in reply to • What is this?

A while back, merlyn told me that he'd stop using • when other people stopped putting "(name)" in their post replies.

Well, people have stopped doing that, so the ball's back in merlyn's court to either stop it himself, or to change his story.

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
•Re^2: • What is this?
by merlyn (Sage) on Jul 08, 2004 at 22:39 UTC
    OK, new story.

    Up until a few weeks ago, I put • into the reply nodes because I wanted to "subscribe" to the threads to which I had contributed. A quick glance of the "new nodes" page showed me replies to replies to my replies.

    Now, even that's been taken away from me, because the reply-subject-constructor now leaves "re^n" but takes away my tagging.

    Why do people insist on taking things away that I find useful, but not replace them with other useful things, like subscriptions or better searching? That's a net loss, as far as I'm concerned.

    Today I still do it, in hopes that the recent re^-folding logic might be backed out until a good searching or subscription system can be set up.

    Those who have not studied Usenet threading are doomed to reinvent it, poorly.

    -- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker
    Be sure to read my standard disclaimer if this is a reply.

      Now, even that's been taken away from me, because the reply-subject-constructor now leaves "re^n" but takes away my tagging.

      You asked that it be removed. Actually, you demanded that it be banned and claimed that you were adding • in protest until your demands were met.

      I guess you should be careful what you wish for (or perhaps just remember what you wished for).

      Now let's all pick our own dingbat to mark which threads we've contributed to and whine if anyone removes our personal dingbat from reply titles... Then maybe merlyn will remember why he started doing this in the first place and then, at long last, stop doing it.

      Oh, wait. Only merlyn is important enough to warrant a special dingbat for his personal use. What was I thinking??

      - tye (rolling his eyes)        

        There's always the opportunity for merlyn to request pmdev access and 'fix' this himself, right?

        --Solo
        --
        You said you wanted to be around when I made a mistake; well, this could be it, sweetheart.

      I'm missing why this tagging is so important to you; you get a /msg when someone replies, right? What about 2nd- and higher-level replies, you say? Aren't bookmarks and your memory enough? The rest of us unwashed get along fine. =)

      There is much worse out there; you ever tried to track a conversation at fark.com? (No really, we have serious conversations on TotalFark. I assure you.)

      P.S.: I'm a good samaritan, and I perpetuated the * for you. ;)



      mhoward - at - hattmoward.org
        Wow do I look like an idiot there, or what? I swear, all of those bullets appeared as regular *'s when I wrote my reply from Konqueror. Now that I'm on firefox, they're all • bullets.


        mhoward - at - hattmoward.org
      Those who have not studied Usenet threading are doomed to reinvent it, poorly.

      I, for one, would be delighted to see a PM<->Usenet gateway. I don't have access to a newsfeed to put it on, nor do I have a hell of a lot of experience with the admin side of Usenet, but I'll gladly help such an effort.

      --
      F o x t r o t U n i f o r m
      Found a typo in this node? /msg me
      % man 3 strfry

        desert-island.dynodns.net, on the normal NNTP port. No authentication neccessary (or supported). It's a little buggy -- if you find the bugs, please yell at me to fix them.

      Those who have not studied Usenet threading are doomed to reinvent it, poorly.

      Those who kvetch without providing links or patches are doomed to be ignored....


      ---
      demerphq

        First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.
        -- Gandhi


        kvetch

        A bit harsh I think in the present discussion but nevertheless thanks for introducing me to a new word.

        --
        Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Seek what they sought. -Basho