Background mode + stats

[bcomnes]

Idea, allow science fair to run after you close the window
17:22 also add a task tray mode
17:22 <blahah> yeah i was thinking about that too 
17:23 <bret> Bret Comnes its important to encourage/enable people to keep their clients open in order to promote healthy swarm characteristics for bittorrent
17:23 its probably the same for hyperdrive
17:23 <blahah> yeah
17:24 <bret> Bret Comnes also tracking stats that are relevant to that as well.  lifetime seed times, lifetime/drive upload/download ratio, total data downloaded, total data seeded etc
17:24 might be able to gamify those a bit too
17:25 <blahah> yeah that's an excellent idea
17:25 feel like opening an issue? 
17:25 <bret> Bret Comnes sure

[blahah]

Thanks @bcomnes!

So we have three suggestions in here:

1. Allow ScienceFair to run in the background as a daemon, probably with an icon + menubar sitting i the tasktray
2. Track stats (some you suggested, some I'm ad-libbing):
   • upload and download totals over time, per article, datasource and the whole app
   • seed ratios
   • average speeds over time
   • network health (protocols/methods available, peers)
3. Think about how to design the UX around the stats to incentivise people to seed, contribute etc.

[aschrijver]

This is a good setup. If I position myself in the role of the end user, then the stats would be very important to me, especially storage + speed, as these can slow down my system, fill up the hdd or cost me money.

I would like to add that you should also provide an indication of bandwidth and storage use to potential users before they install the software. They might be hesitant to install not knowing the impact.

PS This is the reason I chose Dat above SSB, because I couldn't figure out without diving into code what data a Pub server was actually exchanging, and how much it would cost to host one.

PS2 @blahah I addressed some of the concerns you had wrt the vision/future/reposition discussion here: https://github.com/datproject/discussions/issues/58

[aschrijver]

(PS you should also have a smooth installation and onboarding process. If people spend 2 hrs on install + configuration, that means 2 hrs of their valuable time contributed to your good cause, that is now wasted. Plus you'll get more support requests of people having trouble following the instructions)

[bcomnes]

fwiw, pub servers are cheap to host. I have one running on a raspi in my closet hooked up to gigabit fiber I have at home. I have no clue what flows through it though.

[aschrijver]

(@bcomnes if you're curious what's on the wire, I've created an issue: https://github.com/ssbc/secure-scuttlebutt/issues/181)