features

"Personal in-jokes, stories, or references to words"? Sounds like the most interesting part of Wordie! So, whichie, when they are shareable, please do it!

Thanks, whichbe and Pro. I can probably find some good uses for the feature that I hadn't thought of, in the process of fixing my disastrous dinosaur lists. *sigh*

Oh, well, my first use was for the Demons list. There's a handful of demons on the list that shouldn't be there, there's lots that I haven't looked up in google, and lots that I have. Sometimes a look-up is not very fruitful, and this provides me with a 'post-it note' saying so. And I can also throw in any info that's relevant but too generic or uninteresting to post to all users, i.e. "Russian demon".

Another use is for personal in-jokes, stories, or references to words. That is, if I want to remember a particular story behind a word it's a place where I can quickly scribe the data. Like a reflexive memory-flag that isn't meant for public banter.

I was very skeptical about that feature. But now, I'm using it for the Italian translation of some words, when it can't be of any interest to you.
I think I'll create a list to keep track of the words I added a private note to. So I'll bother you anyway. :-)

Whichbe, may I ask what you are finding the feature most useful for? (I know what I'd use them for but I'm curious what others are doing.)

Signed, So Far Behind I'm Only Now Getting the Hang of Tagging.

I've been using the private notes feature this morning...it's quite useful for keeping track of some things. Thanks.

Private notes! Yahoo! Thanks, John!

John! John! I just noticed the private note feature and came here to squeal about it. Cool! Coolio! Megacool! I'm going to play with it if I ever get done with these friggin' dinosaurs and not-dinosaurs.

Thanks! Great idea!

Hi bilb. Yes, we have a cloud feature. Activate it by clicking 'cloud' under any list title :-) It is, as c_b notes, kind of broken, I think. I'll check it out this weekend.

Everybody: we now also have a 'private notes' feature. Leave notes on words just for yourself. It probably needs work (suggestions appreciated), and I probably broke various things while I was at it, since I also rashly upgraded a bunch of stuff on the server without really testing any of it. Let me know what's gone sideways, and I'll fix.

We have a cloud feature?

Yes, rt. I don't get any emails at all.

Edit: to change the subject almost entirely (sorry all), John, I have a question about the "cloud" feature. Is it not possible for the cloud option to show all the words on a list on the same page? I guess that can get really dicey with longer lists, but I use the cloud feature a lot to make sure I'm not adding something twice, or adding something with a slight variation if I've forgotten there's something already there just like it, etc. Just wondering! Thanks.

I think that happens only if you sign up for it, whichbe.

frindley: minor point--if someone posts on one of your lists, you will get an email about it, like with the comments on a profile...

I'm not sure a wall-to-wall feature wouldn't dilute the main purpose of the site, as you mentioned toward the end of your post, frindley. The point here is listing words (and commenting on them), not social networking (though obviously that goes on as well). If it were easier to network with individual users than it already is, via (for example) a wall-to-wall, I think it would change the essential character of the site.

As for the fragmented nature of conversations, that's all over the site, not just on profiles. Though for myself only, I try to keep conversations together or else post comments that link them back to wherever they started. But that's my own personal use and I don't expect anyone else to care.

It seems to me that commenting on profiles is the only reliable way of carrying on a specific conversation via Wordie, and that's because you receive a notification when someone comments on your profile, whereas you don't if they use word or list comments to "talk" to you. But it does mean that you only ever see one side of a conversation on any given profile. If a Wall-to-Wall type feature could be achieved without clutter or spoiling Wordie's simplicity then I'd be all for that.

But perhaps it's better as is. Conversations on profiles aren't terribly convenient to sustain and so we focus our attention on the things that really matter on this site!

I actually don't really care for comments on profiles. A good percentage are referring to (but not linking) random conversations around Wordie, leading to terrible fragmentation. My profile, for example, is a complete hodge podge of comments, most of which are indecipherable to even me, not that I mind too much, but some of the profiles that have a lot of comments kind of get out of hand.

Perhaps having that part of the profile on a separate page would alleviate this.

Just to be clear: I have no problem with that function either; in this case it was simply the context in which it occurred that bothered me.

Ptero, just checked and saw that too (that one can delete anyone's comments on one's own lists). John, like ptero, I don't have a problem with that either. It may not be a bad thing to be able to control the comments on one's own created lists, especially if the list is not public.

It's true that not all Wordie users are going to be as careful as you (John) are about not deleting anyone else's comments, but it should be all right in the end. Most users seem to respect Wordieternity.

I've noticed that one can delete only one's own comments on word pages, though, and you can only delete tags that you added yourself. (Is this true of tag lists (for lack of a better term) also? If so, is it the way you intended?) I think since word pages are public by definition, it's perfectly fair that you can only delete your own comments there.

But for one's profile, and possibly one's "private" lists, it's okay with me for a user to have some control.

Yes, ptero, that's true about one's own list pages.

Since mobile wordie has recently received a plug, I have a feature suggestion for that.

At present in the mobile version we can add words to existing lists and we can follow the recent comments. But it's virtually not possible to add comments to new words (a huge minus for me, since I rarely add a word without wanting to say something about it right then and there). It's also virtually not possible to contribute to conversations via the mobile version.

I say "virtually not possible" because I did discover one day when my train was delayed that it is possible to go through a circuitous process that effectively brings up the regular version of the site onto my mobile screen, at which point I can do all the normal things, albeit in a pretty clumsy interface. Basically it involves clicking on a username (e.g. from a comment header), which takes you to that profile in the non-mobile version. From there you have access to searching and other functions. But it's pretty clunky. Indeed it's probably a bug - but please don't fix it before adding these features…

1. ability to search for words
2. ability to comment on words

I agree with c_b and rt that one's profile should remain under one's control.

I also want to point out that I can delete comments made on any of my lists, no matter who the commenter is. As far as I can recall, it's always been this way. I don't really have a problem with it.

I agree, c_b.

John, regarding your comment for reesetee on my profile:

"1 minute ago John said:
Reesetee, a comment of yours really disappeared? I'm supposed to be the only one able to delete comments other than their own, and I've never done it. If anyone has found a bug that lets someone mess with someone else's stuff, please let me know quickly (by email, not here!), and I'll plug that hole as quickly as possible."

I've noticed for a while that one can delete comments on one's own profile. I would like to keep that feature/bug, if at all possible. I think an individual ought to be able to control his/her own profile at least, though I can see how you'd like to protect people's comments elsewhere. My two cents.

Perhaps other wordie denizens have opinions about this...?

Fusc me, if I made a comment more than 2 days ago I have difficulty remembering it. Wordie has the comments in chronologickle order so we can see how things pan out. I don't mind how things are. I'm easily pleased.

I don't know, a timestamp seems so... normal websites use those. This is Wordie! Plus I like the vagueness. I was just wondering exactly how vague they are...

But yarb's second suggestion, for metalisting? Oh PLEASE!!! Please please!! Pretty please with some nice cute animals on top?! *quivers with joy*

I would really like an option to see timestamp on comments, rather than "...ago". With older comments, I find it adds something to know exactly how far apart in time they were made.

Also: how about a metalist feature? I.e. a way to list lists in the same way we currently list words?

John, I don't have a suggestion, or even a bug report, but just a curious question: the oldest comments all seem to say "about 1 year ago." Is this the highest the counter goes? I.e., are there comments that were made more than 1 year ago, but the counter still says 1 year ago? Just wondering!

I think it's a good idea, bestiary, and I can certainly see myself taking advantage of private notes, but I have to say that I have come to value the open, at times perhaps even intrusively public nature of Wordie, which can be both annoying and delightful, and I suspect that private notes will diminish that.

oh, i wouldn't want to see a decline in comments either, rolig! i know exactly what you mean. i saw keeping notes private primarily as a way to draw as clear as possible a distiction between their purpose and that of comments (thus avoiding comments on a word-note being left on someone's list when they'd be more appropriate on the word's respective page, etc.), making them less likely to be seen as commenting replacements. a simple reminder to that effect beside the input box ("notes are private; only you can see them. if you think others might like to see this, you may want to leave a comment") would help as well. — another thought would be to give the option to submit a note and a comment simultaneously (–though i could see that potentially producing spam), or to have a separate "submit and view word" button to take you to the word's page to leave a comment, rather than back to your list, upon submitting a note.

in any case, i think the personal benefits outweigh potential losses, which seem simple enough to mitigate. :)

"aminals" was most certainly intentional! i see you're unfamiliar with enthusiastic metathesis.

I sort-of like the idea of private notes. I might, for example, use them in my Slovene word lists. But at the same time I am ambivalent. I have been pleasantly surprised when someone responds positively to what, for me, is simply an academic gloss on a Slovene word, and maybe even makes a suggestion about how to translate it. An interesting discussion with Bilby, for instance, developed around the word uglajen.

Private word notes might protect some words from getting the Wordie treatment, but some of the fun, and risk, of Wordie would get lost, too. I (or someone else) wouldn't be able to chide Bestiary about the misspelling of (of all things!) the word "animals" in the note for "zoopraxiscope" in the example he (she?) provides. So I guess I'm ambivalent.

I would love that feature as well!

oh, wonderful! :) expect a very enthusiastic reception, here.

Bestiary, great idea, I've wanted to do something along those lines for a while. Can't promise a delivery date but it's on the list.

i think it would be neat if we could add a note beside each word on our lists (private, i'd think, so not to take the action away from comments) to serve as little reminders, directly on the page, for quick-reference (e.g., definitions or pronunciations you tend to forget, associated quotes, synonyms, "this is a good word to call bob," etc. — without having to put redundant/only personally relevant things in comments or having to click on each individual word). people with unwieldy lists and those with a focus on vocab-building would find this particularly useful! — or, well, i can confirm that one person would. :)

i took a few minutes to see if i could whip up a decent-looking example (wordie's all nice and clean; i wondered what might be a way that wouldn't disturb the flow of things), and came up with this:

drop.io/wordienotes (—the .html file's the example, and the .txt file has the only snippet of html i really messed with. notice the blue-grey of any links to other words within notes! the rest of the text is the same grey as the dividing dotted lines.)

er yes. so there's that. (just trying to be helpful! haha. don't mind me. *twiddles thumbs*)

I have been pruning my list of lists, which had been getting out of hand. A couple of the candidates for deletion, however, are open lists which I started, but which other folks have contributed to. Two questions:

1. Can I delete this type of list?
2. If the answer to the previous question is 'yes', I assume that all entries on the list would be purged. Which raises a question of etiquette - do I have the right to delete an entire list to which other people have contributed?

The immediate impetus for this question is provided by the list:
Actors whose mere presence in a movie will cause me to change the channel immediately , but the question is a general one.

A related question is whether it is possible to see how many times a given list has been made a favorite, as this might influence one's decision whether or not to keep a particular list.

Thoughts? Comments?

Nice solution jenn!

Now why didn't I think of that? First one I tried, list 12, has 12 words. What are the chances of that?

bilby, we don't need a random list feature. You just type in http://wordie.org/lists/ and add a jumble of numbers after that. It's pretty entertaining. :)

I DO like toast...

A list can be reordered by moving words to a place-holder list and then moving them back in the desired sequence. It's time-consuming though.

You could try some crow on toast, dc.

which - I take it back. I don't know what got in to me today. I'm feeling particularly scorpioptic.

Let's me and you go to the Verbal Arms later and I'll have a crowtini, eh?

pps: I enjoy the new and improved This week on Wordie sidebar. Thanks, John!

I like that the order of your words isn't editable outside of an alpha sort (which is very handy, ps).

Is there a way I can tag pronoun displacements?

Is there a way I can tag smarmy comments?

If bibly gets a 'fresh coffee' button, I want a 'waffle' button. *crosses arms, stomps foot*

which: "Me and MissAnthropist"...? Really?

It's close. But John does god work around here.

Will this help meanwhile?

I'd like a 'fresh coffee' button which will, when clicked, almost instantaneously cause fresh-brewed East Timor organic robusta to pour forth from the speakers. I have recently purchased twin espresso cups and placed them strategically for this purpose.

Me and MissAnthropist were having a discussion and agreed that being able to re-order the sequence of words on a list be would make the site far more appealing to OCD list-makers such as us. It seems between the "order added" and the "alpha" we miss the ability to re-shape the tone, message, and experience of the list once it's up there.

I don't think the 'most commented on' feature is updating itself.

John, how about a link to see more of the recently listed words than show on the homepage? Ideally with the ability to keep browsing back, as with comments.

cookie!

whichbe, that's a great idea. not least because it won't take me much work :-) on the list.

This is a minor, useless idea, but I think it'd be cute if listed with a word somewhere is a little count of how many times it's on someone's "Favorites" list. This would be kind of like how with a YouTube video there's such a count...

OH MY GOSH!!!! John, I love the new "most active threads" feature. You are *so* getting the cookie recipie.

I didn't really foresee wanting this, but the ability to block certain words whose comments you'd rather not see on the front page when you're logged in would be dandy.

Yes, but it should list both words and discussions. I think John CAN.

Hear hear! Good idea.

As per the discussion on this list, I present an idea for some god work that John could do in his copious free time:

How about, in addition to the "Most Wordied, Past 7 Days" list on the home page, a "Most Commented On, Past 7 Days" list? I think it'd be really useful to be able to see at glance which words have been getting all the commenty action recently.

*respectfully bows and backs away*

Pro, you fixin' to steal that tiny Emmy from tiny, she-shoulder-sitting chained_bear? I wouldn't try it. Look how she reacts to cupcake flinging. :-\

But back to the subject...sure, it can be a chore plowing through the citations of an enthusiastic Wordie. But we can handle it. Still, I do like the suggestions for finding ways around it, Wordie being an ever-evolving site. :-)

And if I haven't said it already, welcome, she!

She, as someone who's been on the receiving end of some comments in the past about the volume of words (or more specifically, comments) being added in a day... It just isn't a big deal. If you add 300 words a day, how long can that possibly go on? A week? Ten days? Two weeks? The rest of us who hang out here all the time, or visit periodically, can suck it up and look for new words and new comments in new ways. It isn't like there's any shortage of interesting features on this site.

That said, I do think that people suggesting new features, filters, and a "more" button for recent words is a great idea.

And that said, "You can do it! Go on. They're just playa-hatin'." But I'm not sure you'd want me on your shoulder, what with the occasional tappen and all. *blushing*

I want it too! But only if an even smaller Emmy is included.

Well, it's born of not wanting to make it harder for anyone else to enjoy the site, and if I'm adding words too quickly for anyone to possibly keep up (I like the sharing as much as the list-building), it doesn't really seem like the best way to go about things. But I'd certainly have no problem going to town if there were some way for the people it might bother to control the noise, if they like, and better digest things. (I'm also beginning to think it would be a nice idea to have a little c_b sitting on my shoulder during the day. "You can do it! Go on. They're just playa-hatin'.")

While I'm thinking about your idea for this new feature, she, may I just remark that you can and should use Wordie however you like, without feeling guilty?

I had a thought, just now, on a way to possibly arm ourselves when navigating the front page—What if we had the (functional rather than social; I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks "friend"ing usually amounts to fluff) ability to mark "familiar users," that we could see, unsee, or isolate (as a group) when browsing? That is, marking as "familiar" the people you see most often (those repeatedly Wordiest, in particular, and anyone you'd like to keep track of) would let you: temporarily ignore new lists, words, and comments of theirs in recent activity (solving the issue of congestion caused by one person adding hundreds of words in one day! which I am guilty of, but would love to be able to do again without feeling guilty)—leaving only those of all the users not on that list, making it easier to spot things which you might have otherwise missed; or, temporarily view new lists, words, and comments only from "familiar" users (useful for chatching up after you've been browsing with those users filtered out, and a quicker way of getting up-to-date, if you've been away). The logical default would be set to showing everyone's recent activity, "familiar" and not, and those with no interest in using any filters wouldn't have to.

So yes, filtering. Is this doable—? And appealing? (Seems to me, especially as the site grows, that some sort of filtery feature would work in the interest of general Wordie-sanity.)

If you have a google toolbar, you could add a button like this.

I'd like one of those little javascript function bookmarklet things that sits on the bookmarks toolbar of a browser for a quick and easy way to add words. Also, it could have a place to make a comment, and it could have a drop-down menu for our various lists. I hope this isn't too much to ask. If you already have one, please point me to the way. Thank you.

Thanks John. Have a look at, for example, loquacious for a different kind of pagination issue. A lot of the 'listed by' entries aren't of much interest to me. turd's Words by turd lists are of much less interest than lists with intriguing titles, usually those that are NOT a user's default first list on Wordie. I'd like a toggle to screen those out. There aren't many words in the loquacious zone yet but this problem will get worse as time goes on.

Oh, and comment paging on words would be nice. This page and some of the other standing conversations are a bit much to scroll through.

Sorry to have been incommunicado for so long. I totally agree, comment grouping is badly needed, and by Word is a great suggestion. So great, I can't believe we all missed it earlier, though Asatvium was close :-)

I've been mucking around with some of the low-level code, and need to do a bit more of that before I can focus on featues. And I'm ridiculously overbooked these days. But the next big feature will be comment grouping by word, unless anyone has other suggestions for priority. I'd like an API too, but dealing with the flood of comments seems more important.

I'll second Pro (as long as no duels are involved).

Much neater than the solution I had been mulling, which was listing comments by time, so I could remember that I'd been gone a couple days and find my place.

John, I am starting to feel the need for a "conversations of the last 24 hours, grouped by word page" option. I mean, having in the main page a link to another page where you can see all that Wordies wrote, but with a single link for all the conversations that took place on the same page.

A little late to the party here, but:

I agree 100% with Asativum, c_b (and everyone else) who says nix to a friends feature. There are truly enough sites where one can do that--and I might remind newcomers that we do have a Wordie group on Facebook. :-) As for book lovers, a few Wordies have also linked on LibraryThing, for what it's worth.

And Pro--thank you for hating me the most. It warms my heart. :-D Palooka, I'd have added you as my very first friend. So get your butt over to Facebook. ;-)

API would be nice. I want a geeky command line client to add words...

I'd like a Random List feature. Random Word is fine, I use it almost daily. Random List will be good too.

I created the tag bookie.

No friends lists, please! I don't distinguish between "fellow Wordie user" and "friend", and I've no intention of starting. :-)

TYP, I'm sure you can write your favorited on book (or maybe on books) and people will follow. Otherwise, there are many readers' networks suggestions on the "you" page, and a couple of applications on facebook (I use "books iRead").

You drive a hard bargin my friend.

OK -- but only books with words.

Wordie book club anyone? I'd imagine most of us are avid readers.

This conversation will make it even harder to find the feature requests :-D that's Wordie, folks!

Oh, I can't pretend any longer. I don't hate you, guys. (weeping)

Bilby's so cool. I couldn't put him on my enemies list - in fact I can't think of any Wordie to add. You're all great people.

I'm sorry, I just can't hate you, Pro. I can try being precociously indifferent for a while if you think that would help.

Oh, palooka, there is hatebook, for that...

Ooh. Haven't been here in a bit. My thoughts, for what they're worth*:

Friends: No, no, no. Please? No? We have oodles of other social networking sites for friends (or "friends"). Wordie is for words, and words about words, and wordiness. (Or is that Wordieness?) I don't need friends. I need words. Words are my friends.

Forum: I love that Wordie is so aggressively linear about its nonlinearity. Forums are too easy. This way, it's like a big conversation. Or really, a bunch of them, at a very strange garden party. Only you can rewind and revisit conversations, if you can find them again in the crowd, behind the topiary where you left them. Or something.

Bulk add: Let's just keep bickering about it for a while.


* About $0.63 Canadian, but that's for the lot of them.

I'm convinced the friend system won't work here. Maybe we could be different & institute an enemies list. Prolagus has two for his list already.
I wouldn't mind having 837 enemies with 200 on the waiting list.

Awww, I hate you too, Pro :)

I wouldn't. I hate you. But I hate reesetee even more, as everybody knows.
Actually, I hate you all.

Would you have added me as a friend, c_b? I didn't think so. *sobs*

Which button do you press to make bears chime? I want to try this at home.

I'll chime in here and say, again, that Wordie is so awesome *precisely* because there's no way to really link to other users (unless you favorite them). This isn't a networking site for people. It's a networking site for WORDS. That's what makes it so cool. There are tons of other networking sites out there for people; there aren't any others (that I know of) for words. The conversations here have to revolve around the words. Or lists. Not politics or people—just words. That's the very simple beauty of it--I hope it stays that way! :)

Very much enjoying the conversations, even though I haven't had much to contribute lately.

Moreover, we can link to many social networking websites on our profile page!

I'm steadfastly against an adding friends feature. I mean, who would add me as a friend? No one. I'd be shamed off Wordie.
I just think the idea of having 837 friends and a waiting list of 200 more to be sort of ludicrous.

im with you. that way people dont have to worry about dealing with other people and can have fun if you want to talk to your friend call them or chat on messenger.

I'm not keen on that one; I'd sooner enjoy the words without having to worry about friend list politics on this as well as those other sites.

I'd like a way to add friends, like other social networking sites have.

Not to be too contrary, but I'd opt for just the opposite of gangerh's suggestion for expanding the "Most Citations..." and other lists pertaining to specific Wordies. Why not eliminate them altogether and focus solely on words?

wordie.org/words/features?o=asc to have the page sort comments with the most recent next to the box. Maybe the sort buttons should be made more prominent.

Edit: oh, and it doesn't seem to work when the page reloads after posting.

As we all (humans, that is) like recognition, increasing the Most Citations (last 7 days) list may encourage more Wordies to contribute to the Comment Feed. Perhaps to 20 names.

I'm 99% certain that he meant campaign, as in a "promotional campaign".

While I'm posting here, it is somewhat difficult to post here and then scroll all the way to the top to read the relevant comment. I think that we are reaching the point where some simple sort of paging may be necessary, although I'm not sure if a simple page redesign might make this easier.

I thought you meant you were going to ply people with alcohol until I looked up champaign and discovered it's about land.

Once you're recruited more people there'll promptly be complaints about the increasing difficulty of keeping up with all the conversations going on; I agree that the current front page is inflexible, but what's to be done for people who do like at least to skim everything that's passed overnight? Filtering people out would prevent our seeing comments of theirs which we might want to see.

Maybe filtering types of comment ('chat' vs. 'definition/citation') is what's required, but it would require comments to be marked as such. There's some discussion from five and seven months ago on this page related to possibilities like that.

Yeesh. Well, my apologies if my explosive use of Wordie in the last month has been blowing out other users. Obviously I love this site.

In regards to limiting inputted words per day, I'm down for it, but perhaps there's a less imposing manner this can be done besides the "hard-limit". Perhaps the idea of a more personally-configurable front page would really make things work, wherein there's a wide-variety of "types" of feeds that can be presented on the main page, and the user picks what they want. I like this idea a lot, and perhaps some of the selectable feed options could be where certain users can be filtered in or out? Or perhaps "filter out the most active users"?

I think to honor the site, I'm going to go on a bit of a promotional champaign this week for Wordie, to bring in new users...

I feel the same, bilby, but the answer is to get more users contributing, thereby evening out the flow. I hope wordie grows, so that it becomes harder for a single user to clog up the front page. We can still follow particular wordies with feeds, if we want. Word limits would be a backward step.

Personally I'm not a fan of amateur 'definitions' from e.g. Wikipedia - I'd much rather see a citation. I wouldn't want to ban them though.

Oh, Pro: you could write the TOEFL questions. But don't worry, nobody in his right mind would allow my convoluted syntax and lousy punctuation make it to any kind of test without major editing.

I hope your last comment won't be in my TOEFL test next month, sionnach. I'm not sure I will ever be able to understand it.

Not sure I understand your reasoning there, bilby. Why is it becoming necessary? Does the rate of addition of new words affect usability that adversely?

It does seem less likely that someone hellbent on achieving some kind of monumental word total in short order will actually contribute much in the way of intelligent commentary on the words that are being so assiduously added, and the empirical evidence seems to support this. But then we get into that murky territory where one person's intelligent commentary is another's fatuous platitude.

But, was that what you meant about 'usability'? Or was it something else? Or should I just be tiptoeing away silently, backing away from this whole, potentially incendiary, subject?

These remarks, it should be noted, are rooted essentially in blissful ignorance of developments in the past month, as I only had time to check in once or twice while in Mexico.

It's a kind of anti-feature really: a limit on the number of words a single user can add in a day, or a week. I know we all have our moments of being 'swept away', but the reality is that a single user adding enormous numbers of words can detract from the useability of the site for others. I'd suggest 50 words a day, which pains me. Unfortunately, it's becoming necessary.

I agree, and there is no reason that couldn't still go on while also having a forum.

But, I also think that it would be easier for a random browser to find a conversation if it is indexed in a forum as a opposed to finding a conversation by chance. That means more participants.

Also, the current format pretty much limits conversation to words. A forum would facillitate a greater range of topics. We can find out what we share with fellow wordies aside from logophilia.

Well, I think part of the fun is having the conversations anywhere in the site, based on our Pindar's flights, isn't it?

Is there any way we could get a forum? There seems to be a lot of avenues for discussion that this site brings about which could be pursued in a forum or message board.

We can't just use Google with site:wordie.org either. Any Web search engines that have better wildcard support?

Is there a way of doing wildcard searches? Someone listed a word a few days ago that started haber- but I couldn't remember the end of it today. So I did a search on haber* ...
Nobody is listing haber*. Why don't you?

yep. frequently.

Everything related to google appears to be loading at a glacial pace and/or timing out this morning, possibly because of their cute new 'artists' feature. I'm running Firefox on a PC. The slowness of google is independent of Wordie, but seems to be slowing down Wordie, maybe because of the ads.

Are other people experiencing this slowness as well, or is it just me?

Also, I've done some bulk adding in my day--manually, I mean--and it really doesn't take THAT long. Then, too, if you already have 20,000 words listed somewhere off Wordie, it's not a bad idea to go through them manually and enjoy each one of them again as you enter it.

I still say 'no' to bulk adding.
Every word is sacred.
Every word is good.
:-)

John, I have an idea for a new phrase to be typed in the home page:
"Problems? Disagreement? Arguments? Join the discussion here.

Has the time come for Wordie to introduce capital punishment?

On the point of bulk add, I do agree that allowing people to dump huge text files (ie, entire works, books, stuff from the e-Gutenberg project) would not be a good idea. But for those of us who do have lists of words, allowing 20-30 words to be added at a time would be great, and should be enough to protect against spamming.

I'm going to hesitantly raise my hand and make my first feature suggestion...

Over at this brilliant list that Prolagus created, I've been having fun trying to deduce the occupations of my fellow wordies, and it would be a good deal easier if I could sort the words by which user contributed them. What about a "sort by contributor" button for open lists?

And thanks as always, John, for all your work on this excellent site!

Bewdiful!

Frindley, you can use something called a character entity to print out characters; if you use the character entities for square brackets, Wordie interprets them differently than if you used actual brackets, and doesn't insert a link.

The character entities for left and right brackets are [ and ] respectively, so wrapping a word in those characters in the comment form (like this: [bracketed]) will result in a [bracketed], but not linked, word in the resulting comment.

That's what I've been doing too, and they certainly do the trick. But the geekette at heart is curious as to whether there is a neat technical solution.

Frindley, I have been using the shift+bracket key for that. It makes ... those squiggly brackets, the ones that have some serious name that's a word I don't know yet. { } <--Those. Does that help?

Help please: If, in a comment, I want to put square brackets around a word or phrase – not to link to a word or phrase entry, but simply to use the brackets as punctuation, e.g. editorial aside, or because it's in the original source for a citation – how do I do that?

Hey John, how about random list feature?

M, P, P & G, I'm sold. Come to think of it, I was sold the first time this came up, when the same good arguments were made. Then I forgot about it. Oops.

John, I think it would be nice to have the option to view open lists sorted by "popularity", other than by "order added".

However gangerh's comment continues, I'll agree with him.

John, this is serious.
I'm a relative newcomer to Wordie. My passion for just one word has been noted by others. My passion for Wordie has not, though 'tis greater than that for that word.
Wordie is unique. You have created a masterpiece. On a canvas that absorbs one word at a time. That allows all the chance to observe the word, create something of their own, and stimulate further thought and imagination such that wasn't happening before.
.........to be continued

I also cast my vote against unlimited bulk add. I echo the sentiments that the fun of Wordie is observing how people selectively choose & enter specific words that have meaning or fascination for them. I'd hate to see some uncaring, even malicious person simply enter an entire dictionary full of words into wordie as a prank.

A 25 word or so limit to bulk adding would be useful.

I thank mollusque for saying what I wanted to say far better than I could.
I think even 50 words per day would be too many. 25, maybe, reasonable enough.

(Today is maybe day for me.)

John, I don't think bulk adding is a good idea. I have a database of more than 300,000 English words. I also have one online of more than 15,000 Latin words. If I started bulk adding those into Wordie, it could substantially change the character of the site.

Words being selected and sorted into lists is part of what makes Wordie interesting. Also, some people enjoy being the first to add a word. Just a couple of weeks ago, I was the first to add nourishment. It gave me a moment of pleasure to think Wordie has been without nourishment all this time. With additions at random, following people's whimsies, it will be years till all the common words have been entered. Bulk adding of dictionary files would wipe out that simple pleasure.

That said, I could see a limited bulk-add feature, say 25 or 50 words at time. People often develop themed lists off-line, and being able to add them rapidly would be nice.

I'd probably be against bulk add. The current rate of adding, plus the regular spurts - reesetee with ornithological opus in hand for example - is about right. For the record I'm not the kind of person who is against change simply because it's not like what we have now. One of Wordie's strengths is the simplicity of its features. In a cluttered world ...
It's not the add I'm concerned about, it's the bulk. Such a squat, sweaty, pigeon-toed word wearing cheap trainers. No.

I think in a week Wordie would have the whole Divine Comedy and all Shakespeare's writings. But maybe I'm wrong.

OP, bulk add is a good idea. It was actually one of the first feature requests way back when, but it fell between the cracks. I'll add it to the list--though I don't have much Wordie time these days, sadly, so not sure when it'll appear.

If you're technically inclined you might be able to script your own bulk loader. If you do, please limit inserts to some sane rate -- every other second or less. Someone used wget to bulk load a large list a while back, and knocked down the site :-)

Shan't miss oddocomplete myself; tripped me up too often. If it returns, perhaps it can be something each Wordie can turn on/off. (Hey John, I avoided user!)

Bulk add would be cool, OP. But maybe tough to protect it from spambots?

Am I crazy, or is there no way to bulk add words? I have txt files full of words I have been keeping for years that I would love to dump into Wordie, but I am not going to type them out one by one.

Is there a combinatoric I can use to put multiple words in the same field?

I'm with VO, I had a lot of odd results with the auto thingy.

Wishing you Many Fruity Returns of the Season.

VO, that happened a lot to me too.

Yes, it was rather...oddocomplete.

...I wasn't a fan of autocomplete either.

Autocomplete seemed to have a habit of foisting its suggestions upon me if I pressed Return before it disappeared, even though I hadn't selected any of them, so I shan't miss it much... though it did exhibit a WeirdNet-like propensity to put odd results at the top sometimes.

John, perhaps search with autocomplete could be moved to the "more searches" page, which would be a better place for it anyway. If you reinstate it, perhaps you could let it show more than 10 examples.

Prolagus, I'm sorry! If I am a userist, you are on my 'nice user' list. Though I don't much like the term "user." Besides tech there's only one other group of people called users: junkies :-)

Mollusque, I did turn off autocomplete. It uses up a lot of server juice, and traffic has been climbing lately, so I needed to lighten the load to keep things responsive. Wildcarding would be nice -- someday I hope to revisit search.

Alangager, you can link to other users, but you have to do it manually, there's no shortcut like there is with words. To do so, you'd wrap the words you want to link in html, like this:

<a href="/people/profile/alangager">alangager</a>

That results in a link like this: alangager

Am I missing something or can you link to other users?

John - The public service ads are much more soothing than the regular google ads.

John, the auto-suggest/complete function in the word search box no longer works. Did you remove it, or is this a bug? Also, any chance of getting a pattern search working? Something with wildcards?

John only recently added the "public lists" feature, so there just aren't that many open lists yet. I'm sure that will change over time. Don't be sad. :|

OK, got the message :-(
I don't think I'll ever duplicate a list I like, though. My new challenge will be finding different open lists, on a different topic, in which the same words can fit...
(this is gonna be painfully hard)

I don't consider any list dead. Ever. I'd be crushed if I came back to Wordie and my lists were all open--that's just not what I signed up for. Even now, I don't always open my lists. But, reesetee's point about there being a lot of similar lists already is well taken. There's nothing stopping any Wordie user from starting his/her own list if there are things he/she wants to add to someone else's (non-public) list.

I don't know that I'd want my lists opened if I were away for a while, Prolagus. I agree with John on that one. But you could, as he suggests, copy the list and open yours up. Even without trying, we manage to start up lists related to already existing ones--I think it's part of the fun of Wordie. Twenty of us could have the same idea for a list and come up with 20 different lists in the end. :-)

Sigh, you love anyone's ideas but mine. And you even misspell my name.
That's userism.

Wschoenh, great idea, which I may do someday when I get the time. Won't be for a while though, since I have none.

Gangerh, I love the idea of upside down lists, sort of like a reverse lookup phone book. I put it on the wish list, but again, no idea when I might be able to get to it. In the meanwhile feel free to improvise, Asativum's suggestion sounds good.

Prolagus, I've had that temptation, but I think people should be able to come back to Wordie years later and find their words waiting patiently as they left them. But there's nothing to stop you from remaking a ghost list and opening it up.

John,
I often find lists that are dead, i.e. their authors are no more active in Wordie. When those lists are not open, it means that they will never have new contributions (see e.g. Polite words, impolite stuff). Isn't it sad?
I was thinking: what if you open the lists after, let's say, 3 months of inactivity of the user?

Gangerh, as a stopgap, you could just post an empty list (presumably with a clever title) and solicit descriptions in the comments; once a word is settled on, it can be added to the list. Just a thought.

At breakfast this morning, John, I put my spoon into my bowl of Sugar Puffs and one Sugar Puff, on contact with the spoon, catapulted out of the bowl, flew across the table, rebounded off the teapot with a (very satisfying) ping and finally came to rest beside the butter dish. Something I couldn't have done trying.
My immediate thought was 'is there a word for that?'. Now it's impractical to create a list of descriptions (I guess) so that Wordies can input their knowledge and ideas. So my humble suggestion is for a feature that allows us to post such descriptions for which we seek a word.
I am assuming there is no such device within the site already which can be used for this purpose.
Perhaps I would be the only one that would use it, anyway, of course, though I do detect from time to time a need from others.
Greetings from gangerh.

You should make a Facebook application that will show recently added words on a Facebook profile.

I never thought I'd be so glad to see serifs again.

Ah, it tricked me too! See my comment under font.

Ditto bilby! I thought to myself, how can Wordie misjudge so? And then I realised that it was still 1 April in some parts of the world.

Well you really got me, seeing as I'm on the other side of the date line, it's April 2 here, and I had well and truly shaken all the sillies out yesterday and was expecting nothing today. Nice one John!

But I am talking in a cartoony voice. Always have been.

Uncle!

EEEEEEEYEWW!!! I just logged on, and ... EEEEEEEEYEW!! Great joke, John! ;)

Also, when I read everyone's comments in this typeface, I feel like we're all talking in a cartoony voice. How odd.

I certainly won't be sad to see it go.

Don't forget virgle.

Saayy...that's one snazzy rotating "NEW" you have there, John! Well, consider us fooled. Certainly can't be worse than Google's annual contribution to the holiday. ;-)

Excellent ruse, John. You had me full of wrongteous indignation for a full 20 minutes mentally composing all sorts of comments!! Can't wait for tomorrow.

Yeah, I got sucked into the whole lame web April fool's thing. It was also an experiment to see if it would be asked about on features or bugs. I had meant to lard the front page with animated gifs, flowing American flags, things like this: . Didn't get my shit together in time, though :-)

But I'm not sure I can keep this up all day. It's killing me.

HAHAHAHAHA it's unbearable!

Hey! What happened to Wordie's typeface? It's gone all Comic Sans-y on us! Is this an April Fool's Day joke, John?

Already there, Prolagus--seventh from the left. :-)

I think you should put a urban dictionary button. For some of the words it could be very useful...

John

is there a way to change one's username?

If not I might delete my account and start over now before it's too late;)

thanks!

Ah, sionnach, so that was you on Amazon? ;-)

Now you introduce bulk tagging, John? Now?! After I've tagged almost 4,000 items individually!!!

Actually, I like the idea, but probably wouldn't use it much. Most of my tags indicate the vowel patterns in my monovocalic and panvocalic lists, which have to be specified individually.

What I'd really like to have is the ability to do more specific searches, like for *a*e*i*o*u*.

Oh my gosh. I'm definitely going to go tag things "affront to human intelligence" now. How todally alsome.

Why does bulk tagging sound like an activity best suited to Whole Earth Foods?

I've kind of given up on trusting my own ability to tag sensibly, ever since I noticed that among the handful of tags I'd used on Amazon.com, each one was more abusive and dismissive than the next. 'affront to human intelligence' was about the mildest.

C_b, I think I understand your struggle. It may come with the territory when you're an editor (as we are). The impulse is to clean up, whereas with tags you almost go about it the opposite way, then "filter on the way out," as John says. It can take some getting used to. :-)

One way around the "dog" and "dogs" problem is to tag your word(s) with both. Same with nautical, marine, maritime, sea, etc. Use 'em all...

Wikipedia has a good article on tags.

C_b, I think one thing to consider with tags is that it's ok if they're idiosyncratic--they're not supposed to be a rigid hierarchy or taxonomy. As Dave Winer puts it in his fabulous book Everything is Miscellaneous, the best bet with metadata (ie, tags) is to filter on the way out, not the way in. People should use tags however it may help them, and then later on ways to use all that data to help everybody else can be figured out. And as more and more tags are in the system, it becomes easier to filter out the noise.

This may mean that eventually some words will get so tarted up with tags that they'll be an eyesore. At which time I'll do something about it :-)

Back to basics please for the uninitiated. What's a tag? Are there any instructions?

Another example to add on to yarb's and john's comments--the words on my Body Metaphors list are now tagged with anatomy, colloquialism, metaphor, body metaphors, and slang. The tags don't have to be literal--they can link your lists to other lists with even tangentially similar content. I'm anxious to see what other words have been tagged with "metaphor," for example.

I'm loving this...

Oh, OK. That makes sense. Obviously it depends on people tagging words as they come across them. So I would tag "Tito" as "dog" so it could come up on yarb's listing.

That's another question, though--if some people use "dog" as the tag, and some use "dogs," then there's a problem. Also to use an example I've seen, some words tagged "nautical" and some tagged "marine."

But isn't there another danger in bulk-tagging lists? For example, in the first link you listed, John, someone might most reasonably tag my "ships of fame" list with "nautical," not realizing that "Millennium Falcon" is on there. Now "Millennium Falcon" has a "nautical" tag on it. Which may not make a big difference in this case, but... suppose there are words that have outright wrong tags on them? Does that matter?

I'm new to this tagging concept, so forgive the dumb questions.

And finally, might efficient use of tags finally make the tags section of each word page into an enormous thing you have to scroll past to get to the comments? I guess we can burn that bridge when we come to it (as confused people like me would say).

Well, bulk tagging is just a way to apply tags to lots of words at once. So we should really just be talking about the utility of tagging. My favorite use these days is to create big collaborative meta-lists.

For instance, this, this, this and this are all lists somehow related to the sea, or things nautical. Maybe I don't personally want to bother making a list with all those words in it--it'd be a pain in the neck. But I could bulk tag all those lists in about 10 seconds, and bam, I have a way to see all those words in one place.

It's the overlap with words tagged by others which makes tagging more connective than listing. By bulk tagging my dogs from russian literature list with "dogs", "russian", "literature", and "dogs from russian literature", I will be able to link all my dogs from russian literature with everyone else's dogs from russian literature.

I have a question, though. What kind of bulk tags did you have in mind for your lists? I'm asking because as I thought about using them, it occurred to me that bulk-tagging my list would be sorta just creating a tag that, if I click on it, would bring me right to my list. So then I was wondering, why would I bulk-tag anything? If you click on the tag, it pulls up a list of all the words with that tag, which presumably would be everything on your list (plus anyone else's words with the same tag, of course). But if you click on any one of those words, it also shows you (thank God for this feature!) which lists it's already on, over on the right. So it seems like the purposes of bulk-tagging are ... well, probably I'm just not comprehending the potential of bulk-tagging an entire list. :| Can someone enlighten me?

Bulk-tagging is a phenomenal upgrade, John. I just tagged all my lists. I'm definitely going to use tags more often as a search tool on Wordie.

Thanks for your quick response.

Bulk tagging is teh alsome. Thanks, John! I'm going to try it out tonight.

Just added bulk tagging to lists. Important to note that this doesn't let you tag lists themselves. What it does is tag every word in a list.

Yeah, keeping up with the comments is like drinking from a fire hose. I continue to chew on ways to deal with that, but the truth of the matter is I don't think there's any way a normal person* could keep up with them all. The best I think we'll be able to do is come up with ways to better keep track of the subset that most interests you.

* Though some of us clearly aren't normal people :-)

Speaking only for myself (as always), I don't see a need to categorize what types of comments are entered. Too often they are a mix of conversational, quotational, citational, or usage-ational (to coin a phrase).

We do have tags, which is great, but as Skip pointed out, many of us aren't really using them to their full potential. (I'm starting to work on that on my own entries/lists.) Tags will certainly help sort things for lots of folks; I don't think sorting comments will prove as useful or as simple.

It's unfortunate that people are sad they can't "keep up" with comments--I include myself in that group--but it does seem like any technical change that would make that easier would also make Wordie a lot like your average message board/forum kind of site. And I am vehemently opposed to that.

I agree, skipvia--better use of tags might be a quick way to help solve what appears to be a problem, but I've never been able to make myself use them consistently.

At first blush, categorizing comments seems a lot like work to me. I'm not sure we can say definitively that the reason some people don't post often is because they feel overwhelmed, although that may be true for some. As for me, I simply skip comments I'm not inclined to be interested in. Then again, I check in on Wordie nearly every day, and that's not always possible (or even desirable) for everyone.

Hi Skip, for sure, I've wanted that capability for myself as well. I'll move it to the top of the list, as it should probably take precedence over the "phone in your own pronunciations" feature I've been chewing on...

Hey, John...could you provide a way to bulk-tag existing lists? For example, there are currently 187 untagged entries on one of my lists. I'd love to be able to apply a tag (or set of tags) to one of my lists--or other folks' lists, for that matter. I'm far less likely to open each of those entries to apply tags, but if I could do it all at once...

Tags can be an enormous benefit in tracking down words and conversations. I'm as guilty as anyone in terms of forgetting to provide them, but if we all took tags a bit more seriously we'd all benefit.

We miss you too, jennarenn! :)

Unfortunately it seems that, if Wordie continues to grow, it isn't an issue of anyone being in the thick of anything or not. It isn't possible, and never was since the site was teensy tiny, to read all the comments. They're for Wordieternity. They're for coming across someday. The only way to "track" them is tied to actual vocabulary words or to the lists that they reside on. Which kind of seems like... well... the point of Wordie--that it be about words.

As someone whose Wordie time is severely limited between September and June, there are times when I'd appreciate a way to filter comments. Personally, I simply can't keep up anymore. I love that you guys are enjoying yourselves, but I do miss being in the thick of things. :) Jen

People only annoy you with your permission.

Good points. I love Wordie as it is. John's done wonders with this site.

True, that could be a solution. Another thought is that the word page is kind of where usage notes belong, since the page actually says, "Leave a comment, citation, or usage note here." I'm not sure attaching usage notes or citations to a list rather than a word would clear anything up--in fact it might result in more confusion, since they'd all be jumbled up on the list instead of attached to the words in question.

Listen, I'm not opposed to a feature that might result in someone not being annoyed, particularly if that feature eliminates more than one source of frustration for more than one user. But could this be a case of a mountain being made of a molehill?

Another possible solution to sionnach's frustration would be for Wordies to have the ability to include a word's definition with their lists rather than in the word's comment box. That might free up comments for conversations rather than for definitions.
Just a thought.

John, the exchange taking place between sionnach and chained_bear on her profile makes me think again about ways to fine-tune Wordie content. Some of us are enjoying c_b's current run of quotations, others wish they would end, and some presumably skip blithely over them.

Previously there have been complaints that the flow of comments on Wordie is getting to be too much handle. Comments seem to have slowed down recently, but perhaps that means some people aren't participating as much because they're being overwhelmed, which would be a shame.

A possible solution: create check-boxes to allow each comment to be flagged as a "definition", a "citation", or a "remark", or more than one of those (just as each word can be flagged for its parts of speech).

This would allow the comments to be separated into three streams. The homepage could still have all comments flowing through, but one could choose a view showing just remarks, or just definitions or just citations. Clicking through on anyone of them would then show the full thread.

There could be several advantages. Someone who's been away from Wordie for a week probably is most interested in catching up on the conversations. Those would all be in the "remarks stream", since the most interesting definitions and citations stimulate remarks.

The default page for any word would be the same as currently, but could have options for viewing only definitions or citations from among the comments. This would answer another longtime desire expressed at times among Wordies--to somehow give definitions special status among the comments.

Yeah, I bumped up the refresh rate. But since it regenerates all the comments on each refresh, edits will be reflected on the front page after a subsequent refresh.

John, have you changed the frequency with which the homepage is refreshed? I find that many of my comments post almost immediately, and since I often edit them in the first minute or two, I notice the lack of the buffer.

I have posed a question about 'words added by me' figures on forty eight.

Unlisted words are consigned to the Island of Misfit Toys.

Hi gangerh. Some of them are in yarb's Adoption agency. I also have a list composed of Former ghosts. But most delisted words if encountered should just be tagged as misspellings.

Ta, Treeseed. But where's there where it sits? With all the other listless words. Just out-takes really. Perhaps they should have a list of their own. Maybe 'Out-takes Awaiting Adoption'. Or 'Word Rescue'. Then we could all pick one of the cutest and give it a proper home.

gangerh,
It just sits there waiting for someone to use it. It says "0 Wordies list". I have put a few words in the limbo of "0 Wordies List"..usually because of accidental misspelling.

Say I add a word to my list. Say it's a unique one. Say I delete it from my list before anyone else adds it to their list. Where does the poor listless word go?

I think I've managed to avoid lost comments by reading from the bottom of the page up, then refreshing the screen just before I go to a newer comments page. Seems to work. You catch those newer comments that otherwise get lost in the shuffle when going from page to page.

I think open lists have really accelerated the activity.

Yes, the comments are even faster now than they were before my hiatus. I'm getting nauseous!

I know, seanahan. It's really difficult keeping up with the comments. I wish there were some way to tame them, but I can't imagine what that would be.

Skipvia, beware of lost comments.

You do look quite fetching in that outfit, John.

Thanks for doing that--although I usually read from the bottom up, it's a nice little luxury.

Hi sv, good call, done.

Probably has something to do with my sparkly dress and magic wand.

John, this is a minor point, but it would be nice if there were a "past comments" link at the bottom of the Recent Comments and Citations section as well as the top so that you wouldn't have to scroll all the way back up to the top of the comments to get to the next section.

(Why do I always feel like Dorothy approaching the Wizard when I ask for things like this?...)

Yo yo yo, just added an (optional, configurable) image search option. See images.

And that's on a good day!

You know, you just have to love a site on which hemorrhoid cream puffs, euryvocalic, sheila, and foretopgallantmast appear on the same page. Thanks, John.

Would be nice if under or above "appears in these lists:" we also had "is a favourite word of Tom, Dick, Harry and Joan". Favourites are an underused feature here and this would help them be seen more, which I'd like a lot.

Hi John,
Could you please add Playlist.com to the choose a service drop-down box? I would love to see what others like to listen to while playing on Wordie.
Thanks.

John, I guess you're trying to make it easier for people to equate comments and citations, but the new heading upon listing a word is painful: "xxx was added to the list yyy. Feel free to add a comment or citation". It's going to get old real fast.

I too discovered the recent activity link just now, and I am enraptured by it. Thanks, John!

I hadn't noticed the recent activity link. Great addition, John!

Good idea moll, that page is looking kind of spare.

Have you noticed the recent activity page we all have? It's linked to in the right column on your profile (though you can turn it off if, for some reason, you don't want to be stalked).

John, how about on the "your words" page showing the words someone recently listed down the right side? I got the idea from Asativum's comment on Treeseed's profile. It would be interesting to see what someone is listing and what connections are make.

Now there's a man who knows his own mind. :-)

Ah u, a similar stance to the one my pop almost always stakes out! The rest of the family will be in heated debate, and eventually one of us, forgetting how he answered the question the last 10,000 times he was asked, will solicit his opinion. Which is always, always "I agree strongly with the both of you."

Can I be actively indifferent? It's decided: I am staunchly, ardently, 100% opposed to having an opinion on the matter.

Point taken and I agree.

I'm as much a culprit as anyone, but I agree. I'll cut out the images and video. Or at least be much more discerning about when to embed something :-)

I would also prefer not to have pictures and videos directly in Wordie. I don't mind them occasionally. Another concern is that most of the ones posted appear to be copyright violations.

I third sionnach and reesetee. In fact, maybe I'll start using lynx again, just for Wordie.

I agree with skipvia. In general, I think it far preferable just to link to pictures or videos, rather than embedding them here on Wordie.

Me again, with the same old observation about images and videos on Wordie. Lord knows I love them, and I frequently link to them, but I avoid embedding them in my posts because this is Wordie, and it's supposed to be like Flickr but without the pictures, right? If it's just me, please let me know and I'll never comment on this again, but I really love the simple, uncluttered look of words on a page, sans images.

Really--I'll let this be if it's not an issue for any other Wordies, and no ill will is intended toward anyone.

Not sure this belongs here, but after some discussion around the word confuzzle, including John's musings about a FAQ at brusselsprouts''s profile, I notice that FAQ remains unlisted and unclaimed.

Perhaps Wordies could give John a hand? Or is that only a recipe for more confuzzlement?

My first foray with the exciting new 'open list' feature was when I started the 'Dewey, Cheatham and Howe' list. When one views the entire list, it correctly identifies who added which word (e.g. Reed D. Manual was contributed by skipvia). However, if one brings up any specific word on the list, if the word is listed for the first time, the attribution is 'first listed by sionnach', regardless of who actually added it. Has anyone else noticed this phenomenon? By the nature of the list, pretty much all the constituent words are being listed for the first time.

I agree. Nice compromise.

I'm personally glad that WeirdNet can still live on with its definition of choice provided first, and perhaps "better" ones available with a click. At this point I'd kind of hate for its quirkiness to go away!

John, you added "more" and "less" links for WordNet? Great idea! Guess you were weary of all the WeirdNet whining.... ;-)

Something sionnach said inspired me to suggest this, so I can blame him if it's tosh. It'd be fun, though predictably quite useless, to have a little calculator that showed how far the unique words on Wordie stretched if they were laid end to end in 12 point font. Sort of a measure of how far we, as a community, progress in perpetrating death/life to language by a thousand (ok, more) lists. Lexicon v Real World distance. Might not sell as many tickets as Godzilla v Megalon but I'll be watching, you betcha by golly wow yeah rumpty numpty.

I'd like a user search on the 'Other Searches' page, and I'd like to wish John a Happy New Year before I forget to do so.

Thanks for the quick action, John! It definitely helps. I picked up several comments that I'd missed.

Thanks mollusque, good suggestions. I just edited the your comments page so it shows what word or list was commented on. Grouping by thread strikes me as more problematic. Right now the comments are ordered chronologically, so I'm not sure how grouping would handle words where the same person left numerous comments at widely disparate times -- a common case. By grouping them, I imagine they'd only show up lumped under the most recent use? I maybe be misunderstanding you, ping me off thread if you want to explain.

I like the columns idea, and I really like the idea of finding ways to raise visibility based on activity level. I'll work on as time permits.

A few suggestions that might not increase server load much. I occasionally use the list of my own comments to find the conversations I've been involved in. Showing which list or word was commented on would make that page more useful. Showing all the comments in one thread together would be even more helpful.

Could the past comments page be divided into two columns? One for stand-alone comments (words with only one comment), the other for all other comments? That way if, say, I'm putting in a bunch of definitions for two letter words not in the Scrabble dictionary, someone can ignore those as stand-alones, and look for more interesting things among the active threads in the other column.

To clarify re: my suggestions... "blocking" somebody in that example does not mean you'd never see anything by that person, it only means their posts wouldn't show up in your notification page. It's only (hypothetically) offered as one tool among many in an attempt to streamline comment-following, because we're all getting bogged down lately.

Essentially, if the Recent Comments page is moving too fast, this would be a custom page you could use to bring the most relevant/interesting posts to your attention. You'd still be able to see the other stuff, or follow the Recent Comments page as usual. But if you're in a time crunch, such filters could be very helpful in getting caught up. If there are options you don't want to use, you don't have to, but ultimately the choices would be there if you wanted them. Hypothetically.

Frankly u, I would not want the option, "Never show me comments by this user." People say dumb, insensitive things, and refusing them an audience is refusing them feedback as well as the opportunity to grow. :) I can think of several times when some of our best users forgot themselves, myself included.

also, u? That stuff does sound interesting, but it's also kind of mind-numbing. Maybe it's the way work has been going lately, but your list of suggestions made me want to cry. Do we *have* to have all those choices? Can't we just, like, list words?

What chained_bear and reesetee said, John. We wouldn't be wanting so many features if Wordie weren't such a compelling place to be. If we forget to thank you every day for that, shame on us. You da man. (You are a man, aren't you? It was a long time before I figured out that c_b wasn't...)

Awww!!! That was a lovely read--your post, his post, your response. *hugs John metaphorically*

Interesting post, John, and a very gracious reply from you. :-)

Skipvia and friends, I'll try to find ways make it easier to keep track of comments and the like, but not sure how or when that'll happen. Uselessness, you're right, having a really granular way to select what you hear about, and how, would be great, but it'd be a job of work. And equally, it would take more computing power than Wordie currently has available. Pretty much every feature I add increases the load on the little chunk of a rented server Wordie runs on.

The folks at Merriam-Webster seem to be awfully sporting about my making fun of them (see these comments). Maybe they'll sponsor a server upgrade ;-)

Yes, it was uselessness.

Bilby, did you mean uselessness when you mentioned the e-mail suggestion? I'm fine with e-mail notifications, so long as they're manageable--but then I'm sure I get far less e-mail than the Ghostmaster. ;-)

I'm confused (ok, nothing new, but ...). If you find an unlisted word the drop-list encourages you to add it. This list is ordered oldest to newest. Yet on the 'Your Words' view the list is ordered newest to oldest. That's confuzzling, because sometimes I'm shooting to one end because I remember I created the list a long time ago, and sometimes I do the same and end up at the wrong end completely. Once one has Quite A Few Lists (over 30?), list management and how to find the wee devils is quite an issue.

I'm the opposite of reesetee on email. I don't mind email because I am used to being ruthless with it. On the other hand if I have to come on Wordie to see what's 'come in' I'll be here all day. Can't have that, can we?

Thansk for the improvements. I didn't mis-spell that, I'm just a big fan of Murmansk, that's all.

I'd rather not have e-mail notification... I get enough mail as it is, and constant Wordie things would push it over the top. If we are to have any notifications, I would prefer for them to be here on-site, accessible via a nice little link at the top of every page that lights up when it contains something new. And it might be nice to customize what does or doesn't show up there. In other words, how about the following options (for example):

• Subscribe to this list's comments
• Subscribe to this word's comments
• Subscribe to this tag's comments
• Subscribe to this profile's comments
• Subscribe to comments by this user
• Subscribe to comments on this user's lists
• Subscribe to comments on words with this tag
• Never show me comments on this list
• Never show me comments on this word
• Never show me comments on this tag
• Never show me comments on this profile
• Never show me comments by this user
• Never show me comments on this user's lists
• Never show me comments on words with this tag

John, I'm with skipvia on the problem of keeping up with comments. (Dang, Wordie is just too popular!) But perhaps an option to receive e-mail digests might solve the problem? And since I know next to nothing about what that entails, I'll leave it at that. :-)

One disadvantage with status bar scripting, aside from the fact that some people like to block it, is that if I go to a list page, then use the Back and Forward browser buttons to return to it, the scripting doesn't work on the return visit.

ps -- thanks jennarenn! I've often been told I'm full of shist.

Yesterday's changes didn't break things nearly as much as I expected them to, so I'm trying again. I just added "open lists" as an option, which are rather raw: built on the train ride home tonight :-) They allow all Wordies to contribute to a list, as requested. On tomorrow's train ride I'll try get all lists -- those to which you're a contributor, as well as the ones you created--showing up on your list of lists, and in the dropdowns.

The url changes are permanent--someday I'm planning to introduce an API, and this style of URL will lend itself to that. To try and make up for it, though, when you're on a list page the status bar at the bottom of your browser now says who the creator is. It felt very mid-90s retro to be scripting the status bar--that was a very sexy thing to do, back in the day.

I also fixed a few bugs, including the tags link. Thanks for all the feedback, keep it coming.

Dear John,

You rock like a good mica shist.

Love and cookies,
jennarenn

Hi John;

I don't think I'm alone in having a difficult time keeping up with comments. There are so many that I often miss comments to my words or lists. Pagination has helped, but even so there are just so many comments...

I like getting notified via e-mail when someone comments on a list, but getting e-mail for every word clearly isn't feasible. What if we could have some sort of notification when we logged on (or specifically checked) to see if any new comments had been directed at us? For example:

"Hi skipvia. The following (words/comments/lists) have received comments since the last time you checked:
word...
word...
word..."

Then, if we are rushed, we could go right to the words that need attention.

U, I noticed that URL change myself and was a bit disappointed. Glad to hear it will (probably?) be coming back.

Hi John. Once you are invited to contribute to someone else's list, how do you go about doing that? I can't seem to find the hidden key...

All good suggestions, I'll hit the low hanging fruit when I have time to do a round 2 on this. U, you are emailed when someone adds you to a list. Or, er, you should be... I'll verify that that is working.

Oh, also... I would love some sort of notification feature that says "reesetee has added you as a contributor to [name of list]" so I'm aware of new additions to my editable repertoire. Such a notification thingy would go well with private messaging, but we've had that conversation before... ;-)

What bilby and mollusque suggested. Also, I'd like to voice my disappointment that a listmaster (i.e., creator/owner of a list) can no longer be determined at a glance by the list URL. I always found it handy to look up at the location bar to find out who's responsible for the page I'm reading, particularly if there are multiple people involved in the discussion there. Under the new format, I have to scroll all the way back to the top of the page.

I'd like an option to enable all Wordies to contribute to the list.
cheers,
B

Good idea!

I'm honored, reesetee! Well-programmed, John! I tested with a few trees and it worked beautifully.

The only tweak I'd suggest is for the shared list to be on both (or all) contributors list of lists. That way a word could be added via the drop-down menu instead of from the list page.

Oroboros, I tried adding mollusque as a contributor to a list and got that error too, but when I clicked again, all was well.

You're multiplying, John! Have you cloned yourself?

Hey O, thanks, that should be fixed now.

Despite your having gotten that error, reesetee and uselessness should be contributors to whatever list you added them to. Guess they'll have to click through all your lists and see which ones let them add stuff :-)

Surprises await me on Wordie this week! I must be digging into this stuff...

Wasn't me, oroboros! ;-> *flattered to be among the first list-sharers on Wordie*

Thanks, John! Will be interesting to see how this develops. I can barely keep track of my lists now!

Heidy John; tried to add reesetee and uselessness to the 'approved to add' feature and got a FYVM (f**k you very much!) error message. Lord, sumbuddy sayed sumthin' 'bout not promisin' a rose garden, and so does it be!

Signed:

Enthusiastic, grateful...and patient Wordister.

Just turned on collaborative (aka group) lists. Click on the 'edit' link under the name of any of your lists, and you'll see how it works. Probably full of bugs--let me know if you find any. I'll blog it at greater length tomorrow. Enjoy :-)

Thanks, mollusque! I'd also refer you to jennarenn and chained_bear's comment lists. Very funny. :-)

I think listing a word as a favorite counts toward its total on the top 100 list, so presumably this could be pulled out separately. It would be fun to see.

The other thing I'd like to see is a list of words that have the most comments. Toward that end, reesetee has a great list "Only on Wordie". Not necessarily the most comments, but the most interesting!

John,

Could we have a feature that would tell us how often a word or a list has been listed as a favorite by members? I only see favorite lists on the individual profiles. I don't know if it's feasible for favorite words, but I think it could work with lists.

It didn't appear after my first edit, but I did a test one now and lo, there it is. I feel compelled to leave it for posterity though.

It's still there, sarra, as VO says--it shows up if you reopen the comment box to edit, then click on "edit" again.

The delete button seems to appear after one edit.

Simple request: please move the little "processing" throbber next to whichever button has been pressed on each respective page (like it is for commenting), so that one doesn't have to scroll around to see if one's request has been successfully submitted!

edit: I can't find a displaced one, now. If I do I'll point it out. And please bring back the "delete" button for comments!

Regarding the browser-based search question, http://mycroft.mozdev.org/ has Sherlock/OpenSearch-related links. Somebody would have to make a search plugin.

I was just thinking, John, that it's a good feature that comments are entered in Courier and displayed in Palatino. It gives two chances to catch typos.

With a lot of sites, you can "Add Search Engine" to the search box in Firefox, allowing you to search the site with a simple Command-K (or, Ctrl-K, I believe). Any chance we could get this going on for Wordie?

maybe the ability to add a word to multiple lists at the same time (e.g. i recently added concatenation to my words, and words by woolf), vs. clicking on a word then manually adding it multiple times to different lists?

-from a wordie with lots of crossover

:)

U, I am totally down with a random list feature, as long as it won't pop up a list that's so long it crashes my browser. ;)

I also think the benefit of a more accurate total word count is probably one worth having. And you're probably right--no one will miss the non-listed misspellings. I keep forgetting if they're non-listed, that... you know, that means it's not on anyone's list.

Oh, here's another request I just thought of... I love the random word feature, but how about a random list feature?

Seems I kicked off a discussion and then disappeared before it really got going! My original suggestion, of course, opts for a human-controlled mechanism over an automated one, so I don't think mollusque's concern applies. And the issue about accidentally deleting "legitimate" or intentional misspellings is, I think, moot... because if it's an uncommented ghost, frankly, no one will miss it.

I'm a natural packrat, John, so I understand your aversion to deleting anything from the database. But isn't it safe to say that the benefits outweigh the costs of allowing us to manually clean up uncommented ghosts? It'll make the word count a more accurate figure, it'll stop auto-suggest from feeding typos to unsuspecting searchers, and I guarantee no one will be offended that "their" word got deleted. Think about it. ;-)

c_b, this could be the apophenia speaking again, but seeing what people incorrectly tag as a misspelling could be interesting in itself, as well.

Mollusque, I think you cut to the chase. I can't think of a completely reliable way to tell the difference between a misspelling and a madeupical word. Discounting unlisted, uncommented, non-dictionary words would probably get you most of the way there, but there's no way to be sure you wouldn't also be zapping intended words. I'd rather let 100 misspellings go free than convict a single intentional word.

Plus there's the slack factor. It's just so much easier to ignore them :-)

Oroboros, I'm sure you're right, trying to read meaning into misspelling is probably a quixotic task. A symptom of my apophenia.

Eugraphic? Cacographic? Delightful words.

Right, mollusque--distinguishing misspellings from perhaps bizarre words without comments is not easily done. (That was my point but I got waylaid by goofiness.)

But tagging words as misspellings has its own issues. I can think of half a dozen instances just since tagging was instituted (not long ago!) in which something was tagged a misspelling and it was not. In that case, there's no way to change the tag except for the original tagger to delete it. I think that's as fraught with difficulty and imprecision as distinguishing between caspers and zombies is.

How do you propose to distinguish uncommented correct words from uncommented misspellings? I can't imagine an automated way. Some words are legitimately listed, but then ghosted for whatever reason--maybe the original lister changed the focus of the list. I've already encountered at least a dozen eugraphic ghosts that I've added to one or another of my lists. I think the solution to cacographic ghosts is to use the misspelling tag.

I'm agreeing with uselessness. Uncommented misspellings should be consigned to the dustheap. John, I wonder if Wordie will ever be big enough (in my lifetime, anyway) that misspelling data will ever be meaningful any more than misspellings in all the grade schools of the universe will ever yield anything other than the equivalent of a rorschach test. But I'm no experk, so maybe we need sionnach to weigh in on that aspect, hmmm?

More: deletion of U.M.s would make the word count more meaningful, I feel.

We can just tag words as misspelled.

I've always thought that at some point it would be fun to start rooting around in the db, to collect data on misspellings. So I'm averse to ever deleting anything, ever.

But of course I'm a database weenie. Data should persist for eternity. Like, you know... zombies. But zombies (like wierd) need love too.

You'll need to talk to John about that. It might cut down on membership.

I agree, jennarenn. I don't want to delete the conversations on some misspellings. (Heck, I'm the one who misspelled some of them! Crappuccino, anyone?) But they're still undead. And they may try to *eat* one of us.

Fewer misspellings = fewer zombies

That is to say, I don't think it's right to delete a 'word' once it has a comment on it. If we edit out the abandoned misspellings, there will be fewer opportunities to create zombies.

I agree that dead misspellings are stupid. However, your theory about ghost words being nice nuggets that turn up when people leave comments also applies to dead misspellings. Sometimes people leave comments on *them,* which makes them undead misspellings--that is, zombies. I'm okay with ghosts, and I'm okay with ghosts that have comments--let's call them caspers, since they're loved by someone. But I don't like zombies. Now how do you differentiate between caspers and zombies? Who's gonna be the Big Zombie Sheriff of Wordie?

I like legitimate ghosts. I think of them as little nuggets of surprise that will turn up far in the future, when somebody either discovers them via the random word feature, or else adds something s/he thought was new, yet already bears comments.

Dead typos just floating around out there, on the other hand, are stupid. I figure if a ghost doesn't have any comments on it, that's a good gauge of keepability. No comments means no one cares. If you find it and you do care, leave a comment. ;-)

I thought you liked ghosts...? I guess it sounds cool to have the option to delete clear misspellings that aren't on anyone's lists and don't have any comments, but then, how the heck would that prevent *all* ghosts from being deleted?

So, how about a way for us to clean up the database a little? I'm thinking a "delete this word" button that only appears on ghosts that don't have any comments. There are a lot of these floating around on the site, and we ought to be able to do our part to weed them out. :-)

I'd love to be able to invert the cloud display for my words, so that the least-added words appear in the largest font, and the most-added words in the smallest.

Great site, I really enjoy it :-)

VO, I think phreaking came up in the back of my mind too, but it's not really what I meant :-)

Mollusque, any change I made was inadvertent, I'll look into it tonight.

Hi John, I see you've changed the screen that appears when a word is added to a list from a list page. I find it harder to use because it doesn't show the modified list after the word is added. This makes it harder to check that the word was entered correctly, to see if someone else has added the word before, and to click through to add a comment. Also, there are two windows to add the word on the resulting screen, and sometimes I end up in the bottom one instead of the top one. Can we revert to older version?

*Blinks* I take it the meaning of 'phone phreak' you have in mind isn't the one I immediately thought of.

Depends on your phone plan. Some include unlimited texting, some include a certain number, above which you pay per SMS.

I'm not really a phone phreak kind of guy, personally, but usually because I hate the additional charges associated with doing anything beyond talk. Any idea what kind of fees I might incur if I tried managing lists via SMS?

mollusque, good suggestions, I'll add paging ("next 400" links) to the comments page tonight, and a way to see more than the last 100 words added.

A threaded view of comments is more complicated, but I'll look into it.

Hey, did anyone besides kewpid notice the new mini-wordie? And would there be any interest in being able to add words via SMS, or is this not a phone phreak crowd?

I want an option to ignore comments by reesetee. Guy talks too much. ;-)

John, as Wordie grows and the great new features make it easier to find things, it's becoming harder to keep up with the comments and the flow of listed words. Is it feasible to:

a) have a "next 400" button on comments, so that one can see more than the first 400 hundred,
b) have an option for a threaded view of comments,
c) see more than the last 100 words added to Wordie?

Maybe some of this could be done with the feeds, but I know squat about them. (I don't know squat about them either). What do the feeds do?

As far as the debate over opening new windows/tabs versus not (this debate used to be on John's profile), thanks very much for the note that the scrolling wheel and the middle mouse button do the same thing in one click. I don't know that I'll get in the habit of using that knowledge, but it's handy to know. And uselessness has a good point, that there are several options for those of us who prefer new tabs/windows, but no real alternatives for those who don't. I am now more neutral on this issue than I was before. (I'm also a big fan of the back button, which helps.)

You ask me, you should make some pennies on the deal. :-) And no, I have no objections whatsoever.

About the ads on the front page, I was experimenting on my laptop, and once again accidentally launched the page when I moved the comments for tags to the live site. Hazard of only working on Wordie at 2am :-)

That square ad box is only on the front page; the rest of the pages are still set to only show ads on Tuesdays. If there are no complaints, I'll just keep it as is, see how it goes. This all remains an experiment. Eventually I'll build some kind of self-serve system where people can buy ads directly (user generated advertising :-). With Google ads, they're the only ones making a dime.

John, will we now see ads every day? I noticed a few delicately placed ones on the top right of the home page (and it's Thursday). No objection; just wondering.

I agree, John. Thanks.

Just added the ability to leave comments on tag pages, like so.

In light of everything that's been said, I think I'll just leave comments as they are: editable, no marker. Mostly because of inertia, but also because we're word people. We should be allowed to edit things. Every once in a while I come across a typo in a comment I left a day or a week ago, and I'm glad I can just fix it.

I hate when editing leaves a marker, since sometimes you're just fixing a typo, and no one else needs to know that. You start wondering if people are editing for typos or changing their post entirely, and if an argument gets heated that can really mess things up.

It would be ideal to be able to edit a comment, as you can on almost every message board I post to. If people are concerned about people editing messages and screwing up the flow of conversations, I would say have an "Edited" marker that a person could click on for the original post.

I've had to do that too.

I just edited one of my older comments (from seven months) ago because the link was outdated. So may I suggest that if we do introduce a time limit for editing comments, that it only apply to comments which have had responses, for the sake of archiving conversations?

John, I was going to mention that I always just ran a CTRL+F search on the lists page (which wasn't perfect, but it helped), but you've already made that practice obsolete! Wordie gets to be more addictive every day--and we have you to thank for it. :-)

John, thanks for all these improvements! They are like potato chips. Great to have the all view back. Might I suggest that the next, previous, and view all options be repeated at the bottom of the lists.

I've found that Google is good for searching Wordie. Do Googlebots affect performance? They index Wordie often.

How about including tag searching? Sorry to keep going on about this!

Just added a basic list search to the lists page.

I'll soon create a consolidated search page with the list search, comments search, and word search.

Hi lanklenmot. Asian characters should work fine (see this page). The search box at the upper right is for words, and you can search comments on the comments page, but right now that's it. I'll add a search for lists. Eventually I plan to totally revamp search, but that'll have to wait for upgraded hosting.

skipvia, a comment preview would be great. Eventually I'm going to hunt around for some kind of basic WYSIWYG comment editor, and will try to add preview when I get to that.

yarb, a 'what links point here' would also be great, but the only way I can think to do that would require a prohibitive amount of processing -- every once in a while the system would have to comb through every comment and see what was linked where. But if I can think of a simpler way to do it, I will.

Searching by list only: not yet.
Searching by tag: click on the tag.
Chinese characters: try pasting them in from another webpage. See 《♜☏☣》

Is it possible to search just the names of lists? If so, how can I do this?

Is it possible to search by tag?

Does wordie support Asian language encoding? Would really like to start a list of Chinese characters.

Thanks!

Everytime I open wordie I discover a wonderful new improvement - from definitions on the word pages to better spacing of our lists. Appreciate your work John!

That's mainly why I like being able to edit my comments, skipvia--accusations of historical revisionism aside. :-)

Sometimes I wish there were a "Preview Comment" button that would allow us to proofread a comment before we actually post it. This would be particularly useful when comments include off-site links, some of which are quite lengthy and make proofing comments difficult.

Plus I suck at typing...

The new list format (extra space and periods) is much appreciated as well. Thanks.

Wahoo! Thanks very much, John!

awesome! Thanks, John.

Two small additions. The sort order of your lists can now be toggled between alpha and chronological, the same as with words within a list. And on lists longer than 100 words, there's now a 'view all' link, which lets you turn off pagination and see everything on a single page.

How about a "which words link here?" facility?

How about in addition to a cloud view, a compact view? Like cloud view, but all in the small font size, with minimal line spacing. That would allow those of us with penchants for long lists to see them all at once and see what we've added already.

Also, on the lists of lists, could semicolons be used as separators instead of commas. Since some listnames have commas, it can be hard to parse.

By the way, the html addition is good. I thought you meant a mouseover pop-up, not a clickable pop-up. Still can't get square brackets not to link though, so I'm doing something wrong. I used curly braces instead.

mollusque, good point about comment editing being desirable in some cases. To preserve the historic record I could save the whole edit trail for a comment, though I'd have to figure out an interface so the trail was viewable, and it would add complexity. As a compromise, maybe comments that have been edited should just be marked as such? That wouldn't preserve the record, but it would let people know that they weren't seeing the original.

sionnach and cb, I hear you about wanting to be able to see lists on one page, I'll add that as an option sometime soon. Though I think I'll leave paging as the default, it keeps things a little more manageable and prevents really long undifferentiated lists from causing problems.

I had the same questions as sionnach re: paging through one's lists. I can understand the need or desire for such a feature--and it doesn't *really* bother me one way or the other--but for me, I guess I got used to the big long lists and my scrolling finger has now developed huge muscles and qualified for the Olympics.

I'm *not* down with a time limit on editing comments, though with historicity in mind, I have been using "Edit:" to append notes to previous comments. Using this method, rather than putting in a new comment every time, also helps keep down on the clutter on some pages that have tons of comments.

I'm also *not* down with anyone editing comments that aren't their own, regardless of whether someone "tagged" them as editable.

Using a "conversations" tag---why didn't I think of that? Duh...

Also, I routinely use the 400 comments link as well, all the time, to catch up on what I've missed.

Thanks again for all your hard work, John!

Recall that I proposed that the creator of the comment be allowed to decide if a comment should be editable by others. This was similar to the proposal that there be comments and definitions as two different classes, which people seemed to like. If people prefer that approach it's fine with me.

Editing comments: As far as a time limit on editing comments, I'm undecided. I agree on the importance of historicity. But there are some kinds of comments that serve as lists in their own right. I could imagine creating entries for "a - a", "a - b" etc., and then in the comments, list my favorite word starting and ending with those pairs of letters: aa, ana, alga, abaca, aurora...; ab, alb, arab, acerb, aplomb.... Why shouldn't I be able to go in and edit that list when I find a seven letter a - b word? I don't want to clutter my list of lists with 676 separate such lists.

Ghost words: I've changed by mind on ghost words: I think they should be counted in the total number of unique words on Wordie. They appear in the search window, and the comments still exist. There are a few I've encountered that aren't on anyone's list, but have been tagged as misspellings. (Actually, it's important that such ghost words be tagged as misspellings, otherwise newbies might add them to their lists. Try typing "sesq" in the search box. The last item on the list is a misspelling of sesquipedalian.)

On another note, John--I love the HTML popup info above the comments field. Neat! :-)

I am clearly an undisciplined wordier, so that roughly half of my words appear in an undifferentiated heap on my basic list. Previously, when viewing this list, it all appeared on screen together, making it simple to scroll up and down through it. In particular, checking to see if I had already added a word was relatively straightforward - just alphabetize the list and scroll down. This simplicity has been taken away by the recently added feature, which only allows me to see the list 100 words at a time. To get to my "s" words, it seems like I would have to hit "next" many, many times.

I am curious about the perceived advantage that this new feature might confer. Also whether there is any way to circumvent it?

Of course, one way to check if a word I'm thinking of adding is already on my list is just to add it, but the relatively slow response time makes this an unappealing option.

Sorry to be a complainer. In other news:

* I can see no benefit to allowing one user to edit a different user's comments, and several potential disadvantages, as others have already pointed out.

* The lowercase restriction doesn't bother me.

* I routinely use the "last 400 comments" feature, as the most convenient way of checking up on recent discussions and developments.

I'm pretty settled that comments will only ever be editable by the person who authored them, and eventually, there probably will be restrictions on that, like some sort of a time window. The only reason it hasn't happened yet is that I haven't had the time to do it. Likewise, things will probably stay all-lowercase for the foreseeable future. I know it's not ideal, but changing it causes more problems that it solves, and as I'm time and resource constrained, occam's razor wins.

One-way comments ratings (ie, you can say something is good, but not that it's bad) will come, someday. And I really like the idea of being able to custom-order lists, it would enable all kinds of fun stuff with poems, etc. Added to the to-do someday list.

I agree, too, that ghost words (nice phrase) should get their due. Sometimes you want something on the site, perhaps so it can be linked from a comment, but it doesn't belong in a list.

My immediate goal is to work on performance again. Between higher traffic, and added load on the system from the (perhaps not ideal) way I'm getting definitions, it's gone all to pot.

This may seem sort of silly, but sometimes I'd really love to be able to rearrange the order of the words on one of my lists. With some lists word order can make a pleasure of reading the list as a whole. Thus far the only way I've accomplished shuffling words is to move them all to a generic list and then move them back in the desired order.

I'm a legendary necromancer. I deliberately summon ghost words all the time. They shouldn't be ignored, it'll only make them feel bad. And when my ghosties feel bad, I feel bad.

Because I'm really not a fan of historical revisionism, I'd prefer that users can't edit comments left by other users. Actually, I might even add a time limit for commenting so that people can't even edit their own comments after, say, an hour. Changing things after they've been said in conversation only confuses things and shoos away whatever historicity might be lingering on the pages here. But I'm not opposed to deleting one's own comments, which can be useful, and I still think a comment ranking system (of some sort) would be nice.

Capitalization is a trickier issue than tags, I think, for words with multiple capitals in them. Particularly in the case of capitonyms: shall we have separate pages for Thanksgiving the holiday and thanksgiving the act of gratitude? And if so, what's the best way to ensure people are adding the one they think they want? Could lead to lots of head-scratching.

I agree that flags for acronyms and abbreviations would be great.

Ooh... What a list of suggestions!

I think I would be opposed to anyone editing comments that aren't their own. That could too easily turn into something we probably don't want here.

I think the tagging ideas--re: acronyms and ghost words--are interesting, though I haven't formed an opinion about them yet.

Not sure I agree on opening up comments in the way that mollusque suggests, if only because it may put a damper on some discussions, particularly those concerning various uses of a word/phrase.

My two cents. :-)

I really like the look up options. Thanks for keeping them!

Okay, I've prowled around enough now to have some opinions.

Regarding comments: I'd say there should be two types: ones that only the creator can edit, and ones that anyone can edit. The ones that anyone can edit would be the "serious" ones that give definitions and other "objective" information, and presumably would be displayed at the top. The creator of the comment would check a box opening the comment for editing (either when it was created or subsequently, which would give a way to bubble existing comments to the top).

Capitalization: how about a check box in tags where one could indicate that a word should be capitalized? That way capitalization would be a matter of display, and wouldn't affect sorting, and variants wouldn't build up. An option to turn off capitalization in display might also be wanted, since some would prefer the current system. Not sure how capitalization of phrases could be handled.

Tags: Checkboxes for tagging abbreviations and acronyms would be helpful. A word flagged as an acronym and also flagged as capitalized could be displayed with all letters capitalized.

Word counts: I don't think ghost words (words once entered then deleted) should be counted toward the total of unique words (as commented under detartrated yesterday). I've already entered a couple of words, that I realized I misspelled, and deleted before the feed ran displayed them on the home page. Why count such words? There are of course orphans, but they'll be counted when someone lists them again.

The counts for words listed seem to include tags, at least for individuals. Why?

More to come, but I'm up past my normal bedtime for the seventh night in a row.

Still a nice feature, despite what it says about Anne Heche. ;-)

Yay! We're keeping the tags for parts of speech! Yay!

Yeah, I thought it made sense to keep the manual parts of speech option, for words not in WordNet (madeupical and otherwise).

I'll improve the WordNet integration over time--I thought it was useful enough to launch now, but I know it's not perfect. It frequently gives the definition of the first word in a phrase, rather than the phrase itself. I just added "read in", and and it's showing the definition of "read", which is related, yet totally wrong. At the least I'll put in a notice when the definition isn't an exact match. Also, right now I have it showing a single definition, though many more are often available. I don't want to list them all--I tried that, it overwhelms the page--but eventually I'll add a 'more' link, so you can see the rest if you want to.

And when the definition just isn't long enough--that's why I left all the lookup icons on there :-)

If anyone has ideas to improve this, I am, as always, open to suggestions.

The WordNet addition is nice on some words, but sucky on others, where it gives an inadequate definition. :(

I second that! And while I'm on the right page (I asked this elsewhere)...Will you keep the option to tag parts of speech, now that you have the WordNet feature up & running? Just curious.

John--I love the WordNet addition. Thanks!

Hey John,
Has anyone thought about or suggested a comments-filtering feature? Just a thought.

I presume tag searching will appear at some stage, John?

I would like to see the wordie community able to link certain words to each other as synonym, antonyms, homonyms, etc.

There could be links to the associated words under the appropriate category in the word's page.

Also, word forms could be grouped together. One could group together, for example, prescient and prescience. Instead of one being listed 9 times and the other 12 times, both could be shown as listed 21 times.

All of these could be managed by the community. For example, any user could link a certain word to another or group words, but a certain number of members objecting to the action could negate it. Almost like wikipedia, but not quite :).

Forgive me if these have already been suggested, as I suspect they may have.

I don't mind the occasional image/video, but I would mind if there were many more than there are now.

I like the monochromatic look.

And I wouldn't use messaging.

That's my two cents for the day.

Form follows function, and in the case of Wordie, black letters on a white background seems quite functional (and beautiful) to me.

I take it all back. I love the earworm.

;)

I agree 100% with skipvia and ceebee. Wordie is, and should be, an oasis of words. If people want embedded media they can go to literally any other site.

Private messaging I don't really see the point of, either. But I'm neutral on that one.

I'm not super-attached to the embedded media thing. I like finding the occasional YouTube video on a word page because it often adds context (see: like) but it's true that it breaks the flow of the text we've come to expect. And a link would be nearly as effective, anyway. However, without embedded media, we wouldn't have earworm, which may or may not be a good thing.

I'm with skipvia on this. I find it jarring to encounter images and embedded YouTube videos, etc. on Wordie, though I would not be the first one to come right out and say so. (Partly because I'm a coward, and partly because I figured nobody else minded.)

I see uselessness's point re: design and color, and it's true that so far, those images and videos that have been embedded have not been overdone (as reesetee pointed out). I can only speak for myself and my own personal taste. One of the things I love about Wordie, and that sets it off so completely from almost *every* other site, is the dearth of embedded images and video. That dearth changes not only the look of the site itself (which is immediately apparent), but--and this is entirely subjective--the nature of the discourse that takes place here as well. It's a mindset, reading this site, that you're not going to be entertained by anything but words. You're not going to see a cute baby porcupine eating bananas and having the hiccups. (Which was darling, if I may say so! But that was a link, I believe...no?) You're only going to get words. You're going to have to use your brain here.

When words are all you have, you learn to use them well.

Anyway, I would submit to everyone else's opinion on this--if the majority of other wordies really love those embeds, then I'll deal with it, until/unless it gets beyond my capability to stand it. But since someone (*glares at skipvia*) was willing to share his/her dislike of that feature at the risk of being... well... disliked... I figured it wasn't fair, at least to that person, to stay silent.

In my view, the amount of embedded media we see now is entertaining and not too awfully jarring, so long as no one goes overboard (and thus far no one has). Not sure whether private messaging would make a difference, to be honest. There are other ways to contact fellow Wordies, especially now that we have a Wordie group on Facebook. :-)

As the first person to ever embed media on Wordie, of course I'm a little biased... but I do like having the ability to post that kind of stuff. :-P

However, I'm probably at odds with everyone else here when I say that I would appreciate some color and design elements around the site. I mean, it's perfectly functional as-is (and I love it!) but a little on the bland side for my tastes. Just because we're pro-words doesn't mean we have to be anti-everything else. Now, the only reason I've brought this up is that embedded media would not seem nearly so out-of-place on a more colorful site; I think it's only because of the simpler design we currently have that their presence seems a little jarring.

I'm also going to go out on the proverbial limb here and ask about embedded images and movies in comments. I don't want to offend anyone who has posted such, but I really don't think they belong on Wordie. ("Like Flickr, but without the pictures.") I don't object at all to off-site links to images, but placing them in the text just seems...wrong, somehow.

I have enjoyed many of the images and movies that folks have posted, but I would have preferred a link. Am I way off base here?

*throws himself at the mercy of other Wordies*

I'm neutral about messaging except for the fear that some of the wonderful conversations that we all enjoy might go private if we could message. As an alternative, could you expand the profile a bit to include a contact e-mail, with the assumption being that if you entered one you don't mind being contacted personally?

Do you think it might become a messaging site or would it still be Wordie, but with a messaging capability? The former I'm against, the latter... eh. I'm easy. :)

Hey! It's something I've on-and-off-again wanted, but never bugged you about it directly because you have so many other things on your plate. But yeah, if you made it, I wouldn't complain. ;-)

I guess I kind of love hypercategorization--as David Weinberger says, the solution to too much information, is more information!

Another question, sparked by a comment on uselessness's profile: would a private messaging system be appreciated? I've avoided it so far, because I figured it was best to encourage common discussion. But sometimes it would be nice to be able to send a message to just one person.

My original thought was something like what the OED does (if you are on a university, you can typically access it for free). You can browse just the definition, or the citations, the pronunciation, date graph, etc. After reading this topic, I think this is a bad idea. If you want to do that, go to a Dictionary. Wordie is about words, how they're used, how they make us feel, the memories they invoke, how they make us cringe or laugh or cry. Adding hypercategorization to this would probably ruin it. However, adding some basic comment tagging would be acceptable to me.

Ahh, brilliant, John, I'll keep that in mind next time I make an on-Wordie link!

So yeah, lots of ideas here to consider... but in the meantime, perhaps a good priority is pagination on any page where comments can go? Because the active ones (like, say this page) fill up fast, and that's a lot of scrolling. AJAX and pagination go together like birds of a feather, so a little XMLHttpRequest magic could do wonders. ;-)

Tags are certainly underutilized on Wordie. I'm guilty of neglecting to add them to many of my words. But the thoughtful use of tags could solve many of the issues that have come up, as trivet suggests.

good stuff here, still digesting, but a quick note to U: to add a link without having the external icon appear, make it relative: /words/features instead of http://wordie.org/words/features.

Or, instead of making lists of conversation, you could use a conversation tag?

I guess some of us are sensing a negative connotation to "favoriting" and some are viewing it as a useful distinguishing feature. I'm all for useful distinguishing features; my fear is that any feature on Wordie, if you can favorite it, might become a popularity contest. I don't want that, whether it be for a word, list, tag, or what have you.

The way u describes a favoriting-comments system doesn't sound like it could foster competitive feelings. I'm not familiar with MetaFilter so I can't really address the suggestion any more specifically. If there's a way to add tags to tags, or list tags, or tag lists, or whatever--that sounds good.

U does have a very good point, which I hadn't considered fully before. A list of conversational pages (such as what jennarenn and I have started keeping) is useful only so long. Eventually, and maybe sooner rather than later, that list will start looking like st.peter's word list, and crash people's computers when you try to bring it up. :) (I imagine that was fixed long ago, but it still kind of cracks me up that it happened.)

John, a shot in the dark: what about setting up a tag box, like the one on word pages right now, for comments? Maybe instead of allowing people to post their own tags on comments (e.g. "stabby"), you could limit them to a couple check-boxes...? Like a serious button? (I have to admit, this thought amuses me endlessly. It could turn into a form of punctuation! "Statement. Serious!" Or even a verb! "I totally serioused my comment! Didn't you see?")

Wait. My brain is vacillating wildly now and I'm not comprehending what I'm in favor of and what I'm opposed to. *goes to earworm page to clear head*

I wondered whose voice that was in my head, sionnach. It didn't sound like the voice of binky.

I'm also opposed to favoriting users, but I don't think favoriting comments is bad. At least on MetaFilter (my inspiration for the idea) there's no sense of competition. The "favorites" aren't really worth anything, except as a placemark to return to good conversation points. It has the side benefit of encouraging people to post substantial comments, though "substantial" remains plenty vague so it could mean educational or weird or funny or whatever. It's very free-form.

I love all the "conversations" lists but I think it's only a short-term solution for keeping track of good stuff. I'm just looking for better ways to do that, and while favoriting comments may or may not help, maybe there are other things that will work better in the long-term. Wordie's getting bigger, and faster, and more complicated, and anything that improves the way it's organized is a big plus in my book.

So here's an idea I just had. At the moment, we can create lists of words. But what if we could make lists of other things too? For example, lists of lists. Lists of tags. Lists of users. Lists of comments. I think that would add many layers of interconnectivity, and provide new ways to organize stuff as well.

Finally, John, how the heck did you link to a list page without the icon showing up after it?

Rocking catatonically back and forth.... Wordie good. no change wordie.

favoritism is a hellspawnish idea.

skipvia is channeling my thoughts on these various possibilities and expressing them better than I could

I'm opposed to the idea of favoriting (hey, new word) comments, and I'm seriously opposed to favoriting each other. Any possibility of destroying the egalitarian nature of Wordie worries me. What if you don't get favorited? Will you be less likely to use Wordie? We already favorite the words, lists, and Wordies we like by following links and possibly making comments. Do we need to codify this?

Some of these ideas seem like solutions without problems.

Well, I'm down with a serious tag or checkbox, either one.

I'm not sure I like the idea of favoriting comments or ... favoriting anything, really. I can understand the desire to remember certain users or profiles, or even certain comments on certain words. I've certainly had that desire in the past, but ... I just made lists to put them on so I wouldn't forget them. I mean... that's kind of what we do here anyway. Right?

*puts this word on a "conversations" list*

U, I love the idea of favoriting comments. I've also thought it might be nice to be able to favorite each other. As with voting, I don't want to do anything that'll add a competitive or negative vibe, but sometimes you want to be able to essentially bookmark a profile.

The possible downside is that it becomes a tit-for-tat thing, or that people might feel badly if they haven't been favorited enough. Though that would be mitigated by the fact that I have no intention of making it possible to see who has favorited you, or any specific user.

I agree, Wordie isn't and shouldn't try to be a wikipedia clone. But I love citations, and I don't see any reason it can't be a social, fun-first place, and also useful (see errata for more on this). I'm listening, though; anything I add along those lines will be done in small, incremental steps that don't impinge on the primary mission.

Uh, you know, the mission? Of telling fart jokes, and referencing cheesy 80s heavy metal bands?

I like the idea for a "definition" or "dictionary mode" checkbox. You can't segregate the citational comments from the conversational ones because they depend on each other.

Other than that, I'm against voting, rating etc. for the reasons given by others.

What I do like though is stats, stats, stats. Give us stats, John! Tell us people's average letter and syllable counts! The mean and median obscurity of their words (a la librarything). Most fantastic of all, show us a spider diagram detailing list overlap, i.e. connectivity / affinity between members.

I'm always late to these parties, but here's my two cents. I like my Wordie existential. You know, so it just is what it is.

Maybe it's my pseudonym taking over, but I think attempts to make the site more useful are not so good. At least academically speaking. I'm all in favor of making it more usable, and more efficient to do what we already do. But let's not kid ourselves that we're making some kind of purposeful dictionary/Wikipedia clone. That may be right for Lingoz, but it's not who we are. Wordie is primarily about fun (vis-à-vis word appreciation, admittedly).

Yes, the site is educational. But mostly in the "gosh, I wasn't planning to learn that today but I'm glad I did" way. There's no way to differentiate between fun comments and informative comments, and comments are frequently both. Often a regular definition comment will spawn a whole conversation that could be considered "fun" or "off-topic" but is also thought-provoking and enlightening. We should make no attempts to corral comments into one category or another. In my opinion.

On the other hand, I'd be up for other ways to add value to comments. Perhaps comment-favoriting? MetaFilter has a nice way to both give kudos for good contributions to a discussion and save them for recall later. Favorited comments are noted with a little "14 users marked this comment as a favorite" blurb. Food for thought.

cb, a 'serious' checkbox (i wouldn't call it that, but a 'serious' button would be kind of... funny) *could* be just a tag. the reason i prefer a checkbox is that i think it's easier for people to use, and it enforces uniformity. which in general i don't care about, but in some specific instances just makes everyone's life easier.

Agreed, trivet. And I also like the "appears in these lists" feature for the same reason you do.

I like the citation v. miscellaneous idea much better than categories and voting. One of the (many) reasons I like this site is that the only rating system you have is the number of people who have listed / commented / favorited a word. I dislike stars and precentages and the like.

PS - my favorite new thing is seeing what other lists a word is on - good for finding new and interesting lists and wordtuplets.

That would work for me, John. It eliminates the need (implied or otherwise) to categorize one's comments all the time, but it does give the option for people to see the "serious" notes on words when they don't have time/inclination to wade through all the serendipitousness. Also, it's optional.

But wait... if it's only the one category, how is that different from a tag with site-wide uniformity?

Nevermind... it's probably more technical than I need to know!

how about instead of multiple categories, just one: citation/usage note. a single, discrete checkbox. everything else would fall under the (implied) category "miscellaneous". Reminds me of one of my favorite recent non-fiction books, Everything is miscellaneous.

Thanks for considering the "list of lists" sort, John.

I have to say that I'm not crazy about the categorizing idea either, although if it's an option that's left to the user, it might be useful for some Wordies. Not sure I'd use it myself. One of my favorite aspects of Wordie is its serendipitousness. Granted, a little organization is nice (and the new features are fantastic), but I'm not sure that this wouldn't come off as over-organizing.

As for voting--make mine an absolute NO vote. In my view, that's asking for trouble and bad feelings.

My two cents. :-)

catergories, schmatergories. I can't really imagine myself categorizing my posts

but... but... what about when you make a joking comment in a usage note? What about cracking wise in a definition? I don't know about this. I'm still wondering how it's going to work if people just start *thinking* in terms of categorizing their comments, even if they don't *have* to check one of those boxes.

What if one category were called "comments" (or even "general comments") and one were called "in all seriousness"? Wouldn't that cover what you're hoping to cover? It makes all the comments kinda sortable, but not so sortable that people will feel constrained and/or not check any boxes at all.

P.S. I also like the idea of having switchable "dictionary" and "normal" views, though I don't know how that would work logistically.

Glad some of you are into the multi-mode business. And yes, you're absolutely right, no 'joke' category. Explaining humor is about as funny as cancer. That I even suggested it means I need to go to bed.

'night :-)

I'm not sure how I feel about the joke category. It's not nearly as funny if you have to specify that is a joke. Next thing you know there will be a sarcasm tag. Then there will be an irony tag and I'll have to spend the next year flaming every person who uses it because 90% of the time it is used incorrectly. I think Skipvia's merging idea would work.

The proposed categories look pretty good. I'm not sure about the difference between the "joke" and "comment" categories, though. Could we combine these into a single "comment" category?

I very much like the idea of having switchable "dictionary" and "normal" views. Great idea.

Maybe we also need a "non sequitur" category. :)

reesetee, i'll look into sorting the list of lists. and uselessness, i want batch tagging too, will do that eventually. i'm trying to triage the feature/todo list :-)

I'm thinking that any comment categorization would be strictly optional, and visually discrete. It would be possible to use wordie exactly as we do now, and have it behave the same (because, yeah... I'm here for the banter, too, primarily :-). But you could switch to "dictionary view" and be able to see only the comments that had been categorized as citation/usage/definition.

We could use tags for this, and maybe that's the way to do it. But I'm thinking it might be a little easier, interface-wise, to have a little row of checkboxes next to the comment form, and you could (optionally) check all the categories that apply. I'm thinking these categories would make sense:

comment
citation
usage
definition
joke

Thoughts?

I love how every single day there's a new idea to improve Wordie and make it more cooler!

I'd be down with categorizing conversations. Sometimes it's really fun just to follow the conversation in all its twisty-turny glory, and other times it's a bit frustrating because I'm really looking for a definition, explanation, usage note, whatever. It'd be nice to be able to find those usage notes without having--for example--to wade through a week or two worth of conversational one-upmanship!

Though, in all honesty, that's kind of what I'm here for. :)

So... is there a way to "tag" conversations as being usage- or word-oriented, or "merely" conversational? And, if this were the case, what about those odd conversations that really are about the word itself (or the list), but veer away into conversation, then veer back again? Maybe a "hybrid" tag as well? Or is that too many categories?

I *kind of* like the idea of catagorizing words as long as we don't loose the informality of the experience. If there are only two catagories--"dictionary mode" and "conversation mode," that might work. We could have a section for formal citations and another for everything else.

I'm still thinking about this one. I love the happy disorganization of Wordie, where a conversation can take many twists and turns through personal citations, messages to other Wordies, dictionary references, madeupical words, literary sources, and so forth. It's a rich mix. We may get off track--a lot, in some cases--but that's just having fun with words, isn't it?

*Still thinking..must get some sleep...*

logophile, I'll add WordPress tomorrow night.

This is carried over from a discussion that started on lingoz. Skipvia, I very much hear you. Something I've been thinking about, more than voting, is categorizing, which might achieve a similar end, without the downsides. Comments on Wordie are sometimes chatty, and sometimes more informational: a citation, usage note, link. So if we could classify comments, perhaps the way we can mark parts of speech for words, it would let us view a word in different ways, depending on what we're after: "dictionary mode", where you'd see citations up top, or "conversation mode", where you see comments in the order they're added.

The fun, social aspect of Wordie is the most important part of it, to me, but we're also creating a pretty amazing collaborative resource while we're at it. I'd like to find ways to facilitate using the site both ways.

I see a link to Blogger in my profile editor... but no Wordpress!

So I was thinking a way to batch tag words en masse might be handy. I was tagging all the words in a list of mine, and since they all have the same tag, it would have been nice to select them all (with checkboxes or something) and just type the tag once for all of them.

Well, he does have a list dedicated to exploring his identity, after all. Can't get much more famous on Wordie than that. Unless you're John, of course.

PS rt thanks! That makes more sense.

Wait, rt is famous?!

John, I thought of the same thing rt did, but never mentioned it. It's only because i have too damn many lists... *flips through, thinking about deleting some*

No, I mean the list of lists, arby. Didn't make that clear. But thanks for the compliment. :-)

Sorting by alpha is already there, rt!

*is shocked to know something about wordie that the famous rt does not*

It's right under the list title, to the right.

Here's an interesting cautionary tale from Hopeless Geek.

John, do you have any plans for allowing us to organize our own lists in ways other than chronological--say, alphabetically? Just a thought.

Is it just me, or is Wordie starting to look like Flickr, but without as many photos?

John, I just happened to notice on Facebook that you mentioned ads? Would that be as in advertisements?

edit ah, question answered by available evidence. :)

Once again--thanks, John!

Yeah, that is a great idea seanahan. On the list.

Just added autocomplete to the search box on every page. It returns up to 10 results, and updates them as you type. You can scroll through the suggestions with the arrow keys, or select them with the mouse.

I'm finding this pretty useful. Really shows how many misspellings are in Wordie -- I'm going to start tagging those as I find them, I think.

Great ideas, seanahan!

One feature that is nice is "posts since my last visit", sorted by word. Perhaps other standard methods of searching, such as, "Words commented in the last day", etc., would be easier to do in short run, since that wouldn't be user dependent.

Feel free to use this word to talk about, or ask for, Wordie features.