[Pidgin] #301: Make number of saved popular statuses configurable

[Pidgin]

#301: Make number of saved popular statuses configurable
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  Reporter:  gagern        |       Owner:  seanegan
      Type:  enhancement   |      Status:  new     
  Priority:  minor         |   Milestone:          
 Component:  pidgin (gtk)  |     Version:  2.0     
Resolution:                |    Keywords:          
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Comment (by elb):

 Replying to [comment:6 gagern]:
 > We don't have the distribution of the last 100 status changes. We only
 have the abolute usage counts and the timestamps of creation and last
 usage. At least that's what I see here on my beta6. And collecting more
 seems excessive to me.

 The nice thing about open source software, is that we can collect whatever
 we want, however we want.  Keeping the distribution of the last hundred
 status changes is basically free, if done in a heuristic rather than
 absolute fashion (that is, store counts only for the statuses which
 actually "survive", and discount those which do not.

 > If you were to use usage_count / time_since_created as an estimate of
 usage frequency, you could then apply the scheme you outlined, and try
 tweak it until it seems satisfactory. An alternative would be to simply
 examine the possible cutoff positions and take the one with the largest
 difference in estimated usage frequency. Saves a lot of math, and is best
 for all scenarios I can think of right now.

 A problem here is that it could (and, I think, would) develop an
 undesirable amount of hysteresis.  In situations like this, you generally
 want to (as Mark's comment indicates we do currently) lend some extra
 weight to more recent decisions than long distant decisions.  Your
 division by time_since_created helps this, but I think still gives too
 much credence to old statuses which were popular at one time, but are no
 longer.

 That said, this is all optimization when we don't have a product to
 optimize, yet.  We get enough questions and suggestions about the current
 fixed value of 6 to warrant further discussion, at any rate.  My
 suggestion for the discussion is some sort of fixed-window (time or event,
 which one is better is not clear to me) calculation, or at the very least,
 a moving average of some sort.

 Keep in mind that the only status I ever use is 'Available'.  ;-)

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Ticket URL: <http://developer.pidgin.im/ticket/301#comment:8>
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