Silk Road forums

Discussion => Silk Road discussion => Topic started by: harlock on November 13, 2012, 12:33 am

Title: Non-invasive suggestion for reducing server traffic/load and more.
Post by: harlock on November 13, 2012, 12:33 am
Obviously I understand that this is not going to be a top priority for anyone on the development end of things in the very short term, but I have suggestion to reduce at least some of the site traffic.  If indeed the problems as of late that eventually led to the site outage were caused by too much traffic from an unexpected number of new users as was suggested by Inigo.  Adding an advanced search--though it may seem counter-intuitive at first--would be an excellent way to mitigate at least some traffic and resource usage.

I also realize that there is a feature request section on the forums, and that a more robust search function has been requested before.  But the last thread was made at the beginning of September and did not seem to attract much attention.  Moreover, as I stated before, this is more in the interest of the site as a whole with just the added benefit of making Silk Road better for everybody.  But I would not be offended if any of the moderators saw fit to move this thread to the aforementioned place along with the others.

Abstract:  everyone knows exactly how much coin they have in their wallet at any given time (given that the website is up and running).  And it should stand to reason that they have at least some idea of what they want to buy.  But the current simple search and browsing methods makes it rather difficult to find an affordable quantity of the substance that they desire.

Real-life example:  last week I started browsing around for the first cannabis that I was going to buy through The Road.  I have made other purchases on Silk Road, but they were in far less less crowded categories.  Anyway, I knew that I had a little over 17 BTC and that I wanted to buy at least 14 grams of marijuana.  And I did try the simple search, but it was not particularly effective due the multitude of ways for this quantity to be expressed in the plaintext title of a vendor's listings (14g, 14 g., 14 grams, .5 oz., 0.5 ounces, 1/2oz., etc.).  So what did I end up having to do?  Browse through something like 17 pages of listings (approximately 450 individual listings) to find the product I wanted at a price that I could afford and in the quantity desired.  Not that is is a complaint thread, I am just sharing my experience.

It ended up taking me hours to narrow down my choices and to finally pick one.  Which definitely can't be good for server resources.  This may not be a problem for buyers who have built up a relationship with a network of trusted vendors, but for newer buyers and those who want to browse around for different flavors of the day from newer vendors, it is not ideal from either a usability standpoint or in terms of server load and resource usage.

I am not a code monkey of any sort, but I am fairly confident that beefing up the search function would be a relatively simple task as far as the technical aspects are concerned.  Though, I understand that it would make creating listings slightly more difficult for vendors.  But it would just be a drop in the bucket compared to the more difficult aspects of being a vendor and the magic that they work after they have completed the relatively simple step of creating a product listing.  I admittedly have no experience in being a vendor, but I can't imagine that having some extra drop-down boxes or text fields to fill in while creating a listing would be too much of a burden.  Especially in the interest of being able to attract more buyers to their listings and for buyers to more easily be able to find exactly what they want want.  On top of optimizing site traffic of course.

I hope that everyone will understand that my intentions are pure, apropos to the current state of operations, and in the interests of everyone involved.

I also know that double-posting is usually looked down upon, but I feel that the other requests for an expanded search function lacked a certain amount of insight and were expressed more as wishful thinking than as a means of optimizing and improving the experience of buyers, vendors, and site administrators.

And while I don't doubt that this request is on a to-do list somewhere, with the urgency of recent issues, I think it is not particularly something would immediately come to mind as a way to allow Silk Road to continue to grow and improve.  I also feel that it is a far more constructive suggestion than cutting off or limiting registration of new users, and I feel that it falls much more in line with the ideology behind Silk Road as whole.

Comments and suggests are welcome and encouraged!

Stay safe and be peaceful to one another.

--SPCH
Title: Re: Non-invasive suggestion for reducing server traffic/load and more.
Post by: Lelise on November 13, 2012, 01:02 am
I'm a total newbie, apart from one batch of orders made just before the weekend, in the SR world as a customer, so forgive me for any ignorence.

Neither do I have anything to do with SR's business.

But, I'm a vendor and a sysadmin elsewhere, it makes total sense what you said. Apart from thinking it's not too much work ^.^

As a vendor I can say it's totally worth it having to click multiple boxes etc, you know it's for your own sake as well, it at least makes it easy to find your product(s).

If a vendor decides it's too much effort, well, go ahead and just fill the description line. See how much business it costs, it'll probably go to others which *did* bother to use as much options as possible.

Also, when vendoring the same type of items over and over again, you kind of make the ads on auto pilot. The only differences would probably be in quantity and/or prices.

Cheers
Title: Re: Non-invasive suggestion for reducing server traffic/load and more.
Post by: harlock on November 13, 2012, 01:56 am
I'm a total newbie, apart from one batch of orders made just before the weekend, in the SR world as a customer, so forgive me for any ignorence.

Neither do I have anything to do with SR's business.

But, I'm a vendor and a sysadmin elsewhere, it makes total sense what you said. Apart from thinking it's not too much work ^.^

As a vendor I can say it's totally worth it having to click multiple boxes etc, you know it's for your own sake as well, it at least makes it easy to find your product(s).

If a vendor decides it's too much effort, well, go ahead and just fill the description line. See how much business it costs, it'll probably go to others which *did* bother to use as much options as possible.

Also, when vendoring the same type of items over and over again, you kind of make the ads on auto pilot. The only differences would probably be in quantity and/or prices.

Cheers

Thanks very much for the comments!

I didn't mean to imply that search is conceptually simple at all.  Google, Microsoft, and countless others spend millions in cash and man-hours to try to perfect their search algorithms and spiders and such.  Of course, nothing even close to that scale would be required or even desirable for Silk Road.

I meant that it would be relatively simple in the sense that only a few additional parameters added to the search function could make a world of difference.  Adding too many would certainly run the risk of diminishing returns and over-complicating everything unnecessarily.  The things that come to mind immediately are category, price, and quantity.  But there are certainly many options that could be added as well in the future including things like sorting the results by the specified parameters and vendor rating and level of activity.  And perhaps even things that are a bit more ephemeral and complex, such as vendor "reliability" or "quality" that could be determined in any number of of ways--the most basic of which might be a composite of their rating and order volume along with how often they log into the site to see their pending orders, which would allow potential buyers to have some sort of indication about how soon their order will be shipped.

And there are certainly people here on these forums that are wiser and more experienced with such things as I.  It is something that could open a lot of debate, with varying viewpoints among both buyers and vendors, as well as IT professionals.  All of which is encouraged.  For the first phase of improving search functionality though, I am just thinking of K.I.S.S.--"Keep It Simple, Stupid."

Oh, and thanks again for bringing up something that I forgot to mention in my opening post!  This could all be a voluntary and opt-in option for the vendors creating their listings.  Though, I find it hard to believe that most vendors would want to miss out on the opportunity for their product listings to be more easily found by potential buyers for the small amount of time it would take to add some additional information to their listings.

--SPCH
Title: Re: Non-invasive suggestion for reducing server traffic/load and more.
Post by: johnboygreen on November 13, 2012, 03:17 am
Excellent idea and very well written. I could not agree more, the search function is minimal at best. Although i enjoy browsing through endless listings looking for the just right bag of weed, it can consume much time and ultimately puts much more load on the system.
Im no teckie but i do love SR and this will have to happen eventually.
Title: Re: Non-invasive suggestion for reducing server traffic/load and more.
Post by: matosago on November 13, 2012, 04:20 am
Even the ability to sort by price would be nice.  Perhaps the ability to view only a certain range of prices in a category.
Title: Re: Non-invasive suggestion for reducing server traffic/load and more.
Post by: BlarghRawr on November 13, 2012, 04:52 am
I support this(without having read it in-depth).
Title: Re: Non-invasive suggestion for reducing server traffic/load and more.
Post by: harlock on November 13, 2012, 05:43 am
Thanks for all the kind comments, everyone! I know that I tend to write rather verbosely, but I am glad that it is not unappreciated.

--SPCH
Title: Re: Non-invasive suggestion for reducing server traffic/load and more.
Post by: nitpi950 on November 13, 2012, 05:47 am
I appreciate your writing style. Like my own in many ways. Pretentious five!
Title: Re: Non-invasive suggestion for reducing server traffic/load and more.
Post by: harlock on November 13, 2012, 05:58 am
I appreciate your writing style. Like my own in many ways. Pretentious five!

Haha, thank you!  And I have only just recently come to accept this gift of mine and to consider it as a real vocation.

You're all welcome aboard the spaceship Arcadia anytime.

--SPCH