In Reply to: I usualy MSE, what is so terible about that? posted by ? on July 27, 2000 at 14:17:37:
Two things:
1. If you mark the bills before you enter them, there's always the chance that you'll accidentally spend some before you get the chance to enter them, and then there'll be unentered marked bills floating around. Then if someone finds one and enters it, they won't get a history; sometimes they'll send Hank a nasty email, which is a Bad Thing. If you're really scrupulous about not spending your bills until you get them entered, then marking first wouldn't cause problems...but nobody's perfect, so Hank, and the georging community, frown upon this sort of thing.
B. If you spend the bills and then enter them later, things get even worse. Suppose you spend the bill, and someone else finds it and enters it before you get around to it. Then, not only do they get no history on the bill (see point 1), but also, when you finally enter the bill, they get a hit on a bill that they may still be holding! In that case, they often conclude that the whole site's a fraud and send Hank a *really* nasty email. Not to mention the fact that you miss out on a hit. Also, the database then contains inaccurate data, since the bill is timestamped when you *enter* it. Sometimes this leads to bills apparently travelling at hundreds of miles per hour; again, they look fake, and people complain.
Therefore, in order to keep the database accurate and the webmaster sane, the rule is that we must enter the bills before either marking or spending them. And since we can't very well mark them *after* spending them, that only leaves one possible order: Enter, Mark, Spend.
Any questions?