We don't want to be a general-purpose discussion website, and we don't have the capacity, really. This is why I would argue that all the miscellaneous topics, even the really important ones, belong in Natter.

Just repeating Jesse here. I think we need to keep this in mind. We are not a general forum, and that was never the intention.

I’m really not privy to much in the way of back channel and I don’t know if I’ve made any enemies over this. I doubt I’ve made any friends. I want you to know the feeling is far from mutual. I appreciate the respect and courtesy I’ve been shown throughout, and have tried to disregard anything that was less than that.

Chiming in to say, good for you, Wolfram (I'm not going to call you Wolfie, though I reserve the right to call you "Tungsten" of course).

It's a pity if the idea of backchannel has made you paranoid. I don't know of any at all, if that helps.

Mind you, composing your posts in Word, with Smart Quotes turned on? That's going to make you some enemies for sure. Please Note: this was a joke.

John, I didn't understand half the things you just said, but thanks (for the other half.)

From a coding point of view, it's aesthetically sloppy. Right now, they appear in the order of creation. They could appear alphabetical or in most-recently-posted-in order -- basically anything that's sortable. Forcing threads to appear in a specific order means you have to hardcode in the thread id's which is badbadbad.

Can you just trick the order of creation into thinking Voting Discussion came before BBaBB? And has this now become a BBaBB question, because I am so not qualified to post in there?

Can you just trick the order of creation into thinking Voting Discussion came before BBaBB? And has this now become a BBaBB question, because I am so not qualified to post in there?

It is a BBaBB question, but anyone is qualified to post in there. Honest. "The order of creation" is also known as the thread ID. If you look in the URL of this page, you'll see a piece that reads "thread_id=25". To "trick the order of creation" we'd have to change that number and that is NOT something we want to do. Trust me. ;)

In honor of the discussion being held there right now, I propose that Lightbulb be given the thread number 24½.

John, I didn't understand half the things you just said, but thanks (for the other half.)

t straight-quotes evangelist

Wolfram, dude, you're writing your posts in some word-processing program that automatically replaces all the quotation marks or apostrophes you type (", ') with the special-character "smart quotes", which curl around the word instead of being straight. You can see it in the I've here:

I doubt I’ve

Thing is, these often translate very, very badly to the internet. Especially in plain-text email. If you don't know what they are, (forgive me for making the assumption) you probably will not miss them gone from your documents; go to your word-processing program's preferences (in Microsoft Word, it's under the Tools menu, in AutoCorrect, the AutoFormat As You Type tab) and turn them off and you'll never have to worry about your posts looking odd on the internet.

This has been a moment of internet-typography evangelism. We now return you to your normally-scheduled, unhijacked thread.

Wolfram, I think he's saying you're bent! Durned furriners.

Wish I could get bent. Damnit.

I said BENT, not another word that sounds similar but has an a instead of an e! No, wait! AAAAARRRRGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!

What were we talking about?

Oh, well. My apologies to everyone I unintentionally offended. Everyone I meant to offend, piss off.

John is correct and funny. From now on I'm going to call Wolfram 'Tungsten'. Ah, periodic table humour - is there a better kind?

This content free post is brought to you by the letter W and the number 74 and a crippling lack of sleep.

Ah, periodic table humour - is there a better kind?

If there's a Joss, there is.