Comments/Ratings for a Single Item
Regarding 'cockles', below. Note that the link actually provides no solution to the meaning of 'cockles' in this sense. Neither does the Oxford English Dictionary, which has much the same info as the editor's link. The upshot is, we don't know what 'cockles' are. I once read a hypothesis that suggested that expressions that were used formulaicly, but made no sense (like 'dead as a doornail') were actually the punchlines of forgotten jokes. Sounds dopey, but think of how many punchlines you use as metaphors in colloquial conversation, and how often you really tell the jokes they go with.
What about ratings abysmal, mediocre, and superb? Keeping the discussion alive alive O, I always thot that cockles were a type of dialectic seafood, suitable for the musselbound. However, if in doubt, the question can be submitted to alt.usage.english, a font of linguistic wisdom. Submit without review is not necessary as long as it is made obvious that submit can be found within review: we are accustomed to pesky and insecure programs asking us 'are you sure, are you really reaaly sure, should I do what you said or are you a jerk? 99 and 44/100ths, not 99.4; Ivory Soap (tm). It's your turn in the barrel, as Safire recently apologized for saying -- the phrase is the punchline of a *dirty* joke, you see. Many adages and colloquialisms come from jokes or from Ad Age; and they are ephemeral, for example who today would know what ad agency I one worked for if I specify that it sounds like a suitcase falling down a flight of stairs, as Marcel Duchamp once said. Oh, sorry, it was Fred Allen who said it. As comedians in the Borscht Belt once asked, 'Where's the beet?' Back to topic, how can there be a Comdey Chess, in which every move is a joke??
if a comment is submitted in html mode, its left margin is indented. <P> Non-html comments start at page left. <P> The above is true when viewing with lynx. Your mileage may vary if you use any of the inferior alternatives. <P>
if a comment is submitted in non-html mode, things that appear to be html tags are not printed. Are they interpreted? here's an hr:<HR> <P> The previous line appears blank but contained left-angle-bracket. P, right-angle-bracket. <P> This is inconsistent behavior.
if a comment is submitted in non-html mode, things that appear to be html tags are not printed. But the preview prints them!!! <P> The previous line appears blank but contained left-angle-bracket. P, right-angle-bracket. In preview mode, I saw the html tag, but when viewing comments I see a blank line. <P> This is inconsistent behavior.
Most of the recent flood of commants/feebback was caused by my article on ''Chatter Chess'''', which has not yet been seen. <P> Imagine what may happen if chatter chess ever sees the light of day, will the comment system be able to handle such volume? <P> These are important considerations.... <P> <Blink>
If you think Ruddigore Chess seems playable, by all means test a bit more and write it up! You're the inventor. I just blathered away with a crude sketch of the rules and a crazy suggestion, you saw the possibilities and found the specific rule-set that makes it work -- in other words, you do all the hard work, it's your game. <P> You'll mention me, of course, but you know I would never have pursued the idea further...
So, given the amount of chatter about Chatter Chess and Ruddigore Chess and so on, do we need 'virtual' comment pages so we can discuss variants that haven't actually been posted? Then, going forward, the comments will be where they belong. I mean, who's going to think about looking for comments about Ruddigore Chess attached to the Archoniclastic Chess page? Also, to David, I like the little subtle link to the recent comments at the top of the What's New page, but I don't think in GMT. Maybe we could include the current time in GMT, or the time elapsed since the last comment, or something like that.
I fall between Peter and David here. When I write a comment, I don't really plan it. Something in the page, or another comment sets me off, and I just start writing. If it leads somewhere not completely germaine to the page being commented on, so be it. BUT, the result is that discussions that are potentially interesting or inspiring get buried attached to pages that effectively conceal them from later browsers. (Look at the recent discussion attached to the 'Archoniclastic Chess' page.) To do the thing properly, comments should be limited to the variant they are attached to, and any flight of fancy should be moved to the discussion group. I think this is against human nature (at least mine) and I would probably never make 50% of those posts. Furthermore, the discussion group posting may be cryptic outside of context of the variant page that inspired it. On the other side, the number of people 'misusing' the comment system are relatively small. It would be a huge waste of time and resources to build a parallel discussion system for a handful of 'chatterers'. Also, the public discussion board has a better possibility of attracting random searchers. Maybe a compromise is possible. Let me note here that I am no programmer, and I have no idea how difficult any particular idea would be to implement. An idea that seems simple to me might be to allow the writer of an extended comment to select a small set of keywords ('Ruddigore', 'double-move') which the comment system could also search for. Better ideas?
The comment system allows you to see the whole discussion on one page, instead of needing to access (and then page down past all the garbage) a new page for each message. This is a huge advantage, and I expect that people will abandon the yahoo thingy and flock to the chessvariants.com comment pages.
For those who constantly check the what's new page, I have created the 'Minimal New' page, which just gives a short summary on when the latest comment was made, and when the latest item was added or updated. The address is: http://www.chessvariants.com/index/new.php
This comment is about the whole site: Do you know just how many dead links to external pages you have?
I have replaced the listcomments.php script with a new script. This new script uses PDO methods instead of mysql functions, and it changes how it pages through the comments. The old script used the offset method, which grew more expensive with each page of links further away from the origin. The new script uses the first and last keywords to indicate a specific starting point from which to count ahead or count down additional comments. This works just as quickly for any point in the Comment table, and it provides links that will identify the same set of comments even when additional comments are added.
The default is now to list comments in ascending order instead of descending order, and order=DESC must be set to list comments in descending order. This is to make it explicit when comments are being listed in descending order. The new script uses the sort keyword instead of the sortbydate keyword, and it can take different column names for values. It defaults to CommentID. But until I change the links, it will change the order value to DESC, so that old links can still function as they used to. The link on the home page has already been corrected, since it did not include any parameters. For further details on parameters, click on the Help link, or add the help parameter to the URL.
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