Updates on Test Data

[Toyoo]

@MarviBiene

The only thing I would accept would be Discord, because it has good tools to moderate and provides a quick way to text people.

Do they still require a phone number to register?

[EasyRhino]

discord feels like a dumpster fire, and can’t find old information easily which is useful with troubleshooting.

Stickied “announcements” seem fine.

and of course for extremely important thing, an email to SNO’s or customers would be great. Yes i’m old fashioned.

[MarviBiene]

@Toyoo

Do they still require a phone number to register?

They never did. They have different security levels, and at the higher levels, you need a verified phone number. However, it’s not required for general use.

I think if i am right. (I dont know how it is at the moment) If you dont have a phone number on a server that requires one, you can only read messages, but not write one or see members of the channel

[MarviBiene]

@EasyRhino

discord feels like a dumpster fire, and can’t find old information easily which is useful with troubleshooting.

Thats why i said forum is and will be the best way for troubleshooting. Discord is just an instant Messenger. But i have to say, that they already have a good forum feature too.

[Knowledge]

I believe we started with Slack, and then migrated to Rocket Chat. We used that for a few years, but we were constantly having to go over the same things with users again and again. We decided on Discourse because it waa easier to reference and search for content that was previously posted, as well as organize the discussions better.

I do recoginize that some kind of “notice” feature would be ideal for some. Telegram had a Storj squatter on it, previously. And we decided years ago that we weren’t going to use it as a communications channel. It was discussed at a higher level and not just by the admins.

Generally, we do post important updates in the Announcements channel, but not everything lands there that might be of interest to SNO’s
I will try to summarize important updates in a read only post in the Announcements channel where other admins can also update it, if a post there hasn’t already been created. It will not be exhaustive, but I will try to at least provide a more concise resource for those who want to get in and out of the forum quickly.

[MarviBiene]

The thing is, this forum is a really powerful tool. Everyone has a browser, so they can easily search for anything they need. If you use third-party software like Discord, Telegram, or others, access is limited to users who also have that software.

I don’t know much about Telegram, but if it’s built like WhatsApp, it can get messy because everyone writes what they want with no order, leading to confusion.

As I mentioned, something like Discord is the only alternative I would consider, as it can be very powerful too. You can categorize everything you need (separate SNOs from paying customers with roles), create a “Common SNO Problems” guide, and so on. However, it would require a lot of work and constant moderation as a secondary site. So, I don’t really see it being beneficial for Storj in the short or long term. Testing it might just be a waste of resources at the moment because the forum already serves as a good platform for everything.

I think they need to focus their manpower on the current SNO and satellite problems, which require a lot of attention. Perhaps once the situation stabilizes, they can consider an instant messaging solution again.

[Pentium100]

@Knowledge

I will try to summarize important updates in a read only post in the Announcements channel where other admins can also update it, if a post there hasn’t already been created. It will not be exhaustive, but I will try to at least provide a more concise resource for those who want to get in and out of the forum quickly.

That will be great.
When I check this and other threads pretty much every day, it is not difficult to find the announcements even in a long thread (since the forum will open it at the first unread post). However, if someone does not continuously read this and the other threads, how easy it wold be to find the post that says “we stopped the tests for the weekend”? It’s in here, probably 1500 posts down from the first and 100 posts up from the last.

Another way probably would be creating a read-only announcement with whatever info and linking it in this or another thread for discussions.

[Alexey]

No telegram, discord, Rocket Chat. Any chat. This would not change in the foreseeable future.

The forum itself has a similar functionality, but it’s much more adapted to give a support.

@Andrew

I am talking about a channel with announcements for SNO.

Sorry, I seems did not understand the request. Then we usually using these ones:

https://forum.storj.io/tags/c/category-announce/8/storagenode

and

https://forum.storj.io/tags/c/product-discussions/storjlingcategory/29/storagenode

Unfortunately there is no guidance so far specifically how to announce some changes to the Storage Node Operators, but usually the most important are in the

Announcements

We did an attempt to make something similar to what’s you requested, the analogue of the Status Page for Storage Node Operators:

Storagenode Operational updates

This forum topic supposed to give more insights about Storagenode operations Similar to https://status.storj.io/, but focused to SN This may help in case of debugging issues, but shouldn’t be required to be followed for normal operation Please consider opening dedicated thread for specific problems Current status, notable, known issues: Huge performance improvements are rolling out, attention may be required: Announcement: major storage node release (potential config changes needed!) - #38 b…

[Alexey]

@MarviBiene

As I mentioned, something like Discord is the only alternative I would consider, as it can be very powerful too.

We tried and it’s failed as all previous attempts. It’s not for support anyhow, unless you have only the one topic - how to buy tokens/coins/whatever and sell it fast with a profit. Or, maybe for gamers also (but they have an alternative and usually much more convenient tool).
Just try to organize something to channels, when you have a Customers and Storage Node Operators. You will be always doomed to respond “this is a wrong channel, please ask in this one”, you also cannot provide a link to the exact post to solve the issue and forced to repeat the same to the death. Thanks. Not here.

[Andrew]

@Alexey

We did an attempt to make something similar to what’s you requested, the analogue of the Status Page for Storage Node Operators

Yes, it is similar (but not perfect) to what I suggest, but at least write a new post in that thread when the first post has been updated. This way, we will receive a notification. Right now, you just updated the first post, and we can’t know about it unless we manually check it for some reason.

[Mitsos]

Bookmark the post, that way it will alert you when it’s edited.

[Alexey]

We can bump it in this case (it will be showed as updated). But @Mitsos is correct, you may bookmark it (either in the forum, or in your browser).
You can also modify the notification behavior for your account to notify you on any change, too.

[MarviBiene]

@Alexey

cannot provide a link to the exact post to solve the issue

That is not true. You can send links to Channels and exact message without any problem on Discord. And you can do many things automated with bots and so on. I know big company discords that are well build and have many things automated with bots. It can work but it consumes a lot of time to reach the goal

[Alexey]

ok, they find a way, fine. Still - no specific chats (software, subscriptions, headache, etc.), I’m sorry.

You can have chats right now, right here. You always can see when someone is typing and the new post will appear without a refresh of the page.
What else is it different from the chats?

[Aitor]

I like the forum format and the calm without the tests.

[Roxor]

I also prefer the forum. But I can’t wait for the test data to resume. When it’s quiet like this it becomes all-too-apparent that most of my nodes load comes from used-space-filewalker

[peter_linder]

Speaking of which, about the upcoming feature to cache inode data (last I saw it was in 1.108-rc1) for filewalkers.

I would love some more info on that, it looks promising and I have read the patch a little bit. I know it is experimental, but it would make a world of difference for my nodes that also spend most of their time filewalking (up to around a week per node per restart)

[Roxor]

@peter_linder

…it would make a world of difference for my nodes that also spend most of their time filewalking…

I have a node that was on its fourth day of used-space-filewalker… then it autoupgraded to 1.107.3 on July 3rd… so it restarted and filewalker is still grinding. A week of 24x7 100% IO (so far) just for it to finally figure out “I’m Full”

[mikee027]

So wait when we turning this sucker back up? I spent the holiday weekend spinning up some more nodes

[Roxor]

@mikee027

So wait when we turning this sucker back up?

The US Storj team needs a few days to sober up , put out fires from all the BBQs , repair any fireworks damage , replace any windows smashed by baseballs , and patch up any foreign tourists who were injured by screaming eagles .

So… probably Monday afternoon.