What is the best way to rank people on the site?

Question

Ratings

There is a user profile with a first name, last name, etc.,
which is better to create an atomic rating, i.e. each +1 is fixed in a separate record of the database table or plus in the profile itself?

Answer 1

Hmm ... and there and there it is necessary to do. Those. in separate records - the history of changes. In the profile - the final result, so as not to recalculate each time. Sometimes you need to recalculate, you never know what. If the history does not need to be shown to users (i.e., as in habr, for example, karma), then all the same, I would keep the history of changes additionally in the table. In any case, how else can you prevent one user from changing the rating of another many times? In short, you need to start from the goal.

Answer 2

Both here and there, the first for statistics, the second for display (it will be very expensive to remove all +1 from a separate table)