User:Which Linden/Office Hours/2009 Apr 23

• [11:01] Kevin Paisley: *meow*
• [11:01] Kevin Paisley: ooh a bong
• [11:01] Kevin Paisley: er wait that is which
• [11:01] Kevin Paisley: hehe
• [11:01] Which Linden: Who?
• [11:01] Morgaine Dinova: Hi Peeps. Lucky that someone made a sound, or I'd have forgotten about this window :-)
• [11:01] Flimsey Freenote: lol
• [11:02] Which Linden: Hey there everyone, I'm afraid that I have reduced time available today -- only about 20 minutes or so
• [11:02] Saijanai Kuhn: ah well.
• [11:02] Flimsey Freenote: what do you do here Which
• [11:03] Morgaine Dinova: Which: talk fast then :P
• [11:03] Morgaine Dinova: Got agenda topic?
• [11:03] Which Linden: Well, Flimsey, I work on backend data services stuff, so, currently I'm working on scaling L$ transfers, and also on the side investigating improving messaging
• [11:03] Saijanai Kuhn: Which, don't know if you'd ever be into it since you have regular hours, but I'm trying to start up a guest host thingie for the AW Groupies meeting, so Lindens with technical stuff that they don't want to schedule for an office hour, can make presentations at (Tuesday mornings 9:30 AM)
• [11:03] Flimsey Freenote: awsome ty
• [11:04] Which Linden: Morgaine: I'm trying to remember--- did last week's end up with a topic that we can continue with?
• [11:04] Which Linden: Sai: hm! that sounds cool, as you know though I more rarely have things to present on
• [11:04] Saijanai Kuhn: think it was a continuation of the IM discussion
• [11:04] Saijanai Kuhn: it basically frees up some of Zha's time, and makes things lisghtly more flexible for Lindens to talk to the populace
• [11:05] Morgaine Dinova: Everyone's always happy to talk about IM.
• [11:05] Saijanai Kuhn: me, I'm just havingwxpython notebook woes :-/
• [11:05] Flimsey Freenote: I need 50 more group spots but other than that im pretty good :)
• [11:05] Which Linden:  :-)
• [11:06] Which Linden: Yeah so it looks like last time we just ended up deciding that I am not particularly involved with inter-domain IM
• [11:06] Which Linden:  :-)
• [11:06] Saijanai Kuhn: heh
• [11:06] Morgaine Dinova: Which, what would be required in your view to make IM unaffected by group counts? Because 1000 groups is perfectly warranted, for example for SL Live Music fans, since each musician has her own fan group.
• [11:06] Saijanai Kuhn: awww. But hopefully that will change as the OGP IM is implemented
• [11:07] Which Linden: Morgaine: well I think that just points to the fact that group IM should not be tied to group counts
• [11:07] Morgaine Dinova: Yup
• [11:07] Which Linden: I think it's reasonable to limit group IM participation, but that doesn't necessarily have to mean limits on groups
• [11:07] Morgaine Dinova: Indeed
• [11:08] Saijanai Kuhn: don't understand the distinction, sorry
• [11:08] Which Linden: At least from my perspective. It's conceivable that there are technical limitations on unlimited groups that I'm not aware of.
• [11:08] Flimsey Freenote: nods, maybe some groups that only are for sending notices
• [11:08] Which Linden: Sai: basically we could have groups that don't have any chat
• [11:08] Saijanai Kuhn: ah, OK
• [11:08] Which Linden: Or....you're only allowed to be in 25 chats our of the 1000 groups you're in
• [11:08] Saijanai Kuhn: so announcements only, like Flimsey says, or group chat, or...?
• [11:08] Morgaine Dinova: Incidentally, IM traffic is self-limiting --- there is a limit to the amount of IM traffic one can read, so people would only turn on the ones they want to hear at a time, or the number actively transmitting could be managed automatically.
• [11:09] Cel Edman: well groups got to be something special or elite, its more attractive to choose 25 or 50 max then unlimmited?
• [11:09] Which Linden: I'm not realy a great user experience designer though, I suspect that someone would want to do some research on the way groups are currently used
• [11:09] Which Linden: Cel hah, artificial scarcity
• [11:09] Which Linden: Morgaine: agreed, which is why I think a limited number of simultaneous group chats is perfectly reasonable
• [11:10] Cel Edman: the internet is scalable* while new clever ways to search/add are made possible slowly
• [11:10] Saijanai Kuhn: can there be a one-to-many otpion, not just for anouncements, but for chat messages? Say, a lecture-type group where there's only one talker
• [11:10] Morgaine Dinova: If the number of simultaneously active IM sessions is a problem for scalability, then that just means that clients should have a cache of most recently used channels, from out of their 1000's of groups.
• [11:10] Which Linden: In fact, quick straw poll, how many group chats does everyone here currently have open?
• [11:10] Which Linden: Just count the tabs in your communicate window
• [11:10] Flimsey Freenote: 1
• [11:11] Saijanai Kuhn: Open? 4
• [11:11] Saijanai Kuhn: but its early
• [11:11] Morgaine Dinova: Only 2 tabs open
• [11:11] Which Linden: Ever the power user
• [11:11] Morgaine Dinova: But even at peak, I never have more than say 8 open.
• [11:11] Which Linden: I got 0 cause I get confused easily
• [11:11] Saijanai Kuhn: I monitor lots of newbie scripting groups (mostly to learn tidbits about scripting)
• [11:11] Flimsey Freenote: giggles all of your resources are mine!
• [11:12] Cel Edman: groupchats is fast becoming a spam, the only spam group i`m in and like is awgroupies
• [11:12] Saijanai Kuhn: hooray for spam
• [11:13] Which Linden: Yeah, so, even for people who are pretty power users like us, we don't use all 25, even though if we're in 25 groups we're consuming as many system resources as if we were listening to all of them
• [11:13] Cel Edman: well if it was spam more then 50% i leave the group
• [11:13] Which Linden: I think this is a UI thing in some ways because the system hides the groups you're "listening to" but haven't received any traffic
• [11:13] Saijanai Kuhn: well I subscribe to a few announcement-mostly groups like Kira Cafe
• [11:13] Morgaine Dinova: I think automatic opening and closing of IM channels is quite doable --- it's just a tradeoff, the cost being high latency on a new incoming message because the least recently used IM channel has to be dropped and a new one opened.
• [11:13] Cel Edman: awgroupies is about discussion /mindfeel. so i`m ok with that
• [11:14] Which Linden: Morgaine: I'm not really sure what you mean by automatic opening and closing -- you mean it'd close channels that have no traffic and open ones that do have traffic>
• [11:14] Morgaine Dinova: Yes
• [11:14] Morgaine Dinova: Using LRU
• [11:14] Morgaine Dinova: So the number of groups you belong to wouldn't matter
• [11:15] Which Linden: Wouldn't the checks for activity on the "closed" groups be just as expensive as being in the group itself?
• [11:15] Which Linden: Like, I don't see the difference between "I'm in this group and send me every message" and "I'm not in this group but tell me when there are messages anyhow"
• [11:16] Morgaine Dinova: Well that depends on implementation, but usually no--- after all, it's an extremely noddy check, and requires no sessions to be created.
• [11:16] Youri Ashton: hi all
• [11:16] Which Linden: Session creation isn't expensive, message notification is
• [11:16] Which Linden: Hi Youri
• [11:16] Which Linden: (I should say, in our current system that is)
• [11:16] Morgaine Dinova: Well there's no noticiation involved in checking group membership.
• [11:17] Morgaine Dinova: It's a very simple hash lookup
• [11:17] Which Linden: Oh so it would be based on membership, as in, it would check every minute or so and if the membership got more than, say, 10 members it'd decide that it's an active group?
• [11:17] Youri Ashton: very interresting and orriginal avi Which Linden :)
• [11:17] Youri Ashton: I like it!
• [11:17] Flimsey Freenote: what if you had groups for musicians for instance that instead of sending an Im it sends a link to open the browser for a schedule or info
• [11:18] Which Linden: Flimsey, that would be more of a notification wouldn't it?
• [11:18] Flimsey Freenote: yes i guess so, where there is not response required
• [11:18] Which Linden: The key property of notifications that distinguishes them from IMs is that latency is acceptable for notifications
• [11:18] Which Linden: So it's much easier to implement
• [11:19] Flimsey Freenote: nods
• [11:19] Morgaine Dinova: Which: no, it wouldn't require any polling. The only time a person's group hash table would change is when the person adds/leaves a group, or when a group kicks a person out. So in effect a person's group membership table is static, as is the inverse hash from group to members. So from either end it's a very low cost operation.
• [11:20] Which Linden: Yeah but if the hash is a datum stored on the server how are you gonna know it's changed?
• [11:21] Cel Edman: whats the point and discussion, to be honest, like increase number of groups? and allow that?
• [11:21] Morgaine Dinova: Who is "you" in this context? Viewer doesn't need to know.
• [11:21] Morgaine Dinova: Cel: yes, discussing cost of having thousands of groups per person.
• [11:21] Which Linden: "you" meaning the LRU algorithm
• [11:21] Cel Edman: ok
• [11:22] Cel Edman: Maybe a game like introduction could be nice to SL, if you spend X-ammount in SL and Are loyal and Grinded enough hours and did bussiness.. you are allowed to join 10 more groups. like a gam
• [11:22] Which Linden: Yeah, Cel, I kinda feel like some research is required as to exactly what the use cases are for lots of group IMs -- I understand the use case for lots of group notifications, and as groups as sort of fan clubs, but, overall it seems like groups are kind of the spork of SL
• [11:23] Cel Edman: game**
• [11:23] Morgaine Dinova: Which: one doesn't need to know (on the server) that it's changed --- you just do the lookup directly, assuming that the hash is current. And it will always be current, because adding/leaving a group are the only things that cause updates.
• [11:23] Flimsey Freenote: Lol Cel
• [11:23] Which Linden: Cel ha ha sounds like something we'd have tried back when we had ratings and stuff
• [11:23] Which Linden: OK, shoot, I gotta run. Was very enjoyable to chat with you however briefly
• [11:24] Flimsey Freenote: bye Which ty
• [11:24] Which Linden: Thanks for stopping by!
• [11:24] Saijanai Kuhn: later which
• [11:24] Morgaine Dinova: Belonging to groups is just natural. We each belong to hundreds or thousands of groups in RL, informally. Every circle of friends is a group, every friend is a subgroup, etc
• [11:24] Which Linden: Sorry I can't conclude morgaine -- next time!
• [11:24] Which Linden: cya~!
• [11:24] Morgaine Dinova: See you Which :-)