Hi all

Just a short post to let you know where things stand at the moment regarding the database problem.

Johan attempted yesterday to do a long-distance repair to the bug affecting the database additions scripts. One of the screeners then gave it a trial run, which was two-thirds successful ... two photos uploaded without any apparent errors, but a third had the broken links problem we saw occuring on Friday.

Under these circumstances it was decided to again halt database additions until Johan can sort out the problem on his return to Lulea tomorrow (Monday). Once the problem is cleared, the screeners will have that backlog to work through (currently edging towards 1600).

While I can understand the frustration that many photographers must be feeling at not seeing any movement in the queue, please remember the point I made in the other thread I posted, about the risks of screeners having to work under the pressure of a large backlog.

Some comments on other threads I've seen in this forum:

Forum for Admin announcements:
I believe this was one of the original intentions of the Non-Aviation Forum ... but it seems more appropriate to post photography-related announcements in this forum, as they only really affect photographers directly.
While the idea of a separate announcements forum is something that could be considered for the future, there is no guarantee that people would read that forum any more than this one.
Ideally, in a situation like this, I would have sent out a mass email to update all of the photographers ... unfortunately I did not have direct access to a usable list of email addresses (and I didn't fancy a couple of thousand "cut & pastes") else I would have done that. Doing a mass emailing is a rare thing for this website, though, as you may have noticed from past experience - I think Johan prefers not to do them.

Banner:
I can add banners to the homepage, and considered doing that, but didn't because I felt it was a temporary problem that directly affected only the photographers; besides, how many of you enter the website via the homepage, and of those of you who do, how many wait for the banners to load? (they load last)

Flaming icon for Admin posts:
Unfortunately only Johan can add these at the moment, else I would have been able to make my previous post a bit more visible.

Disabling the Uploads page:
That's a webmaster-only action. Not too easy for anyone else to change the links of a website when it's sitting on a dedicated server at a remote location. It's a plus for the security of the website, though  

These are issues which I believe Johan will be looking at so as to be able to keep you better informed should there ever be a re-occurance of this sort of situation. That besides, I am confidant that the current problem will be a thing of the past within 24 hours, and things will soon be back to "business as usual".

Thank you again for your patience in the meantime.

Andrew Davies (Southflite)
Corrections Editor
andrew@airliners.net