There's one particular query that often shows up as being slow, and I'd like to cut it out. It is, I'm sad to say, getting e-mail notifications of new AQ mail.

I figure there's two ways to fix this problem. First, I could just require that you receive an e-mail with the actual message in it instead of just a note saying there's AQ mail waiting for you. If you go this route, that doesn't make the AQ mail unaccessible in AQ. You can still log in whenever you want to read messages there, but it does mean you might get several e-mails instead of just once the first time a new message goes to your inbox.

The other option I could do set it up so the notifications are only sent out once or twice each day rather than immediately sending you a notification of new AQ mail the first time someone sends you something. The notification might be delayed, but you'd still get it. It doesn't actually help the problem query, but the query would run less often (just once or twice a day, instead of every time a new AQ mail is sent--which is running into the thousands each day!)

Actually, I suppose I could implement the second option, and those who don't like it could switch to the first option. I never really like the e-mail notifications, though. The only reason I even implemented it was because I couldn't support forwarded AQ mail as an option at the time. So I would prefer to get rid of it completely. =) But if it's really that popular, I should do something to reduce the number of times AQ is checking for when a notification needs to be sent.

Thoughts?

-- Ryan

I do like receiving notifications that I have AQ mail. However, only having this twice per day would be sufficient.

Amyrica

Sorry Ryan, but I didn't like getting the actual messages in my inbox. I prefer to keep my AQ mail on AQ. I really really really really prefer getting the mail notifications as soon as I get new AQ mail. I know this isn't what you want to hear.

TG

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I do like receiving notifications that I have AQ mail. However, only having this twice per day would be sufficient.

Ditto! :)

GG

I tried the email notifications when I first joined also, but also turned it off, as I check AQ mail first every day!!!and periodically throughout the day!! I wouldn't miss it!!!

LtW

I, too, have shut off my e-mail notification. I check AQ everyday anyway, so I figured I didn't really need it.

FG

Ditto!!!

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The only reason I even implemented it was because I couldn't support forwarded AQ mail as an option at the time.

I don't like having my AQmail forwarded so turned that off, but I agree the notifications are not neccessary now. The two options are there. AQmail stays on AQ, or AQmail can be forwarded to normal email.

I am constantly on AQ so a notification is not really neccessary, and if I were ever not going to log in so much *gulp, take a deep breath, no need to panic* I can easily turn on the forward AQmail switch.

YT

I've just opted to have my email forwarded to my email, so whichever you decide is fine by me!

For people who log on daily it is serving little purpose if you are going to log on a few times every day anyway. The only people who are likely to really "need" email notification are those who don't log on regularly. And those people probably don't care if the query only runs once or twice a day. I mean honestly, how important is it that you receive an email notification that you have a message if all it does is make you log on two hours sooner than you would have otherwise?!?

We have never used this, so we wouldn't miss it if it were just twice a day. We like the mail being forwarded to our gmail account, so we seldom even open our AQ mail in AQ.

PB

Ryan,

Your world, your rules! Whatever makes it easier for you & the system is what you should do. While I enjoy getting the notifications, I'm sure I can find my way here to check the mail on my own if you stop them or make them less frequent. The joy of being an adult is sometimes taking responsibility for my own stuff. :) Do what you need to do to make the system run best for all of us. And thanks for all the hard work you continue to put into the site!

The Family

Eliminate the notice and no one will notice the elimination.

Since there is a posting on the top of various pages "You have mail" I see no reason to keep the message notification function in operation.

Don

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I do like receiving notifications that I have AQ mail. However, only having this twice per day would be sufficient.

Amyrica

I agree.

Lone R

I have always preferred getting an e-mail notification of new AQ mail. I depend on it a lot. It wasn't all that long ago when you decided to remove this feature, and there was such a negative reaction that you re-instated it within a very short period of time. I'm not sure why this is being discussed again. It's like when a community votes something down, and the politicians or school boards keep putting it back out there until they finally sneak it by anyway. But, of course, this is not something that we vote on democratically since it's your site. Sounds like it's giving you a headache, anyway.

I do like the feature, and it's very helpful to me. However, if it's overall a problem for AQ then I'll learn to live without it. But, it WILL be missed.

Sahalie

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It wasn't all that long ago when you decided to remove this feature, and there was such a negative reaction that you re-instated it within a very short period of time. I'm not sure why this is being discussed again. It's like when a community votes something down, and the politicians or school boards keep putting it back out there until they finally sneak it by anyway.

Ah, yes, I forgot about that. =) You must keep the historical context in mind.

Originally, in the very beginning, AQ had a 'contact the placer' option much like LbNA has today. Almost immediately, it became a very big problem. AQ was hosted on a shared server, and the other accounts on that server sometimes would send spam. So that server often got marked as a source of spam--including the legitimate e-mail that AQ sent. I was lucky if half the e-mail sent from AQ actually reached its destination at times.

Thus, AQ mail was born. By providing it through the web, it stopped being bounced as spam. But, of course, there was a new problem. Not everyone checked Atlas Quest very often. AQ was a much smaller site then, and didn't even have message boards as an incentive to keep people coming back day after day. ;o) So while I could be sure no mail ever got lost, sometimes months could go by before someone actually logged in to get it.

Thus, the e-mail notifications were born. I couldn't put the actual e-mail in the message--the risk was too great it would be flagged as spam and deleted before the recipient ever knew it arrived. If the e-mail notification was flagged as spam, no great loss. It might take months before someone logged in and noticed they had new mail, but at least no mail was getting lost.

Atlas Quest continued to grow. And after awhile, it even started making a small profit. I use the term "profit" loosely here. In it's first full year of being online, I had an extra thousand bucks or so burning a hole in my pocket. I considered that rather a meager sum for working more-or-less full time on a website for an entire year, but it was mine. All mine. =)

I hated the shared server setup, though, and after year of being on it, upgraded to a Virtual Private Server (VPS). It was significantly more expensive than a shared server and half those 'profits' went into it. The server ran faster, the site became more reliable, and AQ got its very own IP address (two of them, actually) and nameservers. Suddenly, e-mail became MUCH more reliable. AQ was no longer associated with a source of spam. AQ mail was no longer needed!

Actually, it found other uses outside of its original purpose for "contacting the placer." It allowed letterboxers to contact each other without having to show their real e-mail address or names. It allowed me to investigate problems or accusations. It lets me verify that people are logging in with the sole purposes of sending spam. And, more importantly, a lot of people got used to AQ mail. They liked it! =) It was a place to segregate letterboxing e-mail from other e-mail. AQ mail was here to stay.

But, I thought, I could still change it so people who prefer real e-mail could have their mail forwarded to their e-mail address. Once that was done, though, there would no longer by any reason for the e-mail notifications. It was obsolete. So I removed the feature.

Ack! I had no idea it would cause such a cry of alarm! It was just a feature to compensate for bouncing e-mails. Once that problem was resolved, I thought the feature was obsolete. But people wanted it, so I put it back.

Fast forward to today. AQ has grown bigger than ever. As of this minute, there have been 457,879 pieces of AQ mail sent. And it keeps growing. Faster and faster. Bigger and bigger. Now, just the simple process of adding a virtual letterbox, for instance, might create hundreds of AQ mail messages in an instant--generating notifications automatically to those who wanted them. It has to look up notification settings for perhaps hundreds of people in an instant. Then it has to figure out which ones need to get the notifications. How does it check? It looks in each one of their mailboxes, counts up the number of unread messages in their inbox, and sends the notifications to those whose only new message was the one that was just sent.

Every now and then, it's not a problem. But as AQ continues to grow, the notifications will likely grow into the thousands. More people will add new boxes, so the occasional slow query will grow into a query that's slow and runs often. That's a serious concern.

Preferably, I'd like to ditch the notifications completely since I never intended it to be for anything except a way to get important information through an unreliable e-mail. But I recognize that people still like the feature, so I'm trying to be accommodating. =) Last time I got rid of the feature, I did it because I thought it was obsolete. This time, I want to get rid of it because it's causing performance problems on the server--which is a little more serious from my point of view than the original reason I got rid of it.

As it is, though, the fact that the query is slow isn't as big of a concern as it is that the slow query runs OFTEN. If I can send an e-mail notification from a low priority cron job in the background, the site will still appear to run fast for everyone, and it'll still send e-mail notifications. The downside, of course, is they don't come as promptly nor as often as before, but they'll still come, the site runs faster, and most people stay happy. =)

Someday, I hope to afford several servers to run AQ. One for the database, perhaps, and another one for the web server. And maybe a third machine that can run cron jobs, store backups, or that I could use to launch updates from. As it is now, the site still runs on a VPS (it's a bigger one with more resources than the original one I had upgraded to last year--and I suspect I'll probably have upgrade the system again next year at some point).

Anyhow, that's the reason for the suggestion this time. =) It's actually a very different issue involved than the last time I got rid of the feature. As it is, though, I don't want to get rid of it completely--just change it to keep AQ fast and responsive.

-- Ryan

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The only reason I even implemented it was because I couldn't support forwarded AQ mail as an option at the time.

I don't like having my AQmail forwarded so turned that off, but I agree the notifications are not neccessary now. The two options are there. AQmail stays on AQ, or AQmail can be forwarded to normal email.

I am constantly on AQ so a notification is not really neccessary, and if I were ever not going to log in so much *gulp, take a deep breath, no need to panic* I can easily turn on the forward AQmail switch.

YT

I would have to offer a hearty ditto. . . I check in at least a couple of times per day and my other mailbox gets overwhelmed as it is.

Happy Hunting~BRex

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Eliminate the notice and no one will notice the elimination.

I would miss it! However, a once a day notification would be just fine. ;-)

Six Ps