this doesn't bode well...

[ratcreature]

I'm trying to use the AO3, but I'm just getting "Error 502 Page did not respond in a timely fashion. Either you found a page that took too long to render or we're getting more requests right now than we can handle. You can try refreshing the page, the problem may be temporary."

Is this because of the Yuletide sign-up going on? (I'm not trying to do anything challenge related.)

Comments

[ratcreature]

Yes, I've always appreciated ff.net for its reliability. The only thing I mind as a reader there is that you only have a chapter, not a complete view, and its odd stripping of characters that changed and ambushed people. Even the search has gotten quite useful, compared to its beginnings.

[sholio]

Yeah. There are a number of things that frustrate me about ff.net; among other things, I got so fed up with the upload interface and the way it stripped out characters that I haven't posted anything there in about ... er, two years now, I guess. (Though I still get reviews on my old fic, which means I should probably upload some of the newer stuff so that it doesn't look like I died or left fandom or something.) But despite the problems, it's been up and stable and completely usable 99% of the time for over ten years now, and it's still going strong, which becomes all the more incredible as I watch other archives and fannish endeavors struggling with the same issues that plagued ff.net (heavy traffic, increased visibility and so forth).

By the way, I totally hear you on the problem of Yuletide taking down the whole AO3 archive. And it's just going to be more and more of a problem as AO3 grows and starts to become the central archiving site for a number of fandoms and challenges. It's really a problem for a major fannish hub to be brought to a crawl a couple weeks out of the year because of one ficathon. Hopefully these are just growing pains that they'll work out in the next couple of years, but it really isn't a good sign for the future stability of AO3 in general ...

[red-eft.livejournal.com]

In their latest news post, they mention they'll be getting new servers soon, (http://community.livejournal.com/otw_news/109002.html) and that they'll be using Yuletide to test which parts need to be reinforced. So hopefully, the downtime this year will help prevent downtime in future years. *fingers crossed*