Welcome to Slashdot 2.2

Welcome to Slashdot, now running Slashcode 2.2. Since we never upgraded Slashdot to 2.0, this is a huge deal. The changes are numerous, but non-obvious unless you happen to be a fairly frequent user who actually hits most of the functionality on the site. Read on for an executive summary of major features and random props to folks that made it happen.

Ok, lets start with a minor vanity thing that I love. Krow set it up so you can hit unix style homepages to get fellow user info pages. Its just nicer to look at and easier to remember. I love it.

Messaging is in place. If you're logged in, hit your user preferences page and you'll see the option to configure it. You'll see notification on the homepage when you have messages. There are a variety of message types, like notification of replies to your comments, or moderations done to you. You can choose from a couple of different delivery mechanisms currently, right now email and web. Eventually we'll offer other options, but if people submit patches from CVS, "Eventually" will be sooner. Jabber is definitely planned. Inter-User messaging should happen soon too. Also note that the messaging replaces the old headline-mailer. I think you'll enjoy some of the other stuff you see there. All this messaging is the 0th child of Pudge.

Journals are a long awaited feature that people on Slashcode.com really like, so we brought it over here. Everyone contributed bits and pieces to this sucker, and its fairly complex so don't be surprised if there are some bugs. Users can enable or disable comments. Journals also features Friends Lists. This will be extended in the future, but for now you can use it to track a quick list of journals you want to scan regularly. Eventually friends will be bigger, but we'll worry about that after 2.2 settles down.

Discussions can now be created to house your own little chats without bugging us. This replaces the old hidden sids which were bugs to some, and features to others.

There are rss feeds scattered throughout the site now that will need to be documented so people can find them. The user help stuff will be updated soon.

There are several new user options for comment display. I'll let you poke around them yourself and see how they work. Some you'll like, some you won't. You'll notice that the old 'Fake Email Address' is now gone. We decided that it simply was to easy to abuse, so instead we offer auto spam proofing of your real email address. Of course this is purely optional for you paranoid spam-free types. This is Jamie's, as was the new domain linking stuff, and countless other usability features.

Meta Moderation received an overall at the maniacal hands of Cliff. Under previous versions of Slashcode, meta moderations were single autonomous events, and therefore fairly easy to manipulate by malicious users. Now M2's are tallied and when a consensus is reached, judgement is made (and karma is adjusted appropriately).

The 1% of submissions that are accepted will show up on User Info pages now. So now the 99% of you who have your submissions rejected will have something else to complain about to me an average of 15 times a day.

Forgotten passwords can be resent even if you don't remember your nickname. I can't fathom how so many people could forget their nicks, but you sure did. CowboyNeal is dancing in the streets with Mic Jagger and David Bowie knowing that he will have to respond to half as many people who can't figure out how to login. Also, plain text passwords aren't sent in emails any more, so while we're still not pretending Slashdot is secure, its more secure then it was.

A huge new deal is the fact that all the old articles have been re-imported back into the database. 2 million of them. Old discussions will continue to be closed out as they age, but users will still be able to adjust order and threshold when they view them. This was a really nasty task for Cliff since he had to import nearly 4 years of HTML back into the database... including a dozen different comment formats that evolved over that time. A huge task, but one that he managed to pull off by the deadline. And I think any users who read older stories will appreciate it.

CaptTofu fixed tons of security issues and greatly improved a lot of the security stuff that most of you will never notice. But believe me it makes dealing with bots and denial of service attacks a lot easier now (for example, if a robot is hitting us as they so often do, we can ban them without restart httpd). Tofu also had to "Manage" the team, which makes cat herding seem like a party.

We have some new hardware too. Replacing our 6 600mhz web servers are 5 shiny new dual ghz boxes. OSDNs Netops staff mercilessly beat these things into submission. Thanks to Yazz, Kurt, Toad and Trish. And also props go out to Uriah on the West Si-eed for helping with some raid bios problems that messed with our database stuff and really though us for a loop.

We also gotta thank the guys at SourceForge for having a functional bug tracking system that we (and the trolls *sigh*) could use. We love you all, and we shouldn't let little things like a language barrier stand between us. Lets both port to ML. Its like switzerland for web pages!

I also wanna thank Hemos for being our man on the inside, and Richard French, OSDN boss-man for giving us the room to put this all together.

I know I forgot to thank someone, and I apologize, but its past midnight and I've been going for 16 hours today.

Allright this is only scratching the surface. There are so many more little things that you'll notice, and either submit thinking they are bugs, or hate, or love, or whatever. But we're not fooling ourselves by thinking that we're out of the woods yet. There are still several dozen significant bugs that need fixing so we're gonna keep going. And then we have to update the FAQ with all new FAQs and corrections to the old FAQs! The real test will be when loads pick up. We expect that there will continue to be brief periods of trouble for the next couple days, but it shouldn't be significant since we did a lot of load testing, and managed to get the new setup to handle 2x Slashdot's normal peak load. We think things will be all right, but thanks to you all for having patience.

Now holy shit, I'm gonna sleep.

Comments

Thanks for the hard work

[EvlG]

Just want to say thanks so much for all the hard work you guys have done to make Slashdot the community it is today. Looking forward to using all the new features and speed improvements!

Awesome

[Rayban]

Looks good so far. It's a shame we don't have a moderated submission queue, though. :) Has anyone considered this?

Keep up the good work!

Re:Awesome

[mindpixel]

I've submitted 11 articles - 6 have been accepted - which I think is pretty damn good. But I would still like to see this become a true Direct Democracy.

I vote to open the submission queue to the public!!!

What the...?

[J'raxis]

Two-millionth post!!! (nice bug!) :)

Metamoderation

[bconway]

Is it now possible to claim 2 moderations as unfair without losing karma yourself? I thought that was a pretty piss-poor choice, especially with the rampant crackhead moderation that's been going on recently. Great work, guys.

Re:Metamoderation

[bconway]

That was EXACTLY my point. In the old metamoderation system, if you marked two or more moderations as unfair (which was often the case) you would automatically lose a point of karma. That was quite ridiculous for those of us who actually metamoderated fairly.

Can I still use journals

[Hairy_Potter]

if I'm stuck with a non-journaling file system,like Win 98?

Re:Can I still use journals

[sharkey]

No, it's a door-stop, but it still doesn't journal.

Re:Can I still use journals

[sharkey]

I can only give you a ballpark, but my 486DX2-100, running MS-DOS 6.2 + Win3.1, my P5-166 MMX running RedHat 6.2 and my P5-200MMX running Win9x all perform at about the same level when it comes to holding open doors.

Is the look ever going to change?

[Xafloc]

I mean come on...Slashdot has looked the same forever. Are we ever going to get some visual changes. Something to keep the site looking fresh?

I am not sure about the rest of you, but I think Slashdot is looking just a bit out-dated. Now, I am not saying let's go make Slashdot look like the millions of phpnuke site and there look-alikes, but I am sure with all the talent over there that they can come up with something new.

Maybe it's just me

Re:Is the look ever going to change?

[Villain]

I find it somewhat refreshing to find a site that doesn't feel the need to reinvent itself every few months. We all know exactly where to find everything when it comes down to it, I think most of us would prefer a functional old design over some crappy flash intro or other garbage everyone would just skip over anyway.

Re:Is the look ever going to change?

[localman]

Aw man! One of the reasons I love Slashdot is that it has stuck by it's guns and remained one of the gawd awfulest looking sites on the web!

Seriously, though, I'm sick of website (and application) appearance makeovers. 9 times out of 10 they decrease functionality and increase the level of annoyance.

However, I've been happy with the same woman for ten years now so I guess I'm not the average guy.

Re:Is the look ever going to change?

[scrytch]

I *like* slashdot's look -- when it's slashdot green and not some godawful khaki/mauve category "theme". I like the subtle grey header bars that go all the way across as opposed to advogato's neon bars of varying widths. I like the subdued colors over the garishness of most nuke sites.

Other comments: automunging the real email address and ditching the fake one. What slash munges, a spambot can unmunge. You do know that most spambots already auto-unmunge the standard munging done to listserv archives? Now I'm going to have to get a throwaway account just for slashdot.

Lameness filters are still lame.

Running post numbers are nice, I just hope it really didn't have anything to do with FP and more about unique id's. "first post" still means "first post" after all.

Would be nice to support some javascript in the clients if they're capable of it. Glasscode's async scoring mechanism is a nice example of what you can do with javascript.

Re:Is the look ever going to change?

[iomud]

I really like the developers section colors, light grey and blue. I agree that slashdot is in need of a new look perhaps user selectable themes so that each user can pick from a number of slashdot layouts to looks at.

Re:Is the look ever going to change?

[chuqui]

You're right. they need to update slashdot.

I suggest that the slashdot folks improve the site. At the very minimum, they need to add: a splash page we have to click through before getting to the main page ("welcome to slashdot!)

frames

15K of javascript to make sure the cursor gets to the correct text entry field, since we're incapable of finding it otherwise.

A new Slashdot logo, which will be animated and rendered in Flash. Must be at least 250K in size.

Every time you visit slashdot, it'll send you a 100K sound file of CmdrTaco saying "howdy! welcome to slashdot!"

A new privacy statement which points out they plan to sell everything you say, in 2 point type. Hidden behind a java applet. In swahili. And opt-out.

Yup. We really need to bring slashdot in line with current th current web standards. can't just have something that sits there and works....

Re:Is the look ever going to change?

[sharkey]

And, as a plus, the new messaging could be jazzed a little. When one of your comments is moderated as a troll, the notification should automatically redirect you to The Amish Rake Fight, just to let you know the general feeling about you.

Did you upgrade cowboyneal?

[defence budget]

Which version of cowboyneal is /. currently using?

I had to change my subject for the lameness filter

[RESPAWN]

Whoa! What's with the comment numbers? No more first posts? What are all the /. trolls going to do now? /. will end up losing half it's readership because of this oversight. Bad choice, Mr. Taco.

-----

Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted! Reason: What do you want? A medal?

Subject: No first posts?

Actually, I want you to let me post my frickin' comment.

fake e-mail address vs auto spamproofing

[jesser]

There are several new user options for comment display. I'll let you poke around them yourself and see how they work. Some you'll like, some you won't. You'll notice that the old 'Fake Email Address' is now gone. We decided that it simply was to easy to abuse, so instead we offer auto spam proofing of your real email address. Of course this is purely optional for you paranoid spam-free types. This is Jamie's, as was the new domain linking stuff, and countless other usability features.

How was the fake e-mail address field "abused"? And how can automatic spam-proofing possibly be good enough that a clever spammer wouldn't be able to get around (especially with the source code visible)?

lameness filters

[jesser]

The lameness filters are really getting on my nerves. More than half of my comments over the last few weeks hit some filter or another before I managed to get the comment through.

• Every time I screw up in a comment -- trigger some other lameness filter, forget to put a subject, anything -- I get a "it hasn't been 20 seconds since you hit reply".
• I like to read the entire article before posting to make sure I'm not putting up something redundant with an existing score:3 post, but if I use that strategy and then end up deciding to post two comments, I invariably get "it's been less than two minutes since your last comment post."
• I got a cryptic message about "postersubj compression" when I tried to reply to this comment. Changing the subject of my reply made the error message go away, but it took me 5 minutes to figure out how to get aroudn the filter (mostly because of the 20 second rule).

Others have complained about shell scripts being rejected as "junk posts", and having comments rejected as having been posted before slashdot existed. Some of these are just Bugs, but many seem to be intentional. Does the lameness filter serve any purpose that moderation doesn't?

IMO, there should be two filters:

1. No duplicate posts. Not so much to filter out "lameness", but to help people who accidentally hit "Submit" twice or hit it again when slashdot forgets to respond to the first post.
2. No more than five comments from one poster within two minutes.

Hey...

[Electric Angst]

I'm just curious, how many bugs from old slash, or new, were first discovered by trolls? Do you feel that the trolls did you a service, like the way white-hat hackers reveal holes in certain software?

Feature: filter out certain comments?

[occam]

Cmdr, is it possible to filter out "Humor" comments with this new version? For some threads that's about half of the (supposedly) high value comments, but I'd really just like to read info. I've looked through the preferences without finding that feature.

Thanks,

= Joe =

Re:Feature: filter out certain comments?

[J'raxis]

I'd like to see a full-blown filter system à la Usenet killfiles. Currently we can killfile story authors, why not users in general? Would probably be more useful than moderation as you make your own decisions as to what's crap and what's not.

Can I have my old nick back?

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Is the limit on nick size still there and still too short for "Ungrounded Lightning Rod"?

I'd like to update my Sig but I don't plan on doing that unless/until I can get the 'ol nick back.

(While we're at it, is the limit on sig size still so small that I have to abbreviate? You didn't shrink it any more did you?)

(We'll see momentarily...)

A cookie per page

[ewen]

The most obvious change is that now every single page sends a brand new cookie to accept/reject (unlike the old code which sent one only when you logged in or didn't supply a cookie). This is one of my pet hates on websites -- being bugged by new cookies with every single page -- and rapidly makes an otherwise good website too annoying to bother with.

Surely with a one year expiry time on the cookies it is only necessary to send them once a month or so at the most? Or perhaps this is the Slashcode version of Chinese Water Torture.

Re:A cookie per page

[koreth]

Sounds like a browser deficiency to me -- the "do you want this cookie?" popup should give you the option of suppressing future instances of itself. I know Opera does; there's a button for "make my accept/refuse choice apply to all cookies from this site." I'm sure one of the open-source browsers out there either already does something similar or could be made to do so without Herculean effort.

It's not the site that's putting cookie popups in your face, after all; it's your browser (and your chosen configuration of your browser, at that).

Re:A cookie per page

[Swordfish]

I agree 100%

Either the cookies go. Or slashdot goes!

Not happy!

And in other news

[JediTrainer]

Meta Moderation received an overall at the maniacal hands of Cliff.

User Info pages were handed a pair of old jeans with patches over the holes in the knees, and the 2-million-odd old articles were collectively given a large flowery muumuu.

Security gets a brand-new pair of underwear with an attached padlock.

AC?

[jbarnett]

Check this out (don't login and look at user.pl):

Karma 1972 (mostly the sum of moderation done to users comments)

Anonymous Coward has posted 325291 comments. Below are the most recent 24 comments.

I first panic and though dammit I don't remember posting 325,291 comments last night in my drunken state. Then it hit me after the coffee started hitting my brain.

The thing that AMAZES me is that Anonymous Coward not only has POSTIVE karma, that account has ALOT of karma (1972)... I guess someone with a lot of mod points *cough*CmdrTaco*cough* really likes what AC has to say *cough*goatcx*cough*

Who would of thought?

Suggestion: Mark editorial moderations clearly

[Seth Finkelstein]

The link [hostname] indicator is a nice, clever idea. I have a suggestion along the same lines. Please consider doing the same with editorial moderations. Many people don't even know that Slashcode editors have unlimited moderation points

So, when an editor uses those unlimited moderation privileges, it should appear as e.g. -1 Troll [editor's name]. This would avoid the current problem that when comments critical of Slashdot, or a particular editor, are down-modded, there's no way to tell whether the mod is "honest", or an editor abusing his position. This leads to much suspicion, as dishonest editors can say "You can't prove it was me", while honest editors have a cloud over their integrity.

Now, let me say up-front, of course I have an interest here. The acrimony between one Slashot editor and myself is no secret. I don't deny my experiences inform this suggestion. Nonetheless, the idea should stand or fall on its own merits.

-- Seth Finkelstein

A tribute to the greatness that was Slashdot

[duffbeer703]

A long, long time ago
I can still remember
How the trollers used to make me smile

And I knew if I had to boast
That I could try to get first post
And maybe I'd be happy for a while

But moderators made me shiver
With every minus they'd deliver

DoS scripts couldn't stop it
They scored them all "Offtopic"

I know that it's cheap crack they smoke
And meta-moderation's broke
At first I thought it was a joke
The day that trolltalk died

-- Chorus --
Bye, bye, MEEPTy, OOG, and Grits guy
Drove the Cruiser like some loser who starts posts with a *sigh*
Those Steve Woston posts that we all knew were a lie
Wonder what became of girls petrified?
What became of girls petrified?
--

Did you write a bunch of Perl?
And did it make you want to hurl
Feces at the Wall?

Can you believe these lame-ass polls?
Do you post big stretched-out assholes?
Can you make the goatse.cx link not show?

Well I know you think that Siggy sucked
Will the real Bruce Perens please stand up?

The bots don't have a clue.
Man, I dig those trolls from Shoe!

I was a rabid Free Speech advocate
With a Red Hat T-shirt and a Free Beer gut
Bought my Sony laptop working Pizza Hut
The day that trolltalk died

-- Chorus --

It's been two years since the IPO
And LNUX sinks to all-time lows
But that's not how it used to be

When Spiral showed how it was done
Trolling as Jon Erikson
Who worked for NPO Technologies

Oh and while they tried to filter posts
Somebody rooted Slashdot's host

"Crack Slashdot? That's absurd!"
Better go change your password

While JonKatz wrote a Hellmouth book
By using posts he simply took
And we flamed him till he was cooked
The day that trolltalk died

And we were singin....

-- Chorus --

10 grams. Inchfan. Didn't log out. Goddamn
The mods will find the sid real soon, man
You can't hide if you aren't AC

Your bud (George here) tried BSD
A dead Streetlawyer's tips were free
And WIPO helped letsriot turn Nazi

70 made his percents up
While 80md warned "liberals suck"

The moon does not exist
It's just a liberal myth

Oh and as Taco tried to take a nap
We forced him to invoke bitchslaps
Do you recall the flood of crap
The day that trolltalk died?

We started singin....

-- Chorus --

Oh and then we were wearing out "All your base"
And started posting monospace
The better for our penis birds

So come on, be a zealot, be a dick
You don't think Anne Marie's a chick?
Because lying's all we do about HURD

So go and push for BSD
And say GPL isn't free

Slow down, cowboy! The limit
Is one post every minute

Now tell the right wing facist slime
Infringing on Your Rights Online
That they can't censor all the time
The day that trolltalk died

-- Chorus --

I met a troll they called The Rev
And asked him if CD BREAK HEAD
He said, "That's old. Get over it."

And with all the courage I could muster
"Imagine what a Beowulf cluster...."
But it wasn't worth the trouble to submit

The karma caps are just plain jive
And everyone's moved to K5

The steelcage has grown rusted
And Geekizoid is busted

The three sites I don't see for weeks
Segfault, kernel, Comp-u-geek
Code is not art. This ain't Freshmeat
The day that trolltalk died

-- Chorus

I really wish you didn't upgrade YET.

[AtariDatacenter]

After reporting somewhere in the order of 10 bugs on the Slash 2.2 code, I really wish that you hadn't of gone live with this version. Mind you, a lot of bugs have been addressed, but there are quite a number still lurking out there. For example, I see that on the right some of the slash boxes don't have a grey background... they are white! And the journal area still looks a bit messed up.

Okay. As of this writing, it looks a bit better. But look at the icons in my journal entries. They are all broken. At least it is letting me post journal entries once again.

I also didn't expect that everything I did on Banjo would make it into production. I've got a lot of trash in my journal.

BTW, going to "Preferences" as AC was interesting. Talk about a Karma Whore. That UID has Karma through the roof.

But Commander, why didn't you all hold off a bit more before going live with the new version?