Mm--some very good points were made then. I'm still puzzled by Faldage's
I know some of y'all have chosen Collapsed Threads for your Default View since this minimizes load time for the initial view of the forum. However (engineering tradeoff) this also deprives you of what may be an important piece of information; who has been posting to a given thread. We all have developed preferences to whose posts we like to read; there may be some whose posts we consider a must read and others who we would not prefer to spend our time on. In Expanded Threads you can tell that a given thread is nothing but a discussion between your two favorite love to hate posters and you can give that thread a pass.

By Collapsed and Expanded, do you mean that + thang that Bingley mentioned?

**slipping back into AWAD oblivion** And I was soooooooo happy to see your name again!!!

In reply to:

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Ha! Good reminder. It's pretty easy to click on your own threads over and over again, thus upping recorded "hits"....

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Who in the world would want to waste time doing that? And who on earth even cares about the number of hits? It would be like working in a button factory.

WW, your post just sent my thoughts back to this book I read years and years ago; prolly somewhere in the '60's. Can't remember the title or author for the life of me, but I believe it was an autobiography. The guy had gone blind as a child; he was one of the first people who gave me the idea that it can matter how you say things: he wrote that he met a store clerk and could tell right away that she considered him as "a person who is blind", and said that when he was referred to as "a blind person", the word blind sort of set up a fence around the word person.
Anyway--what reminded me was that, after he had completed all the schooling that was available to him, the rehab. people sent him to work in a facility that sounded like it was emotionally the equivalent of a button factory. It was a sheltered workshop for the handicapped; the work consisted solely of some menial task, such as counting and filling boxes. He said that after his short learning period that he was soon totalling 2 and 3 times what his co-workers were completing (and they got mad at him for doing that), and soon decided that he would have to somehow get out in the world and find something that was even a little bit satisfying.

What in the world? This place up here must have pretty thin air. First, Jackie's Experiment thread climbs up--now down--for no reason at all and now Jackie is argh-brb'ing!

[Interesting story about the educated blind person, however, Jackie. My Uncle Jonah was blind and could play a banjo well. Nothing button-factorial about a banjo!]

I still would like to know what's the good of having higher hits than any other thread. Am I an idealist, or is it the quality of the hits that would be more desirable?

An unknown imp seems to want that other thing brought back up. If someone actually has something to add, go right ahead. Otherwise, I'd prefer that it die a natural death.

As to # of hits: I dunno. I've always felt that a good (but not infallible) indicator of a "good" thread was the # of replies by a variety of people (as opposed to what was pointed out, not just one or two going back and forth).

that + thang that Bingley mentioned

Yeah, it's the + thang that Bingley mentioned. Expanded and Collapsed is what they call it on your viewing preferences page.

"argh-brb'ing"

English translation?

Who in the world would want to waste time doing that? And who on earth even cares about the number of hits

there's no knowing how to answer these questions. there is (currently) a post in Q&A that has 99 views and 0 replies. we have maybe (maybe!) 25 folks that are posting with any regularity. it's hard to believe that there are ~75 lurkers.

I'm not sayin', I'm just sayin'...

Argh is argh. (!) brb is be right back.