• LillyPip@lemmy.ca
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    9 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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      9 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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        9 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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          9 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.