Is there a technical problem with this website?
For at least the last two weeks (for me) it is painfully slow coming up and clicking on a topic means at least a 30 second wait.
For a while, it timed out before loading. Are we going through this again?

I generally like to log in at least once per day (sometimes more) to catch up on Interchange threads that I like/are interested in. Over the past half week (no new posts since Friday), the forum has become difficult to access, nigh unusable. The fact that it's a more common occurrence now than it has been in the past is troubling...

This is the second time I've been able to just view this site in seven days. Dunno how I even got logged in. I noticed that the "users online" block is missing at the bottom of the pages signaling a further loss of functionality.

I've gotten nothing but time out or SSL handshake failures. This means a) the server is too busy, b) it doesn't have enough connections, c) lack of disk space, d) too slow, e) etc.

Unless the admin wants to pass along the site for others to manage, methinks the TOD clock is ticking down towards RIP.

Hi
I totally agree,, the site either needs a complete makeover,, it times out and shows a Host problem..
Just too Log in,, sometimes takes 2 or 3 times, depending on if you can log in,, when you try to post a reply to any post,,it sometimes ( most times) kicks you back to RELogin again...
The website takes a long time just to view,, as I said I agree with those who have posted...
RYPN still is my go to site,,when I turn on the computer,,, just to find out what is happening...
So maybe it is times to refresh this website,,either with a new server if that is the problem,, this is just a suggestion... something has to be done... Thank you, Pat.

We've been over this before. Repeatedly. Endlessly.

The current admins of this site have no control over this aspect of it. It all comes down to the domain registration's OWNER, who I understand is David Collinson. He has reportedly repeatedly rebuffed any efforts at any transfer, change, or upgrade by not replying to repeated entreaties.

I don't think that it is the age of the software here alone that is responsible for it being fragile, I know of other working boards as old as this one, e.g., I have seen posts as far back as 2007 on the NG board, and it doesn't seem to get knocked offline as often as RyPN. I actually like the interface here better than a lot of newer boards.

So, who has contact information for David Collinson? (Which I also see spelled as "Collison") Perhaps if enough of us sent a POLITELY WORDED message to him, he might understand how this board is very important to a lot of people, he might respond positively.

I see about 80 different guys named David Collinson/Collisons on Link In, some of whom seem to have some interest in railways, but none who is obviously our nominal leader.

Alternatively, we give up, and somebody sets up a totally new "Railway Preservation Discussion Board" (rpdb.org?) and we all migrate over there.

/s/ Larry
Lawrence G. Lovejoy, P.E.

This is him I believe: search.php?author_id=46&sr=posts He hasn't posted here since 2019. There are some things about the board software among the posts.

Today the site opens pages as fast as I have seen in months. As fast or faster than other sites that I visit. I was even able to post this with relative ease.

Searches and edits were also totally painless.

I wonder what changed?

I agree, the performance is markedly improved compared to the past week. While the immediate issue is reliability, I think the site could also use a refresh since it's been essentially the same for many years. If the issues return, I share the sentiment that it would be time to start a new site with more reliable ownership. One big downside to that is leaving behind the many years of information and knowledge that have been shared here, though.

They could have done an update/fix that took a week to complete, without announcing it. It's lightening fast now.

A thread I started yesterday received 2500 views in less than 24 hours. I assume most of those views were by bots scraping RYPN's data for Large Language Models (llm).

Here's an article about the problems LLM bots are causing:
Library Journal - AI Bots Swarm Library, Cultural Heritage Sites, Causing Slowdowns and Crashes

RYPN does not require registration or logging in to read (scrape) the site.

Yer jinxed it, yer blighters.

1) The site, at least for me, is back to "molasses in mid-January in Nunavet" speeds;

2) the Library Journal article linked in the previous post now also times out/"Gateway Error" as well...........

As simple an explanation as can be possibly made: Registering and logging in is only for human people. Bots and AI ain't people.

I still have to wonder why this board is so susceptible to bots while others of the same age, that also don't require a login to read the posts, are not, or at least don't seem to be. For example, the NG forum. The NG board doesn't give a read count so I don't know what they are experiencing.