Rattle wrote:
] For several months now, work has been underway building the
] next version of MemeStreams. It has been necessary to recode
] most of the site from scratch, so its taking awhile. At any
] given time the trials of life, lack of funding, bad timing,
] hardware failure, and general bad luck is screwing up the
] works. However, we _are_ making progress.
]
] Just before the new year, I hit the point in the development
] process where new capabilities of mining and graphing social
] network data were becoming available. I decided to go off on
] a little tangent, embrace the milestone, and do something to
] show our technology's progress. The result is the Year in
] Graphs 2003. Over the course of putting this together I've
] wound up fixing all kinds of problems with our database
] conversion code and wrote much of what will become the new
] graphing engine. I even had a really good "eureka" moment in
] relation to some of our network theory.. Its been time
] usefully spent.
]
] That being said, this is all very kludgy. I did not spend
] that much time crossing I's and dotting T's.. The fonts in
] the nodes are hard to read, some of the graphs look
] "squished", its missing the "Show Links" feature the current
] Social Network portion of the sites has, etc.. There is much
] room for improvement with our graphing. I look forward to
] additional feedback.. :)
]
] While these graphs may be fun to look at, the data they are
] built with is what's really exciting.. The same thing that
] allowed me to make these graphs is what's going to lead to
] improvements in the capabilities of the Reputation Agent.
]
] Anyway, I hope you all enjoy browsing through this review of
] the past year!

Thanks alot, guys.

BTW: Are you aware that the search engine blows? I think it could use an overhaul.

Jello wrote:
] BTW: Are you aware that the search engine blows? I think it
] could use an overhaul.

Yes. We are keenly aware that the search engine sucks. It is getting an overhaul. There are a shitload of changes necessary to the way the database back-end works, and none of them are trivial. Development came to a screeching halt around the time I left San Francisco in March. We have been trying to get the ball back in motion.

I just got back from meeting with Cerkit, the newest addition to the development team. He is a real coder, not a multipurpose jack-of-all-bullshit hack like myself. We have worked together in the past, and I know he will be able to get done in a few days what would take me a few weeks. I also just received an email from Decius informing me that setup of a new development environment has been completed, something we have been lacking for awhile. This will allow us to lower the bar necessary to participate in development, allowing a few other folks to jump in.

I know I've said this before, but things should stop sucking faster now..

Rattle wrote:
] Jello wrote:
] ] BTW: Are you aware that the search engine blows? I think it
]
] ] could use an overhaul.
]
] Yes. We are keenly aware that the search engine sucks. It is
] getting an overhaul. There are a shitload of changes
] necessary to the way the database back-end works, and none of
] them are trivial. Development came to a screeching halt
] around the time I left San Francisco in March. We have been
] trying to get the ball back in motion.
]
] I just got back from meeting with Cerkit, the newest addition
] to the development team. He is a real coder, not a
] multipurpose jack-of-all-bullshit hack like myself. We have
] worked together in the past, and I know he will be able to get
] done in a few days what would take me a few weeks. I also
] just received an email from Decius informing me that setup of
] a new development environment has been completed, something we
] have been lacking for awhile. This will allow us to lower the
] bar necessary to participate in development, allowing a few
] other folks to jump in.
]
] I know I've said this before, but things should stop sucking
] faster now..

If you need another jack-of-all-bullshit hack to work on something, I could use a project to keep my perl-skills up. Be happy to help, if I can.

Jello wrote:
] If you need another jack-of-all-bullshit hack to work on
] something, I could use a project to keep my perl-skills up.
] Be happy to help, if I can.

Email Decius.. tom at memestreams.net. He is handing out accounts on the devel box.

lclough wrote:
] Wow. The underlying data would be really valueable for anyone
] doning social-network research.
]
] MemeStreams seems small. Is this a result of the interface or
] is it really small? It would be interesting to see graphs of
] usage over time for the frequency with which folks read,
] recommend, and post. Even better would be summary data in a
] tabular form that one could crunch.

MemeStreams is still small. We are growing, but we are still small. The main page has a fair amount of readers and we get tons of referrals from Google, but there are only a handful of active users who post frequently.

After we get the next version of MemeStreams up, we plan to expose XML based interfaces for querying link data. This will not only allow people to access the data for research, but also to support other visualization tools such as Touchgraph.

] A philosophical question. Is MemeStreams going to be a single
] community where everyone reads more or less the same set of
] posts, or a community with multiple foci of interest? How
] will the new developments support the one versus the other
] approach?

Nothing about MemeStreams design limits it to one group of people. Nothing about our intent for the site limits it to one group of people. Quite the contrary actually. We feel that the fact MemeStreams is only one group of people is a sign of its youth and immaturity. It is one community. One young community. Someday, there will be many communities present here. We have not created the architecture necessary for this to happen yet, so it hasn't. :)

The main page (which Decius and I usually refer to as the "democratic view") has whatever is most popular on the system, but the Reputation Agent is completely different for every person. The Agent's content is based on the system's understanding of the social network present, in relation to the user or a specified group.

One thing that I don't think most people realize: There are no "admin accounts" on MemeStreams, or anything like that. Decius's account, my account, your account, etc, are all the same. No one has any more power to make links appear on the front page then anyone else..

While on this topic.. I wish I never made the "most recommended users" page at the root of the Social Network section of the site. That page seriously misleads people. That list doesn't really have any bearing on anything.. That's built by totaling up a number of metrics, that are never actually totaled in that way, anywhere other then that page. Decius, Jeremy, and myself will always be at the top of that list. It wouldn't be possible to nock us from the top spots.. We have been actively using the system since day one, so someone would have to post and be recommended a truly insane amount to make up for the fact we have several years of system usage on them. In the year in graphs, you are seeing lists built on the same metrics, but with a timeframe taken into account so its in context.