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i really want to play tremulous. next time we have a LAN?

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So... slight problem with idkfa's backend. Here's the problem:

I store a record for each message a user sees in something like ["kaiden", "Msg #256"]. This means that for every time you view a message, a record is entered into this table, and then is left alone on subsequent visits to the same message.

This is by far the easiest way to give people a "viewing history." However, it doesn't scale well. We have about 800 posts on idkfa, and about 30 users. With only that many people viewing, we already have ~4,500 records in the viewing history table. Worst case for this table (everybody logs in and views everything) would be 24,000 records. Which means that with relatively few people, and only over the course of a few months, we've already reached 18% of the worst case. The more records in this table, the longer it will take to search, and the longer it will take to calculate things like "Next Unread Post" or the "#Unseen" value in the discussion area list.

I worked with this for a couple of hours last night. I think I have a good idea how to better handle this. Instead of storing records like I have above, I'll store it like ["kaiden", "Msg #256", "Msg #300"]. This will mean that user "kaiden" has already viewed the range of posts from #256 to #300, and it can be assumed that every post in between has been viewed. With some careful updates, it will be the case that over time there will be less entries in this table with the more messages a given user views.

What this might mean is that in the near future, I might have to reset your viewing histories. I might have a way to keep them, but I can't promise anything. Also, post tagging might have to be postponed while I rework this system as well.

What this will enable in the future is the ability to mark entire threads, or even entire items as "read," as you can in other forums. This will mean if you've been a diligent lurker, you don't necessarily have to reread all 800+ posts just to get good use out of the history function.

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My new objective is to now only view odd numbered posts.

EDITED FOR A TYPO - I'M PLAYING A DANGEROUS GAME, JOSH

#844, Green Man, +15Y | root latest up search (edited)
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Ha. I'd still be at 50% of the previous record usage, if so.

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He can't read your reply. It's an even-numbered message.

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so, I volunteer up front that I know NOTHING about computer science. I had a thought that maybe have each array be based on the message, and not the user. That way, each message says #kaiden or #kitacek have seen it. But then, I was thinking about it a little more, and maybe that doesn't reduce the amount of records you'd have...

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You're right, would cause the same problem in the reverse direction. Though, I like that you're thinking about it.

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what if each new message received every user's name as an attribute in its array, and when a user reads the message, the user's name is removed from the array?

#849, kitacek, +15Y | root latest up search (edited)
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I'd be needlessly preallocating space. I'd also need to perform an additional update every time a new user came along, which is a little unreasonable.

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as users do more, though, wouldn't the required space go down? and there couldn't be an "auto-add" script when a new user joins?

on a side note, my whole half of the conversation here reminds me of dilbert comics, where i'm the clueless customer and you're one of the engineers.

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Touch every message record every time somebody creates an account?

Let's say you have 1000 posts, and 100 users. Worst case is the starting case: nobody has read anything, so 1,000 * 100 = 100,000 extraneous records must be stored until a user starts viewing. Add a single user, and you have to add 1,000 extra rows, even if that user only ever logs in once and never comes back. Add a single post, and that post has to include 100 extra rows to indicate the number of users that haven't viewed it.

With the viewing history boundaries, worst case: Mike's even-odd viewing, 50% of total number of posts, and will only grow as they continue to view even-odd.

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this is why we have to have smart people like you fix those of us who don't know what we're talking about.

now if we would only listen.

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I'm not necessarily smart, just that I've built such things before, and watched with hot tears in my eyes as they came crashing down around me.

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(sneezes) What? Who? Oh, look. Got switched over to the new system. And migrated everybody's histories over.

You also now have the ability to "speedread." For any search term, you can elect to mark the results as "read." You can access this from the search feature.

#860, kaiden, +15Y | root latest up search (edited)
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Fun stuff:

- Currently ~800 "bounds" defined across all users, down from the previous 4500.
- User with the most bounds (the most sparse viewing history): CapitolZebra

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Ahaha you lose, Ashley!!

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i'm confused.....

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You read posts in such a fashion that it makes it hard to "compress" your viewing history. You're doing nothing wrong.

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oh.... What did I do that made it difficult to compress?

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You view posts "sparsely," that is, you tend to view posts with non-contiguous ID numbers. Rather than storing each number, I'm storing a range that says "This user has read from post #20 to post #30." Each time you read a post near that range, I can increase the range by one. But if you view a post that's more than 2 away from that range, I have to store a new range entirely.

The more posts you read, the less "sparse" your viewing history so be. That you have more ranges than anyone else just means you don't make it a point to read everything, just things you're interested in. That makes you a discerning reader. :)

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oh... hmm. Well, I definitely do jump around a lot which what I click on rather than reading posts all in order. So that makes sense, I guess.

Erik - I think this means I win. Yeah, you know I'm right.

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If you haven't read all of the posts.... you definitely loooooooooooose.

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Also, tag feature isn't working at the moment.

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Alright, I think this is back up. Let me know if otherwise.

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when i try to use the ctrl-`-n shortcut, it takes me back to this post every time.

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same thing for "myidkfa - next unread"

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Try again.

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SPDCA:

Being fresh in my mind, I'm researching how other boards do this.

phpBB: These guys cheat a little bit. They store the following:
- Whether you've marked a sub-forum as read, and the last time you "read" it, or marked it as "read."
- Whether you've marked a thread as read, and the last time you "read" it, or marked it "read."

They never store whether you've read a given post, as default thread display is every single post that is part of a thread (and never an individual post). This means that if you read the first page of a thread, it doesn't matter of you haven't read the subsequent or even the last page of that thread, it will be marked as thread, and you'll never know whether a new post in the thread is something you've actually read, only something that was posted since you were on one of the many pages of a thread.

They get by on the fact that there will always be more replies than there will be threads, which works in most cases, I suppose.

Simple Machines Forum (SMF): A little more sophisticated, but they somewhat suffer from the same problem. They store:

- Whether you've "read" a board, and the ID of the latest post you read (in that board).
- Whether you've "read" a sub-forum, and the ID of the latest post you read (in that sub-forum).
- Whether you've "read" a thread, and the ID of the latest post you read in that thread (in that thread).
- Whether you've "read" a post.

They do specify each message you read, as well as the the ID of the last message at each level. This is as efficient as the phpBB method, as all you have to do is find a ID later or a date newer than the one stored for a particular user.

Supposedly, when a user reads all of a thread, or a sub-forum, it marks the next level up as "read." However, if people read 99/100 posts in a thread, it will never remove the "per message" history and replace it with the "thread" history, or the level above. This means that while occasionally a user will read everything, or mark something explicitly as read, the system eventually balloons its storage. People have come up with solutions for it (marking everything as read for inactive users (www.simplemachines.org)), but they aren't perfect, and end up tampering with people's viewing history.

I can't find much of anything on vBulletin (probably because it's proprietary). MyBB (the codebase that The Lollerdome is built from) does per forum and per thread marking, storing the latest date (the phpBB method).

I might have done something novel here. Or, there's a reason why I shouldn't be doing this that everybody else already figured out.

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I think I found the reason why people don't do this.

I was noticing that idkfa was running a little slow. I looked on the server, noticed there was other stuff going on, and thought nothing of it.

I noticed again this afternoon, and found that nothing else was going on. Yet idkfa was taking almost 2 seconds to load each time.

Looking closer, I found that the type of query I have to use to do this is not terribly efficient unless you index heavily, and index correctly. I had three indexes, one to keep track of the user ID of the message bound, one to keep track of the lower bound, and one to keep track of the higher bound. I removed these, and added a single index that contained a concatenation of all three rows (usr, lower, upper).

This improved speed by reducing load times back down below 200 ms.

I guess we'll just have to watch as this scales. If you folks notice more slowdowns, don't be afraid to mention it.

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Sorta funny. I was poking around, and realized that there were about 400+ posts on idkfa that I had written, but hadn't "read."

I used the speedreader function of the search page to mark these as read. My page load times were cut in half.

So yeah. If you're a frequent reader, but you haven't read everything, and you're noticing idkfa loading somewhat slower than normal, it might be a good idea to mark the posts you don't intend on reading as read.

You can do this by logging in, navigating to http://idkfa.com/v3...?terms=is%3Aunread, and clicking "Mark these posts as read." It will tell you how many posts it intends to mark, and gives you an out before it marks them.

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SPDCA:

Having trouble sleeping, so I'll write a bit about some developments regarding the adventures of this algorithm.

Amazingly, I had the opportunity to use this at work. It was the case where I needed to design a tool that could consume log messages from another data source. These logs were sequentially numbered (like idkfa posts), were monotonically increasing, and came through at a very, very fast pace (say 80MB in a few seconds).

My log consumer needed to be robust, fast, and in addition to the statistical features it would have from scanning the log messages, it would need to "remember" if it had seen a log message provided that a message was a) accidentally/programmatically repeated, or b) explicitly sent again by an administrator. That meant that I needed a way to accurately track the messages that would be 1) quick to access and 2) take little memory. I decided to take the method I had for idkfa and implement it using Perl.

The "quick" part took about a week and a half to figure out, as I was having to continuously rewrite my code to try to keep up with the data stream. Performing a linear search was far, far too slow, even in the beginning, and would be unusable after only a short period of normal usage. By the time I was done, I was using two Red-Black trees as lower and upper bound indexes (similar to the database index I use on idkfa), as well as a few other tricks made possible by having data structures stored in memory rather than a database.

Unfortunately, memory usage became a killer issue. While my algorithm could keep up and scale well as it "saw" more data, there was never any guarantee that the "gaps" in the log messages would be filled. I was collecting such a huge amount of data that even if I was missing 1 in 1000 messages, within hours my process would run out of memory by being forced to store all of the gaps.

It was at that point I had to make a compromise. There was no way I was going to be able to build more complexity into the tool to track messages, and the probability that I would see a gap be filled grew less and less likely as time went on.

My decision was this: I would only store 1000 bounds. When it came time to add another bound, I would take the "oldest" two bounds (those that I was the least likely to see again), and merge them. This means that though I was introducing inaccuracy into the system, I was introducing it at the point where I was least likely to need accuracy. If I can still be 99% accurate over my configured time period, then I think this was a reasonable compromise.

If idkfa's seen/unseen system bogs down with the sheer quantity of posts we're adding, this may become a viable option. In this case, as you read, you would slowly "auto-read" the oldest posts as soon as you read new posts that couldn't be amended to currently stored boundaries. It would mean the system would be less accurate, but only so for older posts that you probably weren't going to read anyway.

I don't see that happening any time soon. More just making a note for the future.

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would the application of your idkfa algorithm at work relate to your inquiries of excel elsewhere in this forum? and your critique of it in EC?

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Well... related? Yes and no.

Yes, in that it's an example of "shit you cannot and should not try to do in Excel, yet people will try to do it anyways."

No, in that my particular experience that spawned my survey and subsequent awful essay wasn't related to the aforementioned project and its use of my algorithm.

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SPDCA: There's an article I happened to come across (www.joelonsoftware.com) in some of my research for this, stating the author's disdain for forums that adopt "threading" rather than "flat" displays for forum interfaces:

"Something interesting happens sociologically when you don't have threading: the conversation is forced along one train of thought. People feel like they can respond to the original inquiry, or they can respond to the last post, but if they want to nitpick about the third post and there are already twenty more posts after that, it's just too late." Joel Spolsky (www.joelonsoftware.com), Jan 2001

The most compelling implication of what Spolsky says is that flat forums often reduce a topic such that it is more "conversational," rather than simply passing messages and storing them in a message tree. Users are compelled to hold a conversation, based on either the original thing brought up, or the last thing said about it, and less so the in-between.

(shrugs) I don't know. I've been on a few forums. And nothing about them is conversational. Forums are a unique form of communication, at once static and dynamic, with topical direction and dimension changing regardless of whatever convention users happen to uphold. Reading without threading, to me, is like reading a book written by twenty authors, none of whom proofread or try to maintain any sense of conversational narrative. It is screaming at the Internet, and lengthening a wall of text.

The reason I'm looking at this at all is I'm feeling a little outnumbered. The majority of the popular forum software out there on the Internet, either open source or commercial products, are all predominantly "flat." In addition to that, they have fairly unsophisticated viewing history mechanisms. I've been trying to bring up my boundary algorithm on their developer forums, only to find that people ask why I would come up with a system like that in the first place (the answer being: viewing in threads means that I have to be accurate, whereas they can be lazy with less of a detriment to user experience). Once threading comes up, they attack my choice of threaded display, and discard my boundary idea as unnecessary (as they never really plan on supporting threads).

I thought for a while that I was being ignored because my idea was too complicated (to the point where I was toying around with making an infographic about it), but I don't think that's the case. It's simply that they have a system that already works, it's too stupid to fail, and changing it would be catastrophic in terms of compatibility.

A question: For those members of idkfa v2 and v3, in your opinion, compared to other similar mechanisms (Facebook comments/posts, Email clients/listservs, etc.), do you find that idkfa's threading makes it harder to have a conversation? Is it because you're replying to one person at a time? Or that you can't easily see a single point of activity in a conversation? Other reasons?

I was considering what it would take to implement a "flat" display mechanism for idkfa. Technically difficult... but not impossible, I don't think. It would definitely put "flat" users at a disadvantage, though, as it would be like trying to see a cube on a 2D surface. You wouldn't see the shape of the conversation, only a single line of posts, with people's replies appearing randomly, and likely without context, at the end of the line. It might have to be that a thread is chosen, at its creation, on whether the creator wants it to be flat or threaded. Hmm.

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IDKFA probably makes up the majority of my early use of message boards. And probably also a good portion still. The fact that as from what I can remember idkfa has always been threaded means that's how I prefer to see all message boards now. I really dislike the "flat" view for the reason that even in real conversation I prefer to be able to respond to not just the initial comment, but also the last comment, and sometimes interesting things that are said in between.

So good on ya josh because I prefer how you run your shit over how pretty much everyone else does it. Probably mostly out of familiarity, but maybe also just personal style as well. Those other developers can go to hell.

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Haha, thanks man.

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I definitely prefer the way you have idkfa set up. It seems much easier to follow what is being posted. I appreciate the chance to make a comment to a post in the middle of a thread and have everything 'in context' rather than purely in chronological order.

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I'm glad you feel that way. Other than the problem of having to display threads going to indefinitely to the right, I don't understand why absolutely everything (Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Google+, etc.) has chosen to go flat. Maybe our brains don't work like everybody else's.

#4098, kaiden, +13Y | root latest up search | latest
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I... I finally did it. I finally read every post so far on idkfa. Sweet jesus that took a while. And I got paid for the entirety of it. Muahahahahhah HA AHAHA AHAHAHHAHA AHA!

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(slow clap)

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I'm surprised it took you this long. I mean, Josh only made it RIDICULOUSLY easy to find unread posts. Even MULTIPLE tools, you tool!

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In Erik's defense, a lot of people use the site and don't realize that a) I'm tracking what posts you've already read, and b) You have to be logged in to do it.

I guess... maybe... I could track what you're looking at as a guest? And update it when you log in? That just sounds messy... And probably wouldn't work in most cases.

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Really, the question is: what DON'T you track??

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I only track what you give me to track.

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oops, I posted me previous post too soon. Apparently it was already asked. haha.

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I just kinda assumed you are tracking every move we make on this site.... Is there anything you aren't tracking?

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Hey man, I didn't know about the keyboard shortcuts until TODAY. Plus, this internet is slower than dial-up; it's satellite. So eat shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit.

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I can't wait for your employers to stumble across this post.

Josh, redact all your editing capabilities. Immediately.

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I would post about your employment malfeasance, but, alas, Peter is probably drinking RIGHT NOW. You bastard.

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So how does it end?

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It said something about "Lee" and "bumpersticker tycoon". Can't remember much beyond that, it was kind of boring.

#916, Scrotor, +15Y | root latest up search | latest
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Alright. Apparently a busy week at idkfa.

You can now edit posts. Rules are the following:

- You can edit each post only once.
- You must edit the post within 24 hours.
- You can edit up to 5 posts in a given month. Counter is reset when the month rolls over.

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Devils advocate: Does the counter roll over at the beginning of the month, or does it after 30 days from the first edit? What if I wanted to edit it more then once, like with a funny cartoon, or pictures of my cats?

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It asks: "How many posts do you own that are marked as 'edited' in the same month as 'now'?" So, you can edit 5 posts in September, 5 posts in October, etc., on any day of month, but you can't edit more than that. It doesn't pay attention to how long it's been since you edited. You could edit 5 posts on Sept 30 and 5 posts on Oct 1, and it wouldn't stop you.

More than once? Pictures of cats? These things I cannot abide.

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Now we need signatures, so that a picture of my cat will be my siggy.

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Testing, testing... one, two, three.

#800, kaiden, +15Y in idkfa | root latest up search (edited)
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Testing once more. Hopefully the last time...

#801, kaiden, +15Y | root latest up search (edited)
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Every time you do this I always want to know what was just tested.

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This time I was testing out the editing feature, first to make sure I could edit, second to make sure I wasn't going above my limit.

http://idkfa.com/v...=802&msg_id=802

#926, kaiden, +15Y | root latest up search | latest
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This is the third time I'm restarting this work for you. This is even after the fourth time I've come to you for clarification/ checking in. Thanks for that, especially since I dropped everything I was doing to help you try to make your deadline.
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Document the instance heavily, and bring it up at an opportune moment.

#793, kaiden, +15Y | root latest up search | latest
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Any camera aficionados in this here website forum place? I'm looking at buying a new point and shoot camera and have started reading up on the Panasonic Lumix DMC-zs7. Amazon (www.amazon.com) is currently selling it on sale for $250. It includes cool whiz-bang things like a gps for in-camera geotagging, a 3 inch lcd screen, and AVCHD movie mode.

Costco is currently selling a slightly stripped down version called the Lumix DMC-zx6 that doesn't have the same movie mode. Instead it has some sort of movie mode that is limited to 8 minutes. It also doesn't have the gps. It's listed at $250 right now as well. I'm going to Yosemite next week so I need get to get a digital camera right now otherwise I'd go ahead and order the one from Amazon. That being the case, I'll probably buy the one at Costco and return it when I get back.

So has anyone else lately done any camera shopping/comparing?

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I recently got a sony wx1. Got it off ebay for like 180 w/ shipping. Its pretty awesome, video is reasonable and allows zooming. Pics are universally good, night photography in particular though not dslr quality. If yellowstone is your destination then scenery pics are in your future. I took these (picasaweb.google.com)on my sony while climbing rainier.... well I took most of them some are from my dad.

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Those look pretty cool. I like the super wide shots, those are neat. How long did it take you? Like 2 days??

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Two and a half, started friday after work and got home sunday night. Could be done faster but my dad was feeling his age I suppose.

Those panorama's are done in camera with a single sweep, no stitching necessary and they look much better not in picassa.

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Late for your purchase, but in case others read the thread......

My son gave me a Canon G11 (there's a G12 now). It's not small or light or cheap, but it's got the sensor used in Canon DSLR's and all kinds of manual or automatic modes. Without actually getting into a DSLR (and it is smaller than that) it gives you a lot of control and stuff to play with, if you want, or fully automatic functions.

Really sharp photos, turns on really quick, big display, and a very reasonably priced underwater case, which I'll try out this Christmas.

#1292, Buzz, +14Y | root latest up search | latest
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So I went ahead and bought the zs6 from Costco as I'm going to be in Yosemite next week. It's a pretty sweet camera the little I've used it so far. I should probably read the book to figure out all the whiz-bang stuff it's got, but meh, maybe on the plane. It definetly blows away my last camera which was a 4MP digital with 3x optical zoom. This thing having 12x optical at 12MP is pretty amazing. Also my old camera didn't have the auto stablization.. I had made many a fuzzy picture because of that.

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I sweated a lot last night.. in bed. I believe due to my dreams.. I just don't exactly remember what they were. But waking up in bed sweat is nasty.

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I think we agreed on Monday, Oct. 18th, for our next meeting, tenatively at Allison or Cuyler's place, or both. Plan is to finish "Saturn's Children."

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Should be able to finish it by then.

#795, Scrotor, +15Y | root latest up search | latest
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Another new feature / description of a current feature: Relative / Absolute Timestamps.

You may have noticed in each thread's list of replies that there is a value at the end, something to the tune of "+1H" or "+2W" or "+1M". These represent things like "+1 hour", "+2 weeks", or "+1 Month" respectively. Their intent is to show you, approximately, how old a post is, or, how old it is in relation to what it is in reply to.

Let me explain. Humans, when it comes down to it, aren't good at measuring time. We have things like years, months, weeks, days, hours, seconds, and other fun arbitrary allotments of time to represent an otherwise single-dimension value. Computers measure the passing of time as a number of seconds, which is easier, but hard to qualify for humans.

Every other forum I've seen displays dates like "2010-09-27 20:55:04 -0900" that tells you everything you have to know about the date. However, most people when they're considering a post, only care about how recent it is, and have to spend extra time remembering if that date is now, then, in the past, in the future, last week, etc. This is why I decided to only display the full date on the post you're interested in, and display a short "relative time" that's of the most immediate interest.

Unfortunately, I got all programmer on you. I figured out that there are two types of "relative time" I can show you. I can calculate the amount of time that has passed since a post occurred and the current time (what I'll call "absolute time"). What I can also calculate is the time between when the parent of a post was posted, and when its reply was posted (what I'll call "relative time"). I chose the latter as the default, and failed to explain what I was doing.

Absolute time is the most interesting when you're trying to get a general idea of a timeline. Relative time is useful when you're trying to figure out the timeline of a particular thread. Absolute time is simpler to calculate (I only need the creation timestamp of the post and the current timestamp). In calculating absolute time, all posts are dislaying their approximate age.

Relative time is a little more complicated: the first post in the thread (the "root") is calculated using absolute time, and all subsequent posts are calculated relative to that of its parent. That means if the root is "+3W", the initial post is three weeks old. If a following reply to the root is "+1H", that means someone replied to the root within one hour, but three weeks ago.

I can see people preferring either. I've now put up another user preference that lets you choose how you want to view your time differences. You can choose between absolute time and relative time.

#775, kaiden, +15Y in idkfa | root latest up search | latest
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So, is there a way to edit posts? I would like to be able to edit asinine grammatical/spelling errors, if possible.

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Not so much. Hard to manage, and rife for abuse.

Open to ideas, though.

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Other forums I've seen handle it in a few ways:

- Allow users to edit any post, without limitation.

This is sort of a bad design, even if a good idea. In previous version of idkfa, the logic against this was that people could go back and change their points, their wording, whatever they needed to invalidate the points made in a later reply. If somebody's really trying to hold a good debate, this would be infuriating, and would be hard to track down, and would take away from what was supposed to be discussed.

More argument against it would be that people wouldn't so much give a shit what they post if they can just go back and fix it. It also sort of goes against what the model of a conversation is like: people can't edit what they say once they've said it.

- Allow moderators to edit / delete posts

Previous version of idkfa allowed deletion of posts by members of the Moderator group. This worked, sort of, but caused a lot of drama, not only on the "What was deleted?" front, but more destructively when somebody posts something, somebody else sees it, suddenly disappears, and everybody hears about it anyway.

Allowing one person, even myself, the ability to edit something brings into suspicion the legitimacy of what people posted. People are forced to trust me, and I try to be a good custodian of people's writing (I take the Gabe approach: "Tough, but Fair"). I edit things when people ask me to, and the reasons are usually good (maintaining one's privacy, etc.).

But it doesn't scale well. Larger forums have dozens of moderators, usually one per section. It again creates drama, starting with jealousy at not being a moderator, and also because people have different opinions on what should and shouldn't be posted, and who should or shouldn't be a moderator.

I purposely left out most of the original "privilege" features from previous idkfa in lieu of simplifying the featureset and trying to do a few things well.

- Allow users to edit their own posts, but permanently tag the post as "edited"

This puts the badge of "I fucked up" on a post that sort of detracts from what's being written. It's also rare in a forum the poster or the forum itself will indicate what has changed, leaving users to wonder what was the modification.

This seems to be a little more balanced and scalable, I'll admit. But there's no limit on how much one can edit in the original post (one word? one sentence? the whole thing?), and doesn't answer well what would occur if somebody wanted to retract their post entirely.

- Allow users to edit their own posts, perform message tagging, but limit the number of posts one can edit, and how often.

This... sounds draconian, but it's probably the most flexible, and maybe the one I'd be most willing to implement. I would put rules in place, such as "One cannot edit a post more than once" in addition to "One cannot edit a post more than once a day."

This would sort of give users a get out of jail free card for a single post, but hopefully inspire them to proofread the first time through, given limited editing capability.

The deletion question is unanswered though. This go-around, I've instead implemented thread deletion as "tagged as deleted," rather than removing something from the database. Essentially, it will never display on the idkfa interface, but the original record will be stored.

This I would try to limit considerably, possibly with a rule like "One cannot delete more than 5 of their own posts during their use of idkfa." This would eliminate the severest of mistakes. It wouldn't delete the messages in reply... not sure how I would handle those cases.

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Ultimately, I want people to value the time they spend reading stuff on idkfa. Yeah, not all of it will be Shakespeare, but it doesn't need to be vacuous either. We made it through plenty of years on the original revisions without post editing feature, and still managed to maintain a decent community. We're now a fraction of that size and quantity of activity, so... I guess every post counts.

Anybody have further thoughts?

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I like #3 and #4 the bestest. So a combination thereof will be implemented anon. Carry forth, Joshus!

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Uh, right...

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...people can't edit what they say once they've said it.

Starting in the month of October, Josh can only correct himself in verbal conversation five times per calendar month. After that, whatever was said first I will take verbatim and remember as gospel.

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Yeah, yeah.

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I like this rule. Too bad I won't see Josh until October's pretty much over. You'll have to keep track, Mike. Put a bug on him or something.

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So... we're punishing Josh... for trying to model a real conversation... in a program he wrote on his spare time... of which, providing in it a feature you've never had before... and making it manageable from a user and administrative perspective...

This is why God doesn't talk to us anymore.

#857, kaiden, +15Y | root latest up search | latest
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I was looking through old files, and found a jpeg of a newspaper clipping from what I assume to be the Anchorage Daily News, although there is no date. This editorial is so fucking classic, I thought it needed to be transcribed for us here:

"Letter to the Editor

'Reader voices strong opinion on atheists'

It's time to stomp out atheists in America. The majority of Americans would love to see athesits kicked out of America. If you don't believe in God, then get out of this country.

The United States is based on having freedom of religion, speech, etc., which means you can believe in God any way you want (Baptist, Catholic, Methodist, etc.), but you must believe.

I don't recall freedom of religion meaning no religion. Our currency even says, "In God We Trust." So, to all the atheists in America: Get off our country.

Atheists have caused the ruin of this great nation by taking prayer out of our schools and being able to practice what can only be called evil. I don't care if they have never committed a crime, atheists are the reason crime is rampant.

Alice Shannon

Soldotna"

I seriously hope this is some sort of farce. Otherwise, there is no hope for a culture with people this ignorant.

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Ah, whew, at least I know have a little hope for humanity. Although, the last line of that snopes page is a little disconcerting:

"Given the plentitude of e-mails we've received over the years expressing the very same sentiments as this letter, it... apparently does represent the genuine opinions of a not insubstantial readership base."

Oh well.

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I caught the end of a pretty interesting speaker yesterday on NPR. It was on racism and how "they" have found that most people are racist against the non-majority. No matter if it against race, sex, sexuality. http://kska.org/201...ns-healing-racism/ (kska.org)

Very interesting listen!

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That's pretty interesting. Human behavior modeling is some crazy shit.

#917, Scrotor, +15Y | root latest up search | latest
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New feature: alternate Item / Thread sorting.

When perusing items, you now have two methods with which to view threads within items (in addition to the "Thread Forwards / Thread Backwards" user setting.

The first is "Latest Thread." This is the classic sorting of idkfa threads when perusing an item. It is sorted by the order in which a thread was created, in respect to the other threads in the item. New threads? They go to the top, the rest follow.

The new one is "Latest Post in Thread," which is a slight derivation. Threads in an item are instead sorted by the latest post within the thread. That means that if somebody posts to an item in "Latest Post in Thread" sorting, that thread will go to the top, followed the the second latest post's thread, the third, and so on.

The idea behind "Latest Post in Thread" sorting is so people can tell which threads have the most recent activity, not necessarily the threads that were posted last. This is ideal in a situation where an older thread has activity, as it puts it at the top for all to see.

This is reminiscent of the type of sorting that goes on in flat forums (phpBB, SMF).

#764, kaiden, +15Y in idkfa | root latest up search | latest
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Cuyler and i have a condo association meeting at 6. (Think old ladies in matching velour jumpsuits and rose colored glasses yelling about trash, those damn kids, and dog poop.) We actually are supposed to vote on something, but are committed to leaving by 7pm at the latest. That would make us (worst case senario) 10-15 minutes late. We will try our best.
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"Think old ladies in matching velour jumpsuits and rose colored glasses yelling about trash, those damn kids, and dog poop."

That is what I imagine hell is like.

#752, kaiden, +15Y | root latest up search | latest
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Any good tips for shin splints treatment and prevention? I warm up and stretch, but dancing and running are hard. Should I wrap them when they get painful? Ice or heat? I'm looking especially at you, CapitolZebra.

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advil, then alcohol

That's how I deal with any soreness I get from running. Pop the aspirin till its a reasonable enough time to drink.

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You mean, deal with the problem called 'your liver'? The advil-alcohol is a one-two punch straight towards cirrhosis, precious. Not that that stops me from taking tylenol for a hangover :D

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eh, she's young and livers heal.

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Ahahahahaha touche!

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I don't trust or love any body parts I can't see... Vivisection doesn't count either.

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hahaha... You actually mentioned me by name? I feel special.

There is a great taping technique that I used to use almost every single day in high school when dance and track season would overlap. I had horrendous shin splints and I hate taking drugs so I refused to take anything for them. It might take me a few minutes to figure out how to explain the taping without being able to show it, but I can definitely try if you're interested in hearing it. It really really helped me out a lot. I think one of the physical therapists I worked with when I worked at AFOC taught me, so I trusted what they had to say.

#869, CapitolZebra, +15Y | root latest up search | latest
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Predictable bad news: I have rehearsal tonight from 8 PM until 10 PM. Perhaps I could be there early for a little bit? I will be very sad to miss pie and pink goo discussions. But I can tell you that the apples and dough are DELICIOUS.

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If you'd like to stop by a little early for an apricot beer, feel free.

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Yum. Yes.

#747, sexretary, +15Y | root latest up search | latest
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John and Mallory hosted a murder mystery to celebrate Mallory's birthday.

(picasaweb.google.com)
2010 Mal's Birthday / Murder Mystery (picasaweb.google.com)
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You know, mayhap you should make a separate photos, section, or its ilk?

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(shrugs) I think they're kinda few and far between.

You can also use this: http://idkfa.com/v3...?terms=img&p=0

Hmm. I might see about making a search "full view," where it'll display search results as full posts rather than the small excerpts. You could then peruse all of the images on idkfa, in all sections, 25 posts at a time!

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Taking the easy way out, I see.

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Wh-... Why can't I ever please you? I offer you a brand new feature, and you spurn my love. Spurn it all away.

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It's called tough love, babycakes.

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Genius. Pure genius.

#790, Governator, +15Y | root latest up search | latest
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Anyone ever visit any old teachers at Service within the past few years? Just curious. If so, who were they and what are they like now? I'm tempted to do so over christmas break if school is in session for any part of it...

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Can't say I have. Following my first year, I thought about visiting some of my high school tech lab teachers to see how things were going, but I recalled the year prior when a returning college freshmen I'd worked with stopped by. It was weird, and strange, and awkward, because apparently in the year since I'd seen him, he'd either a) changed personalities completely, or b) was so full of anti-depressants or other psychoactive drugs that he was an entirely different person.

He was the first person I'd heard say he preferred working with raw code rather than working through any kind of user interface. Now I say that. I wonder at the implications. I worry for my very soul.

Also, my spanish teacher I really liked asked me to come back to visit him, but unfortunately I never did. Sorry, Mr. McKenzie.

I did invite Mr. Holleman and Mr. Sant back to idkfa v3.

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Can't say that I would want to go visit the school so much, though it would find in pretty fun to invite a bunch of old teachers out to a pub for some drinks. Drunk high school teachers, that would be fun. That and Matt the old security guy, he would be awesome as well.

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Acutally, i'm going back to Service for a work thing in a couple weeks... Going to take the cast of Mamma Mia! to Sant's 4th period acting class for a Q&A/meet and greet thing. Should be fun. And, a little weird. Will be nice to see Mr. Sant though.
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haha YES I love that idea!

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I went back a couple times while still in college. I even helped judge one of the debate tournaments when I was a sophomore or junior. It was soooo strange because half the school had been significantly renovated. It was great to see some teachers, but overall it was definitely strange. I actually have fond memories of older friends coming back to visit after they left for college. I enjoyed seeing them and they seemed to enjoy coming back. But that was also when they still knew people who were still in school. Now I think the only students I would know would be ones who were little kids in my moms classes, and to be honest, I don't want to see them as 17 year olds. They few who I have seen have ruined my image of them as a 7 year old, and have made me petrified of having children. I like JDs idea, though.

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I just remember after John was born I got treated by the teachers a whole new way. Its much harder to treat a student like a kid who doesn't know shit about the world when they technically take a very adult step in life. That made me have a whole new way of interacting with teachers, so I have pretty fond memories of some of them.

At the time sitting down for a beer wasn't an option but it is now. Seems like it'd be pretty fun. I really have no attachment to the school building itself, nor any students for that matter since its been 7 years now. I would find it pretty fun to go back and judge DDF again. But I suppose I'd need to move up there for that one... Someday Alaska, someday.

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Yeah, I definitely remember seeing that. Especially in AP Gov. I remember Mr. Miller didn't really seem to know how to react because I don't think he was used to his "smart AP kids" having kids. haha. But he was always so cool anyway that I always loved his class. (again, I wonder why I insisted on majoring in a science in college...)

I too no longer have any attachment to the building or students, and most of our teachers are retired or spread out across the district now... But, I do wonder what they are up to. I see how excited my mom gets when former students find her and come say hello. She absolutely loves it and loves tell us what they are up to now and what they had to say. So it makes me wonder if it would be worthwhile to go track down some of my favorites someday. I doubt it would be very difficult for the ones who are still with the district since they are all online... The ones that would be tough/impossible would be the retired ones.

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Yeah, Miller was fun. He reacted kinda funny. That was a good year though. Good class, fun group and having the food locker so close was handy as well.

Hmm, drink with a teacher list. Steve Kemper, possibly Mr Lechtenburger... both dudes I'd hang out with. Miller's on the list, though I imagine he's a bourbon kind of guy. Sant would be fun, and possibly Frau Sended. Basically I don't care enough about my other teachers from high school to remember them well.

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Miller was pretty incredible, I got away with WAAAAAAAAAY too much shit with him. I'll always have fond memories of his classes.

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can we please add Mr. Wright to the list? is he still around? one of my fondest memories from high school is him telling us the dead baby joke in order to describe use of irony in literature...

#1051, semblance, +14Y | root latest up search | latest
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I've gone back and visited Mr. Kincaid and Frau Senden a couple times, but they both moved on to South and Chugiak, respectively, after we graduated. so I haven't been back to Service proper. It was great to see them, though... nothing had changed at all.

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(sigh) And it's snowing outside...

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WHEEEEEEEEEEEE

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I'll tell you what it's NOT doing here...

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SLEDDING!!

#781, Governator, +15Y | root latest up search | latest
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Thoughts on the Sept 25th, 2010 show:

  • Altogether solid show. Started strong with freeze tag, and kept good energy throughout. I was thinking about writing some notes on my phone on the games played, and devising systems for rating and note-taking, but I kept having to mentally revise my system when the games kept getting better, and I wanted to watch the games rather than take notes on them.
  • Though the game was successful, Panel of Experts showed Warren to be in serious poison mode. Everyone else had distinct, immediately accepted and hilarious characters that could have great answers. Warren's biologist I think was Warren, playing himslf, and not wanting to play the game. The audience laughed at his characterization, but as the final say for most of the questions, arguably should have been something different.
  • Wasn't Zoom In, Zoom out supposed to relate to sex somehow? The game worked, but the rules, John. The rules. :)
  • John / Mal: I like the framing device you guys use to build up a scene by yourself with more than one character. The "tch", followed by a hand sign of "one" or "two" or "three." Worked really well for the "death by Chuck Norris Stare."
  • Love letters went really well. Exemplifies how well the both of you work with the audience.
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TOO MUCH BELL

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Well, I didn't get a boner in Kwajalein, so, I mean, it was probably only a mediocre show. With a boner radius of less than 2500 miles, you can only expect so much.

No offense to the players, I'm sure they tried or whatever.

#762, Scrotor, +15Y | root latest up search | latest
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OMGOMGOMGOGMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMG

HOLY DIVER for ROCK BAND. UNNnNNnnhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhghghggghggggg....

With that exclamation, off to Ebeye.

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I know what this means to you. I'm so happy for you.

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Already got it baby, now I'm waiting for the right crowd to assemble to play it.

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THE CROWD IS AMASSING.

Mainly in my pants. But Aaron will be there too I hope.

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Are you insinuating that your sperm will take up drums and bass and lead you to musical awesomeness? If so I need to witness this.

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Well, it might not be as spectacular as you think. Just a lot of rubbing and moaning and "Hold on, I'm almost there" until I blow my load on your gaming equipment, and collapse an exhausted, drunken mess.

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That sounds really hard to clean, I thing recruiting Joel and Brad might be more effective.

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Joel's woman let's him get out?

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It happens, though I must say I have been terrible of late specifically inviting to do shit with other guys. Though the occassional RB night and the even rarer A&A definitely need him.

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You've become a solo workout machine. It happens.

#763, Scrotor, +15Y | root latest up search | latest
...which was started +1 day after this thread...
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"Oh my GOD... isn't that your boyfriend down there??" Lol.

#838, Scrotor, +15Y | root latest up search | latest
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Currently I'm listening to Steven Colbert's testimony in front congessional subcommittee on immigration and farm labor. Painfully hillarious, but this may be the only government committee meeting I could ever actually give enough of a shit to listen to.

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I watched it as well. Completely hilarious. I love how most of the congress people hardly got any of his jokes at all. That's evidence enough for me how out of touch our representatives are...

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I kept thinking about how a committee hearing is not the place to throw in a plug for yourself or your party, get your damn job done. Stop preening yourself just because there's a shit ton of cameras around.

#739, MrFood, +15Y | root latest up search | latest
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Got a letter from the Scottsdale Police Department (from Scottsdale, AZ) at my parent's address. The letter contained a form, asking me to fill out questions like "Since reporting your theft, have you recovered your vehicle? (Yes/No) ____" and "If you recovered your vehicle, did you report it to the Scottsdale Police Department? (Yes/No) ____"

I got my '96 Ford Explorer stolen in June, 2006.

Thanks for the follow-up, assholes.

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Its okay, Josh - they'll start the investigation into it in another four or five years.
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I'm so glad we both immediately thought of this.

#721, Green Man, +15Y | root latest up search | latest
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5 Second Films in "Late for Work": http://5secondfilms...tch/late_for_work/ (5secondfilms.com)

#715, kaiden, +15Y in Cognitive Surplus | root latest up search | latest