Random starts of conversations

[Historian]

This is an odd forum indeed. True to my name, I've spent the past few hours looking at both new and really old posts around here, and I've noticed quite a few things:

- Logging out produces a strange prompt about deleting a random account, the "Nordic Walking" thread in the hobbies forum has been changed to "Nordic Wanking", the hit counter at the bottom of the page is stuck at 43112609, welcome to our newest victim has been crossed out and replaced with "member", and the currently active users section displays " cranks/guests/spambots/spiders/terrorists". If this is happening in late March, I wonder what April Fools' Day will look like.

- There seems to be some kind of pokemon theme for the avatars for people who post in the Riesel Prime Search forum. lsoule's avatar is a primeape, Slashdude's avatar is a zubat, VBCurtis's avatar is a pidgeot, sjtjung's avatar is a psyduck, and fetofs' avatar is a sandshrew.

- Similarly, there seems to be a cow theme for mersenneforum posters in general. I've seen moo, MooooMoo, Spherical Cow, and A Sunny Moo as either usernames or titles under usernames.

- "Global warming: the scientific evidence" thread is in the Soap Box forum, not in the Science and Technology forum. However, "Evolution: the scientific evidence" thread is in the Science and Technology forum, not the Soap Box forum. You'd think both threads would be in the same forum, but this doesn't seem to be the case.

- gd_barnes, the person with the most posts on here, really deserves that title. Looking at his past 250 post history reveals that he has at least one post for every hour of the day. Whether it's 1AM, 8AM, or 6PM, he's bound to be posting in one forum or another.

- Like most distributed computing forums, the male:female ratio is about 1000:1. Anyone have a list of female members in here?

Explanations, comments, and additional observations are welcome.

[Mini-Geek]

Originally Posted by Historian

- Logging out produces a strange prompt about deleting a random account, the "Nordic Walking" thread in the hobbies forum has been changed to "Nordic Wanking", the hit counter at the bottom of the page is stuck at 43112609, welcome to our newest victim has been crossed out and replaced with "member", and the currently active users section displays " cranks/guests/spambots/spiders/terrorists". If this is happening in late March, I wonder what April Fools' Day will look like.

Let's just say the admin (Xyzzy) has a sense of humor.

Originally Posted by Historian

- Like most distributed computing forums, the male:female ratio is about 1000:1. Anyone have a list of female members in here?

This is the full list of members who I know to be female:
{ }

(in case you didn't get it, that's the empty set, i.e. none)

[kar_bon]

To see some stats on number of posts by person see here.

Originally Posted by Historian

- gd_barnes, the person with the most posts on here, really deserves that title. Looking at his past 250 post history reveals that he has at least one post for every hour of the day. Whether it's 1AM, 8AM, or 6PM, he's bound to be posting in one forum or another.

He is maintaining 2 project here at Mersenne-Forum: NPLB and CRUS, and is also interested in Aliquot Sequences!
Especially CRUS got a high response the last few weeks when many members were interested to do some work there.

[cheesehead]

Originally Posted by Historian

This is an odd forum indeed.

Not been to many other forums, eh?

Oh -- okay, it's probably odder than many others. So is our quest for Mersenne primes.

- Logging out produces a strange prompt about deleting a random account, the "Nordic Walking" thread in the hobbies forum has been changed to "Nordic Wanking",

That's a mild one. You probably can't guess the original titles of some threads.

the hit counter at the bottom of the page is stuck at 43112609,

... but only until we find a Mersenne prime larger than 2^43112609-1

welcome to our newest victim has been crossed out and replaced with "member",

Careful about those analyses! It was a crossed-out "victim" that was inserted into the original phrase "our newest member".

and the currently active users section displays " cranks/guests/spambots/spiders/terrorists". If this is happening in late March, I wonder what April Fools' Day will look like.

Pretty much the same. Welcome to Xyzzy's world. He's our unpaid administrator. As compensation, he reserves a few fringe benefits to himself. E.g., the comments appearing on the left just under some users' nyms ("Cheesiepoof" under mine) are Xyzzy's choice, not ours. Have you read about the gerbils yet?

- There seems to be some kind of pokemon theme for the avatars for people who post in the Riesel Prime Search forum. lsoule's avatar is a primeape, Slashdude's avatar is a zubat, VBCurtis's avatar is a pidgeot, sjtjung's avatar is a psyduck, and fetofs' avatar is a sandshrew.

- Similarly, there seems to be a cow theme for mersenneforum posters in general. I've seen moo, MooooMoo, Spherical Cow, and A Sunny Moo as either usernames or titles under usernames.

Everyone has his choice of nym and avatar. Xyzzy may choose an avatar for you, if you still haven't after a few months, but he probably won't substitute another once you have uploaded one of your own choice.

Xyzzy's comment-under-nym and avatar actions depend partly on how you draw attention to yourself.

- "Global warming: the scientific evidence" thread is in the Soap Box forum, not in the Science and Technology forum. However, "Evolution: the scientific evidence" thread is in the Science and Technology forum, not the Soap Box forum. You'd think both threads would be in the same forum, but this doesn't seem to be the case.

Not all threads were originally in the same subforum they are now. Not all subfora are the same age. Some subfora were created in response to complaints that there was no suitable subforum, at the time, for some particular new thread or threads. Some threads occasionally provoke requests for their removal to some other subforum.

GIMPS has been in existence 15 years. This forum has been here 10 years. In each, there have been many revisions. Almost always, there's no particular reason to go around making all the evidence consistent, as though everything had always been the way it is now. What you see is a mixture of records of historic events, many occurring under conditions differing from today's.

Surely, as a historian, you're aware of the need to analyze present evidence with an eye toward a varied past history that may need to be mostly deduced from clues rather than read from documentation.

For instance, look at the numbers used in the URL links to each subforum. If they were assigned in chronological order, what might that imply?

- Like most distributed computing forums, the male:female ratio is about 1000:1.

Not that extreme, I think.

Can you guess the cattle:llama:pokemon ratio?

Anyone have a list of female members in here?

I know of several, but see no reason to single them out. Let them self-identify, if they wish. If they don't, let them be. Count cattle, llamas and pokemons instead.

[Uncwilly]

Originally Posted by cheesehead

Everyone has his choice of nym and avatar. Xyzzy may choose an avatar for you, if you still haven't after a few months, but he probably won't substitute another once you have uploaded one of your own choice.

I think that he has fixed an avatar or 3. And he did really "fix" TTn's. And by the way, do not trust the post counts that you see on the average page. ;)

[10metreh]

Originally Posted by Historian

If this is happening in late March, I wonder what April Fools' Day will look like.

Last year every "01 Apr 09" changed to "21 Dec 12" on April Fools' Day. That even happened when you wrote "01 Apr 09" in a post.

[Historian]

Ah, I have a better idea of how things are here now. It might take a while for me to get used to it, though.

Originally Posted by cheesehead

Surely, as a historian, you're aware of the need to analyze present evidence with an eye toward a varied past history that may need to be mostly deduced from clues rather than read from documentation.

FYI, I'm not a professional historian, nor do I work in history-related fields. I just chose that as my username because I like looking at old posts to see how forums have evolved over time.

[xilman]

Originally Posted by Historian

Ah, I have a better idea of how things are here now. It might take a while for me to get used to it, though.

The forum may perhaps not be queerer than you suppose. It may be queerer than you can suppose.

Welcome to the asylum.


Paul

[xilman]

Originally Posted by Mini-Geek

Let's just say the admin (Xyzzy) has a sense of humor.

As do many of the inmates.

A word of advice: do not meddle in the affairs of supermods, for they are quick to anger and have a viciously bizarre sense of humour.


Paul

[cheesehead]

Originally Posted by Historian

It might take a while for me to get used to it, though.

No hurry. :-)

FYI, I'm not a professional historian, nor do I work in history-related fields.

I'm not really wearing a cheesehat all the time, either ...

I like looking at old posts to see how forums have evolved over time.

Have you explored many forums older than this one? If so, do they tend all to accumulate idiosyncrasies?

- - -

That reminds me of something else: The oldest posts of this forum have been archived and removed, no longer accessible through the mersenneforum.org index page. (I'm not referring to the subforum "Archived Projects" -- those posts are still accessible.) Ask Xyzzy if you're interested in reviewing them.

[Xyzzy]

That reminds me of something else: The oldest posts of this forum have been archived and removed, no longer accessible through the mersenneforum.org index page.

As far as we know, no posts have been removed except posts that were spam and/or inappropriate. Also, we think the single word thread was killed. We are too lazy and apathetic to bother to look for it. But we do know the policy in place is to keep posts and to not edit them (severely) after the fact, to preserve history. Some titles here and there get massaged, and a few posts get a few words changed, but they are so obviously silly that we think that everybody "gets it".

The oldest post we can find.