Technical ILX For Dummies

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this is the thread where the technical aspects of ILX are explained, for The Rest of Us.

― Grandpont Genie, Friday, 20 April 2007 09:29 (eighteen years ago)

the skipping answers at this point thing - is it automatic or introduced by a moderator pressing a button? And if it is automatic, what triggers it and what decides at what point it cuts in and what decides how many messages are skipped?

― Grandpont Genie, Friday, 20 April 2007 09:30 (eighteen years ago)

If the number of answers exceeds (100, I think?), it's inserted automatically. Half before the message, half after. The rest are skipped. Therefore, a thread with 101 messages would contain a "Skipping 1 messages at this point, click here" box.

― StanM, Friday, 20 April 2007 09:36 (eighteen years ago)

Yep, it's 100. Just checked on this thread:

# Entitlement Issues [Started by Masonic Boom, last updated 4 minutes ago] 106 new answers

and

Skipping 6 messages at this point... Click here if you want to load them all.

― StanM, Friday, 20 April 2007 09:37 (eighteen years ago)

ok, cool. what makes an image Illegal?

― Grandpont Genie, Friday, 20 April 2007 09:39 (eighteen years ago)

A number of characters are not allowed inside the square brackets. I'm not sure which exactly, but I think ' " ? & and so on could cause the "illegal" message.

― StanM, Friday, 20 April 2007 09:45 (eighteen years ago)

why? it's bloody annoying.

― lex pretend, Friday, 20 April 2007 09:47 (eighteen years ago)

I don't know! :-(

Keef, Stet, help?

― StanM, Friday, 20 April 2007 09:50 (eighteen years ago)

those characters have the potential to be used to cast SPELLS that would render ILX sessile and insensate

― Tracer Hand, Friday, 20 April 2007 10:08 (eighteen years ago)

even more than it already is? wow.

― StanM, Friday, 20 April 2007 10:13 (eighteen years ago)

new threads should appear in bold, like they used to. presumably this would be relatively easy to do?

― Grandpont Genie, Friday, 20 April 2007 10:13 (eighteen years ago)

WAIT A MINUTE!

"sessile" ?

― StanM, Friday, 20 April 2007 10:14 (eighteen years ago)

― Mark C, Friday, 20 April 2007 10:15 (eighteen years ago)

sessile adj.

1. Botany. attached by the base, or without any distinct projecting support, as a leaf issuing directly from the stem.
2. Zoology. permanently attached; not freely moving.

HUH?

― Grandpont Genie, Friday, 20 April 2007 10:16 (eighteen years ago)

Tracer works for dictionary.com and that's how he makes his money, tricking innocent people onto the site to check words he uses on message boards?

― StanM, Friday, 20 April 2007 10:18 (eighteen years ago)

I would really, really prefer that when posts are skipped, it was the early posts in the thread - I've read them already, but there may be more than 50 new answers so I have to go back through the skipped ones anyway to find here I left off.

You've read them already, but not everybody has! It's set to 50/50 because it's not an option, so it has to be the setting that will apply to most users.

― stet, Friday, 20 April 2007 15:39 (eighteen years ago)

50/50 applies to most users, really? It strikes me as a worst of both worlds option. And the most annoying thing is that the link is buried in the middle of the thread. (Actually the most annoying thing is when it skips a paltry number of messages. Should be a minimum threshold, say 20.)

― ledge, Friday, 20 April 2007 15:46 (eighteen years ago)

> And the most annoying thing is that the link is buried in the middle of the thread.

it's also at the very top, above the first post (but is easy to miss):

"Not all messages are displayed: show all messages"

but yes, the 'skipping 1 message' thing should be eradicated.

― koogs, Friday, 20 April 2007 16:06 (eighteen years ago)

http://retrothing.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/bbcscreen.gif

― Catsupppppppppppppp dude ‫茄蕃‪, Friday, 20 April 2007 16:06 (eighteen years ago)

it's also at the very top, above the first post

Not if yer logged out.

― ledge, Friday, 20 April 2007 16:08 (eighteen years ago)

You've read them already, but not everybody has! It's set to 50/50 because it's not an option, so it has to be the setting that will apply to most users

Stet it's hardly illogical that the posts people are most likely to have read are the first ones! So, have the initial post, then the skipping x posts, then the most recent 50 or 100 or whatever. Which is how it used to be, right...?

― Mark C, Friday, 20 April 2007 16:21 (eighteen years ago)

Yeh, but in the old system, googlers or logged-outs got the whole damn thread (=cruncha cruncha server). Now, everyone gets the 100-post thread.

If it was just the last 50, they'd come to thread, go "Oh, don't have all the posts here, click to see them all", which obviates the point of this. And people coming to a thread for the first time would have to click through as well.

― stet, Friday, 20 April 2007 17:04 (eighteen years ago)

Further thought will show that, for very popular threads, more than 100 replies can accumulate quite rapidly, in less than one hour in many cases. During that hour (or three, or six) a signifigant number of ILXors are sleeping or otherwise engaged and have not had time to read the thread or even become aware it exists.

Threads that are not especially popular rarely accumulate the 100 replies necessary to trigger the feature.

The default setting is least adequate when aplied to threads of great longevity as well as great length, which also happen to be the least common sort of thread on ILX. In those cases, the first 100 replies will be outdated for much of the thread's lifetime, but for most of that lifetime new replies will tend to accumulate in brief spurts, and those new replies will still appear at the end of the thread, conveniently enough.

I think the default is well-conceived.

― Aimless, Friday, 20 April 2007 17:14 (eighteen years ago)

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