Forums
This is the place for announcements about stuff elsewhere on the site.
Seems to me ...
This might be a good spot to announce what the heck is going on with this site the last little while. Yesterday off the air all day, Monday coming and going with no updates to Tapers section ... how about using this forum to make some:
Announcements About Dead.Net
and otherwise shedding some light on the increasingly erratic nature of the site. Otherwise you should nuke this part of the Forum
cool. We have mentioned it in several other locales, but...
the very short version is that high traffic in response to the Road Trips announcement exacerbated some other issues, and there was massive server meltdown, and not just at dead.net.
Word is the Tapers section, which was dealing with some missing-file issues of its own when all this hit, will be up shortly.
Sorry for all the trouble.
It's all GOOD !
no shirts, no shoes no stress...udawoman marye...keep up a most excellent job!
143or245
stay safe and feel good!
Button, button, I made a button!
I made a button for bloggers and website managers to use, to promote Dead.Net.
It works! I tested it on my blog and clicked on it to get here! You are free to use it, sorry about the length:
Button, button, I made a button!--pt 2
OOOPS, it didn't print the code. Here it is, just close the spaces between href and the = sign, to make it print right:
Third time is the charm
Okay, well, dayum. Instead of a = I used a & in the first line. Replace the & with =
harumph
I'm sorry, it won't let me print the html code! :(
If yall want it, just email me: Whofan917@yahoo.com
...and I'll be glad to send it along for you to use.
My kisses and hugs to you all,
Daisy
Deadheads for Barack Obama!
Please check out this website! We have the power, we must unite!
crissy
this topic is for announcements about this system. Deadheads for Obama does not qualify.
We have a topic for discussing the 2008 campaign here:
http://www.dead.net/forum/campaign-2008-who-do-you. That is the place for posts such as this. Go talk about Barack there.
Since there is a very sizeable portion of the local population that is deeply offended at getting spammed by political advocacy in inappropriate topics, I put on my mod hat and say that such posts outside the politics topic will be treated as spam and summarily removed. I'm leaving this one for the sake of illustration, but any further instances will be deleted. Thank you.
CCj for President!
I would like to announce my candidacy for President... am I allowed to do that here??
I am a member of dead.net after all.
when elected, I promise...
but seriously folks,
kudos to marye (and the other members of the Mod Squad) for trying to keep things in order here. thanks, marye.
I hate spammers of all kinds and like others, it irks me a bit to keep seeing the same stuff all over the place here.
peace.
lets dead it all together
Hello all, this is a cool siteits like play-by-post games.
you should make it more like a fund-raising website for non-profits.
Jerry would've love to see programs for heart victims, young and old.
If you generate a will, a plan, you can make difference.
god speed,
Paul, Lost Finger Project
Chat Room
Folks, if things are working as they should, you will see, in the left-hand menu under "Dead Community"--
Chatroom.
Yes, by popular demand, we have a chatroom.
It is very simple and bare-bones for the moment, but it seems to work. And, to forestall one obvious question, for the moment we just have the one chat room (let's work out one set of bugs at a time...) but that will probably change over time. For one thing, the feature's usefulness for special events is obvious. Etc.
So have fun!
And if you're not seeing that link, report issues in the topic I will be opening momentarily. Thanks!
Some well meant suggestions
I have found myself becoming a little detached from the site lately and have been thinking about why this might be. Lots of good people are here for sure, but the site is becoming hard to navigate around and I am getting a bit frustrated with some of the content. Here are some well meant ideas and suggestions that may just apply to me or that others may also agree with.
NAVIGATION
As the site and the number of users grow, easy navigation becomes more and more important.
1. Please sort out the forums to show the most recent post first. Many have asked for this many times and I cannot think of any reason why it has not been changed. At the moment it takes way too long to find ones way to the latest post on a forum and I think that this affects whether and how people contribute. It puts people off reading and posting, it prevents spontaneous snappy dialogue and encourages long rambling essays like this one (once you have found your way to the right page, there is a tendency to get the maximum reward for your effort!).
2. Please consider changing the display to show more posts per page so that scrolling and searching is faster. The displays waste a lot of space.
3. Please fix the search function so that it takes you to the actual post that the search finds, not just the first page of the forum where the post is located. At present the function is useless.
4. Please consider making the Vines a separate ‘type’, rather than forum topics. The ‘Most Recent Posts’ page tends to get swamped very quickly by vine communications, because each vine is a separate forum topic. So new posts on forums and new stories tend to get lost quickly from the headline page, causing promising threads to die. I worry that a lot of newer folks do not find out about all the forums that exist, many of which are becoming rather moribund. I am in no way trying to hamper the vining (no way!), but if the vines were a separate ‘type’ or even a whole separate section of the site then viners could readily go there to check out what was happening without the recent post list getting swamped. Does that make sense?
CONTENT
Please (as I have mentioned elsewhere) commission and headline some more mainstream Grateful Dead stories. Great shows, great tours, notorious events etc. The only regular (and very welcome) features of that kind are the David Lemieux’s stories in the Tapers section and the adding of interesting archive materials to support music releases
BAND MEMBERS
And why oh why no interviews with or direct contributions from Bob, Phil, Mickey and Bill (there has been an interview with Donna Jean)? Are they not wanting to cooperate or are they not being asked? Bob Weir at least has given interviews to various magazines this year, so why not dead.net? I am getting rather frustrated with the long succession of headline features about members of Ratdog and Phil and Friends. Interesting for sure and nothing against those guys, but can we not mix the new stuff with more real Grateful Dead news and features? Both bands have fine websites of their own and Blair Jackson and others must have a wealth of untold stories about the Good Old Grateful Dead.
EDITORIAL CONTENT
In fact it is not very clear who is controlling editorial content or how it is decided. Indeed who are TPTB? It would be nice to know and for these people to engage a bit more with the folks who support this site and actually respond to suggestions and requests. These ideas are intended to enable the site to become rather more dynamic and relevant, to encourage quicker, easier posting and wider use of the forums. But based on past experience this message will be kindly passed on up the line by Marye to TPTB and ‘vanish in the air’
or maybe its just me :-(
Well put, badger.
As usual, you observations appear to be spot on, at least as I see it. Especially treating the vines as a separate type other than "Forum Post." This would make the Filter By Type combo on All Recent Posts even more useful.
Conversation is always more interesting than recitation, so speak your mind and not someone else's.
and mebbe some cake
oops!! sorry....when my computer actually works i just can't help my self....heeheehee!!
hm, thanks for the thoughts
as far as last post first, I'm kind of against it for various reasons, not least of which is that if the blasted feature to take you to new posts actually worked it would be a nonissue and discussions could remain linear. That feature has been on the to-do list forever, though I am not sure what the technical feasibility is. Believe me, I know this is a drag.
I would also note, WRT the vines, that I'll look into how feasible this would be--I don't think it's out of the question, but anything that involves manually retrofitting hundreds of existing vines is, uh, not happening, most likely. My overall concern, however, is that is it somewhat noteworthy and by no means a foregone conclusion that there is tape trading here at all, let alone a thriving vineyard (this is not the case on all Dead-related sites, spinoff, official or otherwise), and I am not looking for opportunities to rock the boat on the subject.
All that said, I tend to agree we've lost some momentum lately, and while I think some of this is inevitable post-election exhaustion, to say nothing of pre-holiday exhaustion, I appreciate badger speaking up. Thoughts, folks?
thanks Bob
one thing to keep in mind is that for various reasons (Egypt and/or the election at the top of the list, I'd guess) we have seen a lot of new folks arriving over the last couple of months, and sticking around and talking and starting vines etc. This is of course a good thing, but it does have the side effect that if you're a longtime resident and go away for a couple weeks, the neighborhood's going to look different when you get back.
This is not news of course, just sayin'. Please resume discussion...
wrt the foregoing
there are quite a few different threads in Badger's excellent post, so I'm kinda trying to sort them out into the technical, the social, the navigational, the content, etc. Not that they're entirely separable of course.
But as long as we're talking about what could work better, might as well be here as anywhere else, and have at it (with the understanding that I'm making no promises other than to pass this along when we're at a reasonable place in the discussion to do so!).
My two cent's worth.
I am not really technically sophisticated, but I manage to navigate around the site fairly well. On the other hand, there can always be improvements and Badger's suggestions make sense to me.
I also think the people who contribute to the site (Mary, DL, Gans, all the authors of articles, etc.) are doing a great job, and their efforts are definitely appreciated. Certainly, the Vineyard is great for those of us either filling in their collection or getting started with one.
My major gripe concerns the lack of the surviving member's participation on the site. Do they even know or care about this site? How about a chat once in a while or a message from the guys? I don't mean self-serving announcements about releases or tours. I just feel as though there is a total disconnect with the band itself.
Thanks for listening.
"Let there be songs to fill the air."
Right on!
Well said C Badge. I thought it was just me. Nothing against the Phil & Friends scene, Ratdog, their fans, on and on, but those guys / bands have their own websites.
After sifting through that stuff, and all the vine stuff, one can tend to forget (or care) why they checked in at all.
some more ideas
Sorry I forgot to mention David Gans’ GD Hour slots as something definitely in the ‘plus’ column. I don’t get Sirius but DG seems to be including in his ‘Tales from the Golden Road’ show much more of the type of feature I would like to see here.
Here’s some off the top my head ideas suggestions for features here
- Merl, Jerry and the Dead: a retrospective of Merl and the boys (with Tapers section tie in)
- 40 (41 Actually) Years of Dark Star! From Oakland to Penn State (with Tapers section Tie In) Same for other classic tunes (Playing in the Band maybe, as David Lemieux is being teased about how often he features it)
- Interviews with Bob, Mickey, Bill, Phil, Donna Jean, Robert Hunter, John Perry Barlow etc
- Interview with David Lemieux
- Interview with Charlie Miller!!!!
- Grateful Guests. Jamming with Dead
- Dark Star Orchestra; more than a tribute band?
excellent thoughts!
(or, hell, I'd read those articles...)
Anybody else?
how about?
'Secrets of the perfect cookie' by Johnman
A virtual tour of Buddy Plant's amazing poster collection
This cue ain't straight in line - the truth about CC Joe!
'How to surf deadnet while pretending to work' - Rider, '73 and many others
Role playing the Grateful Dead - by Tigerlilly
The continuing adventures of SUPERHAL!
.......and many many more
I could write that article
'How to surf deadnet while pretending to work' - Rider, '73 and many others"
I am practicing that right now!
*********************************************
I have a sigfile! --> www.kindveggieburritos.com
*********************************************
'How to surf deadnet while pretending to work'
Doesn't work for me, too much clay on my hands. ;)
Two words, PK:
Helper monkey!
Or learn to type with your toes, that's what I did. Multi-tasking at its finest!
*********************************************
I have a sigfile! --> www.kindveggieburritos.com
*********************************************
My 2 cents is that
The site has been kinda dull because of a dry spell of badger's wise and humorous words. ;-) Great new topic ideas, one and all. Specially the johnman cookie recipe-wanna know that!!**********************************
Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone, you will still exist, but you have ceased to live.
Samuel Clemens
Hey markinthedark, do you
Hey markinthedark, do you mean the tazier monkey. found in the Phillipines. The worlds smallest primate. Can turn it's head 180 degrees, gotta help with the work surfing thing! ;)
on another note, the navigation issue, I like the idea of being able to access the recent post when you go to a forum, but understand that it may render older ,very pertinent posts not so accessible.
I am really a newbie, but really believe that you don't know what you got til it's gone, and this needs to stay. Magic happens here. I have seen it.
I lived in the phillipines,I
I lived in the phillipines,I know that monkey, well not THAT monkey, but we had one, I was 11 and it would have definitly helped me, except it was 1969 and the computer thing might have the little guy for a loop.
ps. thank you marye, you are a sparkle in the sun.
this space
this space, the forum, is way too hard to handle, way too big, too many topics...
now that can not change, and shouldn't. just the way I see it.
so perhaps, like some folks, I tend to just look at a few of the threads and only participate in those. If I recognize a name on the main forum screen, as the last poster, (like I just did now) I might take a poke around and see what was up.
I do seriously think that the chat room takes a lot away from the forum. not that that is bad, but if people are busy chatting, they might not feel like posting up stories or whatever or continuing a day/week/month old dialog.
for local reasons I suppose, I can not chat with my MacApple 'puter... so using that, I just have to use the forum.
YES, the badger makes numerous good points and has some good idears, best of which is that the boys from the band should have a voice here should they choose to participate, and yes, I would love to have a last post first thing, or at least the ability to go to the last posts I saw.
if it were possible to 'subscribe' to topics that might help, then if the search thing or 'show recent posts' or whatever would take you to where YOU were last time that would be a big plus. They have that feature over at deadnetcentral and it really helps navigation.
nobody can be everywhere, and everybody can be nowhere. and??? ok, that train of thought just crashed.
badger, oh badger, "This cue ain't straight in line" might be a gobsmacking topic, but knowing that you and I HAVE indeed walked some of the same streets, streets where the sunny side of the street is dark, (you know where) that might not really be 'cricket'
alls I'll say is truth is stranger than fiction.
and anyways, my cue is most certainly straight in line!!
http://www.pechauer.com/
so there!
( -;
Speaking of Cricket
I heard on NPR this morning that it's about to become America's favorite passtime :)
PEACE & Happy Tofu Turkey Day!
Good points cc, but i like
Good points cc, but i like the feel of it, being like the parking lot. so much going on you can't possibly take it all in, maybe thats the beauty of it. seems to be kinda working like that, i look around a nd see...ccjoe..hey whats happening?..hey rider, very colorful view you have...hey,grdaed73,been in any traffic jams lately?........you can almost smell the veggie burritos and see the balloons.
Actually, cc, I misspoke and
Actually, cc, I misspoke and as soon as I read my post..probably supposed to do that before it goes public..I thought, should have have left the "but" out. just a dumb typo...along with the usual cases of misspelled words......but grdaed73 is my online editor...he try's to be iknowyouriders also, but his anglo saxon dictionary is rated pg,oh well it's the effort that counts!
ps- why am I hungry for tofu all of a sudden?
still!!
hey, c'mon, i like widdle turkeys, ok! got chased by a roving band of em outside of mauston, on a fall day just like this... dadadada dadadada @@@. and they're much worse than the packs of thug geese at chicagos waterfront parks, least i knew the geese could fly!! yikes
no problem, pk.
no problem, pk.
spelling don't count.
BUT using conjunctions is another matter...
AND:
just watch how much Tofu Turkey you eat though, it HAS been known to give some folks the 'hard runs'
OR
they have to 'move' 'really have to mo've'...
( -;
BUT
(how many times can I say the same joke before it gets boring?)
whats your fuction!?
damn you cc, now i got that stupid song in my head!!!! and keep tellin the joke, we'll let you know!
yuks
the original joke, which I have probably repeated at least 3-4 times was the 'hard runs' after eating tofu turkey was made in the game show, round a. bear had guessed Bertha, then said something about wanting to eat tofu turkey.
( -;
I should credit and give kudos for the "I had to move, really had to mo've" part of the joke to a dude nick-named blue-jay-way who added that line after hearing the 'hard runs' part of the don't eat too much tofu turkey joke.
peace.
bluejay...
too bad he doesn't hang around these parts so much any more.
I propose a forum titled
I propose a forum titled Blue Jay Way in his honor. Hey cc, maybe an episode of your game show, just watched today an episode of Jeopardy which was Steely Dan themed, bizzaarly cool, waiting for the Todd Rundgren episode "International Feel".
Blue Jay Way?
I used to party at the top of Blue Jay Way all the time back in the seventies and eighties! A great place to burn one back in the day! (You can still sneak one in.)
Larree.ws
Any word on SPRING 2009 tour????
Do you know if any word on if the dead r playin again??? It was said in state college they might do again...??? let me know??? ~~~~~peace~~~~
Fare Thee Well...