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Congratulations Chriss Miller on being selected by the Tek-Tips community for having the most helpful posts in the forums last week. Way to Go!
Size of this VFP-forum 1
- Thread starter german12
- Start date
Chris Miller
Programmer
If you go to the last page that has the number 1441 the first post was from April 1999. Might be, VFP exists far longer, but maybe tek-tips didn't start a FoxPro forum earlier. I guess there's more on levelextreme aka universa lthread and in newsgroups that only exist in narkive and other Newsgroups post archives. They surely had more and most posts in the 80s and perhaps still the 90s. It's often overseen that 90s were also still quite an early stage of internet usage, I simply remind the first acctual smartphone was 2010, while "mobiles" exist since the 90s or even a bit earlier, too, if you take in car phones.
Okay, I get off topic. But the essence is you find most VFP Q&A in newsgroups, very likely. Only things related to VFP9 and perhaps VFP8 might be mostly in internet forums. So I'd consider looking into the web knowledge about FoxPro you would mainly look into newsgroups.
What's interesting about tek-tips, specifically is that users can archive a thread, and that marks it as more interesting to them. It may be interesting to know the list of archived threads. If you set thread order to stars, you can see that even of the threads with the most stars only some have been archived by some users. There's not an option to sort by how many times a thread was archived. And maybe it's also a sign that the tek-tips stars aren't given for helpful tips only. Or archiving is less used than it should be. Whatever.
I also assume there will be many doubles and in the end, there are good books on all major topics about VFP and they are much better organized than just putting together forum posts. If you want to put together a book like 1001 Things You Wanted to Know about Visual FoxPro... just notice that already exists.
Chriss
Okay, I get off topic. But the essence is you find most VFP Q&A in newsgroups, very likely. Only things related to VFP9 and perhaps VFP8 might be mostly in internet forums. So I'd consider looking into the web knowledge about FoxPro you would mainly look into newsgroups.
What's interesting about tek-tips, specifically is that users can archive a thread, and that marks it as more interesting to them. It may be interesting to know the list of archived threads. If you set thread order to stars, you can see that even of the threads with the most stars only some have been archived by some users. There's not an option to sort by how many times a thread was archived. And maybe it's also a sign that the tek-tips stars aren't given for helpful tips only. Or archiving is less used than it should be. Whatever.
I also assume there will be many doubles and in the end, there are good books on all major topics about VFP and they are much better organized than just putting together forum posts. If you want to put together a book like 1001 Things You Wanted to Know about Visual FoxPro... just notice that already exists.
Chriss
TamarGranor
Programmer
Surely it would depend on what format they were saved in. Plain text is pretty efficient.
Tamar
Tamar
Chris Miller
Programmer
I don't know, images and attachments could contribute much more. But it's all obvously managable sizes to keep the site going, with many more forums, too.
Chriss
Chriss
Mike Gagnon
Programmer
Lest we forget that Tek-Tips is not just for Foxpro, but many 100's of other forums and if you combine that with Eng Tip site, it many 100's more. So Foxpro is a little part of this entity.
If you want to get the best response to a question, please check out FAQ184-2483 first.
If you want to get the best response to a question, please check out FAQ184-2483 first.
Mike Lewis
Programmer
Keep in mind too that there hasn't always been a single VFP forum. There have at various times been separate forums for Visual Foxpro and some earlier versions.
Mike
__________________________________
Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)
Visual FoxPro articles, tips and downloads
Mike
__________________________________
Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)
Visual FoxPro articles, tips and downloads
Mike,
The VFP forum was originally split from FoxPro forum in 2004 (I still have the email from Dave Murphy that was sent as an announcement). At my request about 2 or 3 years ago, the forums were re-combined when I noted that the FoxPro forum as getting about 1 new question every 3 or 4 months, and they were again rejoined as a single forum.
So messages from 1999 (while VFP was first released in 3.0 version in 1995), were when the forum first appeared, it was only separated from 2004 to around 2019, and now, all back to one "family" again.
None of the postings were lost. They are all combined into this forum set of threads now.
Best Regards,
Scott
MSc ISM, MIET, MASHRAE, CDCAP, CDCP, CDCS, CDCE, CTDC, CTIA, ATS, ATD
"I try to be nice, but sometimes my mouth doesn't cooperate.
The VFP forum was originally split from FoxPro forum in 2004 (I still have the email from Dave Murphy that was sent as an announcement). At my request about 2 or 3 years ago, the forums were re-combined when I noted that the FoxPro forum as getting about 1 new question every 3 or 4 months, and they were again rejoined as a single forum.
So messages from 1999 (while VFP was first released in 3.0 version in 1995), were when the forum first appeared, it was only separated from 2004 to around 2019, and now, all back to one "family" again.
None of the postings were lost. They are all combined into this forum set of threads now.
Best Regards,
Scott
MSc ISM, MIET, MASHRAE, CDCAP, CDCP, CDCS, CDCE, CTDC, CTIA, ATS, ATD
"I try to be nice, but sometimes my mouth doesn't cooperate.
- Thread starter
- #8
This thread is no. 184-1820801.
Does that mean that 1,8 millon times a question had been asked in this forum 184?
Provided on average every thread inclusive responses fills half of a paper-sheet size DIN A4 then 4 threads could be printed on one sheet (front + back)
So to print all what had been discussed only here would fill 450,000 sheets of paper. (1,8 millon divided by 4)
and that would fill 900 file folders each with 500 pages.
And as a file folder has a width of 80 mm ...so a row of 72 m would be necessary to store them all.
I will start printing all here (just a joke) but have to find a sponsor who pays all the printer cartridges, the folders, the paper and the wages cost.
very funny thoughts.....
Thanks for all your answers.
Klaus
PS: I hope the above calculation was not too wrong.
Peace worldwide - it starts here...
Does that mean that 1,8 millon times a question had been asked in this forum 184?
Provided on average every thread inclusive responses fills half of a paper-sheet size DIN A4 then 4 threads could be printed on one sheet (front + back)
So to print all what had been discussed only here would fill 450,000 sheets of paper. (1,8 millon divided by 4)
and that would fill 900 file folders each with 500 pages.
And as a file folder has a width of 80 mm ...so a row of 72 m would be necessary to store them all.
I will start printing all here (just a joke) but have to find a sponsor who pays all the printer cartridges, the folders, the paper and the wages cost.
very funny thoughts.....
Thanks for all your answers.
Klaus
PS: I hope the above calculation was not too wrong.
Peace worldwide - it starts here...
Chris Miller
Programmer
Yes, print the internet. I think it once was an art campaign.
No, we don't have 1820801 VFP threads, the 1820801 part is unique in itself, so counts all threads of all forums. For example, the last thread in the SQL Server Programming forum is 183-1820836, and that's not because in forum 183 the number of threads is by chance similar to that of this forum, but actually, the part after the forum id is a thread id and the forum id is just prepended to that for clarity to which forum a thread belongs. Even though it's not necessary, it could cater to cases the data gets mangled.
Edit: It is very common to have an independently growing ID number, if you think of the general primary key as an incrementing number for each table. A table design with forums in one table and threads in another, which have the forum id as a foreign key, means that each thread has a) its own unique thread id and b) the forum id as a foreign key. To identify the thread you only need the thread id, as by definition that's its identifier, but it doesn't hurt to add the forum id to it. By the way, every time you consider building up an id of two components, a main record id plus an incrementing number starting at 1, doing so just makes id creation harder.
Chriss
No, we don't have 1820801 VFP threads, the 1820801 part is unique in itself, so counts all threads of all forums. For example, the last thread in the SQL Server Programming forum is 183-1820836, and that's not because in forum 183 the number of threads is by chance similar to that of this forum, but actually, the part after the forum id is a thread id and the forum id is just prepended to that for clarity to which forum a thread belongs. Even though it's not necessary, it could cater to cases the data gets mangled.
Edit: It is very common to have an independently growing ID number, if you think of the general primary key as an incrementing number for each table. A table design with forums in one table and threads in another, which have the forum id as a foreign key, means that each thread has a) its own unique thread id and b) the forum id as a foreign key. To identify the thread you only need the thread id, as by definition that's its identifier, but it doesn't hurt to add the forum id to it. By the way, every time you consider building up an id of two components, a main record id plus an incrementing number starting at 1, doing so just makes id creation harder.
Chriss
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Mike Lewis
Programmer
I suspect that they starting assigning thread IDs from 1000000, so as not to get any leading zeroes (at least, that's what I would have done). If that's right, you would have to subtract one million from your total.
And don't forget to factor in the threads that have been deleted by management because of spam, self-promotion, etc. Those are a very small proportion of the total, but they have been increasing rapidly in recent months.
Mike
__________________________________
Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)
Visual FoxPro articles, tips and downloads
And don't forget to factor in the threads that have been deleted by management because of spam, self-promotion, etc. Those are a very small proportion of the total, but they have been increasing rapidly in recent months.
Mike
__________________________________
Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)
Visual FoxPro articles, tips and downloads
@crhis
Thank you for providing your perspective on the size of this VFP-forum.
Consider the vast volume of information and knowledge found in internet forums and newsgroups such as this one. I appreciate your suggestion to look into newsgroups for more VFP Q&A, as they may have even larger archives of debates from the 1980s and 1990s.
It's also worth noting the archiving feature on tek-tips, as well as how users can mark threads as more interesting to them. While it may not always provide meaningful advice, it can be a good method to find the most popular and relevant debates.
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Thank you for providing your perspective on the size of this VFP-forum.
Consider the vast volume of information and knowledge found in internet forums and newsgroups such as this one. I appreciate your suggestion to look into newsgroups for more VFP Q&A, as they may have even larger archives of debates from the 1980s and 1990s.
It's also worth noting the archiving feature on tek-tips, as well as how users can mark threads as more interesting to them. While it may not always provide meaningful advice, it can be a good method to find the most popular and relevant debates.
Check My apk Site!
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