• tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip
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    7 months ago

    On the front end this still theoretically works, but it’s unclear when (if ever) reddit respected it on the back end. They might have an archive of all the text ever put on the site.

    • LillyPip@lemmy.ca
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      7 months ago

      I don’t know how their backend works, but as a former db admin, it seems wasteful to maintain that many layers of change for every user. I would certainly do that in a mission-critical system, but for millions of pseudo-anonymous users, many of whom are shitposters, that would be an insane waste of server space.

      That may be true, but I would be a bit surprised if there were a change-log like that.

      e: keep in mind, systems like this don’t just work like that – you’d have to do extra work to build it that way on purpose. And you’d be doing that extra work, maintenance, and hosting for a user base who aren’t paying you, in a system you’re giving away for free, in Lemmy’s case.

      • Turun@feddit.de
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        7 months ago

        Knowing how comments get changed is immensely interesting data. And if you design a system from the ground up, adding the functionality to save edits in the backend does not take much effort at all.

        • LillyPip@lemmy.ca
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          7 months ago

          Sure, and I can see keeping the last edit (which it obviously does), but every edit? That seems ridiculous if only for the hosting costs.

          • Turun@feddit.de
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            7 months ago

            Really? What do you expect is the edit rate on sites like Lemmy and reddit? One in ten comments? I think more like one in 30 or something. That would increase the storage costs by 3% and a small amount of processing power.

            Hosting costs are dwarfed by media storage anyway.