Data Wipe

[Bohtty 1,775]

Hello,

 

The idea of wiping all of the uploads and other data on the website upon finishing closed alpha and entering into public alpha. What do you guys think of this? 

 

Personally, I am for the wipe. I've seen several test/gibberish songs that might be missed if there is no wipe. While it may be trivial, it also gives beta testers a head start in terms of publicity.

Edited January 21, 2013 by Bohtty

[Courageous Thunder Dash 7,824]

I don't agree with a wipe. For a lot of tracks have been uploaded. Some were just test tracks. May wipe all of the test tracks because if a full wipe is performed, people would have to take all of the time uploading the files. 

[Bohtty 1,775]

I don't agree with a wipe. For a lot of tracks have been uploaded. Some were just test tracks. May wipe all of the test tracks because if a full wipe is performed, people would have to take all of the time uploading the files. 

Yeah, but it only takes one person to upload a test file and then never log in again for that test file to be there forever. Plus we only get one chance to do a wipe. Once pony.fm goes public a wipe would alienate a lot of users and caused pony.fm to get a bad rep and/or a bad start.

[Courageous Thunder Dash 7,824]

Well, it's best to only rid the test/gibberish files instead of wiping everything. 

[Bohtty 1,775]

Well, it's best to only rid the test/gibberish files instead of wiping everything. 

Well besides checking every song by hand, there isn't really an automated way to do it.

[Killian Jones 2,655]

But the database is fairly small, so it wouldn't be a big deal to try and tag all files as test files and only remove those. And database space honestly isn't a big deal. neither is file space considering the database will likely grow in size exponentially post launch.

 

So honestly, hiding all the test tracks is the best options, even if it is to be done manually, perhaps tagging test tracks  properly can make deleting them much easier as it would be much less work to purge the database based on these tags.

[Twilight Sparkle ✨ 8,529]

But the database is fairly small, so it wouldn't be a big deal to try and tag all files as test files and only remove those. And database space honestly isn't a big deal. neither is file space considering the database will likely grow in size exponentially post launch.

 

So honestly, hiding all the test tracks is the best options, even if it is to be done manually, perhaps tagging test tracks  properly can make deleting them much easier as it would be much less work to purge the database based on these tags.

 

Essentially, is your proposal to simply remove all "test" tracks while letting "real" music make the transition? That's completely possible, though it is technically more of a selective expunging than what is being proposed here, which is wiping the entire Pony.fm database and starting totally fresh. With that said, I don't think it's unreasonable to do.

 

I don't think the primary concern with a data wipe is so much culling the crap, as it were, so much as it is to ensure that the logs of auxiliary data like plays, logs, and views are accurate and in line with a more finalized form of the site. For example, until not too long ago, there was no distinction between a "download" and a "play". Coupled with the pre-loading behaviour of the old player Pony.fm used before I wrote my own, this resulted in tracks getting absurdly high download counters with no indicator of how many viewers actually listened to music.

 

Letting this kind of data make the transition into a public release could raise some eyebrows about things like "how did this track get 500 downloads and only ten views?".

 

Of course, it's also possible to do some partial data wipes (like, say, dropping all download and view logs prior to the day that the plays logger was deployed), but I think that may be crossing a line of what's "right" to delete and what isn't.

[Crystal Skull 53]

I have not even been able to upload anything to pony.fm because my internet sucks so I wouldn't mind it. But a lot of people already have content posted on pony.fm it is not the best thing to do because they would have to take the time and reupload tracks.

[Bohtty 1,775]

For example, until not too long ago, there was no distinction between a "download" and a "play".

Didn't even know about this. I think that there should definitely be a wipe of some kind, perhaps the test songs and then the views, downloads and plays?

[CloudFyre 848]

I don't think the primary concern with a data wipe is so much culling the crap, as it were, so much as it is to ensure that the logs of auxiliary data like plays, logs, and views are accurate and in line with a more finalized form of the site. For example, until not too long ago, there was no distinction between a "download" and a "play". Coupled with the pre-loading behaviour of the old player Pony.fm used before I wrote my own, this resulted in tracks getting absurdly high download counters with no indicator of how many viewers actually listened to music.

 

Didn't even know about this. I think that there should definitely be a wipe of some kind, perhaps the test songs and then the views, downloads and plays?

 

This is definitely a valid point. I think resetting might be good, just for the sake of keeping playcounts realistic.

 

So no: maybe not delete "real" tracks, but instead reset the viewcounts and such. (And delete any non-pony music that was used just for testing purposes.)

[DusK 1,264]

I honestly don't care either way. I have no problem re-uploading my tracks the day after the wipe. Kind of expecting to anyway.

[Anorax 29]

While I couldn't really care either way, I am leading towards the wipe. I personally don't have much to reupload anyway if the server was to be wiped of song data. If I had more music to feed into the site, I might be more protective of it, but I don't really care either way.
 

Although dealing with all these test tracks could be time consuming if we don't do a music wipe (we'll still have to wipe the statistics though to prevent public beta stat skews)

[Twilight Sparkle ✨ 8,529]

After mulling this over for a while, I think I can safely say that Pony.fm's tracks and albums will not be getting wiped. I will run through and clean out all obvious test tracks, but all other content will be left in place. So, feel free to start uploading to the site as if it was an archive.

 

The statistics may or may not be reset in the transition. More likely to be reset than not, for reasons already discussed above. This will primarily be a cosmetic thing, though, and will not functionally affect anything.