Differences regarding where chapter release posts appear inside the various Story Universe release sections

[kd7mvs]

Background: I perceived what seemed to be an inconsistency within the Subjugation section of Chapter Announcements in regard to where the chapter release posts were currently appearing.

Board Index=>General=>Chapter Announcements=>Subjugation

Within that there are two sections with posts, "Announcements" and "Topics". "Announcements" has two stickied posts, both of which qualify as "Unusual Official Business". It also has the release posts concerning the current book, Retribution. "Topics" has the release posts for the previous books.

It struck me that release posts would want to be grouped together. Librarians are big on like items being grouped together, after all.

Kyli & MartinK pointed out something that I had forgotten, it was from so long ago and with age memory is the second thing to go... anyway, the previous novel, Conviction, was initially posted in "Announcements", and when posting for Retribution commenced, transfered to "Topics".

So, apparently, the release posts for the current book are in "Announcements", while the release posts for the previous books within Subjugation are in "Topics".

Clearly, I need to mentally translate "Announcements" as "New Book Shelf" and "Topics" as "Open Stacks", to put it into Library terminology.

However, my being confused about this turns out to have some justification, other than having forgotten that this was how the previous volume within Subjugation had been handled.

If you look at the Chapter Announcement categories for the other Story Universes, you will see that all release posts, including the currently being released book, are in the "Topics" subsection; Kit, and Earth Bond, being only one volume within each Story Universe, not surprisingly have the release posts in the "Topics" section, since otherwise nothing would be there at all. However, Walker of the Path, which is not complete, is found in the "Topics" section, not the "Announcements" section, of the Spirit Walker section of Chapter Announcements.

The story specific posts in the "Announcements" section of the other Story Universe Chapter Announcements sections almost all relate to the availability of complete zip files for a specific book within that Story Universe.

Thus, the Subjugation section of Chapter Announcements is being handled differently than all the other Story Universes in regard to where the release posts appear for the current work.

I know, in the Greater Scheme of Things, this is a complete non-issue. But, I gotta say, this is the type of thing that traumatizes Librarians; we are majorly into consistency in how items are grouped on Open Shelf stacks. And given that all of my non-fiction titles in my personal hardcopy library have Library of Congress Classification System Call Numbers on the spine, I'm one of the worst of the lot about this, especially if you take into account that I was never employed as a Cataloger; even most Librarians think putting Call Numbers on your personal library is going overboard. Major UberGeekdom.

[Omegano]

When I saw the topic title, I was "What is he talking about?"
As I started reading, I told myself I should stop reading.
I didn't listen.
Now, I will never be able to NOT see this.
...
Ignorance is bliss, right?

Background info: Programmer taught with C/C++ and Object Oriented Programming. And I mean taught with C, THEN C++. The little things and how they fit the system. Or systems.
...
The system was implemented, then instantiated only once, and it also does not handle side cases. >.<
Sometimes I really hate how my mind works...

[GBLW]

Luckily I saw the problem initially and thankfully was able to ignore it when the errors began to crop up.
After that I decide that in the great scheme of things it matters little, for the stories are still very enjoyable trips into the depths of Fel's imagination

KP

PS: My ex-wife was/is a librarian and my daughter followed in her footsteps - which is why I even noticed what was happening.

[Greymist]

Please document and provide to Fel a standard about how he should post his chapters, specifically how announcements, topics and stickies should be used, and when chapters should be moved from one classification to another :p </TongueInCheek>

I could move them around if you like, but I actually never noticed it. I really need do get to the other things in my to do list first though (migrating the forums to Azure, sort out a front page for www.sennadar.com, and bring back the wiki).

[kyli]

I could move them around if you like, but I actually never noticed it. I really need do get to the other things in my to do list first though (migrating the forums to Azure, sort out a front page for www.sennadar.com, and bring back the wiki).

I would love to see some of this to-do list happen.

[GBLW]

Please document and provide to Fel a standard about how he should post his chapters, specifically how announcements, topics and stickies should be used, and when chapters should be moved from one classification to another :p </TongueInCheek>

Nahh, as far as I'm concerned, don't bother - I kinda like the informality. Besides, if you looked at my 'library' of 'dead tree' books, you'd find it is sorted by physical size as much as topic and I know exactly where to look for things, but it used to drive my 'ex' nuts.

kp

[ettoren]

Organising by spatial reasoning is a valid form of organization. Anyone who says otherwise has never had a dead tree library that exceeded the space alotted to it when organized in more traditional methods.

[heustess]

To maximize space, the NYPL is now storing its collection based on a book’s physical dimensions instead of shelving them based on where they fall in the Dewey Decimal System. This means that Religion and Innovation: Antagonists or Partners? which measures roughly 6 x 9 in. would be placed next to the recipe book Oyster: A Gastronomic History which measures 7 x 9 in. “Content, color [of the cover]—it doesn’t matter. It’s all based on size,” explains Gerry Oliva, the NYPL’s head of facilities.

https://qz.com/802744/the-legendary-new ... t-subject/

[GBLW]

To maximize space, the NYPL is now storing its collection based on a book’s physical dimensions instead of shelving them based on where they fall in the Dewey Decimal System. This means that Religion and Innovation: Antagonists or Partners? which measures roughly 6 x 9 in. would be placed next to the recipe book Oyster: A Gastronomic History which measures 7 x 9 in. “Content, color [of the cover]—it doesn’t matter. It’s all based on size,” explains Gerry Oliva, the NYPL’s head of facilities.

https://qz.com/802744/the-legendary-new ... t-subject/

Thanx - I'll send that url to the ex
KP

[kd7mvs]

In re the NYPL reorganization of their collection by physical dimensions of the items involved:

So long as you have proper indexing of the collection such that you can determine what relates to your subject of research, and where it is physically stored, it doesn't matter how you order items on the shelves. The Bodelian Library, if I recall correctly, has organized their collection by the order of accession for centuries; it may not be the Bodelian, but I know it's one of the major British libraries.

Organizing items on the shelves by topic using a fixed classification scheme, such as the DDC or LC classification systems, was developed to allow for browsing of the shelves when you don't know just what you are looking for, but have a good idea as to what the subject is labelled as. This was especialy important when indexing was limited to no more than three subject headings in addition to author and title. One relied a great deal on serendipidously stumbling across what you needed from within like materials grouped together. And even with open stack collections, one frequently encountered the need to shelve non-standard sized materials seperately; by using standardized shelving for the majority of your materials, and using seperate shelving for the much rarer oversized items, you mazimize the utility of your physical space; you just have to make sure, when browsing the shelves, that you remember to check the oversized shelves as well.

There are Librarians who can't seem to grasp that how you organize the items on open shelves for researchers to browse through will vary depending upon the predominent research focus of your organization. I was involved with creating a variation upon the DDC classification system to by used by the Genealogical Forum of Oregon, and I apparently was a breath of fresh air when I said we had to focus on how the end-user desired things be organized, rather than a steadfast insistance upon strict DDC, which was the stance of the previous professional librarians they had talked to. So, we tweaked the call numbers to have geographically related materials shelved adjacently before grouping them by type of material contained within them, rather than arranging them by type of material and then geographic location arranged alphabetically with no regard to actual geographic proximity within a State or County; we clustered items by geographic proximity, as that is how genealogists typically research things.

With the shift from the physical card catalog to electronic indexes, there is no practical limitation on the number of index terms one can attach to a given item, provided you have set up your database to allow for this. Thus, it has become increasingly possible to determine which items have useful information without physically looking at them, and requesting that they be retrieved from stacks for you; when physically retrieving the items is restricted to archive staff, it doesn't matter how they are arranged, so long as the location is properly recorded for retrieval and reshelving.

In regard to maintenance of this website, the variance within one sub-section which I pointed out is very low on the priority list. As GBLW remarked, there are much more significant things to worry about, things which have a much greater impact upon the user experience than where the postings for the current title are within two sub-categories that are both visible at the same time; you will be able to find them, after all, with very little effort. Getting the wiki back, reworking the front page, etc., will have much greater impact for the effort involved.