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

You've been popping up all over the place recently. I keep running into you. And you write interesting, almost esoteric, journal entries, so I thought I'd add you to my friends list.

Duly done.

TRiG.

I'm sincerely honored! If you have no objection, I'll add you to my list, too. Yes, we do seem to have been frequenting several of the same threads recently. I often tend to do more lurking than contributing, but occasionally jump in with something. I appreciate your offer of help with the tree thingy, too. It's still a bit of a mystery to me, but I'll keep playing with it. I need to guard against becoming totally addicted to this place ... it would be easy to do, but probably not the most advisable thing one could do. Anyway, see you in the threads!

Okay. The first post in this conversation is a reply to nothing. So, as you look at the tree gadget on it, you'll see that the top ball is grey, and is not a link. Since there is no "parent post", there cannot be earlier or later replies to it either, so the left and right balls are also grey and are not links.

The central ball, as always, is red and is not a link. That ball indicates the current post, and there's no point having a link to the post you're looking at, is there?

Below, you have one more ball indicating the first reply. That's your post 2. That ball is brown, and is a link to post 2.



Thoroughly confused yet?

The top ball in post two is brown, and is a link to the "parent post", post one.

There cannot be an earlier reply to the parent post: post two is the earliest reply that can exist, so the left ball is also grey.

As I write, the right ball too is grey, for there are no later replies to post one. But there may be later. In that case, this ball would turn brown and would be a link to the first of these later replies.

The bottom ball on post two was grey, as it had no replies. When I post this it will turn brown, and be a link to this, which is post three.



Am I making myself as obscure as I think I am?

TRiG.

No, so far in this conversation, as I write this, we have a neat conversation in which each post is a reply to the previous post. In other words, this conversation has only one thread.

Now, many people use the words /thread/ and /conversation/ synonymously, but there is a distinction, which is it not helped to make clear by the wording of the URL*. I try to avoid using the word /thread/ at all. Gnomon will explain what a thread is, technically, if you ask him.

TRiG.

*What the URL calls a thread is, actually, a conversation.

Test: See what happens.

Quick quiz: Post 5 is a reply to which post?

If you can discover this only by looking at the sidearms of the tree gadget, without using the top ball, you know how to navigate a conversation.

TRiG.

If I ever get this figured out, then bridging the gap between general relativity and quantum mechanics should be a piece of cake by comparison!

Probably the best way for me to learn is just to take a short thread such as this and play around with it, i.e., experiment, and observe what happens when I click on various balls. Eventually it probably will sink into even my thick skull, and it it doesn't I'll just have to struggle along as best I can without the blasted thing Regardless, thanks again for your efforts!

As soon as I post this, I'm adding you to my list of friends, so welcome to the crew! I tend to add people who strike me as being smart, interesting, and articulate, even if I don't always necessarily agree with their positions on things. I also admire people who are willing to stand up and be counted, even when they recognize that it may be in support of an unpopular cause ... just so long as whatever they're standing up for makes some sort of sense and isn't an intrinsically negative cause. In other words, the old, "I may not agree with what you're saying, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it" sort of thing. See you in the threads!

Attributed to Voltaire, but not found in his writings. Possibly coined by his biographer.

A reply to post three. Any reason why it's a reply to post three?

All the information given is skin-specific to brunel. Other skins have the tree gadget only if you set it to exist in your preferences (by choosing "expert mode"). <./>UserDetails</.>

See you!

TRiG.

Well okay then! I think I'm going to go to bed and pull the covers up over my head and lie there and suck my thumb for a few days now. Sorry, but I'm more confused and frustrated than ever. Probably a lost cause. For one thing, you mention brown balls on the tree ... okay, maybe I'm color blind (although I've never tested color blind on any of the several color blindness tests I've taken), but all the balls on my trees (I'm in brunel) look either grey or various barely distinguishable shades of a reddish-orange color. It might help if they made them dramatically different such as red, blue and yellow or some such. But I doubt it. I don't think that's really my problem. I think my problem is just having a thick head. Anyway I'm simply getting more and more frustrated with this at the moment, so am planning to forget the whole thing for a while. I've managed to survive without it up till now, and suspect I may need to continue doing so for at least a bit longer.

BTW, I want to go on record as stating that I know there undoubtedly are vast numbers of h2 researchers who fit the criteria outlined in my post 7 to this conversation (?). If any of them happen to read that and wonder why they're not on my list, it's most likely because of simple inattentiveness on my part. I'm sufficiently unobservant as to miss a great many of the good things that tend to zoom so quickly across the old h2 radar screen.

Cheers!

When I explain things, they become more complicated. Good general rule, that. I'm simply useless at clarity.

Let's ignore the first post in a conversation, which is a bit different. Each other post is a reply to one of the posts above it. On most dna subsites, and on most h2g2 skins, there is a link on each post to bring you to the post to which it is a reply (its parent). In the brunel skin, that link is the top ball in the tree. On the first post it's grey and isn't a link, and on all other posts it's brownish and is a link.

Now, what if two people reply to the same post? In that case, each of their posts will be siblings. In F55607?thread=192835 posts 2, 9, 12, 14, 17, 36, 37, 50 and many more are siblings. Each of them is a reply to post 1. You can navigate between younger and older siblings by using the sidearms of the tree: the left ball brings you to an older sibling and the right ball to an younger sibling. If there are no such siblings, the ball will be grey and will not be a link.

And then there are offspring. The bottom ball brings you to the first reply to the posting, if anyone has replied to it. In other words, it brings you to the oldest child of that post. To find other children of the same parent post, use the sidearms of the child post.

As it says at the bottom of the page:

A: An older reply to the parent Posting
B: The parent Posting, to which this is a reply
C: A newer reply to the parent posting
D: The first reply to this Posting

Cliché alert: Clear as mud?

TRiG.

As a by-the-way, the software which powered the old BBC messageboards, before they were all put on the dna system, was called Howerd2, or something like that, and was often abbreviated to H2.

So, if you're talking to an old messageboarder (and there are many such around), abbreviating h2g2 to h2 could be confusing. It's not generally considered best practice.

(Some of us call it hootoo, which means that I'm a hootooer, which is a wonderful word, isn't it?)

TRiG.

Thank you for clarifying the h2g2 vs. h2 terminology. I had been thinking h2 was simply a shorthand for h2g2, not realizing there actually is such a thing as an h2 which is separate and distinct from h2g2! Yes, this obviously could indeed be confusing to people who know the difference! Henceforth will stick with h2g2.

Unlike you, and for some illogical reason that I can't put my finger on or explain, I have a viceral dislike for the term "hootoo".

Thanks also for pointing out that there's a distinction between "thread" and "conversation"; yet another subtlety I'd missed.

I sincerely appreciate your interest and tutelage. There are a great many subtleties and tricks to learn here. I regret that I'm not a better student. Certainly not what anyone could mistake for being "a quick study" when it comes to the little tree thingy, at any rate!

I may not always be quick, but I tend to be tenacious, so that can make up for quite a bit. Although, given that life is finite in duration, a lack of quickness can put one at a disadvantage.

Quite a lot of people say h2 for h2g2, but some messageboarders also use h2 to talk about the old messageboards. I've most often seen that use on the Hub. (No doubt you'd also see it on the new dna messageboards, but I spend little time there.)

To avoid confusion, the full names should be used: h2g2 and Howerd2.

The name hootoo confused me when first I saw it, and I still don't use it, but I do use hootooer. h2g2 Researcher seems a bit too formal. And also, I've done very little actual research for this site. My one article that went through PR was a recycled college assignment. Which reminds me that I should now be doing some research for my next article. And I should be applying for jobs online. And I should be getting the range hot for dinner. Bye!

TRiG.

FYI, just a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel on the tree thingy. I've actually used it a few times today in a real conversation, so I'm now mildly encouraged and guardedly optimistic regarding a long-term prognosis. Persistence may pay off eventually. Thanks again for your encouragement.

F135418?thread=3577992&skip=997&show=1

Simple enough. I noticed that the image of the cartoon was a link. So I clicked on it to see where it went. Since the url of the resultant image had the word "archive" in it, along with the date, I assumed it would be a permanant link.

I feel like a conjurer who's given away a trick, now.

TRiG.

Aha! Thank you! You can rest assured that the secret of this conjurer's trick is safe with me, and perhaps with just a few of our friends here at h2g2, who I'm sure would never breathe a word about it.