To wonder why the 'Chat' section on MN has an underlined blank space before the word 'Chat'

[WetAugust]

It annoys me.

Look at mumsnet before chat!

<a class="break-all" href="http://web.archive.org/web/20030201083801/www.mumsnet.com/Talk" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">web.archive.org/web/20030201083801/www.mumsnet.com/Talk

Ooh it annoys me too! SOOOOO messy and wrong looking.

It is so that it comes bottom,of lists as others have said. Lots of ppl did not want it at all.

AIBU will be the same soon.

And then... <a class="break-all" href="http://web.archive.org/web/20030608084537/www.mumsnet.com/Talk" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">it appears!

The underscore would have been because of in ye olde days of web 1.0, the links wouldn't be put in alphabetical order manually using any name tech liked for the links (as in the popular shortcuts below) but automatically displayed alphabetically by directory name as it appears there in folders, which would have had to be one unchanging name (probably the bit after talk/ in the site address) And since all links used to be underlined the underscore would have been the least intrusive character to use to denote .

If this is all going over your head you probably need to read a bit about how web pages and/or file systems operate, but TBH it's not really worth it(!)

Not worth it for this purpose I mean, it's fairly useful knowledge to have if you use computers a lot though.

So now that we are all super whizzy technic-like, why can't it be changed to just Chat?

It probably could. I don't know why they haven't

Aha! Now I understand. _But it still looks wrong.

Good God Bertie, your link to Ye Olde Mumsnet is astonishing! It's so plain! It has folder icons! And only about 20 topics!

Back in ye olden days, there was the type of kerfuffle about introducing chat as there is now regularly about aibu.

As in "no-one will bother with topics, everyone will shove everything into chat, and it will be difficult to find anything".

Bear in mind that at the time there were probably only about ten topics, and maybe 100 threads a day (in fact you could log in every three days and ask to see "all posts since I last logged in").

When chat was introduced, to avoid people putting everything there, and to keep it for "chat" - as in people chatting to each other rather than looking for advice, or for asking direct questions. It was put at the bottom of the list out of the way. Where it still is.

Where aibu should be now . Because atm if you hit "last 15 minutes" or "last hour" the first 50 threads you see are AIBU. So most people don't even get past AIBU, which is why tumbleweed blows sadly through the rest of the Mumsnet talk boards.

I remember when it was all green fields around here [old gimmer emoticon]

"It is historical - I still remember the shock when it first appeared. MN used to be fairly slow and you could log in a couple of times a week and read all of the messages. "

Dear God, Ladymuck. And now you can't go to put the kettle on without missing a bunfight and coming back to a thread about the deleted thread.

The link for the old MN just takes me to the usual homepage :(

The old fashioned link doesn't work for me

You have to copy and paste the link rather than click - like old times!!

Wow, if you go to that link and click on parenting, half the threads are about SWMNBN .

Try copying the link and pasting it straight into your address bar.

I am so glad you started this thread OP. For me this matter has fallen into the 'things you've always wanted to know but been too embarrassed to ask' category.

Are we any the wiser?

@BleurghUna

Is it deliberate? I thought it was a typo.

SPLUTTER of outrage of hte very suggestion of a typo

Hello and sorry to be a bit late to this but I can quote Justine on this:

Back in the dim and distant past there was a big hoohah when we first introduced chat. Folks thought it would lower the tone and Last Day (not last 15 mins in those day) was very popular. Many didn't want to scroll through a load of chat threads at the top of Last Day before getting to other topics so we called it _chat and that way chat threads came at the bottom of the list.

Hope this helps

NB I shall now move this thread to Site Stuff where it rightfully belongs.
Thanks

Oh how weird (have just hovered over my link), must be some kind of override to avoid redirect pages.

Try googling "wayback machine" and going to the first link, then put "www.mumsnet.com/talk" into the address bar it gives you and then select a time from 2003 or so.

That is a good point about AIBU dominating the last 15 mins/hour/day sections.

I love animated stuff- shame most of the drivel that's out now is so dreadful. I loathed Princess and the Frog, but loved Tangled.

wtf????????Sorry guys, totally wrong thread!

_AIBU is a good idea - if anyone actually uses Last 15 Mins instead of using Active like sensible people do.

Trills, do you have lots of topics hidden? I think most regulars do, but a lot of newer posters don't. Therefore if you use active, it is dominated by "club" posts, especially ante and post natal, as well as quiche-y type posts.

Before I hid topics, I used to use "last 15" a lot - because then I could look for topics (alphabetically) that I was interested in.

I suspect a lot of "new to mumsnet" posters use "last 15", and never scroll past aibu .

But of course I could be wrong.

Not a lot, but the antenatal/postnatal clubs are hidden.