Mark Baum's Tagline Collection FAQ - Frequently Asked Questions Last updated 12-24-1995 (c) Mark Baum Q: Is this supposed to be the FAQ for your Tagline Collection? It is supposed to be. For right now it is quite small...but what more do you expect from a debut release. This file will serve as a general Q&A guide. When this file gains some more weight, refer to it first before filling my hard drive up with E-mail. Since I can't read anyones' mind, ask me a question concerning this tagline collection. If your question is very intriguing and prompts be to submit a detailed reply, the question and answer will be placed here. I will not give the answer via E-mail but the answer will be contained within this file or posted within the Wildnet Taglines conference. Q: What prompted you to release your own Tagline Collection? I've been meaning to do this for some time. Because of time limitations this project was severely delayed. What coereced me into releasing this collection was to prove my stature in providing a quality outlet for tagline collectors. Not to mention that I'm a moderator of a Tagline conference so I have to prove that I can set an example. {g} Q: What files comprise the full release of your Tagline Collection? DESC.SDI - Short BBS description of this release. FILE_ID.DIZ - Long BBS description of this release. MBTCyymm.LST - Mark Baum's Tagline Collection (where "yy" and "mm" indicates the year and month of release respectively) MBTC-FAQ.TXT - The FAQ file your are reading right now. OLXTAGS.BAS - A small BASIC program which extracts the taglines which are 57 or less characters long and creates a TAGLINES.OLX file for use with SLMR or OLX. Q: I've noticed that there are taglines that are longer than 57 characters in your Tagline Collection. How can I use your file with SLMR or OLX? Included with this tagline collection is a small BASIC program which goes through a tagline file and extracts taglines which are 57 or less characters long from my Tagline Collection. To run this program load a BASIC interpreter (common ones are BASICA, GWBASIC and QBASIC). Load "OLXTAGS.BAS" into memory and RUN the program. The program will display a small file list showing what "*.LST" files are in the current directory. Enter in the name of the tagline file you wish to extract the taglines from (make sure you include the ".LST" extension) and the program will go through the file searching for the taglines and add what it finds to "TAGLINES.OLX". When completed it will exit to DOS. Be patient! The program isn't the fastest in the world under QBASIC or GWBASIC but it does get the job done. For users of SLMR, rename the TAGLINES.OLX file to TAGLINES.MR. Questions about BASIC are beyond the scope of this FAQ. Please refer to your BASIC manual for more details. Q: Are you sure there are no vulgar or duplicate taglines in your collection? As this collection grows in size the possibility of near-duplicates being found increases. Also I do my best to screen out any vulgar taglines where possible...but I won't say that 100% of such taglines have been removed. This tagline collection is scrutinized by a program I've written to help clean up the file by removing such taglines where possible and it is always in a constant state of improvement. Yes, all exact and some near-duplicate taglines are removed and most but not all vulgar taglines are removed. It all comes down to whether human intervention is feasable. For example, me sitting down and reading each individual tagline. With the size of this file, that task would be rather inefficient. By using a program to automate the process of removing such taglines it saves plenty of time on my part and allows for each release to seem more consistent. But the computer isn't human. You have to tell it exactly what to look for. And I mean exactly. I don't have the time to create a context-based tagline filtering system. But by looking for small phrases and words which may sound a little suggestive it can help reduce the risk. As for some near-duplicate tags which are different because of mispellings I pray to the gawds to find a spell checker which doesn't require human intervention. I'm sure that there may be a few out there by now so time will only tell until I implement such a program. Q: Why is your tagline file not sorted? I've heard a few stories about how the random tagline function in some offline readers sometimes doesn't offer a random tagline now and then. So, in order to help that problem I decided to randomize the order of the taglines in my file. All you need to do is rename and replace this file for the main tagline file for your mail reader then switch the mail reader to select taglines sequentially. Also, I wanted to be a little different. All tagline files which I have seen released are always sorted. So instead of me sorting the file after it had most of the duplicate and possibly vulgar taglines removed I created a small subprogram which will go through the file and "shuffle" the taglines one by one. But the biggest reason that I purposely randomize this tagline file is because most users will append this to their tagline collection and will sort it eventually. So why should I sort a tagline file in the neatest ASCII order as possible when the end user will end up appending this file to their collection and eventually sort it themselves? Yes, it is indeed pointless. So, with this infinite wisdom in hand, I decided to create that tagline randomizing routine. It may slow down the works a little bit...but I run that program while I'm sleeping so who really cares? Well, maybe there is a point. Read on, my friend... Q: Your file is too big! Would you please sort it for me? I won't sort it but you can find a program on the BBSes I upload this collection to called "QuikSort". It is a very fast file sorting program which can handle very large files. How fast? Download it and sort this tagline collection yourself. I'm sure you'll be more than amazed by it. In fact, if you compare how fast "QuikSort" sorts this file to the sort function in OLX, you'll swear off using OLX's tagline sort function FOREVER! If the file is big enough, OLX will take about a few hours to sort it. To quote a wise man, "Can't MSI do anything right?" Questions about "QuikSort" are beyond the scope of this FAQ. Please review the online documentation which accompanies "QuikSort" very carefully. Q: Will the users get credit? Definitely. In fact, here is the list of current contributors. I will not go and say how many they contributed. The fact that they contributed Taglines to this Collection is more than enough (there is no order to this list): Your Name Could Be Here If You Contribute Any Taglines {g} You see, there aren't many contributors yet...but time will tell! Wait until next month and hopefully this file will _double_ in size. Q: Where do I find your latest Tagline Collection? You may download my latest Tagline Collection from the following BBSes: Metropitt BBS (412) 487-9223 28.8k Sounding Board (412) 621-4604 28.8k Software Creations BBS (508) 368-4137 28.8k The Dead Leeeeeeeech Society (614) 899-7839 14.4k Brinkman's Hollow (717) 689-3123 28.8k The magic filename is "MBTCyymm.ZIP"...where "yy" and "mm" indicates the release year and month of the tagline file. The latest version is always uploaded a few days before the first of the next month to these BBSes to allow for the new release to be downloaded and spread to other BBSes. Q: How do I become one of your Tagline Collection distribution BBSes? I'm currently not looking for additional boards where I'll personally upload this collection to. The main reason I distribute this Tagline Collection to the boards listed above is that I am a regular user on those BBSes. If you call one of the boards above every month to grab the latest Tagline Collection, feel free and spread it to the BBSes you call most often. Q: How may I contact you if I want to trade taglines, let you know if I find a naughty tagline in your collection or just to ask a few questions? I can be contacted in two ways: One: Via Internet E-mail. My Internet address is "tag.guru@ix.netcom.com". If you have any comments about this file make sure you enter "Taglines" as the subject title...or I won't give it any serious thoughts and I will promptly delete it from my mailbox. Two: Via the WildNet Taglines conference. For more information about finding a WildNet BBS near you which receives the WildNet Taglines conference please call Brinkman's Hollow and download the latest WildNet nodelist. I will NOT accept Fido Netmail due to excessive lag time. Q: Is this the end of the MBTC-FAQ? Only until you see the following line of text: [END OF FAQ]