Monday 8 October 2007

Pic of the day: This probably doesn't help here.

Chinchilla days

No, I don't actually raise these cuddly little critters myself. Rather I am referring to the promise by the NaNoWriMo web site that they will change their server farm into a chinchilla farm if they don't get the site to run reasonably fast really soon now. Since a day or two after the forums opened again (as they do on October 1st each year), the forums went into snail mode and then collapsed, along with much of the rest of the site. This is still so a week's time later. I can get into the forums briefly while the Americans sleep.

The first page, where the web site usually stops, has a small notice that proudly proclaims: "Powered by Drupal." I don't think the people behind Drupal are dancing with joy about that recommendation right now. But most likely it is a problem not with the underlying software tools, but some snag in the database code. It is really hard to test what a load of tens of thousands of fans will do to a site, before you let them in. This is not unique for NaNoWriMo. Also other small errors tend to crop up in real use that did not in testing.

Typically testing of new software has two main stages (with many rounds within each): Alpha and beta testing. Alpha is internal, this is where the developers run the program through its paces and fix errors. When they think it looks OK, they invite beta testers. For games these are very easy to recruit: Who would not want to play a game for free that they are planning to buy anyway? But it is not all fun and games. You are supposed to describe all bugs and dubious behavior by the software, in great detail, together with a description of your hardware and system software. Often there is a "closed beta" first, with specially invited people who are picked from forums or from testing other programs before, or who have the most common computer systems. When things seem to work fine, there is an open beta for the purpose of "stress testing" the system. The more people who are the more active at this point, the better. This is to weed out exactly the kind of problem we have at the NaNoWriMo forums now.

But it seems to me that these days, there is a third stage of testing, we could call it "gamma testing", but a less flattering name I have seen is "paying to beta". Most games are sold at full price but still contain bugs, sometimes serious bugs that could ruin the fun for thousands of people. This has happened to The Sims 2 from the first release through the latest expansion pack, where both the expansion itself and the first patch is so buggy that experts recommend waiting. But of course if everyone did that, the errors would never be found.

As for NaNoWriMo, I have only paid an almost symbolic sum, I think it was like $10 or something, just enough to get a halo for my name in the forums. ^^ It is no noticeable loss for me if they decide to throw in the towel and feed chinchillas instead of the amateur novelist crowd. (There is probably less difference in behavior than we would like to think.) But I think I'll just wait it out and see. They usually bounce back. Perhaps chinchilla do too, but hopefully I shall never know.