Story viewing limiter

Today I was rather surprised to see the limiter warning flash up. I consider that an interim validation placed with publication which just showed the orientation of a story or whether young children were involved would be a useful addition.
The only reason that I was flicking is that it is my usual practice to close any stories that involve young children immediately, and I must have inadvertently opened more than one in the allotted time.

If there are genres or orientations you wish to avoid then simply be patient and wait till the submissions have been validated and classified which usually happens within a couple of days of the items being loaded, often sooner. It's this constant flicking behaviour that is causing the server problem. There are 19,000 items here, it's not essential to view the VERY latest items and the validation process works perfectly well as it is so 'interim validation' is not on the agenda.

I also ran into that limiter. I was checking out an older serial. I am a little leery of serials as often they start out well dealing with something I'm interested in and then go off-track. Either that or they become repetitious. So I was scanning through various parts but then hit that limiter.

I understand Februs' reason for installing it but it can be annoying. That is why I asked how many stories could be opened in a 60 second period. If you know beforehand what the limit is you can avoid going over it. If you don't know then it is just trial and error.

Februs, now that we are on the subject of readers flicking stories, is there a way not to count a story read until at least a certain amount of time goes by, like 60 seconds, for a story to count as read. Look at the reader statistics and it can be noticed that some readers have "read" 100 stories per day for a year. That is really flickering. Any regulation goes, as long as The Library stays solvent.
I would like to add something. I was once on a forum (same subject matter) where the administrators wanted everyone, not just to comment continuously but to set up new threads or new topics and also, the amount of time by logging on and off, how long a person is logged in. Any deviation and that person was cut off. With all of my comments, I was cut off. They seemed to want very full participation, 24/7.

I find it rather mind-boggling that there are readers who won't give any particular Library item (with the possible exception of very short poems or snippets) at least a single minute of their attention before 'flicking away' from it.

As for trying to install/develop software that will measure how long a particular member spends reading a specific item, IMHO that's a waste of resources, namely the time and energy of Februs. Educating and encouraging some readers to use the available methods to identify items which they're likely to enjoy reading through to the end, that strikes me as a far more effective approach... --C.K.

I couldn't agree more with the above.

I fully understand that someone may open something for viewing and then subsequently decide it's not to their liking but that process surely has to take longer than 10 seconds which is barely enough time to have read much more than a sentence.

Also, as previously explained, if the content and orientation of the story is of principal concern to you then don't view unvalidated items which at any given time tend to constitute less than 0.1% of the library content. It seems pointless for us to expend the vast amount of time that goes into validating items if that information is not going to be put to good use.

One assumes that the frantic flicking behaviour would not be reproduced in an actual library otherwise you'd have people literally running around the place, opening books and 10 seconds later putting them back on the shelf and running to open the next. Madness.

The limiter has been put on in such a way as to try and encourage a more sensible and measured approach to viewing things and to ensure the site remains available for use.

When you open a story, the server looks it up and sends it to your browser. If it's a thirty thousand word story then the entire thirty thousand words are sent - even if you just read the first line and decide not to read more, the entire story counts against the site's bandwidth.

And the look up takes server time. The server has to correctly select which of the more than 19000 items you want. Even if it's a 28 word poem or a 100 word snippet, it takes server time to select the right story.

Perhaps the most important point is that nothing in life is free. Oh, we (the readers) don't pay anything for this site, but someone has to. The lack of ads means that someone (perhaps three someones) is paying a monthly bill to keep this place running.

Which is why having some restrictions make sense. A whole lot of sense.

Goodgulf

Personally I will gladly settle for reading or perhaps just viewing one or two stories a minute if it means this site stays as it is. free and a great place to visit. The validators on this site work hard and fast, I am often amazed as just how fast a story does get validated.

I am what most of my teachers and professors called a "speed reader" with excellent comprehension ability and recall of anything I read, (not boasting, just a fact), and I have never seen the warnings I am going to fast. Of course one of the main reasons may be is that I stop to comment which takes time. Maybe that would solve two problems at once if everyone commented on the stories all the time then no one would ever worry about the flicking...LMAO

CS

This is certainly true and we do have to take into account what bandwidth we use but the primary problem is overloading the SQL database. Although transparent to the reader, behind the scenes a whole host of database operations are transacted every time an item is viewed. This is a greatly simplified version of some of the database transactions that occur when someone clicks on an item to view it:

- a number of checks are made to determine if the reader's account is a limited one and if so whether they have reached their limit.

- an entry is made in the 'Last Read' database table.

- an update to the submission's database table is made to increment the total views for the item.

- an update to the reader's database table is made to record that they have viewed this item.

- a number of checks are made to see if the item being viewed is part of a serial and in particular whether it has previous or subsequent parts available.

- a check is made to see if the item is part of an ordered or unordered series with further database table access to retrieve relevant data if it is.

- a check is made to see if an audio version of the item is available with further database table access to retrieve relevant data if it is.

- a check is made to see if the item about to be viewed is a library item or an item to be 'imported' from the WRW with further database table access to retrieve data if it is

- an update is made to the information table used by the "activity" part of the site where you can see what others are viewing.

- a variety of updates are made to various statistical tables.

- an update is made to the 'number of stories read today' counter.

- an update is made to the 'number of stories read to date' counter.

- a check is made to see if the 'Last Read' database table needs to be culled and if so a number of records are deleted.


So, if you imagine all these various processes have to queue up to be transacted for EACH item viewed and then multiply that by the number of people, including admins and validaters, who might be viewing items on the site you can imagine how it's very easy for them all to get backed up. Once we exceed a certain number we violate our Terms of Service and bang - no more site. I'm sure the above is TMI for most people but it should also explain why the 'flicking' that goes on is generally a bad thing for the site.

Februs' latest answer is quite comprehensive except that it does not answer the question that I have asked twice. What is the limit of stories that can be viewed in that 60 second time period? Right now it is like driving on a road with signs that say "Speed Limit" and then don't tell you what that limit is.

So how slow do you want us to go? I'm sure most members can manage to keep below that limit if they know what that limit is.