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[candylord]

If you kept reading that article, it goes on to say
despite Tolkien's fondness for it, the form dwarrow only appears in his writing as Dwarrowdelf, a name for Moria.

Just sayin.

 

[lordcooper]

Although the keywords here are in his writing.

The term dwarves is a Tolkien bastardization (sp?) of the original term dwarrows.

[Leonidas]

One of the problems with lever-pulling is you never know which idle dwarf will get the job -- it could be one all the way across the fortress instead of the one standing right next to it.

If you are building something that requires levers to be pulled immediately when you give the order, then I would suggest having 2-3 dedicated lever-pullers with no jobs, and stick the levers in the dining hall, and change the profile to only accept the lever-pullers.  There should always be one of them hanging around, so it should be pulled pretty fast.

It also helps if you assign more than one lever to whatever you want pulled.  That way, you can have many dwarves all running to activate whatever you need done.

[jei]

Soon, I'm going to implement a bunch of levers into my fortress. At the moment, I'm considering putting the levers in my dining hall. But I'm worried that even though there are a lot of dwarves in that area, everyone has a job already and so the lever wont get pulled.

What do you guys do in order to ensure a lever gets pulled ASAP?

I go to the jobs menu and kick dorfs off of their jobs until I see someone with a pull lever task.

[rephikul]

burrow and profile restriction work extremely well.

[drkpaladin]

My chief medical dwarf is always my go to guy for all things.  Every labor is disabled for him save for medical related stuff.  Unless the hospital is overflowing, he'll pull the lever.  Moody dwarf needs a workshop built that I don't have, he'll do it!  Moody dwarf demands silk before the first caravan?  He'll plump the caverns single handed to weave some thread real fast.  It helps that I have levers set to flood my hospital.  (mostly used to wash deadly forgotten beast extract off my dwarves, but it kills all my babies).  Just turn your hospital into a control room for all your levers, or give him a nearby office/control room in case you like to drown legless dwarves.

[Fredd]

 A good technique is to assign a burrow in the lever room. When I start a fortress, this is the burrow all civilians get sent to, in case of problems, i.e Bugout Alert. When told danger is imminent with the alert, most jobs get suspended, and you will get several lever puller volunteers. Besides this, put some screw pumps in the room, and assign pump operators to man them. When trouble shows up, lock the door to the room, have them quit pumping, then set the levers to be pulled.

[expwnent]

Fastest way is to use a pressure plate instead of a lever, and use a high-speed trigger:

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=62798.msg1443094

[Cheshire Cat]

back in 40d when i was fond of elaborate trap systems with bridges, water, magma and collapsing bits, i would station a dwarf, or normally a pair of dwarves in a room with all my levers then lock the door and undraft them for the duration of the siege/prisoner fun or whatever was going on. used a pair because one tragic siege the lever dwarf fell asleep on the stone floor as soon as i undrafted him.

psieye points out here that burrows can be used for this exact same thing, and they can be paired up with things like concentrating all your craftsdwarves in one effecient place. i personally would make the lever room the burrow where dwarves go when invasions occur, using the new alert system. that ways there will be a dwarf standing ready to yank on the lever.

also, who cares about the proper plural for dwarves? just use whatever you want, so long as people understand you. its like octopusses, octopi, and octopode. grammer wankers and primary school teachers like to point out that "octopi" is the correct plural. technically its not, as its a filthy horrible mixture of latin and greek, and "octopode" should be what you say if you want to be pedantic. but who cares? everyone knows what you mean when you say "octopusses." so much better to just use that.