is happily being the wheel rather than a rusty old spoke
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Counter? As in number of boards within the category?
Putting in appropriate returns is something I'll do when I start optimizing/standardizing code across the whole site. I agree about the value of being able to go back from whence you came.
Speaking of the Top Members list, I've apparently got a bug there. Fatt Matt shouldn't be in the list, since he hasn't posted since 10/3/2001. Unless he posted a PM within the last 30 days before I had PM's quit going to the new posts counter.
Whaddya think, Matt? Bug? Or did you use the account recently for a PM test?
test test test
Added a link to all profiles by which you can edit your own.
I did this after seeing someone ask the same question I repeatedly have asked myself, "Now where on earth is that Edit Profile link?!? I know I've seen it before somewhere!"
The new link is right below the profile information and is visible in any profile but will only edit yours. Sorry.
Nah. I was thinking Ex-Lax might purge you from my system more quickly. <g>
Said in jest. I'm too busy and happy with what I'm doing to really mean the above personally.
Minor change. When you're reading a PM that's a reply to a PM of yours, the date of your PM now displays.
I agree. Have your girl tell my girl to add it to my list.
Agree, BoP.
It ain't perfect and nothing is. If it's workable and especially "better than before", I'm thrilled. I'll take it. Warts and all.
I'll also take it into account if/when I modify the topmembers algorithm. Shouldn't be too much more expensive.
Works for me. It's your problem anyway.
BTW, I like that JXM rule. Hadn't thought of that.
Add a new field to each board, where the moderator can select "Market" or "Non-Market", and have Matt oversee that so it doesn't get abused
Yep. Had to double-check to make sure I didn't say "Message", when I meant "Board". I got it right the first time, which is surprising for me.
Yes, anything having to do with the Message table is real expensive. I try to limit my use of it.
Which is also why I'm not using SQL's built-in message-text indexing. I ran it the other night to build a catalog and it took about an hour (for 250k posts) and the whole site crawled while it was doing it. And a lot of things can happen to trigger that whole rebuild.
Besides, rolling my own is more fun. :) Although it throws away my "It's Microsoft's fault" card.
Regarding Shadkin, I'd give my eye teeth to get him over here. He isn't a prolific writer (on SI), but he's just as brilliant as they come.
Your gratitude is the salve I needed for what has been a really hectic day. I thank you kindly.
I thought that'd been changed and that a post had to break a limited set of rules for a moderator to submit it for Matt's deletion-review.
Had a feeling I was forgetting that.
Further have a feeling I'm going to be changing that so both are acceptable. <g>
Thanks, Al!
Gonna stick around?
Thanks, Cobie. It's all working out beautifully so far. I only have to bang out code, deal with business aspects, and exchange pleasantries. Suits me very nicely. :)
Wow! That goes back a whole lotta moons! :) Good to see ya, Jay!
factoring in the number of posts deleted
I *like* that. Lemme see what I can do without making it any more of an expensive process than it is now.
Every system is open to abuse
Shhhh... Those who would abuse these systems typically take longer than you or I to figure out how.<g> Thought it'd take a group far larger than 5-10 to get themselves very high on our list. More like 100.
I put this one together because I'm so strongly (even vehemently) against RB's "rating system", but I feel like it's an asset to a site, from a new user's perspective, if they can quickly see who're the most prolific and widely-watched people on a site and check them out.
For example, I would've never heard of Michael Shadkin (http://www.siliconinvestor.com/stocktalk/subject.gsp?subjectid=51138) on SI if someone hadn't mentioned him to me. Same thing if he were on RB. If he were on IH, anyone who visited the Top_Members list would be aware of him.
I also like the idea of giving more weight to posts on stock boards than non-stock boards and think I just figured out an inexpensive (whenever I say "expensive" or "inexpensive", I'm referring to processing overhead -- I've got firebreathers, but they still have a finite amount of horsepower) way to do this. Add a new field to each board, where the moderator can select "Market" or "Non-Market", and have Matt oversee that so it doesn't get abused.
Thoughts?
If it were up to me, it wouldn't be until a civil, mature email had been written conveying at least a little remorse for past activity (down to specific activities) and plausible assurances the same wouldn't continue.
But you know what's so cool about this job? That I can say "That's *your* problem, dude! Do what you think is best and deal with the rewards or consequences." Ahhhh.... Nice. :)
Back to work. Got SQL Server running fine here as well as Visual Studio, but can't seem to get the help system installed, and I need it badly. Once I learn how to connect to the table I'm working with, I'm off to the races.
Actually, I think we're going to hit about 1200 posts tonight.
Well, I'm off to try this SQL install again. I'm really champing at the bit to get this message-text search running. It's going to take forever to get it going once I get started writing it, so if you can accumulate bug reports and minor feature requests for me, I'd appreciate it, as that'll let me glue my nose to this screen until I've got this project done.
I post the way I talk. If my command of logic and grammar make you feel inferior, I'm sorry. I can't dumb it down, though. :)
But I'll make you a deal. Quit blabbering nonsense about me and I'll quit replying to you. You go your way without trying to wizz in my Wheaties, and you'll be surprised how little of me you'll see gracing your screen.
Deal?
I'm happy to see you, too! :)
BTW, iHUB currently averages about 540 posts/day over the last week, which is down, NOT up from recent past numbers...
1037 so far today.
Edit: 1044.
Check my profile. I'm purposely holding back because I've got a number of peoplemarks and will hit the charts like "I Wanna Hold Your Hand". <g>
If it motivates you (and others) to post a LOT of stock-related commentary, it's worth any amount of effort on my part. I'll see what I can do about not only simplifying the formula (so I can understand it, and so I can include the score in each profile), but also reflecting my own feelings about the comparative "value" of the posts to different forums.
I'd thought about that, too. Stock-related commentary is quite a bit more "valuable" to me than non-stock commentary. But you already knew this. <g>
Here's the problem.
There are threads not devoted to particular stocks that have wonderful market commentary on them. Some may live in the Lounge, I'm sure.
And there are stock threads that're run loosely enough (moderator's call) that they could have a lot of non-stock commentary.
But I'm willing to introduce that kind of factoring (putting more value on stock posts) into the mix if there's a clear-cut way to segregate stock and non-stock posts.
I am still not quite sure how it works. But it does seem to do the job on showing who the quality-posting folks are.
Me, neither, actually. By the time I'd done all my tweaks ("Let's throw another fudge in there to make avg daily posts more valuable if your peoplemarks are high", etc), I ended up with a rather nightmarish formula that does seem to at least work. So I hope I don't need to tweak it. Or explain it. <g>
I'm also curious to hear other thoughts on it. And in reality, it wouldn't be all that hard for it to return the top 100 or top 200. I'm also looking into making the score available either on profile screens (whether a person has made "the list" or not), or somewhere else where a person would see only their score and the elements that go into determining it.
If I can get SQL Server reinstalled here, I'm getting right on the message-text searching. It's the next item on my plate.
Was hoping you were one of the replies.
Marcos, ordinarily I'd be happy to make such changes, but Matt wrote his own set of admin utils to make those things easier (I don't know how to use them), plus I try not to do anything but coding for now.
Actually, I checked and my score would be in the 200's, but I'm not eligible for the list because I don't have 100 posts. I will soon, though.
Minor change. Top Members list changed to include top 60. For as long as the equipment can handle it, I'd like that list to include everyone who has a score of at least 100.
Also, since it's been asked, I'd like to briefly explain how that list works, specifically the scoring.
Though I wrote the algorithm, I'm hard-pressed to define it simply and easily, but the Reader's Digest version is that it uses a person's Peoplemarks, their total posts, the time since they joined the site, and their average number of posts per day, and combines them in a way in which Peoplemarks is by far the most heavily weighted. And the larger the peoplemarks, the heavier the weighting given to average posts per day.
For the average user of the site, the number of posts they've written has little bearing on their "Score". About 1 point for every 100 posts. However, when someone has a lot of peoplemarks, the number of points they get per 100 posts goes up.
For example, I peoplemarked a somewhat prolific poster who likely has a fair number of peoplemarks and their "score" jumped 11 points. Just with the one additional peoplemark.
If enough people care (PM me), I'll add a routine that lets you check your own "Score" if you don't see it on the list.
Did a global update to populate the new lastpostdate field in user records with the correct date grabbed from their most recent public post. Makes the Top_Members page accurate and complete now rather than waiting for everyone to post after the holidays.
Also modified that page so it won't display anyone who is suspended or terminated. I did this upon noting that an erstwhile simian was showing up in it.
Yes, Gary put together a great system! My hat's off to him. I'm glad my task is modifying and changing it rather than doing it from scratch.
Thanks. :)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/replies.asp?msg=233921
Do you see now why I was laughing myself silly at your post and replied about the irony? <g>
you and Matt share the same goals for what you want Ihub to become, but you don't mention what that is?
Well, many things.
We share a belief that a proper Mission Statement can simply be "Please the customers. Have fun. Make money."
We agree that the level of "interference" imposed by the owners of a site is ideally as little as is necessary to foster a high volume of quality discussion.
We agree that simple interfaces rock!
What we want is for Investors Hub to take its place among "the biggies" of market-related message boards. We feel that there is room for a number of market-related message boards to thrive and make a profit in the process. You don't have to be the king of the mountain (which is how I'll always see SI) to make a living and have a large community.
The main thing, though, is that unlike a number of sites in this market, we know that the community is everything. And while I don't have any notions (illusions) of topping Yahoo for size or SI for quality, I fully expect that through the efforts of Matt, myself, and the people who use the site, we will become known as the model for how to run a community-centric site.
Gotta toot my own horn a sec.
If you visit the "Hot" page http://www.investorshub.com/boards/hot.asp , note that the Top Members list (and others) is updated in realtime at the click of your mouse. We may be the first with that feature. I'm especially proud of it. It's a bit on the expensive side horsepower-wise, but I think it's worth it and likely won't be too bad too soon.
When I buy equipment, I don't mess around. These are a couple of firebreathers we're running on. Comparatively speaking.
To all:
It gives me great pleasure to announce that Matt Brown and I have teamed up to take Investors Hub into the future.
The site is now running in Kansas City on a pair of decent machines (specs divulged to any geeks who ask) and a very fat pipeline to the internet.
Yes, I'm the "test user" who's been posting lately while testing various fixes and changes I've been making. If you want to see a list of fixes/changes that I've done so far, use http://www.investorshub.com/boards/progtasks.asp (which I may or may not keep online).
Matt and I have continued a dialogue since I left several months ago and we both share the same vision of not only what message boards should be, but the differences between right and wrong.
My role with the company is President and CEO. Matt is the company's Chairman and Vice President of Communities. We purposely structured it so that we're essentially peers with different responsibilities working toward the same goals.
In a nutshell, Matt will continue to be the Admin of the site and will deal with everything customer-related. In my opinion, he's extremely good at it and not only do I not need to be involved in this process, I'm frankly very relieved to not have that responsibility.
My job will entail basically "everything else". Programming and turning this into a profitable, enjoyable endeavor for all involved. In a way, it could be said that my goal is to see to it that Matt someday enjoys the non-stop feeling of being overwhelmed that I once felt at SI. <g>
Let me stress again that I am not going to be an Admin here. I don't want the job, Matt and I have agreed that I won't do it, and I'm darned happy to not have to. I won't get involved in disputes and will NOT override any of Matt's decisions, so please don't ask me to. My plate is going to be full enough, thank you very much.
I want to take this opportunity to publicly thank my best friend, John Hutton, without whom this changeover couldn't have possibly happened as quickly as it did. Despite my being a geek for many years, I bow in his presence because I know when I'm in the presence of the King of Geeks.
Regarding programming changes, I usually prefer to just let the deed say the thing and not say too much about what I'm working on, and not build up anyone's expectations and especially not say when I expect something to be done (as a programmer, I know that if a programmer gives a delivery date, he's lying), but here's a list, anyway, of what things are highest on my priority list:
1. Message-text searching
2. Tightening/optimizing/standardizing existing code and database
3. User control over certain aspects of the interface
None of the above will be done soon. Period. Some of it will be rolled out a little at a time and most of you likely won't notice.
This is in addition to squashing any bugs and doing any quickie additions I (or you) think of like the new "Hot" pages. http://www.investorshub.com/boards/hot.asp
In closing, I'd like to say I'm really excited to team up with Matt and take on the business side of running a board again, and interacting with everyone without being the big, bad Admin.
Any questions or comments?
Bob Zumbrunnen
President, Investors Hub
Slumming.
I'm pretty impressed with the snot-nose you hired to bang out code, though. He'll be a CEO one day.
Was that grubbage of some kind? 8555? 1:12 (local) on 1/1/02? Or as close to "2112" as I'm gonna get?
I'm not aware of it anywhere else, but I haven't used the site much in a while.
Things sure have changed around here...
and making it restricted as to whom can post... It just shows how you like to run things in a skewed and unfair way to try and favor
Yeah, don't you just hate when people do that? When they use the power of deletion to control the contents of a thread in such a way to make posts that agree with them appear to be the only posts anyone has written?
Being the altruistic guy you are, I'm sure you find such conduct just as despicable as I do.