Alternative/Supplement to Search?

About This Message Board
1

I’m sure nobody really cares, but I’m wondering if something that might help the server and bandwidth issue a little, as well as giving a greater sense of organization to the site, is having an annotated list of GQ and GD threads, offline from the SDMB servers, that have been reviewed. These would be maintained on Geocities or some other place, and would consist only of links, and reviews/commentary on the linked threads. No actual material from the SDMB would be off-site.

The advantage of this is that people would not have to keep searching for some topics, and they would not have to keep loading thread after thread to find where the real “meat and potatoes” information is. A link to this would be featured prominently in the icons in the upper right hand portion of the Forum display, and the Search page would also contain an icon and a link that calls this list of threads out. This would be most useful for several hot-button topics in GQ and GD, but may be useful for ones of lesser concern too, like “coal”. For example, I put together this little sample of how all threads dealing with “coal” that I could quickly find would work.
Anthracite’s SDMB General Questions/Great Debates Annotated Directory Version 0.001

Threads are listed by topic area, and then by order of (IMO) on-topicness, relevance, and completeness (best to worst).

Coal, ash:
“Did I hear COAL???” (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=41889) – wide ranging topic on electricity production from coal. Much discussion of ash usage.

Coal, combustion, general:
“Coal…???” (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=36555) – discussion of several coal topics, including literature references.

Coal, combustion, residential:
“Can I burn coal in my woodstove?” (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=36174) – complete info on the ramifications of residential coal use.

*“House coal?”* http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=57909 – general question on whether people still have residential coal furnaces.

*“Coal…???”* (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=36555) – discussion of several coal topics, including literature references. Posting by Fierra on residential use.

Coal, electricity production from:
“Did I hear COAL???” (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=41889) – wide ranging topic on electricity production from coal.

*“Energy from Waste Coal?”* (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=64254) – discussion of characterization and utilization of “waste coal” resources.

Coal, jewelry (jet):
“Coal…???” (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=36555) – discussion of several coal topics, including literature references.

Coal, misc:
“Did I hear COAL???” (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=41889) – wide ranging topic on electricity production from coal. Discussion of ash usage, safety in mining, politics.

*“Coal – how much fossil structure is left?* (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=47501) – discussion about fossils in coal.

*“Chronos is a moderator now?”* (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=39376) – a thread which gets horribly off-topic and has some detailed info on the maximum ppm of coal dust allowable in mines.

*“Question about coal”* (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=73528) – a question about the lyrics to “16 tons”.

*“Iron pot found in 295 million year old coal deposit”* (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=61779) – debunking an urban legend.

*“Spark plug found in coal?”* (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=33978) – debunking an urban legend.

Coal, pollution from:
“Sulfur in coal” (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=38040) – the be-all and end-all of where sulfur comes from in coal, and how it is distributed in the coal. Contains some other coal power plant info.

*“Did I hear COAL???”* (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=41889) – wide ranging topic on electricity production from coal. Much discussion of ash usage.

Coal, tar:
“Why does coal tar cure dandruff?” (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=25931) – a complete thread on coal tar and its use on hair. Some dandruff info.

Combustion:
“What’s the coldest flame?” (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=69340) – a question about low-temperature combustion, with some off-topic noise in it.

Energy, politics:
“Coal power vs. Nuclear: How clean? How safe?” (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=55605) – excellent thread comparing relative safeties and cost/benefits of these two power sources.

*“Did I hear COAL???”* (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=41889) – wide ranging topic on electricity production from coal. Short political blurb at end about the Utah coal resources and Clinton.

Energy, World/US supply:
“Energy resources – what can we do?” (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=68535) – a question about alternative combustion fuel sources, with some discussion on renewable energy.

*“Plastic fired boilers”* (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=38163) – thread about using plastics/industrial items as fuel for combustion power.

This sort of arrangement seems daunting, at first. And I guess it is - provided only one or a couple people do it. But what if a handful of frequent, trusted posters are allowed to get together and help out on it. Seems like in not too long we would have a pretty good catalogue of useful threads, with reviews. And these would be relatively easy to update.

Anyhow…I guess it’s another one of my Bad Ideas, huh?

2

Well, I think it’s a nice idea.

Couple more thoughts:

On the thread display page, place a button to allow the average reader to say “nice thread”, with a textfield to fill in keywords they think apply.

This will simply send the info to your off-line site, where we can maintain a raw DB of suggested threads and keywords, and redirect them back to the thread display with a “thank you” note.

No guarantee that anybody is going to do anything about them, but a report of hits by keyword would let you know what keywords are “going begging” for somebody to index the threads. For keywords that have already been volunteered for by somebody, it would provide that person with some threads they might like to investigate.

Off the top of my head:

Nomination:

thread - threadid of nominated thread
user - userid of nominator
id - surrogate key

unique on user / thread (no ballot box stuffing)

NominatedKeywords

nomination references Nomination.id
keyword

You might also maintain tables of User / Thread to be able to locally access desired information about them, and a Volunteer / VolunteeredKeywords table to keep track of who’s claiming what. That implies a “keyword” join, and joins on character data make my skin crawl, so maybe a keyword lookup table with another surrogate key.

Standard DB reporting tools could provide relevent information for volunteers and potential volunteers. There may be a little DBA work for somebody to massage keywords we’ve decided were synonyms and so on, but I’ll bet it would be a pretty small set of operations you could come up with a few canned queries for.

Another way to offload the search engine - I’m sure there are a lot of searchs on threads by user. You could have a daemon periodically mirror a subset of the MySQL info sufficient for supporting lookup of threads by user, and replace that part of the search with a request to your offline site driving a pretty simple lookup which would report a set of links back to the real SD sitea again.

3

Do you need SD staff blessing for this? It sounds like a good idea to me - perhaps it’s worth recruiting a few people and getting on with it, if you have the inclination?

pan

4

Technically, since it is only links and reviews, and not content, one could do it independently. But why?

I guess we will have to see if someone will respond. No one has responded to my e-mails, and no one responded to my two requests in the Pit, so…

5

Oh, I’m not saying that one shouldn’t seek blessings upon ye. Just that given that it is a good idea, it may well be worth pursuing even if Tuba et al choose to ignore this thread.

I’d love to offer to help myself, but sadly it isn’t possible, for reasons of being a lazy workshy sumbitch.

pan

6

Ditto. It would be very useful for the weekly round of “we’ve already discussed this” threads, but I’m a bit snowed under at work at the moment. Good idea, though.

7

Well, for what it’s worth, I think it’s a great idea, and there’s a few other pages out there which have similar links (on a far smaller scale), so it should be OK from a legal standpoint. Let’s wait to see what Tuba or Lynn says, though.

In the meantime, all of the Threadspotting threads are already listed on the Archives page(independant of the message board search), so if you think that the thread you’re looking for might be a Threadspotting, you can save yourself (and everyone else) a lot of waiting by checking there first.

8

I personally think it’s an outstanding idea. It’s kind of akin to starting your own encyclopedia, really. It’s very time consuming and tedious, but when it’s all done it’ll be one of the most valuable reference materials around.

And that’s really what the SDMB is, anyway: an encyclopedia. There is a greater variety in the topics covered on this message board than in just about any other medium, including many encyclopedias.

I would love to help out. Right now, however, I am in the middle of my own project.

I applaud your efforts. Here’s a further thought. Perhaps people who do have both the time and the inclination could pick a topic of which they have more than just a passing interest and compile a thread list on that subject alone, as you have. (I do realize you didn’t mean for just you alone to perform this task, that a small group of others would need to do it.)

This is decidedly NOT a bad idea. In fact, you’re proving to me that you wish to use your power of Intelligence for good, not evil. :slight_smile: This can only be beneficial to everyone.

9

The SDMB Encyclopedia. Has an interesting ring to it, but I imagine it can’t use the name “SDMB” or “Straight Dope” unless it is controlled in some way by the Chicago Reader. Not that that is anything bad, but it defeats the purpose of reducing the bandwidth drain if it on their site, sharing the same Net access.

It should be easy to find some people who could divide up topics. I would volunteer for Energy/Oil related ones, someone could do Cars, Gay and Lesbian Issues, Abortion, Gun Control, Food, Medical, Sex, Music, Pop Culture…maybe divide it up by categories like that. In case of disputes about who should do what, Chronos would be the final word, perhaps.

It could be a Geocities site that has a main page that points to smaller pages of the sub-categories. That way each person can edit each sub-category without needing to synchronize with others.

A database solution sounds interesting at first, but I don’t know who would host it, and who has the honest-to-God time and ability and drive to do it. I would offer to host it, but my bandwidth is scarce. I would offer to maintain a web-accessable backup, like I have with the People Pages.