At 6/5/09 04:48 PM, citricsquid wrote:
At 6/5/09 04:35 PM, Casualty wrote:
Indeed, that's why it wasn't done. Not because I was too lazy. Because of that. Not because I was too lazy. Yeah.
Well, it wouldn't exactly be hard to do? Just run through each user and get their stats, it's like, two queries and a cron :P
I'll give you an "A" for effort, but you are missing some very important facts that make this impractical. First of, for EACH user, when you request stats, the program actually has to load up 6 separate pages of HTML from NewGrounds, read it in, parse them, and then extract the data into a stat record. Depending on the load at the NG servers, this can take anywhere from 1 to 10 seconds - and if the server is heavily loaded, some pages time out and the stats wind up partially zero.
On average, I'm seeing about 150 - 170 logs a day - and that's running about 15% of my daily bandwidth allowed on the server. So, right now, that's okay. But, dividing it out and extrapolating, that means my server will max out at 1000 logs a day. I doubt that would happen manually, but if I were to loop through all 4,000+ users on file, I would over-use bandwidth and it wouldn't be pretty.
So, automatically updating the entire database nightly - or at any time - is not an option.
Now, as for doing it automatically for a subset, or for someone "on vacation" - that would mean managing a switch or flag for each user - and would they set it themselves, or would I have to manage that myself (hint: it's NOT going to be the second option). If I leave it up to the users, it is possible that too many people would set it, and there goes the bandwidth.
Let's take a step back - why was this site made? To help users keep track of individual stats. The truth be told, if you log daily or weekly or every other week, when you average out the information, it's all the same. So, rather than trying to please everyone - and since it's impractical to log everything for everybody, we just will leave it up to each person to check for themselves. If you don't have time to make a shortcut to the site, sign in and get your stats (total time - less than 15 seconds) you're probably not B/P'ing all that much. And like I said before, it all averages out as you go.
For those who are whoring medal points, it's simple: if you want to see your name in the list, log in your stats weekly before HybridOfSouls publishes it. It's called personal responsibility. If you have the time to play the games, you can take 15 seconds a week and update your stats.
Maybe one day Newgrounds will do all of this for us automatically , but until they do, this is what we have to work with.
So, Casualty, it was never laziness - it was just impractical.
Hope this helps everyone understand why the site is the way it is - and not to stress out if you miss a log day. It's just not that important in the big picture.
So just relax, and log when you can - there's more important things in life to worry about! XD