Fighting notification flood with the alea gem

notification_flood.rb

# Activity streams' notifications to third parties are cool because they bring 
# a feeling of a shared public space and increase the chance serendipitous findings

# But too much information quickly becomes noise, and relevant bits of news can 
# disappear among a tsunami of irrelevant (to me) "x did y with z' 

# What we're trying to do here is going from deterministic notifications 
# (stuff happens, stuff gets broadcasted) to stochastic ones (stuff happens, 
# stuff may gets broadcasted)

# Thanks to the fantastic alea gem (http://github.com/linkingpaths/alea) by Linking Paths, 
# the explanation is way longer than this very naive one liner implementation.

# TO-DO: experiment with varying the probabilities based on time thresholds 
# (i.e. 100 similar notifications (same type / same originating user) in one hour 
# have a 1% chance of showing up, 1 single notification in one hour has 100% chances of showing up)
 

def do_probabilistic_broadcast
  # Always notify you of activity around your stuff
  notify_owner
  # Don't flood your peers with too much info
  maybe(60.percent) { notify_peers }
end