Suggestion: Create a new forum to allow customers to discuss ongoing outages or other issues.

Suggested name "Outage reports and connectivity testing".

Personally, I like to network with other customers during an outage -- as I expect the host already knows about it (they better) and calling them just makes them more busy during a critical time.

I recently posted a minor outage note on the Dedicated/Co-location forum and got all kinds of attacks from people because the host itself wasn't down and it was thier upstream.

To me, this isn't about slamming a host - it is about knowing the true network quality and getting confirmation (from other customers) about outages.

I feel that if we start a new forum, it will remove the hostility factor -- as the intention of the posts can be more clear and it not be percieved as attack on a provider. People can have a place to discuss outages without it being intermixed with the requests for recommendations on hosts.

To me, a host being unreachable is worthy of discussion - I don't really care the fault, as my customers (web site users) don't care the fault... and often the problems are difficult to solve, so working together has advantages (hence using the forum here).

Just a suggestion, take it or leave it. I'm not trying to create a problem here, I'm trying to solve one.

I'm not sure about the exact mechanics but I like the general idea. Visitors often come here looking for information on specific hosts and it would assist them if they could find that information through searching a particular forum.

On the other hand, this is the sort of thing that MattF might want to have as part of his service so I would understand if he decided not to add such a forum but instead added "report host outage" next to "add host review".

But even if Matt did want to do that, surely it could still be discussed in a forum, couldn't it?

It sounds like a reasonable idea to me. Although there mightn't be enough demand for a new forum.

Seems like there are a lot of posts in this vain.
A separate forum would be well supported.

Originally posted by Lawrence
It sounds like a reasonable idea to me. Although there mightn't be enough demand for a new forum.

That might depend on the hosts in question, some seem to be pretty bad from complaints I've seen in the past.

I think it's a great idea. I recently reported an outage with a dedicated provider... it would be good if we all had a central point in which to go when such a situation arises and discuss and share information with other customers.

I've noticed people have been spraying these reports around several different forums so it's not immediately noticable if someone has posted a report already.