Slash 2.2.0 Released

If you meander over to Slashcode, you will notice that Slash 2.2.0 has been released. This is of course the website engine that runs Slashdot. The release has the message system, improved journal functions, new comment filters, and countless bug fixes. And of course a variety of optimizations that continue to make it possible to serve a quantity of pages that no other open source package like this can even touch :) Plus it's way easier to install. Now that we've got the Fry tree out of the way, its off to work on Zoidberg (which will include subscriptions, killfiles, and a few surprises)

Comments

Changelog lacks any real value.

[Neutron_F1uX]

"More changes to stats report" Bug fix changes, or just changes? It'd be pretty nice if the changelog was a little more detailed. When there are a whopping 4 entries in it, you could give a little bit more detail.

Re:Changelog lacks any real value.

[krez]

Any chance of there being a DEB package of Slashcode? Does anyone know? Anyone working on this?

Re:Changelog lacks any real value.

[Smirks]

Well, according to the official changelog there's only 5 changes. I guess the slashcode team isn't up for much documentation of changes.

Re:Changelog lacks any real value.

[Neutron_F1uX]

I just didn't bother counting them. After I read what they said, there was not enough to count them. Laziness is a technicians best friend.

Re:Changelog lacks any real value.

[devphil]

When I give my indoctrination spiel, uh, er, "training lecture" on CVS to coworkers and lackeys, I usually hand down a list of requirements for log/commit messages and a ChangeLog entry.

Most of the time it's a variation on http://www.gnu.org/software/guile/changelogs/guile -changelogs_toc.html, or sometimes the rules used for ChangeLogs in the GCC project, which I've found to be of immense value when tracking down changes.

Personally I can't stand changelogs that don't say a thing. It's just enough "open source" to look good, but not open enough to actually invite help.

Re:Changelog lacks any real value.

[notsoanonymouscoward]

It's open source, that's really the only documentation any reasonably intelligent person needs. RTFS. Got it? If not, go back to your little Macintosh.

what the heck, I'll bite...

You obviously haven't had the experience of crawling through 15k+ lines of code with a distinct lack of comments, spread over a 2 dozen files. Sure anyone with enough time can plow through it and figure it all out, but why should they have to? A few well written and well placed comments would cut comprehension time dramatically. So before you tell ppl to RTFS, I think you should UYFB (use your fucking brain).

Re:Changelog lacks any real value.

[BacOs]

An Intent To Package slash was posted on December 17, 2000 but there doesn't seem to be any activity on the packaging front. Check the Debian BTS for more information.

Re:Changelog lacks any real value.

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you trying to say that 15,000 lines of ugly perl written by functional illiterates is hard to read?

Re:Changelog lacks any real value.

[RetroGeek]

Um, you mistyped that. You added a comma and three zeros....

Reliability.

[saintlupus]

Gee, I sure hope the new slashcode has the same rock-solid reliability I've come to expect from this site.

*crickets*

--saint

Re:Reliability.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is freebsd/postgresql country. On a quiet night, you can hear slashcode/mysql being rebooted.

A nice surprice wuold be:

[CptnHarlock]

If the box called "No Score +1 Bonus" became "I really wanna use my KH bonus"... Then noone could blame posting at +1 because of "forgetting" to mark the No Bonus Checkbox. Please Taco!?.. :) .. Just for the sake of it I'm "forgetting" to uncheck the box... Only to illustrate my point that is.. Err.. whatever..

Cheers..

Re:A nice surprice wuold be:

[Russ Steffen]

Another nice suprise would be to have posting at +1 cost a point a karma.

Re:A nice surprice wuold be:

[vrmlguy]

So, if I now understand correctly, posting a message with the "No Score +1 Bonus" checkbox unchecked means that I get 1 point added to my score, but it costs me a point of karma; posting a message with the "No Score +1 Bonus" checkbox checked means that I get no points added to my score, and my karma remains untouched.

I was just about to post a question about this. I've been seeing the "No Score +1 Bonus" checkbox for some time now, but I never knew what it did and I couldn't find anywhere at /. that explained it. So, sometimes I'd check it, and sometimes I wouldn't, and I could never figure out what the difference was, and I don't have the time to "use the Source".

Re:A nice surprice wuold be:

[brassman]

I've managed to bite, scratch, and claw my way up to 25 points, and it's a bit disappointing to find out (finally) that I have to make 40 or better to get that precious posting bonus.

It's especially frustrating because I really, REALLY try not to spout off unless I've got something to add to the conversation. So much for choosing quality over quantity. :-(

Re:A nice surprice wuold be:

[einstein]

you have that backwards. if you don't check the box, your karma currently doesn't go down, you just add +1 to the comments moderation by default.
The parent poster is suggesting that when you use your plus 1 bonus, you lose karma to essential add a bit of self decided moderation to you comment.. I'm not sure how I feel about either. but just for kicks, I'm leaving my +1 bonus on. :)
---

Re:A nice surprice wuold be:

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, you need 26 points for the bonus, not 40.

Re:A nice surprice wuold be:

[j-beda]

...but it costs me a point of karma...

I don't think that it costs a point of karma. At least I hope not...

Re:A nice surprice wuold be:

[Anonymous Coward]

Another nice suprise would be to have posting at +1 cost a point a karma.

OMG, you're kidding aren't you? I thought it already cost 1 point of karma whenever one posted at +2. This is a fucking joke.

Re:A nice surprice wuold be:

[Sloppy]

It's especially frustrating because I really, REALLY try not to spout off unless I've got something to add to the conversation. So much for choosing quality over quantity. :-(

In all seriousness, just try this: sell out for a week or two. Just post a lot. You don't really need to "whore" yourself (i.e. write to be compatable with a popular line), just be prolific. If you're a decent writer, it's pretty much guaranteed that somebody will like your posts and mod 'em up, regardless of whatever your opinions happen to be. (You can even be pro-MS and RIAA if you want to.) You'll quickly get to 50, without any clawing or scratching (and only a minimal amount of biting).

Then after your week of this, you can go back to normal. After that, whenever you have something important that you want to say, it'll start at 2. You may occasionally get an overrated and drop to 49, but the point always comes back. I suspect that most people who get a +1 bonus, never lose it unless they work at it.

Re:A nice surprice wuold be:

[fader]

I suspect that most people who get a +1 bonus, never lose it unless they work at it.

I think that's part of the reason that you have to have such a high karma to get the bonus... the idea that you've consistently had {insightful,funny,etc.} things to say means that more than likely, you're worth listening to.

Whether or not it works in practice is another matter, of course...

Re:A nice surprice wuold be:

[elflord]

It's especially frustrating because I really, REALLY try not to spout off unless I've got something to add to the conversation. So much for choosing quality over quantity. :-(

I haven't noticed an overwhelming correlation between posts of mine that are insightful, and posts that are marked as such. One thing I have observed is a snowball effect -- posts that are marked up to 3 are likely to go up to 5.

Re:A nice surprice wuold be:

[sulli]

Too few posts, buddy! (74) I probably needed 200 posts to get the Karma bonus. Post early and often!

Re:A nice surprice wuold be:

[MindStalker]

Well, the easiest way to loose it, is to post everything at +1. Because the average post will get moderated down from 2.

Re:A nice surprice wuold be:

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought so too before I hit point 26, the FAQ isn't very clear about this but what they say is basicly that you're likely to be modded down to 1 and thus lose a karma point. Not that you automaticly lose a karma point.

Re:A nice surprice wuold be:

[Glytch]

Either that, or you've just hung around for several years getting the occasional (+1, Funny). ;)

Re:A nice surprice wuold be:

[Jeremy Erwin]

In very early releases of slashdot, one could gain karma by using the +1 bonus...

Re:A nice surprice wuold be:

[Anonymous Coward]

Fah - most moderators apparently have their thresholds set. The hardest jump is from 1 to 2. Get to 3 and you've got a 50/50 chance to hit 5.

Re:A nice surprice wuold be:

[Spy Hunter]

How about making the "Parent" link actually work? That's one of my pet peeves with Slashdot: If you click "Parent" it is usually because the parent is below your threshold and you want to read it. Does the "Parent" link acually lower your threshold so you can read the comment? No. Does it even display the parent comment if it is below your threshold? No. It dumps you at the top of the comment page with no explanation and the same threshold you had before.

Re:A nice surprice wuold be:

[Spy Hunter]

Hm. I guess this does work now. I could have sworn it didn't, maybe it was fixed. Oh well. Still, top-level comments shouldn't have "Parent" links, that's just confusing.

Re:A nice surprice wuold be:

[loosenut]

I've managed to bite, scratch, and claw my way up to 25 points, and it's a bit disappointing to find out (finally) that I have to make 40 or better to get that precious posting bonus.

I've got a question for you. I've got about 30 karma, and I get a check box on the post comment form that says "No Score +1 Bonus". I'll check it this time because this is pretty offtopic.

The question is: Does something more happen at 40 or better?

Thanks.

Re:A nice surprice wuold be:

[doug363]

I've noticed this too - I actually think it's something to do with moderators being afraid of meta-moderators. Or maybe its moderator peer pressure/herd mentality: not wanting to stand out from the crowd (even when they're anonymous).

Re:A nice surprice wuold be:

[Anonymous Coward]

This 'feature' is also really annoying when metamoderating. The 'context' link is so useless, it always takes me to the main story. Yeah, thanks guys.

Re:A nice surprice wuold be:

[Sloppy]

the idea that you've consistently had {insightful,funny,etc.} things to say means that more than likely, you're worth listening to.

No, no, no, you missed my point. It's not that they consistently had insightful/funny things to say -- it's just that they said insightful/funny things many times. There's a difference.

Consider: Poster A and Poster B, each post useless crud 90% of the time. Both are consistently not funny/insightful. But Poster A posts 10 times as often as Poster B. So let's say Poster A has a good post once per week, and Poster B has a good post every ten weeks. Poster A is going to accumulate karma ten times faster than poster B.

You don't lose karma for making flat, boring, or unobservant posts at score 1 (they just don't get marked down, because 1 really is an appropriate score), so those 9 out of 10 posts don't really cost anything. Oh sure, you can lose karma for certain types of posts (grits down pants, Natalie Portman naked and petrified, BSD is dying, etc), but that's a fringe case.

It just occurred to me that it would be pretty easy to fix the situation. All you gotta do is get rid of the "No Score +1 bonus" checkbox. Make posters use their +1 bonus, so if they post boring things, their score 2 post sticks out and gets modded down as overrated, and the lose karma. Then their karma may actually start to reflect their typical quality.

Hmm... I usually know when I'm really trying to contribute to a conversation, and when I'm just spouting off drivel. (Obviously other people would disagree with me about what's drivel and what's insightful, but what I'm talking about here is intent, not the specific details of the post.) So, based on that, I decide whether or not to use my +1 or not. Now one way to look at this, is to say that when I don't use my +1, I'm moderating myself, so try to keep my useless crap from floating to the top, "for the good of the community." That sounds like a good thing. But another way to look at it, is to say that when I don't use my +1, it's because I'm selfishly trying to reduce the risk of losing a point of karma, while still getting the satisfaction of spouting off my useless drivel.

Another much better solution would be to get rid of karma altogether. Just have people's posts start out with a score equal to the average moderated score of their last n posts.

Re:A nice surprice wuold be:

[Anonymous Coward]

The question is: Does something more happen at 40 or better?

Yes, you get to have sex with 72 beautiful virgins at karma 100!

How to get there is left as an exercise for the reader.

So when is /. going to get a facelift?

[BenLutgens]

I mean really, we've been looking at the same interface for years. Not that there's anything wrong with the current appearance, it's just time for a change.

Re:So when is /. going to get a facelift?

[the Man in Black]

Not that there's anything wrong with the current appearance, it's just time for a change.

How very Microsoft-ian of you.

Re:So when is /. going to get a facelift?

[Man of E]

I like the current interface - it's clean, presents information well and is appropriate to the spirit of the site. What do I care if they change the colors and so forth to make it look "new"? I actually think slashdot is the most aesthetic slash site I've seen.
The design of the interface is almost intrinsic to slashcode, because it was designed to present exactly this kind of news and boards. What would you like the interface to look like?

Re:So when is /. going to get a facelift?

[Anonymous Coward]

after hearing all this praise, I can conclude you obviously have never ran thru the YRO section, aka, the "shit brown and pass yellow" color scheme.

Re:So when is /. going to get a facelift?

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah. windows XP has got some really nice UI features. maybe you could make everything more.. round, fuzzy and generally looking like it designed for the retarded?

Re:So when is /. going to get a facelift?

[guinness_duck]

Ooo, maybe we could make it bright pink and green! Yeah! That's the ticket! Make it really bright! So bright that it burns out that nosey guy in the next cubes retinas! Hah! That'll teach him to wear sunglassed indoors at all times.

Where was I going with this?

Re:So when is /. going to get a facelift?

[Jeremy Erwin]

Please-- no funky windows XP themes. I've recently downloaded IE 6.0, and found it to "fuzzy." Maybe I'm supposed to squint and think that the blue smears/drop shadows are supposed to be pretty?

Re:So when is /. going to get a facelift?

[xanadu-xtroot.com]

BSD's SIte kicks ass??

Jeezus H. Krist! I'm color blind and it STILL looks bad. I'll take /. over that any day.

Re:So when is /. going to get a facelift?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, you're supposed to turn them off. What's wrong with 'small icons' and 'no text labels'? There are no drop shadows of any sort, and instead of a 16 color palette they are 256. If you just keep the 'back', 'forward', 'stop' and 'reload' navigation icons you won't even have to look at them, you'll just know where they are.

Re:So when is /. going to get a facelift?

[scrytch]

I rather like the slashdot look -- except for those awful "themed" color selections. Apache stories are the worst, it's like bisque and mauve. I hate to say it, but "skins" (oh dear god, just strike me dead) are really the answer here... Slash obviously has some support for them, c.f. slashdot lite. I personally think skinning is the most useless interface boondoggle that actually detracts from real interface usability (distracts anyway), but it would seem to be a necessary feature point for a good blog.

Question...

[EnglishTim]

I'd like to be able to put in an URL something like

http://slashdot.org/frontpage.pl?commentthresh=5 &s tyle=light

and have it give me slashdot in 'light' format, with comments in the stories as 5 & over only.

The reason for this is that I want to get Slashdot on Avantgo, but obviously I have different viewing requierments on my Palm than I have on my desktop.

Is there any way of doing this with Slash 2.2?
I know there wasn't in the old Slash 1.x ...

Re:Question...

[michael]

http://slashdot.org/palm/ doesn't do it for you?

Re:Question...

[crumley]

Well, the obvious answer is to have a separate slashdot user ID for reading off your Palm, and set that user to read in light mode. It shouldn't hurt too much having an extra user since, I would guess you wouldn't want to do that much posting from the Palm anyway. Of course, I don't know enough about Avantgo to know if this answer makes sense.

Re:Question...

[EnglishTim]

... Just what I was looking for!

Thanks, Michael.

Re:Question...

[Xaje]

I'm not sure if I understood your description, but are you looking for something like this?

I use it on my palm and it works out pretty well.

Re:Question...

[woggo]

Speaking of "light" mode, here are a couple of questions/tirades:

* I've used light mode for a long time. One of my favorite things about it was that I didn't have to deal with a lot of the extraneous crap that shows up in "regular mode". That seems to be changing, though. Now light mode nags me to metamoderate (which it didn't do before) and now also features that stupid, Mad-Libs-like "this page generated by a <collective-noun> of <adjective> <noun>s for <user>" Not only are those both completely useless, but they take up enough screen space so that I can only see one story. I have no problem with <miniscule font>logged in as "user"</miniscule font>, but the total lack of regard for vertical space in "light mode" is irritating. If these are going to be the norm, please let me disable them in my prefs.

* Why doesn't light mode include link tags? It seems really dense that "putting mad libs and metamod nagging in light mode" was a higher priority than "putting link tags in light mode", especially since most text-mode browsers support link tags.

One last thing (that I realized when previewing this comment): Is it too much to ask to have slashdot convert angle braces to html entities (i.e. lt and rt) when posting in "Plain old Text"?

Re:Question...

[AntiFreeze]

This is what I use. The source code is available. Quite helpful. Enjoy.

Re:Question...

[Anonymous Coward]

You are in the minority, and thus, do not matter.

Re:Question...

[Pope Slackman]

Looks like it'd be pretty cool...
If I could fucking use it!

It appears (on a background of absolutely vile SPAM-pink, even) that he banned my entire subnet.
Why the hell do people feel the need to ban entire goddamn subnets because of one misbehaving IP?

C-X C-S

Re:Question...

[Anonymous Coward]

Because it's too much trouble to determine if it's a dialup/dhcp pool. Much easier to just ban the whole thing. I'm running some low-mid traffic servers (web, ftp, irc, etc) on my personal machine, and I don't care to put up with assholes, so I just ban a huge subnet for a couple of days.

Re:Question...

[Mr_Silver]

Unfortunately the site IP was banned because he was running an old version of the script and failed to update it despite numerious email requests.

There are alternatives - check them out at http://www.custard.org/~richard/avantslash.

On a side note, I'm desperately looking for people who can host a public avantslash site in non-UK locations. If you can help, please let me know at the email address on the URL above.

First Post

[JohnHegarty]

I there any plans to stop this first post c##p in the code. I have not looked at the code, but i know there is some type of lameness filter.

Re:First Post

[Anonymous Coward]

"I there any plans to stop this first post c##p in the code"

Yes, I hear that Taco plans to introduce the following snippet into Slash:

if(comment.number() == 1)
{
post.abort();
}

ie. anybody trying to post a first comment to a story will be rejected, only the second, third etc. posts will be allowed.

HTH.

Re:First Post

[liquidsin]

let's tweak that code a bit...

if(comment.number() == 1)
{
post.abort();
}
else {
comment.number ++;
}

there, that should take care of all lameness on this site

Re:First Post

[ethereal]

That's what moderation points are for, and also why the comments in an article don't number from 1 anymore. Between the two of those, I can't think the last time I've read a first post (that said it was a first post, at least).

Re:First Post

[Anonymous Coward]

k... both of you are code-retarded!


if( comment.number() == 1 )
{
post.abort();
comment.number++;
}

// rest of code...

Re:First Post

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm pretty sure the error was intentional.

Re:First Post

[dakoda]

in reading very fresh articles, first posts are still present.

case in point:
the transmeta article of yesterday revealed a first post message (before mine, obviously) for a while. now its gone though (was as of yesterday afternoon)

so, i guess you're just not reading /. enough =)

Re:First Post

[liquidsin]

and you are apparently humour-retarded ;)
the error was there on purpose - basically making it so that comment.number is always 1, thus aborting all posts. Thereby fulfilling my original intent to keep the site free of lameness. Har har har. Of course, the joke is lost when you have to go the long way around to explain it. *sigh*

Re:First Post

[jeffehobbs]

Second Post!

~jeff

Re:First Post

[ethereal]

I'm not hitting the stories when they are first posted, usually. Unless I have a comment to make myself, I don't read a story until it has ~30 comments because moderation hasn't really kicked in until then.

I don't see the point of a first post when the commend id number is not 1, but then again I never saw the point in the first place :)

Re:First Post

[Anonymous Coward]

Plus, you didn't put the line numbers in.

10 IF POSTNUMBER > 1 THEN GOTO 20 ELSE GOTO 30
20 POSTNUMBER = POSTNUMBER + 1
30 GOSUB 50; REM FIRE THE OUTPUT ROUTINE
40 END
50 REM THIS IS WHERE THE OUTPUT ROUTINE SHOULD GO

"A few surprises"

[BarefootClown]

Any chacne one of thoes sprises could be a web itnerface to aspel?

Re:"A few surprises"

[NerdSlayer]

Why is this modded funny? I recently wrote a message posting interface that uses Aspell for Lyris ListManager. In Perl, nonetheless.

Re:"A few surprises"

[big.ears]

Maybe its an automated database query that checks to see if the story has been posted already.

Re:"A few surprises"

[SCHecklerX]

I've actually implemented that in a system I wrote at work. I'd be happy to release the code...

What it does is if you hit 'spellcheck', each misspelled word becomes a drop down list of the suggestions. You then pick the proper spelling at each of these (or leave them alone if they are already right) and when you submit, all replacements are made. It's really very slick.

The drawback with the way I wrote it at the moment is the fork to ispell though. I think there is a perl module for ispell which would work better, I just didn't have the time to research it.

Re:"A few surprises"

[Anonymous Coward]

it's funny because the slashdot editors (especially Taco) can't spell for beans.

Re:"A few surprises"

[quinto2000]

I think that it must be the intentional mis-spellings in the post, to state the obvious. All the more evidence that us modern computer users can't detect mis-spellings at all without our spell checkers.

Re:"A few surprises"

[Anonymous Coward]

And for a more office-like behaviour check out Yahoo Mail's spell checker. I've studied their java script and rewrote it from scratch (improved on it a bit too IMO). It's a pretty nifty system.

I was building a web mail for my company, and I have to admit, as far as these things go, Hotmail is pretty poor. Its filters suck ass (yahoo mail has a better solution). The spell-checker isn't as nice, etc.

Add sub-categories to main page

[crow]

I want to be able to set my preferences to include stories that only appear in certain sub-categories (Science and Ask Slashdot) on the main page as if they were full-fledged main stories.

Re:Add sub-categories to main page

[pudge]

You can. Well, you can include every sectional-only story on the main page, that is not otherwise excluded. Pretty close to the same thing.

Karma Kap

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is something that sort of irks me. My karma is capped, not that it is important or anything... but get this...

I post a comment with a score of one. Four moderators come along and think that the comment ought to be at a five. Three more moderators come along and they think that it should be at a two. I just got screwed out of three points, when I really should have stayed at 50.

50 + 4 = 50 (karma cap)
50 - 3 = 47

I just lost three points when in reality I should have gained one. This sucks.

Re:Karma Kap

[VA Software]

Karma doesn't matter - it's just a number in a database. There's no practical difference between 47 and 50.

And if you really are that insightful, interesting or funny then you'll soon get them back.

Re:Karma Kap

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll second that. Karma doesn't really matter, but the limit is just such a stupid idea. Further, shouldn't "overrated" be the fault of the moderator, not the original poster?

Re:Karma Kap

[sporty]

Its karma for Christ's sake, not money. You don't get any smarter, stronger or better looking because your karma is higher. To boot, you are well above the +1 bonus mark. That's like complaining you lost a point off of the SAT's so instead of 1390, you got 1380. The difference is negligable .

Re:Karma Kap

[Calle Ballz]

I agree with the overrated. Also the "Redundant" moderation needs to go. I have only seen this used correctly a few times. Most of the time I will see an informative post that's near the top modded as Reduntant... yet near the bottom, a similar post will be modded as Informative. I think whoever is moderating needs to learn to look at which they have on: Oldest First or Newest First.

Re:Karma Kap

[Pinball Wizard]

Actually its more like complaining about getting a 1590 on the SAT due to a glitch in the system when you should have gotten a 1600.

That would piss me off too.

Re:Karma Kap

[Anonymous Coward]

The difference is that you can get karma back.

Re:Karma Kap

[jiheison]

You could also re-take the SAT. But, why should you have to go through that hassle because of a loophole in the scoring system?

Re:Karma Kap

[Shagg]

How many colleges will turn you down because you ONLY got a 1590 on the SAT? In reality, it makes absolutely no difference, so why do you care?

Just the same, what real difference does it make if you have 50 karma or 500 karma. After the +1 bonus at 20 something, the rest is meaningless, so why do you care?

Re:Karma Kap

[sporty]

You'll get over it. The difference is negligable. I've had people excuse thigns like waranties just because i'm a day over. Its all negligable.

Re:Karma Kap

[Anonymous Coward]

christ. of all the things to complain about!

if you are paying that much attention to your comments' moderation and its effect of your karma, you seriously need to find something more productive to do with your time and energy.

Re:Karma Kap

[enrico_suave]

The karma itself does not matter.. you are correct... The parent poster was identifying a "bug" in the code or a flaw in the design of the system/implementation... or more likely a missed/overlooked requirement =P

E.

Re:Karma Kap

[RetroGeek]

Bragging rights!

Maybe your karma should be shown right after your UI, You know:

by UI (49)

Re:Karma Kap

[Anonymous Coward]

Also redundant is entirely to do with context of the comment, which is impossible to understand from the metamod page.

Re:Karma Kap

[Anonymous Coward]

Thats a very good idea.

People that post a lot of news or that do really nice comments should be recognized.

Do that USERname ( karma: xxxxx RATED :) )

I AM AN ASSHOLE

OK, spit it out Taco...

[FortKnox]

which will include subscriptions

Ok.. enough hinting at subscriptions. Lets get it out in the open. Looks like its a shoe-in, so tell us the current plan, please...

Re:OK, spit it out Taco...

[Anonymous Coward]

NOT redundant

Kill funny messages

[crow]

I'm still waiting for the option to recalculate the point value for articles based on my own preferences. I want funny to count as +0.

Re:Kill funny messages

[Nick's Name]

I agree, why would we want to include humour? I'd much rather read stories while frowning and pouting. Laughing and smiling is for suckers and 'oh yeah, HUMAN BEINGS!! Don't be such a dumb ass.

Re:Kill funny messages

[Anonymous Coward]

I don' think we can mod things up as funny anymore....

Re:Kill funny messages

[Dagheti]

I would appreciate a +1 irony mod.

Re:Kill funny messages

[ralmeida]

LOL! Someone mod this +0, Funny!

Re:Kill funny messages

[mshiltonj]

I'm still waiting for the option to recalculate the point value for articles based on my own preferences. I want funny to count as +0.

I'd like funny to count as -1. But then, with the way posts are moderated around here, no posts would get above 4.

Re:Kill funny messages

[ethereal]

It looks like a greater-than-infinite amount of people already have :)

Re:Kill funny messages

[Anonymous Coward]

It's "open source". Get to work.

Re:Kill funny messages

[T-Lex]

I agree, why would we want to include humour? I'd much rather read stories while frowning and pouting. Laughing and smiling is for suckers and 'oh yeah, HUMAN BEINGS!! Don't be such a dumb ass.

Why was this rated off-topic?

Re:Kill funny messages

[Anonymous Coward]

You should know that your usage of the word "ousted" here is incorrect.

Also, you might think about changing "people" to "souls," though, I guess that's not required.

Re:Kill funny messages

[Anonymous Coward]

It's best not to think about it. You'll only give yourself a headache.

Re:Kill funny messages

[krow]

That is somewhere with one of the next couple of items I will toss in. Expect it sometime in the next couple of weeks (I have other changes that I want to go in at the same time).

Re:Kill funny messages

[tswinzig]

I'm still waiting for the option to recalculate the point value for articles based on my own preferences. I want funny to count as +0.

And I find myself on the other end of the spectrum. I'd like to be able to view just the highly-rated funny comments...

Re:Kill funny messages

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe you two just don't get most of the humour.

Re:Kill funny messages

[ftobin]

I'm still waiting for the option to recalculate the point value for articles based on my own preferences. I want funny to count as +0.

I find it hilariously ironic that I and many others would have never seen this message if it hadn't been modded +5. By getting people going directly against the author's proposal he get more people to see it.

Re:Kill funny messages

[abelsson]

thus illustrating the point why funny should be 0 or -1.

Re:Kill funny messages

[Anonymous Coward]

Silence, geekboy.

Re:Kill funny messages

[Corporate Gadfly]

Its true... I don't come to slashdot to catch up on funny punch lines. I would much rather go here. Lately, /. has become a place for people to tickle their funny bone. Its a contest for who can come up with the funniest response? I already see people lining up to repond to this post in the funniest possible way.

Re:Kill funny messages

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh lighten up, for fuck sake.

Not funny, but there it is.

Re:Kill funny messages

[aka-ed]

The problem here is the stuff that strikes moderators as "funny" seldom strikes me the same. I usualy find more humor in stuff labelled Flame, Troll, Redundant, and (like your own post) Off-Topic.

Re:Kill funny messages

[aka-ed]

Correct. The most annoying thing about the "funny" up-mod is when someone makes a subtle, sly, sardonic comment; someone responds to it by saying the exact same thing, except they've dressed it in a clown suit and given it a bicycle horn. The second poster gets modded to 3 or even 5, Funny; the initial poster gets modded down, off-topic.

This is why engineering students need some liberal arts background.

Re:Kill funny messages

[odaiwai]

New mod options:
-1: Innacurate information
-2: Just plain Wrong
-3: Poster on Crack

dave

Re:Kill funny messages

[Anonymous Coward]

Some new mod categories are definitely needed. I all too often see +Informative posts and are totally wrong. A -1 Misinformed/Wrong options would be excellent for those times when you can't respond directly to correct (because you're already moderated the particular thread).

...Slash code has a...

[ekrout]

...Slash code has a variety of new improvements for users and administrators alike!

For example, the new SlashTag &ltgoatsex>, which saves you the tedium of having to do all that HREF and HTTP:// stuff.

Re:...Slash code has a...

[Anonymous Coward]

That comment made you roll on the floor and laugh your ass off? Hot shit, boy, get your comments into perspective! That was the least funny thing on this page. Dumbass noob.

Re:...Slash code has a...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a tragic waste, really. The creator allocates us one ass each per lifetime, and he wastes his on a lame goatse line. It didn't even have a link.

Mirror...

[Anonymous Coward]

...here

How about an NNTP gateway? I'll gladly subscribe.

[Dast]

Taco, I've posted this before, but I will post it again. I would be willing to pay for an ad-free, subscription based NNTP gateway to slashdot. I think something in the range of $5-10 US / month or maybe $50 US for a whole year would be reasonable, as long as there aren't any ads and it works with GNUS. (I know GNUS has a /. backend, but it sucks, sorry. I don't want to worry about parsing html to get the content into GNUS.)

Think about it, cause there isn't anything else you could offer me that I would pay for.

No Score +1 Bonus broken

[crow]

The option to not add +1 to your posts is broken. I've used it on another post, and it still came in as a score of 2 without moderation.

Re:No Score +1 Bonus broken

[sulli]

Is it? Testing

Re:No Score +1 Bonus broken

[sulli]

No it's not (see above post)

Improvement suggestions:

[Anonymous Coward]

* Lose the lameness filter. It is lame. Why? Because it
a) doesn't deter trolls but
b) does annoy legitimate posters.

* Separate karma moderation from comment moderation, eg. a plagiarizing post could be moderated interesting, yet the poster's karma could be modded down.

* Kill the CowboyNeal cop-out poll option. It hasn't been funny for, oh I dunno, about a year or so.

* Add year to (at least some of) the dates. Currently the only way to determine the year in which a given story or a post was made is to look at the URL, which is just plain dumb.

* Improve the search. Finer details of this left as an excersise.

* Add a link to stories that leads to the "daily issue" of Slashdot when the story appeared. Currently the only way to see the full Slashdot for a given day is, if I'm not mistaken, to keep clicking on the "yesterday's issue" link or hack the URL.

* Expand the hall of fame to cover more top stories, say 30 or so, ten is too little.

Other than that I'm pretty happy with Slashdot. :)

(I like the fact how users who aren't logged in don't see sigs anymore, the ability of the Slashdot crowd to generate good sigs AND UPDATE THEM has always been a bit, um, shitty.)

Re:Improvement suggestions:

[VA Software]

Add year to (at least some of) the dates.

Login.
Go to the homepage preferences.
Choose a time/date format with a 4 digit year.
Voila.

Re:Improvement suggestions:

[Anonymous Coward]

"Login."

Ah, but I like my Slashdot unlogged... no, seriously, I access /. thru public terminals at my University, and typing in uid/pwd is a pain.

Besides, any random visitor is not likely to log in if s/he is confused by the fact that the year is *nowhere* to be seen.

(But props on spelling "voila" correctly, even if it's lacking the ''. ;)

Re:Improvement suggestions:

[Anonymous Coward]

"Add year to (at least some of) the dates. Currently the only way to determine the year in which a given story or a post was made is to look at the URL, which is just plain dumb."

Well, he tried, but he kept on getting '19101'...

-RN

Re:Improvement suggestions:

[rif42]

I agree that the UI should default to use year indication in its default date format - without it is a mess when searching old articles.

Preferable using a universal understandable date format, which do not leaves you wonder if month or date are written first.

yyyy/MM/dd hh:mm, e.g. 2001/11/07 19:25
or
dd month yyyy hh:mm, e.g. November 7 2001 19:25

Re:Improvement suggestions:

[mosch]

Lose the gzip filter too. Testing how well a comment compresses is a fucking retarded way to check if it might contain valid content. On a number of occasions I've attempted to post code to do something useful, that was related to the story or a parent comment, and it got rejected because it compressed too well.

The fact of the matter is that most of the filters do not stop trolls, who are willing to attempt to post an obnoxious piece of ascii art multiple times, but do not stop legitimate posters who just want to share a contribution with the community. After all, who here has a job and a life, and time to refine their messages to make the slashdot retardo-filters pass their content along successfully.

I'm so glad to see that somebody else has realized that the slashdot auto-filters are useless, annoying, poorly written pieces of software that merely detract from the slashdot community.

Re:Improvement suggestions:

[elflord]

On a number of occasions I've attempted to post code to
do something useful, that was related to the story or a parent comment, and it got rejected because
it compressed too well.

In fact the "lameness" filter does a fantastic job at filtering out code.
I've had the same problem, and I'd rather live with the ASCII art. People who care can always browse at +1 ...

Re:Improvement suggestions:

[Skyshadow]

I second the Cowboy Neil thing. Maybe that could be a subscriber bonus: deletion of the Cowboy Neil option in polls and result tabulation.

If you really, really want to get people to pay, you could also allow only subscribers to filter Katz (you know, I used to be a supporter of that poser?). That seems a little mean, though.

Re:Improvement suggestions:

[David Greene]

Lose the lameness filter. It is lame.

Amen to that! I find it incredibly funny that a system created by folks who decry internet filters is built on the same flawed assumptions.

I agree with others who've said the +1 bonus should go away or at least be disabled by default. I'm sick of turning that thing off all the time. I want my posts to stand on their own merit, not on that of past posts.

Why are karma points tracked anyway? Is it used for anything besides the +1 bonus and moderator priviledges? Why do we need to see a number?

Like others, I want the option to set point values for moderation categories.

Re:Improvement suggestions:

[jamie]

Actually the gzip filter is a really clever way to determine whether you're posting ascii art or repetition.

It's been eased up a couple of weeks ago and now catches very little except ascii art. It used to catch comments posted in the mode "Code" pretty frequently but that's been fixed as well.

If anyone has good examples of genuine attempted comment text that trips the compression filter, email it to me and I'll see about fixing it.

Re:Improvement suggestions:

[Anonymous Coward]

how about the fact that the lameness filter is, by definition, censorware??

The editors all seem to be against it, but when they run it on their own site, it's just a way to stop trolls and ascii art.

The hypocrisy is stenching, from michael and his handling of censorware.org, to this "filter".

At least you guys should own up to it, and censorware is ok from some cases.

Plus the fact that editors mod comments is a travesty of this stupid moderation system.

Re:Improvement suggestions:

[Anonymous Coward]

I have been around just long enough that I am starting to get used to the 'stenching' hypocrisy. It is, after all, all around: Microsoft gets derided for having to release FixPacks (service packs?); Linux gets top billing every time a new kernel (which often is naught more than a fix pack) comes out. Copying MP3s and other media is fine because the underlying copyright laws are broken, but infringing copyright by violating the GPL is bad. Not to mention the hypocrisy of trying to jibe censorship here with the abuse that censorware takes when (say) libraries try to install porn filters. The editors here are self-serving hypocrites and chauvinists who are too blind to see the inherent contradictions between the viewpoints they espouse and the actions they undertake.

Re:Improvement suggestions:

[Krilomir]

You can filter Katz (or some of the other editors) in your /. preferences. You can filter topics and sections too - you should go have a look some day =)

Re:Improvement suggestions:

[DavidJA]

* Lose the lameness filter. It is lame. Why? Because it a) doesn't deter trolls but b) does annoy legitimate posters.

There seems to be a fundamental flaw in the troll moderation system.

Consider this:
If you create a troll account, you can post around 10 trolls in one 'session' before you get modded down enough to get stopped by the isTroll() check. Then you will not be able to post for 3 days or so.

After this, all of your posts are at -1, and hence will generally never get modded down again. Therefore you are free to post as many trolls as you want, without fear of being modded down again!

What is needed is either a rule that if you post x comments at -1, and none of them get modded up, then you are deemed to be a troll again, and are stopped by the isTroll() check.

OR

For the moderators, if you mod a post that defaulted to -1 down one, making it unreadable you should not loose a mod point. This way there is an incentive for the mods to clean up the trolls.

Re:Improvement suggestions:

[Anonymous Coward]

You are a wise man. You'd think that such a prominent website could attract at least one editor with a brain.

Re:Improvement suggestions:

[YKnot]

ISO8601 defines an international standard format for date/time which avoids some of the issues of other formats, like wrong sort order and ambiguity. It is summarized here: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/iso-time.html

Re:Improvement suggestions:

[mobets]

yes, but if the only way you could filter Katz was to pay, many might pay for just to get that option.

Re:Improvement suggestions:

[mobets]

um... it looked right in the preview, where did my closing tag go?

Re:Improvement suggestions:

[mcjulio]

MMMMMM. My my, that was a delicious closing !

Re:Improvement suggestions:

[cduffy]

Something is only censorship when imposed by the gov't, or by any private party upon material which they don't have rights to.

If I choose to filter my own web site, I have every right to do that. I don't think anyone here claims otherwise.

When the government forces me to filter my web site, that's wrong -- and I think most people here would agree with that too.

This position is not hypocritical.

Re:Improvement suggestions:

[denshi]

Jamie, I think you're the best editor on this site, but your response is the lamest I've seen you write yet.

"Actually the gzip filter is a really clever way..."

This line angers me b/c it is just a one-line unsupported dismissal of a widely held viewpoint. That may have been the design intention of the lameness filter. That may be what it looks like to you from up there. But down here in the posters' trenches, the consensus is that it sucks ass. Way too many people catch the lameness filter for a short subject, or trying to be lyrical, or just having too much whitespace. I have caught it several times, and after playing with the text for a while to evade the filter, I just give up. Most people I know do. Email it to you? Sure, right after pouring one's energies into writing someing insightful and on-topic, a tiny block of perl tells one to piss off, one should feel motivated to email bug reports to a group that has grown continually less responsive to user input?? Right, he said.

Why the continuing trend to offload debugging onto users who didn't ask for the 'improvement' in the first place? Why keep pushing code onto a hugely popular community site that only serves in Generalissimo Taco's war on trolls, dadaists, and the generally absurd? Why a gzip "filter"?? There are decades of research into fast algorithms for determining statistics on bodies of text -- any one of them, many public domain, would be an intelligent tool against crapflooders. But a 'compress and size check' line instead?? That's the worst kind of lax unfeeling code, that wields a brutal metric without regard for corollary damage. ("Rob code", I've heard it called, but "MS code" is more typifying of that style of program design.)

I generally don't rant. You are running a valuable site at no monetary cost to us. But /. continues to become a place where trenchant technical analysis is unwelcome, master geeks ignore the pablum, and Taco & the trolls continue their little war with the rest of us caught in the minefields that they lay. Every day I feel a greater desire for the /. of 1998. I say, bring back Chips and Dips.

Re:Improvement suggestions:

[jamie]

"But down here in the posters' trenches, the consensus is that it sucks ass. Way too many people catch the lameness filter for a short subject..."

It sucks ass to have to type more than one character for a subject?

I log every instance of the compress filter doing its thing. In the last 20,000 comments or so that have been posted to Slashdot, it's blocked exactly two attempts to post because of a too-compressible subject. Both times the poster could easily have added about one character and it would have gone through.

And of the last 20,000 successfully posted comments, there have been exactly 50 blocked attempts because of compression on the text. (Note that two blocked previews followed by a successful post, which is typically what happens, counts for 2 of that 50.) The blocked posts are mostly things like the same link pasted in over and over, or one that was 23K worth of "... testtesttestesttesttestesttesttestest..."

Big chunks of whitespace look too much like ascii art and are frequently caught (where "frequently" means "well under 1%"). The solution is simple: trim out the whitespace. Sooner or later I'll get around to a feature that lets the Slash code trim it out automatically if you ask.

As I say, the code changed a couple of weeks ago, becoming much better. I am always very interested to hear about its failures, please, submit bug reports and let me know exactly what legitimate comment you were stopped from posting. But be precise. I have the debug logs, so vague anecdotes aren't convincing. And in this case, you're complaining about stuff that has already been addressed. Get with the times :)

Re:Improvement suggestions:

[An Ominous Coward]

Your definition of censorship is totally wrong. I think you're confusing the definition of censhorship with the application and scope of the First Amendment.

Re:Improvement suggestions:

[Anonymous Coward]

So, next time that someone on a TV interview says shit, but it gets bleeped out, remember it's not censorship. Wee's just protecting the youngns'

Re:Improvement suggestions:

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/iso-time.html

Wow, that's so... common sense. Amazing an actual ISO pronouncement was needed. Nothing annoys me more than seeing dates in yyyy-dd-mm format without realising it, which is absolutely retarded, I mean, does it make sense to ANYONE? Who the fuck writes dates like that?!?

Re:Improvement suggestions:

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, I just realized, yes, there is something that annoys me more than yyyy-dd-mm. It's dd-mm-yyyy or even worse, mm-dd-yyyy. Some people just should not be allowed to breed.

Re:Improvement suggestions:

[cduffy]

Main Entry: censorship
Pronunciation: 'sen(t)-s&r-"ship
Function: noun
Date: circa 1591
1 a : the institution, system, or practice of censoring b : the actions or practices of censors; especially : censorial control exercised repressively
2 : the office, power, or term of a Roman censor
3 : exclusion from consciousness by the psychic censor

Note the focus on censorship as an insitutional or repressive behaviour. A private entity, granted no additional (govt-enforced) rights over another, can hardly be seen as institutionalizing its practices of selecting which information it presents, nor may it repress others (who, as this entity has no power of gov't, may freely publish or obtain their information through alternate means).

Re:Improvement suggestions:

[Slash Privacy Watch]

Something is only censorship when imposed by the gov't, or by any private party upon material which they don't have rights to.

What you're missing is that no one has accused Slashdot of Censorship; therefore you are refuting an assertion that has not been made. The assertion is that Slashdot contains Censorware. The difference between these terms is vast.

Jamie McCarthy of the Censorware Project defines Censorware here as:
"software which is designed to prevent another person from sending or receiving information (usually on the web)."

I hate to break it to you, but the lameness filter is designed to prevent a person from sending information on the web. So are the negative moderation subnet bans, account bans, and IP bans. I'm not saying that they're not a good idea; they may actually improve the signal to noise ratio. However, to remain objective we must accept that all of these components meet the technical definition of Censorware, and must be referred to as such.

The anti-abuse mechanisms in Slash 2.2.0 are probably the most sophisticated "selective Censorware" mechanisms available in a weblog product, and they're going to a be large "value-added" in this release for administrators everywhere. Whether users will embrace them as well remains to be seen.

Re:Improvement suggestions:

[An Ominous Coward]

the institution, system, or practice of censoring

What about this confuses you? That's an "or" in there, not an "and". If you run a forum and delete someone's posts, you are censoring. You are a censor. You are engaging in censorship. It's your right to do that, but that doesn't change what it is.

Re:Improvement suggestions:

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not the original poster, but I appreciate deeply your thorough response. Keep up the good work!

Re:Improvement suggestions:

[cduffy]

You presume a rather expansive definition of "censoring", such that it may be done by a private entity without enforced support; otherwise, the "or" is irrelevant.

censoring
n 1: counterintelligence achieved by banning or deleting any information of value to the enemy [syn: censorship, security review]
2: deleting parts of publications or correspondence or theatrical performances [syn: censorship]

As none of these apply quite correctly, let's turn to the synonym of censorship:

Censorship \Cen"sor*ship\, n. The office or power of a censor; as, to stand for a censorship. --Holland.

The press was not indeed at that moment under a general censorship. --Macaulay.

Here, it's quite clear that being a censor requires an office or other form of empowerment; thus, that a private individual controlling the content which he or she publishes does not qualify.

In any event, even *were* the practice which Slashdot engages in censorship, it is most certainly less harmful than its less voluntary form; hence, I can see a reasonable entity (ie. the Slashdot editorial staff) believing the former to be benign and the latter to be harmful.

Re:Improvement suggestions:

[cduffy]

Oops -- you're right. I misread the post I was replying to. Mea culpa.

Re:Improvement suggestions:

[An Ominous Coward]

From m-w.com:

censoring: to examine in order to suppress or delete anything considered objectionable.

And members of the Slashdot editorial staff are being quite hypocritical, because they have stated that even "voluntary" censorship is wrong. Michael and Jamie have frequently spoken against "censorware" -- programs designed by private companies for use by parents and organizations for voluntary censorship. That is why their support for censorship on Slashdot, a private organization that has the right to censor, is hypocritical.

nntp

[stevens]

Now that we've got the Fry tree out of the way, its off to work on Zoidberg (which will include subscriptions, killfiles, and a few surprises)

Wow. In just a few short years they'll have implemented....usenet!

Just kidding, I know there are differences. Still, an nntp gateway would allow people to use their own clients, and those killfiles.

Re:nntp

[Jason Earl]

There already is a Gnus client for Slashdot. It allows you to use Gnus scorefiles and everything. Sometimes I wonder if Emacs hackers belong to a totally different species.

Re:nntp

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. In just a few short years they'll have implemented....usenet!

I've always been unimpressed by web-based forums. A while ago I wrote a perl script that imports /. comments into my local Hamster news server so I can read them with any newsreader. It's strictly read-only (can't post or moderate this way), but it works. It's nice to use real, flexible scoring rather than being stuck with whatever interface the site owners choose to implement.

Re:nntp

[Anonymous Coward]

Sometimes I wonder if Emacs hackers belong to a totally different species.

They are. I believe they are referred to as Homosapiens Emacsus in the relevant scientific literature, right along with Homosapiens Vius and Homosapiens Cantspellforcrapus.

Does post anonymously work?

[crow]

I hope posting anonymously still works. We'll see real soon.

Not the only game in town...

[ajuda]

There are several different packages which are easier for individuals to configure. PHP Nuke comes to mind. Could anyone tell me how, or if, slashcode's difficult setup procedure is mitigated by administration or scalability?

Re:Not the only game in town...

[Anonymous Coward]

Not at all. I can tell you that PHPNuke produces about the most unmaintainable HTML spread over dozens of files though. Does that help?

Re:Not the only game in town...

[Dracos]

PHP-Nuke has been closed again by its author. This has caused quite an uproar in the *Nuke community.

PostNuke, a fork from PHP-Nuke, is rapidly gaining popularity. I've been hacking at it for a while, and it's a very nice system.

Badly formed tag

[wiredog]

Should be

Re:Badly formed tag

[gaudior]

Right. Like Slash has ever cared about correctly formed HTML.

Anonymous posting fails

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, oh. This is a serious problem.

If this comes through as anonymous, then it's something weird with Mozilla build 2001110610 (I just switched to my old Netscape 4.7 to test).

Of course, many have complained about Anonymous Cowards, but this certainly isn't the solution.

Slashddot slashdot?

[snoozerdss]

Could this be? slashdot effect on shashdot?

Mozilla issue

[crow]

This seems to be an issue with Mozilla. I was running build 2001110610 for Linux. It was apparently ignoring the check boxes when submitting the form.

That's a nasty bug.

Re:Mozilla issue

[Anonymous Coward]

more proof that open source software cant compete with a real browser.

Re:Mozilla issue

[Anonymous Coward]

Hopefully it can be fixed before the other 14 Mozilla users get bitten by it.

Re:Mozilla issue

[crumley]

Yep, mozilla builds since 20011102 have had some nasty form bugs - they make posting to slashdot quite interesting - take a look at mozillazine's build bar comments for details. Hmm, it looks like the bugs were supposed to be fixed for today's builds. Strange that you're still seeing them. For now I'm sticking with 20011030.

Security?

[Krieger]

Have the passwords for accounts been moved to a secure format yet? And along similar lines, what about password resets?

I remember that these were pending problems from a while ago.

My biggest wish

[Reality Master 101]

How about comment editing capability??? There's nothing worse than posting a comment, even using preview, and realize you screwed it up somehow.

It might even be interesting to add a "previous version" capability. Just stick the message in some other dump table and have a different screen to dump them out.

The journals have editing capability, so I don't see why normal messages can't do the same.

Re:My biggest wish

[jiheison]

It seems like the ability to post something and then go back and edit it into something completely different would invite confusion and abuse.

Perhaps a better solution would be an option to append comments to a post, after it has been submitted. This would be an improvement to posting my sheepish corrections in a reply to my own comment.

Re:My biggest wish

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember that on an Oracomm BBS back in the olden times the person who originated a discussion thread could at any time delete his post and all the comments added to it would disappear.

One night when I was bored I captured an entire long discussion that I had started, ran it through the 'jive' filter, deleted the orignal thread and resubmitted the whole jived text capture as if it were the orignal discussion. In effect I ran everybody else's comments through jive.

Hacks like that are worth living for.

Yes, my account got deleted (a few days later, when I refused to apologize).

Re:My biggest wish

[FortKnox]

Absolutely!

Karma whore quickly to get +5 score, then fix all your links to goatse.

Trolling would be more artistic this way, but slashdot would die of abuse.

Re:My biggest wish

[sam@caveman.org]

excellent idea. i agree that being able to go back and edit your posts is a BAD idea. that is what preview is for. however there are dozens of 'oops, i meant to say' comments all over the place on nearly every story, and being able to append to the story (much like Ebay allows you to append info but not change what is already there) would be good.

-sam

Re:My biggest wish

[Reality Master 101]

I have to admit, that this is a great point. Being able to edit the posts would be open to huge abuse.

Even appending comments would be pretty open game -- as another poster pointed out, the trolls could put up a normal post, and then just add "Oh! by the way, I forgot this link (which is goatse.cx).

Annoying. I think you're probably right that we're better off the way it is now.

Re:My biggest wish

[Shagg]

The problem with this is if you could change your comment after it was moderated. Say you post something intelligent and it gets moded to +5. Than you could go back and edit it to say "First Post" or something , and basically get around the whole moderation system.

If comment editing is put in place, at least make it so that you can only edit the comment if it has not been moderated yet. This will allow people to make quick corrections right after they post, but hopefully avoid the abusive implications of an edit feature.

Re:My biggest wish

[Reality Master 101]

The problem with this is if you could change your comment after it was moderated.

Hm; this gives rise to another idea: What if you could edit it only until it was moderated or comments were added to it?

Re:My biggest wish

[tb3]

Now that makes sense. I post to a few other message boards running other code, and some of them let you edit your posts, and it does make for cleaner posts. None of them have a moderation system, however. Locking the post after child posts or moderation would make a lot of sense.

Re:My biggest wish

[baptiste]

So make comment editing painful so folks won;t do it. Just like you can't moderate a story you post to. If you edit a comment, the moderation gets reset to whatever it posted at (-1 to +2) plain and simple. Also to avoid lamers from editing comments to get out of -1 land (say they posted at +1), you make it so that your post has to be at its original moderation or higher to edit it (or for simplicity, +1) So 0 and -1 comments could NOT be edited.

OR even simpler. Any comment at -1 or 0 could be edited at its current moderation - who cares? Any comment at +1 or higher will automatically get set to +1 when edited to start over. Easy enough and hard to abuse.

So for the word problem challenged:

sub edit_submit { if current_moderation > 1 { moderation = 1 } }

Easy enough!

Re:My biggest wish

[don.g]

Inability to edit comments with a score of 0 or -1 is silly. What would be really good: reset the post to whatever 'default' score the poster has.

If the comment is a troll, it'll get modded down again. If it was a post someone forgot to preview, they can edit it again.

Given that $TROLL could be writing a new comment instead of editing, resetting scores isn't too problematic. And I personally can't be bothered with losing extra points on an article of mine that's been modded up - they never are, anyway.

Re:My biggest wish

[baptiste]

I wasn't saying don't allow 0/-1 comments to be edited - I said don't change teh mod score - let them edit it at will since they're so close to the hole. But anything at +1 or higher would have its mod score reset to +1 - simply easy

Re:My biggest wish

[pod]

The problem with your scheme is that it is WAAAAY too convoluted. There are other message boards out there implementing comment editing.

How about not allowing comment editing in these cases:
- comment has been moderated (for obvious reasons)
- comment has been replied to (also obvious I hope)
- comment was posted AC (duh!)
- 15 minutes have passed (comment editing should be for quick corrections which escaped previews, etc, not wholesale rewrites years later)

There, simple, problem solved.

Re:My biggest wish

[baptiste]

Why is it convoluted? Its very simple.

• Any comment can be edited (very simple)
• If moderation < 1 leave moderation score alone
• If moderation >= 1 reset moderation to 1

That's convoluted? Under your proposal hardly anyone would be able to edit their comment after like 30 minutes - and even worse, if someone replies and says 'you made a mistake' you can't go and fix it! My proposal eliminates just about all avenues of abuse without penalizing people left and right. You can't edit yourself out of -1 or 0 and you can't toss goatse.cx into a +5 comment and expect it to stay there - it goes to +1 and will disappear in no time.

Re:My biggest wish

[scrytch]

Or do like half-empty does. Only allow appending, which is clearly marked, not outright editing, and the ability to do so times out once the post is a few hours old.

Re:My biggest wish

[damiam]

How about we just have a STOP!!! button on the submit screen that cancels posting if pushed within 15 seconds of submission?

Four suggestions..

[update()]

First of all, the new code seems to be working well. Availability and response time has been much better than before. (Bender code was in place on September 11, right? I was amazed at how well the system held up.)

Four suggestions -- three of which should be easy and the fourth is harder:

• The hard one -- I'd love the ability to go back and revise posts for typos or even delete them if I realize I've said something false.
• Moderation by editors should be noted as such. This would reduce (or confirm) a lot of the conspiracy theories around here.
• I'll also agree that the +1 bonus should be off by default.
• How about a lameness filter against HTML posts where more than 30% of the displayed text is formatted? This would help out people who forget to close a tag and don't bother to preview, and reduce readability problems caused by people who want to use all bold. (In a related vein, does the Code option for post formatting do anything but generate unreadable posts? If people want to post code, let them use HTML.)

Re:Four suggestions..

[FortKnox]

The hard one -- I'd love the ability to go back and revise posts for typos or even delete them if I realize I've said something false.

The abuse for "modified" comments would be immense (ie - whore to +5 quickly to be on top of the comments, then change all your links to goatse). Deletion isn't, though. I like that idea (although what happens to mods and replied?).

Moderation by editors should be noted as such. This would reduce (or confirm) a lot of the conspiracy theories around here

Yeah, like michael would agree to that (I'm teasin michael... don't mod me down!) ;-)
I don't think editors should have mod points at all! Unlimited mod points *DESTROY* the moderation system by definition. They should trust in the system they designed!!

I'll also agree that the +1 bonus should be off by default.

I think majority will rule, and this one come in effect quickly.

How about a lameness filter against HTML posts where more than 30% of the displayed text is formatted? This would help out people who forget to close a tag and don't bother to preview, and reduce readability problems caused by people who want to use all bold. (In a related vein, does the Code option for post formatting do anything but generate unreadable posts? If people want to post code, let them use HTML.)

How about killing the lameness filter altogether?
We all hate it, and it doesn't stop the trolling. Plus, isn't it a form of *censoring* (gasp!)??
Honestly, my only suggestion (both for comments AND articles) is to have the terminator of every type of valid HTML tag forced at the end (already done on comments). This will prevent bleeding of comments (and no more "Close you italics flag!" comments).

Re:Four suggestions..

[Anonymous Coward]

How about a lameness filter against HTML posts where more than 30% of the displayed text is formatted? This would help out people who forget to close a tag and don't bother to preview, and reduce readability problems caused by people who want to use all bold.

It'd also "help" reduce problems by people who want to post code snippets in their posts.

Re:Four suggestions..

[athakur999]

The abuse for "modified" comments would be immense

Allowing deletion only if the post hasn't been replied to or moderated would be compromise. Since most of the "doh, I wish I could edit this" probably fall in the "oops, I misspelled something" or the "I forgot to preview" category, the author will catch these pretty quickly and be able to do something about it.

Re:Four suggestions..

[update()]

That's a great idea! It's an excellent compromise.

As long as I'm posting again, the other idea someone raised here that sounds really good to me is the option to have all articles in a particular subsection appear on the front page.

Re:Four suggestions..

[baptiste]

Simply reset ann edited comment's moderation to +1 if it is already at +1 or higher. If its at 0 or -1 leave it at that moderation level - no biggie.

Re:Four suggestions..

[bint]

Why not instead of deleting post add a self moderation option "Retracted" which sets your post to -1 (or less, or simply add -2 to it) whithout affecting your precious karma?

Spell Checker?

[Christianfreak]

I mean there's been a perl mod for ispell for a long time now. How about incorporating it in? That would certainly help both users and administrators.

Re:Spell Checker?

[Calle Ballz]

One think I have learned about any technical conversation is that they kill spell checkers. I set my outlook (I don't choose my software) at work to automatically check for spelling errors before I send it out and initially I found myself adding TONS of new words for spellcheck to ignore. It's been a year, and it's still trying to correct various technical terms, acronyms, abbreviations & such. On slashdot I think it would mostly be a pain in the neck trying to post, unless you could choose to use it or whatever.

I can read past misspellings anyways, 99% of the time. I am not like the grammer trolls who feel it is their duty to give everyone a language lesson, I just say give it a break... no one is perfect and not everyone has a degree in literature.

Re:Spell Checker?

[ellem]

grammer trolls

grammar

Re:Spell Checker?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oops

Re:Spell Checker?

[Howie]

You don't need ispell to handle a lot of the spelling issues. I've been thinking for a while of writing a slashdot-oriented spellchecker/filter that would go something like:

$input =~ s/than/then/;
$input =~ s/rediculous/ridiculous/g;
$input =~ s/copyright/trademark/g;

Aside: how would you turn then to than and than to then in a single substitution?

Re:Spell Checker?

[SCHecklerX]

If you are not a good speller, try this:

http://freefall.homeip.net/stuff/spellcheck/

Be warned that this is VERY SIMPLE. You CAN hurt yourself if there is, something bad in the stuff you are spell checking (although unless there is a " before it, you are probably safe).

Re:Spell Checker?

[Anonymous Coward]

How about learning how to spell? Don't you think that may be a wee bit more worthwhile?

Re:Spell Checker?

[chromatic]

my %swap = ( e => 'than', a => 'then', );

$input =~ s/\bth([ae])n\b/$swap{$1}/;

Hemos told me that Jaime has written an ispell plugin for Slash. I don't know if it's used on Slashdot, but most of the problems I see are homonyms and poor grammar. That's hard to fix.

Re:Spell Checker?

[Knobby]

Here's a link to OmniWeb
on Mac OS X checking the speeling of a post as it's typed.

Re:Spell Checker?

[Mister Black]

That is one of my favorite features of omniweb but I've switched back to IE because OmniWeb can be so SLOOOOOWWW sometimes. Plus it had trouble on some of the sites I like to go to. But the buttons and the smoothed text are gorgeous.

Re:Spell Checker?

[ez76]

I mean there's been a perl mod for ispell for a long time now. How about incorporating it in? That would certainly help both users and administrators.

perl: not found; perhaps you meant "pearl"?
ispell: not found; perhaps you meant "spell"?

Re:Spell Checker?

[Howie]

Thanks - That's what I had. I was trying to figure if there was a way to do it without the hash.

Re:Spell Checker?

[melatonin]

How about improving the browsers instead?

My browser has inline spell checking, and damnit, all browsers should.

Actually, every Mac OS X Cocoa-based app has inline spell checking. The point is to fix (and gripe about) the problem at the source.

Re:Spell Checker?

[vicviper]

How about improving the spellers instead? :)

Re:Spell Checker?

[chromatic]

Don't try this at home, kids:

$input =~ s/\b(th([ae])n)\b/$2 eq 'a' ? 'then' : 'than'/ge;

I want more room

[ellem]

in my Slashbox.

I need more room in my Slashbox. This way I can log into /. from anywhere and go to my fave places that aren't /.!

Database

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope that one of these "surprises" is the lack of database crashes!!!!!

One died

[Anonymous Coward]

There are only thirteen users now.

Re:One died

[Anonymous Coward]

That poisoned Kool-Aid... such a killer.

Dotslash.

[Odinson]

Oh oh oh, I want to change my prefrences to form....

Eeeeevvvvviiiilll Slaaaaaassshhdoooooot!!!

• Underrated +0
  
• Overrated +1
  
• Funny -1
  
• Offtopic +1
  
• Interesting -2
  
• Redundant +2
  
• Informitive -2
  
• Troll +2
  
• Insightful -3
  

and drum roll please.....

• Flamebait +5

Re:Dotslash.

[jayhawk88]

Don't forget the goattee.

How about a -1 view?

[Anonymous Coward]

About the only reason I read Slashdot is for the troll posts, which are good for at least a few laughs per day. Some of these fuckers have me laughing outloud at work. So how about an option that allows anonymous AND logged-in users to view ONLY specific scores, including -1.

Re:How about a -1 view?

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed, even if only for Jon Katz articles.

Re:How about a -1 view?

[mansoft]

And following that, it'd be interesting to be able to choose from a type of moderation, i.e: "funny", no matter the points a comment has. I simply prefer funnies than trolls :)

Flamebait?

[saintlupus]

Oh, come on. I don't think that was really flamebait. After all, anyone whose account is old enough to have been granted the boon of mod points has certainly heard MySQL sputtering and choking at the other end of the browser when trying to access this site.

--saint

My wish for meta-moderation

[Erik Hensema]

I'd like to see the score of an article at the time the moderation I'm metamoderating was done.

A slightly interesting post at +3 shouldn't be awarded yet another point, so in that case an 'interesting' moderation would be unfair.

Currently you only see the comment and think 'hey, interesting' and you'd M2 it as fair.

And please dump the over/underrated moderations. They're only used to dodge M2.

Re:My wish for meta-moderation

[Anonymous Coward]

What difference does it make if an interesting comment get's 3, 4, or 5 +1 Interestings? It's not like the whole discussion thread is ruined if a topic is modded up a little higher than some think.

Keep in mind that moderation sometimes comes fast and furious. Many times I've given a +1 Whatever when a comment was at 1 or 2, only to see it at 4 or 5 by the time I scroll back down to it after moderating. No point in punishing a moderator just because other's thought the same as he did.

Re:My wish for meta-moderation

[Anonymous Coward]

A slightly interesting post at +3 shouldn't be awarded yet another point, so in that case an 'interesting' moderation would be unfair

And how would you know whether the specific moderation you're MMing is the 3rd interesting and not the 2nd? Or that mod #3 didn't just finish reading the page before clicking [moderate]?

Re:My wish for meta-moderation

[crawling_chaos]

I'd like to see the score of an article at the time the moderation I'm metamoderating was done. A slightly interesting post at +3 shouldn't be awarded yet another point, so in that case an 'interesting' moderation would be unfair

I've thought about this too, but there are problems. I read in nested mode and I tend to wait until I've read all of the articles on a page before I submit my moderations. That means there can be quite a delay from when I moderate a comment and when I actually submit the moderation. In the meantime, the 6.02e23 other moderators have modded the comment to +4, when I only thought it warranted a +2. Are slow readers to be penalized for their "late" moderations?

Re:My wish for meta-moderation

[Erik Hensema]

Are slow readers to be penalized for their "late" moderations?

No they aren't. And just this makes it very hard to implement it. It would require slashcode to remember the scores it presents to a moderator until moderation is done (you offcourse cannot let the webbrowser of the moderator remember them, to avoid abuse). Implementing this would be very, very not trivial I think.

Still, for me as a user it would be nice ;-)

Re:My wish for meta-moderation

[ink]

And just this makes it very hard to implement it. It would require slashcode to remember the scores it presents to a moderator until moderation is done (you offcourse cannot let the webbrowser of the moderator remember them, to avoid abuse). Implementing this would be very, very not trivial I think.

It wouldn't be difficult at all. Instead of giving the moderator a +1 / -1, you'd ask the moderator what score the post deserves to have (eg, +3, interesting); if that article has already reached the desired threshold, no points are spent and nothing is moderated. If there is a difference, the points are deducted and the post is moved up or down by one point.

Re:My wish for meta-moderation

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh great moderator, I bow before thee!

Showoff.

Feature request

[Anonymous Coward]

I would like the ability to read the -1 posts only (all the other posts are crap).

true

[CptnHarlock]

I was thinking of that yesterday, but I forgot to mention it now!.. :) .. Then you would hold on to those points and only use them when it makes sense... Not for general discussion like this post.. :) .. Then you wouldn't be distracted by pointless +1 comments...

NNTP is copiable

[Pseudonymus Bosch]

Um, but if somebody receives an NNTP stream even a paid one, there is no technical difficulty to create an NNTP server that rebroadcasts the news.
Maybe that's why.

Anyway has somebody actually done that converter? I remember that when Slash was formally published as usable Open Source there were people saying it was the first thing they'll contribute.

Re:NNTP is copiable

[Just Some Guy]

Um, but if somebody receives an NNTP stream even a paid one, there is no technical difficulty to create an NNTP server that rebroadcasts the news.

People have been viewing web pages from behind proxy servers like Squid for years. I don't believe that there's a fundamental difference.

Re:NNTP is copiable

[gregorio]

People have been viewing web pages from behind proxy servers like Squid for years. I don't believe that there's a fundamental difference.

The difference is that if /. ever opens a NNTP server, it will be subscription-based.

Re:NNTP is copiable

[Just Some Guy]

The difference is that if /. ever opens a NNTP server, it will be subscription-based.

Are you implying that you can't store subscription content in a web cache?

Re:NNTP is copiable

[gregorio]

Are you implying that you can't store subscription content in a web cache?

Webcaches store HTTP requests, not *NNTP*.

Re:NNTP is copiable

[Just Some Guy]

Webcaches store HTTP requests, not *NNTP*.

Sigh. Yes, we all know that. The point is that NNTP is not really any more 'copiable' than HTTP requests. Both can be requested through proxy servers, such as Squid (for HTTP) or Leafnode (for NNTP). Multiple users can suck the subscription content from a Squid server as readily as from a Leafnode server, given the proper configuration.

Re:NNTP is copiable

[Pseudonymus Bosch]

The difference is that HTML pages will have advertisements and Newsposts won't (if under subscription) or they will be text-only (or will they be HTML pages).

If somebody reads an ad-free version of Slashdot is easy to check for abuse (password-sharing) because it is centralized. An NNTP stream is easily distributable.

Persistent forms in Mozilla

[dave-fu]

I don't know if you're using Java Script, but we'd run into problems with NS 6.1 (can't speak to Mozilla per se, but it's the same render engine, no?) if'n you ran onEvent handlers or had the JS reset form items for you.
Other times, even pages without event handlers would overlook any form element changes (checkboxes and radio buttons) that the user was making. Ugly stuff to debug.

offtopic?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice job, moderator. Offtopic? Let him thank Michael, you f.

20 Second Timer

[Amazing Quantum Man]

How about killing that 20 second timer? That's pretty lame...

And under certain browsers (*cringe*IE5.5*cringe), when you hit the back button, you've lost what you typed if you blow the 20 second filter.

I also think that adding a new story type "Poll" along the lines of Ask Slashdot would be nice (for user suggested polls).

Re:20 Second Timer

[FortKnox]

The 20-second timer is to prevent the "spamming troll" (before it was implemented, you could write a story and hit the submit button a zillion times and a zillion copies of your post would appear. Very annoying).
If you use IE, then just hit "reload" on the 20-second timer warning page and resubmit the data. It'll go through then.

Re:20 Second Timer

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't that what formkeys was about? Each form is assigned a key and only that key can only be used once? Besides, duplicate posts were detected long before that, too.

One idea..

[RadioheadKid]

My only suggestion is that Microsoft has seemed to one-up slashdot on the Developers section, I think it should be titled "Developers, developers, developers, developers, developers" One better...

Here we go (he started it...)

[Anonymous Coward]

> Sometimes I wonder if Emacs hackers belong to a totally different species.

A different species? How about a different planet? One can only dream..... :-P

BWAHAHAHA

[Pope Slackman]

It's open source, that's really the only documentation any reasonably intelligent person needs.

You've obviously never read slashcode.

C-X C-S

Surprises...

[Swaffs]

"Now that we've got the Fry tree out of the way, its off to work on Zoidberg (which will include subscriptions, killfiles, and a few surprises)"

The rest of the world calls these surprises "bugs". Except Microsoft, who calls them "features".

you don't like slashcode cuz it's perl ? use somet

[Anonymous Coward]

use something else.

Here's a kinda new CMS:

siteseed.org

siteseed.com

The name's siteseed. It's backed by a webdevelopment company, Mr.Net, and some external coders. It's written in PHP.

You get the code, you can contribute. If you don't want to you don't need to, but hey, it's here, use it or don't. It's your call.

Some sites made using it:

http://www.portugaldiario.iol.pt

http://www.maisandebol.iol.pt

http://www.maisatletismo.iol.pt

http://www.culto.iol.pt

http://www.fra.pt

http://www.nec.pt

http://www.ieei.pt

http://www.netjobs.pt

http://pls.mrnet.pt -> this guy is like, the main code hacker in the thing. don't ask.

http://www.missprint.com

There's a mailing list also.

The code is lauzy, but nevermind, they are professionals so they don't have time to do good code. Just working one.

I'm not in the mood to a href the rest of the links.

Fear me cuz I'm an asshole.

Will I pay for Slashdot?

[Skyshadow]

I've been thinking about this off and on ever since I heard that Taco was going to institute subscriptions: Would I pay for Slashdot?

In favor: I've used and enjoyed Slashdot for a very long time. I'm not concerned about privacy issues involving my email address, so that's not a worry for me. I know that a lot of hard work has been done to keep this service running for me to enjoy, and I know that the upkeep costs a lot. I know that the reality of the web is different now than it was.

Convincing, but against: I, and all the other posters, experts, flamers, trolls and etc. are what make Slashdot even basically interesting. The stories alone I can get anywhere -- it's the posts that are semi-interesting. When I pay for a subscription to Salon, I'm paying to get content I enjoy. If I were to pay for Slashdot, even just to get ride of ads, I feel like I'd be paying for something I help make happen.

All that said: I'll pay for Slashdot. The reason is that, all philosophical problems aside, I know that economic realities are forcing this thing in. I'll miss the free Slashdot, but even a subscriber-friendly Slashdot is better than no Slashdot at all (what would I *do* with my days?).

In return, I'd really, really like to see a more intelligent basis for story selection. I *miss* that Slashdot from three years ago where the stories were mostly tech-oriented and not just another excuse to flame Katz or diss Microsoft. I want to see real efforts to improve the signal to noise ratio without stomping on unpopular views (like moderation tends to). Maybe it's not possible to go back to that, but I'd like to see some effort made to try.

Re:Will I pay for Slashdot?

[Tomster]

Regarding a 'more intelligent' basis for story selection: we have moderators for comments... why not moderators for story submissions? Users can then decide what moderation threshold to view the front page at. Threshold 5 would be for "Linus has opened the 2.5 branch. Start submitting those 5MB patches!", 1 would be "Jon Katz rants about...", -1 would be "Did you hear about the latest MS IIS security hole?"

Taco and the other editors can still have a final say, they have the power to GodMod (that's an awful term, I ought to be modded way down for that) a submission to whatever they want. Tho a submission modded up or down by them ought to have a "This submission set to '1' by CmdrTaco" line.

If the "submission moderators" are relatively few in number, and are rotated in like comment moderators, we should get a bit more variety than we do now without losing the flavor that makes Slashdot unique.

That whole option should go

[Lac]

I believe that allowing posters to "opt out" of their +1 is moronic. The premise behind the bonus is that said poster generally posts good comments, so this one is probably good too. Now this either works or it doesn't. If it doesn't, remove the +1. If it does, grant the +1 and get over it.

Allowing an option to "opt out" of the +1 is like an option that would allow you to "opt out" of being moderated up. The feature is down-right silly. Judging the quality of a post is not the job of the poster. It is the job of the community system and the moderators.

Just remove that option. It makes no sense.

Re:That whole option should go

[baptiste]

Just remove that option. It makes no sense.

Actually I like having the option. I look at it this way. I normally try to post good solid comments. But if I'm in the mood and just want to spout off and be an idiot, I post at +1 - that way the worst that can happen is a -2 hit to my karma :) Yeah its only one point. But lose 10 and you lose hte bonus - easy enough to whore and get it back. But seriously - it lets you post subpar comments at +1 instead of +2 where you're more likely to get modded down.

Of course sometimes when I'm being a d**k and posting obnoxious stuff it'll be funny enough to get +5 so go figure :) :)

Re:That whole option should go

[carlos_benj]

Just remove that option. It makes no sense.


Sure it makes sense. I quite often opt-out because my comment isn't particularly insightful or funny, but I want to add to or refute a comment. Since moderation is handed out willy-nilly and some of the mod points applied make absolutely no sense, I post at +1 unless the point is genuinely important and everyone else seems to be dancing around it (rarely happens). The only other time I post at +2 is when I forget to check that dang box.

Re:That whole option should go

[scrytch]

I post at +2, and occasionally use the "No Score +1 Bonus" checkbox. I dont see the point of making it a default, but I do see its use, as I do occasionally post cute or snide little one liners that really don't belong at the +2 threshold that many (including myself) read slashdot at. I should probably use it more often, actually...

ObWish: Javascriptify slash for browsers that are capable. Background moderation submits like half-empty. Disable the submit button until the timeouts pass. Or just make the submission textarea a little bit bigger (there's a preference item for ya). I'd hack on it myself, but last I looked at Slash.pm I was just too horrified for words.

Slashdotted

[Pseudonymus Bosch]

So now we have to slashdot Slashcode?

I'll Pay!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll pay up to $0.10 per year on the condition that the only people who can post to Slashdot are the ones with the substring "troll" in their userid.

More useless suggestions

[yardbird]

Two quick suggestions:

Enable me to have separate comment viewing prefs for when I'm a moderator. Changing them back and forth is annoying. Plus then they could be set automatically to more socially responsible defaults.

If a comment below my threshold has a child which is above my threshold, I think that should be clearer; ideally, in between the visible grandparent and the visible child should be a link to the invisible parent.

Re:More useless suggestions

[mech9t8]

If a comment below my threshold has a child which is above my threshold, I think that should be clearer; ideally, in between the visible grandparent and the visible child should be a link to the invisible parent.

Try putting your Threshold to zero, your Highlight Threshold to +3 (or whatever) and your Spill to something like 1. Works for me...

troll?

[Anonymous Coward]

what is that troll thing everyone seams to talk about?

is there a cs major here? a major from the army?

I'm funny right?

Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

New Slashcode?? Hrmm...lemme see:

WHO FUCKING CARES!?!?!

Subscriptions?

[hutchy]

The moment it costs more than $0.00 for any content on /. I for one will no longer be a reader of Slashdot. The next we know it VA software will pull up the leash, and slashcode will become proprietary

Re:Subscriptions?

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn, we'll really miss you and shit. I'll bet there'll be tears. But I can understand your feelings, wanting to utilize a web-board as much as you want without having to pay a nickle for it. It's just not right for them Slashdot jerks to want to keep themselves out of bankruptcy.

Re:Subscriptions?

[hutchy]

What do you mean "we". Do you have a large turd in your pocket?

Not necessarily...

[Green Aardvark House]

This is my 50th post, and I've already bounced off the cap.

Re:Not necessarily...

[dhamsaic]

tru dat. i've had it forever. i think i hit 50 around post 50-60...

Re:Not necessarily...

[wholesomegrits]

Here's the best way to do it:
Get a nice fat slice of karma.

The tell people like you to Go Get Fucked because isn't like like losing karma will suck a quart of blood from your arm.

It ain't worth nothing, to nobody. It's a stupid number that means shit. Posts that start at +2 rarely go above that. Look at the moderation totals sometime. It's far less common for a +2 post to go much higher.

Re:Not necessarily...

[xanadu-xtroot.com]

This is obviously a subscriber to "Hooked on Ebonics"...

Re:Not necessarily...

[Anonymous Coward]

Nigga please. He be speaking the language uh da black man.

great code

[Anonymous Coward]

put that and run it trough your browser. just hope php is somewhere you run it.

then copy past that shit to slashdot.

you'll be an instant troll.

Lameness filter

[CaptainSuperBoy]

Screw it. Be more like K5. If someone posts a goatse.cx ascii art (I know, probably old, but I haven't checked what the latest troll nonsense is in a while), bitchslap them. It's not fair? Who cares- we all hate each other here anyway.

Re:Lameness filter

[t]

Actually a -50 asshole moderation would be quite handy. It would reduce goatsex to ac's only.

slashdot.org/trollovision.pl?mode=penisbird

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd buy that for a dollar!

A bad surprise wuold be:

[ackthpt]

which will include subscriptions, killfiles, and a few surprises)

Pop-under adds for the Amazing Z10 pr0n c4m.

Please, I'll subscribe, anything but that!!! =-(

Seriously, I'd toss a buck a month to dodge ads, if that would help with /. upkeep.

My small wish

[Polo]

I only wish for one thing:

An easy way on the main page to scroll back through previous stories.

This could be as simple as an "Older stories..." link or as "complicated" as separators between days and something like a "Monday's stories" link.

If I miss a day or two, I always have to fiddle with the slashboxes to scroll back through the stories. This is a simple UI fix and would greatly increase usability.

How cool is that? (Sorta OT)

[earthloop]

Slash releases have the same naming schemes as the machines on my network at home! Bender (Sun SparcServer4) being my particular favourite.

How about blacklists

[Niksie3]

Think about it, a user editable blacklist that blocks posts including certain urls (gouts.cx comes to mind). And a Bad User list, this one should be supplied by users themselves to prevent conspiracy stories.

How about the abillity to mod down every post that includes a link or reference to a known goat.cx mirror?

Comments -1 0 +1 +2 +3 +4 +5

[nickgrieve]

I would love to be able to view only -1 or only +5 or whatever, Its a pain to have to filter though all the positve crap to get to the good trolls.

Re:you don't like slashcode cuz it's perl ? use so

[Anonymous Coward]

www.microsoft.com is nice.

Thanks for that URL.

this is a cool site.

Autocaching to mitigate the Slashdot Effect

[jstell]

How about an autocache mechanism that retrieves linked-to pages (with size limits, depth limits, expirations, blah blah) and caches them for some period after the story is posted?

But only if...

[tswinzig]

...the karma cap is removed.

Re:But only if...

[Doug Neal]

What about an option? Post with a bonus and lose a karma point, but not have a cap (giving you the chance to go above 50 anyway), OR, post at +1 and remain capped...

Stylesheets

[NutscrapeSucks]

Nobody else has mentioned it, and it's my pet peeve, so I'll throw it in there -- I would love to have nice clean XHTML or XML that could be formatted with stylesheets (CSS or XSLT) on the client-side. Now that Mozilla is out there, this should be politically acceptable.

This could potentially reduce serverload quite a bit -- not only would you be spitting out far less bandwidth per page, but things like score filtering could be done on the clientside instead of requiring another roundtrip to the server.

You could even invent your own killfile, highlighting, light-mode, and score biasing schemes. Slashdot could use a default stylesheet, and then host user-submitted ones. Removing all the presentation goop would probably make NNTP/Gopher/whatever gateways easier to implement too. This would also have the positive aspect of pushing off most of the minor bitches back onto the userbase.

Re:Stylesheets

[Anonymous Coward]

> Removing all the presentation goop would
> probably make NNTP/Gopher/whatever gateways
> easier to implement too.

Do you think they want that ?? They need money from the adds on the top of the pages. That's why they are almost impossible to parse (look at the HTML code ... horrible !)

BoD

Re:Stylesheets

[NutscrapeSucks]

It occurred to me, but I figured that any data feed would probably have to be a subscription service (since Taco has previously indicated that there will be more ads).

Re:Stylesheets

[ikarus-fallen]

fyuze sorta does what you mentioned. all of the layout and styles are determined by the style sheets, which users can select from existing skins, create by themselves, and also upload to share. it's not perfect between browsers, but it's pretty close.

In short, no.

[_xeno_]

I could try and explain it, or I could simply point to AvantSlash and let Scott Tringali's plagerized comment from Kuro5hin explain.

Reproduced for the terminaly lazy:

First of all, this is a great example of how not to write a Palm version of the site, and here's why. Offline readers depend on "link-depth" to traverse a site. However, their Palm version breaks each story into a random number of small chunks. So, you can't just page-down to read a long story or a bunch of comments- you have to click on lots and lots of links. A real pain. Lots of small links makes sense on a slow online connection, but it's awful when you have more bandwidth available, as your desktop PC or an offline browser.

Additionally, it's restricted to 10 comments, not a threshold. That's boring. I'm sitting here in Jiffy Lube picking my nose, I wanna read some funny trolls and flamewars!

Finally, using /. in "light" mode doesn't work either. There are too many useless links on the front page. I don't care about the advertising or the FAQ or all the other stuff: I want the stories and the comments. Basically, the readers I use so far have no way to "prune" sections of the tree you don't care about. This causes the site to be gigantic and not fit into the paltry 8MB of your typical handheld, or, it fits, but it so big as to detract from its usefulness.

Finally, someone did the right thing: AvantSlash takes the page, filters out all the crap you don't care about, and doesn't break it up into a thousand chunks so it's readable.

In order to make that usable, I'd have to pump my link depth to something like 4 in order to read the stories. Plus, for the first time in months, slashdot.org has stopped serving 403's to sync.avantgo.com, which basically killed it's usefulnes... (It was one of the first sites I tried to sync to my iPaq via AvantGo, and until today, everytime I tried, I'd get access denied errors reading it when I tried to sync.)

As long as we're on the subject of wishlists...

[DahGhostfacedFiddlah]

An anonymous post by a logged-in user should be treated exactly the same as a regular post. It should include any +1 bonuses and affect karma. If only unregistered ACs were rated at 0, I'd have less qualms about missing something browsing at +1.

Re:As long as we're on the subject of wishlists...

[Yosho]

Then what's the point of allowing logged-in users to post anonymously? I don't know about you, but I chose to post AC when I know my opinion is unpopular and it will be modded down. Many other people do, too -- and they have perfectly valid, logical reasons, but you'll never notice as long as you only read what the moderators tell you is good.

Re:As long as we're on the subject of wishlists...

[Anonymous Coward]

I post a lot as AC when I've forgotten my password and don't have time to have it emailed to me because I'm sitting at school or at someone elses house; not because I have anything inflammatory to say. Separating registered ACs from unregistered ones would be pointless in this case. (Actually... I'd think that the registered ones *are* the worst trolls; otherwise they wouldn't post anonymously.)

Here is a neat feature to make note of

[AnimeFreak]

How about Anon posters can only post after a story has been up on slashdot for a specific ammount of time? That would cutdown on trolls and such. Maybe those with negative karma should fall into that catagory too.

No open-source package can touch it, eh?

[Wonko42]

And of course a variety of optimizations that continue to make it possible to serve a quantity of pages that no other open source package like this can even touch :)

I am insulted, chagrined, annoyed, disturbed, perturbed, dismayed, aghast, and perhaps even indignant at this shocking act of arrogance, Mr. Taco! Shame on you, sir. Shame shame shame!

Re:No open-source package can touch it, eh?

[Pinball Wizard]

Hmm. I haven't seen a PHP package that would do nearly as well as Slash under heavy load. Kuro5hin is a perfect example - while they have similar hardware their site is usually slow and often painfully slow. And that's with a fraction of the traffic.

Re:No open-source package can touch it, eh?

[Pinball Wizard]

my bad. Scoop is also perl. But my point about Slash being able to handle heavier loads than other weblogs is still valid. Their code has been tested under fire like nothing else has.

Re:No open-source package can touch it, eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

For what its worth, kuro5hin.org does *not* have similar hardware to slashdot. We have 1 server, 8 way xeon with 2GB of ram. That houses the db and 2 apaches (one for images one for mod_perl). Slashdot has 10 servers. With a comparison like that slash will always look faster. Also, from our own benchmarks, scoop is about the same speed as slash.

Re:No open-source package can touch it, eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

you get 'em, rusty (or inoshiro). perhaps you can also give slashdot some help redesigning their front page

Re:No open-source package can touch it, eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you trying to be funny with that list of words?

Re:No open-source package can touch it, eh?

[Pinball Wizard]

By similar hardware, I meant similar hardware, not necessarily as much hardware. You have an eight-way Xeon whearas slashdot has a four-way Xeon and a bunch of ordinary servers that could each be built for about $5-600(except for the NFS server, which might run $900-1000). They also have significantly more traffic. Sept. 11, in particular proved that slash has what it takes to handle a heavy load.

And I'm not at all trying to put down kuro5hin, its a nice site, and I like it. I apologize if my comment about it being slow was insulting.

My point is that slash has undergone severe circumstances and they have adapted their site accordingly. Because of that, its my belief that slashcode lives up to Rob's claim in this article.

Re:No open-source package can touch it, eh?

[Wonko42]

My response was merely intended to register my tongue-in-cheek fake disgust at Taco's arrogance. I'm the original author of PHPSlice, a little-known PHP-based (duh) weblog package that we've worked hard at making fast and efficient.

The only reason that was *mock* disgust and not *real* disgust is that, like you mentioned, we've never had an opportunity to test it under a load like Slashdot's.

But, personally, we think it could kick Slash's ass. ;)

Re:SLASH 2.2.0

[Jimmy Seven Nads]

Bow down to the legends of steel!

Cheese metal is the fucking coolest music ever man. It's the shit alright.

Mighty metal gods of hot steel and nordic twilight!

Open to contributions?

[Pinball Wizard]

It seems as if there are two different versions of GPL/Open Source development. One is where the project is open to anyone capable enough to contribute to it. Mozilla and KDE are examples of this. The other is where the development, while open to suggestions, is tightly controlled.

Slashcode seems to fall into the second camp. There doesn't seem to be a wide variety of people who have contributed, rather the credit is purely to CmdrTaco and friends.

Instead of doing all the work yourselves, why not have a todo list and let others make contributions to the project, rather than just implementing suggestions?

Re:Open to contributions?

[tf23]

They're open. Look at the SF feature requests, bug list and patches submitted. Then checkout the repository on slashcode. With slash's plugin system you'll see more functionality come with time.

Are you volunteering? :)

What's after Zoidberg, Leela?

[Anonymous Coward]

I love the Futurama references :).

Runs on IIS?

[Anonymous Coward]

How do I get this to run on my IIS server? What is a tar or gzip file? Can I open them with Microsoft Office 2000?

Popular?

[DEATH AND HATRED]

Now Zoidbergs the popular one!

Oh, come on!

[Anonymous Coward]

proper moderation for that should be : (score: -1, Troll; -1, blatent; +3 Funnee!)

lose the cookies?

[Anonymous Coward]

any hope of someday doing away with cookies?

The karma and moderation points are useless, as far as I am concerned, but I do _sometimes_ agree with whoever puts the 'funny' tag on posts.

otherwise, keep up the good work

Dennis

[gorgon]

"Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong." --Denis Miller

Its Dennis Miller, not Denis Miller. Sheesh.

Re:Dennis

[Anonymous Coward]

"Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong."

--Denise Miller

Headlines only headlines and nothing but headlines

[beretboy]

I want to see a way to access just rawheadlines no bloated XML or RDF how about a finger interface or a simple plaintext file? ist that so much?

Update the lameness filter!

[bgarcia]

http://slashdot.org/frontpage.pl?commentthresh=5&s tyle=light

I'd like to see the stupid lameness filter changed so that instead of placing spaces into the middle of long words (like the URL above), it would simply add a <wbr> tag at that spot so that the browser can break the word there only if it thinks it's necessary.

It's working now!

[Anonymous Coward]

I think they fixed it... :)

I want to post at +3, why can't I do that? :)

maybe, maybe not...

[Anonymous Coward]

That should be an "editorial" function?
I'm not too sure that I want the editors of a "community" discussion board bitchslapping nor abusing the in place moderation system.

I'm inclined to trust the moderation system to do its job. Of course, that could lead to the dreaded slashdot groupthink(tm) complete with goose-stepping, funny salutes and rallies with book burnings of MS Press books.

Re:you don't like slashcode cuz it's perl ? use so

[Anonymous Coward]

I mean this:

that was funny!

Update lameness filter behavior!

[bgarcia]

How about updating the lameness filter?

Instead of adding a space to the middle of long words, why not just add a <wbr> tag so that the browser can decide whether or not it needs to actually break the word at that spot?

There are too many times when someone posts a URL in a comment, and I can't simply cut & paste because the lame filter has put a space in the middle of it!

skins

[spectatorion]

i thought i remembered the idea of a skinnable slash being kicked around a while back, and that it would be in 2.0, but no sign of it anywhere. anyone know what happened to that? not the most useful of features, i know, but a nice hack. just curious...

Re:you don't like slashcode cuz it's perl ? use so

[Anonymous Coward]

thanks man, I rule, I now.

mod me up scotty

I AM AN ASSHOLE.

Warning!

[RageMachine]

This release contains a security flaw. This flaw will not be revlealed in the ChangeLog, and is protected under the DMCA!

Re:Warning!

[Anonymous Coward]

Um. I believe you worded that wrong. But it was funny. :)

I implemented a spell checker for free!

[jelwell]

I hacked in a spell checker for free (as in beer). You can read the Slashcode story or test it out at TivoNews.com.

Joseph Elwell.

Re:Oh Boy!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

But is it GOOD, sexy ass? I mean you know, like ass on a chick that works out a lot, nice an tight and tan and firm? Like nasty ass that if you spanked it like it needed to be spanked, it is so tight you'd break your fingers?

Slashcode may not be the most scalable open source

[Paul Bain]

Commander Taco wrote that Slashcode contains

a variety of optimizations that continue to make it possible to serve a quantity of pages that no other open source package like this can even touch :) [emphasis added]

I am not an expert on improving the scalability of web applications (especially those written in Perl, as is Slashcode), but, from what I read, I understand that Java generally scales much better, especially when it has been tweaked for that purpose. Recently, an open source discussion board (written in Java) appeared that its creators say is one of the most scalable on the planet: Jive. Even in Jive's old, version 1.24 form, it was so scalable that Sun Microsystems decided to use it as its main web discussion software, replacing discussion software that they had written themselves (in Java). Sun employee Eric Larson wrote (in article's last paragraph) that

Jive has proven itself at Sun by supporting 94 forums with more than 358,000 messages, and about 2 million users. And the current infrastructure is not even close to capacity. As more developers try the software and contribute to the project, Jive's success will only continue.

Jive's developers swear that it can serve a million page views per day without a problem. On the other hand, Jive doesn't support the posting of news items in a manner similar to Slashcode. Maybe that's what Taco meant when he wrote "like this" (above). Of course, the open source developers at Meinds may decide to alter the Jive source to permit the posting of news items. Then Slashcode might have been bested in terms of features as well as scalability.

request: offensive word '*' substitution on/off

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd really like to see an offensive language on/off switch added to the url so that i don't have to see score 0 posts with truely offensive text.

A '*' substitution would work.

please use the ARMS open source license

[Anonymous Coward]

"You are free to do anything with this code you want except license it under the GNU license or any license haveing anything to do with Richard Stallman"

Truely open source has no licensing restrictions because it's in the public domain.

Eh? All digital information can be copied.

[Dast]

So what is your point?

MM of Redundant...

[singularity]

I would like to see Redundant be removed from at least meta-moderation, if not gull moderation. It is impossible to accurately see if a moderation of Redundant is Fair or not. You could go back at look at the original discussion, but that is a lot of work.

Re:MM of Redundant...

[Anonymous Coward]

Redundant moderations have become next to impossible to meta-moderate since the new comment numbering came into effect. Before, if post #10 was moderated Redundant, it's almost certain that it's unfair (save for the usual "Bewolf cluster"-type garbage).

Also, Under/Overrated has always been impossible to metamoderate; you can't see the comment's score at time of moderation. An Underrated at +4 is quite different from Underrated at 0.

My only wish

[Pope]

Is that Taco would change the

• indenting hack to .
• 
  Not only is it *proper* HTML, it would allow me to go back to using iCab to read the site in Nested Mode.
  I know it's iCab's fault for changing their rendering code, but for F's sake, can't we make this place a little more compliant?! I tried replacing the above tags on a long, nested (200+ comments), page, and it looked fine in 5 different browsers.

Re:My only wish

[Pope]

Crap! So much for plain text...

That should have read "change the <UL> indenting hack to <DL> <DD> pairs.

True enough

[kuro5hin]

Er, if by "similar" you mean "Intel-based"...

Regardless, you're right that Slashcode is the only package I know of that's been tested with the kind of load and range of attacks that Slashdot gets. I certainly wouldn't argue that it's proven that Scoop could do what Slashcode does, in terms of sheer numbers. That just hasn't been done. Maybe it could, maybe it couldn't, but we don't know for sure.

I do think feature-wise, Scoop kicks Slashcode's ass, but that's to be expected. :-)

PS: The previous defender of Scoop was hurstdog, who is our primary project manager now.

Re:True enough

[Pinball Wizard]

To be fair, Slashdot's site has crapped out plenty of times as we all know. And its certainly true that Kuro5hin looks nicer and has more features. :)

One thing about Slashcode tho - they've put a lot of thought into caching pages and also into database locking issues. How about k5? Is there an article somewhere that discusses performance aspects of Scoop?

I already won slashdot

[TomatoMan]

I've managed to bite, scratch, and claw my way up to 25 points, and it's a bit disappointing to find out (finally) that I have to make 40 or better to get that precious posting bonus.

After a couple of years of periodic karma whoring and ass-kissing, I have scored 50 points, but I can't find where to put in my initials. Anybody know? I'm still waiting for CmdrTaco to send me my prize, should be any day now! I hope it's a GameCube.

(Thankfully, this post should get me back down to 47 or so, so I have something to shoot for again! Life is good.)

Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would the karma cap need to be removed?

Someone please enlighten me

[scorcherer]

I can't use w3m anymore for /. because the current code has these stupid links:

<a href="//slashdot.org/whatever.pl...">

So. w3m interprets this as http://slashdot.org/slashdot.org/whatever.pl. OK, it's probably valid html since it works correctly in Mozilla and friends. But still, I wonder why the fsck does such a convention exist in the first place. More importantly, what's the point of repeating the host name for local links?

Not fair

[Mdog]

How very unix of you.

"Who needs a gui when you have command line completion!"

Seriously /. is not strictly a tecnhical resource, it is also a creative work. Creative works deserve nice looking packages, and the poster is right that face-lifts are a good idea.

Yes, when you open the deadly 32nd chamber of /.

[Dast]

But not at a measly 40 karma. When you get 2.147e9 karma points, you unlock the deadly 32nd chamber of slashdot, in which you gain unlimited moderation abilities and spiritual bliss. You do know how to break the 50 karma limit, right?

Right? If not, you better start reading /. at -1 threshold, newest first. You will find the anser in the pink underbelly of the /. horde. I will start you off in the right direction.

There are many paths to breaking the karma limit. In fact, the limit itself isn't a real limit at all, but your own mind restricting you from realizing your full potential. The obvious shortest path to breaking this limit is to fully realize this truth. Of course, this is easier said than done; it takes years of mental and physical training. I doubt you could manage it if you haven't even yet gotten 40 karma.

Another path to breaking the limit is to go back in the other direction. Negativity meets positivity when you roll over. Troll long and hard enough to drive your karma so low that it rolls over to an astoundingly high positive number.
Of course, these are only two of the infinite number of paths you can take to karmic bliss.

And if you need Slash hosting...

[Micah]

I can do that (blatent plug). We're still at 2.0 and may be for some time, but eventually we'll get upgraded to 2.2 or 2.4.

Or if anyone can tell me how to run two versions on the same server we can start right away. Possibly by dedicating one httpd to 2.2 and having it on its own IP (which I could do) but then I'd have to figure out how to isolate the Slash .pm files from each other. I've heard it said that it can't be done, but there's probably a way...

Re:And if you need Slash hosting...

[chromatic]

See perlfaq8 on keeping your own module directory. Just install the different versions to different paths, and change @INC appropriately, maybe with a SetEnv directive in your httpd.conf. Easy.

Re:And if you need Slash hosting...

[Micah]

Thanks, looks like that is what I needed to know! I thought there was an env variable for setting the @INC, but couldn't find it with a quick look through the docs. It's in the FAQ though... sweet! I hope to have 2.2 up this weekend. :-)

The Karma Cap Should Be 42

[Sara Chan]

Surely it's obvious that the purpose of real karma is life, the universe, and everything. It thus follows that the karma cap should be 42!

Buy Windows XP. Give Bill Gates more of your money.

Bite, scratch, and claw? Heh, back in my day

[Dast]

my boy, the Karma Wyrms of old regularly got well over 200 karma. If you are having to bite and scratch, you are doing something wrong. Spinning your wheels but not going anywhere.

You have two choices on how to accumulate karma, the path of light and the path of dark, and millions of variations on the two.

If you want to go after karma the honest way, here are some hints.

* Post early. I can't stress this enough. Moderators browse at highest score first, so the only way to get noticed is to post early before a lot of people have been bumped up into the 4-5 range.
* Post content not crap. Don't just voice some uninformed opinion on something. If you catch a story early, before the site linked to is /.'ed, read the article! Have something to say.
* Don't reply to other posts, make a reply to the story. Moderators don't go through replies to other peoples comments as much as they see the parents.
* Use a good subject. Moderators notice funny titles; it gets you noticed.
* Use your +1 to your advantage. Get it in early and strike hard. But don't use it all of the time, or you might get modded down a lot.
* And don't let me catch you saying something like: "I know I will lose karma for this, but...", "I know this is an unpopular opinion with the /. horde and moderators only mod up stories the sheep agree with", "Here goes all karma...", or "Oh well, I have karma to burn..." If you do I will mod you down to karma hell on every post you've ever made. I've said it before and I'll say it again. Sometimes on /. it seems like (+5, Insightful) means only "This user doesn't feel confident that his opinion stands on its own and thus needs to end his posts by suggesting he would only be moderated down because his views are unpopular to the /. horde."

If you wish to take the dark side, ie karma whoring, start reading the slashdot underbelly of trolls. They will tell you how.

Good luck and enjoy the game. You have already lost. :)

Re:Yes, when you open the deadly 32nd chamber of /

[loosenut]

There is no Slashdot.

Mu.

Re:How about an NNTP gateway? I'll gladly subscrib

[Anonymous Coward]

Think about it, cause there isn't anything else you could offer me that I would pay for.

Christ, that's just begging for unfriendly comment.

Suggestions

[iomud]

I'd like to see an open submissions section, ie a singular section which users contribute and moderate stories. There's a lot of decent contributions that get dropped because an editor dosen't think its news in this section the slash users would decide, perhaps this could be made a subscription option or someting, to deter troll submissions.

Ideas

[autocracy]

The new "absolute" comment number seems to have stopped a lot of FPs, but it makes it a real pain to see if something is redundant when doing M2. Also, editing is not such a good idea, I would think. This is a web LOG for a reason.

To continue in that vein..

[mandolin]

Another nice suprise would be to have posting at +1 cost a point a karma.

(You beat me to it.) ... and you could generalize that, such that you could post at +2 but lose 2 points, etc. Posting at +4 would get your opinion voiced in a large comments thread but would quickly kill your karma. Especially if you get modded down.

Re:Slashcode may not be the most scalable open sou

[Anonymous Coward]

What a sad world we live in when we consider Java scalable.

Has everybody forgotten the purpose of Java? I can tell ya one thing, it sure as hell wasn't performance.

None of the above poll option

[I am Jack's username]

Let me get this straight, if the options are stupid and/or lacking, we shouldn't have a silly/NOTA poll option? Boggle...

Hell, we should have an approval/ranking option in polls - more fine-grained choice, not less!

Who's been taking spelling lessons from Taco then?

[Godwin O'Hitler]

A nice surprice wuold be:

Yse I konw, it sometisme happzens ot me too.

Re:Who's been taking spelling lessons from Taco th

[CptnHarlock]

its not the speling... its the idea that cunts...

Suggestion

[Sloppy]

Get rid of accumulated karma.

Instead, just have people's posts start out with a score equal to the average score of their last n posts.

This will solve most karma-related problems.

DAMMIT!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

I keep closing my italics tags but fucking crapcode won't let me. So my posts look like hell. WTF??

Re:How about an NNTP gateway? I'll gladly subscrib

[Anonymous Coward]

interestingly, your comment is the only thing even remotely unfriendly in response to it, and even "unfriendly" is an overstatement. You're british, aren't you?

Re:sig

[Boiled Frog]

Yeah, I'd like to know as well. It would be an interesting topic for debate.

Re:sig

[Pope Slackman]

I dunno. Sounds like something JWZ, Theo de Raadt or Jordan K Hubbard might say.
I just saw it on a forum somewhere. Mighta even been crapdot.

The BSD crowd seems to have more of a utilitarian "because it works" attitude rather than the "because it's cool" attitude the linux crowd has, and I happen to like that better.
Note how the main things the BSD faction has been working on (and are known for) are serving and security, while the main thing the linux people have been working on over the last few years are toolkits and desktops.
(Aside from all the window managers and mp3 players, that is...)

C-X C-S

slashcode bug test

[Anonymous Coward]

bold not bold bold not bold