A Thought.....

[stuvalt309]

I just thought of something. If new people keep on signing up for WCA competitions, then there'll be more and more WCA profiles. And when they keep accumulating up, it'll be hard to access the rankings and results lists since it'll have too much memory.

P.S. Something funny: When I didn't know too much about cubing, I thought that square ones were Siamese cubes and vice versa.

 

[Sa967St]

...what makes you think that?

 

[rjohnson_8ball]

Stefan might know best. Ten or twenty thousand profiles should be no problem for the WCA database. I suspect even 100 thousand or more would be no problem, although I doubt it would get that far. There are just under 5000 people now in WCA with Rubik's cube averages, but maybe there are a few more members who skipped that particular event.

 

[shelley]

"It will have too much memory"? What?

How do you think Google, or anything else on the web, really, manage to stay alive and functional? Was there a point to this?

 

[rjohnson_8ball]

At first I thought he was concerned about the WCA computer storage. Then I recognized when I ask for a full list from the WCA site, my computer spends considerable time downloading a very long list. A future enhancement would be to provide the list broken down into separate pages, the same way that forums and Google do. That way the client computer would see results sooner, and in smaller parts.

 

[qqwref]

Database applications these days are very robust, because of the efficient algorithms they use. What I mean is that even if you have a million results it is quite fast to search through them and give the ones with a certain property. I don't think we'll have problems with this for a long time, especially if the WCA updates their server every few years.

 

[Stefan]

If one day the server gets overwhelmed, we'll just tune the code or upgrade to a more powerful server. Or we'll delete everyone slower than me.

Are you also concerned about humanity overpopulating this planet? I don't think we have a realistic upgrade plan for that.

 

[Odin]

Are you also concerned about humanity overpopulating this planet?

I'll be honest with you Mr.Pochmann, I am. Heck, sometimes that keeps me from sleeping at night.

 

[rjohnson_8ball]

Actually, I do think the point is that a full list sent to a client machine can be slightly overwhelming. Presenting the list in pages (of perhaps 1000 entries per page) would be more manageable for clients.

 

[Stefan]

a full list sent to a client machine can be slightly overwhelming.

So don't do that.

Seriously. Top 100 should suffice most of the time, and if you really want to see more than that, would you prefer having to wade through several large pages until you find what you're looking for? I prefer getting it all at once. Besides the server not having a problem with it, that was my main argument against spliting the full list (which I believe both Josef and Clement had worked on already) and I guess in the end Ron and Clement agreed (don't remember the details of the decision). So yeah, already considered and rejected, at least for now. If you do need more than the top 100 and really can't manage the full list, let us know and we can reconsider.

 

[stuvalt309]

"It will have too much memory"? What?

How do you think Google, or anything else on the web, really, manage to stay alive and functional? Was there a point to this?

It won't happen for a very long time, but if cubing gets too popular, there may be I say over 10,000 people with results. This will prolong the time taken for results to show up on the page when you click on the link to access them. But you were right, this thread was of no great essence. I'm sorry if you were annoyed. I'll try to make more important threads in the future.

 

[KubeKid73]

a full list sent to a client machine can be slightly overwhelming.

So don't do that.

Seriously. Top 100 should suffice most of the time, and if you really want to see more than that, would you prefer having to wade through several large pages until you find what you're looking for? I prefer getting it all at once. Besides the server not having a problem with it, that was my main argument against spliting the full list (which I believe both Josef and Clement had worked on already) and I guess in the end Ron and Clement agreed (don't remember the details of the decision). So yeah, already considered and rejected, at least for now. If you do need more than the top 100 and really can't manage the full list, let us know and we can reconsider.

So just make it so you can choose how many per page. 100, 500, or all. Simple.

 

[stuvalt309]

...what makes you think that?

well... if cubing gets more popular.....

 

[Stefan]

So just make it so you can choose how many per page. 100, 500, or all. Simple.

No, not simple. Cause the next guy will request 1000, and then someone will request 300. This would clutter the menu.

In my opinion, there are three use cases:
- You want to see the top people. Top 100 sufficiently gives you that.
- You want to see all people. All people gives you that.
- You want to see your personal favourite view. Sorry, can't please everyone's quirks.

 

[KubeKid73]

What about 100, 300, 500, 750, 1000, or all? Its only 6 choices.

 

[rjohnson_8ball]

a full list sent to a client machine can be slightly overwhelming.

So don't do that.

Seriously. Top 100 should suffice most of the time, and if you really want to see more than that, would you prefer having to wade through several large pages until you find what you're looking for? I prefer getting it all at once. Besides the server not having a problem with it, that was my main argument against spliting the full list (which I believe both Josef and Clement had worked on already) and I guess in the end Ron and Clement agreed (don't remember the details of the decision). So yeah, already considered and rejected, at least for now. If you do need more than the top 100 and really can't manage the full list, let us know and we can reconsider.

I could not find a "summary page" that indicate how many WCA members there are, so I requested a full list of people with Rubik's Cube averages, hoping that the last entry might give me a clue. It took considerable time for the list to finish for me. In my case, it could be helpful to see something like "results of 1-100 out of 5000" on the top 100 list, so I would know immediately there are 5000 in the total list. I like the option recently mentioned, where a user can choose for complete list, or pages of certain sizes. (I would only have maybe 3 choices: "complete list", Top 100, or 1000 per page.)

But I do understand your point. The complete list probably is not a big problem, even when the WCA grows to 10 or 20 thousand members.

 

[Stefan]

In my case, it could be helpful to see something like "results of 1-100 out of 5000" on the top 100 list

In other words, more statistics. Including the total number of WCA members.

And thanks, you just confirmed my point. You wanted to see the number of people. You did *not* really want a new way to list them. I uphold my claim that the "see top" and "see all" use cases for listing people are sufficient (and can be versatilely used for other stuff like yours).

 

[DavidWoner]

A "see all results" option would be nice. I understand that would be quite a lot of information for a single page, so maybe this could be parsed into pages of 5000 or so, if you deem it necessary.

 

[Stefan]

A "see all results" option would be nice.

Why?

Seriously. I'm sure you don't want to see all results. At least not 3x3x3. Already because you wouldn't have the time to read them all. And for the small events down to 5x5x5 blind, top 100 results should suffice. So what are you really after?

 

[Lucas Garron]

A "see all results" option would be nice.

Why?

Seriously. I'm sure you don't want to see all results. At least not 3x3x3. Already because you wouldn't have the time to read them all. And for the small events down to 5x5x5 blind, top 100 results should suffice. So what are you really after?

The last 5, so we can laugh at them.

How about caching the HTML of all the 3x3x3 competitors?