How's Fluther these days?

Hi, @bob! Sandwich incoming…
Well, Search has been down for a looooong time…
Lovely to see you, thanks for helping!

Double-decker sandwich . . . extra bacon !

“Contact the Mods” is No Bueno.

Both of those are on the list! :)

Wait—is this @bob the same as @bob_, who wants a sandwich? I’m confused.

I love that some maintenance is forthcoming. It means we’re not finished yet. Thanks for asking.

I burned my wish list years ago, but I’ll see if I can recall it. All I’d really like to suggest is to let us respond to proposed changes beforehand. We’re all used to it the way it is. If one or two propose a particular change—say, rendering avatars as AI cartoons—there might be 40 who would oppose it, but they wouldn’t be heard from unless they knew it was under consideration. Presenting the change as a fait accompli, as some have been done in the past, might well arouse ill feeling that wouldn’t occur in the absence of change.

One thing I’d like is a go-to-the-top button on all pages.

I just know at times the site seems extra slow, and an error keeps popping up at those times.

It would be helpful if you post in Meta when you are working on the site so we can anticipate it not working right.

We are a small but very loyal cohort and appreciate that you are helping out!

I think it works pretty well, usually.

There are occasional times where following a normal link to a question results in the “Oh no! Looks like something went wrong!” Fluther page, but then usually reloading it works. That happens enough that I would suggest, if it’s easy enough, having that Oh No! page first pause and then re-try, and only if it fails two or three times in a row, show the user the Oh No! While it’s checking it could display something less alarmist like “Please wait . . .”.

Oh, and there’s the problem where when you try to make a link to an address with certain characters, suck as some Wikipedia addresses(film) it doesn’t work because some characters break Fluther out of thinking they’re all in the link.

Oh, and the consecutive visits awards (at least, beyond the first level of them) seem to have been broken for years, not that it matters.

I think if the site opens up to new users, maybe it would help if the newbies were on post approval for a month (or other such amount of time), so they can’t join just to post spam, and inundate posts with spam, which makes work for the mods, and is annoying and frustrating for everyone to have to look at.

Apparently, some can’t get in at all on any mobile devices, asked me to say that. I’m on my iPad mini, with few problems.

And one of the jellies mentioned that his phone and tablet are Android.

I don’t know if its implementation would compromise the structural integrity of Flooder, but pagination would be nice.

Also, changing the name to Flooder would float my boat! ;-p

I would greatly appreciate a working search such that I could find a Q or A, but I realize that that’s probably beyond the scope of what you’re asking for @bob. Thanks for helping out!

Since the search isn’t working, if I want to find something I’ll go to Google (or Bing or whatever) and put in “Fluther” and the word or phrase I am looking for, and surprisingly, it will often come up, @smudges.

@canidmajor thanks for mentioning my inability to access the site from an Android tablet and phone. I even tried logging into the desktop site from those devices without success. I happened to need my laptop for another task, so I decided to hop on here.

I’m glad to see work is being done. Search is broken. “Contact the mods” is also broken. The Lurve score often does not reflect the actual lurve votes on a quip. That’s what comes to mind right now.

I’m going back off-line until I can get on the site from my tablet.

I was under the impression (perhaps the mistaken impression) that lurve didn’t change much because the site has so few users that most have maxed out the amount of lurve we get credit for, from each Jelly.

@jca2 The totals aren’t going up much but often my account may show I got 3 GAs for a post but it will only show as two and somehow that bothers me.

I’m fine on desktop but can’t get in on iPhone now.

Not working on Android phone, but works on my laptop.

[mod says] This question is about the technical side of Fluther. It’s important that we stay on topic so as not to clutter the to-do list. Transparent and fair moderation is also an important subject. Please start a new Meta thread if you’re interested in a discussion about that.

I can now access the site from my Android phone. 9:30 AM Hawaii time, 4/20/25

The message I’m getting on my iPhone is “Safari can’t open the page because too many redirects occurred.”

Wait, @Hawaii_Jake, that’s ten days from now! Can you tell me what happened next Monday?

Thanks for all of these answers, folks — so far the changes planned are technical, mostly around fixing stuff that’s broken. We can post ahead of any downtime so there’s at least a heads up.

@bob, I imagine you’ve already got this on your list, but just in case: please figure out why the graphics go to pieces every so often, and not even necessarily in the same way.

Also there’s the recurring problem of not being able to post a question.

As for how Fluther is, though, Fluther is still great, still wonderful, and I love it and don’t want it ever to go away.

4/11/25 Still unable to access from my I-Phone.
Glad you are helping @bob!