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Re:Reasons for not subscribing. by stienman · 2003-03-06 09:14 · Score: 1 · on Slashdot Subscribers Now See The Future

I just feel like people who make these arguments want to fundamentally change the very nature of what Slashdot is!

So... Duplicate stories and typos/grammar issues are "fundamental" and part of the "very nature" of slashdot?

Ah. Regarding grammar and typos, I thought you guys simply didn't care enough to read through a story three times before submitting it. I can see having one or two dupes a month, but several a month is just sloppy...

What do you guys do all day? I thought Slashdot had one or two editors that all they did all day long was story submissions. Either this is not true, or these guys aren't watching what other part-time editors are submitting, because they should have a pretty good idea of what has been posted before, especially in the recent past.

I can suggest two technical improvements which will fix spelling and dupes:

First, put in a simple spell checker for story submissions. Make it so that submit has to be hit twice if there are words that don't pass muster, wrong words can be highlighted in color in a preview above the submission editor. There are a few grammar checkers to make sure [its|it's] and things like [lose|loose] and [their|they're|there] are correctly used. This'll take care of 95% of spelling and grammar issues. Better yet, employ several proven grammar and spelling editors who get free subscriptions by spell and grammar checking stories before they show up on the front page. Give them some sort of direct line so improvements can be made in the 20 minute time span before publication.

The duplicate story is only a little harder:

No less than 3 editors have to sign off on any newly accepted story before it's displayed. If it's a dupe, chances are good that one of the three editors (the one that accepted and originally edited it and two others to add their stamp of approval to it) will have seen it before. There is no pattern matching engine in perl to match the memory of the human mind.

I understand your desire to keep the 'flavor' of slashdot the same, and to go fast and furious - jumping in where others might apply more caution. I applaud that about slashdot.

In short, you can argue all you want that the old truck on blocks and broken appliances all on the front lawn of slashdot are intended features. You'll just be very, very wrong. You aren't an artist, and you can't claim that a piece of art with feces smeared over it is still art.

-Adam

Grammar/style/spelling engines (in perl) can be found here diction and over here- a list of them. Most are relatively immature, but better than nothing - and adoption here could advertise the need for development in this area. You guys do want to push open source development, right? Don't enable it for comments or user submissions- too much load on the server. Just for the editor's submissions.

If there are too many story submissions to keep up with (ie, you do have two guys busy all the time rejecting stories) then you need to prune the stories before they get in the bin. Do auto-dupe checking on stories within the bin - when one is viewed by an editor, show the others so they can pick the best one, or just throw out dupes. I'm sure you do this to a degree already. Employ a simple spell checker and stop accepting submissions with more than 5 mispellings, never mind grammar. Make submitters work a little harder and the input will improve (garbage in, garbage out).

Re:Closed vs Unavailable. by Forrest+J.+Cavalier · 2001-08-24 09:18 · Score: 1 · on VA Linux to Sell Proprietary Version of Sourceforge

And right now -noone- is doing what fm and sf is doing by any measure

I'll grant the point on sf: the service sf is providing is invaluable, (even though there are a lot of software collaboration systems out there.)

As for freshmeat, there are other large open source software indexes, some larger than freshmeat.

cosource.com is part of VistaSource by Forrest+J.+Cavalier · 2001-01-28 23:46 · Score: 1 · on Vistasource In Trouble

From http://www.cosource.com/company/index.html

Cosource.com is a web service of VistaSource

Anyone know the impact?

http://www.rocketaware.com/ has over 30,000 links to
source, libraries, functions, applications, and documentation.

HREF="javascript:openWindow('target.html')" by Forrest+J.+Cavalier · 2001-01-16 19:35 · Score: 2 · on Will Browser-Neutral Web Soon Become Thing Of Past?

There just seem to be more and more sites using javascript when plain HTML would work just fine.

Is using HREF="javascript:openWindow('target.html')" someone's idea of a joke? Not quite the same as excluding a browser, but similar needless exclusion of audience.

Is this the fault of the authoring tools or the web page authors, (or both?) (Hint to all you "drag-n-drop" web authors: HREF="target.html" would work fine.)

(I browse with Javascript and Java off because of security concerns, in case you are wondering.)

RocketAware.com - 30,000+ links to reusable open source software and the FAQs, references, and Q&A you need to use it.
Check out the category tree of AskSlashdot!

HREF="javascript:openWindow('target.html')" by Forrest+J.+Cavalier · 2001-01-16 19:35 · Score: 2 · on Will Browser-Neutral Web Soon Become Thing Of Past?

There just seem to be more and more sites using javascript when plain HTML would work just fine.

Is using HREF="javascript:openWindow('target.html')" someone's idea of a joke? Not quite the same as excluding a browser, but similar needless exclusion of audience.

Is this the fault of the authoring tools or the web page authors, (or both?) (Hint to all you "drag-n-drop" web authors: HREF="target.html" would work fine.)

(I browse with Javascript and Java off because of security concerns, in case you are wondering.)

RocketAware.com - 30,000+ links to reusable open source software and the FAQs, references, and Q&A you need to use it.
Check out the category tree of AskSlashdot!

Claims don't describe hyperlinking to me. by Forrest+J.+Cavalier · 2000-06-19 00:08 · Score: 1 · on BT To Enforce Patent On Hyperlinking?

First point: You can "invite" anyone to license a patent, regardless of whether you have grounds to sue them under the patent.

Second, to me it doesn't sound like the patent describes hyperlinking. How many navigate the WWW by using a keypad to select numbered menu items?

Claim 5(d)
(d) keypad means coupled to at least one of said modem means and said local memory means for manual entry of keyed digital data,
...
(f) means coupled to said further memory means and to said keypad means for addressing such second portion stored in said further memory means using keypad digital data of less extent than any one of said complete addresses for another block of information to address a portion of the further memory means and cause a read-out portion of the further memory means to supply the complete address of the next block of information which is to be retrieved and utilized for display purposes, the thus obtained complete address being transmissible via the modem means to said central computer.

RocketAware: Code and the knowledge to use it!

Open source debugging..and ways to improve.. by Forrest+J.+Cavalier · 2000-05-28 23:03 · Score: 1 · on Open-Source != Security; PGP Provides Cautionary Tale

In this short paper (from 1997), extending CatB, I observe that

The size of the bazaar (number of participants) affects the "health" and success of the bazaar, even if not a pre-condition to successful bazaar startup.
Not simply "size" but "effective working size" has important implications for the continued progress of the product and strength of the bazaar.
Debugging by testing includes factors which give the bazaar a very much smaller "effective working size"
There are alternative debugging methods which might be used to counter a small "effective working size."
There are activities and natural progression which tend to erode the "effective working size" of the bazaar over time.

Visit RocketAware - hundreds of categories, tens of thousands of links.
Open source software and the FAQs, info, and Q&A needed to use it. (For software developers.)

CSS, what's that? by Forrest+J.+Cavalier · 2000-05-18 06:16 · Score: 1 · on Jeffrey Zeldman Bites Back

Every time I read stories of the hassle people have trying to get pages to be readable in spite of the CSS of some stuck up designer, I am reminded to be thankful I never upgraded from Netscape 3.01, which totally ignores CSS.

In fact, the only gripe I have is NN 3.01 predates PNG. (Any sane person keeps Javascript disabled, so I don't mind that it chokes on later Javascript statements.)

WWW designers who try pixel-level control of fonts and borders are in the wrong medium. They should be using dead trees.

! Aware - software, Q&A, developer knowledge. 39,000 off-site links. 240 categories.

No comp.sources.unix? No UNC metalab? by Forrest+J.+Cavalier · 2000-05-09 03:55 · Score: 1 · on Statistics On Free Software projects

Only 25 million lines? Only 3,149 open source projects? Where's comp.sources.unix? UNC metalab? Phhpth. Next they promise to include CPAN? Whoopee.

Hate to say it, but they made their mistake in thinking freshmeat.net was comprehensive. freshmeat.net is a very small part of the open source out there.

RocketAware already lists much more than freshmeat (and is way easier to use, if you are a programmer looking to reuse code, eh?)

Shameless plugs... by Forrest+J.+Cavalier · 2000-04-23 23:32 · Score: 2 · on A Bunch Of Perl Bits

Is there any shame promoting PerlMonks every time a Perl story comes up? Is that part of the posting script?

Here's another pearl:
The Perl Rocket - Rapid Knowledge Transfer for Perl programming.

Re:Early versions of Perl (from 1988) by Forrest+J.+Cavalier · 2000-01-04 22:48 · Score: 1 · on The Secret History of Perl

Whoa. Like the HREF got replaced with a link to slashdot.... Hello Rob, get somebody on that!....Maybe this will work, sort of.

Here are the RocketAware.co m links to early versions of PERL (like versions 1 and 2) in the comp.sources.unix archives.

http://www.rocketaware.com/comp.sources.unix/spec/ softdev/lang/perl/

Already exists.... by Forrest+J.+Cavalier · 1999-11-03 09:31 · Score: 4 · on Open-Source Component Repository?

Went online in October.
http://www.rocketaware.com/

Includes special sections for GNU software, BSD man pages, FAQs, AskSlashdot (back to the beginning), Programming related books. Even has links to cosource.com, dmoz, yahoo, fatbrain, amazon.
Over 15,000 off-site programming related links. You must check it out. A single idea just like the one that started this thread was discussed about 18 months ago. This is the result.