Why not both?

Post #258,633 by admin 6/12/06 4:51:13 PM 6/12/06 4:52:25 PM Reply	Why not both? We basically have both here. Sometimes someone just starts a discussion. Other times they post a link to an article and that starts a discussion. I'd like to formalize that second form. So basically you'd have the standard, always-there categories: Open, News, Politics, etc. Then you'd have an article that someone posts under some set of categories. This article can then have it's own collection of threads, which would "live" under the same categories that the article is posted under. There's no reason at this point not to support journals and private messages using the same framework. My current thinking is this: newsreader-style tuples to track read status on a per-post basis mark a post ID as "first of the current posts". This gets moved up every week, and everything before that ID is considered 'read' no matter what, unless someone has marked it as 'saved' for themselves. This keeps the querysets manageable. Trim up the read-tuples whenever posts are archived. The alternative is to use the current system of marking a category read and allowing saved threads. Article threads would get marked read along with their categories in this approach. Although you could do the same retire trick on old Articles and allow them to be marked read the same as a category. Regards, -scott anderson "Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson..." Edited by admin June 12, 2006, 04:52:25 PM EDT Why not both? We basically have both here. Sometimes someone just starts a discussion. Other times they post a link to an article and that starts a discussion. I'd like to formalize that second form. So basically you'd have the standard, always-there categories: Open, News, Politics, etc. Then you'd have an article that someone posts under some set of categories. This article can then have it's own collection of threads, which would "live" under the same categories that the article is posted under. There's no reason at this point not to support journals and private messages using the same framework. My current thinking is this: newsreader-style tuples to track read status on a per-post basis mark a post ID as "first of the current posts". This gets moved up every week, and everything before that ID is considered 'read' no matter what, unless someone has marked it as 'saved' for themselves. This keeps the querysets manageable. Trim up the read-tuples whenever posts are archived. The alternative is to use the current system of marking a category read and allowing saved threads. Article threads would get marked read along with their categories in this approach. Regards, -scott anderson "Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson..." Collapse All History
Post #258,639 by drewk 6/12/06 5:09:42 PM Reply	What exactly happens each week? Do you pick a date for all users and anything before that which hasn't been explicitly saved rolls off? Or each week you find the oldest unread item for each user and set that as the "mark read" date for the category? I like the second, but I think you're talking about the first. The thing I don't like about that is that I could be away for a while, and when I come back I'd want to see the same state as when I left. (Plus new items of course.) I'm not sure how my preference would affect the queries you're doing. As to "formalizing" the articles, I'm thinking the same thing. But for it to be meaningful, I think you'd have to have some sort of restriction on who can post an article. Whether it's a user-filtered queue ala K5, editorial selection ala /., or list of approved editors ala IWE or other trade pubs. In one sense it's just another launch point, but there has to be some exclusivity to it or it's useless. That's why I suggested three different types of main page. Right now we're a free-form site. Someone using this software for a site like The Register or LinuxToday would want something that sees the article as the main thing, but with richer discussion than they have now, and a place to put open content. === Purveyor of Doc Hope's [link\|http://DocHope.com\|fresh-baked dog biscuits and pet treats]. [link\|http://DocHope.com\|http://DocHope.com]
Post #258,644 by admin 6/12/06 5:19:59 PM Reply	Re: What exactly happens each week? The idea is that posts older than say 6 months would be archived. Mark read tuples are the user ID, the begin post ID of the tuple, and the end post ID of the tuple. If a post's ID is within a tuple's range and not in a save list for the user, it's considered 'read'. So each week: Figure out the highest post ID older than 6 months. That becomes the new limiter ID. For each user, delete all read tuples where end_post_id <= limiter. If a tuple remains that has begin_post_id < limiter, set begin_post_id = limiter. Now all queries looking for unread posts do two things: add a where clause: id > limiter look in the read tuples for that user to make sure it isn't marked read look in the saved list to see if it's saved anyways. For the alternative, each category and article gets a mark read date per user. Then the articles go through the same aging process (but probably something more like the last 50 articles, or whatever) and the mark read stamps get pruned accordingly. And actually what I'm talking about with respect to articles is original content (like one of Andrew's amazing culinary discussions) with trusted users and possibly submission queues. Links to outside articles would have a submission queue as well, with a link and a fair-use quote. Regards, -scott anderson "Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson..."
Post #258,736 by drewk 6/13/06 9:00:48 AM Reply	Guess I was being pessimistic Not having done the math, I didn't think it would be practical to actually keep the tuples you describe for all users for any useful length of time. Now if I'm reading you right, 6 months becomes a hard limit, and if you're away longer than that you lose your history? Seems like plenty long enough to me. I'm just surprised that you can keep tuples that long for the number of users and posts you cite without killing performance. === Purveyor of Doc Hope's [link\|http://DocHope.com\|fresh-baked dog biscuits and pet treats]. [link\|http://DocHope.com\|http://DocHope.com]
Post #258,740 by admin 6/13/06 9:24:21 AM Reply	Tuple space depends on holes. If people don't reliably mark everything read, then the tuple-space will grow very large. However, I think most people keep up-to-date on that sort of thing, but yes, this sort of system can develop some pathological behavior. Regards, -scott anderson "Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson..."

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