New XKCD Forums

Recently, I did some stress tests on the site. I would take down the site to reduce noise, then use a script to make 2 requests per second to a random page of a particular thread. Doing this with Double Post (the largest thread on the forum with almost 700 pages) resulted in a database load of 287.8 MHz. Meanwhile, the FG first post thread (with only 4 pages) only had a database load of 30.9 MHz. This confirms my suspicion, that large threads have an outsized impact on site performance. Because the database has the most expenses associated with it, I will need to start limiting threads to around 100 pages or so.

With that in mind, I would like to ask how this should be implemented. Should OPs be moved to the new threads? Should they be left alone? What should be done with respect to the scorekeeper?

chridd wrote:

Summoning chridd to this thread to answer about the scorekeeper.

I think OPs shouldn't be duplicated because it will mess with the count of threads like Count to a Million.

Sorry for the somewhat off-topic question, but what does the unit MHz mean with respect to database load?

Megahertz. Millions of CPU cycles per second.

I could probably make the scorekeepers work with multiple threads, but I have something else going on between now and Sunday so I might not have enough time until then. (There was a multi-thread game on the old forum, so in theory it shouldn't be too hard.) I'd likely treat the OP of the new thread as if it were the next post after the last post in the old thread.

For Count to a Million, I'm wondering if we should wait for the end of a page so that pagetoppers stay on the same numbers they otherwise would be on?

I'm wondering if you could actually split the current Count to a Million thread at the beginning of page 401, so it's divided at a nice round number?