From: owner-alloy-digest To: alloy-digest@smoe.org Subject: alloy-digest V1 #68 Reply-To: alloy@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-alloy-digest Precedence: bulk X-To-Unsubscribe: Send mail to "alloy-digest-request@smoe.org" X-To-Unsubscribe: with "unsubscribe" as the body. alloy-digest Friday, 11 October 1996 Volume 01 : Number 068 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Alloy: Re: Flat Earth chat stuff. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Andrew Dinsdale Date: Thu, 10 Oct 1996 09:30:00 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Alloy: Re: Flat Earth chat stuff. Lem, Hope you don't mind my cross posting this to the alloy list. On Thu, 10 Oct 1996, Lem Bingley wrote: > Andrew, thanks for dropping into the Tap Room discussion and laying your > cards on the table. The Flat Earth Site seemed, to me, to be a site that had > been abandoned shortly after its construction, which seemed a shame since > it's such a beautiful piece of Web design. > Netrex would love to re-furbish the site and help in its maintainence, but we are a) busy and b) expensive and c) it is Thomas, Clif and Chris' baby.... btw, it was communication between Thomas and I which started 2 years ago that led to this web site. He was dabbling in this new media (and talking to the press) and I was doing. I became Webmaster for Netrex, and was able to offer Thomas the chance to put our discussions into place. I am a Dolby fan, but they (Headspace) are one of many customers (albeit a good 'un)... > As you asked for comments, I thought I'd put in my two-cents worth. > > The chat room has generated quite a bit of traffic over the months, as I'm > sure you're aware, and as I've mentioned on the current Chat Site Dump > thread, some mechanism needs to be installed whereby we won't run into > similar overload problems in the future. > We are also the developer of several web site tools, logging software, intranet products etc. Chat is scheduled to be re-written over the next few months. > It seems sensible to me to get rid of old, inactive threads from the main > chat page. The best way to do this would be to remove threads that have not > been added to for a while. A month would be a generous margin judging from > previous thread activity. > Not entirely satisfactory. The strength of the web based chat site over an email list serv is the ease an entire archive of a thread can be read. Someone can step into the thread whenever they want and add their 2 cents. The delete/purge system we have is much more complex. It allows the chat site admin to label threads for deletion, preservation, time-out --- as well as edit threads and move content between threads. > That raises the question of what to do with the old threads. Some old > threads will be worth more than others, but I think we shouldn't blind > ourselves to the fact that the majority of threads are going to have very > little historical value. Most don't deserve to be pickled, especially if > that will cause storage problems for you guys who have to manage with > limited resources. > Storage 'space' is not really the problem. The problem is that the chat site is a database with fields for handle, date, thread ID, content. The HTML page is made on the fly from the DB every time that thread is requested...the db was getting so big (unwieldy) that when pulled back the web server would swap out! Under normal circumstances the machine just slows down -- but with www.HEADSPACE.com taking massive hits (and using finite memory too) the connection to the DB would time-out. We also think that something was corrupt with the data. (hint: restoring might be time consuming, so if someone wants to email me HTML of the important threads please do so -- do not send attachments, and include no other comments, signatures in the correspondance, we'll be able to throw that online as an interim step.... and calm all you regulars down!!). > As you suggest, it would be a good idea to archive dead threads as flat HTML > files. It would then be possible to note which archived threads are being > accessed, and how often. Perhaps if an archived thread is not accessed for > more than two months, then it's time to flush it. The onus would then be on > chat room participants to keep threads alive if they think they have value - > they simply need to read them from time to time. > These comments are noted. I think these sorts of solutins will be implemented when we do the re-write. All ofthis kinda stuff can be automated. we are considering doing a custom version for you guys.... > Alternatively you might use the flatearth-l mailing list to alert members > when a clear-out is necessary, so that we might have some say in what goes > and what stays. hmmm. That list is not really our responsiblity. It is a little under utilized. I wonder if the busy-than-hell folks at Headspace even know it exists!! ____________________________________________________________________________ Andrew P. Dinsdale - Director, Interactive | andrewd@netrex.com Business Development | Netrex, Inc | http://www.netrex.com/ Web Design, CUSTOM CGI, Web<-->Database & Java! | 1.810.352.9643 ========================================================================== "Providing businesses and organizations with secure Internet solutions." ------------------------------ End of alloy-digest V1 #68 **************************