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| Author |
Message |
| 25 new of 152 responses total. |
mdw
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response 50 of 152:
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Sep 23 15:03 UTC 1995 |
In PicoSpan, you can say:
read # new to get new responses to just that item.
read # since 5/3 to get responses since may 3
read # since 10:52 to get responses since 10:52a
read # nor to get right to to the RFP prompt
respond # if you want to go directly
to responding (but there's
a strange bug if you have a pager
AND edalways, so experiment &
decide if it's worth it.)
If you're seeing a lot of old responses, you can also hit interrupt, and
get to RFP. This works beautifully on oldfashioned direct connect slow
modems, but isn't nearly so nice on modern high speed modems, which use
a fifo to handle error correcting & data compression. It's nearly
pointless if you're also unlucky enough to be *also* using something
like merit & telnet - telnet *does* have logic to flush outgoing traffic
when an incoming interrupt process is sent, but this doesn't work over
merit, and indeed, I can't recall ever seeing this work effectively.
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lilmo
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response 51 of 152:
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Sep 23 19:34 UTC 1995 |
Also, if you get the RFP, you can say last for the last response, or give a
number to got to that response number.
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popcorn
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response 52 of 152:
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Sep 24 15:21 UTC 1995 |
Re 50: Better than hitting Interrupt, all new users have a pager set up
automatically. They just need to hit "q" to get out of the old responses,
to the "Respond or pass?" prompt.
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janc
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response 53 of 152:
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Sep 24 15:21 UTC 1995 |
I once experimented on M-Net with defining a few range macros in the general
conference's rc file. I picked out a few typical / interesting items, and
defined a macro called "some" for those items. I then suggested in the
header that new users try "read some". This would show the half dozen items
I liked. If they did it again, it would show just new responses to those
items. I forgot the syntax that worked, though it was different in Picospan
and Yapp. On one of them you had to specify the items like "12-12,14-14,..."
since it wouldn't skip items with no new responses unless you give it as a
range. I think the range had to specify "new" or "newresponse" too, so you
don't always see the whole item. This seemed to work pretty well, but it
was a lot of work to maintain, and I'm too lazy.
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selena
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response 54 of 152:
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Sep 26 17:28 UTC 1995 |
well, something has to be done about agora.
It's rediculously big, already
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rcurl
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response 55 of 152:
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Sep 26 22:52 UTC 1995 |
Ah hah! I predicted someone was about to complain. You get the weenie,
selena.
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davel
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response 56 of 152:
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Sep 26 23:28 UTC 1995 |
I *told* you, monthly restarts won't solve the problem. You'd have to go to
daily ones to keep things manageable.
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lilmo
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response 57 of 152:
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Sep 27 03:46 UTC 1995 |
Or weekly, to give the once-a-week callers a chance to get their 2 cents in.
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rcurl
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response 58 of 152:
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Sep 27 06:13 UTC 1995 |
Who would know?
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sidhe
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response 59 of 152:
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Sep 27 14:20 UTC 1995 |
Monthly restarts would at least keep the kind of buildup that
agora tends to experience from occurring.
Rane- all you have to do is join agora right now, if you want
to complain.. Think about this- mos cf's wouldn't get this much use in their
first two months, as this one has gotten in under a week.
I wouldn't think that anything shorter than a month would be
appropriate, but the seasonal concept has seen it's day, and
sorely needs to be shown the door.
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scg
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response 60 of 152:
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Sep 27 15:00 UTC 1995 |
I still haven't seen an explanation of why to get rid of seasonal Agoras that
makes any sense. As sidhe points out, Agora tends to bloat fairly quickly.
It then tends to level out a bit, as people actually start discussing things
rather than just entering new items to see if they'll go anywhere. Restaring
every month would just put a cap on any srt of in depth discussion.
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lilmo
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response 61 of 152:
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Sep 27 19:28 UTC 1995 |
If "good" items are "spun off" to other cf's, then restarts wouldn't have much
effect on the discussion, but would instead direct ppl to the other cf's,
which is a goal I think we all share.
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rickyb
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response 62 of 152:
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Sep 27 19:43 UTC 1995 |
re#50: thanks marcus...I'll give it a try!
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abchan
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response 63 of 152:
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Sep 28 11:49 UTC 1995 |
Also I think an agora phenomenom is that when it is restarted, people
have a tendancy to think, gee, what was that item on last season's
agora? I think we need it again! So the number of new items entered
the first week or two is a *lot*
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sidhe
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response 64 of 152:
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Sep 28 20:59 UTC 1995 |
As lilmo said, the items worth discussing (few at best) could be
linked to conferences that have the appropriate topic, and this
"levelling out" you claim means little.. I've gone into agora mid-season,
run fixseen, read a few, and come back in a day or two to find the
same kind of bog you see right now. Perhaps not as many _items_ are
entered, but the responses in the already existant items mor than makes
up for it.
So, why do you _want_ seasonal agoras?
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rcurl
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response 65 of 152:
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Sep 28 22:21 UTC 1995 |
I don't feel that Summer agora when it ended was any different than
Autumn agora is right now. I'm already nearly into a steady state of
forgets. I'd like to keep the seasonal restarts for reasons of both
nostalgia, and to maintain expectation longer. The main *value*
of seasonal restarts is is keeps good items going for a longer
time than would be convenient with shorter restarts. There are still
some items going in Summer!
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selena
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response 66 of 152:
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Sep 29 02:39 UTC 1995 |
Well, rane, if they were moved to other cf's, what then?
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lilmo
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response 67 of 152:
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Sep 29 05:17 UTC 1995 |
And, of course, if they didn't fit anywhere but agora, they can always be
linked to the new agora, or be the "seed item" for a new cf.
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rcurl
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response 68 of 152:
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Sep 29 06:36 UTC 1995 |
Well, selena, that would just defeat restarts - just link *all* the
Summer items to Autumn, how about that? Actually, it feels rather
quiet in Summer now, as it is when the season winds down.
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scg
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response 69 of 152:
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Sep 29 07:04 UTC 1995 |
It just took me an hour to get through Agora, less than a week after
restarting, and after not Grexing for a little less than 24 hours. I don't
see how more frequent restarts (unless they're daily, or something) will keep
the volume down. Seasonal, or even less frequent, restarts have the advantage
that they let meaningful discussions evolve, rather than cutting things off
before they have a chance to get going.
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selena
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response 70 of 152:
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Sep 29 15:06 UTC 1995 |
scg.. these can be moved.. and Rane, you know most of summer's items
aren't worth linking, so the restart wouls till have a point to it.
scg- So, why let it linger, and keep building up at a terrible rate?
Any good items can be moved. Take the rest of the trash out.
Another thing- Quit dumping everyone by default into it!
The happiest day I ever had with picospan was when I learned how
a cflist works, and how to make it so I never had to see agora's ugly
mug again!
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rcurl
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response 71 of 152:
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Sep 29 15:27 UTC 1995 |
You also need to use the command forget. I use it so much that I
wrote the alias fo for it :).
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davel
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response 72 of 152:
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Sep 29 21:02 UTC 1995 |
So what do you suggest dumping newbies into? (My own candidate would be
Jellyware; when I first showed up I irritated keats, then agora FW, by
posting all kinds of Unix questions.) Since newbies come with all kinds
of interests, I can't really imagine any special-purpose conference being
a good choice - unless maybe Info redone with a rather different structure?
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rcurl
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response 73 of 152:
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Sep 29 22:15 UTC 1995 |
There are some responses in agora now concerning this problem. I'll
copy my commentary here, "for the record", but you can find some of
mlady's own comments in agora:
>This morning I fielded a write-help from a newuser wanting to know what
>one does here - she only knew about mail and write, and was logged in
>on menu. I told her about conferences, so she went and tried it out.
>She wrote me again shortly thereafter *quite steamed*, saying that it
>was ridiculous - not only did she have to page through *pages* of stuff,
>but some of it was about *panties*. I think we have a problem here
>with some newusers. One is being dumped into agora; the other is the
>high intellectual level of the discussion. In our discussion, before
>I sent her to conf, she sounded like she would be interested in many
>of the "real" cfs (those besides agora), but she was ready to hang
>all of us when she got back. If she doesn't return, I think we lost
>a prospective good member. I'm afraid we drove her away.
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kerouac
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response 74 of 152:
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Sep 30 01:05 UTC 1995 |
As I've said before, re-starting agora just ONE(1) extra time a year,
for a total of five, would likely keep the msg base from ever exceeding
100-120 messages. I hate general on mnet, and wont read it anymore, because
they get so many messages that they have to restart EVERY month, which
kills continuity. But on the other hand, re-staring it an extra time or
two (agora that is) is a good service for new users, who dont know what a
forget command is and want to participate but end up being intimidated by
the message load.
So lets say five times a year, or every 10 weeks or so with a 12 week
(or 3 month) session in the summer when usage is down. Now if there
were only five seasons...hmmmm
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