Well, I'm thinking of ways to handle threads in message boards. Assuming that there can be infinite original posts, there might be a finite number of comments per original post. It is that part that I'm addressing.
It's not exactly "dotted quad", but it's close: FFF.FFF.FFF.... (Base 16 0-F)
Every "level" has 4095 siblings. Each time a new response is created, it either increments the current sibling level or adds a new dotted level. Threads have rather easy management and a calculable "number" for uniqueness. The unique identifier for a post/comment stores into a string instead of a numeric. The number of "."s indicate the depth of the post. A 256 byte string could handle 64 levels of children, grandchildren, etc.
I would estimate even the longest threads generally taper off at 16 or so *levels*, even if there are 4000 posts replying to the original poster.
In essence, this could allow 4096^64 total messages (1.55251809 × 10^231) with a numeric management overhead of 256 bytes per post.
Showing posts with label posts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label posts. Show all posts
Friday, March 7, 2008
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
An Alternative Thumbs up/down
When I ws an avid Woot patron, it was important to me to find out whether or not it was worth buying the One Item a day ..whatever was on sale
But that was lame because of the people who clog the message boards up with inane posts.
I want to propose a Signal/Noise choice. Is this relevant to the conversation? Signal. Is this not? Noise. Further, as people vote on such matters, the sorting now becomes based upon Signal/relevance and not time or date of post. Threads are not needed. That is to say, if you want to read threads, you can do so by branch tags. The idea of branch tags is something to the effect of:
Original Poster Tag (ex: Money) Post#x, Money
Response to Original Post Tag Post#y, (Money-level1), Money
Response2 to OP Tag Post#z, (Money-level1), Money
I obviously haven't fleshed this out fully, yet. The concept is not to click to see the thread, it is to click to see the posts tagged with the original post. The generation of the tags to be used is the fun part. I might get there some day
But that was lame because of the people who clog the message boards up with inane posts.
I want to propose a Signal/Noise choice. Is this relevant to the conversation? Signal. Is this not? Noise. Further, as people vote on such matters, the sorting now becomes based upon Signal/relevance and not time or date of post. Threads are not needed. That is to say, if you want to read threads, you can do so by branch tags. The idea of branch tags is something to the effect of:
Original Poster Tag (ex: Money) Post#x, Money
Response to Original Post Tag Post#y, (Money-level1), Money
Response2 to OP Tag Post#z, (Money-level1), Money
I obviously haven't fleshed this out fully, yet. The concept is not to click to see the thread, it is to click to see the posts tagged with the original post. The generation of the tags to be used is the fun part. I might get there some day
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