Discussion Thread

[Rick Stevens]

I think we need multiple ways of addressing this.

Search engines
Directory Services
Maps (overlays that provide navigable links to multiple venue servers)
Public Plaza's that folks can connect too.

I dont see any of these as being inconsistent with the metaphor.. in fact 
we have equivalents of all of these in the real world

At 11:48 PM 9/11/2002 -0500, Terry Disz wrote:
>This mail list ought to be good for more than just sending attachments, and
>since we are all having a hard time being in the same place at the same
>time, I thought I would try and start a discussion thread.
>
>What I want to discuss is scalability, in terms of what do we do if the AG
>becomes really successful and there are bazillions of venues, or more. I
>think this discussion is important because any possible solutions go
>directly to Venue requirements and I don't want us to miss a requirement
>because we didn't think hard enough about this problem.
>
>So, here's the issue - we at Argonne have been promoting the idea that
>venues should be linked with door-like objects, and we can navigate from
>venue to venue, just like the MUD. Although this can be fun, and can be
>interesting in a social-experiment way, it's easy to see that this doesn't
>scale very well when we start to talk about hundreds, let alone bazillions
>of interconnected venues. Without structure, it would quickly become
>impossible to find things and use the venues to conduct business.
>
>Although we have a stake in this idea, I think it might be a little wobbly
>and I wonder if we shouldn't be talking about alternatives, or at least
>about ways of imposing or discovering structure  in a network of linked
>venues.
>
>Looking to some of our users, I know of at least two who operate venue
>servers that have just a list of venues that users can choose and be
>directly ported there. This idea of an index on a set of venues and a method
>of jumping directly to one seems to be attractive to some. I know,
>transiting venues is a fairly heavy operation today, but I think the problem
>goes deeper and these other solutions would still exist even if transiting
>were fast, as with the MUD today.
>
>Other ideas on what to do for scalability are;
>1. dispatch venue-discovery bots to create a database to answer
>google-search questions
>2. Create a set of Yellow pages to help find venues by purpose.
>3. Create a set of white pages to help find venues by name.
>
>
>Put on your thinking caps -  what about scalability? How do we provide it?
>What requirements do these solutions have for the venue? What are your
>ideas?
>
>Terry