Episode: 3616
Title: HPR3616: Filling free Slots from the Reserve Queue
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3616/hpr3616.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 02:13:03

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 3,616 from Monday the 13th of June 2022.
Today's show is entitled, Filling free slots from the Reserve Q.
It is hosted by Dave Morris, and is about 15 minutes long.
It carries an explicit flag.
The summary is, you can now submit shows to the
Reserve Q for when free slots are not filled on time.
Hi everybody, my name is Ken Fallon.
You're listening to another episode of Hacker Public Radio.
Today we're going to continue the ever-ending saga that is
for this community news episode.
So we've broken it up to talk about the change in policy for
shows now moderated, and this one is going to be about policy changes
discussed in the last month's community news show, and also the fact that
as a result of some of those policy changes, the Q has not been filled.
So we need people to submit shows all the time, all the time.
But we realize that some people are busy sometimes, some more people are
not busy a lot of the time, so we don't get the shows when we need them.
So it's a stall, feast, and famine thing.
But let's go back to some of the policy changes we've discussed in last
one show. During HPR 3589 for April 2022, we discussed the tags.
The modification of tags is an ongoing process, and are not modified to improve,
and are often modified to improve navigation.
Host names, handles, series names should not be included in tags.
Clarification of the two week scheduling guidelines.
So we're going to remove guideline five.
If there are uploads, series of shows considering scheduling one show a week, and add
five under normal circumstances, any host should only schedule one show every two weeks.
We'll get our tags, we are intended to make the site more navigable.
The often contained duplicates, misspellings, or can be clustered into full
blonde series. The series and host names have their own navigation mechanism that tie
into the host and series pages with regard to the second, two week scheduling.
This helps with keeping the queue stable as it spreads out the free slots.
This would not apply to special reservations, or as in guideline two, always try and fill
the free slots that are available in the upcoming weeks. At the time of writing, there are
four weeks with no free slots, and yet four weeks after that are almost empty.
And at the time of talking right now, that was the end of that post.
We have partially filled queues as a result of this policy changes.
And I see a hookah has shows, lurking prion has shows,
monochromic has shows and tray has shows, because each of them are doing a series that's
populating two weeks out. So what we can see from that is that people are not,
people other than the regulars are not submission shows. So guys, people, girls,
everything in between, you need to start submission shows, but the submission shows, please, yes.
Do you want to do the next comment from David Lee, please?
Yes, I will, yes, yes. He says, hey Ken, amendment B makes perfect sense to me, amendment
A is a little less straightforward. If I want to do a search for all posts related to ham radio
on the policy amendment A is enforced, then I'm likely to find nothing if I search tags.
Seems a little counterintuitive to have to search in two places to find something.
I wonder as an alternative, which I'd be happy to support amendment A if it's possible to include
series results in the tag search. Interesting. And I replied, we only provide search via third parties
and a link to the page. So your point is move. The tags drive traffic to the host and series page
that are published as part of the side map. From there, the visitor can get to other shows of that
host or other episodes in the series. We do not want to drive them to a huge page of text that is
the tag page. The series and host pages are linked coherently together and are supported by
RSS feeds. So in that context, having the series names and host names in the tags would confuse things.
For example, series has their own page and they give a list to a series and host has their own
page and they give a link to their host page. So that's pretty much that. I think at least.
So Nigel Verity says, while agreeing in principle with the one show every two weeks limit,
perhaps the term under normal circumstances needs to be addressed. Obviously when shows are
in short supply, that would be one such scenario. But when does that become recognized as an issue?
Four weeks out is now. It's probably not a problem. But if the schedule were void
beyond next week's say, would it be deemed reasonable for a host to schedule two shows in a week
to help fill the gaps? Also, if there were a gap of a few days with no shows, but with other
scheduled for later dates, would you would they consider pulling some shows forward to close the gaps?
And I reply to with regard to
so I replied to Nigel with while agreeing in principle, one show every perhaps that under normal
circumstances needs to be addressed. Not really, I say, winky face. The guidelines are just that.
We ask now to leave nicely, but they have been happily ignored for the last 10 years.
If a host wants a slot, then they have a show and they have a show, then that's pretty much that.
So this isn't religion guys, we're not writing the marking character here. Just this isn't
the comment, but just as an explanation. We're not writing the marking character here. So,
you know, these are guidelines. And about the void filling two shows a week to fill in the gap,
yep, that's covered in the guidelines to fill the free slots for the next two weeks. Also,
no problem if there's a special event that you won't cover or interviews. They should also be
or anything that should also be a fast, so engage brain when schedule. And about Dave
or myself pulling some shows forward to close the gaps, I replied, no, we don't mess with the
schedule. People get very annoyed if we did. If there's a free slot, we ask people to fill them.
Have we covered everything? There's one from Kevin O'Brien. I think these are reasonable, he says,
and here, once every two weeks schedule and would cut it down further, if asked, I've also submitted
an emergency shows when the queue ran dry. Ideally, we would like to have a wide variety of hosts
submitting shows and I would like nothing more than to find out there are no open spaces in the
schedule when I'm considering a new show. Okay, super. So that's it. So what we had last month was I
didn't do my usual call for shows. I asked on mastodon to see if people would submit shows there
and they didn't. So so much for social media for you. And we can say that only requesting shows
on the HPR mail list is so far the only place that I've received shows from. So what we did was
rather than me record another hasty show, we picked one from the emergency queue. And that was
also a point that I felt that my show was rushed and somebody else way back met the comments that
they didn't like shows been rushed out because of they felt like rushed shows. So I am actually
taking that on board and agreeing with that comment albeit two years, probably more after
Rosemet. I can't even remember who said it but I'm sure you're right to tell us.
So I'm thinking and I'll copy, I'll read out to you what I pasted into Dave when we were having
a chat about this over a cigarette in the janitor's closet. We weren't smoking cigarettes,
we were just standing over it. I was thinking of automatically filling empty slots from the
emergency. Let's rename it reserve queue. That way the slots remain open for last minute hosts and
new hosts. And the reserve queue can be topped up and managed at a more sedate pace. This would mean
giving people the option of uploading to the reserve queue somehow and that somehow requires me
to modify the upload page which has got the added benefit that it's going to break
monochromics automated script for posting to HPR. So that's my motivation to do it now and not
before. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, that doesn't listen to HPR articles anyways. So I'm fine as long
as nobody tells me. So what that would mean would be that just playing it out here. This isn't
written in stone. There's just many blunts and ideas off your Dave. Would be that looking at the
queue now. We've got Wednesday which we've recorded a show for this might be coming out on Friday.
So say Monday wasn't filled from week 24. Currently only Monday is unavailable where everybody
else is. So a hookah monochromic R72 look on Pryon, a poster to show. The Monday one would say
if it's not filled X time before posting X being the amount of time that you and I need to get
sorted. We would take the older show from the reserve queue and then post that with the text.
You know, the guilty text you haven't recorded a show. So we'd have to use one of the
reserve ones. No, no, no, no. And then we would rapidly run out of shows in the reserve queue
because looking at the only of it shows and I see at least a three slots for the next few weeks.
Between now and the next community show, there's three slots. So therefore we would need a way
when people upload a show to signal that it's that we can add it to the reserve queue.
So I think just a tick box, please add this to the reserve queue. In which case, it would not consume
the slot that has been uploaded. Do you know what I mean? I know. What do you mean?
So if I go to the upload page, of course, of course, I know what I'm with it because to get to
the upload page you have to know you have to give a show number. Yeah, exactly. And there are a whole
lot of clicky things. So for now, right, people, if you want to from day one, if you want to add
a show, you have a show ready and it's timeless. Yeah, that's the important point about
shows going to the reserve queue. They have to be relatively timeless. Although then just mark that
in the show notes. Yeah. So pick a slot, mark it in the show notes and we'll make sure that the
slot is freed up afterwards. Yeah. Although that said, it doesn't necessarily have to be that fresh
because more than likely we'll be cycling through them at a fair rate or not.
Strangely, after all these years of having a reserve queue, it's, yeah, things have changed the
point where we have to dip into it. Yeah, but we should, if we use that as a buffer for when the
shows are there, then we can manage the reserve queue rather than managing the main queue. And then we
can ask like people like a hookah and tattoo and, you know, a mistress to start adding shows there
rather than on the main queue. So the physics of how we're physically going to do that will change
probably on the upload page. It'll be a clicker to post to the emergency queue and I'll modify the
page somehow. But for now, pick any slot, pick the furthest away in the future slot and just mark
end of show notes. So right now, episode 3699 is the is the for October. So pick something in
October and then just mark in the in the comments or in the show notes itself to say this is an
emergency show and we'll obviously post it and then go, oh, thank you. That should be
reserve queue. But we're working that. We'll come back to that. But as a plan, how does this sound?
People that is more your feedback will be appreciated. In fact, your shows will be appreciated
even more than feedback. I think the message of this show is HBR is community podcast where the
shows is submitted by people like you, which means you need to submit a shows one a year. That's
all we're asking one show a year. And if that pops into the reserve queue, that still counts for
your year. Don't worry about it. Yeah, anything else to add, Dave? No, I don't think so. I think
that that covers it. Maybe we could have a special post an emergency show, but no, I don't know,
which gives you slightly different. Might be the might be the easiest way. Yeah, I don't know.
It's you this right in it. So I can't really tell you whether it's easy or not. Yeah, the simplest
thing is just to add another field, but posting an emergency show might be fine. And then I'll
take out lots of checks or modify the checks so that yeah, because that's face us, we are called
hacker public radio. So we have to be quite careful about vetting stuff that comes in from
random people on the internet. Of course. Okay, I've taken it off of your time Dave. Sorry for
us. Okay. Shouldn't it tomorrow for another exciting episode of hacker public radio radio.
Okay, that's last thank you.
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