Denied Add a server side time limit to how long documents can be stored in drawers, push use of Lore section on Forums more.

[Serrt]

What does this suggestion change/add/remove:
This suggestion would add a server side limit of approximately 3-4 months on documents being stored in drawers. The reason I am making this suggestion is due to findings by @Rushi and @Broda Kagen, who I have pinged to speak on the matter as evidence if they wish, in regards to renovations of the UK O5 Offices. They found that by removing 3 cabinets worth of documents related to SCPs (these easily had over about 200-250 documents in them) that there was a marked increase in performance. Considering how many different areas on the map have drawers, I can only imagine that allowing months old documents to accrue because they are deemed as important would have a significant impact on server performance.

The obvious problem with this suggestion is "what happens to really important documents from events that happened months ago?" I would then recommend the use of the Forums, expanding the range of uses of the SCP Lore section. Documents on major event storylines like Cortex or the old TSH storyline could have forum equivalents to have them marked into the server lore instead, allowing for renovation of document storage areas and to keep server performance optimal. This would also cycle most research documents on SCPs for example, allowing newer researchers to enter the server with more possibly ideas that hadn't been done already.

NOTE: The exception to this suggestion would be any pinned documents by Dpt. Leaders or Staff, to avoid hassle when it comes to losing important information.

Has something similar been suggested before? If so, why is your suggestion different?:
Upon searching, I have not found any similar suggestion on the forums

Possible Positives of the suggestion: (At least 2):
Marked increase on server performance in all zones that have document storage
Adds further utility to the forums as a way for players to influence and interact with the server-accepted canon lore
Offers cyclical documentation for Research so that newer players may find the job more accessible


Possible Negatives of the suggestion:
Would probably take significant time to code and implement
Some players may find this confusing
Some documents may end up getting lost to time if the player leaves without uploading their work to SCiPNet

Based on the Positives & Negatives, why should this suggestion be accepted:
It is my opinion that this is a very easy way to further optimize the performance of the server, which many players do always focus on as part of their experience. I also think it will encourage departments to be more strict on what documentation they preserve, as well as encouraging further use of the forums and expanding our way of adding to the server-accepted canon lore. Accordingly, I think that it would be a very beneficial idea to the server, despite the fact that some players may inevitably get confused by missing documentation from time to time.

 

[Broda]

Upon viewing the sheer amount of documents stored just in the O5 Offices alone, caused myself and others around me to notice a dip in server performance. I can't show anything concrete on this as of yet here. A document decay timer would be excellent to mitigate out of date documentation and potentially lower the amount of documentation stored on the server.

Important documents could be stickied in the cabinets where the document becomes permanent until otherwise unstickied.

 

[Cloak]

Not a bad idea, but I don't think this would improve server performance, I think your investigation was a case of the placebo effect / lucky timing - a ton of things go on in the background that can cause the server to shift between good and bad performance, and this 'shift' happens multiple times per hour (I notice it a lot when I'm online). Things like how much combat is ongoing, which SCPs are online as some are laggier than others, what entities are spawned in or in use, etc. It might reduce memory usage but that'd be more applicable to USA, and this took place on UK from the sounds of it.

For context, documents are just some text stored in memory, there isn't really anything going on with them (no code is being run every tick for each document, unlike for entities, players, etc).

It is worth doing just to reduce clutter, I just don't want people to think this is a magic bullet for lag. It might have an improvement in terms of the amount of networking required but if this significant I think we would have noticed it by now as we have profiled net messages many times in the past.

 

[Serrt]

Not a bad idea, but I don't think this would improve server performance, I think your investigation was a case of the placebo effect / lucky timing - a ton of things go on in the background that can cause the server to shift between good and bad performance, and this 'shift' happens multiple times per hour (I notice it a lot when I'm online). Things like how much combat is ongoing, which SCPs are online as some are laggier than others, what entities are spawned in or in use, etc. It might reduce memory usage but that'd be more applicable to USA, and this took place on UK from the sounds of it.

For context, documents are just some text stored in memory, there isn't really anything going on with them (no code is being run every tick for each document, unlike for entities, players, etc).

It is worth doing just to reduce clutter, I just don't want people to think this is a magic bullet for lag. It might have an improvement in terms of the amount of networking required but if this significant I think we would have noticed it by now as we have profiled net messages many times in the past.

I suppose it is important to remember correlation doesn't equal causation, so yeah, maybe jumped the gun a bit here. I just stratified what I heard from Broda and Rushi cause it sounded really promising.

Might be a good idea to still do as you said, and I personally do think increased usage of the "SCP Lore" section of the forums would be great for players. Can edit the suggestion itself to focus less on lag reasoning if you'd like!

 

[Ventz]

Filing cabinets were designed to store a huge number of documents without impacting server performance. The large number of documents stored inside the cabinets is fine and people should feel comfortable to fill up cabinets with as many documents as they can fit inside them without worrying about the impact on the servers performance.

The memory usage from these documents is not large and the network usage is also small, cabinets only network basic information such as the title and author of documents which are stored in a drawer, until a player opens the drawer and views a file.

I believe any performance benefits you saw after removing cabinets which contained large numbers of documents is placebo or coincidence. The filing cabinets should have no passive impact on server performance.

 

[Caesar Kuznetsov]

- Soup

Kinda wanna keep my docs so I can look back on them w/o a set expiration timer. 4 months is a long time, but for docs it's easy to forget.

 

["Onion"]

-support
cloak and ventz said it all already

 

[Starling6]

just make more reasons to use lore fourm, such as allowing for some extreme modifications to models (ie: Outside typical height limits) for extraordinary lore. Or even giving some sort of reward where the people that post the most lore in a month get a discord tag, Simular to Seraph-9 Operative during the S-9 (Site-9) ARG

 

[François "Napoléon"]

In my opinion the easiest fix is to remove any documents that are just outdated. Obviously from an mtf standpoint we get less docs but we do have cabinets that fill over time and every now and then we remove useless docs. If one doc is really worthy of being kept you can just screenshot all the pages and keep it that way.

 

[Noah Dingle/'Shepherd']

-Support

 

[Auburn]

Suggestion Denied​

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Hi Serrt,

Thanks for taking the time to make a server suggestion.
The Content Team has chosen to deny your suggestion due to the following reasons.

As Cloak and Ventz said already, the amount of lag produced by the filing cabinets are not a large impact on the server. Purging old documents would hinder the experience of long-time players as it would stop them from going back to old projects or RP scenarios they or others participated in.
We are all for the use of the forums lore section as it is a great way to share RP and events with the general player base, but that is something the player base has to actively pursue and take part in.

Your suggestion will now be locked and marked as denied.​