Considering a slight improvement in process

[boyd_smythe]

> Paul wrote:
> Boyd has talked with Carolyn about a method that he thought would 
> help him move through the posts more quickly.
> 
> I won't summarize his suggestion for fear of confusing two possible 
> methods.  But I thought I could use his idea in another way.

boyd:

Don't want to leave y'all in the dark. In a nutshell, the idea is to 
add another button next to "Set Categories" that would Set Categories 
as marked, but for the rest of the thread instead of just the one 
post. We'd then read each post in the thread as usual, changing the 
categories of each post if necessary. But a thread that starts on 
wizarding money, for example, is likely to be more than half on that 
same topic, so we'd hit Set Category quite a bit less.

In fact, if half of the posts are part of threads, and if a quarter of 
those posts are in the same categories as the first post in a thread, 
then in the next 100,000 posts we'd save 12,500 clicks on Set 
Category. That would mean less time waiting for the page to reload 
after we click it and less bandwidth for Paul's server, too. 
Especially handy for threads that start OT and stay that way for 20 
posts. :)

Paul, I also really liked your idea of sorting some categories to the 
top. A slight variation would be great under any circumstances: sort 
all of the CHECKED categories to the top. That way, if we need to go 
back and change how we sorted one, it's far easier. Imagine the 
benefits if we ever get to a phase II where we do a little advanced 
resorting!

> The other idea I've had would be to see if this could be made into a 
> java application.  I was thinking that by doing so, the category 
> list wouldn't need to be reloaded each time.  I think that panel is 
> around 30K and probably is larger than most posts.  I'm not a Java 
> programmer, so that would give me a chance to figure something new 
> out.

That'd be absolutely great! Frankly, this would likely have more 
impact than anything else we could do. Paul, when it comes to 
computers, you're our Dumbledore.

Now if we could only make some kind of Sorting, oh I don't know, Cap 
or something that would put the posts in the right categories, maybe 
even sing a FILK just before it started sorting, perhaps carry around 
the weapon of our founder (Jo's pen is mightier than the sword, after 
all).... Sorry, couldn't resist!

--boyd