As of 21 July 2010, www.godiscussions.com is returning a "NORECORD" for DNS queries. The provider, globalgold.co.uk, seems not to have any support for the site anymore. Either there's a failed or delayed transfer going on, or service has ended for the address.
It seems like there is a consensus, or near-consensus that it's time to move away from godiscussions.com because of it's repeated problems, with no communication from the owner when or if anything will be done about it.
There is currently one main alternative that is attracting users as we speak:
This site is working now, and the owners have shown that they are willing to work with the community to guarantee that a situation as we have encountered with GoDiscussions does not happen again.
April 23, 2010:
sh: IgoDojo.org now redirects to LifeIn19x19. It seems to get clear now that this is GD's successor.
April 21, 2010:
Matti If this is wrong place for my problem, please direct me to the right one. I have registstered to GoDiscussion more than one month ago. I still cannot post there. Can anyone help? April 21, 2010:
daal Technical difficulties are one thing, lack of communication another. I'd like for the site Admins to make it their business to find out what's going on and let us know.
tealeaf: GoDiscussions is having lots of problems. I would suggest choosing to register at either
IgoDojo.org or at
LifeIn19x19 (or both!), which are the two main contenders for a GoDiscussions replacement right now. More information can be found at ReplacingGoDiscussions.
April 20, 2010:
Bill: If I go to the main page, it seems that people are posting new notes. However, I cannot access any of them. When I click on the link to a note, I go to what appears to be the last page of the thread, but none of the recent notes appear. :(
April 19, 2010:
pio: It's still not allowing new user registrations :( Anyone have a spare account laying around? ;)
kirkmc? 10:40 am CET, the site is back up...
unkx80: Can't post. I got "Database error", and "The Go Discussions database has encountered a problem."
Aphelion? Its not working completely, the forum indexes and recent posts page don't update, they are stuck at 04/16/10. This happened for a couple hours on Saturday (04/17/10) too.
Joaz Banbeck: At 2:29AM California time ( Grenwich - 8 ) GD was staggering back up. I could read but not write.
Phelan: It seems to be in the same state as yesterday when I posted "it's up. Oh wait no it's not", which is that you get a database error when you post, but the post goes up anyway(although it sometimes doesn't appear in the index). See http://www.godiscussions.com/forum/showthread.php?t=11540
daal: Some of my posts appear, some of them don't, such as the one where I remind folks that the server broke on a weekend, and that real people have to drop their plans to fix it.
April 18, 2010:
frustrated?: (begin rant)
Is it NOW ok, to finally say it's time to look for another site for GD? Could someone please make a convincing argument that Don has enough interest in the GD community as a community and not as a revenue stream, to responsibly attend to running this site for our sakes and not his?
The only arguments that I've seen in favor of keeping Don as the landlord are convenience, non-disruption, loyalty, and "I don't like change because I'm a grumpy old man" – it's too inconvenient and disruptive to move elsewhere, it's being disloyal to Don who was so gracious and altruistic in creating this site in the first place, "why are you being so negative and disruptive? We are a nice and "family-oriented" community. Quit rocking this sinking boat"
How convenient is it now? How's Don's loyalty now? How non-disruptive is it now? Why are we so gullible to believe Don every time he apologizes, promises, ignores us, and on and on and on?
Wow, talk about a willing and placid bunch of sheep!
(end of rant)
Gresil: <name calling edited out> How we're so selctive in what we deem as name calling. This game can be played all day long, so knock it off. If you don't like name calling don't engage in it yourself.
Jedo?: rants aside, it does seem like we have a pretty serious problem
frustrated?: Yes Gresil, we're all aware of your devotion to Don. Some of us are not as enamored with him as you are and think the GD community can do much better without him. You obviously think we need Don at the helm even when he's never at the helm.
As far as doing one's "homework", what part of the past 6 months did you miss? Those of us who believe Don is a impediment to the GD community knew this would happen again, and we'd be without a properly functioning forum again. I never thought it would be this soon – never underestimated Don.
By the way, maybe we should contact swimminghippo and see if they'll offer us webspace. We see more of that page anyway.
unkx80: Actually I am in favour for GD to move house. It is okay to move to a different domain. While Don should be credited for building up the community, an active maintainer is essential for the continued benefit and existence of the community. I was wondering, if the Sudoku community can get its act together to move when its former administrator went MIA for many months, why not the Go community?
However, in my relatively uninformed opinion, the current problem probably isn't the fault of Don. I suspect that the hosting provider has seriously mucked up some things.
Jordus?: I don't think the issue people are having is that the server is down. I think its the lack of any type of communication from Don unless the community threatens to leave his site(Yes that is the only time we really heard from him in the last year or so....) .... I mean... the admin of a site should be able to take 2 minutes out of their day to say "Hey everybody the server host went down and its out of my control. Hopefully we will be up and running by the end of the weekend" or maybe if that is too much for some reason the admin should hand some admin privledges over to someone... such as in the case of the no new registrations? Just some thoughts....
anonymous: I agree with Jordus. The issue is the ongoing absence of Don. Unfortunately, I think this will be a perennial problem. Ironically, I don't think the GD community is committed enough to itself to be proactive about this. The forum will back up soon and everyone will forget about this and past episodes until it happens again 2 months down the road and it will start all over again. Perhaps a better solution is for someone to create an alternative forum without the explicit goal of moving the GD community. Eventually people will just move over on their own accord when they're finally tired of dealing with Don's absence.
Kirby: Jordus has already provided us with such a forum, has he not?
kirkmc?: Sigh. Those of us who wanted to make the change a few months ago are seeing what we expected when the change wasn't made.
frustrated?: Note to Darrell and anyone else who wishes to censor those with whom they disagree. Stop delegating yourself as the wiki police, or at least be consistent in your judgments - you're obviously one sided in what you believe to be personal attacks. Gesil threw the first personal attack and I responded in kind. Disagreeing with my position is not justification for censoring them - that is uncivil my friend.
PeterHB: A little bit of cooling off please frustrated?. I'm sure you feel slighted, but the escalation of tone needs to stop somewhere. Find pride in exercising your self-restraint. A couple of links ( 1, 2) to emphasize the nice polite tone at SL.
frustrated?: agreed PeterHB. I'll tone it down.
Kirby: We have the facts: the site is not functioning and nobody here knows why. Yes, I'm sure there will be some explanation/excuse for why the site was down, but godiscussions.com is just a domain name. It's 2010 now, and it's easier than ever to collaborate online. Jordus has already given us an example of a functional forum that we could be using right now.
http://www.lifein19x19.com (linked edited in to show what site was being referenced) Sure, it'd be better to stick together. But why does the "default" option have to be to stick together at godiscussions.com? If we want to stick together, let's all move to a separate forum that allows new user registrations. I don't think it's rash to move to a functional website.
Bill: Get facts, then make decisions? You must not be a politician. ;)
Anonymous: If I remember correctly(from the new registrations thread), Chiyodad hasn't been able to contact Don going on two weeks now. That doesn't exactly instill confidence.
anonymous: Anonymous (with a capital A) is correct. I don't think the problem is present forum inaccessibility but the ongoing absence of Don. Things break which is expected. Having to wait days, weeks or months for Don to get around to fixing things is really the issue. I sympathize with the expressed frustrations. I think it's time to move on and realize that Don's too busy to maintain an active forum. I wish we had done that when tealeaf was working with the new hosting company.
And let me add one more point. With all due respect to Joaz, we've been down the "sooner or later" road before. The last time the sooner or later took nearly four months. by the way, I think you're doing a great job Joaz - kiss, kiss, hug, hug. :)
April 17, 2010: Phelan: I can't seem to connect to GD. Keep getting a "connection reset". Anyone else having the same problem?
jordus?: Same problem here. Server seems to be down...
xedover: I couldn't connect last night nor tonight from home, but could during the day today from work. I was starting to suspect my home network, but looks like its not just me.
Joaz Banbeck Same here. Worked fine around 3:00 PDT, at 9:00 it was down. But swimming hippo is up. :/
rubin427? Sat Apr 17 08:40:47 PDT 2010: I can not access godiscussions.com either using my connection at home, or at work. This has been the case for perhaps 12 hours. Thankfully, I can still access www.swimminghippo.co.uk without issue.
Phelan: Ugh. :S Also still down for me. I wonder what is happening, if flyingmammoth is still up it can't be a global isp outage... I'm getting GD withdrawal symptoms. :p
unkx80: Can ping godiscussions.com. But the server must have died.
Jordus?: If it comes down to it you can use http://www.lifein19x19.com. SGF posting works fine... Diagrams don't(yet) :( ..But its better than nothing...
Phelan: It's back up!
frustrated?: It's back down! No worries. I'm sure Don will get to it after a dozen or so unanswered emails by ChiyoDad, a quick apology, a promise to look into it over the weekend (which one we never know), and then an appeal for patience as such problems couldn't have come at a worse time for him. It's always the worse time for Don.
Hey give the guy a break! He started GD all by himself and we should be dedicated consumers with no reason to complain. All hail the mighty Don!
Jedo?: i hate to say it, but it may be time for a new world order...
Phelan: Back up, but having problems with the database... Edit: Down again...
Jordus?: Made a poll to help pass the time http://lifein19x19.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=46
NO New Members Allowed Registrations!!!
Discussion thread here: http://www.godiscussions.com/forum/showthread.php?p=147369
04-20-2010 -- Still no registrations.. wow, so it's been, what a month now?
GoDiscussions is dying. See ReplacingGoDiscussions
04-11-2010 -- still ongoing
GD WannaBe?: Can't register either. Been following the ups and downs of this site several months and its clear that the site owner Don is not committed to the GD community. He's interested in making money from the community but not attending to the day to day needs of the site.
There was a rebellion among some members in March who wanted to create a new forum because Don was not responding at all to the problems of the forum. This threat finally got Don's attention with all sorts of promises to be a good landlord, but once again the same pattern remains.
Several members had a feeling this would happen again and they were right. It didn't take very long.
I think another forum should be created for those of us who cannot register. A forum run by the members themselves and not for profit.
03-26-2010 -- ongoing
ScaryPlays?: For about a week now, there have been no registrations allowed, and this is frustrating many new players wanting to join and be part of this community.
Someone or other named Don - from what I gather the site's onlymain maintainer - had promised he was going to do a followupand check into things 2 days or more ago over the weekend. And now, still no news. And no word from this Don person.
A lot of people seem to be very annoyed by this, especially the lack of correspondence on the part of the site's sole maintainer regarding this being unresolved for so long, and no reply when he finally promised to check into it--and didn't hold to it!
-
There are lots of complaint s about this already, espe cially by players daily in the KGS room. While there really seem to be honest and vslid reasons for this block happening in the first place (see rasons in the discussion thread above), the lack of correspondence on the part of the site's maintainer for nearing a WEEK or more is what has already produced several miffed beginners as well.
I think all of the dozens or so of people wanting to access GoDiscussions very much welcome some correspondence.
This seems like one of the things the site maintainer would like to resolve as soon as possible. Seems like a rather important thing for the functioning of his community. So it seems odd to all that the guy hasn't taken care of it yet at all, or let anyone know anything.
So, does anyone have any idea what the goban? is going on?
Redirection
2010-03-21, 11:25 CET, RobertJasiek: When trying to access http://www.godiscussions.com, immediately I am redirected to
http://www.swimminghippo.co.uk/.
Update: At 12:38 working again. - But... why did it happen?
tealeaf: GoDiscussions.com and Swimming Hippo are hosted by the same company. This has been discussed at length on GoDiscussions, and seems most likely a teething problem with the move to the new server.
Moving to New Server
2010-02-25: The forum moved to a new server. It seems to be working fine again!
The following pages remains on Sensei's Library for archival purposes:
Working fine.
23rd December 2009: seems mostly OK, but still producing the occasional 503 error -- xela
The product data base and reviews is not working and has not been for some time.
There is some sort of persistent error resulting in frequent 503 service unavailability notices.