TCH.

 

My intent was not to insult you but to point out something that has been bugging me. If I did insult you I am sorry, but I really believe its just a difference of opinion and for that you should not feel insulted.

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I dont exactly want bring myself in to this discussion since im a little afraid to speak at all in these forums lately...

Thomas, that's why we try to keep firey comments to a minimum and close the threads that are going downhill fast. We don't want anyone to feel bad about the forums and especially not to be afraid to say something for fear of retalliation.

Of course people will think they can ask for linking to each other there, since the description says what it does. People will think they can do this as long the forumdescription exist.

There is a difference between talking about "other site promotion" and actually "promoting sites". If someone would have come in and asked about linkfarms someone would have said "bad idea" and nothing would be done beyond that. It would not be a good place for out 3654 registered forum members to post their sites though. In that forum I'd expect to discuss keyword spamming but I'd hate to see a post with "Nigritude Ultramarine" plastered a million times in it.

 

It's like the difference between going to Home Depot Hardware Store and asking them for advice on how to install windows in your house (they give out free advice like this) and putting your house on a huge truck and driving it to the store and telling them to do it.

 

I'm sorry you feel uncomfortable posting but there is no big conspiracy and no one at TCH is out to get any of their customers!

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Virtual Imager, could you please point me to the threads that I have closed that are related to "Bad Reviews" about TCH. I just do not agree. Here are a couple of posts to support my pposition.

 

http://www.totalchoicehosting.com/forums/i...?showtopic=7511

 

http://www.totalchoicehosting.com/forums/i...?showtopic=9652

 

http://www.totalchoicehosting.com/forums/i...=11&t=9390&st=0

 

http://www.totalchoicehosting.com/forums/i...?showtopic=4962

 

http://www.totalchoicehosting.com/forums/i...?showtopic=3030

 

I spent 30 minutes reviewing the boards and found one thread that I closed that was a negative post about tch, the thread had dragged on for 18 replies and it was just time to end the coconversation.

The threads you referenced are basically the same ones I was remembering. Not necessarily Bad Reviews, but, as I said in my post, just negative comments. Maybe I should have said "complaints." Complaints about ticket response, or whatever... In any case, there just seemed to be more of these threads lately that you closed. And you certainly had justification to do so. As I've said, " I agree with Bill that at some point there is nothing further to be gained by debate and no further useful information to be gleaned." The quantity is what caught my attention, but that is to be expected with the amount of growth you've sustained. And sometimes the tone is a real attention grabber too! ;-) As I've already said, I agree with the need to end discussions that are going nowhere. It does have a high-handed ring to it though and people can't help but notice. But that is your call and your decision to make. I'm sure you consider how it will look for you to close a thread (nicely or not) before you do it and I'm sure you make the best business decision you can with the information available. My point in the opriginal post was only to say that IMHO threads should not be closed based on anticipated events and that most of the closed threads that I recall had to do with negative comments and I agreed with your actions on most of those. And even if I didn't, I agree that it is your right to act any way you want. You have the responsibility for this company and for it's reputation as reflected in these forums. And you have the privilege of making those choices, just as all of us have with our own businesses/websites.

 

I have no beef with the forums.... I'm the first ones to thank the Mods as I've come under attack myself on occasion and I'm sure it would have been worse had they (MikeJ in particular) not stepped in.

 

As far as I'm concerned, Bill, you rock! And the forums rock! and Rock Sign

 

VI

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My intent was not to insult you but to point out something that has been bugging me.

Bob, you sure went about it wrong if that's your intent. TCH is Bill's baby. He has poured so much into it trying to make it the best host in the world and a nice place for people to get what they need, and we don't even know the half of it, so of course an insult against it is taken as one against him.

 

You say you didn't want to insult Bill, but then you also said:

Hi Chad, the Open Discussion really doesn't mean "open discussion" if you have anything to say that maybe negative toward TCH.
[wonders how long this topic will remain open because of this statement]
it looks like censorship.
you are stopping the free flow of ideas with no more replies which is censoring.
I will let you cool down. Do you attack all your customers this way?

 

All of which are inflamatory comments. As I said, if you merely wanted to make an observation you surely went about it the most argumentative manner possible... even going to the point of twice in one reply calling Bill's response a "Possible explanation", implying that it's possibly not true and may only be one possible explanation.

 

The truth is that TCH is a business. Bill allows us to have these forums but it is still a business. You say you are a moderator and don't censor... I'd bet it's not a public forum that directly reflects on your business. Our family forums are just that for TCH. Besides, getting people stirred up in a public forum will not change anything... this is not a government you can overthrow and replace the dictator but it's a business and Bill's here to stay. You could get more changes, if reasonable, by asking him and giving him logical reasons than saying "Yeah, you're censoring any negative comments." would ever do.

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Maybe I need to explain the me too thread in more detail as it was my idea to close it. Look at this from a mod standpoint while reading this.

 

I open the forums and see a post in the website promotion about a link exchange. I see Kevin has a music site and is asking if anyone else has something similar to contact him for an exchange.

 

Then Virtual Imager pops on and says she doesn't have one but would like to do the same with art/photography sites. Then Brian comes on and says his site is not related to either art, photography or music but is willing to exchange with those that have sites like his.

 

Then noble Thomas comes in and says I will link to you anyway if I can. Then a little banter before I had closed the thread. Why? Suppose I come in and say that I have a cutlery site and want to do a link exchange. Mike comes in and says "No cutlery, art, no repubs or music. How about hardware reviews?" Robert says none of the above but he has a gaming site, Jim comes in with a fishing site.

 

See where this is going? Now lets add those that aren't family members from around the Internet. Now we have a guy that thinks it would be good to get back links to his lego I AM A SPAMMER site or a hundreds sites, the board starts getting spammed, rivers and seas boiling, 40 years of darkness, earthquakes, volcanos, the dead rising from the grave, human sacrifice, dogs and cats, living together... mass hysteria!

 

This has a very real potential to get way out of hand. I cant see the future of a particular thread but I have been around long enough to have a pretty good idea of where it can end up going. Sometimes you have to stop something before it starts.

 

There was an alternative solution given as well to get those links, it just takes work on your part as you have to look for them instead of asking and hoping someone will see it. The interesting thing was that Kevin spoke to me afterward and understood the reason I closed it. I take responsibility for that thread.

 

As a customer it may have looked a bit stupid, nothing had happened. As a moderator it was stopping the crack dealer before he moved into our neighborhood.

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There are two things I would like to say:

 

1. Raul actually give me some useful information: TCH is growing insanely fast. That is a concrete example. Growing pains are regular artifacts of success and are rarely anything more than just temporary issues. This is great to hear and the kind of information I was originally looking for. Thank you Raul.

 

2. Madman comment said "...looks like censorship." That is an statement of opinion, not a statement of fact. Madman is entitled to his opinion and it is preposterous to tell someone that an opinion is wrong. TCH may not agree with our individual opinions but it is unfair to say those beliefs are wrong just because they don't coincide.

 

I must admit I was truly taken aback by Bill's response to Madman. To me, the comments seemed so unnecessarily angry, so over the top. It felt similar to some of the responses my original post garnered. Perhaps we inadvertently touched on subjects that the staff are sensitive to.

 

Anyway, as always, these are just my perceptions.

 

Chad

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Everyone,

 

I wasn't going to add to this thread, but I'd just like to point out a couple things in here...

 

This is a forum. This is a forum attached to a business. This is a forum attached to a business who's primary focus is not to run a forum based community but to run a webhosting business. While TCH tries to keep as open a policy as possible (and I feel TCH accomplishes that quite well when you compare it with the majority of business forums out there), TCH does reserve the right to close any thread if we feel there's a need for it to be closed. You may not always know or understand the reasons, but it's certainly not to silence people. (Bill, you can correct me if any of that is not a valid statement).

 

The problem with most "complaints" is that they involve information regarding a customer's account. Often this is why they are closed (not deleted) because TCH won't discuss customer information in a public forum, nor as Bill said, debate what happened between TCH and any specific customer in a public forum. It's just not the appropriate place for it.

 

The other thread closings have already been pretty much discussed. I'll just add that using forums of any type in general, you will always get much better results if you stick to facts when posting criticisms (what you actually know, not what you assume). And as a business related forum, we are more apt to close threads that have the strong potential of problems being caused, then waiting until it happens. After it happens, we have to start deleting threads (which is much worse than closing them in my opinion), and you can't take back what people have already read, and we don't want people to stop using the forums because they felt insulted.

 

I'm particularly surprised at you, Bob, since you have always been a valuable member of the forums, and as you stated yourself, a moderator for over 10 years. Your original comment in this thread was derogatory and based on how you wrote it, intended to cause friction, not create discussion. You should know you will get the reaction you got, and you should know there are more appropriate ways to voice concerns of that type. But don't take this the wrong way, Bob, I'm not trying to set you up as a bad guy... The rest of your posts are always good, and I'm just trying to shed some light on the thread and hopefully everyone will settle down and get back to regular business as usual.

 

I'll end with this following statement for you all to think about, too:

 

Put yourself in Bill's shoes. Imagine starting your own business and pouring your soul into it for several years, and caring deeply about the quality you provide to all customers. Now how would you run your forum, and how would you react? It may not be exactly the same, but I hope you can at least understand why he makes the decisions he does. Are some of the reactions maybe a little over the top due to pride? Very possibly. But that comes with the territory of caring deeply about what you do.

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I think it's time for a big group hug!! :hug:  :hug:  :hug:

Only if it is girl boy girl ;)

I'm here to tell you right now...I think you're out of luck on this one. I'd guess that there are at least 2 or 3 guys to every girl on this board!!! :) But from everyone else's comments...I think you got hugged whether you liked it or not!! ;)

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I just want to chime-in in complete support of CENSORSHIP in forums. No matter how you want to slice it, a moderator is always a censor. I don't think they should be editing peoples posts, or trying to wieght a debate, but every single truly open forum I have ever posted on was completely destroyed by trolls and flames.

 

It's very hard to control and modulate one's tone on line, and unintended little tits always seem to ellicit big angry TATS. I'm impressed by how open this forum is, given it's role, and commend the mods on thier judicious use of censorship. As I have also seen boards that were destroyed by mods who tried to keep it all strictly on point, deleting any post they judged to be wasted bandwidth.

 

Rule of thumb: rocks and lead can smash your head, but pixels don't really touch you. Nothing is more effective than the cold shoulder anyway.

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