I know I'M slow, but Metafilter?

April 4, 2007 5:22 PM

In the past couple of weeks, whenver I load a fresh copy of the Blue it takes a couple of seconds for all the links (in posts, profiles, etc.) to start 'working'. Once or twice I've gotten an error message that says "Scripts are taking a long time to load, do you want to continue loading them?". What's going on? I'm a Vista user, but as I said it's only been for the last couple of weeks, and it doesn't happen in AskMe or MetaTalk. I ask here vice in an email in the event it's happening to others...
posted by matty to MetaFilter-Related at 5:22 PM (43 comments total)

or is it related to that server re-build thingy?
posted by matty at 5:24 PM on April 4, 2007

oh... and I should have placed this under 'bugs'.
posted by matty at 5:25 PM on April 4, 2007

I've never gotten an error message from the site, browser, or operating system. And lately, MeFi's been loading quite fast.
posted by phaedon at 5:26 PM on April 4, 2007

I've never gotten an error message from the site

Okay, that's totally not what i meant. I mean I've never got that kind of error message.
posted by phaedon at 5:27 PM on April 4, 2007

Does this persist from computer to computer? I've been getting a similar-sounding laggy render-pause-okay performance in my work environment but not at home; IE and FF respectively.
posted by cortex (staff) at 5:27 PM on April 4, 2007

cortex - just at home. I use XP at work if it makes any difference.
posted by matty at 5:28 PM on April 4, 2007

actually I should say - I've only noticed it while at home.
posted by matty at 5:29 PM on April 4, 2007

Sounds like a javascript thing with your browser. Dunno why your javascript would be hanging. Maybe it's the offsite adservers?
posted by mathowie (staff) at 5:31 PM on April 4, 2007

It's probably an extension or a greasemonkey user script you have installed.
posted by knave at 5:34 PM on April 4, 2007

I have had the same thing happen. I have to wait about 5 - 8 seconds before I can scroll, click on a link, etc. [using IE7 SP2]. This started a couple of weeks ago -- before the server rebuild. A similar MetaTalk thread from March 22.
posted by ericb at 5:39 PM on April 4, 2007

For me, it's certainly not an extension thing—I'm using a very locked down copy of IE 6.0x.
posted by cortex (staff) at 5:41 PM on April 4, 2007

Er, come on guys, I posted about this like 10 days ago, and though a few people piped up to say they had the same problem, it didn't seem to be widespread.

I even offered some suggestions as to differences in the page code.

To summarize my results: problems occur with IE only, on the Metafilter home page and in Metafilter threads. The problem does not occur on Metatalk, either the home page or inthread, or on AskMe, either on the home page or inthread. It does not occur on the My Comments page.

It's clearly a site problem, and that should be enough to narrow it down, I'd think. I thought it might be the very odd loading of javascript before the DOCTYPE declaration, but I notice now that that's not the case on the MeFi home page, just in threads.

As I mentioned before, the hang is longer the longer a thread gets, which should also be a clue.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 5:44 PM on April 4, 2007

Similar things have been happening for me - quite often the page will only load partially, then hang for ages - couple of refreshes normally fixes it. Happens in both Safari and Firefox.
posted by jack_mo at 5:48 PM on April 4, 2007

ha! i just popped over to ask this exact question.

in my case (XP/IE6), the page mostly loads, then the entire machine hangs for about 5-10 sec, with the CPU churning over at 100%. it's been going on for a couple of weeks, and yes, taskmgr indicates that it is iexplore.exe that is chewing all the resources...
posted by UbuRoivas at 5:58 PM on April 4, 2007

your saying a possible memory leak tied to a javascript DOM? were there any changes made to the "add to favorites/+" links on the front page?
posted by phaedon at 6:07 PM on April 4, 2007

I block ads and have never seen this ever happen. It sounds like the browser hangs because the fmpub.net (or whatever it is) advertising server is taking too long to respond.
posted by Rhomboid at 6:12 PM on April 4, 2007

I have verified (to my satisfaction) that it is not the ad server include.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 6:24 PM on April 4, 2007

what's this cetrk.com about? Might that have something to do with it?
posted by puke & cry at 6:41 PM on April 4, 2007

what's this cetrk.com about?

Yeah, I noticed that the other day too when Firefox actually told me it was 'waiting for...' at home, and wondered about it. I guessed that it had something to do with that heatmap thing Matt mentioned, but I wasn't sure.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 6:43 PM on April 4, 2007

ah, it's crazy egg, aka the heatmap thing.
posted by puke & cry at 6:55 PM on April 4, 2007

I took crazyegg out, but I think the code snuck back in from a backup. Lemme fix it.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 7:03 PM on April 4, 2007

ok, cterk/crazyegg is gone, which could likely be the problem
posted by mathowie (staff) at 7:06 PM on April 4, 2007

Hmm. Still getting hangs on MeFi thread, even after a CTRL-REFRESH, but that could maybe be some weird caching on the company network. Anybody else?
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 7:11 PM on April 4, 2007

I'm hung, but I'm sure it's unrelated.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 7:37 PM on April 4, 2007

Speaking of heatmaps!
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 7:46 PM on April 4, 2007

I don't know if this is a related problem or not, but since the server rebuild, I haven't been able to connect to Metafilter AT ALL from my home computer (I'm at work now, where I have no trouble connecting or logging in). I use Firefox at home and only ever get the "waiting for www.metafilter.com" message in the status bar, before being informed that the page can't be loaded. Metafilter (that is, any page whose address ends with metafilter.com) just won't load. Is there some setting in Firefox that I have to tweak because it's "remembering" that the site was down a couple of weeks ago??
BTW, I'm sorry if this is a question that belongs on AskMeta and not here.
posted by bunglin jones at 7:48 PM on April 4, 2007

I have the same problem as the original poster... I'm running Windows XP Home, IE 7... The lag is only on the blue, not on the green or grey.
posted by amyms at 7:54 PM on April 4, 2007

since the server rebuild, I haven't been able to connect to Metafilter AT ALL from my home computer

i'd guess at some point you put metafilters IP addy in your hosts file. take it out or update it to the new one.
posted by quonsar at 8:02 PM on April 4, 2007

ahh... thanks, quonsar. I'll try that.
posted by bunglin jones at 8:09 PM on April 4, 2007

Hmm. Still getting hangs on MeFi thread...

Ditto.
posted by ericb at 8:32 PM on April 4, 2007

I've been experiencing the same "hanging" for the last 10 days or so
posted by growabrain at 8:47 PM on April 4, 2007

For me it's been happening at work (IE6, Win2k)... but not at all at home, where it's humming along nicely. (IE7, Vista).
posted by evilcolonel at 11:25 PM on April 4, 2007

Bingo. Never seen anything like this before. Blank space on the screen between posts, slowly filled in, just slightly more quickly if I mouse over it. Weird. I was going to say only the last couple of days, but I was away on vacation for almost a week, so that'd fit the 10 day window people are talking about.
posted by dreamsign at 1:52 AM on April 5, 2007

I've also seen the phenomenon dreamsign's talking about, on the Metafilter home page only (again, in IE only), which may or may not be related to the freezing issue. The re-removal of the heatmap script has not resolved it either.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 1:59 AM on April 5, 2007

It's been happening to me just the way (and in the same timeframe) stavrosthewonderchicken describes. IE 6.0, W2K.
posted by klarck at 4:35 AM on April 5, 2007

Just like to say that I too had this problem, but in the last couple hours it's gotten much better. Apparently whatever you are doing is working Matt. Thumbs up!
posted by Catfry at 8:29 AM on April 5, 2007

It's still there though. I has just been shortened to a second or so.
posted by Catfry at 8:30 AM on April 5, 2007

Yeah, something's changed. There's still a lockup, but it doesn't last as long on long threads.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 5:33 PM on April 5, 2007

By the way, I'd be curious to hear about what the problem is/was, if you figure it out and can kill it, Matt.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 5:34 PM on April 5, 2007

Erm... Yeah... It's back. I don't know if it's you tampering Matt but at the moment it's worse than ever.
posted by Catfry at 4:01 AM on April 6, 2007

Still going on ... annoying as heck.
posted by ericb at 12:34 PM on April 10, 2007

bunglin jones writes "BTW, I'm sorry if this is a question that belongs on AskMeta and not here."

No this belongs here as it's Metafilter related.
posted by Mitheral at 1:25 PM on April 11, 2007

Okay -- as of right now there is no longer a delay for me on the BLUE. Let's hope it stays that way. Good job, Matt.
posted by ericb at 9:19 PM on April 13, 2007