How many replies?

[The Shaman]

Is there an upper limit to the number of replies in a thread, or a limit on the number of characters (letters and numbers, not player and non-player!) in a thread?

Just wondering as I plan my future PbP adventures.

 

[Jdvn1]

I believe there's an informal limit. There's no number of replies where your thread auto-ends, and there's no limit to the number of characters in a thread.

I could be wrong, but one typically doesn't worry about this for PbP games.

 

[Psionicist]

Thats an interesting question.

vBulletin matches a threadid in a posts-table in the database to get the contents for a thread. I am unsure exactly how common databases (the program/deamon that fetch data/translate queries, not the actual data) search the "data"base for retriaval but I assume its a non-linear approch, such as a lookup- or hash-table (and not a for loop with an if-statement ). In that case it will, naturally, take marginally longer time the more id's that match the "search".

What the heck does this mean? A long thread will most certainly be heavier for the server and forum software to handle than a short thread, but not by much. My experience with earlier versions of vBulletin is that it works flawlessly with threads up to around 5000 replies, less if its a chatty thread with lots of replies/day. More than that and performance will degrade. YMMW.

Cheers.

Edit: I'd be more worried with the "no. of thread views"-feature. That one is dangerous!

 

[Bobitron]

...how common databases (the program/deamon that fetch data/translate queries, not the actual data) search the "data"base for retriaval but I assume its a non-linear approch, such as a lookup- or hash-table (and not a for loop with an if-statement ).

Ouch. That hurt my head.