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BS: Forum postings are OUT OF ORDER

17 Jun 05 - 02:51 PM (#1503100)
Subject: BS: Forum postings are OUT OF ORDER
From: John M.

I was just checking a few of my previous threads which I started and have noticed that my initial post is not listed first.   See example here:

http://www.mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=80724

Why is my initial post which created the thread now the third post?

Can this be fixed? It makes reading the threads quite difficult to follow.


17 Jun 05 - 03:00 PM (#1503108)
Subject: RE: BS: Forum postings are OUT OF ORDER
From: GUEST,MMario

Max is aware and I believe working on it. Due to database corruption that occurred during the crash.


17 Jun 05 - 03:07 PM (#1503118)
Subject: RE: BS: Forum postings are OUT OF ORDER
From: wysiwyg

And discussed in the Tech thread in the top section.

~S~


17 Jun 05 - 08:57 PM (#1503366)
Subject: RE: BS: Forum postings are OUT OF ORDER
From: The Fooles Troupe

... and some of the Forum Posters are occasionally out of order too... :-)


17 Jun 05 - 09:04 PM (#1503370)
Subject: RE: BS: Forum postings are OUT OF ORDER
From: Rapparee

The DT is duplicated, too. I'm sure that Max will get around to fixing it.


17 Jun 05 - 11:45 PM (#1503440)
Subject: RE: BS: Forum postings are OUT OF ORDER
From: Sorcha

Remember, the man has a JOB and a family.....and does this out of love. Patience is a virtue.


18 Jun 05 - 12:06 AM (#1503451)
Subject: RE: BS: Forum postings are OUT OF ORDER
From: GUEST,.gargoyle

Get used to it.



Several of my best lyrics postings were usurped. Want to assure postings.... create your own base.




Gargoyle


18 Jun 05 - 08:18 AM (#1503593)
Subject: RE: BS: Forum postings are OUT OF ORDER
From: The Fooles Troupe

But was Virtue patient?


18 Jun 05 - 10:51 AM (#1503620)
Subject: RE: BS: Forum postings are OUT OF ORDER
From: freda underhill

out of too posters and some the are of order

erfad


18 Jun 05 - 11:04 AM (#1503625)
Subject: RE: BS: Forum postings are OUT OF ORDER
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T

Les Dixia lures, K.O.

Not D.


18 Jun 05 - 11:05 AM (#1503626)
Subject: RE: BS: Forum postings are OUT OF ORDER
From: freda underhill

I made this post 27 days ago.


18 Jun 05 - 11:08 AM (#1503627)
Subject: RE: BS: postings Forum are OF OUT ORDER
From: freda underhill

so told i you.

underhill freda.


18 Jun 05 - 12:31 PM (#1503669)
Subject: RE: BS: Forum postings are OUT OF ORDER
From: JennyO

This thread is out of order. Please use the next thread.


18 Jun 05 - 01:07 PM (#1503695)
Subject: RE: BS: Forum postings are OUT OF ORDER
From: GUEST

OLL


18 Jun 05 - 08:21 PM (#1503960)
Subject: RE: BS: Forum postings are OUT OF ORDER
From: GUEST

ORDER!!





Did it work?


18 Jun 05 - 08:28 PM (#1503963)
Subject: RE: BS: Forum postings are OUT OF ORDER
From: Peace

OK. I'll have corned beef on rye, bit of mustard, dill pickle.


18 Jun 05 - 08:33 PM (#1503965)
Subject: RE: BS: Forum postings are OUT OF ORDER
From: The Fooles Troupe

Two packet a beers and of chips!


19 Jun 05 - 01:00 AM (#1504056)
Subject: RE: BS: Forum postings are OUT OF ORDER
From: GUEST,JennyO

Alligator sandwich for me - and make it snappy!


19 Jun 05 - 02:12 AM (#1504074)
Subject: RE: BS: Forum postings are OUT OF ORDER
From: sixtieschick

A decaf latte please.


19 Jun 05 - 02:16 AM (#1504077)
Subject: RE: BS: Forum postings are OUT OF ORDER
From: GUEST,G-Spot

Won't someone order someone to reorder some order in order for the postings to not be out of order. But it must be done in an orderly fashion.

GS


19 Jun 05 - 03:01 AM (#1504092)
Subject: RE: BS: Forum postings are OUT OF ORDER
From: Liz the Squeak

AAAAAAAAHHH!! There you are G-Spot - some men have been trying to find you for ages!

LTS


19 Jun 05 - 03:04 AM (#1504093)
Subject: RE: BS: Forum postings are OUT OF ORDER
From: freda underhill

is this a metaphor for life? if I could reshuffle certain events....


19 Jun 05 - 04:07 AM (#1504127)
Subject: RE: BS: Forum postings are OUT OF ORDER
From: JohnInKansas

Until things get straightened out, note that the list of posts that appears at the beginning of each thread appears to show the posts in the order in which they appear.

It is much easier to scan the dates shown there to see if the sequence is scrambled than it is to scroll through the posts to try to sort things out. A quick check at the top of the page will usually tell if a post is incomprehensible for the usual "personality" reasons, or because the posts are out of order; and will frequently let you find the nearest few preceding or following to make (sometimes) better sense of the conversation.

In addition to out-of-order listings, there do seem to be quite a few missing individual posts, and especially in longer threads the original (first) post to the thread seems fairly often to be among the missing. While some will be annoyed at not being credited for threads they started, others may be eternally grateful...

Perhaps, while things are being fixed, we need a game to identify places where threads make better (or different) sense because the posts are out of order. A few threads always did look like they were written by the proverbial ten thousand monkeys.

John


19 Jun 05 - 04:20 AM (#1504129)
Subject: RE: BS: Forum postings are OUT OF ORDER
From: Liz the Squeak

Wasn't it an infinite number of monkeys?

LTS


19 Jun 05 - 04:34 AM (#1504134)
Subject: RE: BS: Forum postings are OUT OF ORDER
From: GUEST

Poor John. He makes a serious post, and you all just laugh about it. You are not helping. Do not post to this thread unless you are contributing!

Semi Serious Poster
Serious Poster Semi
Poster Semi Serious

Do you notice how those all come out the same length? Take Kansas John's advice and date the reads.


19 Jun 05 - 05:38 AM (#1504152)
Subject: RE: BS: Forum postings are OUT OF ORDER
From: JohnInKansas

LTS -

For a fully professional and accurate rendering, an infinite number of monkeys might be needed, although one can get into serious debates about how many monkeys actually would be needed to replicate the 'cat "within a reasonable probability" of success and with an acceptable level of error. Since an exact replication of the previously existing 'cat is not really mandatory, a reasonably large number of monkeys would give a finite likelihood of replication of the prior 'cat database with good expectation that the number of errors of reproduction would be limited to an easily definable percentage of data elements.

Unfortunately not all participants at the 'cat are "fully randomized" (although the presence of "bias" producing repetitions of the same stuff over and over will likely be a surprise to some). Including defective monkeys might seem to lead us into the requirement for higher order infinities. I attempted to avoid the arguments about "my infinity is bigger than your infinity" by using the less accurate "ten thousand monkeys." In fact, since the inclusion of "defective monkeys" in any infinite set doesn't affect the "size" of the included set of functional ones (assuming some limit on percent defective) that would be another endless and repetitive argument.

The less precise "colloquial" term is perhaps more descriptive of our behaviour here, anyhow.

For us other monkeys:

A quick check of the first 20 threads in the top section as of now shows posts out of order in 5 of the 20. Short threads started after the "recovery" seem pretty good. Threads that were "dormant" for a while before the data corruption seem mostly to be okay, although there were not enough in the sample to be sure.

Long threads (many posts) are more seriously garbled, and surprisingly out-of-order posts pop up among the newer ones posted "post-recovery." I had sort of expected that posts since the recovery would be in pretty good order. While this indicates some "error propogation," I don't think the database grows rapidly enough for this to be cause for serious concern.

In most cases, individual readers should be able to make sense of the threads, if they are aware that some posts may be out of order. The more serious concern would be with posts that are simply "missing." It's reasonable to assume that some of these may still be in the database, although there may be some actual loss. Finding unlinked records, if any exist, may be a bit of a trick; and may not be worth the effort.

The recovery thus far has been remarkable, and the 'cat lives.

John


19 Jun 05 - 05:39 AM (#1504154)
Subject: RE: BS: Forum postings are OUT OF ORDER
From: JennyO

With a REALLY muddled long thread, even doing it John's suggested way (which is obviously the best way to do it) can be rather long and tedious. You have to seriously want to read the whole thread to bother.

Frinstance, when someone wondered on a thread fairly recently how Rick Fielding would have dealt with Martin Gibson, someone else linked to a thread about Pete Seeger, where he actually had done just that, in his own calm way. I had never read that thread before, and when I found it, it was a real mess - one of the more muddled ones. But I really wanted to follow the sequence of posts in the right order to see how the conversation developed. So I kept referring back to the list of posts, jumping round till I had finally read it all.

It was worth it for me that time, but it did take a while, and for most threads I wouldn't bother. Interestingly enough, Naemanson's current Guam thread doesn't seem to be very badly affected - only a few posts out of place.

It's just as well I've read the MOAB since the beginning! On the other hand, with that one, maybe it doesn't matter all that much :-)

John, I think your idea for a game has great potential - might take the place of the thread name game even! Infinite number of monkeys - ha ha.


19 Jun 05 - 10:35 AM (#1504295)
Subject: RE: BS: Forum postings are OUT OF ORDER
From: GUEST,G-Spot

Liz, I think most of them have never even heard of me, much less find me!
At least, that is my experience! ;-)

GS