Private message problems

[Uncwilly]

In this day and age,
with due regard to recent events,
I can see no reason why anyone would want to give pirates massages.


The problem has gone too far and must be stopped!



I summon the spirit of Commodore William Bainbridge
to strike down upon them with great vengeanceand furious anger
those who would attempt to pirate and detain my brothers.

[gd_barnes]

You are guys are friggin hilarious. Exactly what is cofinite? Had me ROFLMAO on that one.

Anyway, Mike, you'll be happy to know that I have deleted all of my PM's down to 80 in anticipation of the restriction to 100. Of course I did that before I read this, darn it. lol Oh well, it needed to be done.

I've also taken the tact of no longer quoting previous posts nor PM's if it's clear what is being responded to (like this one).

One improvement could be made to the PM software. When you hit "reply", it automatically quotes the entire message that you reply to. Perhaps there could be an option that allows you to not quote it. The way it is, I have to manually delete the quoted message or all but the very specific lines that I am replying to. Not that it takes any time to speak of but many people may not be aware that that is a large part of what is causing the space problem in the PM's.

Now, we have a problem with one of our NPLB primes posts that we can't edit because it has 80K+ characters. (This one is extremely unusual because it has primes from our only drive that has small tests; hence far more primes than others.) I had really wanted to continue showing all of the primes for NPLB's 9th drive in it. It would have maxed out at around 100K characters as the drive is about 80% complete as far as the # of primes are concerned.

I'm going to go ahead and copy off one large set of primes to a web page and provide a link to the page but I strongly suspect that it will still be over 10K and we won't be able to add to it with what is remaining.

Can I talk you into increasing the posting limit back to 25K instead of 10K? Reducing the limit from (what appears) to be 100K or more (or maybe no limit) down to 10K is a 90% reduction, which seems a little bit drastic until we have some time to take action. [Or is there a way to add to the limit for just one post or thread.]

I simply wasn't aware that you were going to restrict posting limits so this caught us entirely off guard. I had only been taking action on my PM's because that is what the 1st post here said.


Thank you,
Gary

[cheesehead]

Originally Posted by gd_barnes

Exactly what is cofinite?

"All but a finite number"

A cofinite number of posts, out of an infinite set of posts, would be all of that infinite number of posts except for a finite number of posts.

(Personally, I like "cocountable", which looks like it could mean an infinite source of coconut oil.)

[mdettweiler]

Originally Posted by gd_barnes

Now, we have a problem with one of our NPLB primes posts that we can't edit because it has 80K+ characters. (This one is extremely unusual because it has primes from our only drive that has small tests; hence far more primes than others.) I had really wanted to continue showing all of the primes for NPLB's 9th drive in it. It would have maxed out at around 100K characters as the drive is about 80% complete as far as the # of primes are concerned.

I'm going to go ahead and copy off one large set of primes to a web page and provide a link to the page but I strongly suspect that it will still be over 10K and we won't be able to add to it with what is remaining.

Can I talk you into increasing the posting limit back to 25K instead of 10K? Reducing the limit from (what appears) to be 100K or more (or maybe no limit) down to 10K is a 90% reduction, which seems a little bit drastic until we have some time to take action. [Or is there a way to add to the limit for just one post or thread.]

I've got an idea: how about we split the primes into two posts? Maybe put all the 50K-200K primes in a post right below the first one?

[Xyzzy]

Is it possible to attach a list of the primes?

You can manage attachments just like you can manage posts and threads.

If new primes need to be added, you can delete the old attachment and upload a new one.

[mdettweiler]

Well, often these primes lists get updated VERY frequently--so it would be a huge pain to have to de-attach/re-attach a file each time.

However...we still could possibly do that for the n=50K-200K primes, since that's a range that's been completed. That would take care of quite a bit of the # of characters in that post.

[kar_bon]

Originally Posted by mdettweiler

Well, often these primes lists get updated VERY frequently--so it would be a huge pain to have to de-attach/re-attach a file each time.

However...we still could possibly do that for the n=50K-200K primes, since that's a range that's been completed. That would take care of quite a bit of the # of characters in that post.

update the post with new primes like now.

when numerous primes listed, put them in a new attachment and clear the list in the post!

what about that!?

[garo]

@kar_bon: We have teh w1nn3r.

[mdettweiler]

Originally Posted by kar_bon

update the post with new primes like now.

when numerous primes listed, put them in a new attachment and clear the list in the post!

what about that!?

That sounds somewhat like what I was proposing--namely, to shift the older group of primes into an attachment, then possibly do the same with the newer group either when that range is complete, or if we fill up the limit again.

I'll take a look at the current post a little later and see how many characters would be saved by moving 50K-200K to an attachment, to see if it would be enough.

[gd_barnes]

I've already offloaded a group of primes in the problem post and attached them as a link. Now we're near the 10K limit again. It's not enough. We lose the "feel" and "effect" of what we are accomplishing by continuing to offload them such that only the most recent ones are shown.

Mike, my complaint is not about the restriction. It's about the way it was sprung on us: You said in the 1st post here that PM's would be limited to 100 in number with a 10000-character limit on PM's only. Here it is:

So, in a week, we plan to set everybody back to a maximum of 100 private messages. That is plenty of time for you all to download your messages so they are not lost. Private messages will also be limited to 10,000 characters, like they used to be.

That was ample warning so I took the time to clean mine out. But then with no warning at all, there is this:

Given that we do not have adequate time right now to properly evaluate this situation, we have made the following changes, effective immediately:

• Private messages are limited to 5×103 characters.
• The private message quota you have had until now has not changed.
• Forum messages are limited to 1×104 characters.

Hopefully, the forum limit will encourage the use of attachments for long code listings.

We will continue to investigate this issue but it will be a while before we fully understand how best to deal with it.

The impression was given that there was only a PM problem and then suddenely, we're restricted on postings. Shouldn't we have been given some sort of warning on postings?

I've stopped quoting when responding unless absolutely necessary and have reduced my PM to 80 (now 90-something). I've offered money if more drives are needed.

Therefore, I would respectfully request that we be given a 20K (2*10^4) or 25K character posting limit until you have more time to analyze the problem.


Thank you,
Gary

[Xyzzy]