Feedback - Bug Reports

Bunpro
#4085

Same issues here.

" Retrieval Error

There was a problem getting your study questions. Please reload the page to try again.

If the problem persists, please contact us."

Not much we can do. It seems the server where the study questions are hosted might be down, overloaded, etc. Some type of issue anyways.

2 Likes
#4087

I agree, it’s a bit weird. But as a former software dev, I have a hypothesis:

  1. They implemented a new patch for something. Either a new bit of feature(s), or perhaps some bug fix, or perhaps some ‘refactoring’ (can google if you want to learn about it).
  2. The patch caused unexpected issues, and people started to report bugs/issues soon after. For example:
  1. Instead of rolling-back the original patch with the unexpected side-effects, they attempt to fix the new issues with (a) new patch(es). Example:
  1. Unfortunately, while this new patch appears to fix things, it also has unexpected side-effects. Namely, it unexpectedly alters the performance of something on the server-side, such as some database queries.
  2. While under low to medium traffic, this second patch appears to fix the original patch without issue, and so most of the dev folks ‘go home’ (or whatever the equivalent phrase would be if they’re working remotely) for the day, thinking everything’s fine.
  3. Since ‘business hours’ for Bunpro are based in Japan, yet most of their customers are from Western countries like in Europe and the Americas, ‘going home’ in Japan is equivalent to ‘late at night / very-early morning’ for most customers.
  4. Later, as ‘late night’ turns to ‘waking up time’ for many customers, the traffic at Bunpro begins to ramp up and up.
  5. The not-fully-tested second patch, with its compromised performance characteristics, cannot accommodate the full load on the server from however many hundreds/thousands of users trying to use the website/app all at the same time.
  6. Bunpro effectively conks out at the least convenient time for its customers.
  7. Thankfully their forums are hosted independently and we can at least document the situation.

A lot of the above is guesswork/speculation on my part, so I expect I’ve gotten lots of specific details wrong. But I think the general gist of it is probably not too far off.

My suggestion to Team Bunpro would be to take this overall issue very seriously (site failing due to recent dev patches, but while dev team unavailable), and immediately begin to implement a more robust Integration and Deployment process.

For example, if they are not already implementing Continuous Integration (wp-CI), then immediately start looking into implementing that. Especially with Automated Testing / Test-Driven Development (wp-TDD).

In particular, set up a test environment which is a clone of the final production/live environment, and which can handle automated Performance Testing in general (wp-PT) and Load Testing in particular (wp-LT).

Then, by having the Continuous Integration perform its Automated Testing in stages – with a Pre-Production Stage, where Integration tests and Performance/Load tests are automatically performed prior to full release to the Live/Production servers – these kinds of nasty ‘can’t handle typical maximum load due to not-fully-tested patches’ situations will be far less frequent.

This is of course important not just because it makes the site more continuously functional/available, but more importantly because these kinds of outages give the brand of Bunpro a ‘black eye’, and harm long-term reputation. And reputation is Bunpro’s strongest power for generating its (currently still high level of) word-of-mouth marketing.

In other words, letting these kinds of things go on, without addressing them seriously and immediately, puts Bunpro’s reputation and long-term success at risk.

In my humble opinion.
:nerd_face: :sweat_smile:

9 Likes
#4088

I’m just dreading the backlog of reviews to look forward to at some point this evening :cold_face:

5 Likes
#4089

oh wow bunpro is out lol…
I also am dreading my review backlog :((

2 Likes
#4090

:slightly_smiling_face: Don’t worry too much – you will be able to handle it!

Even if you end up with a huge pile of Reviews, if you take them ‘slow and steady’, bit by bit, you will be able to break down even a huge mountain of Reviews (eventually!) if you just keep at it on a regular basis.

Specifically, one key idea that has helped me a lot over the years is that I don’t have to finish all my Reviews in a single review session – or even in a single day, or week, or whatever.

Practically speaking, the way I make this work is that before I start to feel discouraged or overwhelmed during a review session, I’ll:

  • Use the Wrap Up feature (or whatever it’s called here), which conveniently has the keyboard shortcut of the number zero ‘0’, which is very easy to press if you have a numeric keypad on your keyboard.
  • Complete the ‘wrap up’ of the session by finishing the remaining review items that I got wrong during the session.
  • Get to the Summary screen, and give myself a little dopamine boost by acknowledging the completed session with a mental "Yay! I did it! :partying_face: ". As simple/silly as that sounds, that kind of ‘positive feedback’ is literally how the brain reinforces habit-building.
  • If I successfully averted the dread/anxiety/overwhelm, and I’m still feeling like I’ve got energy/motivation to keep going, I might just start up another review session – and again use Wrap Up to end it before it gets too long. Otherwise, well at least I did some reviews for now, and I can come back later to do more.

By ‘allowing’ myself to cut review sessions into shorter chunks like this, I can successfully complete many review sessions, over and over. Even if I have a HUGE mountain of reviews, by steadily chipping away at them like this, I can maintain a steady pace – while importantly maintaining the positive feedback of repeated successful sessions – and therefore eventually conquer any number of Reviews in my queue.

(Importantly, it also requires not adding (too many) new items into my review stack, whether that be by doing new Learn sessions, or by manually adding items from item pages.)

I currently have over 2500 reviews in my queue (due to going a little crazy adding tons of Vocab items in the past few months), but by using the above method I can just happily chip chip away at the stack, day by day, and I know that eventually I will get my reviews back down to normal levels.

My point here is simply that I’m guessing you have fewer than 2500 reviews in your queue once BP gets back online. So, if you were to also make use of this idea (keep review sessions short/manageable with Wrap-Up, and just keep making steady progress day by day), you will also be able to tackle your review stack, no matter how big it is. (Just don’t go nuts like I did and add more items to your Reviews, either with Learn sessions or by manually adding them.) :sweat_smile:

4 Likes
#4091

Wow…2500 reviews? I get stressed with my 50 or 60 reviews I have to do a day after learning 3-4 new grammar lol. I like the attitude towards it though for sure

3 Likes
Site availability issue
#4092

you get 50-60 reviews? i do the same with 3-4 grammar points, yet yesterday i got 255 reviews and kept pace for like 3 weeks prior (i do at every chance i get) so unless i have 100 ghosts, i dont know how that works. i also learn 5 vocab a day (which dosent have ghosts so it takes 2 seconds). anyways after all its a long journey, not a rush.

(not much of a bug report, bit off track)

3 Likes
#4093

To be fair, Vocab reviews are orders-of-magnitude easier / less-mental-effort than Grammar reviews. Out of all those 2500-ish reviews, only about 80 are Grammar reviews at any given time, and they are thus spread out very thin among the total reviews I do during a session.

(I could handle my Grammar reviews separately – effectively keep them at 0 day by day, if I wanted to – and doing Vocabs separately. But I’m just enjoying the simplicity of ‘not thinking about it’ and just doing all reviews mixed. I understand that this is drastically slowing down my Grammar progress, but in fact that’s fine by me because my biggest weakpoint right now is lack of Vocab!)

5 Likes
#4094

yeah 50-60 is my normal amount. I used to get much more before but that was because of my conjugation being bad. Now it takes me 1 or 2 fails on a new point and I seem to grasp it enough. But yeah I agree, it definitely is a long journey and should be treated slowly and patiently.

4 Likes
#4095

2.5k reviews! :frowning: Mine will probably be closer to 30 grammar haha, orders of magnitude less.

2 Likes
#4096

My concern with all of this is not so much my reviews piling up, but losing my streak! I don’t anticipate them taking that long to fix the issue, but I still can’t help but worry :joy_cat:.

BTW, my streak is not even impressive (maybe around 240 days) compared to the time I’ve been a member (probably around 750 days), but I’m trying to use it more for accountability for myself that I’m studying everyday.

6 Likes
#4097

Same. I already emailed them to pretty please preserve my streak. If the site isn’t back up in the next 40 minutes, it’s gone unfortunately :’)

4 Likes
#4098

It’s getting a bit annoying

1 Like
#4099

i can access the bunpro dashboard at the very least through the mobile app and you can access the vacation mode through settings menu there to preserve your streak. Give it a shot for sure

4 Likes
#4100

Surely they’ll just freeze/extend everyone’s streak?

4 Likes
#4101

I am experiencing the same issues. Bummer :anguished:

#4102

No worries!
We understand how hard each of you has worked to build and maintain your learning streaks, so even if your streak is lost, you can set it manually in special setting in here back to the value it should be. (when the server will be working again)

Your hard-earned streaks should be OK. :tada:

Also the offline mode in mobile app is working and you can still do the reviews and sync them when server will be back online, to force it you will have to turn off data or enable airplane mode during reviews.

Cheers,
Dominic from Bunpro Team

8 Likes
#4103

Except the app only seems to synchronize reviews when you actively open it up, so it does not know about any reviews done on other devices since the last time it synchronized. If I open mine now it tells me I have way more reviews than I actually should have. Not really related to the current issue, but it has come up a few times now that I wanted to use the offline mode but I couldn’t, because you need an internet connection to set it up beforehand.

2 Likes
#4104

Hey everyone!

Here’s the official thread for reports related to the recent downtime.

If your report is related to this issue, please use that post!
Sorry for the inconvenience, and thank you for your patience!

2 Likes
#4105

It looks like it’s fixed! Thank you so much!

image
image867×510 49.8 KB

4 Likes