WotC forums down for a week or two?

[Piratecat]

Guys, please be careful not to insult the folks doing the web-work over at WotC. As discussed above, there's a marked difference between "this is taking longer than industry standard" and "the people doing it don't know what they're doing."

 

[doctorhook]

Well, first of all, I don't have to presume what they're doing - they've stated that already: they're migrating everything from their existing forums onto a new platform.

Secondly, I'm calling on a lot of experience doing this sort of thing - more than 12 years professional experience - to know that when done right, something like that just doesn't require that amount of downtime.

I've worked on projects with both a much larger scope (as in more than just replacing old forums with new forums that have more features) and scale (as in companies orders of magnitude bigger than WotC), and IME - even if they are doing something new and groundbreaking that will technologically blow us all away - there's no need for the existing forums to be down for a week.

So I can only conclude that either:
1) something has gone wrong with the process (unlikely, given the advance warning); or
2) the project isn't being implemented properly by the IT folks; or
3) the project (and migration process) hasn't been managed properly.

I'm not intending to be "snarky" or overly harsh, and it's not specific to WotC - I'd say the same of any company taking a production system down for a week.


I don't think anyone is saying what they're doing is easy - it isn't - but when done right it shouldn't require this amount of downtime.

Strictly speaking, my comment wasn't directed at you, but since you replied:

I think you missed an important point of what I was trying to say, and that is that all we know about what WotC is doing is what they've told us they're doing. The very fact that they're being very tight-lipped about it and that this process is expected to take so much longer than you (as an industry professional) believe it should suggests that they're up to a lot more than what they've told us.

 

[Shemeska]

Don't you think that a company as big as WotC, with its large, educated staff, would know how best to serve its own interests? If what they're doing is as easy as you claim, why do you assume they're doing it wrong?

Because of Gleemax.

 

[avin]

Because of Gleemax.

Gleemax started wrong by the name.

I think they have learned the lesson.

We gotta also remember that Wotc probably don't have the man power from former days.

 

[Shemeska]

I think they have learned the lesson.

We gotta also remember that Wotc probably don't have the man power from former days.

A lot of the management responsible is gone, true. And Hasbro wouldn't let that happen again given the money sink it became.

I know that they've lost a lot of people from the DDI staff (they've got more managers than developers last I heard), however I'm not sure if the same people that would handle the forum upgrades are from the same pool of people that are doing the DDI (who are woefully understaffed because of layoffs, and the Hasbro hiring freeze's effect on numerous contract-to-hire people upon the end of their original term).

 

[Ulorian - Agent of Chaos]

Strictly speaking, my comment wasn't directed at you, but since you replied:

I think you missed an important point of what I was trying to say, and that is that all we know about what WotC is doing is what they've told us they're doing. The very fact that they're being very tight-lipped about it and that this process is expected to take so much longer than you (as an industry professional) believe it should suggests that they're up to a lot more than what they've told us.

I think you've missed mine and gribble's point: it doesn't matter how 'big' an upgrade is. Transitioning a live system to a new version is measured in hours, at most, not weeks. In fact, it's generally done with no downtime at all.

 

[doctorhook]

I think you've missed mine and gribble's point: it doesn't matter how 'big' an upgrade is. Transitioning a live system to a new version is measured in hours, at most, not weeks. In fact, it's generally done with no downtime at all.

Again, I think you've missed my point, which is that we have no idea why WotC has decided upon an extended downtime, other than what they've told us. The "extended" part of this extended downtime could have been decided upon for any number of reasons, including entirely non-technical ones.

I should have made that more clear in my previous post.

 

[Dougan Axehammer]

I think you've missed mine and gribble's point: it doesn't matter how 'big' an upgrade is. Transitioning a live system to a new version is measured in hours, at most, not weeks. In fact, it's generally done with no downtime at all.

Maybe it's not as simple as a software upgrade. Now I'm not as tech savvy as some of you might be, but doesn't "upgrade the platform" generally mean they are also switching out the hardware. Maybe that means they're replacing they ENTIRE system, hardware and software. I imagine that they'd want to do that all at once, since it's faster and easier to work out some of the kinks. That means they'd want to shut down the whole system for a lengthy period of time: time to remove the old hardware, install the new hardware, install the new software, and the test the system before releasing it. That seems to be the most cost-effective method to me.

 

[Nifft]

Again, I think you've missed my point, which is that we have no idea why WotC has decided upon an extended downtime, other than what they've told us. The "extended" part of this extended downtime could have been decided upon for any number of reasons, including entirely non-technical ones.

IMHO, there's no reason they'd voluntarily let such a public and popular resource go down for so long.

So IMHO it is likely to be involuntary.

My sincere condolences, -- N

 

[doctorhook]

IMHO, there's no reason they'd voluntarily let such a public and popular resource go down for so long.

So IMHO it is likely to be involuntary.

My sincere condolences, -- N

I completely agree, and I think you're probably right. Still, the fact is that we really have no idea what exactly they're up to, and with that in mind, I think it's disingenuous of anyone to claim that WotC isn't doing it right. (Let's be clear: that's exactly what some of the posters in this thread were claiming. Blaming WotC's "track-record", presuming that WotC's technical staff is "unaware" of how to do their job, referring to this event as "shenanigans", and claiming that the reason for the downtime isn't "credible" are all pretty unambiguous attacks.)