Teams: Join a Team!

[IronBits]

SeekersOfTheLostPrime
SearchersOfLostPrimes

I don't think you are Raiding anything are you?

I think we should drop the Team_name all together.
We can load the team names into the database and assign it that way.
This way, if someone wants to team hop, pain in the butt as it would be, it can be changed in the db affiliation. I think that is how it's done in many projects...

[mdettweiler]

Originally Posted by IronBits

SeekersOfTheLostPrime
SearchersOfLostPrimes

I don't think you are Raiding anything are you?

I think we should drop the Team_name all together.
We can load the team names into the database and assign it that way.
This way, if someone wants to team hop, pain in the butt as it would be, it can be changed in the db affiliation. I think that is how it's done in many projects...

In fact, that's the way it was done on Adam's old server--since your stats setup is an offshoot of his code, you should find that under the Admin page there's a handy-dandy little thing that lets you adjust which users are marked under what teams in the database. And then, if someone changes teams, it would be even simpler than what you were saying: simply change the user's team affiliation in the database, and the old results stay with the old team, while all new results go to the new team.

As for the team name in the username: the reason why I suggested having it as optional was so that we wouldn't have to mess with changing the usernames on all the millions of results already returned with team names in the usernames. What I was thinking was, the stats server would just completely ignore team names in the usernames, and instead just check the database directly to find a user's team affiliation. (Essentially, the user would be choosing to include the team name as part of their username if they so wished, though it would be completely irrelevant to the server.)

[mdettweiler]

Originally Posted by Flatlander

I think it should be plural,
RaidersOfTheLostPrimes

imho Singular sounds like we're looking for just one specific prime.

Good point. Having it singular would be more fitting if we were, say, a conjecture search that was down to its last k or something like that.

[gd_barnes]

Originally Posted by Flatlander

I think it should be plural,
RaidersOfTheLostPrimes

imho Singular sounds like we're looking for just one specific prime.

OK, I'll go with plural. The logic makes sense.

[gd_barnes]

Originally Posted by IronBits

SeekersOfTheLostPrime
SearchersOfLostPrimes

I don't think you are Raiding anything are you?

I think we should drop the Team_name all together.
We can load the team names into the database and assign it that way.
This way, if someone wants to team hop, pain in the butt as it would be, it can be changed in the db affiliation. I think that is how it's done in many projects...

I read somewhere, I think in the Free-DC forum, that Bok and/or Ironbits were designing things such that there would be a database of people associated to teams. That's why I wondered if we'd need to have a team name in our ID.

Can that database be set up in the near future?

Based on the discussion, here is a plan of action:

1. I think it's decided, let's start a new team called "RaidersOfTheLostPrimes". I don't know if it can have spaces like "Ars Technica Team Prime Rib". If so, that would be good. Carlos or David or whomever, can you set that up for us?

2. I guess anyone can be leader of the group. It doesn't have to be an admin. Any volunteers?

Assuming the above database of team names/people in them is a viable option, the following likely needs to be done:

1. Set up the database of team names and people in them.

2. After #1 is done, David or whomever can do it, can you write something to convert all of the user ID's in existing results to remove the team name from them?

3. Karsten or Anon, do you need to modify any automated scripts that you have written that tabulate results or totals based on the removal of the team names from all of the ID's?


Is there anything else anyone can think of?


Gary

[mdettweiler]

Originally Posted by gd_barnes

I read somewhere, I think in the Free-DC forum, that Bok and/or Ironbits were designing things such that there would be a database of people associated to teams. That's why I wondered if we'd need to have a team name in our ID.

Can that database be set up in the near future?

Based on the discussion, here is a plan of action:

1. I think it's decided, let's start a new team called "RaidersOfTheLostPrimes". I don't know if it can have spaces like "Ars Technica Team Prime Rib". If so, that would be good. Carlos or David or whomever, can you set that up for us?

If Adam's server was any indication, then spaces should be no problem. Since David's server is based on Adam's previous setup, we've already got a partial user/team database set up--we'll just need to add a few users to various teams to get it updated to our current status.

2. I guess anyone can be leader of the group. It doesn't have to be an admin. Any volunteers?

Assuming the above database of team names/people in them is a viable option, the following likely needs to be done:

1. Set up the database of team names and people in them.

As I said earlier, we already have a partial database set up on David's stats server since the whole master DB was copied from Adam's server; even though we don't have automated import of stats data set up yet, it should still work fine for storing our database (and thus all that stuff will just fall into place when the automated stats import comes online). We also have our list in this thread to base things off of.

2. After #1 is done, David or whomever can do it, can you write something to convert all of the user ID's in existing results to remove the team name from them?

Hmm...I'm not so sure that we should go and remove team names from existing usernames. I think we should just leave the team names there, and treat them as part of the usernames (as we sort of always have, except that we just won't be needing to parse out the data anymore). Otherwise, we have quite a large potential for mess once we get the stats imports flowing again. I'll use Carlos's username as an example here (hope you don't mind, Carlos ) since he's submitted a fair amount of results under his username with the team name included (Free-DC_em99010pepe). We remove the team names from the usernames on all results, hence his results would be listed under just "em99010pepe". But then what happens when his machines keep submitting results under "Free-DC_em9910pepe" (possibly because he's got lots of machines spread all over the place and he won't necessarily be able to get them all switched over at the same time)? Then we have TWO usernames showing up in the stats, and David will have one heck of a job to do when he has to keep re-merging double usernames for many of our users.

My suggestion is this: simply have whatever scripts David will use to import the stats data ignore the team names in the usernames from now on, and instead just look in the database to find out who's on what team. Then, if users wish to have their team names removed from their usernames (though some may prefer to leave it on there, as a sort of team affiliation badge), they can simply say so here in this thread (alternatively, they could email/PM David directly) and he could remove the team name from those particular usernames. (This will probably end up saving David work in the long run, since my guess is that this would probably have to be done manually anyway.)

3. Karsten or Anon, do you need to modify any automated scripts that you have written that tabulate results or totals based on the removal of the team names from all of the ID's?

Well, the only script that I have that needs to mess with this stuff is the script I used to convert results to CSV files for importing into Adam's stats server, and since that's going to be handled automatically by David anyway for importing into his server, my script is now deprecated except for possibly use as example code in developing the new stuff. (Of course, if we ever do need to use it again for anything, such as a server hosted by someone else who doesn't have their results put online automatically like David's do, then I should be able to easily fix it to work with a user/team database instead of parsing out the team names from the username.)

Max

[em99010pepe]

Max,

For the moment I only have my home machine available for crunching but I hope in November to start borging more again for NPLB when I start my new work. Now is easy to change the nicks.

Carlos

[mdettweiler]

Originally Posted by em99010pepe

Max,

For the moment I only have my home machine available for crunching but I hope in November to start borging more again for NPLB when I start my new work. Now is easy to change the nicks.

Carlos

Ah, very good. Anyone else got any opinions on this? Because if everyone's fine with being able to change the usernames easily right now, then hey, we may as well change them all over.

[gd_barnes]

Originally Posted by mdettweiler

If Adam's server was any indication, then spaces should be no problem. Since David's server is based on Adam's previous setup, we've already got a partial user/team database set up--we'll just need to add a few users to various teams to get it updated to our current status.


As I said earlier, we already have a partial database set up on David's stats server since the whole master DB was copied from Adam's server; even though we don't have automated import of stats data set up yet, it should still work fine for storing our database (and thus all that stuff will just fall into place when the automated stats import comes online). We also have our list in this thread to base things off of.


Hmm...I'm not so sure that we should go and remove team names from existing usernames. I think we should just leave the team names there, and treat them as part of the usernames (as we sort of always have, except that we just won't be needing to parse out the data anymore). Otherwise, we have quite a large potential for mess once we get the stats imports flowing again. I'll use Carlos's username as an example here (hope you don't mind, Carlos ) since he's submitted a fair amount of results under his username with the team name included (Free-DC_em99010pepe). We remove the team names from the usernames on all results, hence his results would be listed under just "em99010pepe". But then what happens when his machines keep submitting results under "Free-DC_em9910pepe" (possibly because he's got lots of machines spread all over the place and he won't necessarily be able to get them all switched over at the same time)? Then we have TWO usernames showing up in the stats, and David will have one heck of a job to do when he has to keep re-merging double usernames for many of our users.

My suggestion is this: simply have whatever scripts David will use to import the stats data ignore the team names in the usernames from now on, and instead just look in the database to find out who's on what team. Then, if users wish to have their team names removed from their usernames (though some may prefer to leave it on there, as a sort of team affiliation badge), they can simply say so here in this thread (alternatively, they could email/PM David directly) and he could remove the team name from those particular usernames. (This will probably end up saving David work in the long run, since my guess is that this would probably have to be done manually anyway.)


Well, the only script that I have that needs to mess with this stuff is the script I used to convert results to CSV files for importing into Adam's stats server, and since that's going to be handled automatically by David anyway for importing into his server, my script is now deprecated except for possibly use as example code in developing the new stuff. (Of course, if we ever do need to use it again for anything, such as a server hosted by someone else who doesn't have their results put online automatically like David's do, then I should be able to easily fix it to work with a user/team database instead of parsing out the team names from the username.)

Max

OK, I'll leave it up to Max, Carlos, and David to figure all this stuff out.

How do we go about getting the 'Raiders of the Lost Primes' team set up?


Gary

[mdettweiler]

Originally Posted by gd_barnes

OK, I'll leave it up to Max, Carlos, and David to figure all this stuff out.

How do we go about getting the 'Raiders of the Lost Primes' team set up?


Gary

Well, I guess the main thing to do is to get it listed in the first post of this thread--pretty easy. Then David will need to add it to his teams database, and we have all the necessary bases covered for a team!

We could then go about setting up some extra goodies such as a team forum (we'd probably want to host that off-site, since mersenneforum doesn't have a clear section of subforums devoted to teams' internal forums). Another thing that teams often do is set up a stats aggregator site, but since our team so far is limited to NPLB alone, that would be somewhat pointless (and besides, other teams like Free-DC have already got really nice stats systems set up that do the job fine--why even try to compete? ).

Edit: I've added the Raiders of the Lost Primes team to the list in the first post of this thread, with Gary as the leader and me as a regular member. (Gary, I'm assuming you're fine with being the leader, if not just give a holler. ) I didn't add anyone else for now since I figured we should wait for "official" declarations from the rest of our "planning committee" of sorts that they'd like to join the team.

[kar_bon]

oh, i don't mind to kick off such a big discussion of the team names!

so, i will join the Raiders then, too!

one remark: the discussion of the team name is not a problem of the names, better a problem of the database:
if there were tables for results, users and teams it would be easiest as is.
change a team name in the team-table but the id (the link to the users) is not affected!

so it's good to invest much time in database creation before set up a database.
that's why i don't have it done yet with a database for rieselprime.org! timeconsuming!