vanishedone has looked up 2161 words, created 52 lists, listed 4149 words, written 2685 comments, added 2815 tags, and loved 148 words.
Comments by vanishedone
Comments for vanishedone
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Just stopping by to say I'm sad you've vanished, vanishedone.
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"vanishedone has created 52 lists, listed 4,149 words, written 2,685 comments, and added 2,815 tags, 223 favorites, and 0 pronunciations."
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see drower for explanation to previous question
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Hi VO:
I'm sorry if my comment on your OCSJTS list gave offence. Sometimes I'm just too smart-assed for my own good. Please know that I value and enjoy all your contributions to Wordie greatly.
Foxy. -
I think I'm going to join in, this being my profile and all. (Who wants to be listmaster for 'What Wordies Like'?)
VanishedOne likes philosophy and conlangs he'll never find time to learn. Oh, and as chained_bear said, tags. -
And what about Prolagus?
Prolagus likes cheese, bread, Ancient Greek, his motherland, and Belle and Sebastian.
And Wordie. -
Yes, I did. But I only signed up today and maybe I've got it wrong?
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Also: lant.
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Oh! Add that to Pro's list!
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"Whichbe likes ponies and demons"
Now, that I want on a t-shirt. -
(I knew that. :) I was trying to highlight the fact that, on the Internet, no one knows if you're a bear.)
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I'll lay out some more chairs, shall I...? (Male, by the way.)
Lists can be sorted alphabetically as viewers wish; tags are public meta-data, though, so protocols tend to emerge around them (see OCSJTS). Trying to use a general-purpose tag like an initial letter indicator as an alternative means of organising one's own lists won't work, because nothing's stopping other people using the same tags (edit: okay, a per-user filter exists, but since tags display without attribution on word pages, their function is necessarily to provide information about the word); it only makes sense if you're going to embark on tagging the entire site in that way, and frankly it takes enough obsession just to tag all the plural nouns one comes across... -
C_b, I liked your answer so much that I ditched mine. :-)
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Mechanolatry, I didn't take VO's comment on your profile page (the one about "wondering" about tags) as any kind of personal attack. You probably weren't aware, being new (and welcome) around here, that lots of "regulars" have areas of expertise or interest. Reesetee's a nut for birds. I'm a nut for history. Whichbe likes ponies and demons. Sionnach and bilby like teasing each other. VanishedOne likes a lot of different stuff too, but he/she is also really interested in tags.
To answer the question you did NOT ask, but which I suspect is at the root of the one you did... Lots of new users find Wordie and have a grand time at first entering definitions for every word they list or can think of. Sometimes they don't really get the site, and wonder what they're supposed to do or where they can go for info (the answer is "nowhere," though faq can help). Sometimes they don't realize there are a dozen dictionary links on each page, plus a WordNet definition on most. Sometimes they don't read the page they're commenting on so they repeat things that were already said. Sometimes they use people's profiles here like the Wall on Facebook, and don't realize that on this site, most people prefer to keep an entire conversation on the same page. Sometimes they don't know that every comment they make scrolls by on the front page so everyone else can read it, which is not a big deal (of course) unless they enter a hundred mundane definitions in a row without noticing that other people are commenting on their stuff, or responding to the comments. Sometimes they don't realize that long URLs (for example) can bork up pages.
Nobody was trying to irritate you. My guess is that a couple folks saw you were new, and thought you might like a welcome message and some info.
Also: poop.
P.S. VanishedOne, sorry we're flubbing up your profile. *big cheery grin* -
Using the everyone superlative in this sense is a set-up. If any of us argue and say that we "aren't uptight," by arguing we still demonstrate that we are. Therefore, to *not* argue is an argument, but paradoxically it is also tacit acceptance. Likewise, your uptightness regarding "all of our" (since I obviously speak for every user on this site) uptightness is also an act of uptightness and therefore VanishedOne is your mirror, mechanolatry, that which responds to that which is done. Also: fart.
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It's easy to undo: reenter the tag window for a word and delete the tags.
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Re: tagging a word (for example, about) with so many irrelevant tags is liable to get you accused of spamming and subjected to the Wordie treatment.
Thanks, I did not mean to do that and I don't know how to undo it. I'll keep poking around. -
You're a entredentolignumologist. Admit it.
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Hi, great blog, I especially like your diction and those long sentences. :-)
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Thanks for the correction on how to identify my blogger user information.
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I'm a Durham (U.S.) physicist, and my wife is a grad student working for a Ph.D. in linguistics. Small world.
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Haha, you got me. Well, it's a FFIV and Fullmetal Alchemist fusion.
And wow, I'm 7,000? I wouldn't have noticed if you hadn't pointed it out (I'm still getting familiar with the workings of this site). I am honored! XP -
I noticed that "short story" too, VO. I considered editing, but figured I'd leave it as it was for other Wordies to enjoy. ;->
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Heh, you are making sense, but it's neither of those things. Alizz is from Alice, which was a character of a 'novel' I wrote years ago, and Lain is just because I like it, and because it starts with the same letter as my real name. :)
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I loved those Cannon Fodder videos. You rock.
vanishedone commented on the word hyper-bureaucracy
T.H.E.: 'A scary new word to emerge in our cover story is "hyper-bureaucracy", which describes "an out-of-control system" that emerges in the search for optimum efficiency and takes no account of the costs in time, energy and money that are needed to achieve it. It is a bureaucratic nightmare in which there is no end to the extra information that can be acquired. The monitoring of contact hours and how academics spend their time are examples of the type of bureaucracy that "eats up people and resources", according to Andrew Oswald, professor of economics at the University of Warwick.'
Mar 4, 2010
vanishedone commented on the word dialobocentric
Ouch. You can tell I've been away awhile...
Feb 28, 2010
vanishedone commented on the word dialobocentric
'As scores of historians have not failed to point out, this standard narrative is inherently implausible inasmuch as the medieval conception of the cosmos was less anthropocentric than diabolocentric, the earth being regarded as ‘the filth and mire of the world, the worst, lowest, most lifeless part of the universe, the bottom story of the house’ (Montaigne as quoted by Arthur Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being, op. cit., 102) and the actual centre of the universe being identified with hell.' (Intro. to Collapse V, p. 11 note.)
Feb 28, 2010
vanishedone commented on the word postmamboism
Boing Boing: 'Postmamboism is a portable theory that places music at the center of understanding and uses music to interrogate other fields of study... The term Postmamboism derives from the Kikongo word imbú, likely used in Cuba from the 16th century on, that is variously translated as "word," "law," "song," or "important matter," and which is pluralized as ma-imbú, or mambo. The prefix "post" is understood to mean not "what replaced," but "what happened after the world was transformed by."'
Dec 15, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word Cthulhu
This does give Clooloo, Clulu and Tulu as apparent variants from Lovecraft's writing.
Dec 12, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word Baby death ward 'standards lapse'
You don't say...
Dec 12, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word wraith
Vexamples has given up: She looked like a small white wraith--do you know what a wraith is?
It's interesting to see an etymology from the Century Dictionary; even the mighty O.E.D. just calls the word's origin 'obscure'.
Dec 9, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word Tuckerization
Charles Stross: 'Ever wondered why sometimes the names of characters in works of fiction are ... familiar? In the SF field there's a somewhat tongue-in-cheek tradition called Tuckerization (after SF author Wilson Tucker), whereby authors sometimes use the names of friends or acquaintances in their stories.'
Dec 6, 2009
vanishedone commented on the user feedback
Cheers for the tag clouds; but has somebody changed the wordnik.com/comments layout? I'm suddenly seeing the word newer displayed lower than usual because the column is too narrow for it, and a scrollbar on the right because the div the comments are in is slightly too short for its contents. Visible in Firefox and IE8.
Edit: oh, and it also now seems to start at comment 41, which is inconvenient for me since I have a shortcut directly to it instead of Zeitgeist (the latter being linked from every page, after all).
Dec 6, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word metabiology
G.J. Chaitin: 'METABIOLOGY: a field parallel to biology, dealing with the random evolution of artificial software (computer programs) rather than natural software (DNA), and simple enough that it is possible to prove rigorous theorems or formulate heuristic arguments at the same high level of precision that is common in theoretical physics.'
Dec 5, 2009
vanishedone commented on the list heavy-lifting
And unlike some other spam lists around here, this one is open...
Edit: although I suppose it's dimly possible someone was just trying to add links to example pages.
Dec 4, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word the
Especially when you do as it instructs: thee (1) or (2)?
Dec 3, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word Queen insult Labour man off list
This is from the RSS feed, but the title displaying on the article page itself is pretty bad: 'Would-be councillor in Queen 'vermin' slur off list'.
Dec 3, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word mutaa
foreignpolicy.com: 'Mutaa is a form of "temporary marriage" only acceptable within Shiite communities, one that allows couples to have religiously sanctioned sex for a limited period of time, without any commitments, and without the obligatory involvement of religious figures. In conservative Muslim societies known for their strict sense of propriety, mutaa offers an escape clause. The contract is very simple. The woman says: "I marry myself to you for a specific period of time and for a specified dowry" and the man says: "I accept." The period can range between one hour and a year, and is subject to renewal. A Muslim woman can only marry a Muslim man, but a Muslim man can temporarily marry a Muslim, Christian, or Jewish woman, as long as she is a divorcée or a widow. However, those interviewed for this article confirmed that Hezbollah-the "Party of God"-has allowed the practice to spread to virgins or girls who have never married before, as long as the permission of her guardian (father or paternal grandfather) is obtained.'
Dec 3, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word vexamples
But you do see them in public together... I reckon Vexamples is WeirdNet's son/daughter/nephew/niece or something.
Dec 2, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word multistakeholderism
"It could be the end of multistakeholderism"
Dec 1, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word wordnik
I thought Wordnik, Inc. was part of corporate America.
Nov 30, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word psychoterratic
Cosmos and History: 'He had also coined the concept of a “psychoterratic” illness, one in which psychological symptoms are induced by land sickness: “the people of concern are still ‘at home’, but experience a ‘homesickness’ similar to that caused by nostalgia. What these people lack is solace or comfort derived from their present relationship to ‘home’, and so, a new form of psychoterratic illness needs to be defined. The word ‘solace’ relates to both psychological and physical contexts.”'
See also solastalgia.
Nov 29, 2009
vanishedone commented on the user feedback
I had my stalkability feed turned off on Wordie.org, but I did make fairly frequent use of my commenting record. (Of course, I imagine comment and list searches are also on the to-do list.) As I remember it, the main use I found for the stalking feed was to see who'd dropped off the face of Wordie altogether and who was active but not commenting.
Nov 29, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word wordnik
Well, they talk about the pros and cons of turning a hobby into a job...
I'm not going to split hairs over implicature, or what the aim of the merger was if Wordie is/was characterised by aimlessness; I thought I was actually saying something pretty moderate. Look, I can well understand if you just want to be the tech guy: send one of the others out to do the leadership stuff. But if you want to execute big plans...
Nov 29, 2009
vanishedone commented on the user PossibleUnderscore
It's the 'Jack of all trades, master of none problem', isn't it? I think they sincerely thought they could combine the best of both worlds, so I doubt the staff seriously look down on 'by-products'; but they're finding it harder than they imagined to get a fully-functioning site together, let alone one with a design clearly targetted at either purpose. (Witness my comments in various places about how parts of the site seem to ignore anything in the database that isn't a single word or hyphenated, which demotes some of the best Wordie pages to second class: I don't think anyone stroked a white cat when putting that into the design, it just happened to be built that way.)
Sorry if this is a bad place to jump into the meta-site discussion, PossibleUnderscore.
Nov 28, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word autocomplete
The Wordnik autocomplete is another part of the site that ignores strings in the database that contain whitespace, isn't it? All those fascinating pages, not so much hidden as brushed quietly out of ready view...
Nov 28, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word AOL disc collecting
Here, here and here. Is there a list of odd hobbies (hoddies?) yet?
Nov 28, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word madeupical
Spam Cleanse
The achy spammy products are plenty on Wordnik and there are many who think achy spammers resemble colon cleansers, but they deserve much worse than that. These kinds of achy spam products will make the site's members irritated.
Nov 28, 2009
vanishedone commented on the user feedback
New spam on madeupical. More sadly still, it was the only comment activity in over three hours.
Nov 28, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word bona
According to the O.E.D., in Polari this means 'good; excellent; attractive'.
Nov 28, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word bonafied
'Having been made bona', no doubt.
Nov 28, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word Starwisp
No examples at all, for a word with its own Wikipedia page? It must be a product of the high standards that limit sources to reputable ones like Penisbot.com (still in evidence on Shackled).
Edit: oh, there is one example on starwisp.
Nov 28, 2009
vanishedone commented on the user feedback
They're mostly dealt with, but the descriptive text on /people/midsamme is still there, and so is the spam on /lists/cheap-nike-shoes-handbag-boots-sunglass. Cheers.
Nov 28, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word wordie treatment
Today's spammers haven't come anywhere near the Mi-vox standard... *sigh* I miss the pre-migration days when accounts came with open 'So-and-so's Words' lists, and spammers would fail to notice that anyone could add suggestions to them...
Nov 28, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word ©
As a tag, this seems to be a piece of Wordie Classic which presumably got caught up in the character encoding problems. Can anyone remember what it's supposed to be?
Nov 28, 2009
vanishedone commented on the user feedback
Ditto for the URL tags one of the spammers made on Welcome and comprehensive: clicking on them produces unpredictable results (404 from a word page, the Fixing Things page from the spammer's profile page), but in general things break.
On a related note, this spam list page links to http://www.brandmavin.com/ as a word, and it takes one to http:. Not that I especially want more functional spam, you understand.
Nov 28, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word optional
Oddly enough, 'X is not an option' conveys the opposite of 'X is not optional'.
Nov 28, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word elk shower
Atlas Obscura: 'In the small village of Gravendal in Dalarna, Sweden there is an old wooden water tube, leading water to the local electric power station. Because of it´s age, this tube is full of holes so water squirts out in various places, in wintertime it forms amazing ice sculptures in the trees nearby. Locally this phenomenon is called the "elk shower".'
Nov 27, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word morular
There's an advertising universe? I wish it existed outside this one...
Nov 27, 2009
vanishedone commented on the user feedback
I just tried to edit my comment on /people/midsamme, and the page briefly showed an 'unable to complete request' and then vanished completely; it wouldn't reload, although closing the tab and returning to the page via my link below worked normally until I made another editing attempt.
Nov 27, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word self-destruct
Actually, the O.E.D. lists a verb 'to destruct' (defined as equivalent to destroy) with destructed attested in an example from before 1638, but it does have the note: 'Quot. a1638 is an isolated use. The recent (chiefly U.S.) use in Rocketry is prob. in part a back-formation on DESTRUCTION.' So probably and in part you're right.
Nov 27, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word morular
Do you think it knows a morula is a skin lesion? Hardly the sort of association most sellers want for their products...
Nov 27, 2009
vanishedone commented on the user feedback
Spammers are afoot: see description and first two comments on /people/midsamme.
Edit: also /lists/cheap-nike-shoes-handbag-boots-sunglass and e.g. /words/morular/comments, which I see from the creator's profile other people have spotted.
Nov 27, 2009
vanishedone commented on the user midsamme
Do I spend my money on Premium Force Pro or on Force Factor? It's the battle of the spammers! Unless of course they're actually working in league...
Nov 27, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word vegging
33 examples, compared to just one on veging. Do people pronounce this to rhyme with pegging, or just add the extra g anyway?
Nov 26, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word random
Looking at the other examples, I am struck by how little randomness is in the selection of the 'random, horrific attack' ones.
Nov 26, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word random
Learn English with Vexamples, and learn about technology at the same time!
Anyway: has anyone yet some across a page with whitespace in the word string while using the Random Word feature, or does it produce only single (and hyphenated) words? I'm beginning to suspect it's restricted in the same manner as Recently Viewed (though given the sheer size of the database now, it'll be hard to tell without confirmation from John & co.); and if it is, then it's clearly inferior to classic Wordie's.
Nov 26, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word Videotaped
I wonder whether using headline-style English in examples without a health warning is altogether a good idea; although all this case exemplifies is salaciousness anyway.
Nov 26, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word secondset
Not currently, probably because they may not last long: see CiteULike.
Nov 26, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word pound it until it is well grinned
When I saw this on Zeitgeist, I expected it to be on 'Take This Word And...'
Nov 25, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word domestic violence lessons planned
So says the RSS feed, anyway. The actual page says 'School lessons to tackle domestic violence outlined'.
Nov 25, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word netsearch
Why take this over the already exemplified websearch, unless you mean to encompass other Internet protocols?
Nov 25, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word spam
Can anyone here read Arabic and tell whether this is spam, or just happens to feature a domain name? I don't want to make any accusations based on uncertain Google Translate results.
Nov 24, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word unicycle hockey
Spotted here.
Nov 24, 2009