Call for volunteers

[hilary]

Would anyone like to help create an index of hexagrams for this board?

I'd create an 'index' section with pages for each hexagram - and each person would undertake to read through the posts for maybe a month or 2 (for the Divination Discussion and Friends areas I think that would be plenty to take on), and post links to each thread in the relevant hexagram page.

This is mostly Dobro's idea (thank you, Dobro http://www.onlineclarity.co.uk/I_Ching_community/clipart/happy.gif ). To work, it would need a lot of kind members to volunteer. Your forum needs you. http://www.onlineclarity.co.uk/I_Ching_community/clipart/wink.gif

Post here if you'd be willing to help, or if you have a better idea on how to do it.

[martin]

Okay, I'm available.
BTW, is it necessary to go through all the posts or can I use the forum search function to find links?
I saw that the links appear in the source code of the results page (I searched 26 in subject lines) and I think I can write a small program that extracts the links and puts them in a file. Would speed up the process ..

[jte]

I'd volunteer to one hex or pair of hexes, sure. But I'm limiting myself to that, if you don't mind, as I have plenty on my plate these days...

- Jeff

[bradford_h]

Huge task, Hilary. Wanna chip in for a paid secretary?

Just two suggestions, if this goeth forth -

Standardize the nomenclature now. I would do lines like 01.1>44; Gua Ci as 01.0.

The other is to think through the editing and moving of select data into the Experiences site.

[hilary]

Martin - any way to speed up the process is, of course, great! The forum search function works tolerably if you search on hexagram numbers, but I think only in 2 digits.

Jeff - for one person to try to find all references to a single hexagram would mean searching/ looking through all the threads from 2002 onward - wouldn't recommend you volunteer for that. Try volunteering for a month or a week instead: more hexagrams to find links to, but fewer pages to look through.

Though if we have only a couple or three of us at it, I don't think it will happen. Do you think anyone has noticed this thread over here?

Brad - um, no. http://www.onlineclarity.co.uk/I_Ching_community/clipart/wink.gif This forum provides me with many wonderful things, but money isn't one of them. Standardised nomenclature would solve the single-digit search problem at a stroke... if it were enforceable.

About moving things to ichingresources.co.uk (or its successor, one of these years): I do like the idea. But would I need to contact everyone whose stories I wanted to use? I think I'd better, rather than copying things to another domain willy-nilly. Another one for the paid secretary/ webmaster, perhaps?

[heylise]

I did see the thread, and I would like to help, but I don't dare to. Loaded with so many things, that I am afraid, after adding one more, I will not be able to index my own life anymore.

I will try to look at a thread, and see what happens. Maybe it turns out easier than I think, but I cannot promise anything.

I guess taking one thread at a time will work better than taking a time-span, like a week or month.

LiSe

[rinda]

Hilary,

I'm with LiSe, looking and not daring to commit to this - I'm afraid I might let you down.

Just some random thoughts:

I'm wondering if we could use some kind of matrix (similar to LiSe's Yi page) where we could post links that we found. (Posting only the links in this matrix would help with uniformity.) This way we could see where folks are working already, what's done and not done as we go...
...possibly something that was programmed to sort itself internally by date within the cell or area designated for that Gua??

If something like this was in place, one could work on it during spare moments, and make a contribution...

Rinda

[hilary]

Yes, I see the idea. Committing up front to doing a month's worth of posts is not sensible. (Would I even do it myself?) Having a place available where you can enter a link or two in a spare moment is much more manageable.

The only reason I went for the idea of allocating dates to people was to avoid duplication - ie several people all posting links to the same thread. In other words, either we try to 'organise' the contributors, in a way that may or may not be very compatible with real life, or we do this with a database and let a computer do the organising.

Hm... calling all sympathetic web programmers...

[martin]

Hi Hilary,

If I use the search function and only want references to 4, for instance, I can scan the results with a program to see if it's really 4 and not 34, 45, 22.4, 2004, etc. No problem.
What is a problem, though, is that I only get 10 results on the results page. I would like to have as many results as possible on one page. Is there a setting somewhere that allows you to change that? (1000 is probably enough, 500 would already be fine)

Another question. I suppose you want the references that appear in subject lines (a) and also the references that appear in text of messages (b).
Because (b) will usually give many links (perhaps too many for some users) I think it's a good idea to separate the links, like this:

(page for hexagram 25)

Subject lines:
----------
----------------
-------
-----

Text of messages:
--------------------
----------
-----------------
--------
------------------
-------

Do you agree?


Anyway, I still have to write that program, perhaps there are complications. We'll see ... http://www.onlineclarity.co.uk/I_Ching_community/clipart/happy.gif

[martin]

Btw, another and perhaps better solution is to improve the search function so that it can do the same kind of scanning that I mentioned in my last post.
People could then simply use the search function and there would be no need to set up pages with links for each hexagram. I think ..
But I can't do that for you because I don't know enough about web programming (Java, html, etc).
Perhaps there is someone out there who can?

[bradford_h]

Hi again Hilary-
Not to give up yet, but should this not go forward, what about a Plan B, making your search engine easier to get to, or harder to forget about?
Maybe put it on the template page for all the discussions, not just a link to the page that has the engine.

[hilary]

Martin, I admire the doggedness with which you look for ways round the limitations of this forum's search engine! What I was wondering about ('thinking of' is too strong...) was actually leaving the finding of links to humans (already programmed to tell the difference between 14 and 4, or at least some of us are), and having a separate simple database of hexagrams (or maybe hexagrams and lines) - flat file or MySql - with a still simpler interface where people could go and paste in links for each hexagram/ line, and submit these to the db. (Which would naturally de-duplicate itself.)

I know there are a good few I-Ching-interested programmers out there. Does this idea sound workable to other people - should I try to buy or barter it into existence?

Brad, can you cope if I pour another bucket of 'yes, but' cold water over you?
Good.
Yes, it would be a very good idea indeed to put a search box for the forum only in the page template, but I seem to remember attempting that when I first migrated the forum into this page layout... and staying up until odd hours of the morning removing search box and regenerating pages, as it somehow managed to fry everything. Something to do with one form always managing to wriggle itself inside another, I think, no matter how I tried to separate the two.

Probably this is another reason to upgrade the forum to the latest version of Discus.

[martin]

Yes, I don't know if it's possible to buy or barter it into existence http://www.onlineclarity.co.uk/I_Ching_community/clipart/happy.gif (others may know) but it sounds like a good idea to me.
After all, carbon based life forms generally have a better feel for what is a good link to add than silicon monsters. Lol.

[bradford_h]

Hilary
Please no more "yes but" cold water.
Winter's coming and that cold gets into my old bones.
I'll just keep my peace and get that commentary done instead.

[hilary]

Sorry, Brad!
For you:
http://www.onlineclarity.co.uk/I_Ching_community/messages/330/2597.jpg

[hilary]

Oh, and of course

http://www.onlineclarity.co.uk/I_Ching_community/messages/330/2598.gif

Penitently,
H

[mfc]

Hi,

I just found this thread -- it looks very interesting. I do have some comments and questions.

I suspect that to get a good index, we'll have to do it manually. Yes, a program can distinguish between "4" and "14" but we need more. What does "6" mean? It could be a hexagram, a line or even a line value. "The 6th line of hexagram 6 is 6." (Luckily it isn't!) Or it could refer to someone's young niece, or whatever. A computer-generated index would have a lot of "noise" which would have to be cleaned out.

Just to make this all concrete, I took an actual thread -- "What does it mean? 4.4 to 64" from the Friends' Area -- and indexed it. The thread contains 12 posts beginning on August 4 and ending September 1.

Counting from #1 as the top message, I find:

<TABLE BORDER=1><TR><TD>Message</TD><TD>References </TD></TR><TR><TD>#1</TD><TD>4.4, 64 </TD></TR><TR><TD>#3</TD><TD>4, 64 </TD></TR><TR><TD>#4</TD><TD>4.4, 18, 18.4.6, 32 (plus 6 and 40 as "noise") </TD></TR><TR><TD>#10</TD><TD>18, (line) 6, 32</TD></TR></TABLE>

Is this what you're looking for?

It does seem to me that we had better decide up front just what we want, otherwise some peoples' work may be wasted.

I could add more but let's leave it at that for now. I'm an experienced programmer but an I Ching neophyte. If I've missed the mark, please let me know!

(By the way, Bradford's message mentions "Gua Ci as 01.0" -- I got lost there. Explanation, please?)

- Michael

[bradford_h]

Hi Michael-
In academic circles a standard nomenclature is developing. I first encountered it in Kunst's dissertation, then in Shaugnessy's.
01.0 is the main text for Hexagram One (called Gua Ci, or Hexagram Explanation)
01.1 is Hex 1, line one (hidden dragon ...)
01.6 is the top line
01 is used instead of just 1 because computers auto sort and this keeps things in order.
I've taken this a step further with these:
01.T is the Commentry on the Judgment (Tuan Zhuan)
01.X is the Great Symbolism (Da Xiang)
01.1x is the Small Symbolsm for Line 1 (Xiao Xiang)
The nomenclature 01.1>44 says Hex One, Line One, Changing to Hex 44.

[mfc]

Thanks, Bradford. I'm thinking of coming up with an XML schema to describe the text, knowing there's a standard notation helps.

One further question though. For Hexagrams 01 and 02, "all lines moving" is a special case with a special text. What's the notation for that?

- Michael

[bradford_h]

Hi Michael-
Kunst uses 01.7 and 02.7.
Actually, though, it doesn't say "all lines change",
it simply says "yong jiu (or liu)" "Using Nines (or Sixes).
I don't know when the six line thing started. Wang Bi ignores it. Possibly Kong Yingda (574-648 ce).

[pakua]

Hi Hilary,

I just noticed this thread, and had some thoughts. First, I could contribute some time.

Second, I think if it was to be done manually, it would have to be done by thread ie a person would take on a whole thread, but then you would need some indicator that that thread was done, so no one else would spend time on it. But then you would have to close the thread, so no one could post to it anymore, or else you risk being incomplete. And then you have to think about new threads.

It might be easier in the long run to have it done programmitcally, and then spend the time to clean out the noise manually. Then you could run the program at intervals for all the new posts, clean out the noise, and then merge it with the existing database.

[ewald]

Hilary contacted me by e-mail about this, knowing that I'm a programmer.

I think I can do the indexing automatically with some PHP or Perl script that she can run.

The script would read the threads, and look for patterns that indicate which hexagrams and lines it is about. It is not really a problem to differentiate between "hexagram 4" and "line 4", or "4" and "14".

The index (in a MySQL database) would then be made automatically available in a couple of webpages that everyone can use to find threads on certain hexagrams or specific lines.

[ewald]

Hilary and I agreed that I will make this for the site.

To see if I got it what you guys want, I've uploaded two example pages. Please try
http://www.onlineclarity.co.uk/I_Ching_community/hexsearch_test.php
and let me know if this would be it.

[hilary]

Looks exactly right to me.
http://www.onlineclarity.co.uk/I_Ching_community/clipart/happy.gif

[bradford_h]

Ewald-
Looks loke a really useful format. Good idea.
Again, I think there should be a link to this search engine on the template page so that it's never more than one click away. Otherwise we'll tend to forget it's there.

[jte]

Looks pretty good - as a corporate trainer I can say truly that I've seen much worse!

I like the option to select specific lines. Do you maybe want to add some sort of "any/all" check box, so I can search for a Hex generally without having to check off every box?

My 2 cents...

- Jeff

[ewald]

Thanks, Jeff.

If you're not checking any lines at all, it's supposed to search on any of them. Searching on all lines changing is perhaps really only relevant for hexagrams 1 and 2.

So to keep things simple, I think it may be better not to add that extra check box, and just clarify this in the accompanying text. I'll try to have the results ordered according to relevancy as much as possible, so threads with all lines discussed would be at the top, if the search was just on the hexagram.

[hilary]

Agreed, Brad: once Ewald's worked his programming magic, I'll add a link below 'forum search' to 'index by hexagram' or something.

[hilary]

Well, he's almost done, and here is the beta version of our new hexagram index (http://www.onlineclarity.co.uk/I_Ching_community/hexsearch.php).

Please try it out and post your comments. Personally, I think the man deserves a medal. (Just a moment while I fetch it...)

[hilary]

http://www.onlineclarity.co.uk/I_Ching_community/messages/330/2691.gif

[ewald]

Thanks, Hilary http://www.onlineclarity.co.uk/I_Ching_community/clipart/specs.gif

[kevin]

Ewald - You are wonderful.

Brilliant

I love it

Thanks

[heylise]

This is terrific, so easy to find any hex or line.
The combinations really stupefied me, searching for a hex with 2 or 3 or more lines!
you sure deserve a medal.

LiSe

[jte]

Very nice!

- Jeff

[ewald]

Glad you guys like what I made. http://www.onlineclarity.co.uk/I_Ching_community/clipart/happy.gif

If you encounter "strange" things happening, like results that are not what you expected, I'd like to hear about them. I'll try to do something about problems that seem to have a general scope.

[sparhawk]

I am impressed Ewald. Very good job!! Thank you for doing it.

Luis

[ewald]

I've made a few improvements to the hexagram index. It should now include less results that aren't relevant, and more results for searches on the judgment of a hexagram. Unfortunately those for the low hexagram numbers still contain quite some results that aren't correct, but I expect there to be more relevant results on the first page.

Ewald

[candid]

This is very cool. Nice work, Ewald.