Saturday, June 13, 2015

You're Reinvited

You were invited!

We were here!

Where were you?

Don't worry;
none of the booze went to waste.
About a month and a half ago, I composed a piece on how posting something on a blog is like hosting a party: you provide the venue and excuse for others to get together and converse. Because the piece was kind of long and navel-gazey, I set it aside to rework it, but then it languished while other things jumped the queue. However, the thing that inspired it is still there.

It seemed that one of us planned a party, but the invitations went out late, and hardly anybody showed up. Specifically, due to how Blogger's scheduler works, a post by Professor Chiltepin appeared in the timeline several days before the date it went live, the effect of which was that most readers were no longer scrolling back that far and thus didn't see it (the hit count is only 91 at I write this).

We sometimes see "flashback" posts here, and further discussion sometimes ensues. It occurred to me that anyone can suggest or post a flashback when inclined, so, that's what I'm doing now.

Flava:

 She schedule a conference on Monday, then cancelled it. She rescheduled for yesterday. Cancelled it. Now she schedules one for today, shows up (miracle!) and . . .

The rest of it.

7 comments:

  1. It's fantastically easy to change or update the date of a post. If we spot it, we do it; we're not animals. If anyone should have any trouble with a post they've written and let sit a bit not showing up on the main page, please let us know. But changing the date yourself can also be done by picking a date - even one in the future, which a lot of folks do - under SCHEDULE on the main COMPOSE page.

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    1. This occasionally happens. I know I've spotted a few over time and updated them. Post-dating posts is a nice feature so folks who are writing can see what days already have material running that day. The leisurely arrival of content is nice so that when a post does appear, it's usually on the front page for a while.

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    2. I don't know exactly what happened in Proc. Chiltepin's case, but I do know that I have scheduled posts for a few days in the future while still drafting them, only to exceed my own deadline by several days. It's very easy to overlook the date/time when I click "publish", in which case the post doesn't appear in the lineup at the actual time I posted, but several days in the past when I had originally meant to post it. Editing the post to the current time (considering the time zone) fixes it.

      It is greatly appreciated that you clean up after our mistakes.

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  2. I think your comment about her wanting you to choose her topic (six hours before the paper is due!) so that she's not responsible for her failure is spot-on. Also LOL@learning styles

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  3. I did miss this post. And I pride myself in going back and reading old posts and their comments. Thanks for the re invite.

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    1. I can think of several reasons why it could be fun give an older post a fresh read.

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  4. All this sounds very familiar (not the particular post -- thanks for resurrecting it, OPH -- but the scenario).

    Before I moved to assigning a final paper of a type most of my students have not written before (and which is hard to find on the internet, at least in the form I assign it), I had begun warning students that, while last-minute topic changes were technically "allowed," they also raised red flags for experienced proffies, who are likely to check especially carefully for plagiarism in such cases. Several pairs of eyes got very wide at that pronouncement.

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