Discussion » Forum Experiment

This is a read-only copy. The forum ran on iamcal.com from 2000 until its database was lost in 2016, and this topic was rebuilt from copies saved by the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. Some replies may be missing.
Posted by Grim..., 14:31, 12th August 2004:
 
I've come up with what I think is a new idea in the way forums can be built, so I built one as an experiment.

It's probably much easier if you took a look rather than have me try to explain.
Basically, it's a cross between multi-threaded and single-thread forums.

You can take a look (and post, if you wouldn't mind): www.hsmx.com/flow

Thoughts?
Posted by Victor Menendez, 15:13, 12th August 2004:
 
Its not that i'm not interested, I would prefer to do it on my own computer though.
Posted by Alfie, 15:16, 12th August 2004:
 
what the buggery bollox is going on with that thing?
Posted by Alfie, 15:19, 12th August 2004:
 
could you put some effort into designing a thing so that if for example we are discussing an old topic about cheese. the computer could recognise that and search for the old thread and then post by itself "you guys talking about this thread?" and then link us to it. Save us having to look for old threads ourselves.

or if someone asks a question the computer could go off and look for suitable google pages.

im thinking if someone puts:

"who was that mouse that ran really fast?"

and the forum itself could type "speedy gonzalez"


That's what I want.

Do it now.

Go on.

Don't come back until it's finished.
Posted by Alfie, 15:22, 12th August 2004:
 
ideally it would be a dictatorship computer and if we started discussing Fox Hunting, War with Iraq or Vegetarianism, the forum would automatically shut down the thread, not let us post any more in there and point us to a previous argument about said subject.
Posted by Alfie, 15:25, 12th August 2004:
 
in "who was that mouse that ran really fast?"

you could get it to look for question marks. identify those as real questions.
then take the first word of the sentence (which is usually what, where, how, when, who etc)
then look for adjectives and nouns and Names (anything with a capital letter at the beginning)
then plug those into google.

Then at the very least bring back the first 5 google links for those terms.

Or really basic - get it to identify questions using the ? and plug the whole question into google and then bring back a page of results
Posted by Alfie, 15:30, 12th August 2004:
 
you could build in extra things so that if say 2 weeks or more have gone by since someone last bated gary with a post about his favourite singer then the system would post something abusive.
Posted by Victor Menendez, 15:31, 12th August 2004:
 
I just put that question to google and it gave me the best web page ever!

www.aaronshep.com/stories/055.html
Posted by Victor Menendez, 15:32, 12th August 2004:
 
Hear the mouse song!

www.aaronshep.com/music/MouseDeer.mid
Posted by Victor Menendez, 15:33, 12th August 2004:
 
Go Mouse Deer!

Posted by Alfie, 15:38, 12th August 2004:
 
See?! Wouldn't it be a cool feature

I wouldn't expect it to ever find the right page that actually answered the question.
but that would be half the fun
Posted by Alfie, 15:46, 12th August 2004:
 
It's ok, I've coded it now

Test:

"Who is the biggest geek of them all?"
Posted by iamcal, 15:48, 12th August 2004:
 
Answering: Who is the biggest geek of them all?

KeyWords: Who/Biggest/Geek/All
KeySynonyms: Hooooooooge

AnswerFoundOn: iamcal.com

Answer: Grim...
Posted by Alfie, 15:49, 12th August 2004:
 
yay. this coding lark is easy!
Posted by Grim..., 15:52, 12th August 2004:
 
=]

The only thing is - why wouldn't the user just use Google?
Posted by iamcal, 16:03, 12th August 2004:
 
Answering: Why wouldn't the user just use Google?

KeyWords: Who/Wouldn't/Just/Google

AnswerFoundOn: internal database

Answer:

Some people do use google. Others are too lazy.
It seems to me that people are always asking things in this forum
Seemingly in the hope that someone will know the answer, or google it for them.

As they are asking the forum it would be good for the Forum to respond.
Posted by Alfie, 16:06, 12th August 2004:
 
plus i think the finding old threads thing would be handy and the google thing is potentially funny
Posted by iamcal, 16:44, 12th August 2004:
 
Would anyone like some toast?
Posted by Foghorn Leghorn, 17:01, 12th August 2004:
 
brown or white?
Posted by jeff, 17:23, 12th August 2004:
 
oh you sound like talkie toaster. yeah, a forum that just asked people if they'd like toasted food..
i'm very tired and been without internet all day. hmmm
Posted by Alfie, 18:06, 12th August 2004:
 
you don't seem very enthusiastic about talkie forum. :(
Posted by cal, 18:54, 12th August 2004:
 
it's conceptually the same as slashdot et al, just layed out differently
Posted by Sul, 19:11, 12th August 2004:
 
I dont really get it. But I didnt really try to understand if I'm honest. Maybe if there was a proper thread to follow I'd be able to understand it better.
Posted by Saltation, 22:04, 12th August 2004:
 
i object to the way your code won't let you turn forum discussions into a slow weird game of Tron.