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Actually, a bunch of those comments attributes look like it's not sensible to store a NULL in them. Is it really comment if there is no message? And given their defaults, insisting that timestamps be NOT NULL is just too easy not to do it.

When you're small, spammers won't notice / won't care. If you grow larger, you will attract their attention. At which point you may want to renege on a promise you made to early users who made the site successful, and impose mandatory logins so abusive accounts can be disabled or throttled. Also, reputation systems can improve the UX but they need an "identity" foundation to build upon.

Actually, a bunch of those comments attributes look like it's not sensible to store a NULL in them. Is it really a comment if there is no message? And given their defaults, insisting that timestamps be NOT NULL is just too easy not to do it.

When you're small, spammers won't notice / won't care. If you grow larger, you will attract their attention. At which point you may want to renege on a promise you made to early users who made the site successful, and impose mandatory logins so that abusive accounts can be disabled or throttled. Also, reputation systems can improve the UX but they need an "identity" foundation to build upon.

Actually, a bunch of those comments attributes look like it's not sensible to store a NULL in them.

Actually, a bunch of those comments attributes look like it's not sensible to store a NULL in them. Is it really comment if there is no message? And given their defaults, insisting that timestamps be NOT NULL is just too easy not to do it.

Well, it's your funeral, do what you want.

I always recommend that folks persist UTC seconds since epoch (1970) in the database, and then worry about local zone offsets on the way in and the way out.

create table users (
    id ...
    username ...
    password text not null,

If you're small, spammers won't notice / won't care. If you grow larger, you will attract their attention. At which point you may want to renege on a promise you made to early users who made the site successful, and impose mandatory logins so abusive accounts can be disabled or throttled. Also, reputation systems can improve the UX but they need an "identity" foundation to build upon.

Well, you can do what you want. I always recommend that folks persist UTC seconds since epoch (1970) in the database, and then worry about local zone offsets on the way in and the way out.

create table users (
    id ...
    username ...
    password text   not null,

When you're small, spammers won't notice / won't care. If you grow larger, you will attract their attention. At which point you may want to renege on a promise you made to early users who made the site successful, and impose mandatory logins so abusive accounts can be disabled or throttled. Also, reputation systems can improve the UX but they need an "identity" foundation to build upon.