11 replies to this topic

[FinnMcKool]

Maybe this dosnt matter , but I kind of dont like it.

When I make a new Signature, it changes the Signature not just on new posts , but on all my old posts as well,

and maybe no one else cares but I would like my old posts to be preserved , even the signature, you must

understand that when I make them its an emotional thing for that moment , and I would like to see it even when

I changed it , just to remember some of what was going on in my head at the time, kind of a way of self

metering where I was at , at the time of making that post, (and what if I was leaving some hidden message

or something )

anyway can this be fixed?

before I have a nervous breakdown or something.

Thank you .....Finn

[Taelon Zero]

Add your sig into the post?

[Logi]

well perhaps the signature is just linked. this way the forum doesn´t have to save your sig anew but just call your actual sig. if you change your sig in your profile, then your signatures in your posts use the new one. the signature of most people (mine too^^) is a jpg, gif, etc. and we have already 80k members. so saving 2 or more signatures for everyone is a bunch information, which has to be stored somewhere.

...at least i suppose so. if not, please correct

Edited by Logi, 10 April 2012 - 11:32 PM.

[Aegis Kleais]

A signature is a dynamic per-post addendum that is pulled from the user profile. When you make a post, the only content that is stored into the database is the post contents. The signature is dynamic. Forums that do otherwise are wasting space in the database with redundant information.

[Spooky]

Taelon Zero, on 10 April 2012 - 09:14 PM, said:

Add your sig into the post?

He should not do that.

Aegis Kleais™, on 14 April 2012 - 03:47 PM, said:

A signature is a dynamic per-post addendum that is pulled from the user profile. When you make a post, the only content that is stored into the database is the post contents. The signature is dynamic. Forums that do otherwise are wasting space in the database with redundant information.

It's mostly redundant, but I can see why the OP wants it that way.

Edited by Spooky, 14 April 2012 - 11:45 PM.

[Aegis Kleais]

Spooky, on 14 April 2012 - 11:45 PM, said:

He should not do that.




It's mostly redundant, but I can see why the OP wants it that way.

Yeah it's redundant. It's like email programs that ask if you want to attach a signature to an email you're sending out. It takes from a set static amount of information for unity and consistency sake. The dynamic part of the mail, like a forum post, is the content area.

[Spooky]

Yes, but it's not as simple as you seem to think. It doesn't matter what data you are dealing with, if you always only care about removing redundancy then it opens up other issues. If data is kept redundant, it is easier to back track. If you want to back track without saving redundant data, you need to store additional data and relations, making it more complex while keeping redundancy low.

Point being that such a request is not unreasonable.

[Aegis Kleais]

Spooky, on 16 April 2012 - 04:59 AM, said:

Yes, but it's not as simple as you seem to think. It doesn't matter what data you are dealing with, if you always only care about removing redundancy then it opens up other issues. If data is kept redundant, it is easier to back track. If you want to back track without saving redundant data, you need to store additional data and relations, making it more complex while keeping redundancy low.

Point being that such a request is not unreasonable.

You misunderstand.

REDUNDANCY in a database is a GOOD thing. But you're talking about a database's AVAILABILITY. A redundant availability means that if a database becomes unavailable, other measures step in automatically to ensure the data remains available to the end user.

REDUNDANCY in post content is wasteful and poor database design. If I had a massive signature and made 3000 posts, each one of those posts would have the code of my signature in it. This does nothing more than wastes valuable database space. Instead, a good database/web application design would only store the dynamic content of the post and then append a singular source of signature code automatically when the page is being rendered.

source: I've been a professional web application developer for 10+ years.

[Spooky]

Aegis Kleais™, on 16 April 2012 - 08:10 AM, said:

REDUNDANCY in a database is a GOOD thing. But you're talking about a database's AVAILABILITY. A redundant availability means that if a database becomes unavailable, other measures step in automatically to ensure the data remains available to the end user.

You are talking about a completely different kind of redundancy now, obviously . I am not talking about database availibility. I am refering to your earlier post, where you stated that you do not want to have that kind of redundant information saved in a database as well (i.e. the current signature of a user stored within every post as well).

Aegis Kleais™, on 16 April 2012 - 08:10 AM, said:

REDUNDANCY in post content is wasteful and poor database design. If I had a massive signature and made 3000 posts, each one of those posts would have the code of my signature in it. This does nothing more than wastes valuable database space.

Indeed. But if you want to be able to backtrack the signature of a user at the time of the post, the quick and dirty solution would be to store the signature within it as well. If wasted dataspace base is not an issue and this downside does not outweigh the (slightly..) increased database complexity, then some administrator might be inclined to do it just this way.


There are forums who show the signature of the user at the time of the post, but I can't know of course how they store it (i.e. if they use the inefficient way of wasting space and adding it to every post or if they store every revision of the user's signature and then simply show the latest one corresponding to the post's date).


Again, my point was that it's not an unreasonable feature request. How it's executed, if at all, is not of our concern anyway.

Edited by Spooky, 16 April 2012 - 10:04 AM.

[Aegis Kleais]

Spooky, on 16 April 2012 - 10:02 AM, said:

You are talking about a completely different kind of redundancy now, obviously . I am not talking about database availibility. I am refering to your earlier post, where you stated that you do not want to have that kind of redundant information saved in a database as well (i.e. the current signature of a user stored within every post as well).



Indeed. But if you want to be able to backtrack the signature of a user at the time of the post, the quick and dirty solution would be to store the signature within it as well. If wasted dataspace base is not an issue and this downside does not outweigh the (slightly..) increased database complexity, then some administrator might be inclined to do it just this way.


There are forums who show the signature of the user at the time of the post, but I can't know of course how they store it (i.e. if they use the inefficient way of wasting space and adding it to every post or if they store every revision of the user's signature and then simply show the latest one corresponding to the post's date).


Again, my point was that it's not an unreasonable feature request. How it's executed, if at all, is not of our concern anyway.

I'm sure they could have a SIGNATURES table that posts could link to. As you create a new signature, it creates a new entry, and each post would use an ID key to pull in the signature that was active at the time the post was made.

[Spooky]

Yes, that's what I said :Þ

[Aegis Kleais]

Spooky, on 16 April 2012 - 10:43 AM, said:

Yes, that's what I said :Þ

Good, then we are agreed. Kudos on the ALT+0222. There's far too many people with messed up tongues on the Internet.