h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

In case anyone hasn't yet stumbled across this one by accident (as I did):

There's a work-around to produce the longed-for "go to last 20 posts" function. Go to the forum, type &skip=1000 (or any other number bigger than the number of posts) onto the URL and refresh. You'll get a blank screen, with a "see older posts" link, because you've overshot the end of the thread. Click the link, and you get the latest 20 postings.

A bit easier than clicking "newer posts" 5 or 6 times, if it's a long thread.

Lux

I just tried it on a "14-click" forum, using "&skip=9999"... It didn't work.

The "see older posts" button just brought me to another blank page with "see older posts", repeatedly. You must have been exceptionally lucky and guessed the length of the forum exactly!

The "see older posts" link takes you back 20 posts at a time by subtracting 20 from the current skip number.
In this forum with a length of 80 odd that means you'd need to hit "see older posts" 45 odd times to get back to the end - a bit more than the 4 or 5 to get there the way it was designed to work.

I'd agree with Peet - I think you got lucky

;^)#

A better thing to do than &skip=9999 is &show=9999. NO forum is 10,000 posts long.

As Jim Lynn said (somewhere) the show= trick clobbers the database making the site slow for everyone.

That's possibly true for the skip= trick as well.

;^)#

So long as the SKIP= is within a valid range, there's no reason it should slow the site down - in fact it ought to speed it up very slightly by removing the overhead of transmitting many unwanted pages...?

Probably, though it depends how it's implemented in the SQL - mainly I was just covering my butt

;^)#

I like traffic lights, I like traffic lights, I like traffic lights, but only when there green.


Lucas



Seriously though, I like the new format, just a few things added here and there. By they way folks, this is what they call P-R-O-G-R-E-S-S thats right PROGRESS, we have to move forward, and this was a big step, good job guys.



Lucas

Was that so you could say "Been there, done that, read the book, seen the film and eaten the pie" or just to test the system?

I can see the problem is one of too much information!

I went to your entry because it appeared after mine but it was not a reply. On clicking on the "Back to message this one replied to" to try and pick up the thread, it leapt back to the relevent question but I was unable to spot where in the chronological list this was. I was about to suggest that to reduce the numerous clicks required to go through the list 20 at a time with a list of "other conversations" shown at the bottom. Why cannot this extra list at the bottom be accessed via a permanent link on any forum page while the list of forum postings is a continuous one that can be scrolled through by dragging the bar down on the right, like the full list of info on the right. Just one click and drag not a click per 20.

As it would be difficult to have an entire list of forum entries with their text as now shown the right in batches, could the list on the left be of all entries so that once one is selected the list on the right contains 20 full text versions as now but unless you are at the start or end of the list it shows the ten before and ten after.

Also when you read a posting and then want to go to the question it was a reply to, the only change is the list on the left to show you where in time it had been. Then if you still wish to go back to that question you select it from the list on the left and the full entries on the right are adjusted accordingly.

Why not number or code each entry on a string so that another link will show all entries related to the first entry in a sub-string. This way each new reply will add the new code and could show how many replies apply to that specific question. That way the person playing with limericks or Cheddar Gorge could get all relevent entries in one go evn if they were interupted by perosn on that forum but who were not relpying to his first request for a line or word It would then be up to him/her to sort out all his replies.

This is getting complicated - I think I'll go and phone someone.

P.S. Archive messages over 6 months old and then delete any not accessed after a year leaving only approved guide entries! the Internet is getting filled with useless information - this for a start!

Fez sez:
P.S. Archive messages over 6 months old and then delete any not accessed after a year leaving only approved guide entries! the Internet is getting filled with useless information - this for a start

Sandra sez:
But Fez, some fora ARE their threads. I agree that yet other fora seem to be filled with nothing but emoticon versions of nods, winks and grunts, but there are some threads which contain substantive stuff and which are still used as references in current discussions.

I hesitate to pitch something in this late in the discussion, but here goes nothing.

1. Why not have the default for a forum be the 20 most recent posts?

Almost all the fora that I've contributed to in the past year have been fast-moving conversations where people don't need to refer backwards. Etiquette seems to dictate that new arrivals to the forum read back a little way to understand what's going on, so make that THEIR responsibility, and don't handicap the people who are having the conversation. For me the whole joy of the site is getting a spontaneous response to my post - not being able to see who replied to what point six days ago. I don't want h2g2 to be some sort of librarian program.

2. Once a forum's 20 most recent have loaded, have the whole of the rest of the thread loading up in the background. Then a new arrival or a participant wanting to check something could click on "Show Whole Thread" or something and get the old-style display from the beginning of the forum with continuous scrolling and the tree at the side.

3. If fora getting too long gets to be a problem, make the server monitor their size and insert a flag warning people to consider moving to a new forum when they get close to an agreed limit? Or could the server not just automatically start a new one and keep the name but increment its number?

In my experience, people are quite happy to move, and it usually refocusses a conversation that had been flagging anyway.

4. Make the "Reply to a Post" window a new window every time.

This would let you check details as you compose your post. There would be no need for "The message to which you are replying is from..." because you could just minimize the post window and examine the forum you're posting to.

Hope these make sense...

'There would be no need for "The message to which you are replying is from..."...'

Except that this can point you back several pages, as the reply and the original post may not always be on the same screen...

sorry Peet, you've lost me there...?

No, it's me who should be sorry. I didn't read what I had said before posting - I just copied the line from your post, and misread it as talking about "See the message which this is a reply to..."

My eyesight is bad, and I'm just getting used to wearing spectacles (1 month and counting...), but it's still no excuse for not reading my posting properly all the way through before committing it.

Again, sorry for wasting your bandwidth

Right. Speaking of spontaneosity, what were we talking about?

Holy cow ... what's going on?! This is not a good place to put this bug-report but when I tried to start a new conversation it bombed-out doing that too.

(The new skin is horrible by the way)

The main bug I have is that I can't log-in -- when I type my user name and password and click on log-in it comes-up:

"Error 501/505 - Not implemented or not supported Internet Explorer"

and I can't get in!
(I'm using Internet Explorer version 5.00.2014.0216IC)

And every page I go to, if I don't click the Stop button on my browser as soon as the page is displayed then it refreshes after about five seconds but it doesn't work and I just get another error message. Why refresh every five seconds anyway (or atleast it seems like five seconds to me) would not every five minutes be enough??? Even when it works properly it's a bit annoying to keep get disk activity.

And why is your site still the slowest on the net?... at least it used to look nice and work well before, but now it's just a general pain.

And what's this about optional skins ... have you lot got no sense of identity?? I want to know I'm seeing H2G2 through the same 'eyes' as every one else... if it has to be through the new crappy skin then so be it -- better that you know where you are. It seems to have just selected the old skin itself now anyway when I cliked on the 'reply' button. Ho --- hum.

Oh ... my last posting had my researcher Id above it... well that was the first clue I've had that I had actually logged in!

Another thing ... why have the button and page name say 'register' why not make it say 'login' ... you only register once but you log-in loads of times after that -- it just seems a bit guffy that you have to remember that you have to click-on 'register' to actually login.

Sure you want first time users to know where to go ... but you've always got that register dialog box cluttering-up the front page, so why have a button too???????????

Moose - this seems to be a recurrent bug - it's happened before - all of a sudden, nobody can log in to h2g2 - normally lasts for about 30 minutes. When in this state, large quantities of h2g2 appear as "Not Implemented", and everyone's homepage goes to a "blank" one. Check other conversations in this forum - everyone's getting it...

Hear, hear!