K5 Monthly Update, October 2003 (Site News) By rusty Wed Oct 29th, 2003 at 02:18:17 AM EST
	This month: Code work, known bugs, rating stats, and good CMF news.

Site work After the rating changes and associated code update, I discovered and fixed a problem with the archive which had apparently been keeping it from updating for a while. It's now back up to date, which means everything older than about nine months is archived, and it seems to working again. Numerous bugs in the new code were fixed, with a couple of notable exceptions: Nancy Drew and the Case of the Missing Stories: There are some archived stories and diaries that show up on index pages, but falsely claim to be unfound when you try to display the whole story. All I know right now is they are there in the database. I don't know why they aren't showing up. I will get to this one soon. Rating old pre-rated comments: If you have a comment that got one or two ratings under the old rating system, and you go to rate it now, your rating will be saved, but the comment's existing score doesn't change. This is because the new system requires four ratings to update the comment with a score, but doesn't actually un-score comments that already have one. Considering it's a moot point from here on out, it doesn't seem very pressing, and probably won't be fixed unless someone really wants to send a patch. Otherwise, performance has been, since the archive fix, in a state which I will not characterize in any particular way for fear of drawing the wrath of the gods back down upon us. Let's just say that "bad" isn't a word I'd use and leave it at that. The Long-Awaited New Database Server... ...will be long-awaited a while longer. I'm told (after finally getting someone to answer the question) that the old new one was somehow "misappropriated," and the new new one has arrived at the colo. It has not yet appeared on our network, so I have no real proof of this. I continue to pester them daily. Rating stuff Yes, I did change the threshold to four ratings instead of six. Many of you noticed, and in fact many of you asked for it beforehand, and I thought you were right. It wasn't meant to be a secret, I just don't always post about it every time I tweak a knob, so if something seems to have been changed, you can be pretty sure I changed it. :-) I collected some numbers that may or may not be interesting to fans of meta-wankery K5 statistical analysis. It's been about three weeks since the change, so I broke down ratings as a percentage of total from the last three weeks, the three weeks preceding the change, and all-time before the change. The data looks like this: Since the change: Rating   Number  Percentage ------   ------  ----------   3      39406      49%    2       9591      12%    1       7657       9%  -1,0     23822      30%  Total    80476   Last three weeks before the change: Rating   Number  Percentage ------   ------  ----------   5      47123      59%    4       7147       9%    3       4749       6%    2       4546       6%    1      13161      16%    0       3124       4%    Total    79850 All-time, before the change: Rating   Number  Percentage ------   ------  ----------   5      461345     62%    4       72431     10%    3       47521      6%    2       34850      5%    1       96919     13%    0       32675      4%  Total    745741 First, the last three weeks before the change matches pretty well with the all-time percentages, though shifted downward slightly. Obviously zero ratings have increased dramatically since then, though total rating activity has remained pretty close to what it was before. I wanted to check out the effect on hidden comments, and it will probably surprise no one to find that there are more hidden now than before. Since looking at the three weeks right before the change for comparison doesn't really work here (since comments posted earlier could be and were hidden after the ratings changed), I picked a random three week period in April of this year to compare to. Total comments in the last three weeks.....21169 Hidden comments in the last three weeks.......75 Total comments, April 1 to April 22........40770 Hidden comments, April 1 to April 22..........13 What does it all mean? Your guess is as good as mine. I have a few ideas about what's going on though. Obviously there are many more people able to rate comments zero now. Previously, someone who wasn't trusted might have rated something one that she might now rate zero, helping to hide it as opposed to actually helping keep it un-hidden. Since hidden comments are now optionally visible to everyone, there may not be as much social pressure against using that rating, since you are not permanently "censoring" anything. Not that you were before, but there was more of a perception that you were, and it was harder to see things that had been hidden. Also the new scale is shifted more in favor of hiding than the old one was. My guess is that some combination of all these factors is going on, but I have no particular proof of which is more important, if any. I can say that no one has emailed me about rating abuse since the change happened, so in that sense at least it was successful. I think the minimum number of ratings is to thank for that, since it seemed like the majority of "modstorms" consisted of someone going on a tear against someone else and then getting it out of his system and feeling kind of silly about it. I think when that happens now, no one really notices. It is also interesting to note that there were almost twice as many comments in that three week period in April as in the past three weeks. There were about the same proportion more stories as well. Just as another random data point, there were 48306 ratings made during that three weeks in April. What all of that means, I leave to you to decide. CMF News At last, we get to the thing I've been putting off writing this in order to be able to include. The first CMF directors meeting will be taking place today, October 29th, by teleconference. It gets underway at 1pm PST (4pm EST and 9pm GMT, to cover the directors timezone spread). Thanks to MattOly, if all goes well anyone can listen in live online as it happens. Tragically, we can only stream in .wma format right now. Matt's working on getting mp3 streaming, but it won't be ready for today. Anyway, if you can listen to streaming windows media (and I'm told it can be done on Linux -- perhaps a commenter would like to explain how), it'll be at mms://63.251.167.39/ovs3, starting at 1pm PST. After the call is done it will also be converted to mp3 and put up on the CMF site (see below), if you can't listen live and still want to hear it. If you plan to listen to the call, you might want to take a look at the agenda first. The CMF website is also temporarily live with a lame static page so I can at least get news up on it. I'm working on the proper site, but the news page will be updated in the meantime when things happen. I will get the things we do have so far up there as well, as soon as I can. If you're interested in the CMF, there are finally some ways to communicate with us and, more importantly, each other. We've got two mailing lists, both at lists.collaborativemedia.org. CMF-directors is a list that anyone can join but only directors can post to, and CMF-discuss is open posting. And yes, there are archives. There is also an IRC channel at #cmf on irc.slashnet.org where interested folks have been known to hang out. In conclusion I would like to point out that, in my opinion, a monthly update means that it happens at least once a month, and preferably not on the last day of one month and the first of the next. Not necessarily that there are exactly 30 (or 31) days between updates. So please don't panic if thirty days goes by and I haven't updated yet, as I probably have a reason. If a month comes and goes without an update in it, then you may excoriate me to your heart's content. :-)

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I plan to tune in to the conference call: Yes 17% No 82% Votes: 52 Results | Other Polls

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mms://63.251.167.39/ovs3 the agenda CMF website lists.collaborativemedia.org More on Kuro5hin.org Also by rusty