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Dumb website only lets one user in at a time

imherefor.me

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Re: Dumb website only lets one user in at a time

#71

Post by giancarlostoro »

vasco wrote: post #42
bityard wrote: post #40

Not at all the same thing I admit, but the company I work for has a product that limits the number of transactions (per user) to 1. Where "transaction" is roughly equivalent to an HTTP request. So if you run a query that takes 30 seconds, get bored, open up a new tab to do something else in the product, your new tab will hang until the transaction in the previous tab has completed. I hate it. There is a special URL t…

A manager thought that they could reduce scope on implementing proper rate limiting after a postmortem or how does this appear?

Maybe too many people were overloading the system by opening too many tabs, making it worse. Sounds like this application needs basic fine tuning (I bet there's 0 indexing on the database, and who knows what else).

Re: Dumb website only lets one user in at a time

#73

Post by jesprenj »

knodi123 wrote: post #52
bityard wrote: post #40

Not at all the same thing I admit, but the company I work for has a product that limits the number of transactions (per user) to 1. Where "transaction" is roughly equivalent to an HTTP request. So if you run a query that takes 30 seconds, get bored, open up a new tab to do something else in the product, your new tab will hang until the transaction in the previous tab has completed. I hate it. There is a special URL t…

Ha. When I moved into my town, the public library's online book search was only turned on from 9-5, monday through saturday. Apparently it was so unstable they didn't want anyone trying to use it unless they had an IT guy on hand? I'm guessing? Anyway, they eventually outsourced to bibliocommons, but oy, what a ridiculous limitation to have as late as 2007.

The official government website for accessing information about property ownership information in Slovenia only works during working hours -- mon-fri 8h-20h.

Re: Dumb website only lets one user in at a time

#75

Post by nso »

bb88 wrote: post #50
barryrandall wrote: post #12

Take away the position counter, and this would perfectly simulate trying to use a single-line BBS.

Absolutely. I remember those days. Oh how my parents hated me for running up the long distance bills.

I see this mentioned a lot, but how large would you actually rack up the bills in today's dollars?

Re: Dumb website only lets one user in at a time

#76

Post by floam »

notatoad wrote: post #28
mglz wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whcih ones and why? Wierd load balancing? Or dumb bureaucracy?

we implement one for event registration. without queuing, you end up with some hidden complexity around whether a ticket in a cart counts towards the limit or not, and when it goes back into the available pool if that cart doesn't check out in time. none of it is too difficult to implement, but it is difficult to explain to users and creates experiences that frustrate people are or are perceived as unfair. for exampl…

Hardcore fans demand to feel they earned their spot by having more endurance, being quicker, even if it ends up being kind of luck when it opens up.

I’ve seen something through Ticketmaster that added a lottery system, giving a certain percent of users a shot at tickets a bit before it gets opened up to everyone else. And people with Amex cards or people who demonstrated devotion.

Re: Dumb website only lets one user in at a time

#78

Post by alwa »

notatoad wrote: post #28
mglz wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whcih ones and why? Wierd load balancing? Or dumb bureaucracy?

we implement one for event registration. without queuing, you end up with some hidden complexity around whether a ticket in a cart counts towards the limit or not, and when it goes back into the available pool if that cart doesn't check out in time. none of it is too difficult to implement, but it is difficult to explain to users and creates experiences that frustrate people are or are perceived as unfair. for exampl…

To your last point, I’ve always understood their sentiment to be along the lines of:

- differentially rewarding those customers willing to put in higher levels of effort

- inflating attendees’ sense of the purchase’s value, since they’ve sunk work into acquiring the right to attend/buy

- adding a sense of agency: you “could have” gotten the tickets if you’d just showed up earlier, you have only yourself to blame

- discouraging the sense that the lottery is “rigged” or inundated with scalpers

- for that matter, offering some form of social proof that “other people” (rather than bots) are buying the tickets: taking the amount of time that people take to check out, that sort of thing

- which also offers tangible social proof of the promotion’s desirability: “1,000 people in line around the block” counts for more buzz than “5% chance of being able to spend money on this thing”

- potentially more reliable gauge of the true level of demand, so we can get the right size of venue next time: a lottery rewards trying to game your number of entries, and, depending how it’s constructed, may encourage people to enter on a lark even if they don’t intend to buy

Re: Dumb website only lets one user in at a time

#80

Post by LVB »

nso wrote: post #75
bb88 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely. I remember those days. Oh how my parents hated me for running up the long distance bills.

I see this mentioned a lot, but how large would you actually rack up the bills in today's dollars?

I checked a bad/oops/“no more computer” month from my early 90’s youth and it would be about $250 today (1 month).
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