ANNOUNCEMENT: The 2005 Bifurcation

Whistle
1

As of January 21, 2005, in response to a poll of our members, this board has split the largest forum into two. This has been hotly debated and we hope the new arrangement will work out.

I consulted with Rich Lafferty and asked him to make the change. What Rich has done for us it to create a new forum, called The Chiff and Fipple Poststructural Pub. This is for OT (Off-topic) threads and posts. To populate the new forum, Rich moved all threads started in the last year which were labeled “OT.” Non-OT posts remain in the The Chiff & Fipple Whistle Forum, a renamed version of the original whistle forum.

Now, this division isn’t perfect, but it should have brought about a pretty decent split of on-topic and off-topic posts.

Similarly, there will not be a perfect separation of whistle posts and off-topic posts as we go forward. None of us needs to get our respective knickers in a twist over that. This is no big deal. Please don’t be unkind to people for posting in the wrong forum. At the end of time, all will be sorted.

Let me also remind you of a really useful and often unnoticed feature of the board. When you sign in and see the list of forums, just above the forum table and to the right is an link that reads “View Posts Since Last Visit.” This is a really handy way to see posts on ALL forums that have been made since, well, your last visit.

Thanks!

Dale

2

I dunno if Rich made some applet or something, but however he did it, many thanks for the effort put in to bifurcating the forums. Also many thanks to Dale for allowing, geez, even encouraging me to use bifurcate in a conversational manner. I don’t know that I’d used it since I was studying chaos theory.

3

I’m proud to have been present at this watershed moment in C&F history. Just wait’ll I have grandkids.

4

I have to say, that even though I was against the split, I like it already. I think that if I had dial up I’d like it less. But I like it.

Of course, this means I was wrong in the first place, which stings. But I’ll get over it.

5

Pretty impressive how quickly you guys did it. Lower radio button below messages on the new Forum doesn’t function for me though fwiw.

Just remember, I was against it!!! :laughing:

6

Oh boy, I can smell the passive agression already :stuck_out_tongue:

Thanks Dale, Rich, and all who weighed in, regardless of how you voted.

Loren

7

Hmph. If there’s a word I’d never apply to Weeks, it’s “passive”. :smiley:

8

Neat idea, well done.

9

Not that impressive really. Let me describe the process.

After deciding to execute the bifurcation, I selected a team of four interns and we flew to Ottawa on DaleForce One to meet with Rich and his team in a undisclosed location. It took three hours for my team and Rich’s team to go through the decontamination process (the flash-exfoliation was particularly weird) and enter the clean room.

After a light lunch of chili dogs, Rich walked us through the fundamentals of splitting a single forum into two. It’s hard to summarize, but essentially it involved three high-res large screen monitors, each 72" wide. Rich had already initiated a routine on the ChiffBoard supercomputer to sort threads labeled OT from those not labeled OT. Then subroutines used AI processes (hey, WAY over my head) to “read” the threads and, by some kind of word- and phrase-parsing system, made additional sorts of mislabeled posts. Anway, the middle screen displayed all posts as tiny little icons. As the AI programs made the call on whether they were On or Off Topic, each little icon would change color and then migrate onto either the big OT screen (to the left of the central screen) or the ON-Topic screen to the right.

Team members were then assigned to arrange threads into the new forums, a process that re-converted the icons back into their original full-text formats.

The process took 48 hours but, due to Rich’s genius, the boards were only down for a short time.

After the project was over, we exited the facility and, under the influence of relief, and of some kind of gas Rich had pumped into the ventilation system (Rich is always pulling this kind of stunt), we all poured out into the parking lot on the surface level. Thel interns flooded the parking lot and then slid around on the resulting ice. It was pretty darn cold in Ottawa. Of course, for me, the gas didn’t produce the intended euphoria. It made me see that the skies over Ottawa were swarming with these giant fanged black bats with implanted electronics and red LEDs for eyes. I am now being told that, even though I had to get pretty rough with Rich, I was finally able to extract one of his shotguns from his car and start blasting away at the bats. I am now beginning to believe that these bats were hallucinations.

Anyway, the whole process wasn’t that big of a deal. If we have to reverse the process and fuse the 2 forums back into one, all we’ll have to do is work backwards. Rich tells me the decontamination process is shorter.

10

I tried to figure out what you mean but no luck. What button where? (While posting or reading? What’s the radio button labeled?)

-Rich

11

I would like to repeat my request that you put links to all the different forums on each page of every forum, both at the top and bottom of the page.

The “jump to” feature doesn’t really do the job. Please trust me on this, it will make the boards significantly easier/faster to navigate and make the visiting experience more friendly.

Other than that, the new arrangement is nice. I think it’s an improvement.

Best wishes,
Jerry

12

Sorry rich, i just saw your question this afternoon.. The GO button which is next to the “jump to Forum.” This is on Safari so who knows… What happens is when you have read all the messages downward and get to bottom of that site page, you can pop back to index by hitting the GO. This “problem” only applies to the new Forum, but it wasn’t working at the time I wrote it.. But integrity of display has always been a tiny bit of an issue. As you may know, on some days, a given page is way to wide for my screen. Other pages that day may be fine. Just weird little stuff, but I thought I’d mention it.

Editing in: just checked it, works now.

13

A hungering world aching to read of my distant relation’s mother-in-law’s sacroiliac will be forced to visit the new forum. Then again, “iliac” springs from the same root as “uilleann”. It can go on the pipe forum! - :smiley:

14

Thank You. It’s very nice to go to the whistle forum and read posts about Whistles! :slight_smile:

15

But hasn’t it got awfully quiet in here?

16

Democrats suck eggs!
Dem… Sorry, sorry.

17

I would have never gone the route you did. It’s much simpler with quantum mathamatics and string theory, providing you used thirteen dimensions and utilize the graviton’s ability to pass through dimensions.

However, my feeble brain can barely handle fractions. I would have dumped all the posts into a bucket and shake shake shake. The OT posts float to the top. They’re less dense and are generally larger than ON Topic posts.

18

Interesting. The bucket method you outline is
widely used in universities to grade essay
exams in the humanities. The lower grade
stuff rises. We did try the string
theory/quantum mechanics method, but it seems
less reliable–or perhaps we didn’t do it
right. I found, though, that the single best
method of grading is to retire. Thanks.

19

Yes. Hallucinations. There are no bats. Just hallucinations. All in your head.

20

Thanks Dale; Now I’ll come back and give it another try.