TTW Wishlist Thread

i3602u

Rookie
This was inspired from some discussion in another thread where it was suggested that signatures be unique to each post. What improvements would you make to TTW?

Edit: Sorry for the feeling of limbo here, it's not easy to merge threads without having really weird artifacts. Consider above post as OP.


I see that the tt boards when you change your signature all your old post the sig gets changed. So this can be misleading because all your post prior to being a MRT now have MRT on them

it means this vBulletin software that tw uses has a bug :p. just means as an IT professional by day I wouldn't use vBulletin
 
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mikeler

Moderator
It was just an observation. Not proposing he do anything

it means this vBulletin software that tw uses has a bug :p. just means as an IT professional by day I wouldn't use vBulletin


Not really a bug, just a lack of a feature. :)
 

i3602u

Rookie
Well how ever you put it the software doesn't work correctly


Message + sig = post
What they did was just have message = post and just tacked on the sig so hence when your sig changes all your previous post changes
 

mikeler

Moderator
Well how ever you put it the software doesn't work correctly


Message + sig = post
What they did was just have message = post and just tacked on the sig so hence when your sig changes all your previous post changes


They would have to add a separate field to have a 1:1 relationship between post and sig. Probably not worth it IMHO.
 

i3602u

Rookie
@mikeler - no it wouldn't be a big deal to change the way it's written they could do it with out adding another field. #justsaying would be better because some times you base what you read on the persons expertise.

@themichmann nice job passing the MRT
 

diredesire

Adjunct Moderator
@mikeler - no it wouldn't be a big deal to change the way it's written they could do it with out adding another field. #justsaying would be better because some times you base what you read on the persons expertise.

@themichmann nice job passing the MRT

IMO, it actually makes much more sense to have the sig be a separate portion of your post. IF the sig were part of your post, The board would have to essentially copy/paste text into every post that a user has made. If it's inserted at page-render, the server only has to store one instance globally. This would save a huge amount of database space, as well as data that needs to be served to the end user.

Additionally, it's "nice" to have your sig updated automatically for a few reasons. For instance, what if someone had an image sig [we don't have this feature enabled here...]. The image would exacerbate the above problem several-fold. If you had to keep a copy of the image sig for every post for every user, it'd get a little out of hand very quickly. Of course, you could be intelligent about this by design, and keep a single copy of each sig that a user's made, but the point still stands. It's also a "nice" thing to have an always-up-to-date stats section in your sig that carries from thread to thread (although there is easy arguments against this, too...).
 

mikeler

Moderator
^^^ Yep. Whether you add another field or delimit the post from the sig, the increase in database size is probably not worth the minor benefit.

Congrats on the MRT Mitch.
 

i3602u

Rookie
It wouldn't be a huge amount of space that they save by not having the sig as part of the post. Also storage is cheep.having done this way you also avoid another seek because it has to go to the table that has your user info and pull up your sig.

Also Mitch could put the year next to his MRT that way people reading his older post know he was not one back then haha :p. anyway congrats Mitch
 

themitchmann

Hall of Fame
It wouldn't be a huge amount of space that they save by not having the sig as part of the post. Also storage is cheep.having done this way you also avoid another seek because it has to go to the table that has your user info and pull up your sig.

Also Mitch could put the year next to his MRT that way people reading his older post know he was not one back then haha :p. anyway congrats Mitch

If I were to do that, I'd expect everyone to post their birthdays so we can all know when a pre-teen is pretending to have viable information about Federer's racquet changes ;)
 
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diredesire

Adjunct Moderator
It wouldn't be a huge amount of space that they save by not having the sig as part of the post. Also storage is cheep.having done this way you also avoid another seek because it has to go to the table that has your user info and pull up your sig.

Also Mitch could put the year next to his MRT that way people reading his older post know he was not one back then haha :p. anyway congrats Mitch

It's not just storage that's the problem, there's (especially for vbull) database complexity. Additionally, if we're talking about SERVER storage, that ain't that cheap. If you get into the multiple TB range, and you require RAID/backups, that sort of solution can definitely hurt your pocketbooks.

Edit: especially if you consider current hard drive prices that went way up due to flooding in Thailand. If you start looking at enterprise/raid rated/optimized drives... it just gets worse and worse...
 
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mikeler

Moderator
It's not just storage that's the problem, there's (especially for vbull) database complexity. Additionally, if we're talking about SERVER storage, that ain't that cheap. If you get into the multiple TB range, and you require RAID/backups, that sort of solution can definitely hurt your pocketbooks.

Edit: especially if you consider current hard drive prices that went way up due to flooding in Thailand. If you start looking at enterprise/raid rated/optimized drives... it just gets worse and worse...


Is TTW in the TB range? Sorry Mitch, for the thread derail...too lazy to start a new thread right before bed. ;)
 

i3602u

Rookie
That sounds good mike

Diredesire I know about other complexity I work in IT. What do you do by day?

Mikeler what do you do by day?

Phil
 

diredesire

Adjunct Moderator
That sounds good mike

Diredesire I know about other complexity I work in IT. What do you do by day?

Mikeler what do you do by day?

Phil

I'm an electrical engineer @ "the big" IC company.

No worries. Took the test already. Derail away.
I'll help clean this up if/when we start a thread about TW features/software discussion. (Wishlist thread would be OK with me)

Edit: I don't know the exact size of the TTW DB, I haven't ever dug far enough in the Mod CP to find out, and I'm not an actual TW employee. I know that VBB databases have proven to be problematic on really big sites (especially when adding add-on features). Ironically, one of the tech forums I visit has historically had terrible VBB DB issues... and they're a pretty big computing enthusiast site.
 

i3602u

Rookie
So yes I would like to see the sig as part of the post. If someone changes there signature and adds MRT all there old post get updated.

If some unknowing person searches these archives and sees a post from a MRT before they got MRT certified they might over value someone's post.

Being only txt in the sig it wouldn't make the database any bigger. The database if designed correctly can keep growing with out issue such as partitioning the database by year.

Storage is cheep even considering the floods
 

i3602u

Rookie
Mitch see all the trouble you cause by having MRT and no year if I didn't know you just got your MRT I would think your old post you are an expert :p

I know only take your old post with a grain of salt you new ones your an expert haha
 

i3602u

Rookie
No it won't be. So how would you address the issue of it updating the old post with current sig?

What do you think of dates so like MRT 2012
 

diredesire

Adjunct Moderator
Alright, I just moved the offending off topic posts from the other thread here, and I'm going to try to make it make sense in the current context... stand by.
 

diredesire

Adjunct Moderator
WRT wish list: I have seen a "reputation" system on other forums, and I've always wondered how it would work on a board like TTW. I'm not saying it's a good idea by any means, but the variety of discussion types on TTW is very, very broad. IMO, General Pro discussion is the "wild wild west" of the boards, seeing as it's HUGE, the volume of traffic is mind blowing, and the people who post there are very, very passionate.

A "rep" rating would help new users understand who the non-rational fanatics are relatively quickly, and those who post excellent content (stats/reasonable/logical counter arguments) can get + votes for well thought out content. Obviously there will always be the "rep points" wars, but it has interesting implications. I think boards like Racquets/Strings & Stringing/Machines/techniques could also use a reps system. Those people out there who spout info without a real/useful background on the topics shouldn't have their posts taken as fact/law, and it's easy to impression people who are new into learning about different topics. I see a LOT of regurgitated "rules of thumbs"/"facts"/etc that have no scientific/empirical basis passed off as hard rules. I think this is dangerous for the long term.


I see that the tt boards when you change your signature all your old post the sig gets changed. So this can be misleading because all your post prior to being a MRT now have MRT on them

it means this vBulletin software that tw uses has a bug :p. just means as an IT professional by day I wouldn't use vBulletin

IMO, the system is fine as it is, but I'm happy to agree to disagree. If someone is testing (and passes) the MRT test, it's not like their advice (at least reasonably-recent advice) is useless. Sure, having an indicator of when they passed their test is useful, but IMHO this is an isolated case, and slightly nit-picky.

Well how ever you put it the software doesn't work correctly


Message + sig = post
What they did was just have message = post and just tacked on the sig so hence when your sig changes all your previous post changes

This is pretty much exactly how it is rendered on the page. They take the post you type in, and then tack on the sig to result in a post. One example of your idea above not working is: What if a poster has this in their current sig: "My favorite player is currently Roger Federer"? Context is useful when reading a post, but something superficial (not all sigs have useful information in them!) doesn't need to be kept for legacy/archive purposes, IMO.

@mikeler - no it wouldn't be a big deal to change the way it's written they could do it with out adding another field. #justsaying would be better because some times you base what you read on the persons expertise.

I'm not sure if you've ever written any code that is big enough to really compare to a VBB type release, or complex enough. You mentioned above that you're an "IT Professional," but that doesn't really mean anything to me (no offense intended). An IT professional can range from a desktop support type role to a network admin. Neither of these necessarily means that you're well enough versed to really comment on the complexity of a code change. IMO, you're simplifying/glossing over a code change and I don't know how I feel about that...

As far as context, yes, i agree with you. It is NICE to have some frame of reference when reading posts, but it should be universally understood that ANYTHING you read online (be it from an expert/MRT or a beginning stringer) should be taken with a grain of salt. Spending enough time around these parts gives you some "filtering goggles" so you know whose opinions are worth their salt..

If some unknowing person searches these archives and sees a post from a MRT before they got MRT certified they might over value someone's post.

Being only txt in the sig it wouldn't make the database any bigger. The database if designed correctly can keep growing with out issue such as partitioning the database by year.

Storage is cheep even considering the floods

Like I said before, there's limits to your first argument. What difference is there really between posts <3 months before an MRT certification? What's the limit? 6 months? A year? I personally value the opinion of MANY posters here, and a large proportion of them don't have an MRT.

I'm not directly referring to size, there's also complexity. If you aren't adding a field to the DB, how are you storing separate sigs? You HAVE to add something to the DB, and that implies code rewrites. Even if the change is simple, small changes can have cascading effects throughout multiple code modules. I'm not saying it's going to be painstakingly hard, by any means. However, this sort of change is on the developers of VBB, not TTW.

Additionally, I'm not sure of TW's hosting agreements, but if you're being hosted by someone else, additional storage isn't 1:1 cost with market value. Unless you're self hosting or using a Colo, it's unlikely you can just drop in a few extra drives and call it a day. Besides an array rebuild (assuming you have enough slots, etc), there may be host limits. Having to have someone else rebuild and "install" drives (regardless of how cheap they may or may not be) is going to cost a lot of money. I know from an IT perspective a few grand here or there isn't that much, but IMO it's non-trivial when TTW is only an indirect revenue generator.

No it won't be. So how would you address the issue of it updating the old post with current sig?

What do you think of dates so like MRT 2012
A date is fine, but that's entirely up to the poster. I don't think it's something that has to be tracked as a necessity. My summary of this current feature wishlist is: Everyone should be reading things with a grain of salt. Online advice is NEVER guaranteed to be useful.
 

mikeler

Moderator
Thanks for moving the thread DD. I have never worked on anything close to the size of TTW, so it is interesting to read your post above.
 

i3602u

Rookie
Hi DD,

Yes recent advice from someone who has just passed MRT is useful no question about that. Post when they first started posting could be less useful.

Yes I do agree not everything in a SIG is worth saving for archive purposes.

So the type of IT professional I am is my background is in Applied Networking and Systems Administration. I do mainly Systems Admin work I also do code and work with databases. I have not written code big enough to compare with VBB type release. Code these days is actually simpler then it used to be with modern frameworks greatly improving the development cycle of code.

The way you can do it with out adding a field to the DB is before the post is written to the database you append what ever your current sig is to the end of your post thus no extra field is needs to be added.

For the TT they might not have an array. It depends the data being stored on the don’t have a high value if they lose 24hr behind. They could have warm backup.

Phil
 

diredesire

Adjunct Moderator
Hi DD,

Yes recent advice from someone who has just passed MRT is useful no question about that. Post when they first started posting could be less useful.

Yes I do agree not everything in a SIG is worth saving for archive purposes.

So the type of IT professional I am is my background is in Applied Networking and Systems Administration. I do mainly Systems Admin work I also do code and work with databases. I have not written code big enough to compare with VBB type release. Code these days is actually simpler then it used to be with modern frameworks greatly improving the development cycle of code.

The way you can do it with out adding a field to the DB is before the post is written to the database you append what ever your current sig is to the end of your post thus no extra field is needs to be added.

For the TT they might not have an array. It depends the data being stored on the don’t have a high value if they lose 24hr behind. They could have warm backup.

Phil

Wouldn't a warm backup cost more than an array, depending on type? I'm assuming >1 disk.

As far as the DB, that goes back to one of my earlier points... if you append the sig on, you are adding on size to every post. Depending on the sig, this could be a few bytes to ~1K. It's trivial in the small picture, but with the amount of users, and estimating roughly half of the users having a sig. Worst case you could be ballooning the size of the stored data by a LOT. IMO it's very inefficient, especially when the sig is repeated so many times. Like I said, you can design this better, for instance storing each sig a user has, and having a lookup table, but this would require a recode/recompile.
 

i3602u

Rookie
Hey,

Sorry for not replying soon been busy at work.

A warm backup wouldn't cost much pretty cheep. Array was really designed for back in the days when disks were not reliable.

Yes if you are conserened about database growing you could store all the users sigs in a table. You would have an auto inc number and user ID and sig ID

It would not be major code rewrite you have MVC frameworks which make changing stuff a lot quicker
 
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