Word count

[Callwaiting]

Would it be possible to have a small section in our user CP that tells us information about our posts?
By that I mean like our total word count over all posts, or our average word count per post.
I just thought it'd be pretty interesting :P .

[Kiros]

There's already a small section in a user's profile that is about the user's posts. :)

As for the word-count, I don't believe that would be possible. I know that vBulletin counts the characters in a post whenever it's submitted (to check if it is below the maximum limit), but I don't think it stores that amount in the database - much less, the count of separate words. With enough free time, I'm sure someone could develop a system to do this, but it would put quite a bit of strain on the database.

[Antares]

That would be super server intensive wouldn't it?

[Maverick]

That would be super server intensive wouldn't it?Yes it would.

[Falk 'Ace' Flyer]

I'd do it if I thought it would be worthwhile, though it would be relatively simple. All you do is query all the posts, and add up their lengths...It's like seeing all of a user's topics. You could also make a script that adds a new column to the user info., and have it add all of their current words with a different script that's run once.

But again, it doesn't seem like the kind of thing that would be worth the trouble...

[Kiros]

Given that it would have to skim through and count all the words in each post (which there may be thousands of), store the numbers in the table, and read all of the numbers and average them out hundreds of times each day, yes, it would be very server-intensive.

[Falk 'Ace' Flyer]

Oh right, word count, not character count.

You COULD just count the number of spaces...

[Kiros]

Yes... I'm not saying that it couldn't be done. ô.o

I'm saying that such a implementation would be very strenuous on a server, so it won't be done.

[Falk 'Ace' Flyer]

Aw, it's not that bad if you do it efficiently. Regardless, this isn't a feature worth spending time on.

[Underground_Network]

I think that first we need to implement a system in which cookies come out of your monitor every time you log onto VT, that way people will keep coming back for more....

But yeah, this doesn't seem like it's a priority in the eyes of the admins, so it doesn't look like this is going anywhere. My question is why Kiros didn't simply lock this thread after mentioning it wasn't going to happen... 0.o

[Maverick]

I think that first we need to implement a system in which cookies come out of your monitor every time you log onto VT, that way people will keep coming back for more....

But yeah, this doesn't seem like it's a priority in the eyes of the admins, so it doesn't look like this is going anywhere. My question is why Kiros didn't simply lock this thread after mentioning it wasn't going to happen... 0.o
Because saying no and locking the thread is rude and if people were given that kind of response and treatment they wouldn't want to give suggestions in the future... I certainly wouldn't.

[Falk 'Ace' Flyer]

Because locking threads != free cookies.

[Underground_Network]

I don't know, I just assumed that when there is nothing more to be said, there is no reason for the thread to be open any longer, but I guess, in most cases, it is up to the OP as to whether the thread should remain open or closed.

But yeah, I digress and remove myself from this discussion.

*Exits stage right*

[iJack]

ô.o
Thats new.


That would be cool.

[MoveAlong]

yes that would be interesting, but most of the time interesting things just don't cut it. it also has to be useful.

[Whisper]

Please keep it on topic
or don't post

[Kiros]

Aw, it's not that bad if you do it efficiently. Regardless, this isn't a feature worth spending time on.

I think that you're unconsciously comparing the implementation to something that is done offline.

In a normal word processor, it's fine. Even if there are hundreds or thousands of words, it can afford to keep a real-time count on the words and characters. It's a single process that doesn't need to continuously parse immense amounts of data - it's simply a thread of adding and subtracting.

Now for an online application (i.e. our PHP and MySQL setup) to do this, it would need to fetch the post content, parse the entire thing, searching for the regular expression ^[^\ ]+([\ ]+[^\ ]+)?$, add the results, send the post data as well as the word count and other variables to the database (which means overhead from simply connecting to the database for the queries), get the okay that everything is stored, and pass on the continue page to the client. Whenever someone would go to a profile, the word count would have to be fetched, and then averaged with the number of posts. This might not seem too stressful, alone, but this will happen hundreds of times each day and at many different volumes of post content. That would be stressful even if we were on one of DotServant's VPS packages.

And, as you've said, as someone has said, and as we've all said, it wouldn't be useful enough to even worry about - especially since most people wouldn't even notice/care.

[Mannequin]

Yeah, that's not worth you're time Kiros

[Stark]

It's a good idea.