Archived Notification Feed

[Statius]

thanks @Statius it worked!

View attachment 2571927
Now we'll have to wait and see if the "my authors" feed starts working correctly...

Now stop running around Lit asking people to do stuff to you. It isn't safe!

 

[onehitwanda]

shh i'm building engagement

Did you feel that?

 

[PennyThompson]

Now stop running around Lit asking people to do stuff to you. It isn't safe!

whatever DAD
I probably shouldn't call people on Lit "dad" either...

Did you feel that?

so far the only activity feed action i've gotten was via Statius... unless you're teasing me, you wouldn't do that would you wanda?

 

[NuclearFairy]

whatever DAD
I probably shouldn't call people on Lit "dad" either...

It's better than calling someone Daddy at least.

 

[alohadave]

whatever DAD
I probably shouldn't call people on Lit "dad" either...

The correct term is 'daddy'.

 

[Statius]

whatever DAD
I probably shouldn't call people on Lit "dad" either...

so far the only activity feed action i've gotten was via Statius... unless you're teasing me, you wouldn't do that would you wanda?

I have never been so offended! DAD? That's it young lady....

And.....

You don't want or wouldn't like @onehitwanda to tease you? Nevermind, don't answer that. Keep it to yourselves, please. That's what DM's are for!

 

[onehitwanda]

whatever DAD
I probably shouldn't call people on Lit "dad" either...

so far the only activity feed action i've gotten was via Statius... unless you're teasing me, you wouldn't do that would you wanda?

also, I've been following you for a while


totally not stalking you. Totally not.

 

[Statius]

It's better than calling someone Daddy at least.

 

[Statius]

whatever DAD
I probably shouldn't call people on Lit "dad" either...

so far the only activity feed action i've gotten was via Statius... unless you're teasing me, you wouldn't do that would you wanda?

Awe thanks! Just saw it on my home page.

 

[ShelbyDawn57]

I'm not sure about that. Right now my panel shows these tabs:

View attachment 2571925

and clicking on either doesn't clear out the parenthesized count at all...

Minor bug, the Activity page is loading again, and acceptably fast. I'd say that is 'resolving.'

 

[onehitwanda]

I'm no longer seeing errors on the activity page either.

 

[FrancesScott]

Still alternating between showing stuff and the boilerplate error message.

Seems better now. Fingers crossed.

 

[EmilyMiller]

Mine is working too.

 

[TheWritingGroup]

My Activity page is still showing "nothing here yet." All but the Comments tab. At least the "technical issues" message is gone.

--Annie

 

[Britva415]

You don't fix on the fly......

Sometimes you have to.

Application code can be rolled back. Databases can be restored from a backup.

But.

When new application code depends on new data structures, and you go ahead and commit the production database to the new structure, you can't roll back without losing however much production data was collected since the cut-over.

Imagine the outrage if hours' worth of production data was simply thrown away in order to roll back to the previous known good state.

 

[iwatchus]

Sometimes you have to.

Application code can be rolled back. Databases can be restored from a backup.

But.

When new application code depends on new data structures, and you go ahead and commit the production database to the new structure, you can't roll back without losing however much production data was collected since the cut-over.

Imagine the outrage if hours' worth of production data was simply thrown away in order to roll back to the previous known good state.

There are ways to structure the transition that does not require an irreversible change. It just takes a lot more thought put into it. I have designed and overseen seemingly irreversible transitions in systems far more complicated than Lit is. As a professional, and as someone who has trained hundreds of professionals, I am horrified by the apparent lack of professionalism in the management of the site, as exhibited by this change, as well as other ones I have seen. It's hard to imagine someone who had been running a production system for decades would be so sloppy with a planned update.

 

[SkyBubble]

What was the purpose of doing this? Do archived notifications take up less server space?

 

[TheLobster]

If there’s anything this troubled rollout has told us, it’s that the site is in a dire need for an SRE.

Which of course stands for a Smut Reliability Engineer.

 

[iwatchus]

What was the purpose of doing this? Do archived notifications take up less server space?

I'm assuming they were running into a limit (hard or just performance) on their database, and they needed to move most of the notifications into another table, maybe with a simpler structure.

 

[Britva415]

There are ways to structure the transition that does not require an irreversible change. It just takes a lot more thought put into it.

Yes.

A lot more thought, time, funding, humanpower, stakeholder support, other resources, etc.

You're accusing Lit of being unprofessional and... well, yeah. This isn't an enterprise with a dedicated team of software engineers, product managers, and quality testers on the payroll, and business stakeholders with the influence to get people fired or terminate contracts if they don't like how the project rolled out.

A colleague of mine would frequently answer a business stakeholder who would ask "Is it possible for our app to do this?" (Imagine some blatantly unfeasible and only marginally useful feature) by saying, "Everything is possible. What's your budget and timeline?"

 

[AwkwardlySet]

Gotta love the fact that we now have eight levels of feedback urgency...

I can already see people receiving a 4* vote and immediately sending feedback of a "Critical System Failure" priority.

 

[TheWritingGroup]

I'm assuming they were running into a limit (hard or just performance) on their database, and they needed to move most of the notifications into another table, maybe with a simpler structure.

I was thinking that they were hoping for a performance improvement by partitioning the data.

 

[iwatchus]

Yes.

A lot more thought, time, funding, humanpower, stakeholder support, other resources, etc.

It does take time, certainly. Funding, not so much unless you are paying for Manu's time. Given that Manu and Laurel are the only stakeholders, I don't think that is an issue here. A two person operation just works differently than a division of a big corporation and you have to think about how things work very differently. I suspect there are some interesting discussions between the two of them. But if I had to predict, Manu has pretty much fully accepted reign over the technical aspects and Laurel has full control over the story side and after all these years they just trust the other one when they are told it has to be a certain way.

 

[Britva415]

It does take time, certainly. Funding, not so much unless you are paying for Manu's time. Given that Manu and Laurel are the only stakeholders, I don't think that is an issue here. A two person operation just works differently than a division of a big corporation and you have to think about how things work very differently. I suspect there are some interesting discussions between the two of them. But if I had to predict, Manu has pretty much fully accepted reign over the technical aspects and Laurel has full control over the story side and after all these years they just trust the other one when they are told it has to be a certain way.

The resources to achieve what you described are not there. I've seen projects like that and the requirement to make a data-structure change reversible without losing any production data can add many heads, weeks and hundreds of thousands of dollars to a project.

Maybe Manu could do it alone if he didn't do anything else for weeks.

 

[iwatchus]

The resources to achieve what you described are not there. I've seen projects like that and the requirement to make a data-structure change reversible without losing any production data can add many heads, weeks and hundreds of thousands of dollars to a project.

Maybe Manu could do it alone if he didn't do anything else for weeks.

I have done it as the only engineer working on it a very resource constrained environment. And it was only fraction of my job. I can say categorically this is not true if you put the mental effort into it.