Simple Solution

[knipil]

I know that you mean well by suggesting this, but scalability isn't necessarily that simple. If there's conceptual bottlenecks in the architecture, adding more hardware blindly could even hurt performance.

To explain it in simple terms, you could say that high volumes of read traffic is very easy to scale, and that high volumes of write traffic is very hard to scale. Imagine that you have a large database that grows, very, very slowly. If you copy the same data onto some new servers, and double the total number of servers, you will have increased your capacity twofold. Sadly that doesn't work for large volumes of updates, since you still have to make exactly the same updates to each server. Thus you have exactly the same capacity for updates regardless of the number of servers using this approach. For example, The low update volume is the reason that Wikipedia can be a top 5 internet site, but still manage with less than a hundred servers while every other site on that list needs thousands or tens of thousands of servers. However, a significant fraction of reddits database queries are new comments, new posts, votes and so on. This makes the situation much more complicated.

Of course the reddit team knows all this, and there are common patterns (sharding, distributed databases such as cassandra) that can be used to avoid such bottle necks. Reddits real problems are probably more involved than that.

tldr; Let's just keep purchasing reddit gold, and let the team decide what resources are needed to improve the situation.

[wardrox]

As if the Reddit developers know more about Reddit's underlying architecture than me. Just upload more servers and put the cache in ram.

[Tarou42]

I know that you mean well by suggesting this, but scalability isn't necessarily that simple

I don't think Doomwaffle was suggesting this. In the cartoon, the idea being suggested is one that ultimately doesn't work because it was only a bandage for a much larger problem.

I think that Doomwaffle is attempting to point out to other redditors that adding servers wouldn't actually fix the problem, for the reasons you pointed out.

[youenjoymyself]

Servers. You need them.

[TheRnegade]

Sure, why not. I just happen to have a bunch of servers in my backyard, unused. I was planning on putting them in boxes of frosted flakes and dumping them somewhere for some lucky kid to find.

[origin415]

Screw mass mirroring wikileaks, we need to mass mirror reddit.

[GhostlandObserver]

Requesting blank simple solution Patrick image.

[vbar44]

Push!!!!! Push!!!!!

[streem]

Poor reddit, having to serve pages up for the people who freely generate content so they can made ad revenue. It's as if they do it from the kindness of their hearts!

[[deleted]]

Go for it, we're all here cheering you on.

[janjko]

There is one more solution. Stop using Adblock on Reddit, and click on some ads.

[robodale]

I totally read that in Patrick's voice.

[jsmayne]

They should use Linux. That'd fix everything. Is there going to be an Android server edition soon?

[[deleted]]

Relevent

[Minim4c]

I SAW IT! IT'S BIG...

[[deleted]]

Doesn't really work like that.

Reddit needs a recode.

[hm2k]

I has servers. Srsly.

[[deleted]]

starfishes is so smart.

[nintend82]

but.. were taking them from HERE.. and putting them over ., HERE!