A thread to discuss naming threads, board policy, new thread suggestions, and anything else that has to do with board administration and maintenance. Guaranteed to include lively debate and polls. Natter discouraged, but not deleted.
Current Stompy Feet: ita, Jon B, DXMachina, P.M. Marcontell, Liese S., amych
I'm not comfortable with the process.
Well tough titties, missy. Who said you liked to be comfortable anyway? I'm presuming from your workout regime you like a little pain for breakfast.
and I don't want to be summed up.
Just for that I'm going to add up a column of ita before I go to bed.
No, I don't mean a detailed summary. I mean a general overview. Looks like...
"Hey, looks like I got 8900. Okay, in the last 100 we've chatted about bondage tape (again), the sex lives of Yorkies, hating the Yankees, LA brunch plans, a round of sympathy for Ple's bunion and Trading Spaces. If you're interested in the Yorkie porn, go back, elsewise, read on MacDuff."
I have no bunions, and I stand in the porta-potty with ita on the number companion summary issue.
I have no bunions, and I stand in the porta-potty with ita on the number companion summary issue.
I defy you both!
t strikes pose of defiance
I insist on large batches of grumpy East Coasters backing you up before I give up on this entertaining idea.
I tried Microsoft Word's AutoSummarize on a hundred posts and it did not work. It did a really good job on the Sunday Journal article I tested it on though. Wish there could be a technological solution to Natter. Like maybe your post expires in 30 minutes (or 2 hours, or 24) unless you click "Post" instead of "ComPost."
Here's one grumpy East Coaster, although I'm not sure I've ever number-slutted so my opinion probably isn't worth much.
That said, if I slut by accident, I'm not going to go back and try to remember what I've read before. I skip and skim with regularity to save time and continue to be employed, and having to recap would defeat that process.
I'm not down with the summarizing for the simple reason that I cannot be trusted to be able to summarize the previous 100 posts, unless I've just been trying to power through them, in which case I'll be mildly huffy and therefore not wanting to summarize them. But that's just me.
I'd be terrible at summarizing because I'm only going to be able to remember the shiny things like discussion of voter turnout and completely forget the discussion of, um consignment shops, et cetera.
There is a technological solution to the summaries possible. But, due to the wetware, it would not work.
It would not be that tough to add a new field to the posts table (whatever it may be called) "summary". Anyone who think their post is worth summarizing could simply fill in the summary field which would be short. Summary view would , of course, show only the non-blank summary fields.
The problem is that
A) Most people would not take the trouble to fill in the summary field.
B) Probably those making the most important posts would be least likely.
C) And the summary field would be used for various sorts of jokes, and added snark. So anyone trying acess a summary view would get few summaries and a lot if injokes.
Ultimately, I think we are better off just sticking to skipping and skimming. Summaries run into the human component; as I said it's a wetware problem.
