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I made a couple comments early on in that thread (and got 15 favorites, OMG!) and while I followed it the whole way, I didn't make any comments in the tail-end. I kinda feel like I missed out on something now that it's closed. :(
It really has become such a thing. Spending time with Cortex, LobsterMitten, Wendell, dersins, languagehat, et all, really just made it a fun little group. Again reminds me of the weirdos I used to hang out with smoking cigarettes in highschool.
I went to type a comment half an hour ago but it was GONE. I was very sad when it dropped out of recent activity - why was that anyway? It's been fun watching you all jerk off.
I was very sad when it dropped out of recent activity - why was that anyway?
My understanding is that threads stay in recent activity for 30 days, but close after one calendar month. In a calendar month with 31 days, then, they're open for a day longer than they stay in recent activity.
I didn't comment much toward the end, but I did read it every day. And I felt like I was meeting all y'all at the coffee maker for a little 10:30 break-time check-in. It had that feel of being chattily removed from the overall seriousness of work, where 'work' is the rest of MeFi.
The infamous 9622 thread was beat by almost a thousand comments atleast most of those being made the last two days or so. And the 9622 thread was before the archiving standards were put into place, so it was open much longer.
And nicely organically too. It didn't seem nearly as forced as the middle of 9622(grey) where it felt, for a couple of days there, that the goal was simply to beat 9622(blue). (I say this as the sock-puppeteer of a proud longboater.)
"Beaten soundly", though, seems like it was a competition to some folks. Which is cool too.
Man, I'd forgotten that the Givewell thread cleared so many comments organically, though. 1400+ is a hell of a go.
Also, bewteen the closure of 15931 and me waxing about Aural Times in the "internet moments" thread a ways up the page, I'm feeling kind of stupidly nostalgic and sad all a sudden.
I believe that what you are seeing are the remnants of an exploit some people discovered that allowed them to post to closed threads. See here for more evidence of it.
mrz, hee hee...
I can't even contemplate that yet; must regain life. But my mental image of you is now the dude in a hood at the back of the boat, banging a drum to keep all the rowers in rhythm.
I am kind of tempted to make it a 300 comment system, with the family whitebox on it. That will just keep a list of 300 comments (301 pushes comment 1 off, and becomes comment 300, etc.) so it would be an ad infinitum longboat. A longboat training treadmill of sorts.
the remnants of an exploit some people discovered that allowed them to post to closed threads.
Yeah, languagehat's last comment was the last comment ... and it was perfect. And we fucked it up, regretably. I glad he got the last one in 15931. (The opposite trick of posting to a future thread I don't regret at all though, even if Matt hated me for it. mendel's reaction was just so perfect.)
A longboat training treadmill of sorts.
Dude, that is hardcore. Would the old comments just disappear into the bit bucket, like the grains of a sand painting? That would be cool, if unsettling.
I am tempted to have them disappear forever, means all I would have to do is maintain a list of 300 elements, instead of a forever growing dataset that I would have to keep running fast.
I just have to get through my "learning python book" first (it will be my first experiment for web scripting in N many years, you all will be my guinea pigs).
cortex- i was think I would flatfile the output, and folks could just download the raw lists if they really wanted, but i don't know how I would want to make that available (would everyone want all their bathroom wall scribbles archived and available for all eternity? or atleast the internet?)
A fair concern. The big rolling wipe isn't unreasonable, I just have a wacky archivist bent.
I suppose you could keep the flatfile as a personal treasure and disclose portions of it upon request to those who see the merit in having such a thing. Or just use it as a private data source for a markovian mascot who would then contribute comments to the rolling 300 now and then.
Well, I've already planned to start the comment numbering at 3648, and to keep it continuous. You don't shake it to wipe the board, it will just display the last 300 comments (or some number, but it would be a rolling SPARTA like this).
I'm hoping matt would be cool if I stole the grey theme from metatalk for it.
i realize now that this is already growing outside my coding knowledge and skills, so if other folks want to participate some foo, contact me on gmail under this same name.
I could seed the bot with the contents of the existing 15931 thread actually.
I'm hoping matt would be cool if I stole the grey theme from metatalk for it.
I steal shit from mefi like all the damn time. Sometimes I sneak into Matt's garage and try to teach myself to do trick on his bikes when he's sleeping.
You'll be fine.
I could seed the bot with the contents of the existing 15931 thread actually.
I'll have to make sure I keep myself on task, and see what I can have done by the weekend. Probably something very basic. doing advanced things like user accounts and histories is a whole other thing. Let alone creating markov2
So, playing with markovfilter, it gave me this line, which I think is amazing:
I drove from CT to Seattle with a false sense of daring
The first basic thing is up (i cribbed some php from someone else). This is very basic, and will probably be swarmed with spam bots pretty soon, but it should hold us over for a wee bit.
I'd like to thank mrzarquon for sending me over here; I was feeling an aching void, and this assuages it a bit.
Yeah, languagehat's last comment was the last comment ... and it was perfect. And we fucked it up, regretably. I glad he got the last one in 15931.
Thanks for that -- the pain was intense at the time, but it faded, and getting the last comment in this one totally wiped it away. Life is good, the longboat is immmortal.
photo by splunge
photo by TheophileEscargot
photo by Kronos_to_Earth
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