It seems to be a bit flaky, though, in a way that I guess might be the result of some kind of skew between client and server. Right now, Evan’s comment that’s the grandparent of this one is on 18, I haven’t voted on it, my “small karma delta” is 2 points, and my “large karma delta” is 9 points. So I click on the right chevron and Evan’s comment is up to 20. So far, so good. Then I click on the right chevron again and the comment goes back down to 18. Again, so far so good.
But suppose I do this instead. Click-and-hold to take it up to 27. Click again to turn my big upvote into a small upvote (down to 20). Click again to retract the small upvote too (down to 18). So far, still so good. But then something really weird happens. Before my eyes, the comment’s score goes back up to 20 and the right chevron lights up green again: my un-upvote has evaporated. That’s weird enough … but some seconds later, still without any action on my part, the score goes up to 22! Then I click on the right chevron again, the green light goes away, and the score is down to 20. It looks (...briefly...) as if the cumulative result of my actions has been to give Evan 2 points without my upvote being registered. But then the chevron lights up green again, and finally I can click it once more to bring the comment back down to 18 points with no votes from me registered; and there, mercifully, it stays.
(Exactly what happens seems to depend on the timing of my actions.)
The fluid karma seems to be sloshing around and making me slightly queasy :-).
Yeah, this has to do with latency from the server, and the way we currently manage the client state. I think we should be able to build something that’s more stable here that does some more intelligent merging of client and server state (right now we just override the client state with the server response whenever it comes in, and that can sometimes cause your actions to replay, if you made a bunch of them in series before the first server response comes back).
Actually, I just found out that we had an unoptimized database query for the votes on a document in our DB, which made it so that it sometimes took up to a second for us to retrieve the correct result. This should now be fixed, and I expect the whole thing to be much less laggy from now.
Huh. Fluid karma. Might be a good name for it, it more represents the quality where fixed amounts don’t corresponding to individual votes.
It seems to be a bit flaky, though, in a way that I guess might be the result of some kind of skew between client and server. Right now, Evan’s comment that’s the grandparent of this one is on 18, I haven’t voted on it, my “small karma delta” is 2 points, and my “large karma delta” is 9 points. So I click on the right chevron and Evan’s comment is up to 20. So far, so good. Then I click on the right chevron again and the comment goes back down to 18. Again, so far so good.
But suppose I do this instead. Click-and-hold to take it up to 27. Click again to turn my big upvote into a small upvote (down to 20). Click again to retract the small upvote too (down to 18). So far, still so good. But then something really weird happens. Before my eyes, the comment’s score goes back up to 20 and the right chevron lights up green again: my un-upvote has evaporated. That’s weird enough … but some seconds later, still without any action on my part, the score goes up to 22! Then I click on the right chevron again, the green light goes away, and the score is down to 20. It looks (...briefly...) as if the cumulative result of my actions has been to give Evan 2 points without my upvote being registered. But then the chevron lights up green again, and finally I can click it once more to bring the comment back down to 18 points with no votes from me registered; and there, mercifully, it stays.
(Exactly what happens seems to depend on the timing of my actions.)
The fluid karma seems to be sloshing around and making me slightly queasy :-).
Yeah, this has to do with latency from the server, and the way we currently manage the client state. I think we should be able to build something that’s more stable here that does some more intelligent merging of client and server state (right now we just override the client state with the server response whenever it comes in, and that can sometimes cause your actions to replay, if you made a bunch of them in series before the first server response comes back).
Actually, I just found out that we had an unoptimized database query for the votes on a document in our DB, which made it so that it sometimes took up to a second for us to retrieve the correct result. This should now be fixed, and I expect the whole thing to be much less laggy from now.