Conference 7.286::home_work

To answer all of those queries about the record not locked problem....


it is NOT a function of the version of notes the moderator is running.  I 
am getting record not locked problems even with version 2.5.  It is a 
function of how the note was originally written or the version of the 
conference when the note was written.

What version of VMS?  (I only ask because I haven't seen the problem in
YEARS, when I installed the version that supposedly fixed it.  I did find
out the problem was a VMS/Notes interaction)

Also, do you intend on redoing the directory by general topic/keyword that used
to be in note 1111.*?  Back when it was maintained I found it _very_ useful to
find notes on a topic.  I even found it useful recently, even though it hadn't
been updated in 2 years, and it missed recent notes.  Now it's gone, and a
1500+ line directory isn't too useful (although much more useful than a
5500+ line directory...)

version 2.5


As soon as we get the rest of the "help" and "I've got a problem/question" 
notes straightened out, the topics will get arranged in a better order.

They're "sort of" arranged now, BTW.

Bathrooms are together, Paint's together, siding, etc.


I've also fixed some of the keywords for the topic groups.  i.e "ice dams", 
"bathroom" "wiring" " electrical" etc (there are more than just those, BTW) 
to point to the appropriate base notes.

>version 2.5

VMS V2.5?  Considering VMS V7.0 is out now, that's probably the problem!
Suggest you upgrade! 

:-)

-Mike

    I imagine he meant NOTES 2.5.
    
    
    			Steve

Except I asked what version of VMS he was running.

Skip seems to be the only one still getting a 'record not locked'
error when moving notes.  This appeared _years_ ago as some
sort of interaction between a (then new) version of VMS and Notes.
A later version of Notes supposedly fixed it.  Trying to find out
what was going on I asked him first, what version of Notes, and
once I learned he's got the latest I asked the VMS version.

-Mike

>Except I asked what version of VMS he was running.

Missed the "VMS", thought you meant Notes since that's what you asked last 
time.

Notes 2.5, VMS 6.1

>Skip seems to be the only one still getting a 'record not locked'
>error when moving notes.  

Maybe it's because I'm the only one moving a LOT of notes?

    	When I started moving notes I got the same thing. The system I'm
    coming from has V2.5 of notes and V6.1 of VMS too.
    
    	Ray

> Maybe it's because I'm the only one moving a LOT of notes?

	The old problem used to occur even with small numbers of notes.
	Maybe the conference itself is corrupted in such a way that it
	continues to cause problems?

	Has anyone with read/write access to the .note file itself tried
	using PAN on it to check for corruption (I think PAN can also
	fix the corruption?)

I was speaking to the volume of notes.  I'm seeing the problem in a 
fraction of a percentage of the total number of notes I'm moving.  
Considering the conference had 5745 topics and each of those topics had 
between 3 and 600 replies, and now there are less than 1300 lines (topics) 
in the directory, I'd say a LOT of notes were moved.

Every time you see one of those duplicate notes, a record not locked problem 
has occurred.

Compare the notes moved (look at the directory) to the number of r-n-l 
notes.  It's pretty insignificant.

When this gets cleaned up, the host can compress the conference and fix it. 
 but...we gotta set up some blank notes to leave room for topical expansion 
before it gets compressed.

I think the moderators may be going overboard in merging some topics.
For instance, note 291 ("Electrical, Wiring, etc") has 1937 replies
and covers such diverse matters as installing underground wiring and
installing a light switch.  With so many replies, it's going to be
difficult to find information relevant to your particular needs.

>I think the moderators may be going overboard in merging some topics.
>For instance, note 291 ("Electrical, Wiring, etc") has 1937 replies
>and covers such diverse matters as installing underground wiring and
>installing a light switch.  With so many replies, it's going to be
>difficult to find information relevant to your particular needs.

yea, and how many are the same question asked over and over?

No question there are a lot of duplicates.  But I think the granularity has to
be finer.

Some of the topics don't lend themselves to granularity.  How many times 
can a circuit capacity question be asked before we have to start another 
note to break down the "how many appliances can I run on a 15 amp circuit 
breaker prior to 31 December 1995?" and "how many appliances can I run on a 
15 amp circuit breaker after 1 January 1996?"

> When this gets cleaned up, the host can compress the conference and fix it. 
> but...we gotta set up some blank notes to leave room for topical expansion 
> before it gets compressed.

	?

	Compressing the notesfile is something done at the RMS level.
	Ie. a layer below NOTES.  Bascially you use CONVERT to copy
	the notesfile and RMS gets to layout records on top of the
	layer below RMS (ie. Files-11) from scratch.

    Hello, people....
    
    What's happened to this conference?  Last date of entry is December
    18th or something or other.  
    
    Has it been moved somewhere else?  
    
    

    	Write-locked and marked for delete pending receipt of message sent to 
    author.
    
    	Ray

	Is it my imagination or is this conference getting even more
	and more corrupted?  I just was caught in a ghost topic endless
	loop (ghost topic 41 which you doesn't exist).

	As has been suggested, me thinks this conference should be writelocked
	until PAN can be run on it to have it fix what it can before we
	lose this whole conference to corruption .... :-(

The corruption has to do with phantom keywords that someone's keyword 
finding program messed things up on.  When I get a phantom base note the 
first error I get is Keyword does not exist. (or something on that order) 
After that error I can delete the note.

FWIW, the consolidation is pretty much complete.  We're moving blank notes 
into the spaces between the various topical groups to keep things separated 
or else PAN will run everything together and fill all the empty note numbers.

There are about 550 topics now.  Filling the gaps should create about 700.

FWIW, note 41 has been a black hole since we started.  There are a couple 
of more that swallow up anything you put in there as well.

Landscaping and small engine (snow blowers, too) notes have been 
relocated out of the house-type topics.  So have the fence topics

Curtains and blinds are near the window & shutter notes now.

Blank notes are being added to make it easier for moderators to find empty 
spaces to move legitimate new notes to.

> FWIW, the consolidation is pretty much complete.  We're moving blank notes 
> into the spaces between the various topical groups to keep things separated 
> or else PAN will run everything together and fill all the empty note numbers.

	You mean will renumber topics from 1 to X with no holes?  Sounds
	reasonable to me.  At least it sounds that way to me now after
	just ....

> FWIW, note 41 has been a black hole since we started.  There are a couple 
> of more that swallow up anything you put in there as well.

	... next unseening one by one through hundreds of these "reserved"
	topics just to find myself into the circular loop of non-existent
	topic 41 again (if you need to find topic 41 just let me know,
	I seem to have no trouble finding it :-).

> who has PAN up and running?

	I believe one just needs the single executable? (ie. pan.exe)
	if so, there is a copy of it around here.  However to use
	PAN to fix file corruption you need direct RMS write access to
	the conference, not just NOTES level access via the notes server.
	Me thinks Matt, the host of the physical notesfile, will have to
	do the honors (right Matt?)

    re:21
    
    	I know what Skip is trying to do (with the blank notes) and I
    agree. In the first rough pass through this conference, we've gone from
    over 5700 topics to about 570 topics. 
    
    	Most of the consolidation simply involved merging notes with
    identical topics/questions together, because some new-be notes types
    felt that they got more exposure starting a new note, or they didn't
    know how to do a search.
    
    	The next step will be to eventually go through some of the topics
    with many replies and break that out into seperate related subtopics.
    For example, the Houses topic may break down like so -
    
    		Houses - Brick
    		Houses - Wooden
    		Houses - Pre-fab/Modular
    		Houses - Underground
    
    	It is desirable, from both a moderator and a users point of view,
    to group these similar subtopics together in sequentially numbered areas. 
    To accomodate this requires the blank notes that you're starting to see.
    
    	Sorry for the temporary inconvenience. Hopefully knowing what's 
    trying to be accomplished helps ease the pain a bit.
    
    	Ray

Sort of like opening a book and looking at the table of contents.

6.3 is the table of contents.

Right now we have chimneys at the beginning.  they'll be getting moved 
closer to the foundation topics because they're usually constructed the 
same way.  (mortar, cement, etc)

We've tried to move all the outdoor topics to the same general area.  
Swimming pools still have to move.

Water heaters, air conditioning and home heating systems are grouped 
together

Gutters, ice dams and roof snow removal will wind up in the "roof" area but 
the roof area needs to have some space created around it or the 9 roof 
related topics need to be moved where there's more space.

Garages, sheds, outbuildings will, hopefully, be near the driveway and 
sidewalk topics (or visa versa)

It's getting tough finding ranges of open note numbers so the blank notes 
are starting to show up.  When we need a space, we move the blank note back 
to note 2871 for use later.

If we run a notes compression routine we'll need those filler notes to 
maintain the gaps for expansion later.  Otherwise, the compression process 
will fill any unused note number and reduce the actual number of topics to 
under 500 (which is the current number of actual notes when you eliminate 
the filler notes)

BTW, the purpose of this conference isn't suppose to be to generate new 
notes.  It's SUPPOSED to help people solve problems.  If these people can 
find answers by simply reading past notes, they'll be less likely to ask 
questions for which there are already answers in this conference.  
Hopefully, they'll be a LOT easier to find now.

    >	I know what Skip is trying to do (with the blank notes) and I
    >agree. 
    
     There is no need to create all these blank basenotes "reserved for
    future use" because a NOTES> write will create a new basenote with the
    note number = n + 1, where n is the number of the highest numbered
    topic. What, do you think people are planning on moving notes into
    those unused topic numbers? You don't need to make the fake basenotes
    to hold places- you can just leave the spots empty until you need them.

    	What we're building to is to run PAN to compress the file when 
    we've gotten it sorted. I've never used PAN, but my understanding is 
    that unless a blank basenote exists, PAN will not leave any space where 
    the blank notes were.
    
    	As I mentioned before, we're trying to keep all similar topics and
    sub-topics grouped together. Instead of going the keyword route, we're
    shooting for a one time logical reorg of the whole file. The blank
    notes will allow us to go back and place valid new topics next to
    existing related topics. It will also allow us to break out some of the
    notes with a huge number of replies into smaller, easier to scan,
    sub-topics.
    
    	Ray

	Ray, I think I've got the gist of what your doing and I think its 
	great, I do have a question about PAN, when you do the mass 
	consolidation, will the individual topics be "sorted" by date? 

	What I'm getting at is for example, that I was in topic # 910, 
	Pool Tables, yesterday and found that the replys would skip between 
	1988 to present and back to 1988 vintage, and was wondering if 
	PAN, or any other tool, would be able to sort the individual topics 
	by date in order to make them easier to follow. Its not a big deal
	to glean the info you need the way it is, but it may help some of 
	the "I need to write a new note cause this note isn't clear" type
	thing.

	Thanks for all the work all of you are doing BTW, its makeing the 
	file much more enjoyable to use.

	SteveT.

>    existing related topics. It will also allow us to break out some of the
>    notes with a huge number of replies into smaller, easier to scan,
>    sub-topics.

an example of this "break-out" can be found in the "wiring" topics between 
notes 279 and 291.  The majority of these notes were all in one note with 
nearly 1700 replies.  This was a result of the consolidation of some 300 
"wiring" questions, many of them redundant, with vague titles.  To free up 
space they were ALL moved to one note.  When we got room to move around 
they were broken out - topic by topic , reply by reply - into the more 
specific topics you see now.

If you take some time to browse the directory in note 6.3 you'll see that 
this conference is starting to resemble a DIY handbook or encyclopedia 
instead of the hodge-podge of titles like "help", "what is this", "I 
have a question", etc.  Instead of needing to ask a question, the new 
reader can actually find the subject of his inquiry and read the previous 
replies.  This will usually result in the answering of his/her question w/o 
necessitating a written request for information.

Will activity decrease?  Probably.  Will Network access decrease?  Probably 
not.  People will still read the conference they'll just stop asking they 
same questions over and over.

>     	What we're building to is to run PAN to compress the file when 
>     we've gotten it sorted. I've never used PAN, but my understanding is 
>     that unless a blank basenote exists, PAN will not leave any space where 
>     the blank notes were.

	From skimming the following topics in Rocks::PAN it appears the
	way PAN fixes corruption is not to actually "fix" the corruption,
	but to "copy" the conference (use like one would use CONVERT to
	compress a .note file) and ignoring corrupted areas.  It's not clear
	whether when PAN does a copy if it maintains original topic numbers
	or uses the "highest topic number" + 1 mode (I've never used PAN
	to fix corrupt conferences before, but Jeff Needle has used it
	recently to fix Digital_Investing).

    17  PRAVDA::JACKSON       9-NOV-1989    15  Repairing corrupted conferences
   195  FIEVEL::FILGATE      28-JAN-1993    10  pan to rebuild conference after corruption in the original
   223  FORTY2::YUILLE       27-JUN-1994     7  Can PAN correct keyword corruption?

My experiences with conferences that PAN was used to repair/maintain are 
a bit limited to my being a moderator on those conferences.  In the 
instances where PAN was used to compress the conference to free up disk 
space, all of the blank spaces between both replies AND note topics were 
removed.

FWIW, much of the corruption in the conference appears to be keyword 
related.  For instance:

I try and move a string of notes and come up with "Note Not Found"

I look and ONLY the base note has moved and the rest of the replies are 
inaccessible because the base note is no longer there holding the space in 
the directory.

If you look at the directory you see something like 


  1019  ESCROW::ROBERTS      17-APR-1992    10  Low temp oven info needed
  					    1020.1  Oh oh
  1021  RANGER::DAVE          7-JUN-1993     6  Torque Wrench?
  1022    OASS::HIBBERT_P    15-NOV-1994    26  Alkaline rechargeable batteries
  1023  FOUNDR::DODIER       26-JAN-1996     0  _______
  1024  FOUNDR::DODIER       26-JAN-1996     0  _______
  1025  FOUNDR::DODIER       26-JAN-1996     1  _______
  1026  FOUNDR::DODIER       29-JAN-1996     0  _______

If I go back and move the solitary note BACK to 1020.0 (and that's critical
, it HAS to be specified that you want to move it to .0 ) I get the same 
"Note Not Found" message but the directory is intact again.

I can, now move notes 1020.1-1020.last to the location where I originally 
tried to move the whole string w/o any trouble.

I, then delete 1020.0 and get the message "No Such Keyword".

I delete it AGAIN and get "Note 1020.0 Deleted"

That's why I said a while back that the keyword program is what screwed up 
the conference.

There are a lot of keywords in the conference that reference non-existent 
notes.  THAT was the case BEFORE we even started this whole exercise.

Show key/full "foobar" would work but Dir/key="foobar" would come up with 
errors for a large number of keywords.  Those same keywords that came up 
with errors cannot be deleted, either.

Hopefully, when someone with access to the machine that HOME_WORK runs on 
can run PAN, this'll clear up and we can write to notes 41, 70, 378, & 676 
and we can delete the keywords that point to nowhere.  It's fixed the other 
conferences I've been associated with. It should work here as well.

....but we gotta make sure there are gaps between "chapters" for relocation 
of new topics before PAN cleans the mess up and runs all the topics 
together.

BTW, someone asked about making everything chronological.  That's a manual 
process.  i.e. pull a directory of the note.  rearrange the sub-topics into 
chronological order by moving them in chronological order to a dummy note 
then moving them back to the original location.  very time consuming and, 
often, unnecessary except for the chronological aspect.  The subject matter 
won't change so it's really only useful when there's dated info like store 
sales or law enactments, etc.

Here's another interesting tidbit.

I just rearranged a few replies within note 107 and moved it to 2055 and 
back again to close up the gaps created when I took replies out of the 
middle.

The SAME reply burped the process on the way over and back again (107.941)

Another instance that leads me to believe record not locked is a function 
of how/when the note was written, not a function of the moderator's version 
of VAXNOTES.

Perhaps it would be best to wait until someone with PAN can fix the conference
before rearranging things more.  There might be some good information
being lost or misplaced without anyone knowing about.
I don't know if the following is the result of misplacement or overenthusiastic
moving of notes, but a few days ago I went looking for some notes I wrote last
year about natural stone walls.  I finally found my notes....
...in the "Spiders, Bugs, Insects" note...

That was, most likely, fat fingering and had nothing to do w/ conference 
corruption.  We're fixing those as we find 'em

FWIW, there are 75105 notes in this conference as of today.  This number 
includes the 541 topics we currently have.

Roughly this same number (minus the few notes that have been written in the 
past month) used to be contained in well over 5000 topics.

    
    	I have two questions, one about what happened to the organization
    	of this conference, I'm totally fouled up by it. I can't even
    	locate a "Help Finding/directory" note in here, and when I read 6.3
    	and was pointed to note# 1111, note # 1111 doesn't even exist. 

    	In the old directory list I still have, I easily found what I was
    	looking for by a simple search on the word "granite":

      2405    SAGE::DERAMO       20-JUN-1988    16  Moving Granite Slabs
      4068  CSDNET::DICASTRO      3-JAN-1991    11  How to chisel granite
      4734  MR4DEC::PWILSON       1-SEP-1992     9  Granite Cobblestone Driveways
      4916  DCEIDL::CLARK        19-APR-1993     9  Looking for granite slabs
      5137  SDTMKT::WALKER       11-OCT-1993     3  granite tiles?
      5394  GIAMEM::CRIPPEN      10-AUG-1994    32  Granite Counter Tops....
      5662  NEMAIL::CURTIN       30-AUG-1995     9  Granite counters and Radon?

    	Now in this version were notestrings were moved all around,
    	dir/titl=granite and dir/key turns up nothing.

    	Is there a tow-zone note here for "Old notestring #5394 was moved
    	to 264.200" etc?

    	How do I find the past notes written about granite countertops?

    	Confounded by all the swapping...

    	-Erik

    
    	Also, dir/titl=counter turns up only this string, and 
    	search granite/note=264.0-264.l doesn't turn up these notes
    	either.

    	Did we start from scratch recently so that all these old notes are
    	archived somewhere else, or are the still in here but just
    	reorganized?

    	Feeling the effects of missing my morning coffee... :-)

    	-Erik

> See note 8 and recent replies for conference reorg discussion.

    	Steve, maybe I'm just dense today but reading this string didn't
    	give me any ideas about how to find the old discussions that have
    	be reorg'ed.

    	Is there any listing file available that says previous note:

    5394  GIAMEM::CRIPPEN      10-AUG-1994    32  Granite Counter Tops....

    	was moved to 264.200 (etc)?

    	Besides dir/titl and dir/key and saying maybe granite countertops
    	is in the 264.* kitchen countertop string so I'll use SEARCH to
    	find it, is there another technique I can use to find it? These
    	three methods have failed me. How would you find this string?

	-Erik

Darned if I know.  I simply pointed you at the discussion that told you what
happened.  Just now I tried to figure it out myself and got nowhere.

				Steve

   264  ELWOOD::SIMON        16-DEC-1986   334  Kitchen Counters & Cabinets
   638  amulet::farrington    1-oct-1987    99  brick
   639   ringo::fingerhut     6-nov-1986   118  marble / slate / soapstone
   640    YODA::BARANSKI     12-DEC-1986    23  Stone Working?
   641  HPSVAX::SHURSKY      23-MAR-1988    48  Field Stone
   642   R2ME2::BENNISON      1-SEP-1990     4  Flagstone
   643   MCIS2::WALTON       31-JUL-1990     4  Pea stone
   673    NOVA::BWRIGHT      14-JUL-1986   101  Stone Walls

re .67:

Eric says it's not in the first one, and it doesn't fit in any of the others.

A few THOUSAND notes were moved.  A large majority of these notes were 
duplications.  To put in a pointer that such-and-such a note was relocated 
to a similar-subject base note is rather counterproductive.

Would YOU by Bob Vila's homeowner books if the pages were all thrown, 
haphazardly, into a pile in the middle of the room?  I think not but, damn
, there are a lot of people who think that that's the way a technical 
conference should be organized.  i.e. ask a question, get an answer, wait a 
few weeks and someone asks the same question, elsewhere, and we go through 
the same routine over and over for the same subjects.

We're gradually weeding out the fluff in the combined notes and getting 
them down to a manageable level.

There is an order to this conference now instead of the chaos that we had 
to live with in the past.

>    	Is there any listing file available that says previous note:
>
>    5394  GIAMEM::CRIPPEN      10-AUG-1994    32  Granite Counter Tops....
>
>    	was moved to 264.200 (etc)?



it's at 262.631

dir/title="Granite Counter" *.*

Dir/title="granit" *.*



>      2405    SAGE::DERAMO       20-JUN-1988    16  Moving Granite Slabs
	177.87

>      4068  CSDNET::DICASTRO      3-JAN-1991    11  How to chisel granite
	640.12

>      4734  MR4DEC::PWILSON       1-SEP-1992     9  Granite Cobblestone Driveways
	623.105

>      4916  DCEIDL::CLARK        19-APR-1993     9  Looking for granite slabs
	177.156

>      5137  SDTMKT::WALKER       11-OCT-1993     3  granite tiles?
	39.2

>      5394  GIAMEM::CRIPPEN      10-AUG-1994    32  Granite Counter Tops....

>      5662  NEMAIL::CURTIN       30-AUG-1995     9  Granite counters and Radon?
	262.669

    	Sorry about not responding earlier. I did the same command Skip
    mentioned earlier and added a /out=granite.txt. Then I forgot to post
    it in here. It's been a bit busy lately.
    
    	Ray

re .70:

I think it would be better that if a note could have been relocated to a
general purpose topic or a more specific topic it should have gone into the
specific topic.  In this case a note on Granite countertops was put into a
general purpose topic (Kitchens) when it should have been in a more specific
topic (Kitchen countertops).  Of course with the huge amount of shuffling
there are bound to be a few glitches such as this.

-Mike

    
    	Thanks. Didn't think it'd be in the generic "kitchen" topic when a
    	specific "kitchen countertops" topic was provided. I also didn't
    	think it'd be nice to everyone in this file to do a massive search
    	of the entire database using "search *.*" and slowing everyone down
    	but I guess that's the preferred and only way to find past
    	information in this newly organized database. So... I suppose the
    	message of the story is, don't feel guilty searching through the
    	entire database using *.*, that's the way the reorganizers intended
    	the database be used and is the 'cleanest' approach to their minds.

    	No problem, just tell me the most polite and wisest hunt method and
    	I'll use it. If *.* is it, fine by me. That's what batch jobs are
    	made for... :-)

    	-Erik

    	The order in which to find something would normally be something like 
    this -
    	
    	1. Extract note 2099.la (i.e. NOTES> EXT HW_DIR.TXT 2099.la) and use 
    	   either a DCL SEARCH command or, for Unix, a grep command to find 
    	   the topic. If you're already positioned at note 2099.la you can 
    	   leave out the note # as extract works by default on whatever note 
    	   you're currently at. You can also simply print out the extracted 
    	   listing or use an editor and a find command.
    
    	2. If step 1 fails to find what you're looking for, you can (from 
    	   NOTES>) do a DIR/TIT="xxxx" *.*, where xxxx is the text you're 
    	   looking for (i.e. granite). You can add a /OUT=yyyy.yyy, where 
           yyyy.yyy is the name of the output file that the information will 
    	   go to. You can then type or print the file out.
    
    	3. If that fails, use a NOTES> SEARCH/NOTE=nnn.* "xxxx", where nnn
    	   is the note number you expect to find the information in. If you
    	   find an occurance and want to go to the next one, simply type in
    	   SEARCH again and it will go to the next occurance. The SEARCH
    	   command looks for matches in the body of the replies themselves
    	   rather than the title.
    
    	4. If you have no idea what note the information will be found in,
    	   do a NOTES> SEARCH "xxxx". This will search all notes and
    	   replies for the occurance of "xxxx". Again, type in SEARCH
    	   to find the next occurance (which can be abbreviated to SEA).
    	   
    
    		Ray

In principle, the old system was considerably easier to use than the new
system.  The problem with it was that it was started well after the file
began, and it was allowed to fall by the wayside a few years ago.

The book analogy is a good one, but I think it shows the superiority of
the old system.  Suppose you index a book using 1000 terms, averaging 5
page numbers per term.  You can index the same book with 100 more general
terms, but there will be an average of 50 page numbers per term.  Clearly
the first index is more useful.

    
    	The increasing search strength approach seems wise, I was doing it
    	already since it's a natural search progression, but it's nice to see
    	a suggested policy in writing (ie, "it's OK to do this") like you
    	just gave. Thanks...

    	-Erik

The bottom line to this whole mess is that if people would take the time to 
READ instead of ASK FIRST, we wouldn't be in this mess.

Since they can't be bothered READING FIRST, they ask instead and everyone jumps 
in and repeats the same thing said a few replies back  ...and the note gets so 
long nobody wants to read it.

	FWIW, a conference can be marked so that new "notes" (ie. replies)
	can be written, but that only moderators (or members with the
	"write_regardless" priv) can create new "topics".

	To enable this:

		Notes> MODIFY CONFERENCE/REPLY_ONLY

    	Jeff,
    
    	Thanks for the tip. One of the problems with doing that though is
    that there could conceivably be a new topic that nobody has thought of
    yet. On the outside (remote) chance that this happens, I'd just assume 
    allow the new topic creation. 
    
    	Personally, it hasn't been a big deal to me. In the last month I
    might have moved 2 notes to the appropriate topic and sent mail to the
    author indicating the new location. The vast majority of people have
    been extremely good about looking for an answer to their question before 
    writting. Hopefully, the brief help blurbs that I've put in are helping
    too.
    
    	Co-mod of HOME_WORK......Ray

Oh ya - one thing all this cleanup did is blow away all those nice MARKs I had
setup to point at specific notes withint Homework - like my "old" 4-way line
drawing note.  I don't think one of them is of any use anymore.

bjm

> Thanks for the tip. One of the problems with doing that though is
> that there could conceivably be a new topic that nobody has thought of
> yet. On the outside (remote) chance that this happens, I'd just assume 
> allow the new topic creation. 

	But in that case that's what a moderator for!  (ie. if a new topic
	really need be created, it's done by a moderator [or someone else
	given the write_regardless priv).  The question you have to ask
	is while you only had to move 2 new topic notes in the last month
	(though I seem to remember a couple more than that, could be your
	co-mods moved them before you saw them), how many new legit topics
	were created in that time frame?

	BTW, is it intended that there now be 2 topics for the directory
	listings?  (topic 8 and 2099?)

> Oh ya - one thing all this cleanup did is blow away all those nice MARKs I had
> setup to point at specific notes withint Homework - like my "old" 4-way line
> drawing note.  I don't think one of them is of any use anymore.

	That's really a problem with the way "markers" in NOTES were designed.
	They were obviously designed before they added support for moving
	notes.  ie. the marker stores only the T.R number, not the UID of
	the note (which doesn't change regardless of how many times the
	note is moved, ie. the T.R is changed on it).

	I keep meaning to post this to the NOTES wishlist notesfile, but
	I don't believe there is much going on in new development on
	the product these days :-(

    re:83
    
    	The only other active mod I'm aware of here is Skip. If he agrees,
    it's fine by me, though it seems not very user friendly to have to send
    a request to a moderator to create a new topic.
    
    	Ray

I've moved a couple of dozen notes in the past couple of months  ...and 
deleted Mr Michaud's comments in the first replies asking the author if 
he's read the rules.  :-)