[Amendment] Curial Bandwidth Reduction Bill

**GrnEyedDvl** · February 20, 2014, 02:34 PM

Originally Posted by Squid

Most of those images are shared by a variety of users per page such as the rep images and to a lesser extent the award images. Which means each person viewing the page only downloads the image once, regardless of the number of times it appears on the page.

This is true, but I will add to it.

First, CloudFlare caches most of this stuff now. Things like images that are static aren't impacting us nearly as much as they used to. Added to that is the fact that if there is only 1 badge its not going to be that much different in terms of bandwidth. If there were 50 badges it still wouldn't be that big of an issue. CloudFlare would pull 50 images one time as opposed to pulling 1 image 1 time. So 50 X 40 kb = 2 megabytes. We waste more than 2 megs pulling the text for this thread thousands of times.

showtrhead.php is our biggest bandwidth user, but as I already stated the images are cached so they are not being pulled. What is being pulled is the text generated by php, and that cannot be cached (well there are things we can do but I wont) because it is dynamic, its always changing.

Theoretically we could do some caching with parts of the site so that they only updated every 15 minutes no matter how many times they had been posted in. Craigslist works that way as do several other sites. And we could limit that to specific user groups like guests. But in hot forums like R2 that would probably cause us more grief than its worth. Parts of the site like the Forum Leaders page do work like that, and they only generate every 180 minutes, or in the case of the Forum Leaders page once per day. So if I fired myself I would still show on that page for a maximum of 2 hours. That saves a bit of processing as well since it doesn't have to be queried every time someone views it.

Second, the site is not hurting for money.

**Inarus** · February 18, 2014, 08:22 AM

No! Never! You shall not take our shinies!

**Ishan** · February 18, 2014, 08:41 AM

Several modders like this and that's why it will most likely fail. They like being addressed as Artifex and contribute towards this site in a substantial amount so imo they can have this distinction if they want it.

As far as the bandwidth consumption goes, earlier average badge size was 20KB in size so we can say that citizens where consuming 20+20+20 = 60 kilobytes in total. Assuming a thread, in which 3 types posted, and is viewed like 20,000 times then we have:
60 x 20,000 = 12,00,000 kilobytes = 1170 MB approx. Multiply this with cost of bandwidth per megabyte and you will have your amount. Something that site owner pays from his own pockets. This is for a single thread if some new users view that thread 20000 times. Badge won't get loaded again and again for the same user if the image is already cached in his browser upon first encountering that image.

Site also generates some revenue through Google Adsense, so overall i'm not sure of how the whole profit and loss thing goes. Although i know profit is not that much and sometimes GED ends up paying from his own pockets on several months. Garb might also know more about this, since he was also the site owner. Many other things also come in mind, the place where servers are hosted, the power\electricity costs, the hardware server upgrades etc. It's not that easy i'm sure.

In anycase, last time when squid brought this issue i did brought forward the alternative to reduce the filesizes of badges and optimize most of the imagery hosted on TWC to minimize bandwidth costs. Now average size of every badge on this site is 5KB unlike before where it was 20KB, which is 75% reduction in all badges.

I have also optimized some medals. Like dvk's rtw medal (hosted on TWC) is only 1.6 KB:

while generally they can be 5-15 KB since they aren't optimized.

Anyways besides the bandwidth issue, which as far as i know shouldn't really matter now, i think there should be a singular citizen rank and no division amongst us. A contributor is a contributor, regardless of what he has done, whether in modding, site development or debating etc. I'm sure debaters don't really care for civitate or citizen badge. It really depends on modders who hold artifex badges with some sentimental value.

I'm artifex and a m2tw modder and i'm not going to lie that i do hold this rank as the most important one for me. It's from the old modding days which is the sole reason i came to this site. I'm not sure how other modders feel about their artifex rank.

**Derpy Hooves** · February 18, 2014, 09:53 AM

Changing my decision from abstain to support.

**Shankbot de Bodemloze** · February 18, 2014, 04:34 PM

How about just have a Citizen and Artifex badge?

It deuces the badges to 2, and modders can still be identified as such if they want to.

**The Roman Republic** · February 18, 2014, 06:04 PM

I think the Citizen badge should be something to be proud to achieve irregardless of how you gained it, whether it was through modding or debating. I mean why are those sectioned into badges as a form of gaining the citizenship, surely it becomes unfair for the other members who gained it differently to not have a badge to represent it?

**Hesus de bodemloze** · February 19, 2014, 11:10 AM

Support, change the badge to Senator. Seems more fitting for the elitist clique then citizen.

**AngryTitusPullo** · February 19, 2014, 11:40 PM

Abolish Artifex and Civitate and make them all Citizens then reintroduce the Patrician for those who have become citizen at least 5 years with continuous contributions and good standing (no referrals, no infractions etc).

**Ishan** · February 20, 2014, 02:04 AM

What was this "Patrician" rank about? And why it was abolished? I'm sure there's something on it on the wiki.

**AngryTitusPullo** · February 20, 2014, 02:55 AM

Originally Posted by Ishan

What was this "Patrician" rank about? And why it was abolished? I'm sure there's something on it on the wiki.

http://www.twcenter.net/wiki/Category

atrician

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...oval-Amendment

I remembered the last time only Patricians can be patron or something.

**Lord William** · February 20, 2014, 05:42 AM

I'd rather not lose my badges but with the issue of space I can understand the push to unify the 3 under 1 badge, you have my support

**m_1512** · February 20, 2014, 10:16 AM

Support, just like the last time.

There is another interesting thing to note is that majority of the citizens don't even use the artifex or civiate badge on their profile.

**Squid** · February 20, 2014, 12:12 PM

Originally Posted by m_1512

There is another interesting thing to note is that majority of the citizens don't even use the artifex or civiate badge on their profile.

On what do you base this?

**Shankbot de Bodemloze** · February 20, 2014, 02:37 PM

That's good to hear.

**Inkie** · February 20, 2014, 04:32 PM

Having heard the technical info I was interested in, I'm going to oppose this. Though I don't use them, I find that the Civitate and Artifex badges are a pleasant element of citizenship that add nice flavour to the badge for those who want to wear one of them and also instantly provide a hint towards their background and interests when you see them around the forum, which is always useful.