this could very well be a coincidence, but tonight and last night I've been seeing a lot of "Error: Server Error" when I try to get onto the site. Sometimes it seems that the site is a lot slower late at night than it is during the day

(by the way, I don't know why this got posted twice. Bizarre)

There have been some performance issues with app engine today: You can actually check the status here http://code.google.com/status/appengine Those errors however i am not sure if they are only due to the performance. There have been more than normal issues this weekend. Still don't bother me to much since it has limited impact on my study anyhow.

I can't even get to the practice page right now. Also most of the formatting isn't loading (including for this page).

Same here, it is much worse now. I guess I have to take a break and go to bed instead. The funny thing is that there is no disturbances reported from Google. Just checked the skritter.cn address instead ad that seems to load ok, at least now. Maybe I give that a try.

App Engine is throwing intermittent errors. Sorry about this! I've credited your guys' accounts with an extra day to make up for the lack of access.

Nick, you don't have to do that for me. Appreciate the customer care but I am very happy with the service anyway and do not need to be credited. I just hope there where an option to sign a life time subscription. By the way, the skritter.cn url is for me (from japan) for the moment very much faster than the .com URL. I will use that instead.

Same here. The site has been working on and off for me today. Inconvenient because I only have time to add new vocab during the weekend, during the rest of the week I usually only keep up with my reps.

Thanks Nick! Skritter.cn seems to be the solution here in Singapore as well. Quite fast and no problems (glad there's an alternative!).

same thing tonight

Does this happen very often? I just barely signed up, and would love to continue studying here, but not if it's unreliable. I tried skritter.cn and got errors there as well.

@gclaytonlewis No, this doesn't happen often at all. I remember 4 or 5 months ago was probably the last time it was sort of like this, but it was a lot worse back then. The site was extremely slow for about a week

I never had a day I couldn't study, though performance could be better sometimes...

Don't worry, I have always been able to study and it is seldom those error happens. A quick refresh and you are good to go again. The reason for those errors are often due to Google app engine having some cloud problems. There have been elevated task queue problems the past few days. Google add more 1000 blades/ day 7 days a week in the company so i guess it is hard to really coop up with the demand for this ever increasing trend. They have more than 1.000.000 servers today, more than 2% of the worlds total. Skritter them self are very quick to respond to any technical problem they them self might have.

@gclaytonlewis - typically, Skritter suffers when the Google App Engine screws up. Fortunately, this doesn't happen very often, and it's very rare, though not unheard of, to encounter these errors for more than an hour at a time.

If you want, you can look at it this way - a lot of the faithful users have run into these errors once or twice, and they don't keep us away. Besides, worse comes to worse and you find yourself out of luck for a day, you can spend that time studying Chinese with a different method, and the team will be happy enough to credit an extra day to your account so you aren't paying for the service when it's down.

Still, I can't think of the last time I've noticed was actually properly not working for a substantial period of time (more than a few minutes). Maybe half a year ago? A year ago? It generally runs pretty smoothly.

Good to know. Thanks, guys!