Newsletter Archives

• We now have AI in our forums!

  

  AI-generated image of a computer chip

  We’ve added a new section in our forums for the topic Artificial Intelligence. But don’t worry — we haven’t added AI software to run our forum software, like nearly everyone else on the planet. We just want to provide a place to discuss its use — or reasons why we shouldn’t use it — in our welcoming community.

  Let me note that this new forum section is separate from other sections devoted to specific vendors. This will be a general-purpose section.

  I think there is a time and place to use artificial intelligence. For the moment, it’s showing up everywhere and seems like snake oil.

  The most annoying AI-related thing I’ve seen so far is Copilot in Word. It now makes its presence prominently known and interferes with what you really want to do — work on a document. Maybe it will be helpful in the future, but right now my suggestion is to disable it or download a Classic version of 365.

  AI AI, Artificial Intelligence, AskWoody forum, Patch Lady Posts

• AskWoody to add blog-like appendage

  My Web folks are working on a melding of the AskWoody site, in its present form, with a Bulletin Board package called bbPress and a companion pack called bbPress Moderation.

  In broad stripes, the links to comments in my posts here will go away, replaced by links into the AskWoody forum. You’ll be able to post replies, and there will be the ability to post anonymous (moderated) entries in the forum. Several people will be able to start their own conversations/threads. Navigating should be much easier. I’ll continue to exercise an iron fist in nixing spam and trolls, limiting personal attacks, and I’ll unashamedly Bowdlerize. I never forget that some day my six-year-old will read this stuff.

  We’re generating hundreds of comments a day, and the current site makes it very difficult to find anything. That should improve. I hope.

  I have no idea how this will shake out, and no preconceived notions about how to hook it up.

  (By the way, those of you who asked… did you notice that the main font on the site is now much darker?)

  Suggestions?

  Other AskWoody forum