Basenotes down.....again....again.....again........... :(

[CHSeifert]

What the heck is going on at that site - it almost down once every month now

I have a serious time staying dedicated to a forum that is constantly down because of this and that.....and what not - not saying it's an easy job to keep a huge forum alive, but look at this place, it's pretty stable and only during the hottest period during a day will the server be slow here - but I have never experienced any down time here during the year I have been a member here.

Basenotes have been down 8-10 times during the year I have been a member over there - and also much of the debate over there is staring to get a bit too niche snobby for my taste anyway......so maybe this is the time to cut the relationship

I have a frag collection closing in on 325 full bottles (50 of them 50 ml or 75 ml, the rest 100ml/125ml/200ml) and maybe 50 samples (I use my samples fast and throw them out to get the real stuff if I like the frag), the 40-50 bottles of my collection being niche, so I know what I like - and some niche stuff is very good, whereas with most in life, you don't always get better quality the higher the price and the more niche the frag is - on the contrary sometimes I get very good designer value frags, that can beat a lot of the niche frags I have....YMMV

I find it harder and harder to stay loyal to a forum that is constantly down for days and weeks sometimes........

What do you think ?

 

[Catalin]

I'm frustrated by Basenotes too; it's been down several times in the last month. It is a good forum, but seriously....

 

[Oscroft]

I'm a new user at basenotes, but over the month or so I've been using it I've found it extremely unreliable. As well as actually being down, as it is now, about 50% of the time I try to access it it's just not available, presumably because it doesn't have the server capacity to handle the demand. It works for a while, but then I get repeated timeouts and server resets and I can't get near it for an hour or more - then it's accessible for a while, before becoming inaccessible again.

But hey, it's free - so I guess I don't really get to make any demands of it.

 

[mdunn]

I sympathise with the basenotes team - there is a lot of headache in keepin a large growing forum up and running efficiently.

In unrelated news, the frag forum here is working perfectly

 

[CHSeifert]

I'm a new user at basenotes, but over the month or so I've been using it I've found it extremely unreliable. As well as actually being down, as it is now, about 50% of the time I try to access it it's just not available, presumably because it doesn't have the server capacity to handle the demand. It works for a while, but then I get repeated timeouts and server resets and I can't get near it for an hour or more - then it's accessible for a while, before becoming inaccessible again.

But hey, it's free - so I guess I don't really get to make any demands of it.

I agree, as long as I don't actual make any financial contribution to Basenotes, I really should shut up about down time and stuff like that, but I'm on forums like Basenotes all the time and only Basenotes seem to have the same server downtime problems over and over again.....

I simply lose interest in Basenotes and now visit fragrantica.com more often , because it's always there, up and running.....

So long Basenotes - you will probably not miss me anyways, so all is fine

 

[maxman]

I wonder what their issues could be?
Purely technical? Admin issues?

 

[Oscroft]

I wonder what their issues could be?
Purely technical? Admin issues?

I was on in the minutes leading up to the latest downtime, and just before it went down I started getting programming error messages in various parts of the screen, followed by "Database error" on every page - looks technical to me.

 

[mdevine]

I like their Wardrobe section, where it makes it easy to keep track of what I've worn and when. Unfortunately, they seem to be down at least once every week or two. It also seems to drop a fragrance or two from my wardrobe fairly often. Some of the reviews are helpful, but I prefer to read the reviews in the Scent of the Day Forum here. There are some incredibly informed members at B&B and they write very well. One or two posts from someone I trust here is usually more helpful than a couple pages of reviews over there. I try to keep in mind that it isn't a zero sum game; I can get a benefit from both sites.

Mike

 

[Oscroft]

I like their Wardrobe section, where it makes it easy to keep track of what I've worn and when.

Yes, I like that - it's also handy for keeping a track of the fragrances I want to sample.

 

[Renato1]

Grant at Basenotes has tried time and again to move the whole site to different servers which he was assured would cope with the ever increasing traffic, and time and again, it hasn't worked well. And then the site has been attacked several times by hackers.

I think discussion over there is relatively good at the moment, as there is a lot revolving around the mundane designer scents. Yes, there is a lot of discussion around ultra obscure niche scents I'm never likely to come across. Most of the more easily found niche scents (with the exception of Creed) have become old hat there.

The problem with Basenotes is that it attracts a strong core of enthusiasts from the 5% of the population who can't tell the difference between a masculine and a feminine scent - something that most 5 year olds can do without difficulty. Some five or six years ago, the Male Discussion forum became ridiculous, where every second thread was about wearing women's scents, and how poor and unsophisticated masculine scents were in comparison, how marketers had brainwashed the population with the concept of masculine and feminine scents, and how real aficionados should be wearing women's scents, and that those who didn't were unsophisticated slobs etc, etc. What's the point of a Male Fragrance discussion site that is anti-male scents?

I was one of the few who kept taking pot shots at the proponents of those propositions - people can wear whatever they want, but don't start putting down masculine scents and the people who like wearing masculine scents. I did get quite a few PMs thanking me for some of those pot shots. Eventually some sanity did return.

I still miss the early days of Basenotes - where say, guys would attack Boss Bottled/No6 for being yet another girly/pansy scent to come out - and what ever happened to real men's scents? (Which made me cringe a bit, as I'd just bought it).
Cheers,
Renato

 

[CHSeifert]

Grant at Basenotes has tried time and again to move the whole site to different servers which he was assured would cope with the ever increasing traffic, and time and again, it hasn't worked well. And then the site has been attacked several times by hackers.

I think discussion over there is relatively good at the moment, as there is a lot revolving around the mundane designer scents. Yes, there is a lot of discussion around ultra obscure niche scents I'm never likely to come across. Most of the more easily found niche scents (with the exception of Creed) have become old hat there.

The problem with Basenotes is that it attracts a strong core of enthusiasts from the 5% of the population who can't tell the difference between a masculine and a feminine scent - something that most 5 year olds can do without difficulty. Some five or six years ago, the Male Discussion forum became ridiculous, where every second thread was about wearing women's scents, and how poor and unsophisticated masculine scents were in comparison, how marketers had brainwashed the population with the concept of masculine and feminine scents, and how real aficionados should be wearing women's scents, and that those who didn't were unsophisticated slobs etc, etc. What's the point of a Male Fragrance discussion site that is anti-male scents?

I was one of the few who kept taking pot shots at the proponents of those propositions - people can wear whatever they want, but don't start putting down masculine scents and the people who like wearing masculine scents. I did get quite a few PMs thanking me for some of those pot shots. Eventually some sanity did return.

I still miss the early days of Basenotes - where say, guys would attack Boss Bottled/No6 for being yet another girly/pansy scent to come out - and what ever happened to real men's scents? (Which made me cringe a bit, as I'd just bought it).
Cheers,
Renato

I still enjoy Boss Bottled No.6 - even though it's a bit tame and neutral, I still enjoy wearing it once every 2 or 3 months - I sometimes mix it with YSL L'Homme or L'Homme Libre.

While I agree that basically scent has no gender, I just still have to agree that some scents are just too much on the feminine side of things and should NOT IMHO YMMV be worn by a male, unless you're gay or androgynous (not that there is anything wrong with that)
I suspect quite a few wearers of strong female frags are just that, but of course you also see the regular Joe Testo Muscle Man wear a frag aimed at women - but tell you what: I may see 1 in 10,000 or less males who enjoy wearing frags aimed at women.

But on the other hand, females wearing males perfumes is perfectly fine, so they DO have a point there.
I personally would wear a frag aimed at women, if I really liked it and I also wear a good deal of niche frags that are unisex.

But as with color - I still do find that scent has a gender to a certain extent.
A guy wearing pink pants is perfectly Okayyyy, but you know what - pink pants is for girls and women, so there you have it - pink is a color better suited for women than men IMHO

I still have a pink shirt and a pink polo that I wear from time to time - no problems with that - but pink is just not the most masculine color in the world - and same goes for certain flowery fragrances, that just seem clearly better suited for women.
Nothing wrong with a man who wears Dior Poison or Chanel No.5 - to me they are just frags aimed and better suited for women, and you have to be kind of gender neutral/andro typed person to pull them off if you're a man IMHO

Just my 2 cents of not so wise wisdom

 

[Schad]

RIP Basenotes (again)

I like the discussion there but these recurring themes annoy me:
-Too much Creed bashing
-Anyone who says "this scent is too feminine" is mocked for being a neanderthal and the phrase "anyone can wear anything anytime....fragrance has no gender" line gets thrown out. I think this is B.S. and these people are not living in reality.
-Constant bashing of department store sale associates. Some guy recently was alarmed that an SA didn't know who Hedi Slimane was.
-Tiring obsession with vintage vs reformulated vs batch numbers. Absolute paranoia.
-Argumentative threads that show no passion and joy for this hobby of fragrances.

 

[Austin]

I have not been on their site for about 2 years. They need to update their software and get better servers. They have a ton of members and it shows.

 

[bmathe02]

Complaining about an Internet forum in another internet forum...... The digital age has matured nicely.

 

[Oblique Human]

I never joined up there. True, its down a lot but for a quick reference, I use their Google cache page. Amazing resource though.

 

[Lamb Root]

The only thing worse than frag heads are computer hacking frag heads.

 

[Renato1]

While I agree that basically scent has no gender, I just still have to agree that some scents are just too much on the feminine side of things and should NOT IMHO YMMV be worn by a male, unless you're gay or androgynous (not that there is anything wrong with that)
I suspect quite a few wearers of strong female frags are just that, but of course you also see the regular Joe Testo Muscle Man wear a frag aimed at women - but tell you what: I may see 1 in 10,000 or less males who enjoy wearing frags aimed at women.

But on the other hand, females wearing males perfumes is perfectly fine, so they DO have a point there.
I personally would wear a frag aimed at women, if I really liked it and I also wear a good deal of niche frags that are unisex.

Some of the female scent wearers are gay, but a lot are quite straight - they literally don't have that sense of masculine vs feminine in scents. And some of the openly gay guys seem to greatly prefer the same masculine scents that I do.

Yes, you may wear a female scent occasionally - and I'm pretty sure it'll be citrusy or woodier than usual one (i.e not Miss Cherie Dior or a Jessica Simpson one), but you won't then turn around and start considering yourself superior, and start looking down on others that don't share your enthusiasm for womanly scents.

I've actually bought a few of those much loved women's scents that they like to wear, for my wife (Black Cashmere was one). My wife always laughed - "Guy's would want to wear this?"
And when she wears the woody Black Cashmere, she laughs and says she's going to wear her Butch scent again.

I once wore a hot pink jumper to work one day. I bought it thinking it was red - I'm partially colour blind and have a tough time with many pinks. I got so many humorous jibes, including people wearing sunglasses when they came to my office - claiming I was radiating through the walls - that I had to take the jumper off and freeze the rest of the day (it was winter).

Anyhow, Grant has Basenotes up again. I think it's still a fun place, and I get quite a few chuckles going there. Though when looking for suggestions and opinions, I always check out what Scentimus has to say. And curiously, I get quite a few PMs from people asking me to elaborate on some of the scents I posted about.
Cheers,
Renato

 

[Oscroft]

I find the whole masculine/feminine fragrance thing quite interesting.

While I don't think there are hard and fast differences or boundaries that should not be crossed, I also don't think it's a free-for-all where any fragrance will work on either sex.

For me, there's a minority of male fragrances that will work for some women, and also a minority of female fragrances that will work for some men. Good old Chanel No 5, for example, is one that my wife always has a bottle of - and it's one that I quite like on me too.

But there are lots of really girly fragrances that would simply be wrong on me, and anyone telling me my mind is closed because I think that can go spray their scent where it will sting

 

[CHSeifert]

So is your Basenote website also down once again ?