ConwayLife.com

• Leave things as they are;
• Raise the quota substantially, but with a slight charge for hauls uploaded for non-B3/S23 rules (of course, B3/S23 will remain free forever). The fairest way to do this is per megabyte of hauls -- say, $0.10 per megabyte?

Saka wrote:What about delte (∆?) rules that have been ignored for say, 5 months?

Saka wrote:What about delte rules that have been ignored for say, 5 months?

• donation button (subscription-based donations too)
• throttling non-CGoL hauls after daily traffic reaches a certain threshold
• banning stupid rules full of unremarkable patterns, such as B/S2345678 (if it's not done already)

codeholic wrote:

• donation button (subscription-based donations too)
• throttling non-CWOL hauls after daily traffic reaches a certain threshold
• banning stupid rules full of unremarkable patterns, such as B/S2345678 (if it's not done already)

Saka wrote:assuming you mean CGoL instead of CWOL

Saka wrote:but I think similar popular rules should be non-throttled.
3. Depending on how the rule filter will work, it might dissallow rules like B/S45, which I am planning to use to search for SLs with only 4 or 5 neighbours.

codeholic wrote: There are no still lifes in B/S45. All patterns die out in this rule.

codeholic wrote:There are no still lifes in B/S45. All patterns die out in this rule.

x = 6, y = 6, rule = B/S45
2b2o$b4o$2o2b2o$2o2b2o$b4o$2b2o!

codeholic wrote:

• banning stupid rules full of unremarkable patterns, such as B/S2345678 (if it's not done already)

drc wrote:maybe rules would have to be able to grow in size in order to be posted on the site. (Have one of B2c or B3i and one of B2e and B3a

drc wrote:maybe rules would have to be able to grow in size in order to be posted on the site.

toroidalet wrote: Don't forget about B2a and B1e. A for Awesome's working on one that supports photons.
I'm pretty sure a filter would require more code and more memory devoted to the server for filters. (I'm not an expert so don't quota me on this)

toroidalet wrote:That doesn't seem very good, considering some people (Rhombic and Apple Bottom) apgsearch rules with novel things and then don't report them.

calcyman wrote:It's been noted that there have been several instances of Catagolue downtime due to straying over the daily quota. I'd like to hear what your preferences are out of the following possibilities:

• Leave things as they are;
• Raise the quota substantially, but with a slight charge for hauls uploaded for non-B3/S23 rules (of course, B3/S23 will remain free forever). The fairest way to do this is per megabyte of hauls -- say, $0.10 per megabyte?

Thoughts?

1. I think leaving things as they are is a workable option, for now. I've noticed two instances of over-the-quota downtime recently, and one back in March (if memory serves). It's not a particularly pressing problem yet, and now that more people are aware of it perhaps we can come to a gentlemen's agreement to try our best to not break the site. (For my part, that means no more searching Day & Night for the time being, much as I like the rule.)
2. I don't particularly like the idea of charging for haul submissions; that should be a last resort. People are already donating CPU time (and thus money, in the form of electricity costs).
   
   I'm also not sure how pay-to-submit-hauls would work. Taking micro-payments would require either a payment processor, which'd likely mean fees and other hassles, or using a cryptocurrency such as BTC, which not everyone's using. Actually tracking and managing payments is another complication: how would that work in practice?
   
   Finally, how would you make sure people do pay? What would happen if someone submitted hauls without paying? What if that person was submitting anonymously? (And, as someone mentioned, how do you communicate this to new contributors?)
   
   On to the next idea--
3. Since donation buttons have been mentioned -- that strikes me as a better option. Setting up a Patreon page or a Flattr account might also be worth considering. (That said, I wouldn't count on voluntary donations to make a real dent in the costs of running the site.)
4. Here's another idea. Getting back to the aforementioned "gentlemen's agreement to not break Catagolue", it's actually very difficult right now to gauge the load you, as a contributor, are putting on Catagolue. Perhaps there could be an accounting system of sorts -- a daily breakdown of costs you incurred, grouped by rule (or rule and symmetry). If I saw that, say, I've caused costs of 0.37 USD, of which 0.36 USD went to ${MOSTLY_IRRELEVANT_RULE}, it would be easy for me to decide to stop searching that rule. So I'd say this would be worthwhile.
5. Another thing that would be worthwhile: an overall "Catagolue Quota-O-Meter™", displaying how far into its daily quota Catagolue currently is, perhaps color-coded as well: green (<50%), yellow (50-70%), orange (70-90%), red (90-100%). (One might argue that this would make it easier for malicious actors to bring Catagolue down, but I don't think anyone's actively trying that, and if they did they could just swamp it with requests anyway; they wouldn't need the Quota-O-Meter™.)
6. Vaguely related -- is the Catagolue server code ever going to be published? I don't want to encourage fragmentation by having people set up Catagolue clones (Cataglones?), but if someone's hell-bent on searching a silly rule, this would allow them to set something up for themselves and avoid overwhelming the main site. (How intimately is Catagolue tied to Google's infrastructure, BTW? Could you set it up on your own servers running Hadoop etc., or does it really have to be Google's App Engine?)
7. Finally -- although this is a very remote option, perhaps in the distant future there could be a charitable (or at least non-profit) foundation set up to support research into cellular automata (especially, but not limited to, Conway Life)? Such a foundation could either run sites directly, or it could dispense funds to allow others to do so, in the way that e.g. the Perl Foundation dispenses grant money for working on Perl-related projects. People could then donate to the foundation, and the foundation could also solicit donations from the industry, and from other benefactors.
   
   Granted, this is a rather outlandish idea, but like a one-in-a-million chance, it might just work...! (It did for the OEIS, to name one example.)

Apple Bottom wrote:
Another thing that would be worthwhile: an overall "Catagolue Quota-O-Meter™", displaying how far into its daily quota currently is, perhaps color-coded as well: green (<50%), yellow (50-70%), orange (70-90%), red (90-100%).

Apple Bottom wrote:
Vaguely related -- is the Catagolue server code ever going to be published? I don't want to encourage fragmentation by having people set up Catagolue clones (Cataglones?), but if someone's hell-bent on searching a silly rule, this would allow them to set something up for themselves and avoid overwhelming the main site.

Apple Bottom wrote: Finally -- although this is a very remote option, perhaps in the distant future there could be a charitable (or at least non-profit) foundation set up to support research into cellular automata (especially, but not limited to, Conway Life)?

Another thing that would be worthwhile: an overall "Catagolue Quota-O-Meter™", displaying how far into its daily quota currently is, perhaps color-coded as well: green (<50%), yellow (50-70%), orange (70-90%), red (90-100%).

Saka wrote:Maybe if you have a Payosha account on the Catagolue and you have say, searched 500 different rules, there could be a "Secret Developer Things" button placed on the user page that would link to various code options and the link to the main source code.

Apple Bottom                 553
Rhombic                      384
Daniel R. Collazo            378
muzikbike                    192
Saka                         175
Josh Ball                    153
dmqwerty425@gmail.com        142
Anonymous                    122

Saka wrote:This is amazing. We could set up a lemonade stand thingy. Or sell pattern plushies (Bugs spaceships make very good plushies)! If this goes to far we will have some kind of matrix controlled by a massive conscious patern in a 163910038462015183 state ruleTable....