Jimbo's plan calls for everyone being able to rate, including not-logged-in users. This will be for test purposes only;
the ratings
from the test phase will be deleted again, once the
statistics people
got their hands on it and can hopefully tell us how to fine-tune the rating process.
The "performance hog myth" dates back to the very first
version. I have
worked on the problematic parts and IMHO they should be
good. I can't
be certain without real testing, though. However, I doubt it will degrade performance in the initial phase; if there's a
problem, it will
most likely show once there are at least a few hundred thousand ratings. There will be many write/delete queries on the table, which might lead to table locks; this might be countered with low priority queries, though.
Magnus
If testing this new feature does NOT cause the servers to slow down immediately, then there is no reason not to try it out. Someone had claimed an immediate TRIPLING of access time, but Magnus says "I doubt it will degrade performance in the initial phase", and I believe him.
Magnus is one of the three people whom we all trust the most at Wikipedia. If he says there's no risk in a live test of a new feature, then I say there's no risk.
Tim Starling, do you agree?
Ed Poor Former Developer