ES is looking for volunteers to move threads into new categories.

neptronix

Administrator
Staff member
Joined
Jun 15, 2010
Messages
17,532
Location
Utah, USA
Okay, so in our ebike section, we have a lot of different non-hub motor drives

The ideal work flow:
I create a tool that allows us to easily mark and move threads, supplanting the need for giving access to the moderator control panel.
I create a section for 'Ebike other drives'.
I create a section for 'Ebike hub motor drives'.
I create a section for 'Ebike rear chain drives'.

Work phases:
1) Volunteer moves all non-mid drives ( friction drive, etc ) from 'EBike Non-hub Motor Drives' to 'Ebike other drives'.
2) Volunteer scans 'Ebike Non-hub Motor drives' for hub motor threads and moves them to 'Ebike hub motor drives'.
3) Volunteer scans 'Ebike Non-hub Motor drives' for rear chain threads and moves them to 'Ebike rear chain drives'.
4) I rename 'Ebike Non-hub Motor drives' to 'Ebike mid drives'.

And then we have:
'Ebike other drives'
'Ebike hub motor drives'
'Ebike mid drives'
'Ebike rear chain drives'

This is probably 16 hours of work in total.
You could volunteer to do just one phase, which would amount to 5 hours of work, or a sunday/saturday. Or the whole enchilada.

I promise the tool used to mark these threads will be as convenient to use as possible and show a small snippet of the original post and post title so you can easily do this job on all one screen. 100% accuracy is not required. Just read the first post and make the decision from there. We can clean up the mess created by topics that have changed from one subject to another later.

If you'd like to volunteer, let me know if you want to just take one phase of the project, or the entire enchilada.
 
It sounds like the kind of thing I already do on an irregular basis when I find miscategorized threads. :)

I can't sit down to do it specifically, but I can continue to do it in the few minutes here and there I have between helping people and nodding off (which I do all the time sitting here). I don't even need a tool for it. ;)

But I guess you'd need the tool for others to do it. :)

Where is that ZZZZZzzzz.... smiley, anyway? :lowbatt:
 
You'll immediately want to use the tool versus the moderator control panel. It would make the process painless and infinitely easier to track what you have categorized versus not. It's 5-7 less clicks per thread and has the fastest possible workflow. It also reduces human error.

I'll provide a visual concept on this thread when i get the time. You'll understand the value immediately.
I'll consider your offer, but once we make new subforums, i'd like threads recategorized within a week so that posters don't make the job harder. So the work should be spread over a 2 day period at the most.
 
neptronix said:
So the work should be spread over a 2 day period at the most.
Sorry, I'm not qualified to help in that time limitation. Hopefully someone else can help out.

(Though I would guess they would have to be doing little else except this all day for both days, I could be wrong).



I'd like to help, but I can't imagine how I could possibly do even a portion of that much work (almost five thousand threads to categorize!) over two *days*. Two weeks, maybe (but I doubt it--probably more like a month or more). I'm almost always just too exhausted to concentrate on anything that long even on my two days off (when I may have up to a few hours in a day to do things, between involuntary naps and taking care of dog stuff and household chores I can't do on workdays), much less after getting home from work (when I might have an hour or two scattered amongst dozings). :(
 
I know you're one of the few people willing to do this, so i could design this so multiple people could use it at once.
Instead of the work being divided into phases, all 3 phases could be one pass. It would be a page by page affair, and each user would be given a page after hitting 'next'.

it's more work to code but that work would cut down on volunteer time needed.

I would be willing to put part of a weekend in if you're willing to put part of a weekend in also.
 
It's not a matter of willingness. :(

Have you ever been so tired that you could feel yourself flowing down from your head to your toes? So tired that you can doze off standing up, or have no awareness of having walked from one point to another in a building? So tired that you doze off whenever you sit down, and then wake from whatever stress nightmare plagues you, then doze and wake and doze and wake repeatedly while doing things at the computer (or whatever you're sitting there to do)? So tired that you can't remember things even while you're saying them, or typing them? Dozing in the middle of typing things, having to pick up the thread of thoughts once awakened from the involuntary nap (often being unable to)? Many (most, I'd bet) people ((in western cultrue that aren't phsyical laborers or slaves) have never been that tired, for more than a day or so in a long long stretch. Almost no one I've ever talked to actually understands how tired this actually is.

That's been my life for nearly the last year or so (and has been that way for several other long periods of my life, too)....I've been so tired for so long that I can "automatically" do routine things, like large parts of my dayjob, without even being aware of them or remembering them; I sometimes think I may actually be partially asleep during some or a lot of these times....

So I'm very willing to do a lot of things...I just dont' have the physical ability to manage it. Maybe someday, when I'm not doing the work of several people (that won't do it themselves) just to make it thru the day, every day, but not now. (and no, there's nothing "medical" or otherwise that will help.)

In case anyone ever wondered why I rarely finish any project, and why they take me so long to do what little I do manage; this is one of the major reasons. By the time I get to some point in it, I have so many other things that also have to get done, there's just not enough time to dedicate to it, or I dont' remember where I was in it,

I dont' remember what I was typing here, because I dozed off somewhere before this sentence.

I help on the forums during my wake/doze periods before I finally really fall asleep or am too dozed out (but not asleep) to concentrate or remember what I'm doing,

Dozed again, lost train of thought. When i *am* awake I may be very awake...but it doesn't always last long. Been living on very strong coffee to function at work for a while now, but caffiene makes me sick so i can only handle it for a few days at a atime .

That's all probably way more than I needed to post...but I kept losing what I was going to say so it's very rambly. Sorry about that. :(

Anyway, I really just meant ot explain why just can't do what is needed within time constraints, so while I can do help do whatever I already do, I can't help with this particular project needs.
 
I fully understand and relate. My health, especially energy levels, cognitive, and emotional issues, was a living hell for the majority of my life. Yours sounds a bit worse.

I started out with heart palpitations despite no structural or electrical heart abnormality. Chronic severe depression. ADHD. Mild chronic fatigue. Digestive issues. Arthritis. Type 2 diabetes. Chronic sinus infections. Low testosterone.

I responded poorly to medication and have some permanent damage as a result of that, so natural medicine is always my first approach.

Through 13 years of experimenting on myself and reading 1,000's of scientific research papers, i've settled into a routine of exercise, dietary modification, supplementation, softcore nootropics, and neutraceuticals.. and that routine has been so life changing that it's made me into a completely different person than i was 13 years ago. My energy levels in my late 30's has been better than that in my 20's. Now the only thing i suffer from is much milder ADHD and dramatically milder arthritis.

I am still experimenting today to achieve a perfect state of tune. I am branching into mushroom and herbal based medicine.


Since i am not a licensed medical doctor, i cannot legally diagnose or treat you, but i would like to offer you 1-2 hours of my time over the phone to hear more about the state of your health and point you towards the best scientific research i know of, if you are willing to listen and follow through.
 
I want to say yes, but if I understand your time frame I have unreliable internet, I never know when it will slow down or stop for minutes, hours, whatever. Oh, could the phone run it too? But that's not much better.
 
neptronix said:
Since i am not a licensed medical doctor, i cannot legally diagnose or treat you, but i would like to offer you 1-2 hours of my time over the phone to hear more about the state of your health and point you towards the best scientific research i know of, if you are willing to listen and follow through.
I sincerely appreciate the offer.

Unfortunately, unless you can tell me how to force all of the many other people I have to deal with every day to do their jobs, do even the slightest bit of common-sense stuff, have even the slightest bit of courtesy towards others, pay attention to the world around them, and give a crap about anyone but themselves, then there isn't anything you can do. That's the primary reason I am so tired--I have to do everything they simply won't do, in order to be able to do my own job, or live my own life.

Then once I finally get to bed, I can't sleep because I can't stop thinking about all the stuff I'm going to have to do the next day, week, month, etc., that I shouldn't have to do...but have no choice in, if I am to continue doing what I need to. When i do sleep, the nightmares (which you don't want to hear about) that I always have from stress wake me up and then keep me from going back to sleep for anywhere from a while to at all.


Though they are much much less of an issue than the first problem, the other primary problems I have are simply being unable to get enough air whenever I'm doing much more than sitting there, and I don't think anyone can help with that, either--pretty sure that's permanent damage from whatever I had last spring/summer when it started. And my joints and bones, which are following in the rest of my family history's footsteps and hurting more and more every year. Since the first problem, along with general living, ensures I must always do much much much more than just sit there, and I can either choose to save up for hopeful eventual retirement (rather than working retail or something similar the rest of my life) or pay for medical "care" and "insurance" that is unlikely to actually help (based on everything the rest of my family has gone thru) not much to do about these except endure them.


Life isn't all bad--especially since I always have the dogs (Yogi, Kirin, Jelly, right now)...but right now, and for the last year, there's enough bad that it makes it hard to have energy or time to do anything with or about the other parts. :(
 
I had a feeling that would be your response. Ok.
 
Dauntless said:
I want to say yes, but if I understand your time frame I have unreliable internet, I never know when it will slow down or stop for minutes, hours, whatever. Oh, could the phone run it too? But that's not much better.

Well, thanks for the consideration.
 
neptronix said:
I had a feeling that would be your response. Ok.
Sorry; I guess I'm just too old and grumpy and tired of the stuff I deal with locally every day. :(

Also, I'm sure you've noticed there are short times when I'm very enthusiastic about things, then stuff happens and have a really hard time working up any enthusiasm about things at all, and this always gets worse. I apologise for letting that get in the way of stuff around here....
 
I had similar problems and my brain chemistry is now within 80% of an optimal tune after the 13 years of experimentation.
Now, instead of fatigue and depression being my norm, i have the opposite problem. My brain is always on and ready. I can go days without coffee or any other stimulant, and it's still going. I have 9 clients who would keep me busy 24/7 if my partner didn't intervene and force me to slow down. All my mental capacity has been soaked up by those i serve.
I'm desperately trying to hire someone for my business to fill part of my shoes so that i have free time to work on projects like this one.

I understand that you want to help but cannot and do not fault you. However, the work you have done in the past is a big chunk of what has made ES a great place. I think you deserve more appreciation than you get.


I am currently torn on what to do with the situation of not being able to recruit people on this forum even for the work that's paid for. We may end up with a new forum which contains ES' content as an archive at the bottom of the forum.

I never had this problem on ES FB. People jumped at the chance to do anything to improve the group. Mucho frustrado.

I do hope that some previews of the new format will energize people to come on board and be part of our newfound success.
 
neptronix said:
I am currently torn on what to do with the situation of not being able to recruit people on this forum even for the work that's paid for.
If I didnt' have an exhausting dayjob I'd be able to do more, quicker...but even if I retired right this minute and never went back, it would still take me weeks to get back to something resembling "normal", based on my couple of months of forced-"vacation" last year (around half of which I spent in bed).

So while I'm perfectly willing to do what's needed...there's no way to do it in anything like the timeframe you want. (Even if I was physically capable...the three dogs still need my time, too.)

If you were able to allow a more realistic timeframe, you'd probably get more volunteers, too. There are not many people I know of that would just dive into this sort of thing essentially "full time" for even just their "weekend", as most people have a lot of things they either have to or want to do in that time.

There *are* more people with enforced "free-time" with the various levels of lockdown around the world...but I don't know how many of them are here on ES, or how many of those that are are able or willing to do this kind of work.



BTW, it might help if I move my (our?) OT "health" stuff into a new thread over in the OT forum. :) Do you want me to split that off?
 
Well, I'm ready to try, it's just that you make it sound like there's a shelf life on getting it done. If I was free to go 24 hours without because AT&T gums up again then there'd be no problem. If I misunderstand and it's not such a rush I can do it.
 
Thanks for volunteering, Nicobie. Spirits lifted over here.
Dauntless, since you have questionable internet, it would be best to disclude you, but thanks for your offer.

amberwolf said:
If you were able to allow a more realistic timeframe, you'd probably get more volunteers, too. There are not many people I know of that would just dive into this sort of thing essentially "full time" for even just their "weekend", as most people have a lot of things they either have to or want to do in that time.

Yes, it's a lot to ask for.
You did give me an idea. How about i place a code hack into phpbb so that people can't create new threads into the current section while we do the surgery collectively?
The lockout would produce a message about the section being under construction, and to post in one of the new categories.
Doesn't seem too disruptive, and would allow us to go through the list of threads to categorize in a slow-cooker way.

This would mean we'd have to create a temporary subforum to post about mid-drives and then merge the two resulting mid drive forums. That merge process is actually easy to do in phpbb.

Downside: once threads are moved, people will very likely lose track of the threads in the 'your posts' search in the temporary forum. But this is a small interruption, so i think it should be tolerable.

amberwolf said:
BTW, it might help if I move my (our?) OT "health" stuff into a new thread over in the OT forum. :) Do you want me to split that off?

Don't worry about it, this one didn't get completely derailed. :)
 
Hey all. I think i am not going to get the time to write the tool to do easy moving anytime soon.
But we do have two people on the moderator team who have volunteered to move threads.

So I have a new proposition so we can still move while i don't have free time to program:

1) I create the new sections for our expansion; the mid drive, other, hub, and rear chain sections.
2) I announce in the current mid drive/other forum that this section is under construction.
3) I hack in a new lockout for posting new threads in the mid drive/other.
4) We move all threads out into their appropriate categories.
5) Once the original mid drive / other section is clear, all threads in the new 'mid drive' section are rolled back into it, the temporary new section is deleted.. the reason for this is to preserve links to content.

Downside: existing links on the web to non-mid drive threads are broken. But let's be honest, some side effects are unavoidable.
This is just like creating a temporary pathway while a highway is torn down and reconstructed.

AW and Nicobie, are you down to do this transition the manual plow way? i plan to participate also.
I would remove the expectation of a quick completion, but imagine it's achievable over the course of a month.
 
kauaicycler said:
I can help.

This would require me making you a moderator temporarily. Your name would show up in the list of moderators during this time. I know your post history pretty well and am comfortable with giving you these privileges, if you are comfortable being seen in the software as having them.


I know AW will do a decent bit of heavy lifting, so i am awaiting his agreement with the plan. It'd be killer to have a combined 4 people doing this. :bigthumb:
 
neptronix said:
kauaicycler said:
I can help.

This would require me making you a moderator temporarily. Your name would show up in the list of moderators during this time. I know your post history pretty well and am comfortable with giving you these privileges, if you are comfortable being seen in the software as having them.


I know AW will do a decent bit of heavy lifting, so i am awaiting his agreement with the plan. It'd be killer to have a combined 4 people doing this. :bigthumb:

Thanks for the opportunity to help. This community has changed my life in unexpected ways, and for me, this is a great way to give back.
 
by neptronix » Mar 02 2021 2:38pm

Okay, so in our ebike section, we have a lot of different non-hub motor drives

The ideal work flow:
I create a tool that allows us to easily mark and move threads, supplanting the need for giving access to the moderator control panel.
I create a section for 'Ebike other drives'.
I create a section for 'Ebike hub motor drives'.
I create a section for 'Ebike rear chain drives'.

Work phases:
1) Volunteer moves all non-mid drives ( friction drive, etc ) from 'EBike Non-hub Motor Drives' to 'Ebike other drives'.
2) Volunteer scans 'Ebike Non-hub Motor drives' for hub motor threads and moves them to 'Ebike hub motor drives'.
3) Volunteer scans 'Ebike Non-hub Motor drives' for rear chain threads and moves them to 'Ebike rear chain drives'.
4) I rename 'Ebike Non-hub Motor drives' to 'Ebike mid drives'.

And then we have:
'Ebike other drives'
'Ebike hub motor drives'
'Ebike mid drives'
'Ebike rear chain drives'

This is probably 16 hours of work in total.
You could volunteer to do just one phase, which would amount to 5 hours of work, or a sunday/saturday. Or the whole enchilada.

I promise the tool used to mark these threads will be as convenient to use as possible and show a small snippet of the original post and post title so you can easily do this job on all one screen. 100% accuracy is not required. Just read the first post and make the decision from there. We can clean up the mess created by topics that have changed from one subject to another later.

If you'd like to volunteer, let me know if you want to just take one phase of the project, or the entire enchilada.

Have not spent much time on ES the last few months and have not seen this until today.

Neptronix i'm more than willing to help you and ES. I'm stuck in bed for most of the day every day. Just ask and will do what I can. My PC is at the foot of my bed so don't even need to get up to do it.
 
Thank you for volunteering, zero. I want to say yes but I think i am already stretching it a bit by allowing one person into the moderator team. I think 4 people is big enough of a crew also.

I would like to give you some opportunities to help us in the future when our new software is a bit more flexible in what permissions it allows.
 
by neptronix » Mar 16 2021 3:56pm

Thank you for volunteering, zero. I want to say yes but I think i am already stretching it a bit by allowing one person into the moderator team. I think 4 people is big enough of a crew also.

I would like to give you some opportunities to help us in the future when our new software is a bit more flexible in what permissions it allows.

No, worries was reading that you did not have anybody and no one would help. I'm here is you ever need help, don't have much interest in power. Just want to help support ES it has been a wealth of info.
 
Back
Top