We are working hard to diagnose our extreme load errors, and it is possible some changes we make today will fix them. I can't promise anything, though.
Our current hardware should be able to handle the load - it is software tweaking and configuration that is giving us a tough time.
In other news... A lot of users have been confused about the Portal top 50 list. Basically, whenever a new submission reaches 200 votes, it vanishes from the list. This is because we are making a huge effort to get EVERY submission past the 200 vote mark, before we cross over to a new 200 vote judgement threshold.
Achieving 200 votes doesn't take long, but we have over 7,000 OLD submissions that never made it that far. We are trying to bring these old submissions up-to-date. This is why we have prepared the UNDER 200 VOTES list that we have been pushing so hard. If everyone works together, we can knock this list out in a short amount of time.
We have also added the "top 5 most recent" list on the frontpage. These are new submissions that have passed judgement. While they may vanish from the Portal list, they will get plenty of traffic here on the frontpage.
Once we clear out the UNDER 200 VOTES list, the system will return to normal and new submissions will stay on the top 50 until 50 new submissions knock them down.
I know the extreme load errors have been making it hard to chip away at the list... Let's all hope this problem can be resolved soon!
