Okay. Enough with the darn clusters already.

after posting, click to see if you've been 'clustered'. If you have, you can quickly delete your post. You waste time, but may feel less foolish.

Hm.

Okay, littlek, you're trying to be practical. I appreciate that.

But, as a matter of fact, it doesn't make me feel less foolish.

I hate clusters.

The way I've been working around that in an active thread is by right clicking on the reply button to open a new browser window or tab and composing my reply there. Then, before I post it, I refresh the view of the other window to see what's been added after I hit the reply button and then modify my response if needed, or discard it if it's already been said.

You must not be a statistician.

Are you trying to tell me something, littlek?

not really. Clusters are meaningful to statisticians.

I'm with you, oe. If I'm lucky, I just delete it. Otherwise it's just hung there on the thread for eternity to be seen by all!

Exactly.

These clusters will change my online persona completely. I'll be known as old "a minute late" europe.

That's okay, Old "A Minute Late" Europe, I find most of your writing informative no matter how many times others have said a variation on the same theme.

If quality takes a minute later getting there, I don't mind waiting for it.

As Noddy would say, be your own cluster and hold your dominion!

The clusters are happening because people aren't resorting their view of the site, so they keep seeing the same topics over and over again and replying to them. As users get used to the site and start changing their views of it to suit their own purposes or whims, you'll see less clustering. Right now the behavior is as if there are only ten to thirty new topics on the site, which obviously nowhere near being the case.

what are the clusters we're talking about

they're the nut ones, held together with chocolate.

What's wrong with them??

I tried to find an illustration, to better explain.

Here's one of those buggers:



And don't tell me they "look pretty", or something...

Nah, that's not what I mean.

What I'm talking about is the phenomena that, when I try to answer some question is something, I click on the "reply" button, type up my pretty answer, and by the time I've posted, 5 other people have already answered the question.

All within 1 or 3 minutes. And all of them had much more intelligent answers than what I've typed up.

In the old version, that could be avoided by hitting "preview", and you'd see if somebody else had posted to the thread. In the new version, you have use some smart workaround (like the one Butrflynet came up with).

Anyways, the weird thing is this clustering of replies. Nobody replies to a thread for half an hour, and then, just when I'm deciding to reply, nine other people squeeze in an intelligent answer.

It's the ghosts in the machine, I say.

Well, people know stuff or have some ideas about it. They are "clue..sters"

They post together too..

Okay, Francis. That was a pretty smart answer.

<scratches head>

I'll vote your post up.

Part of it is the speed of the site. It's quite a remarkable change.

I've noticed it not only within threads but on the site. By the time I post something, there are many more new posts on a variety of threads than there were on the old version of A2k.

S'brilliant.

oe wrote:
I suppose that's the very same system as in a closing machine without closing mean.

ehBeth - right! The speed is really amazing. Good point, too. I guess in the old version, when lots of people would post at the same time, the system would just stall... maybeperhaps? Occasionally, I had that impression... typed up something, tried to post it, and A2K told me something about... dunno, some error. When I went back, lots of people had replied to something.

Here, you just post - et voilà! Marvellous.

---

Walter - what's a "a closing machine"?