Slashdot Posting Bug Infuriates Haggard Admins

Last night we crossed over 16,777,216 comments in the database. The wise amongst you might note that this number is 2^24, or in MySQLese an unsigned mediumint. Unfortunately, like 5 years ago we changed our primary keys in the comment table to unsigned int (32 bits, or 4.1 billion) but neglected to change the index that handles parents. We're awesome! Fixing is a simple ALTER TABLE statement... but on a table that is 16 million rows long, our system will take 3+ hours to do it, during which time there can be no posting. So today, we're disabling threading and will enable it again later tonight. Sorry for the inconvenience. We shall flog ourselves appropriately. Update: 11/10 12:52 GMT by J : It's fixed.

Comments

Congrats taco

[LiquidCoooled]

Does this mean that comment id#16777215 has the longest thread in history?

Can anyone actually find it to see - I tried but could only get to 16777217, its likely to be in a journal or just a reply to an older article.

Check out...

[BJH]

...comment 16777215.
Mmmm... CT, are you sure the parent index was your only problem?

So was it fixed in Slash?

[tlhIngan]

So is the bug still in the CVS revision of Slash, or was it fixed 5 years ago and Slashdot never applied the patch?

Give Slashdot Subscriptions to the borkers

[davidwr]

Give a 2^0-year Slashdot subscription to the guy who hit the limit and one to the the first non-administrator guy who successfully posted after the fix.

If you can find the first guy who COULDN'T reply due to the limit, give him one too. He deserves something for his trouble.

Today is the first day I've had to type subjects.

[admdrew]

@eldavojohn, #16786251 (god, this feels like digg now)

Uh, this is a reply to the 8th post down from the top (remember to use this like an array and zero reference). Yes, I'm talking to you, admdrew.

You claim that the 16,777,216th comment would have broke it but I contest that actually the 16,777,217th comment poster would be the culprit. Since it should be able to handle that many comments if it is zero referenced, and it would actually be the one after that one that would break it. You laugh but these kinds of problems plague a lot of coders?

If you don't agree with me, please respond below and reference my comment ID.

I certainly admit I wasn't thinking 0-based when I wrote that. The question is, though, should we blame the person who wrote the last valid comment (therefore ruining the fun for the rest of us), or whoever wrote the first broken comment?

Also, is everyone going to add the obligatory 'parent' link on their posts today?


[ Parent ] - [ Reply to this ]

Access to the Database?

[Shadow Wrought]

Any thoughts on making the DB publicly accessable other than through teh Dot? Not sure what I'd do with all that data, but I'm sure these's a grad student somewhere who'd love the opportunity...

Why are all 16 million+ comments in a single table

[poot_rootbeer]

Slashdot being a news (for nerds) site, I would expect that the usage patterns are such that a huge majority of the content accessed by users is very recent -- say, perhaps, 90% of the database hits are for stories and comments that were posted in the last week.

So why, pray, is this usage pattern not accounted for in the database design?

/. copyright question

[Control Group]

Get your mod points ready, this is off topic, but considering the current state of discussion anyway, I don't feel so bad about it.

Regardless, while writing this post regarding why the /. admins won't (and shouldn't) consider releasing a copy of the /. DB to the public, something occurred to me.

Comments on /. are owned by the poster, according to that one line that shows up on all the comment pages (specifically, "The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.") At the same time, though, /. doesn't provide a method for having comments you've made removed from the DB.

If I own the copyright on the comments I've made, shouldn't I be able to rescind publication rights on them, and prevent /. from displaying them in future? Or is there some kind of implicit license in posting on /.? Did I clicksign an agreement covering this when I joined (this was getting on towards a decade ago, so I really don't remember the joining process at all)?

Or are publication rights, once granted, irrevocable?

Of course, I suppose asking questions when there's no way for people to hit reply is a specific form of vague insanity...still, I'm curious.

Re: /. copyright question

[Sloppy]

In reply to this:

Or are publication rights, once granted, irrevocable?

IMHO, probably. When you published a comment, there was no mechanism available to you, for removing comments, or even the slightest hint that one might appear in the future. You knew what you were getting into, so it could be argued that you accepted what happened.

In a more general sense, it is well-known that sending a packet to the 'Net is like opening a bottle and letting a genie out. Once you do it, it's out, and if you ever manage to shove it back inside, it'll be more a matter of luck, rather than something possible because of policy.

"flogging definition"

[UnanimousCoward]

As your punishment, you should write some kind of data-mining algorithm that starts from the point you disabled threading and try to construct intelligent threads based on the subject and the body of comments...

Re:Only one thing to say

[LiquidCoooled]

Update: 11/10 12:52 GMT by J : It's fixed.

Nothing like a 3 hour update taking 18 hours.
(though I suppose the + can mean 15hours... :P)
Are we gonna find out what happened to the time space continuum?

You should call in Hiro Nakamura.