Week in Review -- the wiki entry

This entry comes from the Ships and Dip Wiki. The article (which I wrote, so it's OK) originally appears at: http://www.shipsndip.org/wiki/Week_in_Review

The Week in Review, a Short History
Before Ships and Dip I, the message board was primarily a place for people to discuss the cruise. Participants talked about what to pack, meeting up on board, etc. There were a few digressions, but, for the most part, it was a calm and on-topic sort of forum.

In the excitement following that first cruise, however, things changed. A few dozen posters started to write about anything and everything that entered their minds. They did this often enough that even the hard-core message board members began to find it difficult to keep up with all of the posts.

Something had to be done.

The Call to Arms
On Friday, April 13, 2007, katenev_BNL, a top-ten poster whose message board time was severely curtailed by her toddler, complained: “There is so much going on. And I feel like I'm missing it all. I have to read read read read all weekend long! Nice work to all for keeping the board alive, but man, I am going to be busy trying to catch up!”

True to form, the message board responded to this plea for help with many posts, some of which even referred to the original problem. Many posters, even those responsible for the high activity of the board, admitted to having trouble keeping up with the posts.

A solution, fortunately, soon appeared.

The very next day, Musical Genius posted the following helpful suggestion:

“There should be cliff notes, or better yet - Ships & Cliff Notes. Maybe a Reader's Digest version of what is being posted. How about someone with too much time on their hands (PV) doing a "best of the week" thread, pulling highlights from the board?” (April 14, 2007)

Musical Genius implied that the person most-suited to this job was his wife, who had recently begun to post like a maniac and who was, by this time, one of the board’s top posters. However, it would be another member who took Musical Genius' idea to heart.

The Beginning
Saturday, April 14, 2007

Regular poster really_mzungu posted a fairly short and succinct summary of the previous week’s activities on the message board. The format of this first Week in Review was quite simple. Each thread topic received a brief, bullet-point entry. The lengthy insanity (which was running to several pages in a few cases) was reduced to a single sentence that attempted to sum up all that had been said.

For example: “-Many people like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Many people like grilled cheese. This requires many, many posts. And then veers into psychological evaluations and theatrical reviews.”

These brief sentences (or fragments thereof) represent about 10 pages of sandwich-related (and not-so-related) discussion.

The first Week in Review was quite short. Only 23 topics needed to be recapped that first week, and most of the topics required only a line to sum them up.

And the Loonies Go Wild…
Response to the first Week in Review was mainly positive, indicating what essentially lazy people populate this message board. One response in particular, from personal venus, was especially prescient: “I think you've found a new job. I like the weekly summary.”

The author of the Week in Review, however, insisted that the fun little recap was only a one-time deal, a joke meant to respond to Musical Genius' idea and nothing more. After all, it was assumed at the time that the board was likely to calm down in the near future – the flurry of activity was seen as merely a response to the excitement generated in March with the pre-sale for Ships and Dip III. It was therefore unlikely that further recaps would be needed with nine months remaining before the next cruise.

It was a boring Saturday that would change this.

On the following Saturday, April 21, "Week in Review, Part Deux" appeared, again written by really_mzungu. It was again asserted that the recaps would not become a regular feature of the message board and that the second was due to little more than boredom on the part of the author. The second Week in Review greatly resembled the first in its format: bullet points consisting of short versions of all that had been discussed throughout the week. The second edition was, however, significantly longer than the first, indicating an alarming trend. Instead of slowing down, message board activity had actually increased in the one week interval. A weekly recap might just become necessary…

The Golden Age of the Week in Review
Necessary or not, the Week in Review soon became a staple and a regular feature of the Ships and Dip message board. With only minor variations over time, the weekly recaps from really)mzungu appeared weekly over the course of the next nine months. The first Weeks in Review appeared on Saturdays, but Friday soon came to be the “official” day for the appearance of a recap. The principal reasons for this included a higher board presence on Friday (due to weekday board members who post from work) and the author’s frequent outside plans on Saturday (and lack of Friday classes). The Week in Review did, however, often appear on Saturdays and occasionally Sundays, with an even more occasional Thursday thrown in for good measure. Part of the charm of the Week in Review was that no one, not even the author, knew when exactly it would appear.

The Week in Review remained a weekly feature, for the most part, throughout this time. Due to the author’s occasional travel plans making a review impossible, some recaps actually covered two weeks’ worth of posting. The excessive length of these recaps made them a rare occurrence.
The Week in Review also changed format somewhat shortly after its inception. The message board’s administrators, in response to the same overload of information that had spawned the Week in Review, felt the need to split the board into several forums (or fora, as they were known in the Week in Review) in order to keep the pertinent cruise-related information separate from the random drivel that had come to occupy most of the board-space. Accordingly, five fora were created: The Victory, the Caribbean Lounge, the Grand Buffet, the Indian Lounge, and the Seven Seas Lobby. Each of these fora came to be recapped separately, assuming there were any new posts in each. Not surprisingly, the Grand Buffet, home of the off-topic threads, received the lion’s share of the Week in Review’s attention.

It was also during this period that a new feature briefly made an appearance: the guest author. With one exception, all board recaps prior to Ships and Dip III were written by the original Week in Review author, really_mzungu. However, this poster occasionally had a life, a life which impeded the recapping. While really_mzungu was at a conference (and was presumably unable to write a Week in Review (although the Nov. 3, 2007 recap was written anyway)), personal venus, the original nominee to write the recaps and by this time the highest poster on the board, filled in in a novel way. Her brief but hilarious "In lieu of the week in review" recapped the posting history of really_mzungu.

An unusual and never-to-be-repeated version of the Week in Review appeared just a week later. On Nov. 9, 2007, a Week in Review entitled "I was bored, OK?" appeared completely in verse form. The epic poem, two-thirds of which was written in a modified-limerick meter with the other third in haiku, recapped the week as had all others. Only it rhymed.

Ships and Dip III: The End of the Week in Review?
By the time Ships and Dip III was ready to set sail, the Week in Review had followed the path of Frankenstein’s monster and was an uncontrollable force that threatened to destroy its creator. What had once been a short, half-hour bit of work that was little more than a joke had become a six-hour marathon of a writing project with the enthusiasm for a new cruise mounting.

Accordingly, on Jan. 18, 2008, "The Week in Review to End All Weeks in Review" appeared with the opening line: “Yes, you read that right. This is the last one.” With the cruise imminent, most posters had other priorities by this point, and the apparent end to the recaps passed with a whimper.

Never Mind
Any whimpers about the demise of the Week in Review were, however, soon rewarded. Merely days after the return of Ships and Dip III to these shores, the apocalyptic "Screw the Dissertation" recap appeared, showing the message board world that the Week in Review’s author was a sick person who needed help.

Fortunately, that help was forthcoming!

In a vain attempt to not have to devote her entire life to recapping a message board, really_mzungu appealed to many of the regular posters for “guest writers” of the Week in Review. Most were too wimpy to apply, but a very few brave souls were up to the challenge. The first of these intrepid writers was ShortAlaina, who produced "Heartache and Disappointment that is this Friday's WIR" on Feb. 29, 2008, "This WIR Was Baked With Pure Love" on May 24, 2008, and "This WIR Was Late, But You All Know Who To Blame" on June 15, 2008. She was soon followed by T.B.A., author of "Week in Review -- TBA Style!" on Mar. 14, 2008. These two were joined in writing a WIR by polyester_angel, who graced us with "WIR WIR WIR Widdly" on July 11, 2008 -- a two-week recap! Everyone else officially sucks until they write one too.

Shameless Plug
While there are literally dozens of Weeks in Review now, it is possible to get the entire history in one convenient, bound copy. Please feel free to contact really_mzungu if you would like to buy such a copy. All proceeds go to assist in the planned inebriation of the author on Ships and Dip V.

Week in Review, an introduction

This blog is not really a blog.


In this place, you will soon (hopefully) find the dozens and dozens of Weeks in Review that have been written on the Ships and Dip message board since April, 2007.

They do all exist on that message board, at least as long as the message board exists. But what if it ceases to exist? What if the Weeks in Review disappear? Thus, this blog.

So, the format. Each post of this blog will contain one Week in Review (WIR, henceforth, as I am too lazy to type it out). Following that, the comments made by others (and occasionally myself... ah, narcissism...) will appear. If for no other reason than to show how much I rock.


The first post, other than this one, of course, will be a copy of the Week in Review entry from the Ships and Dip wiki. Yes, I wrote that too.

If you're a purist, there will be links to the original WIRs at the beginning of each. These are especially good when it comes to the many, many, many emoticons I used in each. I have a sinking feeling that I can't use them here. Sigh...

I think that's enough explanation. Besides, if you're reading this, you probably know all about the Week in Review anyway. Unless this becomes an international phenomenon -- which would be cool. But somewhat unlikely.