What you need to know about election day on Democratic Underground

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EarlG (23,989 posts)


What you need to know about election day on Democratic Underground

Hello everyone,

I think it's safe to say that everyone is hoping for a good outcome this Tuesday, and as a result we expect DU to be much busier than usual, particularly in the evening when results start to come in. For those of you who are veterans of DU election nights, you will know what to expect. If this is your first time, be prepared for threads on the Latest Discussions page to move very quickly once polls have closed.

On election day we always have two primary concerns. The first is that increased traffic to the site will slow our servers to a crawl, and that people will not be able to access DU when they most want to. The second is that some kind of hack might occur -- veterans of election day 2016 will know what I'm talking about. I'm not going to go into any detail about the second concern, suffice to say that we have been and are always doing what we can to attempt to prevent such a thing.

However, with regard to a site slowdown caused by excess traffic -- which is far more likely to occur -- I can give you some additional information. We have spent a significant amount of time this year working on our firewall configuration in order to better protect our servers against scrapers and malicious bots, and as a result, I'm hopeful that excess traffic may be less of a problem than it has been in previous years. There is no way to know for sure until Tuesday night though. If excess traffic does become a problem, here is what you should look out for...

504 Gateway Timeout errors

These are usually the first indication that our servers are struggling under excess traffic. If you start seeing 504 errors, it means that our servers are handling too many requests, and your browser's request could not be satisfied in time, hence the error. You should know that these errors in and of themselves are not a disaster, because if they start occurring we can take measures to relieve pressure on the servers. But if you start to see a lot of them, you are welcome to report them to me at earlg@democraticunderground.com.

Javascript challenge pages

If our servers are handling too many requests, we have a few ways to mitigate the problem. One method is to start challenging traffic via our firewall to make sure that it is real people trying to connect, and not an excess of automated scrapers. If slowdowns become a problem, you may see an interrupt page asking you to check a box to confirm that you are a human visitor.

Members Only mode

If our servers are still unable to handle the load, we may have to switch to Members Only mode. In this mode, all access to the site is restricted to registered members only -- in other words, you will not be able to access any page unless you are signed in to a DU account. To lurkers: It is highly recommended that if you do not have a DU account and you want full access to DU on election night, you should create an account before polls close tomorrow night.

Star Members Only mode

In extreme circumstances, site access may be restricted to Star Members only. This is highly unlikely to occur, but I'm putting it out there in the interests of full disclosure. We want everyone to be able to access the site on election night, but if we have to restrict access, we restrict it to all members first, then Star Members as a last resort.

If something goes wrong...

Should the site go down for any reason we will do our absolute best to communicate with you as quickly as possible. We will put a notice on the home page indicating there is a problem, and we will try to update you through other means.

To be clear, I have not used Democratic Underground's old Facebook page in quite some time, but in an emergency I might use it to post information. We also have a Bluesky account for similar purposes.

Finally, we have a DU mailing list powered by Brevo, although you do not get automatic access to this when you create a DU account, you have to sign up for it separately. If you want to join that mailing list, you can do so from our Contact page.

I think that's it for now, so here's to a trouble-free election night, and here's hoping that we get the results we are all anticipating. Good luck everyone!

EG

https://democraticunderground.com/101316576

i am hoping for a lock down if things do not go there way tonight

[67 Rover]

i am hoping for a lock down if things do not go there way tonight

I'm aiming a little higher with mass suicide. 

[Ralph Wiggum]

I'm aiming a little higher with mass suicide. 

Don't know what the DUmp's traffic level is compared to 2004 (the first general election I was around for), or even any subsequent one. I'm guessing that it has dwindled with the proliferation of Twitter/X, Blue"Ski" and other mediums, so SquirrelG has likely cut back on server costs.

In 2004, one couldn't even access the DUmp unless they were a star donor, but even then it was painfully slow. I can remember 2004 distinctly because I conned my way into being a moderator and even I couldn't access the site at times. There was so much butt-hurt claiming that John F-ing Kerry, who served in Vietnam, was cheated out of winning Ohio which would have changed the electoral college.

Good times, good times....