comments

john commented on the word comments

Not that I don't love lists like this, but we've all long wanted more ways to sort through and view the river of comments on the front page. So I just added a page listing the most active threads of the past 24 hours, as dreamed up by Prolagus a few weeks ago.

They're listed in order of the number of comments on the item (words, lists, and profiles), and show excerpts of the three most recent comments.

This needs some work--I'd like to add different ways to sort, make it look nicer, and include comments on tags, which I forgot. But better half baked than nothing, and this way you guys can tell me where it should go.

Though before I revisit this, I'll add a most commented on list to the front page, which is a fantastic idea (thanks pterodactyl!).

July 16, 2008

mialuthien commented on the word comments

Thank you; I, for one, had already noticed the tiny link :) It is a really good idea.

July 16, 2008

pterodactyl commented on the word comments

Oooooh, thanks, John! I shall be a frequent visitor to the new page you've built. Your god work is truly godly.

July 16, 2008

pterodactyl commented on the word comments

(thinks to self: omigosh! John called my idea fantastic! I may swoon!)

July 16, 2008

jennarenn commented on the word comments

Oh, *this* is where one was to deposit words of adoration.

John, I love this feature so much that I'm considering having its babies!!!

July 16, 2008

plethora commented on the word comments

I lerve it.

July 16, 2008

trivet commented on the word comments

Huzzah!

July 16, 2008

sionnach commented on the word comments

joining the love parade. Thanks, John!

July 17, 2008

dontcry commented on the word comments

I luvs it!

July 17, 2008

Prolagus commented on the word comments

Should I say I like it? :-)

July 17, 2008

mollusque commented on the word comments

Great start, John, but it doesn't save me any time! I look at the most active list but then I still look through the other comments and have to scroll past all the comments I've read already. So it takes longer than ever. The solution would be to include on the active list words that have received only one comment in the last 24 hours (just as you've included profiles and lists that have only one comment).

July 17, 2008

pterodactyl commented on the word comments

I'm just stopping by to thank John, sincerely and enthusiastically, for the "Most commented on" list on the main page. It's just what I had in mind, and I think it's going to prove very useful.

Thank you!

July 18, 2008

john commented on the word comments

A million apologies for the character encoding issues on imported comments. That's being fixed right now, as well as comment editing and some display issues. I think I may be saying this a lot in the next few days, but please be a little patient. We'll have everything back to normal as soon as possible.

November 12, 2009

rolig commented on the word comments

Is this a good place to leave general comments -- or point out bugs -- about the transition?

I just clicked on the word celadon and noticed that my list "paintboxes and rainbows" was not one of the lists noted in the sidebar. And yet, this word is indeed on that list. Will old Wordie lists be listed as listing words in the list sidebar of the Comments section? (Yes, I am trying to see how many forms of the word "list" I can use in one sentence; it's called polyptoton.)

November 12, 2009

Prolagus commented on the word comments

So ironic (is it? It would take me too long to think about the definition of the word and make sure this case matches it) that this word is on uselessness's "Another satisfied customer".

November 12, 2009

john commented on the word comments

Hi rolig, this is a fine place to leave comments. The list of lists in the sidebar is being truncated, I'll fix that today. Thanks much for pointing that out.

November 12, 2009

Prolagus commented on the word comments

There's something wrong with non-standard characters. frogapplause left a ♥SMACK♥ on my profile, but now it looks like a ♥SMACK♥.

November 12, 2009

Prolagus commented on the word comments

http://wordie.org/lists/prêt-à-parler redirects to http://www.wordnik.com/lists/pr%C3%AAt-%C3%A0-parler, that is not a valid URL. The Wordnik analog is http://www.wordnik.com/lists/pr%C3%83%C2%AAt-%C3%83%C2%A0-parler

November 12, 2009

john commented on the word comments

Hi pro, thank you. The character issue on existing comments is being fixed as I type, and should be up today. I'll try and fix the forwards from Wordie on lists with unicode characters soon--hopefully by tonight or tomorrow.

November 12, 2009

dontcry commented on the word comments

rolig (snort)

November 12, 2009

Prolagus commented on the word comments

Thank you. I hope you understand that I'm telling you all these issues only out of the love I had for Wordie. We all appreciate what you did there, and hope this huge change won't be too traumatic for the community.

November 12, 2009

dontcry commented on the word comments

Things are really starting to shape up here. I'm feeling a little bit more at home. Thanks, John!

November 12, 2009

Prolagus commented on the word comments

Did anyone mention that this page has, like, 1% of the comments we had on wordie.org/words/comments?

November 12, 2009

john commented on the word comments

pro, i'm working on that right now. the comments are all in there, struggling to get out. comments will also be editable again soon.

November 12, 2009

whichbe commented on the word comments

I'm not trying to be the bug-fairy because I, for one, like the refreshing nature of change, and the chance to add new features and people to the site. Here is, however, some things I've noticed which are probably obvious:

- can't add a word to one of my lists from the word's page?

- variation in CAPS vERSiONs of ThINGs versus NO CAPS means confusion?

- one of my old lists broke completely when I added a word with brackets and an exclamation point ! Will I ever get it back??? http://www.wordnik.com/lists/trunkjunk

- There are some lists that I have listed as "Favorited" that are actually artifacts of Un-favorited lists of christmas past... and when I try to Un-favorite them, they are not there!

November 12, 2009

whichbe commented on the word comments

Apparently CARRIAGE RETURNS don't work either. And I can't re-edit a comment?

November 12, 2009

Prolagus commented on the word comments

It seems to me I can't add any words to my lists.

November 12, 2009

whichbe commented on the word comments

It feels very creepy to me that "recently looked up words" appears as list on profile pages. That's T.M.I. ((LINE BREAK HERE)) Also, what's the logic behind the order of Favorited words? It used to be in Order-Added, now it seems vaguely alphabetical but fairly random.

November 12, 2009

Prolagus commented on the word comments

Edit (about my previous comment): I can only add words to *some* lists (the ones without Unicode characters, perhaps?).

Also: my profile page says

"prolagus (sic!) has looked up 121 words, written 0 comments, favorited 0 items, created 49 lists, and contributed 0 tags and 0 pronunciations."

Three out of the six assertions are not true.

November 12, 2009

whichbe commented on the word comments

Bug bad. Fire burn.

November 12, 2009

john commented on the word comments

I'll save my sincere apologies and a longer explanation for when the fires are out, but for now a status report:

· Adding words to lists is fixed

· Newlines in comments will be fixed soon

· Editing comments will be available soon--hopefully tonight, maybe tomorrow

· I'll make the display of 'recently looked up' optional as soon as possible, probably 1-3 days. That was an oversight from the profile merger: that originated on Wordnik, where it didn't matter because the site didn't used to have public profiles.

· I'll add 'list it' to the options in the 'Take this word and...' drop-down

· I'll go through everything here and hit as many other items as I can.

More soon.

November 12, 2009

dontcry commented on the word comments

wordies: breathe.

November 12, 2009

grant_barrett commented on the word comments

LINE BREAKS ARE THE DEVIL'S TOOLS STOP NEXT THING YOU KNOW YOU WILL WANT TERMINAL SENTENCE PUNCTUATION AND LOWERCASE STOP

November 12, 2009

Prolagus commented on the word comments

I apologize for looking hasty. I just wanted to give some feedback, and I thought that doing it at an early stage could be useful.

SORRY :-) (Bambi eyes)

November 12, 2009

erinmckean commented on the word comments

Dear Prolagus, there's no such thing as too much feedback or feedback given too early. We really appreciate your taking the time to make suggestions! :-)

November 12, 2009

Jubjub commented on the word comments

Was wondering about "Random word" link at top. Last night it was great fun, giving me plenty of new words to think about. But today it was the opposite-- spitting out mostly typos like "Goolge" or randomly culled proper names or even computer code. I'm sure this is something on your radar, but just thought I'd point it out.

November 12, 2009

john commented on the word comments

Yeah Pro (pro?) no worries, it's helpful.

In another hour or so you'll be able edit your comments to change the historical record if you want :-)

November 12, 2009

john commented on the word comments

Hi Jubjub, that's what makes random word so addictive. Sometimes you get on a hot streak, then you loose it all with a string of Goolges.

Wordnik is omnivorous, it collects the good, the bad, and the ugly without judgment. Random has some filters to weed out the pure drek, but not many--maybe we should dial that up?

November 12, 2009

Prolagus commented on the word comments

Jubjub: some of the best conversations we ever had were based on misspellings found via the random features. Believe me!

John:

Re:I'll go through everything here and hit as many other items as I can.

Part of my feedback is on features, bugs, and wordnik (my lowercase P).

Also: we love you.

November 12, 2009

arby commented on the word comments

1) My profile is a hot mess - tons of unrecognized characters. I know I like annoying HTML so I'm sure some of my comments would be hard to render no matter what, but I doubt bilby went back in time and left me a cryptic chinese message reading "�?走常规路，独特视角。" Unless perhaps he is sekritly Hiro from Heroes? (bilby, if it's true, don't deny it.)

2) Also my "you are a" looking for etc is all blank, I know some of them are the same from Wordie but the order is different and I suspect it has boggled the gui;

3) In addition all my counts are 0 except it's randomly counting one list. I know I've been away some time so if it got purged that's cool;

4) I tweeted an obscure word and then tried to look it up in the usual places, no one had it so I went to Wordie. (blissfully ignorant of the changeover.) Is the "On Twitter" function independently scanning the public feed or is it stalking me? I was not logged in to Wordie WordNik at the time I looked up the word and it had my tweet; and last but far from least,

5) I really want a dummy menu item for "shove it" under the Take this word and... menu.

November 12, 2009

marky commented on the word comments

Missing a lot of data from the Wordie Migration. examples: http://www.wordnik.com/words/adsense/comments http://www.wordnik.com/words/wordy+rappinghood/comments http://www.wordnik.com/words/tragic%20comedy/comments

November 12, 2009

whichbe commented on the word comments

Yeah, don't take my comments harshly either. The new site might make a good excuse to get back involved with this adorable concept/site.

I'd like to make one important request for-soon: LIST DELETE. I've been meaning for a while to do some spring (winter?) cleaning and that involves nuking a few old, stupid lists of mine.

Also, some of my lists appear to be missing. Example: WORDIE CHALLENGE. This makes me scared 'cause I didn't record my lists list and now some of them may have fallen through the cracks... although I can find that list referenced here: http://www.wordnik.com/words/wordie+word+of+the+year+2008/comments

November 12, 2009

marky commented on the word comments

Ok, It seems to me this migration should have gone the other way around. Wordnick should have migrated into Wordie and then just changed the graphics to Wordnick. This seems a mess this way! Am I right here?

November 12, 2009

john commented on the word comments

Would have made my life easier marky, but then we would have had to figure out what to do with the 1.7 meellion words we have lying around. The whole "dictionary" thing, which can also be fun.

November 12, 2009

marky commented on the word comments

yeah i know, but the database of wordnick into wordie's layout and database, then change the layout / graphics from there was what i mean.. not sure how your doing it now .. but keeping wordie as the master layout / database seems more logical since it seems to be better with all the cool stuff everyone wants..

November 12, 2009

arby commented on the word comments

Sorry, I didn't see the welcome/disclaimer on the Zeitgeist page, I wouldn't have come in so guns a-blazin' had I done so. The font was unexpectedly normal and tiny instead of gimongous, I think that threw me off.

Where can we access our preferences or site settings? (Not editing profile, but controlling things like the order in which comments are displayed.) And is there any way we can turn off the Flickr or Twitter feed display on a user level?

November 12, 2009

marky commented on the word comments

i dunno, i guess we can live without the data thats missing. i'm not gonna cry over it.. just make the site work better, special characters working, edit , better navigation.. you know .. LIKE WORDIE!!!!!!!!!!!!!

November 12, 2009

marky commented on the word comments

Oh wow, BUG just found. I'm sure you know about it John, but I added 'Heuristic' noticed only I had listed it which seemed odd.. and then 'heuristic' which was listed 50 times. So if I add heuristiC it will probably add another entry. So, turn case sensitivity off in db entries QUICK!!!

November 12, 2009

PossibleUnderscore commented on the word comments

I have never bounced around in so much excitement for a long time. Sure there's still a way to go, but I can't wait!!

:-) teehee.

My profile is empty and I'm missing my capital letters too.

But this is a terrific change.

I'm happy.

:-)

November 12, 2009

PossibleUnderscore commented on the word comments

Right. Just fixed the empty profile and the caps!

This might take some getting used to...

;-)

November 12, 2009

john commented on the word comments

marky, that's a feature, not a bug :-)

Depends who you talk to actually, and it's hotly debated, but Wordknik, unlike Wordie, is case sensitive.

Eventually we hope to find a middle ground, where it's possible to distinguish between, say, polish and Polish, and turkey and Turkey, without the annoyance of having all the comments and definitions disappear because you typed in an initial cap.

November 12, 2009

whichbe commented on the word comments

I find many of the design-specific aspects of Wordnik better than Wordie. Actually, after looking around some more, things are on the whole a considerable improvement. With bug fixes, the ability to make little improvements at a faster pace, and the ability to turn off that hideous Twitter feed, I think I'm plenty happy.

Perks: a whole TEAM of people to develop and maintain the site instead of poor John having to do all things administrative and programming. And TONS of word data all on one page!

November 12, 2009

marky commented on the word comments

OIC. What exactly would that feature do other than allow someone to abuse it by adding extra sTuff liKe THis tO tHe DATaBASe?

November 12, 2009

Prolagus commented on the word comments

marky: it won't probably (hopefully) be much worse than what some Wordies did in the past with other issues - hopefully they won't be too many (except, in my opinion, for uppercase initials).

This website looks very, very pretty. I hope I'll be able to love it nonetheless. :-)

November 12, 2009

marky commented on the word comments

I'm already seeing people ADDING ALL CAPS IN THE LIST. That to me says 'CHEESY SITE'. One of the reasons I liked wordie was the fact that it changed forced lowercase to avoid that kind of crap. I thought that was very smart. now I'm like *yikes*!

November 12, 2009

arby commented on the word comments

I agree with marky. I think that keeping the distinction between Turkey and turkey is much less critical than the risk of being flooded with unwanted dupes and illiterate-looking entries. Misspellings are one thing, but caps? What' the approximate percentage of words are spelled the same but change their meaning from capitalization?

November 12, 2009

arby commented on the word comments

(Let's pretend that last sentence was grammatically correct.)

November 12, 2009

tonytam commented on the word comments

Hi folks, we at Wordnik have a solid plan for handling case sensitivity and will be implementing it in the next several weeks.

November 12, 2009

arby commented on the word comments

Thanks tony. Can you provide any more detail on how it will be implemented?

November 12, 2009

marky commented on the word comments

Got it. Thanks for the reassurance. We shall wait. I understand the need for it in instances such as Initials like N.F.L. (NFL). Just have a script analyse it to validate it .. I trust you guys. :)

November 12, 2009

tonytam commented on the word comments

Sure thing--there are a couple different parts. First, for definitions, if we have a case-sensitive match to what you put, we'll show that. We'll also show you what else there is, like Turkey vs. turkey. Both have definitions. The next part is variants--for instance "ice cream" vs. "ice-cream" vs "icecream". Again, we want to show you the data that you are looking for, and in this case the orthographic variants should be displayed. Finally for UGC, we're prototyping a few different ways to filter between commenting on "Turkey" and commenting on "turkey" and letting the user decide how to view them.

The delay has only been because we want to get it right :)

November 12, 2009

Telofy commented on the word comments

whichbe: Was that a variation on a Buffy quote? :-D

Case sensitivity is glorious. In German all nouns are spelled with a capital letter; not being able to list them that way had kept me from making any German lists before. (I’m a tad perfectionistic. ^^) I’ve been so looking forward to this change.

And to the whole Wordie–Wordnik team: The change and improvement are palpable and it’s only been one day! Great work! Now that Unicode works again, take a hot beverage: ☕

November 12, 2009

sarra commented on the word comments

oh phew! I couldn't find the comments or lists at all - now I can. Thank goodness not as much has been lost as I thought.

November 12, 2009

sarra commented on the word comments

Also, recently looked up: vajayjay and well-laid. Should I be posting this on synchronicity? ;)

November 12, 2009

rolig commented on the word comments

On case-sensitivity: I like the idea of putting the different variants together. After all, sometimes the gap between the uppercased form and the lowercased form is not as wide as in Polish/polish: "The august ruler was born in August." "She enjoyed a cheese danish in the Danish capital." "The morocco-bound tome was shipped to Morocco." "After our turkey dinner, I went with my friend from Turkey to see the latest Tom Cruise flick, and I couldn't believe I paid 12 bucks to see that turkey."

November 12, 2009

frindley commented on the word comments

A question: how do we find wordies (i.e. profiles)? The only search box appears to be strictly for words, and when I search for user profiles I know exist, nothing comes up.

Another question: Is there are way to get the comment entry box to the top? I just had to scroll right down to the bottom of the page to get to it, which seems odd when the most recent comment is at the top.

November 12, 2009

Prolagus commented on the word comments

One more thing: Comments to profile pages don't appear on the Zeitgeist page. Plus, my tiramisù link only works on the Zeitgeist.

Oh, and email notifications! I don't receive them.

November 13, 2009

milosrdenstvi commented on the word comments

I'm a little worried about how hard everything is to find. It took me a few minutes of obliviousness to realize that I could get to all the old Wordie by clicking the tiny little "Zeitgeist" link waaay at the bottom. Similarly, it took me really too long to realize that if I wanted a Wordie-style look at a word, I had to click "Comments". This makes me apprehensive for two reasons: one, it is more difficult for regulars, and two, it reduces the chances that newbies will discover and fall in love with the world of comments.

Also, I miss having a ready access to my list of lists from the home page.

November 13, 2009

arby commented on the word comments

Plus I cannot access any comment links to new words (I get the Wordnik equivalent of a 404 error). Is that by design?

ETA: Good news is, my profile comments are un-borked and editing comments on words is back! Huzzah! I do not seem to be able to edit comments on lists though.

November 13, 2009

arby commented on the word comments

For example, http://www.wordnik.com/words/drunken+horizons/comments yields a cute "Unable to Complete Request" message.

November 13, 2009

dontcry commented on the word comments

This is my favorite place, so far. It's got lots of people I know.

November 13, 2009

Prolagus commented on the word comments

dontcry, your profile page is private so I can't write there or read our old comments. Hello!

November 13, 2009

Prolagus commented on the word comments

When you add a "related word", there's apparently no way of deleting it.

By the way, I think that section should be wiki (I mean that all users should be free to edit/delete all entries), in order to fix typos and bad behaviors.

November 13, 2009

whichbe commented on the word comments

I guess I can be the one to ask about tags. I had some thousand things tagged. I can see that they're still there, though they no longer be attached to "me". Will things remain this way or will I get re-connected to those old tags. Some of mine were silly, but others were useful or special to me.

November 13, 2009

frogapplause commented on the word comments

This is my first comment on Wordnik.

November 13, 2009

john commented on the word comments

whichbe, i'm looking into it, but i'm almost certain your tags, despite not being available, were moved over, and that we'll find them and give them back to you.

while wordie was being migrated we were also switching parts of the site to use a different method of accessing data, which involved a different database. so there were three db's involved: old wordie, old wordnik, and new wordnik. stuff that appears missing is there, but in the wrong database. they can and will be merged with no losses.

we really needed to change our underlying db; wordnik is outgrowing the old one. but in retrospect it might not have been such a hot idea to do these two major migrations concurrently.

frogapplause, hello!

November 13, 2009

dontcry commented on the word comments

pro - that was news to me. thanks. fixed! (i think)

November 13, 2009

Prolagus commented on the word comments

By the way, I think I had at least 50 lists (although I'm not sure), now they are 49. Hmm.

November 13, 2009

whichbe commented on the word comments

You probably already know that comments on list pages don't display on Zeitgeist.

November 13, 2009

dontcry commented on the word comments

pro - you're just another victim of the shrinking economy?

November 13, 2009

Prolagus commented on the word comments

John, Re:lists, I still have problems in listing words (can't add comments to "knucle tattoos").

November 13, 2009

marky commented on the word comments

Need ability to EDIT comments on my profile page, also to be able to toggle PUBLIC/PRIVATE Lookup List only. Those aren't words I looked up, some are words I simply clicked on and I just don't want my entire navigation made public, while I want my profile to be public.

November 14, 2009

ruzuzu commented on the word comments

I'd thought it would be funny to use the public list of words I've looked up as a sort of ridiculous description of myself, but now I'm worried that Wordnik is doing some editorializing. Sure, it was happy to show the world that I had looked up awesome, which I had, but then it showed mob-owned, which I absolutely had not.

(Of course, it occurs to me that this would be a great place to claim that things were added... then when I look up those potentially compromising subjects (ribbon snakes, or even lingonberries), I can just say there was some glitch.)

So, um, yeah, really, it's no problem... nothing to see here....

November 14, 2009

john commented on the word comments

ruzuzu and marky, i removed 'recent lookups' from profiles. i'll add it back when it can be made optional and we're sure it's accurate.

we're working on getting wordie tags back and at fixing commenting on lists with special characters in the url. pro, that will hopefully make it possible to comment on 'knuckle tattoos', which is important to me, since i missed that first time around and want to say how much i love it.

also trying to get editing on list and profile comments working today.

November 14, 2009

ruzuzu commented on the word comments

Thanks, john. I'm looking forward to all of the new Wordnik-y fun to be had, and I'm impressed by all the work you've done already.

November 14, 2009

Prolagus commented on the word comments

We all are. It's hard for us to get used to this place, but it must be even harder for you to deal with that AND all the technical issues.

November 14, 2009

john commented on the word comments

Wordie tags are back. There are a few issues still, the main one being that tags show up on your profile, but not always on the tag page itself. I'm working on that, and also on a dedicated tags page to be linked off our profiles.

Thanks for the understanding everyone, I appreciate it. We stumbled on the Wordie integration, which I regret. That aside, these new surroundings feel weird for me too. But all the Wordie stuff will come back online, and I still have faith that Wordnik+Wordie will be a good thing. I hope that will become more apparent once everything is working and we're moving forward again.

November 14, 2009

john commented on the word comments

Two quick things: tags are and will remain lowercase only. And frogapplause, I love the comic, thanks. You can see the future!

November 14, 2009

marky commented on the word comments

John and Wordnik: I'd like to personally thank you guys for being so on top of things here and working so directly with your userbase. That is sooo very cool. I for one will be a longtime supporter and promoter of this site from this point on. Anything I can do to help, please don't hesitate to ask me. You are much appreciated by this user!

November 14, 2009

sionnach commented on the word comments

Hmmm. There's still that odd lacuna between the comments over the last two days and those from 16 months ago.

On Wednesday when I visited this site for the first time, I was pretty grouchy, and disappointed that the transition from Wordie had left so much undone/inaccessible. After poking around for a while it is apparent to me that some of the apparent inaccessibility was more due to my own not having been imaginative enough to figure out. There are still some minor glitches - e.g. incomplete lists in the case that the number of list entries exceeds 100 words (a concrete example is my "kenny kens kenning" list, where I was unable to see many of the last 29 of its 129 entries).

But it's obvious to me that you guys (by which I mean John and his - as yet unknown to me - Wordnik hench-techies) have been working your butts off to fix glitches as they become evident. For which I would like to offer my sincere thanks. It's gone a long way toward changing my (admittedly grouchy) reaction on Wednesday of "that's it, this sucks, I'm outta here" to a more understanding "well, I need to stick around and support John and the gang in this new endeavour".

That said, I still find the Wordnik entry parlour a cold, dull, gloomy, unwelcoming portal. One that gives absolutely no sense of the gleeful anarchic mischief that lurks within (at least I hope that spirit still lurks within).

Just as defaulting to word comments seems like the only possible interesting choice, so too does defaulting to Zeitgeist as one's point of entry seem like the only non-yawn-inducing option. There's something so unexpectedly unappealing about this whole "look at us we're a dictionary" aspect. It's like being welcomed in by a bunch of thugs dressed as security guards, or something. Which is to say, distinctly offputting.

Obviously that's just one Wordie's opinion. YMMV and I hope it does. Otherwise the benefits of the transition seem entirely fuzzy. Remind me again, what are those benefits, exactly?

But, there I go again, being a nattering nabob of negativism. Something I promised myself I would try not to be. Apparently without too much success.

Keep up the good work, folks. I'm working on my attitude problem.

November 14, 2009

PossibleUnderscore commented on the word comments

I think the transition was ok, not to say there's nothing to be perfected, but I'm sincerely hoping the Wordies will stick around and wait, because that's what makes the spirit we don't want to lose!

November 14, 2009

john commented on the word comments

Profile comments are editable now. List comments next, and they'll both start appearing on Zeitgeist soon.

A ways back I said it would be nice to be able to toggle Wordie between 'dictionary' and 'social' mode, depending on mood or purpose. And that's what I hope Wordie/nik evolves into. Wordie's chatter has been the best part, but when it started I was thinking dictionaries, and that still appeals. Maybe that's trying to square the circle, but I hope not. Guess we'll find out.

More specific controls will come, but it can be make more Wordie-like as-is. This may change, but I feel a simpler homepage is easier to absorb for new folks. But I have my homepage set to Zeitgeist and hardly look at the real one--and Zeitgeist is going to get much better fairly soon. And when poking through lists if you use the 'comment' links, you can bypass the lexicographic pages entirely.

Sionnach*, I'm glad your back :-). Be a grouch, it should have been handled better.

* fyi, your profile is set to private, so I can't comment on it. A vestige of you having had a previous Wordnik account, I think, back when all profiles were private.

November 14, 2009

Prolagus commented on the word comments

John, I added a word to someone's list and found out that once added, I can't delete it but only move it to a list of mine. #deletewords

(perhaps it'll make things easier to follow if I tag my reports)

November 14, 2009

john commented on the word comments

Hash tags on Wordnik! That's funny.

That's a bug Pro, you should be able to remove words you added, I think. Will look into it.

November 14, 2009

PossibleUnderscore commented on the word comments

I don't think you can delete lists either...

November 14, 2009

frindley commented on the word comments

Pretty please: can the comment box be restored to the top of the comments? Having it down the bottom of the page like this would make sense only if the comments ran from oldest to most recent.

November 14, 2009

Telofy commented on the word comments

Unless coffee has altered my memory more than I’m aware of, I’m pretty sure the Wordie comment box had always been at the bottom and that I’ve often resented all the scrolling it entailed. So that’s a great improvement!

I’m also in favor of directing at least the wordie.org domain directly unto Zeitgeist—a setting to switch the whole of Wordnik from “dictionary mode” into “social mode” of course goes beyond that and would be much appreciated.

And what about hiding the empty fields on the profile pages? That would render the list more concise and efficient, thus creating potential for more fields.

And little glitch: Since I fixed a Unicode mishap in its title, I can’t open my list “Bored now.” – Evil Words anymore.

Thanks and keep up the great work.

November 14, 2009

Prolagus commented on the word comments

Yay comment box on top!

November 14, 2009

Prolagus commented on the word comments

John,

if you look up O.K. the link works, but if you hit "comments" you end up on O.Kcomments instead of /O.K./comments

November 14, 2009

Prolagus commented on the word comments

It seems to me that we the comments on tag pages have disappeared (e.g. "my little dynasty")

November 14, 2009

dontcry commented on the word comments

This is tops!

November 14, 2009

reesetee commented on the word comments

Congrats, John & co.! Great job! I'm still poking around, but I'm sure I'll find my way. :-)

November 15, 2009

Prolagus commented on the word comments

On the Zeitgeist page, "Zeitgeist" (on top) is lowercase.

November 15, 2009

Prolagus commented on the word comments

(And while we are at it, could you turn me into Prolagus? pretty please?)

November 15, 2009

Prolagus commented on the word comments

It's lowercase on list pages as well.

November 15, 2009

whichbe commented on the word comments

John: right now when I've moved some two-word phrases from one list to another, and they turn up as: thing+thing -- that is, with a "+" instead of a space. To make matters worse, they new moved-words are gallstones that can not be deleted from my wordish urinary tract.

November 15, 2009

PossibleUnderscore commented on the word comments

ooh ooh! While you fix Prolagus, could you please fix me too? PossibleUnderscore would be be cool!

(sugar on top of the please if you have a sweet tooth)

November 15, 2009

mollusque commented on the word comments

I'm starting to get used to the janusian feel of the Wordienik chimaera. The Wordnik definition pages show the ducks from above, and the Wordie zeitgeist pages show the spirited paddling underneath. I'm not sure I want more people to pay attention to the activity below. Might we be overwhelmed if too many people joined the fray?

The split is odd at times though. Clicking on a bracketed word brings you to the definition page, not the comment page, yet the words are often being bracketed to refer to another comment. And tags can be added only from the definitions pages, not the comments pages. We need an option "Take this word and . . . tag it", and a short cut for linking a word to its comment page. (Maybe double square brackets?)

November 15, 2009

mollusque commented on the word comments

While writing the previous comment, I realized the shortcoming of have the comment box at the top: it's smaller than before, which makes it harder to compose longer comments. How about popping up a larger window for comments, like the tags box we used to have on Wordie? Or automatically enlarging the comment box once typing hits the fifth line?

November 15, 2009

mollusque commented on the word comments

Yet another aspect of the split: try looking up some of the Wordie neologisms, like alphavocalic. The definitions page gives no hint that Wordnik has information about such words, i.e., that they've been listed and commented on. It should show when words have been listed (maybe showing the first ten lists). To make room for this, how about moving the tags to the comments page (since tagging is a form of commenting), and cutting out six of the picture from Flickr so the right column is continuous.

November 15, 2009

whichbe commented on the word comments

Good point here, too: a word could have value on the site in terms of comments/lists but this could be virtually invisible to a random passerby. So, the initial Word page ought to have some subtle way to indicate conversation/listing of a word is present.

November 15, 2009

mollusque commented on the word comments

Where a word hasn't been listed, the "Be the first!" link goes to "Create a new word list" instead of to "Take this word and . . . List it".

November 15, 2009

Prolagus commented on the word comments

What mollusque said. I think I suggested the inflatable comment box somewhere, when we were still packing on Wordie...

November 15, 2009

yarb commented on the word comments

Hello, and thanks for the obvious sweat exuded in the migration. I peeped and hated it, but now I've found the Zeitgeist page I'm more at home. If we want Wordnik to be a community rather than simply a resource then that has to be the default view. Fly-by-nights are nice, and I've always liked the data-side of Wordnik, but there are zillions of people looking for a Wordie without realising it - let's grab them. Growth (repeat visits) will be very slow otherwise.

Thanks to the likes of Mollusque for their diligent bughunting.

Bigger comment box is a must.

Thanks again for the hard work, John.

November 15, 2009

yarb commented on the word comments

I'm pining for weirdnet in a big way. Can we add an option for it pplease (please please), at least until it ceases to be funny?

November 15, 2009

yarb commented on the word comments

On the main page for a word, you should include in brackets after "Comments" the number of comments that exist for that word.

November 15, 2009

sionnach commented on the word comments

Would it be possible to add an option to continue to the next page of the Zeitgeist page? Right now I just see whatever comments fit on one screen. Whatever went before that appears inaccessible to me.

Thanks.

November 15, 2009

Prolagus commented on the word comments

John said he's working on that.

November 15, 2009

john commented on the word comments

Prolagus and PossibleUnderscore, you've been upcased. If anyone else is missing a majuscule, let me know—still a few kicking around the lost and found.

November 16, 2009

Prolagus commented on the word comments

Thank ewe!

November 16, 2009

mollusque commented on the word comments

Was I being dense below, or prescient? The top of the comments box says that double brackets link to the comments pages.

November 16, 2009

john commented on the word comments

That's new and for you mollusque. The idea had been kicked around before, but you kicked me into action.

November 16, 2009

mollusque commented on the word comments

Thanks, John! (By the way, weren't you capitalized on Wordie?)

November 16, 2009

PossibleUnderscore commented on the word comments

yay! thanks.

November 16, 2009

john commented on the word comments

Whichbe: two-word phrases should now stay intact during moves, and the ones that got scrambled earlier should now be removable if you want to re-add. Please let me know if that's not your case.

November 16, 2009

whichbe commented on the word comments

John: most of them worked but I can't seem to delete irony mark from http://www.wordnik.com/lists/jihadmiration

November 16, 2009

rolig commented on the word comments

John, in the first day or so of the Transition, where problems with text-encoding did strange things with my list names, I tried to fix two of them, but only ended up sending these two to the Province of Not-Found-Land. The two lists in question are titled "Pogovorno: Zoran Hočevar, Rožencvet" and "i~je~я~ich~jaz". Can they be fixed? Also, the letter "č" ("c" with a caron) still appears in list names and pre-Transition words as "�?". Can I fix this myself in the list names, or will I only screw things up?

November 17, 2009

milosrdenstvi commented on the word comments

Case sensitivity is weirding me out -- to wit: for every Polish and turkey there are hundreds of other words that owing to negligence are getting stuck into two pages for one idea. Also, bracket links at the beginning of sentences (as pointed out by uselessness)...

Not a complaint. Just an eyebrow-raise.

November 17, 2009

ruzuzu commented on the word comments

Case sensitivity weirds me out, too. Can we figure out which turkeys and Polishes need to be listed separately first, then start dealing with the other duplicates?

Hm... list... if only there were some way to list them....

November 17, 2009

uselessness commented on the word comments

Seems like a "move this comment to another page..." button above every comment might help. Click it to see a list of probable capitalization/punctuation variants that might be appropriate, and a text box to enter your own if it's not in the list. If you're the original author of the comment, it changes immediately; if you're not, it enters a queue for moderation (to prevent abuse). A similar feature for bracketed words would be nice, for the cases when display text and actual linked word should differ.

It'll take time but with tools like those, eventually diligent users will sort (almost) everything out.

November 17, 2009

vanishedone commented on the word comments

I've been decapitated too, which is an odd sort of welcome. (Which perversely makes it feel more like home.)

November 17, 2009

reesetee commented on the word comments

I was wondering why you seemed shorter here, VO.

November 17, 2009

vanishedone commented on the word comments

It looks as though links in old Wordie posts which were formed with square brackets now point to capitalised versions of word pages if the linked text does, which means that some links have actually been repointed. Maybe comments with timestamps from the First Age of Wordie should automatically be made to point to lowercase versions...?

November 17, 2009

Prolagus commented on the word comments

Lowercase, and double-bracketed, IMHO.

November 18, 2009

milosrdenstvi commented on the word comments

Just noticed something that makes me really happy! I added a word to a list that I hadn't realized I'd already added it to, and it didn't add it twice!

November 18, 2009

vanishedone commented on the word comments

This isn't particularly important compared to getting fully working comments on list and tag pages, but if you look at the . newly added to Wordie Paradox, you'll see it apparently has a comment left over from Wordie Classic. Currently this comment can't be seen, because . redirects to a random word page. .. traverses to the home page, while ... and above semi-work; their sub-pages aren't accessible. It's nice to discover a Wordnik Paradox, but I don't like to think of any poor Wordie comments getting lost in the wilderness without the care of their independent flockmaster.

November 18, 2009

uselessness commented on the word comments

Sorry if I missed this somewhere, but is there any way to see more than the 40 most recent comments? I feel that Zeitgeist is insufficient.

November 19, 2009

vanishedone commented on the word comments

I think we're still waiting for a 'more' link to be added.

November 19, 2009

lampbane commented on the word comments

Finally made the move over yesterday, thought the place felt like an echo chamber at first but here everyone is. Yay!

I kind of like the examples feature but the examples they give sometimes aren't very good.

November 19, 2009

vanishedone commented on the word comments

Ah yes: the newly christened Vexamples.

November 19, 2009

sionnach commented on the word comments

Yes, please! We want more Zeitgeist. Of all the multitude of items to be done, this would be my top priority.

November 19, 2009

grantbarrett commented on the word comments

lampbane, we're running a cleanup script on the entire database of example sentences as we speak. It has a ton of fixes in it which should remove a bunch of bad sentences, lower the rank on others, and increase the rank of some good ones. Should be done by the end of next week.

November 19, 2009

Prolagus commented on the word comments

Among other things, we had a "comment title box" on Wordie, that many people (like me) used quite often (I used it a lot on insomnia). It got lost when we moved (it didn't work well during the last months of YEW YOW either).

November 19, 2009

Prolagus commented on the word comments

On the pronunciation page for caput, or perhaps everywhere, the pronunciation guide does not show examples for ə.

November 19, 2009

grantbarrett commented on the word comments

Prolagus, I've made a support ticket for that, but there's no ETA.

November 19, 2009

Prolagus commented on the word comments

(Thanks!)

One question: how can I be the "first person to look up" a word that I found via the random button?

November 19, 2009

frogapplause commented on the word comments

I agree, Pro. I played with Random Word for a while, and I kept landing on horribly horky words. Now it looks like I searched for them!

November 19, 2009

uselessness commented on the word comments

I'm assuming the database is filled with many "words" that Wordnik auto-assimilated by crawling the web. So they'll show up with the Random feature even though they've never actually been seen on the site with human eyes. Which is different from Wordie, which required that all words be manually added to the database by users.

November 19, 2009

Prolagus commented on the word comments

Me doesn't understands it. But it's fine.

November 19, 2009

pollyanna commented on the word comments

The new site is lovely, and promising. May I make a simple request that you reduce the sensitivity or quick-draw forcefulness of the "autocomplete" feature in the Search at the top? I am having to re-type some searches multiple times.

November 19, 2009