Allan Saddi's projects blog

My C WSGI implementation is relatively decoupled from the transport code (AJP). It's conceivable that replacing the transport layer with something else is entirely possible. Like say... a full HTTP 1.1 server. I guess there could be two directions to take that:

http-wsgi
I suppose one could take an embeddable HTTP server (or write one from scratch, if so inclined) and glue the WSGI code into the request handling pipeline. Personally, it's not a project that interests me much. Leave web server writing to the web server experts, I say. However, suppose one wrote it as an extension module for one of the popular web servers...

mod_wsgi
How about an extension module for say, Apache HTTPD or lighttpd? The problem I see with this is that, functionally, it would just be equivalent to mod_python. (After all, you're just embedding Python into the web server and patching into its request processing.) I think the only difference would be that the WSGI-adapter code (the layer that sits just above Python) would be written in C. Additionally, you inherit some of the more interesting problems of mod_python... namely conforming Python's process/threading model to that of the web server's. In all likelihood, you would be running multi-process, not multi-threaded. I guess if you were clever, you could run the Python interpreter in only a single process, similar to how CGI works in modern versions of Apache HTTPD.

But then, if you do that, all it buys you is automatic process management versus using an external server model like AJP/SCGI. So why bother with yet another mod_somethingsomething?

Anyway, ajp-wsgi will remain ajp-wsgi for the foreseeable future. (If I'm sufficiently bored and curious, I may try creating an scgi-wsgi someday.) Though http-wsgi does pique my interest somewhat... I just have to find a suitably feature-laden embeddable C web server.

Well, not much has been happening. ajp-wsgi has been humming along, stable as a rock. It's been running all of my Python-based websites for a little over a month now (longer, really, since I had to reboot my server early January to update FreeBSD). Once I make a few documentation updates, I think it would be safe to declare a 1.0 release. (Seemingly a big milestone nowadays...)

I'd also like to document a news site/comment moderation system that I've been thinking about for a very long time. I'll only paint the broad picture since really, I haven't given it much thought. I credit this discussion from long ago on kuro5hin for inspiration. (Some of "my" ideas may be blatant rips too... so I give credit where credit is due. )

Since moderation systems tend to get gamed... why not just turn it into a game? The site would revolve around fictitious money. I was thinking of having certain actions (like submitting a story or posting a comment) cost money. Not only that, but it would be like an investment. Highly rated comments or active stories would yield profit for the originator. Comments that are universally rated down or stories marked as spam would end up with all or most of the initial investment lost.

It works for people doing moderation/rating as well. For example, it would cost a small amount of money to rate a comment. When you rate a comment, you are basically saying: "I am betting that the average rating of this comment will be X" After some amount of time, an amount of money would be returned to you based on how close you were to the "actual" rating.

It would be a dynamic system. The cost of submitting a story, leaving a comment, rating, etc. would all be variables. As would things such as the return factor for positively-rated stories/comments. It would be adjusted (preferably automatically) to keep the economy adequately sized vs. the number of active users as well as encourage users to say, post more stories under a specific topic.

"New user inflation" (where the economy explodes due to a large influx of new users who get a starting balance) can be combated by transforming the site into something akin to a social network or an invite-only service. Basically, new users start out with a 0 balance and they are given loans, with interest, from existing users. The system enforces the loans by automatically paying it back in installments. (Though what to do with a deadbeat user...?)

Anyhow, the goal of the entire system, ultimately, would be to deter spamming and gaming by the use of multiple accounts. The system can be controlled, albeit indirectly, by setting various prices and rates.