Silk Road forums

Discussion => Silk Road discussion => Topic started by: mollyfan on April 09, 2013, 05:21 pm

Title: SR is down alot lately
Post by: mollyfan on April 09, 2013, 05:21 pm
Keeps timing out... What's going on? Everytime someone does "maintenance" to the site it seems to get worse and worse... I am NOT saying that the admins are causing it but from my side it looks as if its getting pretty bad... Anyone want to shed some light on this for me?
Title: Re: SR is down alot lately
Post by: nbomber on April 09, 2013, 05:39 pm
I'm guessing it has to do with the price of bitcoins. It keeps going up, so bitcoin keeps getting a lot of press, so people keep asking "what can I do with bitcoin?", so SR is getting a lot of traffic. That's what I'm guessing anyway; the SR staff are probably the only ones who know for sure how much traffic the site gets.
Title: Re: SR is down alot lately
Post by: thegrinder on April 09, 2013, 06:04 pm
from about 12pm - 11pm West Coast USA time everyone is trying to use the site, all that traffic makes it real slow.  if you use the site outside of those hours it is quite shocking how fast it runs. 
Title: Re: SR is down alot lately
Post by: g7455mk2 on April 09, 2013, 06:57 pm
from about 12pm - 11pm West Coast USA time everyone is trying to use the site, all that traffic makes it real slow.  if you use the site outside of those hours it is quite shocking how fast it runs.

True.  It's just a shame that this platform is as unreliable as it is for time sensitive matters.

Maybe I want to have my cake and eat it to, but it'd be nice to be able to reliably interact with vendors.
Title: Re: SR is down alot lately
Post by: mollyfan on April 09, 2013, 07:13 pm
I really appreciate you explaining that to me, I was honestly pretty baffled... But with all the money DPR makes, wouldn't you think he would invest in a few things to keep the site running? Load balancers or something? We all know the saying "it takes money to make money" right? Not knocking on DPR at all! I'm very appreciative of the site and the money it makes me but don't you think it would make more money if DPR invested some?
Title: Re: SR is down alot lately
Post by: thegrinder on April 09, 2013, 08:11 pm
I really appreciate you explaining that to me, I was honestly pretty baffled... But with all the money DPR makes, wouldn't you think he would invest in a few things to keep the site running? Load balancers or something? We all know the saying "it takes money to make money" right? Not knocking on DPR at all! I'm very appreciative of the site and the money it makes me but don't you think it would make more money if DPR invested some?

right now i don't think DPR cares too much about money (after all bitcoin is worth $200+ and most of SR's business was done with bitcoin under $20, so the tens of thousands of coins they received at that price....you get the idea) and he is solely after anonymity and safety for the site.  i just couldn't imagine the staff not making upgrades if they could, this is just the most safe way to run the site, and that trumps all.
Title: Re: SR is down alot lately
Post by: 2513415 on April 09, 2013, 08:56 pm
I appreciate all the hard work SR puts into the upgrades. I am ok with it being down from time to time.
Title: Re: SR is down alot lately
Post by: mollyfan on April 09, 2013, 09:14 pm
Thank you grinder, now that you put it like that, I see :)

Thanks for all ur explanations and point of views...

Long live SR
Title: Re: SR is down alot lately
Post by: g7455mk2 on April 09, 2013, 09:21 pm
right now i don't think DPR cares too much about money (after all bitcoin is worth $200+ and most of SR's business was done with bitcoin under $20, so the tens of thousands of coins they received at that price....you get the idea) and he is solely after anonymity and safety for the site.  i just couldn't imagine the staff not making upgrades if they could, this is just the most safe way to run the site, and that trumps all.

I think this is probably right.  There's likely just not a terrific option (in the staffs eyes) for providing a better end user experience while maintaining whatever security protocols are already in place.

That said, one would hope they've cashed out a fair bit of their BTC into real world dollars as a precaution,  and that should a  better option present itself (which, with that amount of theoretical money at their disposal, it damned well should), the SR staff is prepared to implement it.

As an aside (and complete conjecture - there's no numbers backing any of this up), I wonder how much blanket legalization of cannabis in the U.S. will affect the SR overall - or any incentive to improve it.  If it proves that cannabis is beyond a shadow of a doubt the "golden goose" for the SR in terms of overall revenue generation, the BTC's rise in value may well have provided some cushion to deal with the inevitable outflux of revenue once that occurs.

Basically what it comes down to is this; if you accept the premise that cannabis generates the most overall revenue for the road, and that the primary buyers are all going to be affected by the repercussions of U.S. legalization, then the following are probably also true:

1. If I'm DRP and the SR staff, I am probably worried that investing too much back into the site right now could prove a bad investment if the primary revenue source dries up.

2. If the U.S. legalizes cannabis outright, and profit margins for the road slip, is there a reason to maintain it?

Of course, as other nations become a bigger part of the picture, an emerging cannabis market in the U.S. could actually benefit the SR given a larger number of suppliers willing to take the risks inherent in shipping abroad.  Again, this is all just conjecture - but I'm very interested to see how this all plays out.

I love this place, appreciate it's purpose, and the effort that's gone into creating and maintaining it - but I just like to smoke weed (and a lot of it - our vendors can testify to my wife and I's habit), and once there's an open market for it I certainly have no reason to return.

Is there a large enough base of other users consistently making purchases to keep the SR profitable (not counting previously existing profit and capital)?