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After a night of unmoderated trolling at slashcode.com, the site janitors were forced to disable AC posting. This is the best lameness filter they will ever make.

Oh yeah, Maxtor isn't Western Digital Taco.

Since the lameness filter didn't work, the Andover Faggotry Cabal has disabled AC posting at slashcode.com, as well as remove the offending posts ( although the article's links show the old number of posts, nice code guys ). This is the only lameness filter the can get to work. It will happen here.

The new lameness filter is to ban the anonymous coward. That has to be the best coding they have ever done!

After one night of unmoderated trolling, Slashcode.com has been FORCED to turn off AC posting. You must be logged in to post now. Guess what I'm doing after I write this?

Try to AC post at slashcode. The slashdork crew disabled it because the lameness filter doesn't work.

After one night of cruel trolling the Slashdork crew resorted to disabling AC posting. It wouldn't be needed if they could fix the lameness filter.

In a move I find more childish than the trolls it aims to stop, AC posting has been turned off. This is more of an outrage than the lameness filter that filters nothing.

Come on I only posted about fifty times!

1. Slash: The code behind Slashdot. Uses PERL as its underlying technology and is built on Linux. Requires Apache.
2. Zope: Commercial Open Source software which uses Python as its code base. Good support and training available, but the community appears to be lacking.
3. phpNuke: Underlies a lot of the free weblogs on the net at this time. Built on PHP coding and requires Apache. Some personality issues here, but a strong product.
4. PostNuke: Underlies many sites on the web, including both commercial and amatuer. An off-shoot of phpNuke, so built on PHP coding and requires Apache. VERY good project management and a solid timeline. Some recent deaths at the project have placed the team under stress.
5. phpSlash: A PHP port of the Slash system (one of the older ones, and as such is built on PHP coding. Seems solid, but lacks many of the modern features of slash.

There are many others, including (but not limited to): Nope, Druphal, KorWebLog, etc. This is still a crowded marketplace and people are trying to reinvent the wheel here often. Check out this site and do a search on CMS to get an idea of the diversity.

Best advice from my limited experience so far:

1. Decide which language best fits the way you program (Perl and PHP have roots in C/C++, Python is more like Basic)
2. Decide what features are drop-dead critical for your site (i.e. comment system, moderation system, workflow management, shopping cart)
3. Decide if you want commercial support if something goes wrong
4. Decide how much you want to spend (even if you do not spend on a system, you will wind up with costs for hosting, books, training, etc.)

In the end, I think I have decided on PostNuke. But your choice may be very different.

People

Richard Stallman -
Eric S. Raymond -
Larry Wall

Linux Programming

Unix

Programming Methodologies

C Programming

C++ Programming

Perl Programming

Network Programming

Open Source

Actually, "expression" is not so obvious.

IE4+ allow you to embed JavaScript in CSS statements using the "expression" parameter to evaluate it, and return a value to a CSS class. It's obscure, but the syntax is:

<span style="margin-top: expression(JavaScript code here)">

(Hopefully this doesn't get munged by Slashdot's own filtering code). So it's a potentially serious security breach for anyone considering parsing HTML documents and allowing STYLE="" attributes to persist (most mail clients do), especially because it is not well known amongst most coders. Further info is available from MSDN for anyone interested. Seriously, filtering out scripts is a good idea -- anyone else remember when the trolls here managed to insert onMouseOver code into paragraph tags using a Cross-Site Scripting attack, resulting in many goat-themed redirects?

Anyway, a while ago I used Yahoo Mail as my main account and sent quite a few JavaScripts back and forward related to my website, and noticed "onmouseover" was changed to "onfilterchange" and similar replacements in the body of the mail. This was about 6 months back at least, so it's nothing new. Personally, I think they could probably come up with better filtering methods, but then again stealing a Yahoo! account's details using JS could be a lot more dangerous (finance sections etc) than your average Slashdot trollery -- so perhaps the extra caution is warranted.

Perhaps the original JavaScript designers should have included a META tag to disable all scripting in the current document, so you could include that in all your static CGI documents and not have to worry about the details. It would certainly improve the security of many sites if it was adopted by most browsers even now.

No, I'm not going to tell you what the numerical values for each of the labels are -CmdrTaco

But the code is Open Source [slashcode.com]:
('karma_adj','-10=Terrible|-1=Bad|0=Neutral|12=Pos itive|25=Good|99999=Excellent','Adjectives that describe karma, used if karma_obfuscate is set (best to keep aligned with badkarma, m2_maxbonus, and goodkarma)');

if we decide to change the cap, we'll definitely make sure that the space between the cap, and the bonus point privelege, is large than what a single moderator can do to a user.

Rob, a single moderator is capable of negatively moderating a user hundreds of times. This happens quite frequently [slashdot.org]. I think perhaps what you meant was that one single User who is not a 'User who can moderate 500 times' (Admins are Users too [sourceforge.net]).

Nothing gets users more riled up than alterations to the karma system. Well, some of them anyway. Most of them know not to care.

If people are supposed to 'know not to care', then why is it that you care enough about hiding information from your users to make this change while several pending browser rendering bugs are making your site unreadable? It must be awfully important. I think the reason you don't understand why people get upset is that you yourself don't post comments in stories. Which means you're talking about something which you have no experience with.

Personally, the only thing that annoys me is that you use user-created discussions to talk about META issues so that your posts can't be archived. Last time we tried to keep 'bumping' the SID but you went and deleted it anyway. Will that happen this time?
Why didn't you just enable comments in your journal? Isn't that what it's for?

Are they using SlashCode or PHPNuke on this portal?

You should try reading Plastic. It's built on Slashcode, but the level of discourse is much more mature and enlightened than Slashdot.

I am not a developer neither a paid promoter of Drupal, but I think it has what you need.

It's a news system, pretty much like Slashdot. The major difference is the submission queue, like Scoop that runs Kuro5hin, and anyone can rate comments.

Slashcode, which runs Slashdot, is better for targetted news, IMHO. The selective karma system allows wiser users to rate comments. For a wider audience website, I think you need to give more freedom of choice to your users.

Oh, and Drupal also allows users to build blogs, it has a news feed script, collaborative book and a forum. It has a wider scope.

About the specifics of your problem, yes, I do think blogging can be useful for local newspaper. The citizens will get to know each other, and feel like they were part of a community. I would say go for it. A news script performs the tasks that you want, and if you can enhance the community spirit of your users, better.

# all of these will also get moved elsewhere

# this is the worst damned warning ever, so SHUT UP ALREADY!

# Keep your friends close but your enemies closer.
# Or ignore them, we don't care.

# You know, we do assume comments are linear -Brian

So says Roblimo:
Perhaps one of you Slashdot-reading CNN tech guys could talk to Wastler and other CNN editors about automatic story versioning

You trying to get CNN to run Slash?

WHY DONT YOU JUST TRY TO PORT LINUX ON YOU ANAL VIBRATOR!!!?????

Wouldn't that be ANUX?

lameness filter workaround cock bitch cunt cockslap dickwaffle buttsex

I've coded up NNTP support for Slash. Check out a demo at http://slash.zevils.com/ and news:zevils.com. It has support for limiting it only to subscribers and other neat stuff. Told Rob about it, and he said he was interested but I don't think he's had a chance to check it out yet. Also, I don't know Slashcode that well so it would be good if one of the Slashfolk vetted the code to make sure I was Doing The Right Thing. The code is here and my slashcode.com announcement is here. Is anyone interested in this?

I've coded up NNTP support for Slash. Check out a demo at http://slash.zevils.com/ and news:zevils.com. It has support for limiting it only to subscribers and other neat stuff. Told Rob about it, and he said he was interested but I don't think he's had a chance to check it out yet. Also, I don't know Slashcode that well so it would be good if one of the Slashfolk vetted the code to make sure I was Doing The Right Thing. The code is here and my slashcode.com announcement is here. Is anyone interested in this?

We did this too. Two years ago we picked up two mountain bikes (one for me, one for my wife) from our tax return.

We've had a blast ever since. We setup a website MTBMadness (slash-based!) to put information online. We take the digital camera with us whenever we go riding, and put the pictures online.

We've since hooked up with local mountain bike groups, as well as state-wide and multi-state, so as to go on group rides.

It's a blast, and it will definitely get you into shape real quick. I still don't like uphill climbs, but the downhill that comes after one makes it all worth it.

Have you considered giving a more complette description of the problem to Slashcode?

I wonder... are we far enough off topic yet? (-:

If you can give us a button (that I don't care for and didn't ask for) so we label people "friends" or "foes," then please give us a button that lets us hide individual threads, like this one. One click on the parent and the whole thread disappears! Yippee!

I'm at -1 karma anyway, so I might as well answer you.
Yes, there are lots of sites that have a slashdot style comment system, a lot of them use the same code. Go here and have a look, someone might be able to give you a list of some sites that that use the slashcode.

But you're right, this isnt the right place to ask that question.

All in all, apart from the obvious rhetoric point for democracy being served by the collaborative organization of information (which is valid), other advantages of blogs and wikis include the formation of communities revolving around areas of interest, and positive contributions to the 'information tag' game (trying to keep up with the news), especially where technology is involved.
Of course, they can never totally supplant central information dispensation efforts (news agencies, zines and portals), but they don't have to: they are designed to supplement such efforts and provide a modicum of control and feedback by the public.

>Perhaps Slashdot should consider switching to IIS 5.0 or .NET server and rewriting their code using a stable, reliable platform like Visual C++ or .NET. Perhaps only then will the browser compatbility issues will be resolved.

>I am here to help.

Get thee to slash and start porting. Sheesh, if you want it fixed like that, its open source -- do it your own damn self. Its not like its illegal or something.

Conspiracy theories will probably abound, but the bottom line is, this was a security hole that we should have closed a long time ago. Better we do it now than after someone gets hurt.

Anyone who wants to discuss this is welcome to start a journal or discussion. It is offtopic here. I am only posting this because it's a security matter, and I will moderate myself down :)

You're not the only one. It's possible, and I (who have absolutely no control and probably no influence) think it's a great idea.

Slashdot is just a discussion forum. It contributes no code...

You're right of course, they sure don't contribute open source code.

For what it's worth, I'll probably pitch in my $20 or so.

hmm.

could have fooled me... (see reply)

If you're NOT saving more than half, there are possible explanations. POST requests cannot correctly be handled by Slash and mod_gzip. I host Slash sites, so I know this. :) Of course that will only account for a tiny bit.

The biggest reason why you wouldn't save half your bandwidth is that most of your pages are served to clients that can't take it. And nearly all modern browsers can. That means.....

you're serving lots and lots of pages to spiders or spambots. Ouch!

Personally, I like Slash. What's that? You say your website isn't an interactive forum? Oh, dear.

You really should post that to /code, that sounds like a cool feature, of course, it might cause some self-inflicted wounds in VA software headquarters these days.

Look at http://slashcode.com/sites.pl

Okay, so Slashcode is finally serious. I'm amused that O'Reilly has written a book about it. However, being as it powers a great deal of sites, some of them widely read/used daily, it begs one question in my mind:

Why can't Malda and the other authors make the HTML standards compliant?!?!?

In the Slashcode FAQ, Malda (or whoever maintains the FAQs has written this:

"Can you make Slash compliant with HTML x.x?"
"No, but YOU can! Slash is fully customizable. You can edit the templates to suit your taste. See the HOWTO documents for themes, plugins, and templates."

Boo. Bad answer. The Slash implementers shouldn't need to fix this when it would be a fairly trivial task to go through the Slash code and update to HTML 4.0 or XHTML 1.0 standards.

Really, I think the failure of Slash to be HTML compliant reeks of laziness in an important area. I appreciate the work Rob has done, I don't want to sound like an unfair critic, but come on, it's 2002, let's get up to some semblance of recent standards!

About 120!! sites run on slashcode. Take a look.

Start your own site.

...found it.

I doubt it, but he does have bitchslap and modslap.

I doubt it, but he does have bitchslap and modslap.

I find it odd that Malda and the rest of the crew here look down upon Microsoft for using security through obscurity in their services. Now /. is using it to cover up theirs!!

the system randomly assigns mod points to a set percentage of userids ie if your uid is in the x percent of the total users(oversimplified)

example total users 500,000
user mod points awarded to top 20% would mean uid's 1 to 100,000
or 40% would be 1 to 200,000

but wait there is more to it than this... the amount of points available to be assigned is 1 mode point for every 10 posts(each post being a token), so when there are 5 total points a random user id in the users elligable to mod will get assigned points.

The numbers I threw at you are all made up. The system allows you to configure it based uppon your site. go to slashcode and download the source to see the real nuts and bolts of how this works.

As for your willingness to mod; cool, but, you will have to wait till your userid falls below the treshold that they set for moderation on slashdot. I think they are using the oldest third of the uids but that is a guess.

Is this the same code that runs Slashdot?

Yes. Slashdot and Slashcode are usually running the latest development code from CVS, within a week or so.

If this is business as usual then we can expect to see a new release file announced at slashcode within a week or so. So the obvious question is, "Is this business as usual?"

AFAIK, the reason for using GMT is that Slash is designed to work on multiple boxes, and horrible race conditions etc. could arise if different timezones were used. So, it makes sense to standardise on the most widely-known timezone, GMT (sorry, but it's true!)

Happy New Year.

<rant type="offtopic">
Perhaps CmdrTaco and Co. can take note of the following 3 improvements to Slash for their New Year resolutions:

1. Make nested mode the default. How can threaded mode ever be desirable, unless you want to give yourself RSI?!
2. WTF is up with the story text vanishing when you change the display mode or threshold?! Again, how can this ever be desirable? <phrase type="trollish">Kuro5hin can do it ::grin:: </phrase>.
3. For my sanity, include the year in dates in comments and story dates in search results!

the killfile is basically already implemented ..... try reading this and tell me what you think.

I read this book when it first came out and I've been working on a review of it myself. I figured it was an ideal candidate for a review on /. given Steven Johnson's (the author) multiple referrences to /. in the book. It is interesting to note Johnson's background in the context of site many Slashdotters used everyday. Johnson was a founder of now dead community generated content sites Feed Magazine and Plastic, which are very similar to /. in the way they are generated an community maintained. Plastic even uses Slash as its base. I found the sections pertaining to how sites like these work to be very insightful and they'd probably be of interest to anyone who's ever wondered why /. works as well as it does.

Additionally, our reviewer leaves out the parallels between biological emergent systems (slime molds, termites, etc.) and computer systems. Johnson gives an entirely new deconstruction of the 'pacemaker' or 'queen ant' theory in both computer and life systems. Altogether, I think the book is worth the 3 hours it takes to read.

"It's really an open secret that the editors will mod comments and even 'bitchslap' them. I think this is as bad as editing a user since the moderation is supposed to be done by users who earn their mod points, while the editors, as the superusers have unlimited points to mod as they wish.

I wish the editors will realize one day how stupid this is and remedy it. Otherwise it is akin to an election which has no real power."

We do mod comments, yes, but we're fair about it.

I can say this with some certainty because, like all moderations, ours get metamoderated -- so if we start unfairly modding people up or down, we get email a couple of days later letting us know we screwed up!

I can't speak for the other Slashdot editors, but as for me -- of all my mods in the last several months, only two have gotten Unfair judgements. Both were trolls that had posted links that looked like they went somewhere informative but didn't. Apparently the metamoderators didn't bother to check the links, oh well. So I stand by my record of massive Fairness.

Basically I spend mod points where I see that I can save our regular moderators some time. Slashdot gets a lot of crap posted anonymously that is obvious trolling, flamebaiting, or offtopickism, and it would get itself modded down to -1 anyway if we flooded the system with mod points. My taking care of it lets our users focus a little more on picking out what they consider to be the good stuff to mod up, rather than just having a troll cost them a point (and the opportunity to participate in the discussion).

In short, I do a little bit of grunt-work, so that our users can be more choosy and careful, genuinely improving the quality and controlling the tenor of the site. And the built-in feedback of our M2 system will let me know if I ever stray too far from how the users think the site should be run.

Also, for the record, "bitchslap" refers to a specific script in the codebase which retroactively sets all of a user's comments to score:-1. Important point: it's only ever been used on user accounts that posted using scripts. And it hasn't been used in months, AFAIK, since the existing moderation/metamod system has been working so well.

Maybe someone from the Slash development team could elaborate on this.

Given the lengths to which a very few people will go to ruin something for everyone else, I'm not surprised several free services aren't fighting to keep their non-paying customers.

1) Karma?
by glowingspleen

Since you're probably the only one with real access to all the user records, you're the one to ask:

Who among us is the current Karma Whore King, and what is their score? Is there a maximum amount of karma one can earn?brAnd finally, is there a cutoff level where you auto-post at 3 or above?

CowboyNeal:

Wow, a question about karma, what I consider to be the most boring subject in all of Slashdot. I dunno who is the Karma Whore King, since we instituted a karma cap at 50, and all karma levels that are above 50 are living on borrowed time. Getting a karma above 20 allows one to post with a +1 bonus, and from there on there are no rewards.

I said that karma bores me, and I don't understand why people get all hung up over it. It's not like having a high karma is gonna get you discounts in stores. If you're really worried about karma, go donate money to charity or donate your time to some place that can use it. I guarantee the reward will be better than anything that Slashdot karma can get you.

2) Give us the ups and downs!
by Dino

What's the best thing that happened to you since Slashdot started? Conversly, what's the worst?

CowboyNeal:

Easily, the best part was when I got a real job out of it. I had done a few odds and ends for BSI and Slashdot before coming on full time, but getting a check on a regular basis is something I still am thankful for. The worst part is probably the sheer volume of email that I get to deal with on a daily basis. That's not to say that I dislike the people that email me, but it gets troublesome when one has an inbox that can take up to half a day daily to get squared away.

3) A User Info slashbox?
by update()

Like a lot of people, I bet, I frequently look at my user info page to see if there have been responses to my posts, and what moderations I have received. Would it be possible to provide a Slashbox with that information on the main page?

CowboyNeal:

This kind of thing could be implemented, but with our current setup it just wouldn't scale. It would need to add another query to viewing the home page, for each person that has it chosen. There might be a few tricks to implement this that could save some overhead, but if I were to make such a box, it definitely wouldn't happen until after Slashdot is running bender, the new development branch of Slashcode.

4) Slashdot
by emmons

How did you become tangled up in this Slashdot thing with that CmdrTaco guy? How did you guys meet?

CowboyNeal:

I met both Rob and Jeff when all of us where freshmen in college. Rob was in the same Health Dynamics (read, Phys. Ed.) class I was, and Jeff and I shared a lab bench in Chemistry Lab. The CS department at Hope wasn't that large, and most CS majors were aware of Chips & Dips, and would read it regularly. When I graduated, I was approached by Blockstackers, who owned Slashdot at the time, and offered a job. About two months later, Slashdot was acquired by Andover.Net (now OSDN) and my employment was transferred to them.

5) Yes!
by OlympicSponsor

I've been following CowboyNeal's career for years, reading everything he writes, watching all of his movies and eating all of his cooking. Now I finally have a chance to ask him the question that's been burning me up inside: What's Taco really like?

Seriously, can you give us a breakdown of how much time each editor spends actually reading the site they nominally run? Like, time spent clicking on user comments?

CowboyNeal:

Hrm, it sounds like you might have me confused with someone else. I've never made any movies or had a restaurant *grin*. Honestly, I don't know how much time an editor spends doing those tasks. I would assume it varies from person to person, but I don't share office space with hardly any of them, nor do any of them ever have to report to me.

I know from our internal discussion lists and channels, that all of us are constantly reading the site, but as for a detailed breakdown, I'd have no idea where to start.

6) The future
by yamla

What will you be doing in five years? In ten years? If you expect/hope to still be with Slashdot, what sort of changes do you see happening to Slashdot in that time?

And yes, I know 5 - 10 years is an eternity.

CowboyNeal:

5 - 10 years is an eternity! I don't even know what I'm doing two weeks from now!

I wish I knew. I was the kid in school who when asked what he wanted to be when he grew up, didn't have the slightest clue. When I finally discovered computers, I knew that I wanted to work with computers in some capacity for a living. When I think about how much technology has advanced since I first started using a computer, it's truly amazing how far we've come. I'm hoping that someday we can put all this patent/copyright/intellectual property BS behind us, and by that time someone will have discovered the secret to putting infinite bandwidth into everyone's homes and with all of these new resources at our disposal, someone will discover the new killer app for all of it, repeat ad infinitum. That's how the system works. I just hope to be there and be a part of the process somehow. I think it's especially interesting how the internet and all of what it entails has made it easier for people to communicate and become exposed to experiences and views they normally wouldn't, so any new advances will hopefully only improve that.

I don't think Slashdot will do anything like try to take over all forms of media or any sort of grand scheme like that because there's already organizations into that sort of thing. I do think, however, that if a new way of delivering content that replaces or augments the web comes about, that we will most likely be there.

This is probably the best question I've been asked, because it was easily the toughest for me to answer. My job now is primarily the day-to-day maintenance of Slashdot, which means that I'm not usually concerned with looking to the future, but rather just making sure that our current system runs smoothly. In short, I'm not a leader but a follower.

7) What was your fav poll abuse?
by chabotc

What poll in which you were an 'option', did you find most amusing/entertaining?

What was the most depressing?

CowboyNeal:

The first few times I was a poll option I thought it was funny, but I have become rather immune to it now. Now it's to the point where I'm surprised when I am not an option. As for trying to pick out particular polls that amused or depressed me, I can't really remember any.

8) tell us the truth
by segmond

How often have you posted anonymously? do you have a pseudo handle? Have you ever trolled? Are you getting bored with slashdot? What is the biggest screw up that you did to the site that we never found out? Have you ever used "super moderating power" to mod down posts attacking slashdot editors...? What is your favorite pizza topping and sandwich?

CowboyNeal:

Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope.

That should bring me up to the "screw up" question, so I will now relate a story that showcases my stupidity. One day I was working on Slashdot's database, and cleaning up a lot of old database entries, when I suddenly realized I'd forgotten a "WHERE" clause in one of the SQL statements.

Unfortunately, this was after the statement had already run, and the blocks table was completely wiped out. If you know anything about Slashcode, you know that blocks holds everything from color schemes, to the slashboxes, the HTML that gives the site its look and feel, to all the headlines that go into the slashboxes on the right side of the homepage. Of course, this brought the site to a halt until we could restore from backup. I was able to berate myself before anyone else could, though, so anyone in the know about my mistake was fairly forgiving.

As for "super moderating power", I know I could go into the database and moderate like crazy, but my ethics won't allow me to do so. Also, I don't usually read comments attached to stories. I have banned IP addresses from which people have been hammering on the site with scripts at the rate of several requests a second, but I don't actively moderate any stories.

I don't know if I have a favorite pizza topping. I used to work at a pizza place when I was in high school, and learned to like almost every pizza topping there is, even anchovies.

My favorite sandwich is easily a veggie submarine. I'm not a vegetarian, but I find myself ordering veggie subs more than any other sandwich.

9) Anime
by spudwiser

Seeing as in most Geeks in Space episodes Anime quotes and quips spew forth from you, I think we the listeners (and deranged readers) should see exactly how your background in anime developed.

CowboyNeal:

Well, this answer is pretty boring. One day in college my friend and I decided we should watch some anime, because we had heard it was cool. So we took a week, and rented a movie or two per night, starting with Ghost In The Shell, then moving on to Akira, Fist Of The North Star, and Vampire Hunter D. I think those are the anime titles everyone starts with, because they're available at almost any Blockbuster.

But yeah, we discovered we liked it, and I just started watching more anime. I warned that this answer was boring.

10) Stories
by Fervent

Why don't you yourself ever post any stories, Cowboy Neal?

CowboyNeal:

Oh, but I do. On the rare occasion that we get to record an episode of Geeks In Space I'll post the announcement in the radio section. Sometimes a story falls through the cracks and I'll pick it up, also, but that happens much less often lately. Rob and Jeff like to say that the surefire way to not get a story posted is to email it directly to them instead of using the submissions bin, but if you want to absolutely sure your story doesn't get posted to the site, email me it to me instead. *grin*

Slashdot has come up with metric buttloads of different ways to block people in their never-ending arms race with the trolls lameness filter and other content-based filters, account banning, IP banning. None of it works right and can be circumvented in about 5,421,234 different ways (rough estimate), but its a start. Theyve been working on it for about three years, but... well, its still a start.

(Here is the Slashdot source code.)

Joseph Elwell.