Spring cleaning

Topic 141, Go Pack, messages moved to Ramble. Topic killed Topic 131, New calendar, messages moved to #1, Conference business. On deck to be killed.

there's nothing I like better than a nice clean spring!

Do you need any more hands, Amy?

Thanks, Myretta. Johanne is coming up with a plan, which will be a revision of the suggestions made by Joan and Kaf in the austentest conference. Right now I am just making sure I do the moving right so I can show Johanne how to do it. We'll probably do a bunch of pruning initially, then get somebody to volunteer for regular topic maintenance. Were you around at all when Joan and I were chatting about bringing back the old board format for informal discussion and topic generation. Joan, can you put it in words? You have a better handle on how it might work than I do.

Were you around at all when Joan and I were chatting about bringing back the old board format for informal discussion and topic generation. I missed that discussion and would like to hear the details.

Well Amy, I've done the reading at test Austen and now I'm terrified that I won't have time to read it all before it eventually expires... No, I'll be serious. I understand that something must be done - but *if* we can archive most of it I think some newcomer's agree with me. It get's you more updated and familiar with all the goings on here, if you can catch up on old discussions. I've been around since September, and still have not been able to read all of it.

Spring cleaning sounds very hygienic but might I put in a plea to keep a few topics small so that my antiquated system can continue to lift them? I can no longer get into topic 59 and some of the larger ones with images. I seem to have rather limited access and now foresee the day that I will be relegated to posting under the very unpopular topic of watch fobs.

]a few topics small so that my antiquated system can continue to lift them? Elaine, does your system make you look at 'all' all the time? If you use 'new' or since/-1 your sysem should only be trying to download the posts you haven't seen or the posts in the last day respectively. If you've been away for a while or struck by old-is-new, since/-1 works well; the full address is; http://208.199.212.10/yapp-bin/restricted/browse/austen/all/since/-1 The other thing I often do is opt not to download the images since I have a slow modem at home; mostly I don't miss them, although occaisionally curiosity gets the better of me.

Linda - I just downloaded the Prodigy internet software. I haven't signed up yet, but the documentation did say that I could continue to use my Netscape browser with it, so that would be my recommendation - download Netscape and use that instead.

Okay - I've never had "old is new" but I do have a phenomenum that is pretty darn annoying! Often, when I click on a topic near the end of the list, I get "Conference Business" instead! So I clicked on "Spring Cleaning", got "Conference Business" instead, saw Linda's note about Prodigy, responded to it - and the response showed up in "Spring Cleaning"!!! GRRRrrrrr!!!

Amy: Were you around at all when Joan and I were chatting about bringing back the old board format for informal discussion and topic generation. Joan, can you put it in words? You have a better handle on how it might work than I do. It's hard to think about all of the ramifications that come up in a conversation without the questions being asked to generate them, but the basic notion was to try putting up a "Matt's Script" type of format as the "entry area" here, and use it more or less as the "social hall" where conversations could spiral off in all directions as they used to at Bluemarble and we could respond to specific postings, and see the html in the text entry window, and people could get to know one another more informally an conversationally than is possible in the Yapp format in which you have to wait till you get to the end of the topic before you are "allowed" to say anything - which feels more like a series of speeches than a conversaation. And then, as particular threads pick up steam and start indenting across the main page to the right, those entire threads could be moved off into a new topic in the Austen conf and continued there, instead of just beeing removed as they formerly had to be at Bluemarble, and this would make room for more new stuff to generate. Links to where the spun off topics got posted could be there. This way, new people would have a very informal and user-friendly area in which to start out and meet people, and could be directed to other particular items of interest from there - links to other related sites, to other conferences and/or topics at the Spring, to our archives of no-longer-active-but-still-of-interest conversations, etc. etc. etc. Hopefully, spinning off threads into the conference(s) would keep the volume low enough so that the scripts would not crash and burn, and then discussions would be automatically archived and nobody would have to mail them out to newcomers, and people could be "absent" for a few days and not have everything that had been said while they were gone no longer there when they returned...

(anyone else who was there and remembers something else that was said about this, please do add onto this...)

No, I can't think of anything to add, Joan, and it is beginning to seem like a better adn better diea all the time.

well, then, go to it girl! ;-)

well, then, go to it girl! ;-)

!!! :-(

!!! :-(

now wait just a minute!!! I did not post either of those second posts! I am extremely put out! :-(

there's been hints of a new ricochet bug...

And then, as particular threads pick up steam and start indenting across the main page to the right, those entire threads could be moved off into a new topic in the Austen conf and continued there, This is an appealing idea, but I fear that it would really increase the administrative work load for Amy and the Hosts (but probably especially for Amy). Is this not so?

Well, maybe, but at least now there are people to sing "doo op doo op!"

]Well, maybe, but at least now there are people to sing "doo op doo op!" True, true. Tone Deaf but Willing.

" I fear that it would really increase the administrative work load for Amy and the Hosts " I don't think it would be significantly more work that it used to be to remove and archive all of them - would it Amy? Besides, I'll bet that HC could probably figure out an AWK that could do it automatically. :-)

I do see some technical problems (though not necessarily insurmountable ones) with trying to "Yapp-ify" non-Yapp bulletin board postings. Here's an example of what a posting (from topic 101) looks like in a raw Yapp file: ,R0000 ,U11,churchh ,AThe Mysterious H.C. ,D32E01C3B ,T http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~churchh/emmaoldm.html ,E Here the ",R" line indicates the status of the message (scribbled messages get ",R0003"), the ",U" line shows the posting user, the ",A" line indicates the "pseudonym" used, and ",D" encodes the time (probably Unix time format -- no. of seconds since Jan 1 1970 -- in hexadecimal, or base 16). ",T" and ",E" appear to be start and end of message markers....

I could devise a filter program (more probably Perl than Awk) that would austomate a lot of the format translation stuff, but deciding what topic to archive a posting under would be an "executive decision" that couldn't be automated. If we're going to do this, we could bring back the whole archives of the old board (Terry has plenty of disk space, right? ).... Anyone remember my old proposal, from just before the old board crashed the second time?

That's right. I remember. Sounds like a big job all the way around. Thanks for the willingness to tackle, it Henry. Let's talk more first. I still can't exactly picture it.

I have tons of disk space on access.spring.com Henry, if you need an archival area.

Maybe the picture would look something like this? --

Okay, these kinds of representations help me. Let me let it soak in. One thing. If the center of the whatever it is, is the selection process, what is the "thing?" It is not the board. Love the baby P&P2BB new. It should have little bitty place on my teeny site.

The classification process would be the most human-intensive activity, but it wouldn't really be the "center" of the board... Remember, this second one is Joan's idea, not mine...

Hello all, Well this is it. As Amy wrote, it makes a lot of sense to proceed by steps. The long awaited archiving (idealy at Spring as graciously offered my our beloved Terry) will take place soon but first we have to get some particular problems solved. We have to decide what to archive : as the first step, some obvious topics which are not relevant anymore because time passed by, I believe, should be readily archived such as : Topic Title 13 Ranges-Forgotten 14 Forgotten not gone 35 A&E Classroom ... 37 Thanks-giving and other catas.... 65 On the first day of christmas... 98 Christmas gifts 102 Party Party Party... 104 Birthday Ball 110 Merry Hollidays to all In this possible list for archiving, any comments, approval or disapproval. I suggest a meeting in the Sollicitor's office on this subject say next Friday at 8 pm eastern time. Pray confirm or suggest any other wise. When we talked of archiving and spring cleaning at the beginning of the month, many topics were inactive then due to low traffic and a lot of us away for the hollidays. Things have definitely picked up since and most topics have been active in the past 7 days. So: Is there a time limit to a dead topic : if a topic is non-active for a certain time, how long should we allow until removing it. I suggest a period of 30 days. So, if a topic goes inactive during this given time, it could be removed to the archived site. Speaking of site, this archive site would probably be linked with a tag at the beginning of the opening page of the BB. BTW, due to the various pruning operations that has occured and will surely be done again (and I personnaly hope to a vast extent since so many topics possess the same basic subject) some renaming I believe will be in order as well. I'm finishing a list and will suggest it to you soon. This will undoubtebly open the door to other questions and am eager in your comments as we will share those decisions. This will be posted in the austentest conference as well.

Johanne, I'm awed by the amount of work and thought you must have given to this. Thanks for doing it, your suggestions look good too me.

I thank Johanne as well, for doing this step and for agreeing to lead the cleaning team. For those who do not read the austentest conference, I should point out that Kaf and Joan did a lot of preliminary thinking about the sifting too.

I will be happy to join the meeting and assist if I can. Am I wanted?

Myretta and all of you friends of this beloved BB are very welcomed and most invited to this little gatering, so Friday at 8 pm eastern in Sollicitor's. I am but your humble servant in making this BB more enjoyable ;)

Of course, Myretta. I should have kept you in the loop on this. We won't be doing anything drastic for a while, and will test how to move topics by copying first and all that.

Thanks, Amy. I just realized I'll be in Maine this weekend and computerless. Please just email me or post what you'd like me to do. Or I'll catch you when I return (Sunday). I am, as always, glad to help.

New tentative date for meeting : Monday at 10 pm easternUS in Sollicitor's, please confirm your presence here if possible

Monday at 10 pm easternUS I'll be there.

As of today, 24 January 1997, find the following topics which where inactive in the last 30 days : 8 3 Maurice (LauraM) 10 34 Col. Fitzwilliam (Cheryl) 12 10 Denny (mich) 13 4 Ranges- Forgotten (mich) 14 10 Forgotten? Not Gone (alfresco) 19 12 Does this work? (geekman) 20 9 Where we left off (Amy) 21 6 Signs you are seriously addicted to P&P2 (Zimei) 26 48 austen.com (terry) 27 32 Six Degrees of Colin Firth (Kaffeine) 28 7 Elizabeth and about herself accept propos (signatur) 31 17 Archives (was Darcy's appearance) (Amy) 32 10 TEP L.A. premiere pic with CF (Zimei) 33 53 incredibly dumb and stupid questions (for newbies) (terry) 35 1 A&E Classroom bright and early! (Ann) 37 24 Thanks-giving and other catastrophes (was P&P1) (Anna) 41 27 Dark Darcy & Lizzy (Zimei) 42 31 P&P 200 birthday! (ayelet) 46 5 Jane and Bingley (kendall) 49 6 Rules, Regulations and Videotape (Anna) 52 7 Topic 32 crashes my system! (Ann) 53 14 NetMeeting Q &A (Kaffeine) 54 15 Outer garments (Linda409) 55 21 Roger's pictures from Lyme (Amy) 57 11 'Mozart wigs' (baka) 62 23 Wickham: Unprincipled or Unfortunate? (Anna) 63 12 Creating a Jane Austen Newsgroup (geekman) 65 22 On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me (fen) [although Kali left he brief post there today] 66 7 Darcy's "nearest relations" (Saman) 71 33 Virtual View: P&P 1 (Cheryl) 75 8 Just a thought (Donna) 77 11 This little matter of our addiction... (panache) 78 6 Serenades (Amy) 79 5 Solving disorientation in the Netherfield drawing room (Amy) 80 4 CF Quote 1000Acres/P&P (Ann) 81 8 Yapp tricks discovered (Amy) 85 20 The gallery upstairs (Amy) 86 4 Computing for Dummies - read a good book lately? (kendall) 89 7 ONE Question for Jane Austen (lisaC) 97 6 Dance music site (churchh) 99 22 Jane Austen's Fave Music (Becks) 102 25 Party rty - It's Jane Austen's 221st Birthday! (geekman) 105 5 Sickly and Cross (Amy) Those could be archived, kept for our enjoyment or pruned with other similar topics. To be discussed during next Monday night's meeting. May we suggest a full review of the spring cleaning topic in austentest, here's the link for your convenience : http://www.spring.com/yapp-bin/read/read/austentest/11

one more try :http://www.spring.com/yapp-bin/restricted/read/austentest/11

Moved from topic 13, "Ranges forgotten." __ Topic 13 of 170 [austen]: Ranges- Forgotten Response 5 of 8: Johanne (JohanneD) * Thu, Feb 6, 1997 (14:39) * 3 lines Took this one cause its was it didnt have a long list of messages : got the bug again the "all is new" kind : got a theory now : I press the auten conference button on the top of the buttons before the topic indicator at the very first beginning of the page. Ttell me if there's a way to make a topic as read without having to go through it till the end, so it wont show up again in the "New", dont want to go trough 16? messages some 300 long ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Topic 13 of 170 [austen]: Ranges- Forgotten Response 6 of 8: Amy (Amy) * Thu, Feb 6, 1997 (16:41) * 3 lines Johanne, one way is to use /since/-1. Then go back later and clear up the other older threads gradually. Makes one see the need for the cleaning, no? Sorry we have still not done your training. I am still not completely comfortable with the process myself. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Topic 13 of 170 [austen]: Ranges- Forgotten Response 7 of 8: Myretta (mrobens) * Thu, Feb 6, 1997 (16:45) * 1 lines Johanne, I was thinking we might have some shell training when you come down for the weekend of the 22nd. Should we set this up? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Topic 13 of 170 [austen]: Ranges- Forgotten Response 8 of 8: Johanne (JohanneD) * Fri, Feb 7, 1997 (00:39) * 3 lines Myretta, love the idea, was fantasizing (maybe a big word) about it. This is going to be great!!! When are your availabilities, during the week-end or before, this will be included in the when-to-come-done decision Thanks Amy, cleaning? my thoughts EXactLY!! Took me close to 4 hours last time, imagine now! Yeah, was'nt sure cleaning was still on, glad to know it is ;)