System Downtime, Maintenance

We're taking the system down tonight for a some system updates. We expect to go down around 9 (eastern) and hope to be back up by midnight. This is a pretty substantial upgrade, but the changes are almost entirely 'Under the Hood' type fixes: architecture stuff that shouldn't really impact much end user functionality. When the dust settles we expect there to be a few bugs cropping up, so please click that 'Bugs' link on the left hand menu and submit reports so we can squash them quickly. And sorry about the inconvenience. We know it will be hard to live without us for a few hours, but I figure some quality time with your friends and family might just be long overdue! (Also, for the curious, a brief summary of what the change is actually all about follows) Ok, so when I wrote the original code for Slashdot, I had these "Sections" and these "Topics". You're familiar with both I'm sure... the "Sections" are like "Apple" and "BSD". They have unique color schemes, and their own homepages. The "Topics" are specific areas of subject matter... you know them because they each have a colorful little icon associated with them... like for example the rockin 'Slashdot' logo that is attached to this story.

When I originally "designed" (I use the term loosely since evolved is more accurate) the system, "Sections" were meant to be for "Data Types"... for example "Book Reviews". A book review is fundamentally different than a Slashdot "Article" because it has extra fields like the ISBN code. At the same time I essentially coded "Skins" because each "Data Type" needed custom look & feel type stuff so that the story could actually display the unique data fields.

So when we created YRO and the BSD section and later on the Apple section, I just reused the skinning part of "Sections".. it was the easiest way to do it, but it created problems later: under the old design a story could only have one "Section"... some sections defined "Data Type" and others defined "Subject Matter" (like Apple or BSD)... thats why bsd.slashdot.org can never include a book review, and apple.slashdot.org can't include an 'Ask Slashdot'. This confounded users of our search page to no ends, to say nothing of frustrating editors who couldn't include topical stories within their appropriate section.

Undoubtedly we'll see some bugs to pop up... so please be patient and submit bug reports. We'll be wacking bugs for a few days... there's always a few of them that don't pop up until you put them in front of the half a million users on the real hardware. Thanks for understanding!

Comments

Isn't tonight Stargate Atlantis?

[antdude]

Watch that during the downtime if you can. Of course for me, I don't have cable/satellite TV. So feh! :(

Re:Question....

[epsalon]

Because the UK is in daylight savings time...
UK TIME != GMT.

First Bug?

[big_a]

Well, all the links seem to be going to "example.com"... (i.e. read more takes you to example.com)

I know what one of the changes was!

[JoeShmoe]

Someone apparently forgot to remove an "example.com" placeholder! It's good to see that slashdot hires people so well versed in RFC 2606!

( Read More... | science.example.com )

( Read More... | 91 comments | yro.example.com )

And so on...

- JoeShmoe
.

Re:How about upgrading to valid html?

[jamie]

A pair of coders who use Slash are being generous with their time and effort, and working on migrating Slash to XML... we hope to work with them soon to get their work into the main Slash distribution.

Migrating a whole site to XHTML is much, much harder than doing a mockup of one page.

Re:How about upgrading to valid html?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would you want Slashdot to implement a spell checker? Konqueror has it built in, and all the other major browsers I'm familiar with can have it installed via third-parties.

Re:XHTML Compliance?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because you haven't done it yet.

Re:9 eastern?

[Pathwalker]

What's more likely is that the phone reps are penalized for canceling accounts, so he made up an excuse to get you to call back on a day when he wasn't going to be working.

yay Taco

[Geno Z Heinlein]

Thanks for upgrading the rss code. Now I don't have to load the RSS for all the subsections separately, because the main rss has all the stories.

Re:9 eastern?

[LostCluster]

That is most likely it exactly. The only phone reps who are allowed to cancel accounts in most mega-company setups (AOL, credit card issuers, insurance firms, etc.) are people who are specially trained to try to talk you out of canceling, and statistics are kept on how well they perform. A person who calls, gets to the cancelation reps, and doesn't actually go through with it is scored as a "save", and various metrics are computed to determine the saves per time worked, number of calls taken, etc. and compared to the company averages or arbitrary metrics.

I think the grandparent poster just encountered somebody who was lying about being unable to process the cancelation so that they'd be given a save in order to boost the numbers. I don't think top-level management would approve of such a tactic, but it's certainly possible a mid-level manager would "look the other way" about his "star performer"...

Re:Can't

[DrSkwid]

oh really

Here I am in FreeBSD using Firefox

I go here :

http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/dow nl oad.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash

I get this message :

Macromedia Flash Player Download Center

We are unable to locate a single Web player that best matches your platform and operating system.
Please visit our table of recommended Web players. .

Please go read this page

http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/alt er nates/

and revise your opinion on the ubiqity of Flash

Re: "Saves"

[Anonymous Coward]

When I worked for DirecTV Broadband DSL, somehow 30 days before the end of each fiscal quarter our billing system would go down. So we'd be unable to process cancellations till after it was fixed which allways happened after the investors got the numbers back.

Strange coincidence huh?

API published for talking to girls!

[AnotherScratchMonkey]

Dating Design Patterns, previously reviewed here.

Re:How about upgrading to valid html?

[jamie]

The two guys who are doing the conversion don't work for VA Software / OSDN, they are doing it for their own reasons. One actually started on HTML 4.01 and then they decided to join forces and work on the same project, and chose XHTML instead of 4.01. So you'd have to ask them as to why. Stop by #slash on irc.slashnet.org if you want...

Re:9 eastern?

[Tet]

If they didn't use flash, they couldn't do the stuff they do, active games, totally interactive menus, etc. with html

Actually, they could do pretty much everything. Interactive menus? Not desirable in the first place, but easy enough to do with CSS if you really want to. Strongbad could be done with any movie format, and needn't be in Flash. The only part of the site that doesn't really have an option at the moment is the interactive games. Yes, there are alternatives to Flash for that (Java, SVG, etc.) but none of them are ubiquitous enough to be a valid choice at the moment. Maybe in a few years, but not now.