"Scheduled Maintenance" - Behind the Scenes

Great follow-up. Thanks a lot.

My vocab is still missing....(missing ~50 words)....I'm a newbie and only had ~56 words before this maintenance. I feel silly asking as this word list is significantly shorter than others but it is a few hours to rebuild. If the vocab issues are truly solved and my vocab is lost I just need to know.

Thanks for weathering the firestorm

Update: I'm with Zuber - the tech team solved mine too. I'm not too techno-savvy, so to me this is like the magician pulling a rabbit out of a black hat... great job, guys! Thanks!

Update: I'm with Zuber - the tech team solved mine too. I'm not too techno-savvy, so to me this is like the magician pulling a rabbit out of a black hat... great job, guys! Thanks!

The tech team solved all of my vocab problems. Thanks, ya'll!

AzerDoc - Thanks for the links. John messaged me and is going to have the tech team do a search and rescue for my poor vocab lists. :- P Hopefully it will be successful and I'll be back on the road of normal studies soon.

One thing I'll say about the cPod team - at least they're personable and willing to work with their customers to resolve problems. From what I've seen in the past since coming here, they seem to listen to our input for lesson content, etc., and do their best to meet the needs and wants of the majority.

Even when things go crazy, as in recent weeks, the cPod team has done a wonderful job of maintaining personable and professional attitudes in the face of upset customers, technical obstacles, etc. I think that's very commendable, and not always easy to do. ;- )

Cpod, jia1 you2!

just remembered I did open a thread on 88groups feedback

wei1xiao4, multiple login is always a drag though I'm always connected to CPod. However, there is a direct link from your 88groups lesson to the corresponding lesson. Under "current lesson" you have a direct link to "view this lesson on ChinesePod.com's website".

As to 88groups, there are a few glitches but overall it's 不错. For your lessons with Vera it allows you private discussions, she can upload vocab / stories specifically relevant to you, you can ask questions - I often post my own stories / news I picked up, expand on what we didn't have time to cover on the phone. There are lots of other groups you can join too.

There are indeed a few glitches, lesson order sometimes gets mixed up, you can send messages but you can't see them once sent, still I think it's a nice addition. Obviously, multiple websites are time-consumming, I hate to admit but I hardly ever go to the CPod forum, and I have little time to take part in other 88groups...

weixiao, zuber, brooke

if you have vocab missing, John says it's fixed in today's news and features

http://chinesepod.com/extra/holiday-specials-and-new-friends/discussion

and travelyan posted here that it's fixed, too:

http://chinesepod.com/lessons/world-records/discussion

I couldn't find this thread, so wrote my own post on the subject, but I'm with wei1 xiao4 and Zuber: I'm also missing a ton of vocab. Aside from Chinese being an enthusiastic hobby of mine, it's also part of my job at work, so it puts me in a bit of an awkward position when a large part of my job is to study Chinese, but a primary tool (and one I've spent hours at work and in private building up) goes MIA...

I understand technical difficulties happen and are always unexpected, so I'm not blaming anyone for the problems that occurred. Still, it would be good to hear from the Cpod team if our vocab isn't coming back so we can move forward and rebuild our lists, rather than continue to wait in limbo. Thanks guys!

I'm also still missing about 1000 words.

More significantly, I can't move words around between lists. It's strange. If I am in the "all vocab" list, the blue underlined list names appear and I can edit them at will. But when I go to any other list, the blue underlined list names are missing and I can't change what list the word is in. I.e., I can't move old words out of my "current" stack to make room for new ones. The problem has prevented me from studying my vocab effectively for several weeks now.

Thanks!

I'm missing over 1000 vocabulary words! I'm not panicked, just providing feedback.

What I really would like to understand is this 88Group concept. I'm sorry, but I don't understand what the significance of this site is. Vera is now using it for our lessons but I can't see any benefit. I used to sign into Chinesepod, go to my lessons, and go to work. Now I have to sign into 88Group, look up the lesson Vera has assigned, then log into Chinesepod, then look up the lesson (because there is not link to it from 88Group) which may require several inputs. It seems circuitous. I keep waiting to find out the advantages of 88Group. Could someone please explain them to me? I feel disconnected. I'm really not computer savvy, so someone really needs to spell the advantages out for me. Meanwhile, I really find accessing my lessons through 88Group a nuisance. Sorry, but I had to let you know how I feel.

What happened to the Traditional PDFs?

Are they coming back or not?

even Bazza is having doubts... I'm getting reaaally worried now

When can we expect the ipod dialogues back?

We'll look into it Dominic - thanks for the bug report. If anyone else is having similar problems, please send me a message.

I now have 41 lessons bookmarked. I only bookmarked 10 ish myself.

Chinesepod, why is this happening?

Amber, I have no doubt that you care and understand you need to prioritize. I'm not frustrated or upset so much as getting worried...

I'm having problems with bookmarking lessons.

A bunch of lessons that I didn't bookmark have appeared as bookmarked.

Which ever screen I try it from, I am unable to remove these bookmarks.

Is anyone else having this problem?

last paragraph should read:

...chances are now that any thread might contain ...

on the issue of comment, we had missing comments (Cold Will Kill You? - C0684), frozen comments (m.chinesepod.com), I now found re-duplicated comments (Buying a Custom-Built Computer - D0682) where the whole thread appears twice in a row.

Other than the fact that this has been going on for 2 weeks, I'm wondering how synchronization will happen. It wouldn't have been a problem if all had been fixed within 24-48 hours, but chances are now the any thread my contain 'original' comments as well as more recent ones. Will the former override the latter in case of a restore?

Anne,

The problem you mention was mentioned by a few other users as well, and we fixed it this morning.

Mobile functionality is coming back, as are several lessons' missing comments.

hi goulniky,

Please know! We care! One by one, all will be resolved... sorry, very sorry for the pain and frustration this has all caused our loyal listeners! 请原谅！ Qǐng yuánliàng！

ah well, this may help address the comment issue I've been repeatedly raising to no effect whatsoever... if there still is an issue with mobile comments and comments from one lesson on the main portal, there may well be others. If the CPod staff cared to check, the one I am refering to is Intermediate lesson C0684 - - Cold Will Kill You ?

Out of interest, am I the only one to have noticed this, is it a mirage or did this comment really exist and vanished?

Yesterday after going to bed I felt that itch to check the newest comments. As I have no Internet access at my "work home" I used my PDA and accessed the mobile site.

But I found it frozen at the state of Nov 22 (Lessons & Conversations).

Great, things are getting better. I don't understand my iTunes feed though. The new Qing wen doesn't appear in iTunes, but it's on my home page. What can I do?

Dictionary functioning well now. Thanks Dave (and others) for your diligence.

-RJ

sorry guy but it does seem to me that comments have not been reloaded for Intermediate lesson C0684 - - Cold Will Kill You ?

sparechange,

We're already hard at work on better exercises, and a BIGGER FONT is a key issue.

We've switched to more battle-hardened javascript that should improve click-to-add functionality across more browsers. IE6 and IE7 both work for me. Thanks for the bug reports.

Steve, you rock. Thanks for the 411.

I don't mean to beat a dead horse, but the characters in the exercises are very difficult to read. Many of the horizontal strokes don't even show up because they are thinner than 1px. I can put up with it for a while, but it's high on my wish-list for fixes down the road. I use the exercises pretty extensively.

BTW, I'm running Firefox 2.0.0.10 on OS 10.4.11.

works with firefox but not IE for me. Still get undefined in definition columns.

Hmmm, adding vocab from the dictionary works fine for me now too.

OK - can add characters from dictionary to vocab now but the character shows up in vocab with only the words "undefined" in the pinyin and english definition columns. Close, but no cigar, as they say. Well, they probably dont say that in China. Dont stop now. Thanks.

Still can not add to vocab from Dictionay even after shift refresh.

I think it's time for an upgrade/conversion to Microsoft's Dot Net framework with SQL Server on the Back End.

Whadda ya think guys ;-)

Yup, vocab list looks to be back now. I can add words to my vocab list again.

Thanks !

click-to-add functionality should be working from the dictionary again. You may need to clear your cache in order to download the new javascript. This can be accomplished by holding down shift and clicking "refresh" (the round blue arrow in your browser) when viewing any dictionary entry.

Hi guys,

The dictionary work is underway: related lessons link should already work, while click-to-add vocab functionality is being worked on. We're also making some changes that should increase the speed of the authentication code in general.

Anne: the old glossary links will still work (and new words will be added according to the old pinyin conventions). The reason for the change in link-style is to ensure consistency in the way The Fix is recorded -- making sure all content for any particular lesson is recorded using the same

Content issues re: missing lessons are being solved by the academic team as they are found or pointed out. We'll pick up on comments that are left and direct them to Amber or Clay - if you want more immediate action try emailing or messaging them directly. Qingwen access for premium users should be restored shortly as well.

Not sure if this is on the bug list yet, but

You cannot add a word to your vocabulary set from the dictionary. You can only add a word to your vocabulary set from within a lesson which contains that word. Unfortunately, lessons seem to have many words indexed that are not listed within the lesson vocab itself. The result is that you cannot practically add words to your vocab list.

But maybe it's just me.

The vocab xml export delivers pinyin in numbered character codes, not utf-8 encoded. the chinese words are utf-8 encoded, though. Of course I can fix this locally, but it worked before Iceberg. Fixing takes time. Why don't you utf-8 encode the whole file?

... I have hundreds of double entries in my iTunes List now, but better than no dialogue-only.

An other thing. Wasn't project Iceberg all about integrating stuff? But it looks like the dictionary and ChinesePod's search function are not aware of new lesson content. Searching for 阿姨 does not return Interviewing an Ayi as a result. The glossary mp3s, which I could access via my browser typing in a numbered pinyin link before Iceberg are now called rec-xxxxxx-x.mp3 - so I lost another convenient way to study. Grrrrrrr!

LostInAsia, thanks a lot. Sounds absurd, but works :-) Yeah!

On a Mac, you can hold down the alt/ option key while clicking on the "turning arrow" that opens or closes your podcast list. This should ask iTunes to reload any deleted or "should be there" podcasts. Something similar will work on a PC.

(Sorry I can't be clearer--my first sentence sounds absurd.)

When I try to go to the latest qingwen it tells me i have to upgrade my subscription - but I am a full subscriber.

Please can you think hard about where to report bugs rather than just in random conversations - it looks like you need a high volume bug tracking system.

In my iTunes list, there now are all CPod Lessons, but the dialogue only and the fix were removed from the ones I haven't listened to yet in iTunes. I want to do the "Death by Ninja" lesson now, tried to unbookmark it and bookmark it again, hoping that that way the dialogue only and the fix are delivered again but nothing arrives, no Death by Ninja in my iTunes. How do I get older lessons into my iTunes feed, please?

This may have been asked somewhere else, but since there is no way to search for it...

And this one really made me angry by the way. I pay by month... for two weeks of annoyance now.

Btw, when I add vocab by left clicking on words in the lesson or expansion it adds them to the vocab list without any pinyin, definition, or a tag. Actually I have always found this feature annoying since it tends to be set off while you are using the mouse-over (when you dont want it to). The annoying part is still there but the intended function does not work. I am only trying to use it to back door some words I would like to add but again defeated.

any news as to why / where comments have disappeared from Intermediate lesson C0684 - - Cold Will Kill You ?

Hello.

I have sent messages about specific problems in specific lessons, but, unfortunately, have had no response.

Trevelyan, I still can not add to vocab from dictionary. So much for a 3 hour transparent change. Its a shame that a site so progressive in content can drop the ball so completely in other areas. So many complaints and yet never a meanigful response.

Kyle -- I'm genuinely sorry for the problems - we'll look into the situation with your vocab on Monday. If anyone else is still having problems please send me an email or private message so we can look at them at the same time.

I've been with CPod for about 14 months. This is the second time this has happened--where my studying has come to a complete halt in lieu of IT problems. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

I've now finally found a excellent way to back up all of my vocabulary through an excellent open-source flashcard tool, so I won't be affected by these glitches again / will no longer be dependent on CPod for memorizing my vocabulary.

What probably angers me the most is that I have no idea how long CPod will be out of commission. A few days has turned into two weeks which turned into "by the end of the week" which has turned into an indefinite amount of time. In the end, I've just lost my patience.

Sorry for the ranting....

one suggestion to Steve and the CPod staff is to have weekly (or daily when required) updates here, possibly through sticky, even locked posts, under different headings possibly for the various issues.

I have no doubt the staff is under pressure and doing their best chasing bugs while ensuring ongoing production of new material, john, trevelyan and others have been answering posts about specific issues being fixed, but the fact is these replies are scattered all over due to the chronological re-ordering of those conversations, with some under specific entries and others under lesson comments.

the bottom line is that we (users) have no idea how things are going, what's recognized / being addressed / planned / fixed etc.

More in general, it seems that we didn't get any pre-launch notice of upcoming changes, unlike the previous time. Since CPod seems to rely on contributors to these conversations for a lot of their PR activities, if unofficially, it seems to me the least you can do is give them some pre-marketing ammunition.

I still think CPod constantly comes up with terrific innovation and I greatly enjoy it, but there are times were things seem to go out of control...

Amazing how the "old fellows" here who have gone through situations like this for at least three times don't seem to get angry anymore. I don't. I've been promised better communication, information and testing every time things went wrong... Meanwhile I gave up any hope. Seems to be always the same. CPod tells us only after the way too long offline periods or damages (so we can't make any backups or things in advance)... new users get upset and some weeks later everything runs fine. ChinesePod still offers the best content available, that's why I got used to the somewhat chaotic IT handling. I backup my stuff every time I visit ChinesePod. And I'm less committed than in the beginning. And I miss Eileen.

I tried to change my avatar last night, but the system didn't recognize my user name, even after I re-entered it.

Another oddity, the first paragraph of the above post was deleted! Anyway, here it is again:

I reported the same "wacky" RSS feed problem in the Changes after the Upgrade conversation and Trevalyn responed that it was a known bug. No indication of when it will be fixed though.

Lost in Asia

If it is of any help, I found the old Forum RSS feed has been changed to:

http://forum.chinesepod.com/rss.php

I read also in Changes after the Update that some people were reporting all forums were down yesterday though I never noticed this in China.

Good to know - thanks Phil. Usually I catch most of the active threads, but unfortunately my RSS feeds are all wacky too! In NetNewsWireLite: nothing. In Netvibes: I'm getting a feed, but oddly mislabeled: all the "Getting Dressed" posts are labeled under "Driver's Licenses and Businesses", and if I follow the link I get a blank template that I assume will one day be filled with a Driver's Licenses lesson.

Lost in Asia, it's not only you.

For iPod/iTunes there are two relevant fields: Lyrics and Description. It is the description field which is displayed on an iPod for podcasts for some reason whilsts lyrics are displayed for uploaded music. This was discussed quite a bit in another thread somewhere recently.

From what i can see, using elementary as an example, the description field included the transcript up to and including lesson 702 - Hard of Hearing. Subsequent three lessons 707, 711 and 715 only have a brief lesson description in English so somewhere during "Iceberg", the transcript has been dropped off the description.

I'm still not getting the dialogue transcript in the podcast file. Is anyone else having this problem? Is there some setting I need to change? (I DO get the dialogue in the "Lyrics" section, but that doesn't help me since my iPod doesn't display lyrics; I'm no longer getting the dialogue in the information field).

I haven't noticed this problem addressed anywhere, and am starting to wonder if it's just me.

The dictionary uses a separate method for authentication that we'll need. I'll schedule this one for work on Monday. Have a great weekend everyone!

Ron, I can not add new words either. I get a different error whcih I have sent to Steve but I too am waiting for this to be fixed. I plan to tag flash card sets for practice by adding through the dictionary those on my to-learn list (separate from cpod lessons), but cant do it. it tells me to log on and then I will be able to add with one click. Right.

Any word on this situation before the weekend begins?

I should also add that I cannot ADD new words. This function seems to have been disabled for a week or so.

Through the CPod dictionary, whenever I click on the "Add to Vocab" the window that normally says "this has been successfully added" instead brings up my complete vocab list. This occurs with any new vocabulary word I want to add.

Are others having similar problems?

Adding vocab from the CPod dictionary is still broken.

I lost between 80 and 120 words, but not sure. I can't edit any tags except those that haven't been tagged at all.

John

My vocab list has 22 items (as it has had for several days). There were originally around 120 I think though my last download from a few months back has 58. Not too important for me, just for feedback.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yes, it's all still missing!

If it's all unsalvageable the only choice I have is to re-input all 1400+ entries. And many of those entries were "spontaneous", meaning I don't have them recorded elsewhere, meaning their lost for good.

Let me know what I need to do so I can get to work ASAP.

Project Iceberg is the bane of my existence!!!!!!!!

Kyle,

The vocab migration is now complete. Is your vocabulary still missing?

*starting to wonder if project Iceberg will ever thaw...*

Going on two weeks without being able to study vocabulary has brought on withdraw fits....

Understood....thanks for the explanation and the hard work of you and your colleagues.

(I've been in IT for 12 years now...routing/switching/firewalls/vpn....general networking really...so I understand that people tend to "notice" what goes wrong...never really seeing what goes well).

Hang in there.

Do ChinesePod have any plans on making any web services available for us to consume in our applications?

Thank you Steve for letting us in behind the scenes! We know you guys work hard for us all the time, but we feel extra loved when you become this intimate : ) I for one don't understand all the technical lingo, but have trusted all along in the integrity of the CPod team. That eventually, all the bugs would be worked out. It just takes some time. Rome was not built in one day, so they say.

BIG HUGS to all you guys who probably haven't seen the back of your eyelids very much this past week! (OK, now, I can't help myself...) Eat well, eat lots of fruits and vegetables, drink lots and lots of fluids and wash your hands compulsively! And, don't touch things with your bare hands that collect viruses, like bathrooms fixtures and door knobs! Take in lots of vitamin C!

But if the choice was between being the iceberg or being the Titanic, I'm barracking for the iceberg! :-)

It makes sense now. I had thought it was a couple of small changes that mushroomed into a major uncontrolled stuffup with a domino effect, but it seems it was the opposite, a lot of simultaneous major planned changes that basically worked but woke up some computer gremlins along the way, which is no surprise really given the magnitude. Big difference. You guys seem to know what you're doing, and now we know too.

Steve, thanks for bringing us into the project, and good luck!

The grammar guide was static? Seems like that would have been a nightmare to maintain...

Cool. Thanks for the update, steve. You now have my permission to sleep. ;-)

On the subject of project names, V3 was almost dubbed 'The Long March'. I had a soft spot for that name, but in the end the snappier 'V3' won the day.

We are also working on a project called 'Hydrogen', and another called 'Anthill'. I'm afraid the names don't give much away though...

Hi Kyle,

The vocab you recently added is indeed missing. We've backed it up, and once we are sure the pre-Iceberg migration is completed smoothly, we will migrate across your post-Iceberg saves.

Jamestheron,

Yep - bad association. Once we'd named the project it was too late to change, but it did feel like tempting fate at times.

Goulniky,

It definitely felt a few degrees warmer around here last week!

Strange, if I link to this conversation from Bloglines then Bazza appears as the author! But from within Cpod Steve is the author.

Very interesting choice of a project name.

Now, when project iceberg and project titanic meet...

cool name with uncool connotations (according to Wenlin / ABC dictionary) : 冰山 bīngshān n. ①iceberg <座> (zuò) ②individual/group not to be relied on for long

Project Iceberg, cool name. ;)

thanks to let us know the 内幕 (nèimù).

one day, a business school professor and a bunch of graduate students will swarm the CPod offices and rewrite the Unusual but True Story of the ManyPod Migration.

Meanwhile, don't underestimate the effects of global warming...

Nice to see what the man (people?) behind the curtain has been up to.

Don't know about the others, but about 90% of my CPod usage revolves around vocabulary and its related functions. So, it goes without saying that I haven't been getting any studying done over the last week. Glad to hear that we should be back to normal (hopefully) by the end of the week.

Also, and maybe this is just a glitch, but all of the vocab I've added SINCE "Project Iceberg" was instated seems to be have been deleted within the last few hours. Strange, because it was there this morning....