I’d noticed this before, but it didn’t really bother me until one of my posts showed up as the first post in the latest threadspotting thread:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=13796
I am sure that I did not originate that thread–what gives?
WAG here.
That thread was in existence during the fateful 4/28 changeover from UBB to vB, during which time many other threads were also altered in new and marvelous ways, mainly post order in the threads being scrambled. Looks like the OP for this one may have had its pixels all changed into jelly beans and the Wicked Witch of the West ate them.
I’m not sure, but it could be that the first post was dullwit’s on 03-20-2000 12:35 AM. There are six other posts on 03-19 before it, though, including one of dullwit’s own.
There were a couple of times that the clock was wrong. Sometimes a day, sometimes a few hours, sometimes the AM/PM was wrong.
UBB didn’t sort by date & time, but when we went to the new software, it did. So when the clock was reset in the middle of a thread, the thread stayed in the right order with the UBB software but the time and dates looked funny (posting the day before the person above you). When the threads were converted the new software sorted them in date/time sequence which made some thread out of order.
The clock was off on the day before the switch-over which made it look like the conversion really scrambled things.
I reasonably sure that’s what happened.
JIm
Would that explanation work if the only post misplaced was the first one? That seems to be the case–although I am not absolutely positive.
We did have a few glitches in our conversion to the new board, that’s true.
And we had strained the old UBB system to its limits, we lost stuff there as well.
So it’s hard to say exactly when or where the problem started, but we hope all that’s behind us now.
Of course, if you see any further episodes like this, plese let us know soonest.
your humble TubaDiva
Administrator
Yes, the explanation could work if the clock were 12 fast at the time of dullwit’s OP and corrected before you posted at 2:09pm. If dullwit’s post was actually at 3/19/00 12:35pm instead of 3/20/00 12:35am, then everything falls back in order. And it was hard to notice with the UBB software because the order didn’t change.
I remember the date rolling over at noon once or twice and was corrected shortly afterwards. I can’t find anything with a search that it did happen on that day, but it would be still be my guess that it did. We had a lot of outages around that time.
Jim
Tuba
Would it be bad form to correct it as it is now?
I know that the threadspotting link won’t be there forever, but right now my post looks like it started that damn nonsense–and in a totally inexplicable way.
Unfortunately, we are unable to correct the thread. Once it came over from UBB that way, that’s the way it has to stay.
What we can (and I did) do, though, is add an explanatory note to the first post, ahead of your comments. Let me know if that covers it for you, or if I can add something further.
Sorry for your inconvenience.
Earlier today I looked up an old thread from last September (well before the episode with the time stamp) and noticed the OP was missing. I looked at some from last September and October and found a few more like that. I guess they got decapitated in the port to vB.
No inconvenience! Thanks. Two nits though. I’m pretty sure I was the first to respond–which did set the surreal tone, I admit. And the times are off by an hour–are you east coast, and you’ve set the times to auto-translate into your time zone?
Official SDMB time is Central Time.
Yes, but in your profile you can change the time that appears. So, if you refer to a particular post by its time stamp by the time that appears, you may not be accurate. I’m guessing that’s what happened here.
Doh! That’s exactly what I did. Tonight I’ll rework the intro to find another, non-time-sensitive reference to the OP and to make the order of the responses a mystery for the reader to figure out.