features

I have been pruning my list of lists, which had been getting out of hand. A couple of the candidates for deletion, however, are open lists which I started, but which other folks have contributed to. Two questions:

1. Can I delete this type of list?
2. If the answer to the previous question is 'yes', I assume that all entries on the list would be purged. Which raises a question of etiquette - do I have the right to delete an entire list to which other people have contributed?

The immediate impetus for this question is provided by the list:
Actors whose mere presence in a movie will cause me to change the channel immediately , but the question is a general one.

A related question is whether it is possible to see how many times a given list has been made a favorite, as this might influence one's decision whether or not to keep a particular list.

Thoughts? Comments?

Nice solution jenn!

Now why didn't I think of that? First one I tried, list 12, has 12 words. What are the chances of that?

bilby, we don't need a random list feature. You just type in http://wordie.org/lists/ and add a jumble of numbers after that. It's pretty entertaining. :)

I DO like toast...

A list can be reordered by moving words to a place-holder list and then moving them back in the desired sequence. It's time-consuming though.

You could try some crow on toast, dc.

which - I take it back. I don't know what got in to me today. I'm feeling particularly scorpioptic.

Let's me and you go to the Verbal Arms later and I'll have a crowtini, eh?

pps: I enjoy the new and improved This week on Wordie sidebar. Thanks, John!

I like that the order of your words isn't editable outside of an alpha sort (which is very handy, ps).

Is there a way I can tag pronoun displacements?

Is there a way I can tag smarmy comments?

If bibly gets a 'fresh coffee' button, I want a 'waffle' button. *crosses arms, stomps foot*

which: "Me and MissAnthropist"...? Really?

It's close. But John does god work around here.

Will this help meanwhile?

I'd like a 'fresh coffee' button which will, when clicked, almost instantaneously cause fresh-brewed East Timor organic robusta to pour forth from the speakers. I have recently purchased twin espresso cups and placed them strategically for this purpose.

Me and MissAnthropist were having a discussion and agreed that being able to re-order the sequence of words on a list be would make the site far more appealing to OCD list-makers such as us. It seems between the "order added" and the "alpha" we miss the ability to re-shape the tone, message, and experience of the list once it's up there.

I don't think the 'most commented on' feature is updating itself.

John, how about a link to see more of the recently listed words than show on the homepage? Ideally with the ability to keep browsing back, as with comments.

cookie!

whichbe, that's a great idea. not least because it won't take me much work :-) on the list.

This is a minor, useless idea, but I think it'd be cute if listed with a word somewhere is a little count of how many times it's on someone's "Favorites" list. This would be kind of like how with a YouTube video there's such a count...

OH MY GOSH!!!! John, I love the new "most active threads" feature. You are *so* getting the cookie recipie.

I didn't really foresee wanting this, but the ability to block certain words whose comments you'd rather not see on the front page when you're logged in would be dandy.

Yes, but it should list both words and discussions. I think John CAN.

Hear hear! Good idea.

As per the discussion on this list, I present an idea for some god work that John could do in his copious free time:

How about, in addition to the "Most Wordied, Past 7 Days" list on the home page, a "Most Commented On, Past 7 Days" list? I think it'd be really useful to be able to see at glance which words have been getting all the commenty action recently.

*respectfully bows and backs away*

Pro, you fixin' to steal that tiny Emmy from tiny, she-shoulder-sitting chained_bear? I wouldn't try it. Look how she reacts to cupcake flinging. :-\

But back to the subject...sure, it can be a chore plowing through the citations of an enthusiastic Wordie. But we can handle it. Still, I do like the suggestions for finding ways around it, Wordie being an ever-evolving site. :-)

And if I haven't said it already, welcome, she!

She, as someone who's been on the receiving end of some comments in the past about the volume of words (or more specifically, comments) being added in a day... It just isn't a big deal. If you add 300 words a day, how long can that possibly go on? A week? Ten days? Two weeks? The rest of us who hang out here all the time, or visit periodically, can suck it up and look for new words and new comments in new ways. It isn't like there's any shortage of interesting features on this site.

That said, I do think that people suggesting new features, filters, and a "more" button for recent words is a great idea.

And that said, "You can do it! Go on. They're just playa-hatin'." But I'm not sure you'd want me on your shoulder, what with the occasional tappen and all. *blushing*

I want it too! But only if an even smaller Emmy is included.

Well, it's born of not wanting to make it harder for anyone else to enjoy the site, and if I'm adding words too quickly for anyone to possibly keep up (I like the sharing as much as the list-building), it doesn't really seem like the best way to go about things. But I'd certainly have no problem going to town if there were some way for the people it might bother to control the noise, if they like, and better digest things. (I'm also beginning to think it would be a nice idea to have a little c_b sitting on my shoulder during the day. "You can do it! Go on. They're just playa-hatin'.")

While I'm thinking about your idea for this new feature, she, may I just remark that you can and should use Wordie however you like, without feeling guilty?

I had a thought, just now, on a way to possibly arm ourselves when navigating the front page—What if we had the (functional rather than social; I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks "friend"ing usually amounts to fluff) ability to mark "familiar users," that we could see, unsee, or isolate (as a group) when browsing? That is, marking as "familiar" the people you see most often (those repeatedly Wordiest, in particular, and anyone you'd like to keep track of) would let you: temporarily ignore new lists, words, and comments of theirs in recent activity (solving the issue of congestion caused by one person adding hundreds of words in one day! which I am guilty of, but would love to be able to do again without feeling guilty)—leaving only those of all the users not on that list, making it easier to spot things which you might have otherwise missed; or, temporarily view new lists, words, and comments only from "familiar" users (useful for chatching up after you've been browsing with those users filtered out, and a quicker way of getting up-to-date, if you've been away). The logical default would be set to showing everyone's recent activity, "familiar" and not, and those with no interest in using any filters wouldn't have to.

So yes, filtering. Is this doable—? And appealing? (Seems to me, especially as the site grows, that some sort of filtery feature would work in the interest of general Wordie-sanity.)

If you have a google toolbar, you could add a button like this.

I'd like one of those little javascript function bookmarklet things that sits on the bookmarks toolbar of a browser for a quick and easy way to add words. Also, it could have a place to make a comment, and it could have a drop-down menu for our various lists. I hope this isn't too much to ask. If you already have one, please point me to the way. Thank you.

Thanks John. Have a look at, for example, loquacious for a different kind of pagination issue. A lot of the 'listed by' entries aren't of much interest to me. turd's Words by turd lists are of much less interest than lists with intriguing titles, usually those that are NOT a user's default first list on Wordie. I'd like a toggle to screen those out. There aren't many words in the loquacious zone yet but this problem will get worse as time goes on.

Oh, and comment paging on words would be nice. This page and some of the other standing conversations are a bit much to scroll through.

Sorry to have been incommunicado for so long. I totally agree, comment grouping is badly needed, and by Word is a great suggestion. So great, I can't believe we all missed it earlier, though Asatvium was close :-)

I've been mucking around with some of the low-level code, and need to do a bit more of that before I can focus on featues. And I'm ridiculously overbooked these days. But the next big feature will be comment grouping by word, unless anyone has other suggestions for priority. I'd like an API too, but dealing with the flood of comments seems more important.

I'll second Pro (as long as no duels are involved).

Much neater than the solution I had been mulling, which was listing comments by time, so I could remember that I'd been gone a couple days and find my place.

John, I am starting to feel the need for a "conversations of the last 24 hours, grouped by word page" option. I mean, having in the main page a link to another page where you can see all that Wordies wrote, but with a single link for all the conversations that took place on the same page.

A little late to the party here, but:

I agree 100% with Asativum, c_b (and everyone else) who says nix to a friends feature. There are truly enough sites where one can do that--and I might remind newcomers that we do have a Wordie group on Facebook. :-) As for book lovers, a few Wordies have also linked on LibraryThing, for what it's worth.

And Pro--thank you for hating me the most. It warms my heart. :-D Palooka, I'd have added you as my very first friend. So get your butt over to Facebook. ;-)

API would be nice. I want a geeky command line client to add words...

I'd like a Random List feature. Random Word is fine, I use it almost daily. Random List will be good too.

I created the tag bookie.

No friends lists, please! I don't distinguish between "fellow Wordie user" and "friend", and I've no intention of starting. :-)

TYP, I'm sure you can write your favorited on book (or maybe on books) and people will follow. Otherwise, there are many readers' networks suggestions on the "you" page, and a couple of applications on facebook (I use "books iRead").

You drive a hard bargin my friend.

OK -- but only books with words.

Wordie book club anyone? I'd imagine most of us are avid readers.

This conversation will make it even harder to find the feature requests :-D that's Wordie, folks!

Oh, I can't pretend any longer. I don't hate you, guys. (weeping)

Bilby's so cool. I couldn't put him on my enemies list - in fact I can't think of any Wordie to add. You're all great people.

I'm sorry, I just can't hate you, Pro. I can try being precociously indifferent for a while if you think that would help.

Oh, palooka, there is hatebook, for that...

Ooh. Haven't been here in a bit. My thoughts, for what they're worth*:

Friends: No, no, no. Please? No? We have oodles of other social networking sites for friends (or "friends"). Wordie is for words, and words about words, and wordiness. (Or is that Wordieness?) I don't need friends. I need words. Words are my friends.

Forum: I love that Wordie is so aggressively linear about its nonlinearity. Forums are too easy. This way, it's like a big conversation. Or really, a bunch of them, at a very strange garden party. Only you can rewind and revisit conversations, if you can find them again in the crowd, behind the topiary where you left them. Or something.

Bulk add: Let's just keep bickering about it for a while.


* About $0.63 Canadian, but that's for the lot of them.

I'm convinced the friend system won't work here. Maybe we could be different & institute an enemies list. Prolagus has two for his list already.
I wouldn't mind having 837 enemies with 200 on the waiting list.

Awww, I hate you too, Pro :)

I wouldn't. I hate you. But I hate reesetee even more, as everybody knows.
Actually, I hate you all.

Would you have added me as a friend, c_b? I didn't think so. *sobs*

Which button do you press to make bears chime? I want to try this at home.

I'll chime in here and say, again, that Wordie is so awesome *precisely* because there's no way to really link to other users (unless you favorite them). This isn't a networking site for people. It's a networking site for WORDS. That's what makes it so cool. There are tons of other networking sites out there for people; there aren't any others (that I know of) for words. The conversations here have to revolve around the words. Or lists. Not politics or people—just words. That's the very simple beauty of it--I hope it stays that way! :)

Very much enjoying the conversations, even though I haven't had much to contribute lately.

Moreover, we can link to many social networking websites on our profile page!

I'm steadfastly against an adding friends feature. I mean, who would add me as a friend? No one. I'd be shamed off Wordie.
I just think the idea of having 837 friends and a waiting list of 200 more to be sort of ludicrous.

im with you. that way people dont have to worry about dealing with other people and can have fun if you want to talk to your friend call them or chat on messenger.

I'm not keen on that one; I'd sooner enjoy the words without having to worry about friend list politics on this as well as those other sites.

I'd like a way to add friends, like other social networking sites have.

Not to be too contrary, but I'd opt for just the opposite of gangerh's suggestion for expanding the "Most Citations..." and other lists pertaining to specific Wordies. Why not eliminate them altogether and focus solely on words?

wordie.org/words/features?o=asc to have the page sort comments with the most recent next to the box. Maybe the sort buttons should be made more prominent.

Edit: oh, and it doesn't seem to work when the page reloads after posting.

As we all (humans, that is) like recognition, increasing the Most Citations (last 7 days) list may encourage more Wordies to contribute to the Comment Feed. Perhaps to 20 names.

I'm 99% certain that he meant campaign, as in a "promotional campaign".

While I'm posting here, it is somewhat difficult to post here and then scroll all the way to the top to read the relevant comment. I think that we are reaching the point where some simple sort of paging may be necessary, although I'm not sure if a simple page redesign might make this easier.

I thought you meant you were going to ply people with alcohol until I looked up champaign and discovered it's about land.

Once you're recruited more people there'll promptly be complaints about the increasing difficulty of keeping up with all the conversations going on; I agree that the current front page is inflexible, but what's to be done for people who do like at least to skim everything that's passed overnight? Filtering people out would prevent our seeing comments of theirs which we might want to see.

Maybe filtering types of comment ('chat' vs. 'definition/citation') is what's required, but it would require comments to be marked as such. There's some discussion from five and seven months ago on this page related to possibilities like that.

Yeesh. Well, my apologies if my explosive use of Wordie in the last month has been blowing out other users. Obviously I love this site.

In regards to limiting inputted words per day, I'm down for it, but perhaps there's a less imposing manner this can be done besides the "hard-limit". Perhaps the idea of a more personally-configurable front page would really make things work, wherein there's a wide-variety of "types" of feeds that can be presented on the main page, and the user picks what they want. I like this idea a lot, and perhaps some of the selectable feed options could be where certain users can be filtered in or out? Or perhaps "filter out the most active users"?

I think to honor the site, I'm going to go on a bit of a promotional champaign this week for Wordie, to bring in new users...

I feel the same, bilby, but the answer is to get more users contributing, thereby evening out the flow. I hope wordie grows, so that it becomes harder for a single user to clog up the front page. We can still follow particular wordies with feeds, if we want. Word limits would be a backward step.

Personally I'm not a fan of amateur 'definitions' from e.g. Wikipedia - I'd much rather see a citation. I wouldn't want to ban them though.

Oh, Pro: you could write the TOEFL questions. But don't worry, nobody in his right mind would allow my convoluted syntax and lousy punctuation make it to any kind of test without major editing.

I hope your last comment won't be in my TOEFL test next month, sionnach. I'm not sure I will ever be able to understand it.

Not sure I understand your reasoning there, bilby. Why is it becoming necessary? Does the rate of addition of new words affect usability that adversely?

It does seem less likely that someone hellbent on achieving some kind of monumental word total in short order will actually contribute much in the way of intelligent commentary on the words that are being so assiduously added, and the empirical evidence seems to support this. But then we get into that murky territory where one person's intelligent commentary is another's fatuous platitude.

But, was that what you meant about 'usability'? Or was it something else? Or should I just be tiptoeing away silently, backing away from this whole, potentially incendiary, subject?

These remarks, it should be noted, are rooted essentially in blissful ignorance of developments in the past month, as I only had time to check in once or twice while in Mexico.

It's a kind of anti-feature really: a limit on the number of words a single user can add in a day, or a week. I know we all have our moments of being 'swept away', but the reality is that a single user adding enormous numbers of words can detract from the useability of the site for others. I'd suggest 50 words a day, which pains me. Unfortunately, it's becoming necessary.

I agree, and there is no reason that couldn't still go on while also having a forum.

But, I also think that it would be easier for a random browser to find a conversation if it is indexed in a forum as a opposed to finding a conversation by chance. That means more participants.

Also, the current format pretty much limits conversation to words. A forum would facillitate a greater range of topics. We can find out what we share with fellow wordies aside from logophilia.

Well, I think part of the fun is having the conversations anywhere in the site, based on our Pindar's flights, isn't it?

Is there any way we could get a forum? There seems to be a lot of avenues for discussion that this site brings about which could be pursued in a forum or message board.

We can't just use Google with site:wordie.org either. Any Web search engines that have better wildcard support?

Is there a way of doing wildcard searches? Someone listed a word a few days ago that started haber- but I couldn't remember the end of it today. So I did a search on haber* ...
Nobody is listing haber*. Why don't you?

yep. frequently.

Everything related to google appears to be loading at a glacial pace and/or timing out this morning, possibly because of their cute new 'artists' feature. I'm running Firefox on a PC. The slowness of google is independent of Wordie, but seems to be slowing down Wordie, maybe because of the ads.

Are other people experiencing this slowness as well, or is it just me?

Also, I've done some bulk adding in my day--manually, I mean--and it really doesn't take THAT long. Then, too, if you already have 20,000 words listed somewhere off Wordie, it's not a bad idea to go through them manually and enjoy each one of them again as you enter it.

I still say 'no' to bulk adding.
Every word is sacred.
Every word is good.
:-)

John, I have an idea for a new phrase to be typed in the home page:
"Problems? Disagreement? Arguments? Join the discussion here.

Has the time come for Wordie to introduce capital punishment?

On the point of bulk add, I do agree that allowing people to dump huge text files (ie, entire works, books, stuff from the e-Gutenberg project) would not be a good idea. But for those of us who do have lists of words, allowing 20-30 words to be added at a time would be great, and should be enough to protect against spamming.

I'm going to hesitantly raise my hand and make my first feature suggestion...

Over at this brilliant list that Prolagus created, I've been having fun trying to deduce the occupations of my fellow wordies, and it would be a good deal easier if I could sort the words by which user contributed them. What about a "sort by contributor" button for open lists?

And thanks as always, John, for all your work on this excellent site!

Bewdiful!

Frindley, you can use something called a character entity to print out characters; if you use the character entities for square brackets, Wordie interprets them differently than if you used actual brackets, and doesn't insert a link.

The character entities for left and right brackets are [ and ] respectively, so wrapping a word in those characters in the comment form (like this: [bracketed]) will result in a [bracketed], but not linked, word in the resulting comment.

That's what I've been doing too, and they certainly do the trick. But the geekette at heart is curious as to whether there is a neat technical solution.

Frindley, I have been using the shift+bracket key for that. It makes ... those squiggly brackets, the ones that have some serious name that's a word I don't know yet. { } <--Those. Does that help?

Help please: If, in a comment, I want to put square brackets around a word or phrase – not to link to a word or phrase entry, but simply to use the brackets as punctuation, e.g. editorial aside, or because it's in the original source for a citation – how do I do that?

Hey John, how about random list feature?

M, P, P & G, I'm sold. Come to think of it, I was sold the first time this came up, when the same good arguments were made. Then I forgot about it. Oops.

John, I think it would be nice to have the option to view open lists sorted by "popularity", other than by "order added".

However gangerh's comment continues, I'll agree with him.

John, this is serious.
I'm a relative newcomer to Wordie. My passion for just one word has been noted by others. My passion for Wordie has not, though 'tis greater than that for that word.
Wordie is unique. You have created a masterpiece. On a canvas that absorbs one word at a time. That allows all the chance to observe the word, create something of their own, and stimulate further thought and imagination such that wasn't happening before.
.........to be continued

I also cast my vote against unlimited bulk add. I echo the sentiments that the fun of Wordie is observing how people selectively choose & enter specific words that have meaning or fascination for them. I'd hate to see some uncaring, even malicious person simply enter an entire dictionary full of words into wordie as a prank.

A 25 word or so limit to bulk adding would be useful.

I thank mollusque for saying what I wanted to say far better than I could.
I think even 50 words per day would be too many. 25, maybe, reasonable enough.

(Today is maybe day for me.)

John, I don't think bulk adding is a good idea. I have a database of more than 300,000 English words. I also have one online of more than 15,000 Latin words. If I started bulk adding those into Wordie, it could substantially change the character of the site.

Words being selected and sorted into lists is part of what makes Wordie interesting. Also, some people enjoy being the first to add a word. Just a couple of weeks ago, I was the first to add nourishment. It gave me a moment of pleasure to think Wordie has been without nourishment all this time. With additions at random, following people's whimsies, it will be years till all the common words have been entered. Bulk adding of dictionary files would wipe out that simple pleasure.

That said, I could see a limited bulk-add feature, say 25 or 50 words at time. People often develop themed lists off-line, and being able to add them rapidly would be nice.

I'd probably be against bulk add. The current rate of adding, plus the regular spurts - reesetee with ornithological opus in hand for example - is about right. For the record I'm not the kind of person who is against change simply because it's not like what we have now. One of Wordie's strengths is the simplicity of its features. In a cluttered world ...
It's not the add I'm concerned about, it's the bulk. Such a squat, sweaty, pigeon-toed word wearing cheap trainers. No.

I think in a week Wordie would have the whole Divine Comedy and all Shakespeare's writings. But maybe I'm wrong.

OP, bulk add is a good idea. It was actually one of the first feature requests way back when, but it fell between the cracks. I'll add it to the list--though I don't have much Wordie time these days, sadly, so not sure when it'll appear.

If you're technically inclined you might be able to script your own bulk loader. If you do, please limit inserts to some sane rate -- every other second or less. Someone used wget to bulk load a large list a while back, and knocked down the site :-)

Shan't miss oddocomplete myself; tripped me up too often. If it returns, perhaps it can be something each Wordie can turn on/off. (Hey John, I avoided user!)

Bulk add would be cool, OP. But maybe tough to protect it from spambots?

Am I crazy, or is there no way to bulk add words? I have txt files full of words I have been keeping for years that I would love to dump into Wordie, but I am not going to type them out one by one.

Is there a combinatoric I can use to put multiple words in the same field?

I'm with VO, I had a lot of odd results with the auto thingy.

Wishing you Many Fruity Returns of the Season.

VO, that happened a lot to me too.

Yes, it was rather...oddocomplete.

...I wasn't a fan of autocomplete either.

Autocomplete seemed to have a habit of foisting its suggestions upon me if I pressed Return before it disappeared, even though I hadn't selected any of them, so I shan't miss it much... though it did exhibit a WeirdNet-like propensity to put odd results at the top sometimes.

John, perhaps search with autocomplete could be moved to the "more searches" page, which would be a better place for it anyway. If you reinstate it, perhaps you could let it show more than 10 examples.

Prolagus, I'm sorry! If I am a userist, you are on my 'nice user' list. Though I don't much like the term "user." Besides tech there's only one other group of people called users: junkies :-)

Mollusque, I did turn off autocomplete. It uses up a lot of server juice, and traffic has been climbing lately, so I needed to lighten the load to keep things responsive. Wildcarding would be nice -- someday I hope to revisit search.

Alangager, you can link to other users, but you have to do it manually, there's no shortcut like there is with words. To do so, you'd wrap the words you want to link in html, like this:

<a href="/people/profile/alangager">alangager</a>

That results in a link like this: alangager

Am I missing something or can you link to other users?

John - The public service ads are much more soothing than the regular google ads.

John, the auto-suggest/complete function in the word search box no longer works. Did you remove it, or is this a bug? Also, any chance of getting a pattern search working? Something with wildcards?

John only recently added the "public lists" feature, so there just aren't that many open lists yet. I'm sure that will change over time. Don't be sad. :|

OK, got the message :-(
I don't think I'll ever duplicate a list I like, though. My new challenge will be finding different open lists, on a different topic, in which the same words can fit...
(this is gonna be painfully hard)

I don't consider any list dead. Ever. I'd be crushed if I came back to Wordie and my lists were all open--that's just not what I signed up for. Even now, I don't always open my lists. But, reesetee's point about there being a lot of similar lists already is well taken. There's nothing stopping any Wordie user from starting his/her own list if there are things he/she wants to add to someone else's (non-public) list.

I don't know that I'd want my lists opened if I were away for a while, Prolagus. I agree with John on that one. But you could, as he suggests, copy the list and open yours up. Even without trying, we manage to start up lists related to already existing ones--I think it's part of the fun of Wordie. Twenty of us could have the same idea for a list and come up with 20 different lists in the end. :-)

Sigh, you love anyone's ideas but mine. And you even misspell my name.
That's userism.

Wschoenh, great idea, which I may do someday when I get the time. Won't be for a while though, since I have none.

Gangerh, I love the idea of upside down lists, sort of like a reverse lookup phone book. I put it on the wish list, but again, no idea when I might be able to get to it. In the meanwhile feel free to improvise, Asativum's suggestion sounds good.

Prolagus, I've had that temptation, but I think people should be able to come back to Wordie years later and find their words waiting patiently as they left them. But there's nothing to stop you from remaking a ghost list and opening it up.

John,
I often find lists that are dead, i.e. their authors are no more active in Wordie. When those lists are not open, it means that they will never have new contributions (see e.g. Polite words, impolite stuff). Isn't it sad?
I was thinking: what if you open the lists after, let's say, 3 months of inactivity of the user?

Gangerh, as a stopgap, you could just post an empty list (presumably with a clever title) and solicit descriptions in the comments; once a word is settled on, it can be added to the list. Just a thought.

At breakfast this morning, John, I put my spoon into my bowl of Sugar Puffs and one Sugar Puff, on contact with the spoon, catapulted out of the bowl, flew across the table, rebounded off the teapot with a (very satisfying) ping and finally came to rest beside the butter dish. Something I couldn't have done trying.
My immediate thought was 'is there a word for that?'. Now it's impractical to create a list of descriptions (I guess) so that Wordies can input their knowledge and ideas. So my humble suggestion is for a feature that allows us to post such descriptions for which we seek a word.
I am assuming there is no such device within the site already which can be used for this purpose.
Perhaps I would be the only one that would use it, anyway, of course, though I do detect from time to time a need from others.
Greetings from gangerh.

You should make a Facebook application that will show recently added words on a Facebook profile.

I never thought I'd be so glad to see serifs again.

Ah, it tricked me too! See my comment under font.

Ditto bilby! I thought to myself, how can Wordie misjudge so? And then I realised that it was still 1 April in some parts of the world.

Well you really got me, seeing as I'm on the other side of the date line, it's April 2 here, and I had well and truly shaken all the sillies out yesterday and was expecting nothing today. Nice one John!

But I am talking in a cartoony voice. Always have been.

Uncle!

EEEEEEEYEWW!!! I just logged on, and ... EEEEEEEEYEW!! Great joke, John! ;)

Also, when I read everyone's comments in this typeface, I feel like we're all talking in a cartoony voice. How odd.

I certainly won't be sad to see it go.

Don't forget virgle.

Saayy...that's one snazzy rotating "NEW" you have there, John! Well, consider us fooled. Certainly can't be worse than Google's annual contribution to the holiday. ;-)

Excellent ruse, John. You had me full of wrongteous indignation for a full 20 minutes mentally composing all sorts of comments!! Can't wait for tomorrow.

Yeah, I got sucked into the whole lame web April fool's thing. It was also an experiment to see if it would be asked about on features or bugs. I had meant to lard the front page with animated gifs, flowing American flags, things like this: . Didn't get my shit together in time, though :-)

But I'm not sure I can keep this up all day. It's killing me.

HAHAHAHAHA it's unbearable!

Hey! What happened to Wordie's typeface? It's gone all Comic Sans-y on us! Is this an April Fool's Day joke, John?

Already there, Prolagus--seventh from the left. :-)

I think you should put a urban dictionary button. For some of the words it could be very useful...

John

is there a way to change one's username?

If not I might delete my account and start over now before it's too late;)

thanks!

Ah, sionnach, so that was you on Amazon? ;-)

Now you introduce bulk tagging, John? Now?! After I've tagged almost 4,000 items individually!!!

Actually, I like the idea, but probably wouldn't use it much. Most of my tags indicate the vowel patterns in my monovocalic and panvocalic lists, which have to be specified individually.

What I'd really like to have is the ability to do more specific searches, like for *a*e*i*o*u*.

Oh my gosh. I'm definitely going to go tag things "affront to human intelligence" now. How todally alsome.

Why does bulk tagging sound like an activity best suited to Whole Earth Foods?

I've kind of given up on trusting my own ability to tag sensibly, ever since I noticed that among the handful of tags I'd used on Amazon.com, each one was more abusive and dismissive than the next. 'affront to human intelligence' was about the mildest.

C_b, I think I understand your struggle. It may come with the territory when you're an editor (as we are). The impulse is to clean up, whereas with tags you almost go about it the opposite way, then "filter on the way out," as John says. It can take some getting used to. :-)

One way around the "dog" and "dogs" problem is to tag your word(s) with both. Same with nautical, marine, maritime, sea, etc. Use 'em all...

Wikipedia has a good article on tags.

C_b, I think one thing to consider with tags is that it's ok if they're idiosyncratic--they're not supposed to be a rigid hierarchy or taxonomy. As Dave Winer puts it in his fabulous book Everything is Miscellaneous, the best bet with metadata (ie, tags) is to filter on the way out, not the way in. People should use tags however it may help them, and then later on ways to use all that data to help everybody else can be figured out. And as more and more tags are in the system, it becomes easier to filter out the noise.

This may mean that eventually some words will get so tarted up with tags that they'll be an eyesore. At which time I'll do something about it :-)

Back to basics please for the uninitiated. What's a tag? Are there any instructions?

Another example to add on to yarb's and john's comments--the words on my Body Metaphors list are now tagged with anatomy, colloquialism, metaphor, body metaphors, and slang. The tags don't have to be literal--they can link your lists to other lists with even tangentially similar content. I'm anxious to see what other words have been tagged with "metaphor," for example.

I'm loving this...

Oh, OK. That makes sense. Obviously it depends on people tagging words as they come across them. So I would tag "Tito" as "dog" so it could come up on yarb's listing.

That's another question, though--if some people use "dog" as the tag, and some use "dogs," then there's a problem. Also to use an example I've seen, some words tagged "nautical" and some tagged "marine."

But isn't there another danger in bulk-tagging lists? For example, in the first link you listed, John, someone might most reasonably tag my "ships of fame" list with "nautical," not realizing that "Millennium Falcon" is on there. Now "Millennium Falcon" has a "nautical" tag on it. Which may not make a big difference in this case, but... suppose there are words that have outright wrong tags on them? Does that matter?

I'm new to this tagging concept, so forgive the dumb questions.

And finally, might efficient use of tags finally make the tags section of each word page into an enormous thing you have to scroll past to get to the comments? I guess we can burn that bridge when we come to it (as confused people like me would say).

Well, bulk tagging is just a way to apply tags to lots of words at once. So we should really just be talking about the utility of tagging. My favorite use these days is to create big collaborative meta-lists.

For instance, this, this, this and this are all lists somehow related to the sea, or things nautical. Maybe I don't personally want to bother making a list with all those words in it--it'd be a pain in the neck. But I could bulk tag all those lists in about 10 seconds, and bam, I have a way to see all those words in one place.

It's the overlap with words tagged by others which makes tagging more connective than listing. By bulk tagging my dogs from russian literature list with "dogs", "russian", "literature", and "dogs from russian literature", I will be able to link all my dogs from russian literature with everyone else's dogs from russian literature.

I have a question, though. What kind of bulk tags did you have in mind for your lists? I'm asking because as I thought about using them, it occurred to me that bulk-tagging my list would be sorta just creating a tag that, if I click on it, would bring me right to my list. So then I was wondering, why would I bulk-tag anything? If you click on the tag, it pulls up a list of all the words with that tag, which presumably would be everything on your list (plus anyone else's words with the same tag, of course). But if you click on any one of those words, it also shows you (thank God for this feature!) which lists it's already on, over on the right. So it seems like the purposes of bulk-tagging are ... well, probably I'm just not comprehending the potential of bulk-tagging an entire list. :| Can someone enlighten me?

Bulk-tagging is a phenomenal upgrade, John. I just tagged all my lists. I'm definitely going to use tags more often as a search tool on Wordie.

Thanks for your quick response.

Bulk tagging is teh alsome. Thanks, John! I'm going to try it out tonight.

Just added bulk tagging to lists. Important to note that this doesn't let you tag lists themselves. What it does is tag every word in a list.

Yeah, keeping up with the comments is like drinking from a fire hose. I continue to chew on ways to deal with that, but the truth of the matter is I don't think there's any way a normal person* could keep up with them all. The best I think we'll be able to do is come up with ways to better keep track of the subset that most interests you.

* Though some of us clearly aren't normal people :-)

Speaking only for myself (as always), I don't see a need to categorize what types of comments are entered. Too often they are a mix of conversational, quotational, citational, or usage-ational (to coin a phrase).

We do have tags, which is great, but as Skip pointed out, many of us aren't really using them to their full potential. (I'm starting to work on that on my own entries/lists.) Tags will certainly help sort things for lots of folks; I don't think sorting comments will prove as useful or as simple.

It's unfortunate that people are sad they can't "keep up" with comments--I include myself in that group--but it does seem like any technical change that would make that easier would also make Wordie a lot like your average message board/forum kind of site. And I am vehemently opposed to that.

I agree, skipvia--better use of tags might be a quick way to help solve what appears to be a problem, but I've never been able to make myself use them consistently.

At first blush, categorizing comments seems a lot like work to me. I'm not sure we can say definitively that the reason some people don't post often is because they feel overwhelmed, although that may be true for some. As for me, I simply skip comments I'm not inclined to be interested in. Then again, I check in on Wordie nearly every day, and that's not always possible (or even desirable) for everyone.

Hi Skip, for sure, I've wanted that capability for myself as well. I'll move it to the top of the list, as it should probably take precedence over the "phone in your own pronunciations" feature I've been chewing on...

Hey, John...could you provide a way to bulk-tag existing lists? For example, there are currently 187 untagged entries on one of my lists. I'd love to be able to apply a tag (or set of tags) to one of my lists--or other folks' lists, for that matter. I'm far less likely to open each of those entries to apply tags, but if I could do it all at once...

Tags can be an enormous benefit in tracking down words and conversations. I'm as guilty as anyone in terms of forgetting to provide them, but if we all took tags a bit more seriously we'd all benefit.

We miss you too, jennarenn! :)

Unfortunately it seems that, if Wordie continues to grow, it isn't an issue of anyone being in the thick of anything or not. It isn't possible, and never was since the site was teensy tiny, to read all the comments. They're for Wordieternity. They're for coming across someday. The only way to "track" them is tied to actual vocabulary words or to the lists that they reside on. Which kind of seems like... well... the point of Wordie--that it be about words.

As someone whose Wordie time is severely limited between September and June, there are times when I'd appreciate a way to filter comments. Personally, I simply can't keep up anymore. I love that you guys are enjoying yourselves, but I do miss being in the thick of things. :) Jen

People only annoy you with your permission.

Good points. I love Wordie as it is. John's done wonders with this site.

True, that could be a solution. Another thought is that the word page is kind of where usage notes belong, since the page actually says, "Leave a comment, citation, or usage note here." I'm not sure attaching usage notes or citations to a list rather than a word would clear anything up--in fact it might result in more confusion, since they'd all be jumbled up on the list instead of attached to the words in question.

Listen, I'm not opposed to a feature that might result in someone not being annoyed, particularly if that feature eliminates more than one source of frustration for more than one user. But could this be a case of a mountain being made of a molehill?

Another possible solution to sionnach's frustration would be for Wordies to have the ability to include a word's definition with their lists rather than in the word's comment box. That might free up comments for conversations rather than for definitions.
Just a thought.

John, the exchange taking place between sionnach and chained_bear on her profile makes me think again about ways to fine-tune Wordie content. Some of us are enjoying c_b's current run of quotations, others wish they would end, and some presumably skip blithely over them.

Previously there have been complaints that the flow of comments on Wordie is getting to be too much handle. Comments seem to have slowed down recently, but perhaps that means some people aren't participating as much because they're being overwhelmed, which would be a shame.

A possible solution: create check-boxes to allow each comment to be flagged as a "definition", a "citation", or a "remark", or more than one of those (just as each word can be flagged for its parts of speech).

This would allow the comments to be separated into three streams. The homepage could still have all comments flowing through, but one could choose a view showing just remarks, or just definitions or just citations. Clicking through on anyone of them would then show the full thread.

There could be several advantages. Someone who's been away from Wordie for a week probably is most interested in catching up on the conversations. Those would all be in the "remarks stream", since the most interesting definitions and citations stimulate remarks.

The default page for any word would be the same as currently, but could have options for viewing only definitions or citations from among the comments. This would answer another longtime desire expressed at times among Wordies--to somehow give definitions special status among the comments.

Yeah, I bumped up the refresh rate. But since it regenerates all the comments on each refresh, edits will be reflected on the front page after a subsequent refresh.

John, have you changed the frequency with which the homepage is refreshed? I find that many of my comments post almost immediately, and since I often edit them in the first minute or two, I notice the lack of the buffer.

I have posed a question about 'words added by me' figures on forty eight.

Unlisted words are consigned to the Island of Misfit Toys.

Hi gangerh. Some of them are in yarb's Adoption agency. I also have a list composed of Former ghosts. But most delisted words if encountered should just be tagged as misspellings.

Ta, Treeseed. But where's there where it sits? With all the other listless words. Just out-takes really. Perhaps they should have a list of their own. Maybe 'Out-takes Awaiting Adoption'. Or 'Word Rescue'. Then we could all pick one of the cutest and give it a proper home.

gangerh,
It just sits there waiting for someone to use it. It says "0 Wordies list". I have put a few words in the limbo of "0 Wordies List"..usually because of accidental misspelling.

Say I add a word to my list. Say it's a unique one. Say I delete it from my list before anyone else adds it to their list. Where does the poor listless word go?

I think I've managed to avoid lost comments by reading from the bottom of the page up, then refreshing the screen just before I go to a newer comments page. Seems to work. You catch those newer comments that otherwise get lost in the shuffle when going from page to page.

I think open lists have really accelerated the activity.

Yes, the comments are even faster now than they were before my hiatus. I'm getting nauseous!

I know, seanahan. It's really difficult keeping up with the comments. I wish there were some way to tame them, but I can't imagine what that would be.

Skipvia, beware of lost comments.

You do look quite fetching in that outfit, John.

Thanks for doing that--although I usually read from the bottom up, it's a nice little luxury.

Hi sv, good call, done.

Probably has something to do with my sparkly dress and magic wand.

John, this is a minor point, but it would be nice if there were a "past comments" link at the bottom of the Recent Comments and Citations section as well as the top so that you wouldn't have to scroll all the way back up to the top of the comments to get to the next section.

(Why do I always feel like Dorothy approaching the Wizard when I ask for things like this?...)

Yo yo yo, just added an (optional, configurable) image search option. See images.

And that's on a good day!

You know, you just have to love a site on which hemorrhoid cream puffs, euryvocalic, sheila, and foretopgallantmast appear on the same page. Thanks, John.

Would be nice if under or above "appears in these lists:" we also had "is a favourite word of Tom, Dick, Harry and Joan". Favourites are an underused feature here and this would help them be seen more, which I'd like a lot.

Hi John,
Could you please add Playlist.com to the choose a service drop-down box? I would love to see what others like to listen to while playing on Wordie.
Thanks.

John, I guess you're trying to make it easier for people to equate comments and citations, but the new heading upon listing a word is painful: "xxx was added to the list yyy. Feel free to add a comment or citation". It's going to get old real fast.

I too discovered the recent activity link just now, and I am enraptured by it. Thanks, John!

I hadn't noticed the recent activity link. Great addition, John!

Good idea moll, that page is looking kind of spare.

Have you noticed the recent activity page we all have? It's linked to in the right column on your profile (though you can turn it off if, for some reason, you don't want to be stalked).

John, how about on the "your words" page showing the words someone recently listed down the right side? I got the idea from Asativum's comment on Treeseed's profile. It would be interesting to see what someone is listing and what connections are make.

Now there's a man who knows his own mind. :-)

Ah u, a similar stance to the one my pop almost always stakes out! The rest of the family will be in heated debate, and eventually one of us, forgetting how he answered the question the last 10,000 times he was asked, will solicit his opinion. Which is always, always "I agree strongly with the both of you."

Can I be actively indifferent? It's decided: I am staunchly, ardently, 100% opposed to having an opinion on the matter.

Point taken and I agree.

I'm as much a culprit as anyone, but I agree. I'll cut out the images and video. Or at least be much more discerning about when to embed something :-)

I would also prefer not to have pictures and videos directly in Wordie. I don't mind them occasionally. Another concern is that most of the ones posted appear to be copyright violations.

I third sionnach and reesetee. In fact, maybe I'll start using lynx again, just for Wordie.

I agree with skipvia. In general, I think it far preferable just to link to pictures or videos, rather than embedding them here on Wordie.

Me again, with the same old observation about images and videos on Wordie. Lord knows I love them, and I frequently link to them, but I avoid embedding them in my posts because this is Wordie, and it's supposed to be like Flickr but without the pictures, right? If it's just me, please let me know and I'll never comment on this again, but I really love the simple, uncluttered look of words on a page, sans images.

Really--I'll let this be if it's not an issue for any other Wordies, and no ill will is intended toward anyone.

Not sure this belongs here, but after some discussion around the word confuzzle, including John's musings about a FAQ at brusselsprouts''s profile, I notice that FAQ remains unlisted and unclaimed.

Perhaps Wordies could give John a hand? Or is that only a recipe for more confuzzlement?

My first foray with the exciting new 'open list' feature was when I started the 'Dewey, Cheatham and Howe' list. When one views the entire list, it correctly identifies who added which word (e.g. Reed D. Manual was contributed by skipvia). However, if one brings up any specific word on the list, if the word is listed for the first time, the attribution is 'first listed by sionnach', regardless of who actually added it. Has anyone else noticed this phenomenon? By the nature of the list, pretty much all the constituent words are being listed for the first time.

I agree. Nice compromise.

I'm personally glad that WeirdNet can still live on with its definition of choice provided first, and perhaps "better" ones available with a click. At this point I'd kind of hate for its quirkiness to go away!

John, you added "more" and "less" links for WordNet? Great idea! Guess you were weary of all the WeirdNet whining.... ;-)

Something sionnach said inspired me to suggest this, so I can blame him if it's tosh. It'd be fun, though predictably quite useless, to have a little calculator that showed how far the unique words on Wordie stretched if they were laid end to end in 12 point font. Sort of a measure of how far we, as a community, progress in perpetrating death/life to language by a thousand (ok, more) lists. Lexicon v Real World distance. Might not sell as many tickets as Godzilla v Megalon but I'll be watching, you betcha by golly wow yeah rumpty numpty.

I'd like a user search on the 'Other Searches' page, and I'd like to wish John a Happy New Year before I forget to do so.

Thanks for the quick action, John! It definitely helps. I picked up several comments that I'd missed.

Thanks mollusque, good suggestions. I just edited the your comments page so it shows what word or list was commented on. Grouping by thread strikes me as more problematic. Right now the comments are ordered chronologically, so I'm not sure how grouping would handle words where the same person left numerous comments at widely disparate times -- a common case. By grouping them, I imagine they'd only show up lumped under the most recent use? I maybe be misunderstanding you, ping me off thread if you want to explain.

I like the columns idea, and I really like the idea of finding ways to raise visibility based on activity level. I'll work on as time permits.

A few suggestions that might not increase server load much. I occasionally use the list of my own comments to find the conversations I've been involved in. Showing which list or word was commented on would make that page more useful. Showing all the comments in one thread together would be even more helpful.

Could the past comments page be divided into two columns? One for stand-alone comments (words with only one comment), the other for all other comments? That way if, say, I'm putting in a bunch of definitions for two letter words not in the Scrabble dictionary, someone can ignore those as stand-alones, and look for more interesting things among the active threads in the other column.

To clarify re: my suggestions... "blocking" somebody in that example does not mean you'd never see anything by that person, it only means their posts wouldn't show up in your notification page. It's only (hypothetically) offered as one tool among many in an attempt to streamline comment-following, because we're all getting bogged down lately.

Essentially, if the Recent Comments page is moving too fast, this would be a custom page you could use to bring the most relevant/interesting posts to your attention. You'd still be able to see the other stuff, or follow the Recent Comments page as usual. But if you're in a time crunch, such filters could be very helpful in getting caught up. If there are options you don't want to use, you don't have to, but ultimately the choices would be there if you wanted them. Hypothetically.

Frankly u, I would not want the option, "Never show me comments by this user." People say dumb, insensitive things, and refusing them an audience is refusing them feedback as well as the opportunity to grow. :) I can think of several times when some of our best users forgot themselves, myself included.

also, u? That stuff does sound interesting, but it's also kind of mind-numbing. Maybe it's the way work has been going lately, but your list of suggestions made me want to cry. Do we *have* to have all those choices? Can't we just, like, list words?

What chained_bear and reesetee said, John. We wouldn't be wanting so many features if Wordie weren't such a compelling place to be. If we forget to thank you every day for that, shame on us. You da man. (You are a man, aren't you? It was a long time before I figured out that c_b wasn't...)

Awww!!! That was a lovely read--your post, his post, your response. *hugs John metaphorically*

Interesting post, John, and a very gracious reply from you. :-)

Skipvia and friends, I'll try to find ways make it easier to keep track of comments and the like, but not sure how or when that'll happen. Uselessness, you're right, having a really granular way to select what you hear about, and how, would be great, but it'd be a job of work. And equally, it would take more computing power than Wordie currently has available. Pretty much every feature I add increases the load on the little chunk of a rented server Wordie runs on.

The folks at Merriam-Webster seem to be awfully sporting about my making fun of them (see these comments). Maybe they'll sponsor a server upgrade ;-)

Yes, it was uselessness.

Bilby, did you mean uselessness when you mentioned the e-mail suggestion? I'm fine with e-mail notifications, so long as they're manageable--but then I'm sure I get far less e-mail than the Ghostmaster. ;-)

I'm confused (ok, nothing new, but ...). If you find an unlisted word the drop-list encourages you to add it. This list is ordered oldest to newest. Yet on the 'Your Words' view the list is ordered newest to oldest. That's confuzzling, because sometimes I'm shooting to one end because I remember I created the list a long time ago, and sometimes I do the same and end up at the wrong end completely. Once one has Quite A Few Lists (over 30?), list management and how to find the wee devils is quite an issue.

I'm the opposite of reesetee on email. I don't mind email because I am used to being ruthless with it. On the other hand if I have to come on Wordie to see what's 'come in' I'll be here all day. Can't have that, can we?

Thansk for the improvements. I didn't mis-spell that, I'm just a big fan of Murmansk, that's all.

I'd rather not have e-mail notification... I get enough mail as it is, and constant Wordie things would push it over the top. If we are to have any notifications, I would prefer for them to be here on-site, accessible via a nice little link at the top of every page that lights up when it contains something new. And it might be nice to customize what does or doesn't show up there. In other words, how about the following options (for example):

• Subscribe to this list's comments
• Subscribe to this word's comments
• Subscribe to this tag's comments
• Subscribe to this profile's comments
• Subscribe to comments by this user
• Subscribe to comments on this user's lists
• Subscribe to comments on words with this tag
• Never show me comments on this list
• Never show me comments on this word
• Never show me comments on this tag
• Never show me comments on this profile
• Never show me comments by this user
• Never show me comments on this user's lists
• Never show me comments on words with this tag

John, I'm with skipvia on the problem of keeping up with comments. (Dang, Wordie is just too popular!) But perhaps an option to receive e-mail digests might solve the problem? And since I know next to nothing about what that entails, I'll leave it at that. :-)

One disadvantage with status bar scripting, aside from the fact that some people like to block it, is that if I go to a list page, then use the Back and Forward browser buttons to return to it, the scripting doesn't work on the return visit.

ps -- thanks jennarenn! I've often been told I'm full of shist.

Yesterday's changes didn't break things nearly as much as I expected them to, so I'm trying again. I just added "open lists" as an option, which are rather raw: built on the train ride home tonight :-) They allow all Wordies to contribute to a list, as requested. On tomorrow's train ride I'll try get all lists -- those to which you're a contributor, as well as the ones you created--showing up on your list of lists, and in the dropdowns.

The url changes are permanent--someday I'm planning to introduce an API, and this style of URL will lend itself to that. To try and make up for it, though, when you're on a list page the status bar at the bottom of your browser now says who the creator is. It felt very mid-90s retro to be scripting the status bar--that was a very sexy thing to do, back in the day.

I also fixed a few bugs, including the tags link. Thanks for all the feedback, keep it coming.

Dear John,

You rock like a good mica shist.

Love and cookies,
jennarenn

Hi John;

I don't think I'm alone in having a difficult time keeping up with comments. There are so many that I often miss comments to my words or lists. Pagination has helped, but even so there are just so many comments...

I like getting notified via e-mail when someone comments on a list, but getting e-mail for every word clearly isn't feasible. What if we could have some sort of notification when we logged on (or specifically checked) to see if any new comments had been directed at us? For example:

"Hi skipvia. The following (words/comments/lists) have received comments since the last time you checked:
word...
word...
word..."

Then, if we are rushed, we could go right to the words that need attention.

U, I noticed that URL change myself and was a bit disappointed. Glad to hear it will (probably?) be coming back.

Hi John. Once you are invited to contribute to someone else's list, how do you go about doing that? I can't seem to find the hidden key...

All good suggestions, I'll hit the low hanging fruit when I have time to do a round 2 on this. U, you are emailed when someone adds you to a list. Or, er, you should be... I'll verify that that is working.

Oh, also... I would love some sort of notification feature that says "reesetee has added you as a contributor to [name of list]" so I'm aware of new additions to my editable repertoire. Such a notification thingy would go well with private messaging, but we've had that conversation before... ;-)

What bilby and mollusque suggested. Also, I'd like to voice my disappointment that a listmaster (i.e., creator/owner of a list) can no longer be determined at a glance by the list URL. I always found it handy to look up at the location bar to find out who's responsible for the page I'm reading, particularly if there are multiple people involved in the discussion there. Under the new format, I have to scroll all the way back to the top of the page.

I'd like an option to enable all Wordies to contribute to the list.
cheers,
B

Good idea!

I'm honored, reesetee! Well-programmed, John! I tested with a few trees and it worked beautifully.

The only tweak I'd suggest is for the shared list to be on both (or all) contributors list of lists. That way a word could be added via the drop-down menu instead of from the list page.

Oroboros, I tried adding mollusque as a contributor to a list and got that error too, but when I clicked again, all was well.

You're multiplying, John! Have you cloned yourself?

Hey O, thanks, that should be fixed now.

Despite your having gotten that error, reesetee and uselessness should be contributors to whatever list you added them to. Guess they'll have to click through all your lists and see which ones let them add stuff :-)

Surprises await me on Wordie this week! I must be digging into this stuff...