Keyword Questions, Protocol Guidelines, and SHIPping

[ssk7882]

Hi, all.

Yes, I've been thinking about AK too.  And about hit wizards.  

Man!  This situation really is scary, isn't it?  Even serial killers
usually don't seem to be selecting their targets purely at random.  
This fellow sounds as if maybe he just plain likes killing and wants 
to do lots of it, which I find a very frightening notion indeed.

Be careful, Cindy.


ON VEXING DATABASE QUESTIONS


Dicey:

> Excel doesn't know what having the same message number means, so 
> yes, you'd have to include the word SHIP on each row that contains 
> shipping.  

<sigh>  Oh, well.  Okay.  Thanks, Dicey.  

Well, I guess that answers that, then.  Keep keywords on the same 
line with others to which they might be relevant from the point of 
view of the person using the spreadsheet.

This means that a shipping post might well end up having lines 
reading:

SHIP Harry Ginny
SHIP Harry Cho
SHIP Harry Hermione

Life's hard sometimes. 

Don't worry about past entries, though.  As I've said before, anyone 
using the spreadsheet effectively is going to *have* to exercise a 
bit of judgement when it comes to what keywords they look for, and 
will also have to put a bit of work in to find things.  So don't 
sweat it too much if everything isn't perfectly designed for them.  
Just do your best.


Pip (who has greatly improved my understanding of Fudge's character 
by leading me to realize that he actually attained his current 
position due to his preternatural skill at charades) wrote:

> Yup, sticking to updating once a day sounds good, though I wouldn't 
> be too specific about *when*. We've got an 8 hour time difference 
> between FAQers anyway. 

Yes, I agree that the time zone discrepancy is unavoidable, and I 
don't think that we really need worry too much about it. So long as 
everyone is updating the database only once a day -- whenever 
their "day" might be -- then only 24 hours worth of any given 
discrepancy is likely to accumulate.  No need to get any more 
specific than that.  

The "once a day" idea is really just to prevent the situation in 
which the database is being updated every hour on the hour by ten 
different people.  Ten different people in different time zones and 
on different schedules doing so only once a day each, though, 
is a situation that we can manage.


Eileen quavered:

> I haven't been representing every thread. There was a "Who would 
> you like to date?" and "Who would your best friend be?" and "Who is 
> your favourite character, who your least favourite character?" and 
> a highly entertaining discussion of how to make GoF into a movie 
> that I remember. And I haven't the faintest idea where they are now!

No worries.  We haven't had a centralized set of protocols to work 
from, which is my fault, not yours.  With luck, we should have one of 
those ready by tonight.  Er...my night, that is.  Which means your 
tomorrow.

> Forgive me, Elkins, forgive me!

Oh lord, Eileen, stop *tempting* me like that, will you?  You'll send 
me straight over my Edge.  Again.  And then I'll have to spend 
*another* two months lying on George's couch being deprogrammed.

Pip suggests a new character for Theory Bay.  Ann.

> A sweet girl, rather like Faith (but without the Edge), who agrees 
> to everything and never, ever comes up with an original idea.

Why, yes!  I believe that I've met Ann.  She gets around a lot more 
than Faith, sad to say.  In fact, there are entire *threads* that she 
seems to have claimed as her own personal domain.



Elkins