What does the dot mean?

November 22, 2005 8:51 PM

What does "." mean?
posted by Kwantsar to etiquette/policy at 8:51 PM (43 comments total)

lame (and removed). Probably mis-using the my comments feature to track threads.

A "favorites" feature just like the my posts/my comments page is coming soon, letting people watch threads they didn't participate in.
posted by mathowie at 8:53 PM on November 22, 2005

Damn, you're all over the place today Matt. Guess having you here full time really pays off on days like this.
posted by SeizeTheDay at 8:55 PM on November 22, 2005

How are we supposed to pile on and humiliate this guy if you go deleting his comments?
posted by Kwantsar at 8:55 PM on November 22, 2005

Yeah, umm, Matt, I'm going to go ahead and ask you to come in on Saturday.
posted by Saucy Intruder at 8:56 PM on November 22, 2005

A "favorites" feature just like the my posts/my comments page is coming soon, letting people watch threads they didn't participate in.

Ex-cellent.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 8:59 PM on November 22, 2005

See also.
posted by StickyCarpet at 10:21 PM on November 22, 2005

.
posted by Mr T at 10:28 PM on November 22, 2005

Some people use it as a form of respect, to note they took part in a thread but didn't have anything specific to say. You see a lot of them in threads about people dying. But Matt's right, it's mostly used as a way of tracking threads.
posted by xammerboy at 10:32 PM on November 22, 2005

See also.
posted by gramschmidt at 10:52 PM on November 22, 2005

xammerboy, I think with a username like his, he knows exactly what "." means.
posted by Robot Johnny at 10:59 PM on November 22, 2005

I thought, at least in threads about the death of some prominent figure, that it stood for a moment of silence. No?
posted by banished at 11:12 PM on November 22, 2005

As a joke way back when, I suggested that people use a '.' to mark threads in which they had some interest and to which they wanted to return. Apparently, someone took the bait.

Otherwise, '.' indicates someone too ignorant or with too little imagination to come up with something decent to say.

heheh
posted by mischief at 12:57 AM on November 23, 2005

I wonder how many "." comments Matt and Jessamyn have removed from this thread.
posted by Plutor at 2:43 AM on November 23, 2005

I didn't remove any.
posted by mathowie at 3:26 AM on November 23, 2005

.
posted by shmegegge at 4:57 AM on November 23, 2005

mathowie: "I didn't remove any."

I'm surprised, I expected dozens, maybe thousands. This place is less sarcastic than I expected, today. Maybe it's just too early.
posted by Plutor at 5:01 AM on November 23, 2005

I didn't remove any either.
posted by jessamyn at 5:44 AM on November 23, 2005

I haven't seen any removed.
posted by Colloquial Collision at 5:54 AM on November 23, 2005

I removed a few.
posted by languagehat at 6:02 AM on November 23, 2005

donfactor posted one, but it was scrubbed by Gator.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 6:09 AM on November 23, 2005

Yep. I'm the resident deleter.
posted by Gator at 6:11 AM on November 23, 2005

I've had just about enough of you snarkily characterizing, sir.
posted by cortex at 6:24 AM on November 23, 2005

Xammerboy: I use them to keep track of threads about dead people.
posted by klangklangston at 6:31 AM on November 23, 2005

I didn't delete any. I just rearranged the pixels to send you this message.
posted by raedyn at 6:57 AM on November 23, 2005

...
posted by konolia at 6:59 AM on November 23, 2005

Hey! Where did all my dots go?
posted by blue_beetle at 7:04 AM on November 23, 2005

scrubscrubscrubscrubscrub

Out, damned dots! Out, I say!
posted by Gator at 7:04 AM on November 23, 2005

Who let the dots out?
posted by kirkaracha at 7:19 AM on November 23, 2005

Now, what does "/." mean?
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 7:26 AM on November 23, 2005

goodnews: I think it's sanscrit for "mediocre"
posted by fnord at 7:47 AM on November 23, 2005

I always thought it was akin to a moment of silence for threads in which folks have died...

... similarly, used in ridiculous threads where the poster is going to get a callout or something.
posted by tozturk at 8:43 AM on November 23, 2005

Can we kill everyone who asks what "." means?

It'd be worth it for the irony alone.
posted by five fresh fish at 11:04 AM on November 23, 2005

(goodnews, if you're serious - there's a popular technical site called slashdot.org; "slash dot" is /. and it's a reference to how you specify directory names in unix).
posted by andrew cooke at 11:20 AM on November 23, 2005

Thanks for biting, andrew.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 2:09 PM on November 23, 2005

Not only biting, but giving the wrong answer.
posted by klangklangston at 6:02 PM on November 23, 2005

Why is it wrong? That he didn't explain it precisely?
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 10:25 PM on November 23, 2005

What's wrong here is that I was baiting. Oh, I was baiting.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 3:07 AM on November 24, 2005

oh that's teh funny. getting someone to help and then laughing at them.

fuckwit.
posted by andrew cooke at 4:32 AM on November 24, 2005

Aw c'mon, it was a lame joke, I'm sorry, no need for the language, mister.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 5:30 AM on November 24, 2005

well, it was before my morning coffee....
sorry.
posted by andrew cooke at 5:36 AM on November 24, 2005

at the risk of misunderstanding the complaint of wrongness *and* misunderstanding the joke *and* god knows what else:

"/." would be an odd way to address a directory in UNIX -- you'd be addressing the root directory and then, uh, that same directory. Now, "./" is not so weird -- you'd be explicitly referring to the current working directory, which is useful for, say, executing a program in the current directory when you don't have that directory as part of your execution path (which is often a smart way to go to reduce the risk of accidental horrific meltdown).

I always took the name "slashdot" to be an antisocial prank directed specifically at URL structure. Imagine someone tells you about the site back in the early days when it wasn't a household name, and back when people went around repeating URLs with all their glorious regalia:

'Hey, so what's that site you were talking about again? What's the, uh, the, uh, address thingy?'
'Aitch Tee Tee Pee Colon Slash Slash Slash Dot Dot Oh Arr Gee.'
'Oh, fuck you.'
posted by cortex at 8:16 AM on November 24, 2005

I always took the name "slashdot" to be an antisocial prank directed specifically at URL structure. Imagine someone tells you about the site back in the early days when it wasn't a household name, and back when people went around repeating URLs with all their glorious regalia: - cortex

I'm no slashdot expert (being that I'm not a member, and this marks the first time that I've actually read anything on that site), it would seem you're correct. From their FAQ:

What does the name "Slashdot" mean?
"Slashdot" is a sort of obnoxious parody of a URL. When I originally registered the domain, I wanted to make the URL silly, and unpronounceable.

posted by raedyn at 8:24 AM on November 24, 2005

ah, so i was wrong because it's inspired by url rather than unix file path syntax?

heh.

so i bet pounds to pennies that klangklangston is a computer science student who says "true" when asked "tea or coffee"...
posted by andrew cooke at 10:02 AM on November 24, 2005