Continued from here, just to keep the Mods on their toes! Y’all step lightly now! :-)
Okay…okay. Y’all are kinda shy, I know…so I’ll go first. What’s the word on the new software platform? Any concrete decisions yet? Maybe you should shorten pogge’s chain a couple more links :-) <jk>
pogge—poor guy is pinned to the wall!
Jefiner goes back under her desk; it’s a good fallout shelter
bump
As pogge always says, it’s a question of figuring out which tradeoffs we’re willing to live with. We’ve also developed some short term fixes which should improve functionality until we can get to the big decisions.
Mods, I have a question about people posting under someone else’s name. I just ran across an instance of this on another thread. Someone copied a comment from one thread into another to help out the original poster but without the original poster’s prior knowledge apparently. The re-poster copied and posted to the second thread under the original poster’s name. I’ve seen other passing references by posters essentially saying, “Oops, forgot to change my name back.” Is this something that is condoned? Granted, it’s probably only done out of good intentions, but it raises the question of the legitimacy of posts and the intention of the orignal poster.
Edna Mode,
I read the posts you reference and that’s basically innocuous. Pogge has the ability to see IP addresses and if he notices that kind of behavior in less harmless circumstances he has the ability to ban the offender.
We will in future move toward registration. While it is benign intent (your examples), you’re right that it needs to be addressed moving forward.
would be preferred when reposting.
I just wanted to say thank you pogge. I think you and anyone else involved in the decision made the correct choice. I have advance training in discussion leadership, speech and debate. I find the application of technique tiresome. You have my respect for seeing reality as it is. Too few can do that. I lost respect for the situation very early on. If I were a mod, it would have been much sooner.
I suspect one other person (so far) with an “agenda” that I will watch and see if you catch on to…grin. Let me give you a hint, the “government” is watching and trying to influence your debate here. My lips are sealed. Goodnight.
Now I’m curious. Dude??
Oh no…don’t do that, Dude. A poster a couple of months ago did pretty much the same thing, then turned out to be a commercial enterprise “salesman”! Left quite a bitter taste in peoples’ mouths…
BB @ 01:16 You don’t want me to share my observations that one poster has an agenda that does not match the free exchange of ideas and another poster had such an angenda and you banned them. OK. Your house your rules. I really don’t understand your post at all and I am not sure why you are having that reaction but then, I don’t walk in your shoes. You really don’t understand or believe that I am just here to help. I am a really good salesman, but you are not my client base.
DemFromCT – at 19:57 We will in future move toward registration
I am accustomed to a forum in which each poster’s true first & last names are displayed. I understand the perceived need for some people here to post under pseudonyms, but I see no problem in having people “choose a name and stick with it.” I’ve never found any profit in the digital onanistic behavior of one person (operating two sock puppets) debate himself on a bulletin board.
I would ask, though, that registration allow the ability to post under a given name from more than one IP address. I post from work and from home and would prefer not to have to resort to “Dennis in Colorado1″ and “Dennis in Colorado2.”
Dennis,
Noted. We’ll see what the software allows.
Yes,
I’ll have a hard time with “anon_22 at home1″, “”anon_22 at home2″, “anon_22 at hotel#23″ etc.
Just kidding…<g>
Dude – at 14:27
Let me say, first, it’s not my house. I just rent a room here! ;-)
My post was said tongue-in-cheek. No offense was meant by it. The previous “poster” I mentioned came on board here, got himself rather well-liked, and claimed that he had a “feeling” and “information” that he would share at a later time. Turned out to be something entirely different…and then just up and disappeared.
I was certainly not meaning to give the impression that I might be upset by your post…I do apologize to you whole-heartedly and personally! You have given far too much to this board for me to want to do or say anything to push you away!!
My hope is that the government IS watching…how things work here and getting some insight into how concerned private citizens truly are regarding the possibility of a pandemic…
When you go to the News blogs and daily commentary section and click on Effect Measure you are sent to the old site, could this be updated?
Thanks for the reminder, L.
I was wondering if the following issue has already been discussed somewhere in the forum….
One of the recent cases to die of H5N1 had 2 negative tests and only the post-mortem test was positive for H5N1. Given that this virus prefers the lower respiratory tract, perhaps the ‘usual’ nasal and/or throat swabs are inadequate. If they have a high false negative rate, then the 50% mortality rates might be falsely elevated. The same idea could be applied to the contacts being tested ie a lot of false negatives which would again lower the actual mortality rate.
If this has not been previously discussed, are you interested in a thread on this issue?
This has already been discussed. Post mortem deep lung tissues provide the clinical diagnosis.
Do you recall the name of the thread?
Use the search function and check the last 250 threads. We’re not here to do your work for you.
I wrote a story to be used to help explain a pandemic to young children. Where on the Wiki should I post it?
On the preparation pages.
bump
LR,
“One of the recent cases to die of H5N1 had 2 negative tests and only the post-mortem test was positive for H5N1. Given that this virus prefers the lower respiratory tract, perhaps the ‘usual’ nasal and/or throat swabs are inadequate. If they have a high false negative rate, then the 50% mortality rates might be falsely elevated. The same idea could be applied to the contacts being tested ie a lot of false negatives which would again lower the actual mortality rate.”
You are talking about the issue of missed diagnosis and whether there are mild or aymptomatic cases. The best way of finding this out is by serprevalence studies, ie sampling a population within the area for antibodies by microneutralization assay. This particular test is pretty accurate and should pick up those who had been infected before but are asymptomatic. There has not been many such studies but those that have been done show zero or extremely low seroprevalence, in the order of single digit percentage points.
False negatives are most common early in the disease, say Day 5 or so, which is when people turn up at hospitals. This is the time when throat and nasal swabs are likely to be no longer positive, but antibodies have not appeared in the blood yet. Generally for a suspected case, one should repeat these tests including swabs just to increase the chance of catching that postive. Blood tests for antibodies should be repeated after 10–14 days, where in most instances it will start appearing. The trouble is the WHO definition of a confirmed case based on antibody tests requires paired serum sample showing a 4-fold rise in antibodies after 14 days. If for whatever reason, the second test is not done, even if the first serum sample shows sky-high antibody levels, it is still not counted as a confirmed case. We know that this has happened at least a few times eg in Turkey when patients did not turn up for the tests.
So you are right in that there are false negatives. How this affects the calculation of the CFR depends on whether there are more false negatives who survive vs false negatives who die. There have been cases where one person is confirmed and then we found out that 1 or 2 family members had recently died from very similar symptoms but were buried and never testest. We probably will never find out how many there are. I have a feeling there may have been a fair number given the number of people who die from fever-related illnesses in the countries where H5N1 outbreaks have occurred.
Notice that even the example that you gave was for someone who died, and if it hadn’t been for the postmortem tests, that case would have been missed. This kind of false negative if taken into account would raise and not lower the CFR.
Unfortunately, the autopsy rate has been dismally low, mostly due to either cultural issues or more importantly, lack of BSL3+ facilities to conduct such autopsies safely.
Please delete my last few posts on the Threat Assessment II. Thanks.
Ditto. We got into nothing more than a mutual pi**ing contest.
as long as you two agree. :-)
Please delete all the way back to 01:54, if I may ask that.
ok :-)
Anon_22 --- Of course we agree. glo and I have never disagreed on anything. Ever. Honest. :-)
Thanks.
The draft on Coping with your emotions before, during and after a pandemic has been completed. I have delayed posting it because I can’t seem to figure out how to post it to a new page for editing. I have read all the related material on how to edit, create a new page etc. My main problem in following the directions is to click on the edit button on the current page and create a new page. There is no edit button appearing at the top or bottom of the thread on my computer (I use Interner explorer broad band cable hookup, roadrunner}. I have spent hours trying to get this to work.
Is there anyone I could mail this to for your submission here? I hate to see this valuable information not get posted.
Thanks for your help.
ST
Science Teacher – at 13:44 --- You need to go the Wiki server, and create/edit the page there. The only edit function on the Forum side is that which you write your posts in.
Open a page on the Wiki side (fluwikie.com) and click on edit there. Follow the directions from that point on…
There is no edit button appearing at the top or bottom of the thread on my computer…
The edit link is unavailable on the forum pages to prevent one person from editing another’s posts. The link is available on all the pages in the rest of the wiki.
When I want to create a new page, I usually go to the sandbox and create the link first. Then when I’ve saved the sandbox, I can click on the link to create the page in the editor. If you’re creating a page for the wiki proper, make sure you get into the right sandbox.
Is there anyone I could mail this to for your submission here?
If you prefer this approach, your best bet is probably DemFromCT. (That’s an email link.)
I am really nervous about attempting to post to the information pages so wonder if you could add these links to the New Zealand pages on information for a pandemic. (I posted them to the Aust and NZ thread but forgot to get them uploaded)
This one is for MAF (Ministry of Agriculture and Forests) http://tinyurl.com/gt3xt
This one is for the Ministry of Education - quite comprehensive http://tinyurl.com/qkb22
Thank you so much for all your wonderful work.
Ya’ll (the moderators), have been unusually quiet the past 24 hrs. Any thoughts about recent news revelations in Thailand. I’m especially interested in what the reveres think about it.
My question is: How many people are the “reveres” or is that information top secret?
okie - I beleive most are on well-deserved vacations.
Just out of curiosity- Roughly how many hits does the meter record daily?
prepperbabe – at 09:10
See that little box with the rainbow colors towards the top of the page on the left hand side? Click it and it will tell you.
AnnieB:
Done. Thanks.
Okieman:
Revere is on vacation. Dem is too, though he was around a bit yesterday. (I heard something about some kind of election in CT yesterday that had him staying close to home.) I believe Melanie’s around. As for anon_22, she may be on a plane somewhere. She often is.
prepperbabe:
Yesterday we recorded around 2,900 unique visitors and just under 20,000 page views. That’s for this server, i.e. the forum. The wiki is on a different server and has its own meter.
Pogge. What is a ‘unique visitor’.
Tom---I believe ‘unique visitors” just means individual visitors, or “hits”, as opposed to a single visitor hitting several different pages while they’re here…
“Unique” up on ‘em with the site meter…
Bronco Bill Thanks. Does that mean if I log onto flu wiki five times a day, I would be one unique visitor or five?
crfullmoon – at 09:50 --- ;-) I got that!!
Tom DVM --- That’s something I’m not sure about. I believe it would show you as 5 “unique” visits…but that there is a question for pogge, since he has the meter set up to pull the stats he needs…
Oh Mr. pogge? You still in there??
Thanks Okieman! I think I may start tracking just for grins.
From the Site Meter help documentation:
Site Meter defines a “visit” as a series of page views by one person with no more than 30 minutes in between page views.
crfullmoon at 09.50
Now I have to explain to the office why I just let out such a raucous guffaw!
I’m around but fighting some kind of stomach bug which has me having to leave the computer suddenly.
I’m around but doing a 3 day turn around of Asia-UK-US trip plus househunting, so its really crazy. I have another 8 hours to my next trip to the airport.
anon_22 – at 17:56 --- I have a house for sale in a great neighborhood!
Bronco Bill – at 18:15 “anon_22 – at 17:56 --- I have a house for sale in a great neighborhood!”
Great idea! Wrong country!
Thanks :-)
Dang! ;-)
Hi everyone,
Thanks for the good work and sticking around while the mods are ‘otherwise occupied’. Where would we be without Bronco Bill, Tom, MM, Frenchie, AnnieB, Okieman, and everyone else that I haven’t mentioned!!
I’m trying to catch up on 2 days news still.
And, not to be ungrateful, but please can the old-timers set the even better example of taking discussions to ‘purpose-built’ (you can tell I’ve been looking at too many houses LOL) threads? There were some really good discussions and some important items of news, and it would be such a shame if either of those kinda get lost to folks who are scanning too fast. As I tried to do just now. :-)
But still, thanks to everyone again. Keep up the good work! We need you!
Hi, Anon_22!
Long time no see.
Bronco Bill:
No matter what door you walk thru, literal or digital, you’re a “unique visitor”.
anon_22 – at 17:56 “I have another 8 hours to my next trip to the airport.”
Just realized: those 8 (now 7) hours included time for sleep and packing.
Oops!
Gotta go, seeya all later.
interesting data points from the internet loads during the connecticut elections. dailykos reporting that he’s spending $7,000 per month. The site still goes to single thread mode and stalls during the election night load. not a pandemic.
I believe a flu information strategy that depends on one copy of the information/ one channel for access will choke during the pandemic. distributed informaton access via internet will last longer, imo. cd-rom image archives could snapshot the core wiki information and extend availability.
would the mods comment, please? how will the wiki information deal with load and functionality issues? I know that you are working on it. I would be interested in something like a plan/statement similar to a disaster recovery plan that a business would do.
thanks, & I just want to say in advance that I’m not complaining about what you’ve done thus far. I think this may be a useful topic for discussion.
newore,
We are actively discussing it. Server space and the software platform are the biggest problems right now.
melanie:
still surprising to me that the details of the discussion don’t make it out into the general community. you may find, during the discussion of such details that the community has resources or methods that will contribute to the planning effort.
newore,
The community has been solicited repeatedly, just not recently. We have a pretty good idea of what our options are, but some hard decisions to make.
2beans – at 18:59 --- Touche. Excellent point.
newore and Melanie --- I think what might be best if there is a ‘net overload, is to cut the Forum side down to the minimal threads as the Mods did immediately after the March/April server crash. Say, 10 open threads at the maximum. I imagine pogge has a way of closing all threads at once, then opening just a few new ones. News thread, Advice thread, local emergency contacts thread, “I’m looking for this person” thread, etc. A thread could be set up much like the bulletin boards and posting boards you see after a major calamity that show notes saying “Missing: JimBob. Pleaase come home. Call 555–1212″ or something like that. The Forum/Wiki could become a message board for families to get in touch with each other at the beginning of a possible pandemic outbreak.
It would cut down on a lot of our (and I include myself) unneccessary conversations, and just bring us news updates and important imformation. Right now, it’s all about prepping and watching, but when TSHTF, it’ll be more about finding out what’s happening in other areas and notifying loved ones who aren’t at home.
Just a thought or two…
BB,
Noted. Those are helpful suggestions.
I imagine pogge has a way of closing all threads at once, then opening just a few new ones.
Yes. I can make the whole forum read-only in under five minutes.
Oops. Just posting again so everyone won’t think this thread is closed. I forgot to change my name back after dealing with another thread.
pogge has awesome power.
I’m in and out. In a real pandemic, the functionality of the wiki vs forum would need review, but we’d also have help with server functionality way above and beyond what we do now.
The Daily Kos example during the recent primary election: the site got over a million unique visitors that day and stayed up, with a 15 server rack. it was very slow at times. However it uses server intensive software that is capable of simultaneeous conversations amongst the 100,000 registered regulars. It has sophisticated tools we wouldn’t need (that take server space), like comment ratings or diaries. So it’s not exactly comparable to a pandemic, nor woud we be the only site.
The wiki side could be reproduced for local viewing. That static ability is important, and so culling the ‘best’ of the forum via Forum index threads or wiki page creation is important to do and an ongoing task.
Hi everyone. I have noticed in the past four or five days that I am having trouble accessing the forum. I’m not sure if it is my computer but it reminds me of what happened when there were problems before. I wouldn’t think it would be do to traffic at this time of year.
No, the threads are starting to pile up, and we may need to archive the older ones.
Melanie – at 16:10 I’m around but fighting some kind of stomach bug which has me having to leave the computer suddenly.
Maybe you have a computer virus? A snort of Norton A/V might help.
Sorry, couldn’t resist. I hope you feel better soon.
Mods, I have also noticed problems accessing the forum. Maybe time to archive the old threads.
Mike
Blitz time next couple of nights???
BB,
We’re game if you are.
I’ve been lax here on the Forum the last couple of days…had to actually work at my day job. At night I’ve been continuing my packing for moving. It’s a long process…I liked it better when my DW did all the packing before!
Late last nite I started looking through a bunch of the Prepper threads, and as you may have seen today, began to split some of them…a couple were really getting long. I’ll continue that, but I don’t think that will close/archive enough threads to bring the open file number down yet.
I’m going to email pogge a tech question…then I’ll come back here with a possible suggestion…
And a note, Dem…even *I* tried to get onto DKos last night. Heh…ended up watching CNN…
Okay. Cover me. 9pm Pacific time. The Blitz is on…
Traffic took DKos down last night. Even his servers couldn’t handle it.
Then that would be why I kept getting the “Page cannot be found” error. Heh heh. I figured Kos would be ready for a jump in traffic…
better than “pogge not found”….
;) couldn’t resist ;)
Got my new hard drive and tried to set the page color as green, but green only worked on the style page. Everything else is gold. ( I tried once on my substitute computer before too.) What else should I do beside click on the color name?
Is your browser set to accept cookies? If not, you’ll get the default colours.
Little Green Footballs was slow to access as well after posting the stories on the Reuters photo scandal.
(sorry, couldn’t help myself there)
What else should I do beside click on the color name?
You could always try color felt pens… ;-) Since you should never have to go to any other web site anywhere else, the backgrounds here could be any color you like…
Closing a few threads tonight. Wasn’t sure if anyone noticed that on The Last 50 Changes list! ;-)
BB, keep it going. We missed the blitz.
Mike
I just wanted to post a comment about you permanently banning Niman. He has valuable information, you cut off access to his discussions on this board. The discussions where much more informative than what he has on his site. I expect your numbers to tank again. I’ll do what I can to make that happen. I have introduced several people to this board, as I thought it had the most valuable information. It will be a cold day before I reccommend your site to anyone again. You have done a major disservice to this community.
Mastiff – at 02:32
You wrote: “I expect your numbers to tank again. I’ll do what I can to make that happen.”
Sour grapes. Since Niman’s gone, we have peace, fun, and great, friendly, respectable interactions. Numbers have gone up, in the middle of summer.
Are you starving for traffic and trying to advertise here? Don’t bother, it won’t make a difference. The Niman brand has already saturated this forum. If readers haven’t gone to where you want them to, more advertising won’t make a difference. People here are mature and intelligent, and are capable of making their own decisions.
IMO, your tactics are a little ‘cheap’, but nothing surprises me, knowing where it’s from.
Good luck.
If you want to read Henry, he has a website. Feel free to go there.
Melanie,
Are you feelin’ any better?
Well, after staying up almost all night with packing and finishing up last minute stuff, I turned on the news this morning to find complete chaos at Heathrow. The police said they foiled a major terrorist threat to bomb multiple flights, apparently with ‘liquid’ explosives in their hand luggage. So now passengers flying out of all UK airports are not allowed to bring hand luggage except for passport and a small wallet. No books, documents, laptop, liquids, everything have to go in the hold.
That’s for regular folks. Those travelling to the US are subject to ‘3 or 4′ searches, including body search or scans.
I made the clever decision to not go, before I got these details.
FYI Heathrow is the busiest international airport in the world, with 600+ flights a day. The knock-on effect on flights from and to the rest of the world will unravel throughout the next few days.
This is not yet 9am, Heathrow is jam-packed with people. I am looking at pictures of frantic passengers putting stuff into clear plastic bags. I don’t see how all those business executives with their laptops and confidential documents can possibly put those in the hold.
Parents of young children can bring milk and baby food, but they have to taste it in front of staff. I wonder whether some poor parents will find themselves running out of milk after multiple tasting and many hours of queuing.
Just thought I’d let you guys know. It is not exactly flu-related but certainly closely related to contingency planning, maintaining communications, striking the balance between safety and making sure normal eg commercial activities can continue.
Anon 22
thanks for the news….i’m watching fox news now….my dearest neighbors just flew to England yesturday….trying to get a hold of them right now to find out when they are flying out again…..very scarey!!! I hope this isnt another 9/11….thanks for the update…
I’m flying out of, you guessed it, Heathrow on our yearly holiday next week. With, yes, a four year old and a two year old. BUT, because I’m a fluwikian, I will take some of the powdered whole milk I have and ask for H2O on board. I still need to take a hand luggage though. My toddler is not yet potty trained!
Once again, prepers will RULE
Crazy American Lady in the Village – at 06:59
White powdered milk, in a baggee? That may be interesting right now. Maybe label it “ NOT anthrax”? ;)
I second the motion “Preppers Rule”, Nothing stops us (slows us down now and then, but doesn’t stop us!)
Good luck, let us know how it goes.
Not as fun as traveling with my best friend from University. His family owns an explosives factory in South America and ALL of his stuff has explosives resedue on it. If we go anywhere, we are now on diffent planes :)
pogge, the cookies from Fluwikie style page expire in one year. It’s set to pale green. So on paper, so to speak, things are working fine. But my pages are still gold. Not a big deal, though disappointing.
Jane – at 12:19 --- Is the border green, or the entire page is gold? Even with the style pages set to a different color, the “writable” area will remain gold.
Bronco Bill, the border is gold still. The green appears only when I navigate to the style page. (kind of legalistic of my computer, hmm?)
Jane---have you deleted all cookies, closed your browser and rebooted your computer? In that order…
Close the browser means close pages and click on word or something? Or shut down the computer?
Shut down the computer ;-) BTW---which web browser are you using, Internet Explorer, Netscape, or another?
BB,
I’m thinking this is a browser issue.
I am too…
It’s either in the Internet Settings or Security in the browser…
fooey, earlier I found the cookies page, but now all it gives me in System Preferences is a security password page. I have Safari. So I can’t delete the cookies because I can’t find them anymore. Thanks anyway. :) If they turn up, I’ll do it.
Jane…I’m not familiar with Safari, since it’s a newer Apple product, but I did find this page Safari Help
Give it a shot, see if you can find any other help docs there. I’ll keep looking around for you.
FWIW Jane, I’m looking at a green border. I set it early this afternoon and I’ve since not only left the site but shut the machine down for an hour and a half while I was out. I’ve still got a green border. That doesn’t mean necessarily that it’s your problem, but at least on the surface things seem to be working as they should.
pogge, interior designer. That’ll make an interesting business card.
Thanks, Bronco Bill and pogge -according to the Help page my settings are correct, so next thing is to make a report to Apple. (found the cookies, too, thanks!)
With all the changes of recent months (and it is that long since I tried this), how do I find a profile for a contributor to the wiki - assuming they have created one? The past 50 changes on the main wiki do not include those that only contribute to the discussion pages?
If you look on the left sidebar, part way down, you’ll see a Profiles link. That will take you to a list of all the profiles that have been created on this server, i.e. on the forum server.
Edited to add: In case I’ve misunderstood and you want the profiles on the wiki server, go to the wiki and type the following into the search field and then click Go:
group=profiles
Thanks Pogge - if only I learned to read what I was seeing I would have seen that entry in the left column - age, it has a lot to answer for!
pogge…I don’t remember if I asked you this before now, but is there a way to make the Left Side Bar float? So when we scroll down, it in itself stays at the top? I’m thinking XTML programming here, of which, on a scale of 1 thru 10, I have experience in the negative teens!!
I found this article on “network disaster recovery planning needed for Avian flu threat”. It might be relevent to the discussion here (August 9th) on network falure due to overload.
Long thread. Closed and continued here
Last two posts copied to new thread