Application error in Places

[rworange]

Doesn't matter what restaurant ... it goes to the error page

[Melanie Wong]

Well, the application error page has a new look and the site seems to want to show it off. I've had too many opportunities to view it this morning trying to pull up Place records. So far, it's 100% of new records, old records, records created via Lists, "Other" records, records assigned to a specific region, et al.

[squid kun]

Seeing a lot of that over the past couple days ("Sorry, something's not working with this page" etc.) when trying to call up Places pages.

[Melanie Wong]

Yes, until today, it seemed to be mostly newly created records that wouldn't come up. But as of a couple hours ago today, it's all of the Place records I've tried to open. Refreshing multiple times does no good.

[Melanie Wong]

Having any more luck than I am? I've been able to open a handful of records, but none of the newly created ones. Rather inconvenient for weekend eating planning . . .

[DiveFan]

Lucky you. I haven't been able to open a Place record all day, very few since 10/8.

Poor Jacquilynne having to stand in for Chow HQ day after day, week after week.

HQ, just What is going on?

[Jacquilynne]

It's okay -- I'm here to help.

Engineering did something to the servers yesterday afternoon that was supposed to help with the Places problem. I take it that it didn't take, and I reopened the problem report on it.

I'm not personally having any problems opening Places at the moment, so it's difficult for me to verify the problems others are having, though, so if your places access comes back, please let me know.

[Melanie Wong]

Nope, not working for me. The only two Places records of more than a dozen I tried to open right now that work are
http://www.chow.com/places/29702
http://www.chow.com/places/7371
What those two have in common, if it means anything, is that they were both updated by Chow staffers yesterday, so they were able to access them some how. Nothing else will open for me.

[squid kun]

Tried again just now: of five different records (both newly created and older ones), four came up with application errors. The one I was able to open, if this means anything, was an old one, http://www.chow.com/places/5588

[Melanie Wong]

That one opens for me too.

[DiveFan]

Today I seem to be noticing that Places created earlier than the recent site upgrades (<38000) seem to be viewable. Surprisingly, I was able to update Tacos Don Chente http://www.chow.com/places/38571 . Hmmm.
This could be a access control / permissions issue - this would explain why Chow staff might not see the problem.
Until this issue is resolved, I'll try to create new Places only from the regular dialog http://www.chow.com/places/new .

EDIT - just had a thought, let Jacquilynne try to update these places that I can't and see if it 'fixes' them:
http://www.chow.com/places/36957
http://www.chow.com/places/9050
http://www.chow.com/places/27239
http://www.chow.com/places/38631
http://www.chow.com/places/38632
http://www.chow.com/places/38633
http://www.chow.com/places/38634
http://www.chow.com/places/6749

[Jacquilynne]

Nope -- I can't get any of those either.

[Melanie Wong]

"I'll try to create new Places only from the regular dialog http://www.chow.com/places/new&quot;

Not sure that makes a difference. I can't open either of the two new records I created yesterday for the SF hub: Chef Patrick and Good Pizza.

[rworange]

Nope, doesn't seem to have anythint go do creating places earlier than site upgrades.

This list created Sat 10/12 has the majority of records created and left virgin since they were created in 2007.
http://www.chow.com/lists/edit/192

Before adding a place to the list I checked to see if I could get to the record. If the link was broken before adding to the list, it remains broken. If it was fine before, it was fine after and still fine today.

The only records I can get to from that list are 1, 6, 7, 10, 14, 16, 17, 21, 23, 25. The other 15 have application errors.

Even though the link is broken, I'd can guarantee that not only has no one updated Eleseevskiy Deli (15), I'd bet no one has even looked at it besides Melanie, if even her.

[DiveFan]

Well, so much for my theory :-\.

I hope that someone is giving this problem a very high priority to work - it's not like it's a *cough* New feature *cough*.

[squid kun]

> I hope that someone is giving this problem a very high priority ...

Agreed! The glitch comes along as more people appear to be relying on Chow place records. If many more days slip by and a majority of pages still can't be viewed, a lot of users will just stop bothering with this feature.

And who could blame them? There are plenty of other listings sites out there for helpful hounds who want to link address info, etc. Citysearch, Yelp et al. have their limitations, but at least those sites run smoothly. I don't think I've ever tried to open one of their records and been taken to an error page.

[DiveFan]

Knock wood, I've been able to update some of the above Places.

Jacquilynne, have system changes just been made?

[squid kun]

I also got into one record within the past 2 hours that I hadn't been able to open earlier today.

[Chris VR]

Yeah, I hate to jinx things, but 8 out of 8 Places that gave me errors in the past few days are now working. Thanks for the fix!

[DiveFan]

To quote another topic, THEY'RE BAAACCKKK! Application Error dialogs, that is.

[rworange]

Yep. Here's one
http://www.chow.com/places/2089

[Melanie Wong]

Yes, for 3 1/2 hours now . . .

[Melanie Wong]

I've been able to open the pages that wouldn't as of a few minutes ago.

[squid kun]

Just noticed the same thing. I've been able to open and edit records I couldn't get to in several tries since this morning.

[Melanie Wong]

If this happens again, what I did to edit records was add /edit to the end of the place url. Then after saving, and getting the application error screen, i'd do it again to see if the edited info had been saved. In all cases, it had.

[squid kun]

Same here, both older records and new ones (I mean *really* new; the first time I've saved several entries, I've been taken straight to the error page).

Say, when it says " The CHOW team has been notified and will check it out," does that mean every time one of us lands on that page, it's automatically logged?

[Melanie Wong]

Just in the last couple minutes, I'm getting the Application errors when trying to open Places pages the majority of the time. Had no problems earlier this morning.

[Melanie Wong]

I'm staring at a whole row of tabs with application errors again for place records. someone pls let Engineering know.

[Melanie Wong]

Hello, please let Engineering know that Place records are back to the daily routine of Application Errors again today.

[squid kun]

Thanks, Melanie, I wasn't aware of this. I'd been in the habit of updating and adding to Place records pretty much daily. But it's become so frustrating that I'm taking a break until I hear they've fixed this bug.

[Melanie Wong]

Things will work for a while and then things fall apart and revert to the error page. I'd wondered what the impact might be on google searches. When I googled for the restaurants that I've created Place records for in the week that this has been going on, I noticed that they don't come up. Usually the chow.com Place record is in the top five hits on google, but not on these. Might be related to all those Application errors.

But this is just one of many bugs though perhaps the most frustrating right now. The proliferation of duplicate records via the Lists feature is the result of several bugs and bad user interface. I also noticed that the records in duplicate heaven are indexed by google, so that trash is accumulating in full view. Here's one indexed Oct 4 that was last updated by me in April.

http://209.85.173.104/search?q=cache:...

[rworange]

Yup. Except for litlerally a handful, I've given up working on Places because of the errors and in my case, because I can't read this small type long. I also noticed that Chow Places has dropped off Google and they had started to move pretty high up in the search.

[squid kun]

To the Chow staff:

http://www.chow.com/places/39105 duplicates http://www.chow.com/places/18312, but because of the application error bug I'm unable to open the new record and flag it as a duplicate.

If at some point you're able to open the new record, or whenever the bug is fixed, please mark that record as a duplicate.

Thanks!

[Melanie Wong]

Not CHOW staff, but I did it.

I type /edit at the end of the url and the editing screen for any Place record will open,
http://www.chow.com/places/39105/edit

But this is unwieldy, and I'm not editing Place records now until this bug resolves. Many, many duplicate records created by various Chow staffers via the Lists function. Maybe Engineering should interview them and look at their entries to find out where they're making mistakes, since it's quite widespread even among their own employees who seemed to have picked up bad habits. Then the user interface can be redesigned so that casual users among the rest of us won't continue creating duplicate records.

[squid kun]

Thanks, Melanie! I'd forgotten that you'd mentioned that tip earlier.

[Melanie Wong]

It's monday morning and the application errors are still popping up.

[Melanie Wong]

Thanks, guys, the Places door is open again.

[DiveFan]

Knock wood AGAIN, but updating Places is running like relative lighting at this moment. So far, no App Errors.

Is this a weekend server load issue, or did Chow techies tweak something?

J :-) ?

[Jacquilynne]

I did raise a problem ticket over the weekend, so I think they tweaked something. I like to envision one of them taking a large wrench and whacking the server repeatedly with it, but they tell me that the actual servers are miles away from the office where they work, so I guess that's not actually what they do. Still, it's a very comforting mental image.

[Melanie Wong]

Thanks, J, the problem didn't resolve until Monday morning. Believe me, I checked many times over the weekend.

And, now, it has started again. Application errors when trying to open Place records.

[Jacquilynne]

I'm not having any trouble with any of the ones I've clicked on recently -- can you link a couple of examples?

[Melanie Wong]

This one, http://www.chow.com/places/28071 , and anything created after midnight PDT including, http://www.chow.com/places/39234 , would not open when I posted that 2 hours ago. They are opening fine now, thank you.

[DiveFan]

Something that may be a related cause is that Chow's adserver partner sites are really sucking bad today. I blocked eyewonder.com and previously mentioned serving-sys.com and bingo, Place edit and save work much better. I also noticed that even the CNET site com.com is holding up things.

Someone in CNET really, really needs to kick butt on this issue.
Slow ad serving is INEXCUSABLE!

[Melanie Wong]

My nearly daily report of application errors on Places. These not opening right now,
http://www.chow.com/places/39322
http://www.chow.com/places/39318
http://www.chow.com/places/39315
http://www.chow.com/places/39308

and the ones I've tried that are older records (created yesterday or earlier) are all fine.

ETA: guess I need to retract that. This older one isn't opening now either.
http://www.chow.com/places/1252

[Melanie Wong]

Hellooooo, Engineering! It's seven hours later and we're still locked out of Places records. Could we get a hand please?

[squid kun]

Yeah, pretty ugly - "application errors" galore on the lion's share of both new and old records, for at least a couple of days.

I'm getting the strong sense this isn't a high priority for the Chow team. If someone knows that that's not the case, I'm listening ...

[rworange]

Yeah, it's a shame. I've pretty much stopped adding and updating records or linking them on other posts. The only reason I'll add a record these days is if I need it for one of my own lists or for one of my own posts. I've added hundreds of records in the past but this is just annoying. I can understand a weekend when no one is here but during the week? It does seem like Chow doesn't care about Places anymore.

[Jacquilynne]

I've opened a problem ticket on this, so hopefully they'll be able to fix it soon after they get in this morning.

[Jacquilynne]

Better?

[Chuckles the Clone]

I just tried to add two places to a single post. The first one succeeded. The second one appeared to succeed but when the post went up, only one of the two places were attached.
http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/5668...

The post right before that one contains a whole bunch of places. So whatever's going wrong is not consistent.

[Jacquilynne]

What was the second place you were trying to add?

[Chuckles the Clone]

this one.

[Chuckles the Clone]

And I don't know if this is the right place to mention it again but even though the place page says if I'm logged in there's an "edit" button, there's no edit button.

This was a problem since day one. Then, some months ago, for a brief period, the edit button appeared. Then it regressed back into brokenness.

OSX, safari, all latest everything.

[Melanie Wong]

Thanks, yes, better. Since the ticket wasn't opened until this morning, I see why it was broken all day yesterday.

Since this problem has recurred every morning since first reported two weeks ago, would it be possible to have Engineering look at it each morning until a permanent fix can be found? Otherwise we have to wait until you or another staffer opens a ticket, and we have had whole weekends when nothing was done.

Or maybe a working Places function isn't a priority. I am starting to think that, as squid kun has intimated above. If that's the case, please let us know as some 'hounds have been building out the information quite diligently, and we shouldn't abuse their time and good intentions.

[Jacquilynne]

There's some discussion happening about whether the necessary cache updates can be scheduled to happen automatically. But there are side effects to that update, so it's not something they want to do more often than is necessary.

[Melanie Wong]

Thank you for the explanation for why this error continues to repeat every day.

I guess what I'm asking is for Chow staff to figure out a way and be responsible for determining when it is necessary and not wait for a reader to complain, then require service staff to see it and generate a problem ticket. As the time stamps in the posts to this thread show, some times there is considerable lag. Besides that, it's just not good customer service to expect users to not only contribute and maintain the content of the Places feature, but monitor system performance for known problems.

[Melanie Wong]

Application Errors didn't wait until morning to return. Please inform Engineering.

Records that can't be opened right now:
http://www.chow.com/places/39444
http://www.chow.com/places/39442

Edited: Thank you, 55 minutes later, we're rolling again.

[Melanie Wong]

Good morning, this is your daily Application Errors wake up call.

Newly created Places record are not opening, e.g.,
http://www.chow.com/places/39508
http://www.chow.com/places/39507
http://www.chow.com/places/39506

[rworange]

It is not only newly created. It is the same problem that some work and some don't

[Melanie Wong]

It seems to be progressive. The first symptom is that the new records won't open. Then it starts to affect other records on a seemingly random basis with some working and others not. Then if it goes on long enough, like it did over a weekend, nearly all the records are affected.

Let's see if anyone in Engineering is listening. The Place records pop up quite high on google results, at least for the SF Bay area when I've searched for restaurant names. On the weekend, when folks are looking for info about where to go out, the first taste of this site will be a big fat Application Error. And users who have made Lists can't click on a Place name to get any additional info, not even the phone number. What's the point of Lists if the base application, Places, is broken every single day. We're better off keeping our info off-line and off this site.

[Chuckles the Clone]

Hello Chownound Engineering,

If you insist we monitor this, maybe you could simply install the following
little chunk of perl code on a machine somewhere and run it once an hour
or so? It will check a set of place records and send mail to someone important
if any of them return 500 error codes. [I imagine the formatting here is going
to be all screwed up, but it should still work ...]

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;

my $baseurl = "http://www.chow.com/places/&quot;;
my $starting_place = 39506;
my $stopping_place = 39510;
my $wget_args = "-S -nv -O /dev/null --no-cache";

validate_places();

sub validate_places
{
my $placenum = $starting_place;
my ($response, $err, $error_list);

while ($placenum < $stopping_place
) {
my $path = $baseurl . $placenum;

$response = `wget $wget_args $path 2>&1`;

$err = index ($response, "ERROR 500");
if ($err != -1)
{
if ($error_list)
{
$error_list = $error_list . ", " . $placenum;
}
else
{
$error_list = $placenum;
}
}

$placenum++;
}

if ($error_list)
{
notify_the_troops ($error_list);
}
}

sub notify_the_troops
{
my $sendmail = "/usr/sbin/sendmail -t";
my $subject = "Subject: Places are hosed again!\n";
my $send_to = "To: editor\@chowhound.com\n";
my $content;

my $error_list = shift @_;

$content = "The following places are broken:\n $error_list\n";

open(SENDMAIL, "|$sendmail") or die "Cannot open $sendmail: $!";
print SENDMAIL $subject;
print SENDMAIL $send_to;
print SENDMAIL "Content-type: text/plain\n\n";
print SENDMAIL $content;
close(SENDMAIL);
}

[Melanie Wong]

Thanks, hope that helps. I've been too busy to check much. Can't open new Places records after tonight's system maintenance. Examples:
http://www.chow.com/places/39728
http://www.chow.com/places/39726

[Melanie Wong]

Hello Engineering, it's 10 hours later and the records are still showing Appication Errors.

Edited to add: 40 mins later, now it's spreading. Older records that can't be accessed,
http://www.chow.com/places/38638
http://www.chow.com/places/38635
http://www.chow.com/places/18221

[Melanie Wong]

Working now.

Is there a regular time for cache updates now? If there is, let me know and I'll learn to wait instead of posting here.

[Melanie Wong]

Hello Enginering, it's Saturday Night and we can't get into Places!!!
http://www.chow.com/places/39811

[Chuckles the Clone]

Fourteen hours later, same deal.

[Melanie Wong]

Time stamp is wrong too. Your post reads 8:28am, and its only 7:40am PST as I post this.

[Chuckles the Clone]

Odd. It was correct when I posted it at 7:28pst. But sometime in the eighteen minutes after I posted it, it must have changed. It sure looks wrong now.

Maybe the sysadmin got up early to futz with the daylight savings time calculator?

[posted at 8:44am PST, regardless of what the timestamp below says]

[DiveFan]

Places has been 100% broken this PM.
NO film at 11.

<sound of Jeopardy! bridge music>

[Melanie Wong]

Some were working earlier today.

But Application Errors are popping up again now, like here,
http://www.chow.com/places/6055

[Melanie Wong]

Hi Engineering Team, thanks for throwing the switch yesterday before the close of biz. But the error pages have returned now. Example,
http://www.chow.com/places/39955

[Melanie Wong]

G'morning Engineering, please hit the switch. Can't open Places again,
http://www.chow.com/places/40041

What's your plan for the weekend so that we're not shut out again?

[DiveFan]

Very Interesting. I was able to open the above Place and all others this PM.
I wonder if it's a weekday morning thing?

[Melanie Wong]

Shortly after I posted that, it became possible to open Place records. I assume that Engineering did something. Since the application errors also happen on weekends, I don't think it's a weekday morning thing. If you note the time stamps on my many posts in this thread, it seems to happen every day some time after midnight. The timing of the occurrence might be related to the number of view of Places, number new records created, or something like that.

What is a weekday thing is that Engineering only seems to do anything about updating the cache on weekdays. That's why I asked what the plan is for fixing this on weekends when it happens then. A feature called "Restaurants and Bars" needs to work on weekends especially, don't you think? So far, it doesn't.

[Melanie Wong]

We're shut out of Places again this morning.
http://www.chow.com/places/40129

[Melanie Wong]

Well, here we go, blacked-out again in less than 24 hours. just got home, fired up the site, and application errors on Places.
http://www.chow.com/places/40214
http://www.chow.com/places/11270

Please hit the button!

[Melanie Wong]

Engineering, we're in the application error zone again with Places again and it's not midnight yet.
http://www.chow.com/places/40252
Please tell me that this will be fixed before Monday morning.

[Jacquilynne]

That's working for me -- not sure if they fixed it or if we're running into different problems. Anything else not working for you right now?

[Chuckles the Clone]

No, it is not working.

[Melanie Wong]

No, it's not working for me right now, nor is
http://www.chow.com/places/40250

[Jacquilynne]

Okay, this is getting weird. When I originally read your report on 40252, it was working for me. Then Chuckles posted, and I checked it again, and it wasn't working. And now you've confirmed that it's not working for you, but it is working for me again.

Except I just clicked it again one more time, and now it's not.

How utterly bizarre.

[Melanie Wong]

That alternating has never happened for me. The records that won't open stay that way until all place records are working again.

Here's another one that's rendering application error,
http://www.chow.com/places/40255

[Jacquilynne]

And that one is working fine for me.

I wonder if this is what happens when the lag problem that just came back meets the places error problem?

[Melanie Wong]

I just tried http://www.chow.com/places/40255 again, and it's not working for me. All the examples I've provided since 11:29pm PST are new records so there could be some lag issue. Or you could have a different set of permissions to see the pages.

Tried clicking again, still no go.

[Chuckles the Clone]

Here's the current list from place #39000 to #40250 which are broken.

(Note: Removed long list of places from this post with permission. -- Jacquilynne).

[Jacquilynne]

Are you sure? Engineering fixed this around 2:30ET, so if those are still broken for you, there's something else going on.

[Melanie Wong]

The examples I provided for this cycle are working for me, as well as these from Chuckles' list.

http://www.chow.com/places/40203
http://www.chow.com/places/40205
http://www.chow.com/places/40206
http://www.chow.com/places/40211

[Chuckles the Clone]

All better at the moment.

[Jacquilynne]

Would you mind if I edited that list out of your post then? It's introducing rather a lot of extra scrolling to the thread ;)

[Chuckles the Clone]

No problem. The list can always be reproduced by running that
little script I included a couple dozen posts back up the thread ... :)

[Melanie Wong]

Well, that didn't last long, please fix Places. Records displaying application errors,
http://www.chow.com/places/40279
http://www.chow.com/places/40276

[rworange]

You are a better person than I am in tracking the ups and downs.I just think it has been broken for weeks and sometimes works and sometimes doesnt. There hasn't been a day in a long while that I haven't had application errors in Places. Currently both those links give me application errors. There might be something in what you said about Jac.queline having a different set of permissions to see the pages.On top of this I have my thing still going with the survey crashing Places.

[Melanie Wong]

It's been a month now since your original post reporting the problem, and yes, it happens every single day. The cycle time seems to be getting shorter, now less than 12 hours. I'm glad Engineering responded yesterday (Saturday), as we've usually had to wait until Monday morning until it's fixed. Guess we'll see if anyone's on it today (Sunday). I still think it's goofy that the problem isn't monitored internally via error logs without users having to go for hours (and sometimes days) without access to Place records until someone complains. It just compounds all the other problems with Places when users can't get into a newly created record or think they've done something wrong it pops up an application error and they start over again needlessly.

[Jacquilynne]

They are monitoring it, as I understand it, but the problem is that the fix for the Places errors then causes Proxy errors everywhere else on the site so they don't do it as soon as first error crops up as it's disruptive to the boards, the stories, etc.

[Melanie Wong]

Still can't open one of my examples above
http://www.chow.com/places/40279
nor http://www.chow.com/places/40341 and other new records.

Should we stop updating Place records since it's down more than 50% of the time? Maybe it should just be an address function that gets attached to posts, which is how many use it now.

[Melanie Wong]

Can't open this one,
http://www.chow.com/places/40349

[Melanie Wong]

Didn't report in this morning when a handful of Places records I tried would not open. Now three hours later they are working fine. Hope it means that after 32 days of this I can retire as the Places application errors canary.

[rworange]

Nope. As of noon PST, I was getting application errors in places. I will provide links if that is any help. However, I just get the feeling that no one is reading this or cares ... however, if it is useful ... sure.

[Melanie Wong]

Is it still a problem for you?

I checked the newest Place records created after midnight around 9:30am and had no problems then, so I didn't post to this thread this morning. Those are the ones that usually get messed up first.

[rworange]

Yep. I don't pay close attention to it, so it was no different than it usally is ... some records new and old go through and some get the application error. There was a cluster around noon.

[Melanie Wong]

What I meant is, are you getting application errors right NOW? There's a cycle to the problem with them building up with greater frequency until Engineering fixes the cache issue each day, in my experience.

[rworange]

Sorry, can't say. I haven't been using Places since the post ... just didn't need to.

[Melanie Wong]

Hey, Engineering, sorry to bother you. Place record application errors for the last three hours this morning, time to reset, don't you think so?

[rworange]

I guess I missed whatever post that said engineering needs to be notifiied to reset things. I know you keep mentioning it, but it seems based more on guessing than an actual event.

For the past three days this has been down. Only one out of about 10 place records don't get an application error ... if lucky.

This is bad because even though I can get around adding and editing place records, I can no longer tell posters to look at place records for more information, not to mention the often-stated problem about people finding Chow place records through search engines like Google.

Is anyone working on this? Do the Chow engineers just assume because there are no posts that there are no problems. My thing is I assume what is reported is somehow in the queue to be worked on ... which includes two year old problems other than this. Maybe it is time to update the August post on what if anything is being fixed.

[Melanie Wong]

Again, it's cyclical. Last night I had no problem for the couple dozen Place records I opened and/or created. But the application errors were back this morning and continue now.

I'm not sure that Engineering needs to be notified for it to be reset. J said it's not automatic at the first error. Now four hours of down time for an increasing number of records would seem to be too long to me. I had asked whether there was some monitoring process or timetable and didn't get a clear answer. I hope she can shed some more light on how the work on this is coming along and whether users still need to raise the flag when the system fails.

edited to add: the records i could not open earlier today are working now. 1:36pm PST

Would still appreciate an update on this problem and what i should do going forward.

[squid kun]

> ... not to mention the often-stated problem about people finding Chow place records through search engines like Google.

If my introduction to Chow were an error page, I'd probably figure this site was a ghost town, not worth bothering with. Many web users out there have no doubt come to that conclusion.

[Melanie Wong]

I also think that some of the duplicates are arising because of this error page. If someone tries to make a new record, saves and then the app error page comes up, he/she might think that it didn't go through and then does it again, and again, and again.

[Melanie Wong]

Hey Engineering, I just checked in for the first time today and can't open Place records. Here's an example, http://www.chow.com/places/29951

Hope this gets taken care of before the close of business.

[Melanie Wong]

Hello! Can someone pls fix this before the weekend?

Edited to add: Just checked again at 4:59pm and the link above is working. Thanks and bon weekend! (But please do keep an eye on this feature for the next cycle of errors.)

[Melanie Wong]

Nope, spoke too soon, can't open these even after multiple refreshes,
http://www.chow.com/places/41161
http://www.chow.com/places/41157

This has turned into a running joke . . . except that it isn't funny.

[Melanie Wong]

As J mentioned above the app errors also seem to be tied to the lag issue too, so that the problem is random as well.

[rworange]

It is 10 am on Monday. Places has been down all weekend as usual. Whatever fiddling that may or may not be necessary to make it work hasn't happened yet.

Depsite a number of nice requests weekend after weekend by another poster that someone monitor this on the weekend and make fixes as needed, That hasn't happened.

Perhaps I am wrong, but, as mentioned, people looking for restaurants through Google are more likely to do this on the weekend. People who would be accessing this site that way ... reading the ads once they are here... don't ... because they get application errors. I guess I don't understand the decision or lack of decision to keep on top of this. It is what pays peoples salaries. Broken site means less potential revenue.

Despite a number of requests for an update on whether this is being worked on in terms of a permanent fix, there is still no answer.

[Chuckles the Clone]

And don't forget the other side of the coin: if the google bot comes through CH looking
for pages to add to the index and all it sees are a bunch of 500 errors, it's going to
go away and not come back for a month or more. Which is maybe why none of those
place records seem to show up very high on google searches, if at all.

[Melanie Wong]

Both Places and Lists are SPONSORED features. Now that I'm using a borrowed laptop with different settings than my own, I see the Presented by World Mastercard ads. Can't help but wonder if the sponsor is being charged for a page view every time a Places page pops up an application error even though the ad can't be seen if the record doesn't open.

Wondering if the skeleton crew for the holiday will be watching this. Today's request for a re-set is 3+ hours old now and still nothing. This has not been working for more than 12-hours now.

[Melanie Wong]

Hi Engineering, could we get things working before the holiday?

Starting last night, haven't been able to open these examples,
http://www.chow.com/places/41410
http://www.chow.com/places/41329
http://www.chow.com/places/41328
http://www.chow.com/places/41255
http://www.chow.com/places/41254

[Melanie Wong]

Thank you, the Places window is open again though we still have the lag problem with edited changes not showing up immediately or intermittent and random application errors.

Happy t-day, and hope that someone will be watching this over the holiday weekend.

[Melanie Wong]

It's started up again, please help.

http://www.chow.com/places/41473
http://www.chow.com/places/41467
http://www.chow.com/places/29947

[Jacquilynne]

Thanks, Melanie, I've paged Engineering.

[Melanie Wong]

Thank you, J! This is a work day in the Great White North?

[Jacquilynne]

It's always a work day when you work from home ;)

But yes, it's not a holiday here. We had our Thanksgiving back in October, so today, I'm catching up on some paperwork and keeping an eye on things while the volunteer mods are off eating Turkey.

[Melanie Wong]

Paging Engineering:
http://www.chow.com/places/41501

[Melanie Wong]

No change, no Engineering support until Monday?

[Melanie Wong]

Still not working, rampant application errors since Thursday night and growing.

Another weekend without a working Restaurants and Bars feature.

[Jacquilynne]

I've been testing it periodically throughout the weekend, and other than brand new places, I'm finding almost no errors. I'll try testing a different set of places and see if it makes a difference.

[Melanie Wong]

I just tried 5 records, all older ones, and only 1 is working.

Not working -
http://www.chow.com/places/34366
http://www.chow.com/places/25706
http://www.chow.com/places/39525
http://www.chow.com/places/40525

working -
http://www.chow.com/places/37523

[Jacquilynne]

Okay, tested a different set of Places than I have been using, and paged Engineering.

[Melanie Wong]

Thank you, all this last batch are opening fine now.

[Chuckles the Clone]

Oh sorry. I would have thought by now your engineering team would have
set up some sort of at least bare minimum monitoring function. Especially
after I wrote one for them a few dozen posts above.

No, almost all places have been completely down since Thursday. And they
remain down now. I can post the entire list of broken ones for you if it would
help get someone's attention. It's at least 90% of them.

Jacquilynne, it's none of my business but since I'm here ... monitoring the
operations of a website is one of the most basic competencies of an IT
department. Monitoring automatically rather than relying on someone telegraphing
the info in from Toronto or something. If you guys aren't getting that minimal
level of support, somebody needs to be stomping into somebody else's office
and raising holy hell.

[Melanie Wong]

Maybe someone has hit the reset button before I get up in the morning, but I wanted to report that I've not seen the application errors today or yesterday. Usually it strikes the most recently created Place records some time after midnight in the morning hours. Fingers crossed that this has been fixed for good.

[Jacquilynne]

Shhhh. No jinxing it.

They did put in a fix, but are monitoring to make sure it's fully working before declaring success.

[rworange]

Late Saturday afternoon and still working.

Maybe I am shooting myself in the fingers mentioning this, but it also fixed the problem with the popup. Hopefully they didn't just forget to attach it. What a horrible place to put a popup. My guess would be most people find this site through searching, and hitting that pop up the first time you get to this site would be a real turn off to me if this is the first time I was reading chowhound ... especially when so often it would crash the computer.

Yes, I know I can get around it, but I still insist on not doing and special tricks for Chowhound as most people, especially those new to the site, would

Anyway .... thank you ... and if this was an oversight I guess i should add as many Place records as possible ASAP.