E-mail notification [DENIED]

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E-mail notification [DENIED]

Post by Guest »

I don't visit the site every day, any chance and e-mail could be sent as part of the notification system?
exp
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Post by exp »

sorry, to minimize systemload that option is only available to AniDB mods.

BYe!
EXP
Gambit
AniDB Staff
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Joined: Sun Oct 06, 2002 11:21 am

Post by Gambit »

Oh, I have that option? *goes off to look* :P
exp
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Joined: Tue Oct 01, 2002 9:42 pm
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Post by exp »

Gambit wrote:Oh, I have that option? *goes off to look* :P
lol, yes you have :o)
check "Notify by Mail" on the profile page.
be aware that it tends to get very spammy though!

BYe!
EXP
Guest

Post by Guest »

exp wrote:sorry, to minimize systemload that option is only available to AniDB mods.

BYe!
EXP
Um OK??? I am motoring 2 series and they only seem to get updated from once and a while.

How many users are in the database? Sending a small short e-mail after someone adds a new file shouldn't take much overhead if it only emails people moitoring that series. Hell it would just be one e-mail with the BCC field filled with every one who wanted to be notified.
Elberet
Posts: 778
Joined: Sat Jul 19, 2003 8:14 pm

Post by Elberet »

2000 users times 4 notifies on average; whenever a file is added, the whole notifies table is checked and emails are sent out. For popular animes, that can easily be a coupld hundred emails at once.

However, maybe this would work if the notify-by-email was run as a background job. Run in once a day and find all files that match a user's notification settings. If any of these files have been in the DB for more then 36h, send an Email listing all the new files; otherwhise send no Email at all.

This would make sure that the number of Emails is limited and race conditions do not occur. I.e. user uses the website on 23:58, a file is added on 23:59, the job runs on 00:00 and a rather useless mail is sent that reaches the user five minutes later, two minutes after he's seen the notify popup on the site...

I think, in the end, this would put less stress on the server then if every user would visit the up2date page once a day, ne? :) Also, if it can be turned on/off for each notify, only few people would actually use it. Those who use the AniDB once a day will get a faster response from the popup anyways.

But that's just my $0.02... As far as I'm concerned, I don't need Email notifies - having the myplace page on 5-minute-auto-reload (viva Mozilla!) gets the job done too. :P
exp
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Joined: Tue Oct 01, 2002 9:42 pm
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Post by exp »

Anonymous wrote: Um OK??? I am motoring 2 series and they only seem to get updated from once and a while.

How many users are in the database? Sending a small short e-mail after someone adds a new file shouldn't take much overhead if it only emails people moitoring that series. Hell it would just be one e-mail with the BCC field filled with every one who wanted to be notified.
Well,

the way email notifications are implemented atm a new mail will be send to each user monitoring an anime for each new file added to that anime.
this means that i.e. for animes like GitS SAC about 200 emails would need to be send at once.
And using a BCC doesn't help at all bc the mailserver (running on the same machine) will still have to deliver all those emails one by one.

BYe!
EXP
Guest

Post by Guest »

Elberet wrote: But that's just my $0.02... As far as I'm concerned, I don't need Email notifies - having the myplace page on 5-minute-auto-reload (viva Mozilla!) gets the job done too. :P
So what do you think creates more system load? Users refreshing a page with there browser in a loop, or sending out e-mails when files are added or on a fixes interval.


You should be able to get a good Idea of how many e-mails would be sent each update by counting the users with notify and grouping by series, if you then sorted by the count you would see what series has the most users on notify and that would be your worst case scenario.
Elberet
Posts: 778
Joined: Sat Jul 19, 2003 8:14 pm

Post by Elberet »

exp already posted that:
GitS:SAC has about 200 active notifes.

Two hundred Emails is not exactly a serious load, tho... I have qmail with ezmlm running on my puny Athlon 650 Linux box and it serves an announcement mailing list with currently 250 subscribers and about 1 mailing per day, and handles the whole 250 emails in under 5 minutes on 2kB/s upstream bandwith. (That's 16kB/s max minus eMule's 14kB/s upload limit.)

But still, I can understand that exp would rather not provide that feauture to the public masses, at least not in the current implementation. For instance, a malicious user could abuse it by adding a GitS:SAC file with a random hash and size, deleting it and immediately adding another file with random hash and size... :?
exp
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Post by exp »

Elberet wrote:exp already posted that:
GitS:SAC has about 200 active notifes.

Two hundred Emails is not exactly a serious load, tho... I have qmail with ezmlm running on my puny Athlon 650 Linux box and it serves an announcement mailing list with currently 250 subscribers and about 1 mailing per day, and handles the whole 250 emails in under 5 minutes on 2kB/s upstream bandwith. (That's 16kB/s max minus eMule's 14kB/s upload limit.)

But still, I can understand that exp would rather not provide that feauture to the public masses, at least not in the current implementation. For instance, a malicious user could abuse it by adding a GitS:SAC file with a random hash and size, deleting it and immediately adding another file with random hash and size... :?
Well,

5mins you say? so it would already kill anidb instantly the way the email notifications are currently implemented.
allowing only one notification mail per user per 24h would solve part of the problem. however there would still be problems with bounces & co.

BYe!
EXP
Elberet
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Joined: Sat Jul 19, 2003 8:14 pm

Post by Elberet »

5 mins on <2kB/s. And how much upstream do you have? ;)
Some time ago (before joining AR), when qmail had the full bandwith and a higher max concurrency, the same 250 emails were dispatched in under 25 seconds. Not bad for a poor little 128kbit/s DSL line with ultra-high latency, I'd say.

But I fully agree with you nevertheless. An email-notification system that sends a separate mail for each and every new file added to a watched anime is unbearable. If someone had had a notify on Urashiman, they'd have received 26 Emails in about 20 minutes today. 8O
Guest

Post by Guest »

In that case the 24h mail out solves both the abuse and spam problem.

I am fairly sure that email notification would reduce unnessary page hits from users who just load the site to see if there has been anything new posted.

Keep the e-mails simple and plain text it shouldn't be hard to tune the performance.
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