Website comments

[IAmNotAFishIAmAFreeMan @pedant]

@craig – just lost a lengthy post because WordPress uses non-standard keystrokes (meaning I accidentally hit the ‘back’ operation). Do you know if there’s a way to get WP to properly cache posts-in-progress (as, for example PHPBB does)?

Also, the bullet format seems non-fucntional

[ScaryB @scaryb]

@bluesqueakpip

Oooh! yes please, looking forward to it

[CraigNixon @craignixon]

@craig

think that’s been the first time I’ve ever been called a gent!!

 

[Anonymous @]

@craig – after previously suggesting there are too many threads, I find myself asking for another.  Please feel free to pour cold water on this request (but please also suggest the best way of addressing it on this forum).

There are a heckuva lotta loose threads which this episode didn’t address.  They can either be repeatedly summarised in the NofD thread as people merrily theorise away – or, perhaps, they can be sequestered away on a thread / blog of their own.  They are sort of a lead-in to the 50th, so perhaps such summarisation should wait until you re-open that thread; but, we still don’t know how stand-alone the 50th will be, and how many dangling threads will (or will not?!) be picked up in the next regular series.

Yours, in database creation nerdiness heaven, Shazzbot.

[Craig @craig Emperor]

@bluesqueakpip (and @phaseshift )

You are now an author. To post a blog, just hover over the “+New” in the top bar and click “Post”. You will then get a screen where you enter the title, below that you enter your main text, and click “Publish” when your done. If you want, you can give it a category (on the right again), or I can do that for you afterwards.

[Craig @craig Emperor]

@pedant I don’t think there is, but I’ll look into it. I would suggest writing any long posts offline though, just in case.

The bullets should be an easier fix – will try to fix that today.

[ardaraith @ardaraith]

@craig

It seems someone named @happiness just posted some spam on the activity stream.

[Craig @craig Emperor]

Thanks @ardaraith They have now been exterminated 😀

[blenkinsopthebrave @blenkinsopthebrave]

Hi @craig. A boring technical question. I have noticed recently that when I refresh the page on either my iPad or iPhone (which I usually only use while commuting to work), while it does refresh and take me to the latest coment on the page I was viewing, if I try to scroll up the page it simply jumps back to the latest entry. But I do not experience this problem on my PC. Could it be an Apple problem? Has anyone on the site else experienced this?

[blenkinsopthebrave @blenkinsopthebrave]

Oh, and looking again at my last sentence, perhaps some advice on grammar wouldn’t go astray!

[testcraig @testcraig]

This is just a test post.

• This is a list
• Another item on the list
• And another

This is an ordered list

1. This is number one
2. This is number two
3. This is number three

And that’s the end of this post

[Craig @craig Emperor]

@pedant List problem now fixed, as you can see above. Please list away 😀

I’m still looking into caching while writing, but I had real issues with server CPU usage on Sunday and Monday due to the amount of traffic, so have been busy putting things in place to ensure I don’t have to move to yet another server in the near future!

@blenkinsopthebrave I don’t have an iPad but will grab one from our IT dept and see if I can replicate the issue. Cheers.

[Timeloop @timeloop]

@craig How much traffic have we had? (did we have?)

[Craig @craig Emperor]

@timeloop I don’t want to put anyone off posting because, as @scaryb said, they feel like they’re in a goldfish bowl, but if you want the figures, on the 3 days Saturday to Monday we had 6,300 visits from 3,900 unique visitors, and they viewed a total of 28,500 pages.

It’s not massive in big site terms, but still a lot more than I would have expected for our little site.

The CPU usage on the server was 215% more than I’m supposed to be allowed. Oops. But I told them it is probably a blip, it being the final episode of the season. I’ve also put some measures in place to reduce CPU usage in future. I hope. 😕

[Juniperfish @juniperfish]

<waves at the webmaster> Hey @craig 🙂

Wow that’s a lot of eyeballs! We are going to need a bigger sofa!

Fish-clan’s plan to convert the Whoniverse to red/ blue bow-ties and halves of the Doctor’s brain symbolism etc. is going swimmingly then!

Hope it’s all not getting too much for you to manage.

Continuing thanks for all that you do.

[Whisht @whisht]

HI @blenkinsopthebrave and @craig – yep, I’ve had that behaviour on my iPad (if it helps, its an old iPad in case it doesn’t happen on shinier ones).

If there’s no workaround (ie its an Apple thang) the way I try to get round it is to hit the chrome in safari, which sends me to the top of the page, and then scroll back down. Tiresome and doesn’t always work, but…. a minor annoyance overall.

btw am trying to create my own Lounge environment with a good red, cheese and moosic. But still a bit amateur I’m afraid.

;¬)

[Craig @craig Emperor]

@juniperfish Yes, I think the word is definitely getting out there 😀

I think all is fine for now, and should be a bit calmer for a while at least. Am kinda enjoying it anyway, learning new things etc., although would be nice just to get back to some theorising. Maybe tomorrow!

[ScaryB @scaryb]

@juniperfish

Wow that’s a lot of eyeballs!

Sure is! (And what a scary picture it threw up!) Noticed a LOT of new members in last few days, but yes it should settle down for a while now that the series is finished, which should let everyone settle in. Ta for the intro Ms Fish 😉

And yes, agree, mucho thanks to @craig, even if you are enjoying it LOL. We miss your theorising. And loads of sympathies that you have to get spoilered in our defence. It was great to have this site open but feeling safe last week. Apparently even the Who wikepedia entry was spoilered.

Re this being a goldfish bowl (or at least a big aquarium) – not a bad thing if people keep that just a little bit in mind 🙂

[Juniperfish @juniperfish]

@craig Cripes, yes, I picture you in some Who decorated garret fighting spam-bots and errrr… what-not [we already know what level my technical know-how is at 🙂 ]

Go you! And tell us if it gets too much/ you need help in whatever way – someone to join the tech team (sure there are folks on here who could) , £ contributions to move to more bandwidth (right?) etc.

Meanwhile, yes, don’t forget to join us for bonkers theorising. I actually have to get back to work, I’ve had a serious visit from the great god Procrastinatus when I have deadlines!

[ScaryB @scaryb]

@whisht – just let us know when your new lounge is ready 🙂 And I like your avatar upgrade.

@juniperfish

I’ve had a serious visit from the great god Procrastinatus when I have deadlines!

Well keep him over on your side – last thing I need

[Craig @craig Emperor]

Thanks @scaryb and @juniperfish

I didn’t get too spoilered. I saw pictures of Clara with other Doctors, but seeing as that all happened at the start of the episode it wasn’t too bad. And like others I saw the “John Hurt as a possible Doctor” headline in the Radio Times, but that was about it.

I’m glad how it went last week as well. From the sounds of things it wasn’t too bad out there in the end, but everyone here was great and in a way it was quite fun battening down the hatches.

[IAmNotAFishIAmAFreeMan @pedant]

@craig

Nicely fixed, Sir!

I’ve just noticed the search box at the top doesn’t seem to search the forum. Can it be made to do that? (was a right pain tracking down the Chekhov’s Duck posts)

 

PS I think WP-SuperCache is a popular load control plugin.

[Anonymous @]

@craig – I second @pedant‘s request for a full-site search.  I too have needed to find a past comment to reference as I’m sure others have too.

[Craig @craig Emperor]

@pedant Cheers. WP-SuperCache is one of the things I’ve added. I just need to check the load now for the next few days, make sure it’s working well enough, then tweak the settings till it’s how I need it to be.

And @Shazzbot (as well as IAmNotAFishIAmAFreeMan) I hadn’t used the search but you’re right, it’s pants! Another thing I will add to my list, although I know a few good search plugins so shouldn’t be too difficult to fix.

[PhaseShift @phaseshift Time Lord]

General question

Going back to the question about the 50th thread posed on the last page.

I think from my point of view:

There has been a lot of interesting discussion on the 50th in the Name of the Doctor thread.

I think our expectations of what the 50th is, and may be, may have significantly changed since Name was broadcast, when compared to our original speculation thread.

I think going with a fresh start is the best idea. More so that people can consolidate where they stand on the issues at hand, and maybe talk about how they see a story developing and the type of story that is possible.

Don’t know if anyone else has an opinion on this?

Also – I’m not sure how this would work, but I thought a thread that deals with outstanding questions or questions on Who full stop. Anyone who has a question can post it, and if anyone has a theory to explain “Why the Tardis blew up” or “Why Susan claimed she named the TARDIS”, we can have a lively discussion. As I said no idea if it would work but might be worth thinking about.

[Anonymous @]

@phaseshift – See my comment no 9702 earlier on this page – I love the idea of collating all the ‘loose ends’ into one place.

Re a separate 50th thread – now that it’s been made entirely clear that TNotD definitely segues into the 50th, does there actually need to be a separate 50th thread?  That would make sense if TNotD somehow was another ‘movie poster’ episode with a clear-cut finale (well, as clear-cut as we get from this programme!).  But all 50th speculation arises directly from this last episode, so it becomes difficult to find the line between discussion of TNotD and discussion of the 50th.  Just my two cents’ worth.

[ScaryB @scaryb]

@craig

Re a loose ends thread…

I’ve been noticing that as our numbers increase that there’s quite a lot of overlap in the posts, and sometimes with the sheer volume of them that it’s very easy to miss things people have been posting. It works fine for the Episode threads as these are often a conversation, and it’s a fairly short time frame that they are open for.  But there’s a lot of great bonkers theorising getting overlooked, I think.

It strikes me that it might be useful if each loose end – and goodness knows there’s plenty of them! –  could have its own thread, with comments beneath it. But more like a reference list, with maybe eg a 1 line summary, rather than discussion (that would still happen on eg 50th thread or N0tD thread). But something that people could add to (put a character or a word limit on it, LOL)

Then each loose end could be more of a reference point, people could see what the current thinking is and add to it, but main discussion would be on the/a main thread.  Seems a more productive use of our Collective/Hive Mind!  eg main header – Eleventh Hour, sub headings Duckless Duck Pond, Exploding Tardis, Disembodied Voices… then summary of each associated theory. It it’s possible to set up, we could also do it for Clara, HurtDr, Miscellaneous!

Maybe a bit more like the blogs, but not sure of the technical implications for this ie I have no idea if I’m asking for something extremely complex and head-nipping to set up, or something straightforward. 😯

Does that make sense? What do other people think?

And someone also suggested polls? Are these easy to set up?

🙂

[Whisht @whisht]

hmmmmmm……

[thnnks aloud]

ease of reference after people have posted (good) dissipation of conversation (bad) and not everyone dual posting (human)…..

so, an uneven reference list that might dissipate conversation.

Best be careful if we do this (though not to say a great reference ain’t a bad way to go… but might rely on an owner gathering all the mentions together so that its a good ref. Less a thread and more a reference wiki?)

hmm, can’t spell “thinks” so maybe should leave this “thnnking” lark to more cleverer people….

[Anonymous @]

@scaryb, @craig @phaseshift and everyone basically…

I personally think that a separate thread for each loose end could get very messy very quickly. Just my opinion tho I guess there would be ways to make sure it stays manageable.

With regards to 50th speculation, I suppose it could all go in The Name of the Doctor thread but won’t that mean that particular thread will end up being massive by the time November comes around? Mind you, if we set up a new 50th one, the chances are that will too, I suppose. I’ll basically be happy with whatever way people want to go on that one.

[Whisht @whisht]

good point @jimthefish in terms of size of thread between now and Nov.

Though we have precedence in splitting up threads a month at a time (tNotD1, tNotD2, tNotD3…tNotD7).
or somesuch.

But categorising is always tricky due to overlaps and trying to follow multiple (loose) threads.

[sigh]

maybe let’s see if someone will suggest something so bonkersly obvious, we all go “of course…..”

[ScaryB @scaryb]

Thanks for input guys.

OK, maybe not a thread, but personally I would find it very helpful if there was even just a list of what the current thinking is, like @whisht‘s suggestion of a reference wiki.  But definitely not for theorising on. (Like when Whohar made up a list of Clara headings (which I pinched, added a couple of new things people had mentioned and reposted))

But I recognise where it could be problematic – even trying to describe it took 2 paragraphs!

Like @jimthefish trying to plan ahead though – there’s a lot of bonkers theorising time between now and November – it’s also a long time to remember details, haha

[Craig @craig Emperor]

@scaryb @jimthefish @whisht

I am taking notes. I’m just not responding because the events at Trenzalore suddenly seem much more easy to solve than where we go from here 😀

I’ll have a long bath and a think at the weekend!

[PhaseShift @phaseshift Time Lord]

@scaryb

I tend to agree with @jimthefish that separate threads is a route Iwouldn’t want to go down. It has occured to me though that a single thread for questions (even if on old Who) that crop up in episode conversations (Susan and the Tardis, etc) would be a better way of handling them. Then we have a thread that we can easily reference the answer if the question crops up further down the line (if you remember a question being discussed it’s much easier to look it up on one thread than try to remember which page on which episode it cropped up on before).

In a massive irony, considering how much I hate the format, nesting would suit that one thread. Pose a question and the linear answers below answer it before the next question. I really do hate that format, but it’s an idea.

@whisht

I saw your post on the sofa about difficulties on the music thread. Long ago I turned off the autoplay adobe function in firefox, I just get blank windows with activate adobe message which just activates the video window I’ve selected. Problem is – it’s so long ago, I’ve forgotten how I did it! 😀 Maybe someone else can advise. It certainly helps with resources on older equipment. If I can work out how I did it in the meantime, I’ll let you know.

[PhaseShift @phaseshift Time Lord]

I must be tired. In the space it took me to type that with errors, you’d all posted new messages. Off to bed!

[Bluesqueakpip @bluesqueakpip]

Are we talking about a FAQ page for bonkers theories that are still current?

Uh, when I did this last time (long time ago, when JK Rowling hadn’t finished the Harry Potter series; there were a LOT of bonkers theories) – basically what we did was create a page to:

• categorise the main theory heading: Hurt Doctor, Trenzalore, continuity, Clara, etc.
• We listed these headings with an internal link to each section (within the web page), so you could jump straight to the section you wanted.
• Then we gave a one line description of each theory with a link to the original post

Once people were directed to the original post, they could follow the thread through. If there were important posts later on, we’d add links to those.

Dunno if that’s any help…

 

[ScaryB @scaryb]

@phaseshift, @craig, @jimthefish

Nesting!!!

Oh the irony 😈

But yes that could work. Something simple and more linear in thought process. The threads are more wibbly wobbly

Anyway not something we need to rush into, just logging it into the suggestions box.

Fresh cocoa and jammy dodgers on the sofa if anyone’s interested 🙂

[ScaryB @scaryb]

@bluesqueakpip I think you may have just volunteered!

But it doesn’t need to be as complicated as including links to original postings, tho that would be really helpful – the rolls royce edition; Could just be lists

[Anonymous @]

Nesting?? Noooooooooooo 😉

[Timeloop @timeloop]

Well I like both the @whisht  wiki reference (because new stuff could be easily added and theories could be easily linked) and @Bluesqueakpip is proposing the some thing, just board-intern. I like both but I will go with what @craig decides.

[Anonymous @]

@craig – some of the issues about referencing loose ends could be dealt with by an enhanced search function, and perhaps a change in posting – like Twitter?  (which I don’t use)  – which uses a symbol to collate items which are on a theme.

I mean, if people starting prefacing a loose end for example like #duckpond (or any symbol, ^duckpond or %duckpond) then that would make it easier for a comment search of the site to find all comments containing that reference.

 

[Anonymous @]

Also, @craig – and this pertains to my previous suggestion for collation of loose ends –

When I see that I have mentions, I click and go to that page of my profile.  The whole comment doesn’t display, but there isn’t a direct link to that comment – I see what thread it was on, and how many hours/ minutes ago it was made.  But, it requires me to subtract the hrs/mins from current time, and then I have to look through perhaps a couple of pages of comments to find what that person said.

Each comment is sequentially number-stamped – would it be possible to have that as a usable link?  (@bluesqueakpip also mentions having a link to the original post in her comment above in this thread.)  This would help too if we wanted to do what I said in 10504 about easily viewing what people have identified as loose ends.

[Craig @craig Emperor]

@Shazzbot Thanks for the ideas re loose ends, it should be a lot easier with a better search – which I’m looking into at the mo.

Re the mentions in your profile, it’s not obvious but the time IS the link to that post. I’ll try to make that more obvious. If the time doesn’t work for you, let me know. It’s the same on the Activity page.

I’ll also look into making it easier to reference a particular post as well. I agree it would be nice to be able to do #10504 but for now you can always post the full link (got by clicking on the post number e.g.

http://www.thedoctorwhoforum.com/forums/topic/website-comments/page/6/#post-10504

[Anonymous @]

@craig – aha!  That worked!  But since it’s not blue like the links to the thread and the forum, it never occurred to me to hover over the time and see it turn into a link.

Perhaps then, if the time could be blue too, that would make it clearer for … well, I was going to say ‘everyone’ but perhaps it’s just ‘me’!  😀

Yes, I have copied the link location of others’ comments and used it in my comments, and using that method will be good if you decide to go with a separate thread/blog type setup for loose ends.

[Timeloop @timeloop]

@craig Is the activity stream liked to a wordcount?

[PhaseShift @phaseshift Time Lord]

@jimthefish, @scaryb, @craig

Yeeeahhhh…….. Sorry about that! As well as feeling tired I must have had a fever to suggest that. Far too much work as well for one thread. I’ve had another idea for a kind of “Notes and Queries” Blogpost which I’ll think about.

[Craig @craig Emperor]

@timeloop I think it is a combination of wordcount and paragraphs/linebreaks/returns (not quite sure exactly).

[chickenelly @chickenelly]

Do you think now might be a good time to open the 50th thread?  Our rumination© of the episode tNotD seems to be tailing off…

[blenkinsopthebrave @blenkinsopthebrave]

“tailing off”… Oh, @chickenelly. I do so hope that was not a comment on my last post. I am desolate.

[chickenelly @chickenelly]

@Blenkinsop

Well, technically I posted my comment before yours, but there is a distinct  lack of activity going on.

I was so bored, I was fiddling about with my avatar to annoy @Shazzbot.

[Bluesqueakpip @bluesqueakpip]

Probably is time to move to 50th speculation. I know I’ve reached the point where I want to discuss the implications of the whole of 7.2 for the next stage, not just last Saturday’s ep. 😀

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