Slashdot Index Code Update

For years now Slashdot has posted what we call "Sectional Content". That is to say, stories that we think are good, but since we try to keep the Slashdot Main Page to around 15 stories per day, some stuff just gets put into the sections. This content is mostly lost to readers who simply don't know it exists. Today we're deploying new code to help you find that content (and alternatively, to disable it).

One of the most common questions I get is simply "What does the '2 More' mean in the left side menu?" To me it's obvious: it means there are 2 more stories on say, apple.slashdot.org than you have seen on slashdot.org. This is because Slashdot probably already had 15 stories today, and this particular story is only of interest to users who explicitly chose to view Apple stories.

Those little 'N More' snippets clutter up the left hand menu, and confuse people. Our power users know that they can suck all the sectional content into the main page, but very few users actually bother with that kind of customization. And just as important, we have a lot of content that is simply lost because most of you never knew it was there in the first place.

What you'll see now is the interleaving of sectional content with main page content. These articles are displayed in a very abbreviated format, amidst the other stories. This is content we've been posting on Slashdot for years, but most users never knew. I'm pleased with the design of the whole thing. I think it looks really nice and doesn't clutter up the page.

Of course some users will always disagree with me, and for them there are now a plethora of user configurable options. Essentially, each section has a range of options ranging from "All" (Meaning, every story is displayed in full text) to "None" (Meaning I really really really never want to see anything about Apple really no seriously I'm not kidding!)

These options are available on the left hand menu by simply clicking the 'Sections' menu entry. A fancy little window will open with various tools for you do play with allowing you to choose what content on Slashdot you want to read... and perhaps more importantly, to disable the content you don't. The default view of Slashdot has slightly changed today, but you can set your preferences back to make the site look like it did before too.

We are keen on making sure that this works for as many browser platforms as we can. We've tested it on the platforms used by around 96% of you. (that is to say, Internet Explorer, Safari, Firefox, under Windows, Mac, and Linux) and it works on those platforms. However if your platform doesn't work, you can still change the settings from the user preference page (click the word 'Preferences' on the left hand menu if you are logged in. If your browser doesn't support javascript, clicking the 'Sections' menu item on the left hand menu should take you there.).

We fully expect there to be some bugs with this, so please feel free to contact us... preferably by submitting a bug report to our sourceforge project tracker. We hope to have any major kinks worked out of the system in the next few days, so just hang in there.

All in all I am very pleased with this. This solves a number of long standing problems on Slashdot: That is to say sectional content getting "Lost" in the shuffle, the left hand menu being confusing, and the user preferences to twiddle these settings being buried so deep in the UI that nobody would bother changing them.

Best of all, if any of this bugs you, it takes just seconds to disable this stuff. In fact, it would probably take less time to fix it then to post a comment complaining... not that that will stop some of you ;)

update many people have commented on the design of the abbreviated story. Many make great points about how they visually could be interpreted as being "Footnotes" or "Related" somehow to the content above them. Just a reminder, the site is all nicely CSSified now... modifiy the CSS send it our way. If someone creates a design that works better, we'll use it! We're not married to what we have. Personally I wanted the grey curve on the bottom right side, but we thought we'd need an extra DIV to get it right, so this was the compromise.

updated again the reason we don't update the index 'on the fly' is because it is possible for you to get content that we don't actually have yet. We don't have a full ajax engine yet- so if you made an abbreviated article be a full text article, we'd have missing fields. When we have a real dynamic engine for loading the content, doing it on the fly will be trivial. Today I think it would just look crappy.

Comments

Very nice - but has some rough edges currently

[DeadSea]

Great idea. I have used the front page customization to turn off the politics section bring extra stories from sections into my front page. This gives me even more control, so I like it.

There needs to be a bit more work to get the rough edges that I see out:

1. My personal RSS feed no longer matches my home page. I see "Officer's Group Calls for Ban On 25 To Life" even though it is hidden on my home page
2. RSS feeds should have no description for the stubby version of the story. Currently I'm seeing a full description even for those stories that have only a title on my home page.
3. Stub stories in the mysterious future on my home page have a annoying green top 3 or so pixels.

Re:Very nice - but has some rough edges currently

[CmdrTaco]

We plan to fix up RSS to make it corrospond to your settings soon. The design stuffs on the mysterious future stuff needs a little work yet too... we'll get there...

Re:Very nice - but has some rough edges currently

[ari_j]

I don't like the way they display. It makes them look like they are part of the story listed above them. Maybe a line with "In other news..." and a rounded upper-left corner would help. Or just the rounded upper-left corner. But right now, they look like footnotes to the story above them.

Re:Very nice - but has some rough edges currently

[Reducer2001]

I dig it

Watch yourself there....

I'm terribly disappointed

[Rob T Firefly]

I read that there was "sectional content" and thought finally, news about modular sofas. But, noooo...

Form, function, blah blah blah

[heinousjay]

The whole upward sweeping curve gives the impression that it has something to do with the story above it, which of course isn't true. Not really good design from a user perspective. This is what happens when you focus on 'pretty' and forget to deal with 'works.'

Re:Form, function, blah blah blah

[ahecht]

You can try to explain to people that the two pixel green bar means it's separate, but if everyone who looks at it immediatly thinks that that they are footnotes to the previous story, your UI is bad.

Go ahead and spring for whatever extra code you need to make it look intuitive.

Lynx compatible?

[Average_Joe_Sixpack]

All I want to know is if the new format is Lynx compatible ... because if it isn't there'll be hell to pay!

How about a "Dupes Only" Option

[Anonymous Coward]

"Essentially, each section has a range of options ranging from "All" (Meaning, every story is displayed in full text) to "None" (Meaning I really really really never want to see anything about Apple really no seriously I'm not kidding!)"

I only want to see the dupes. Really no seriously I'm not kidding!

That is what AJAX is for

[DeadSea]

Don't load the story into the original page itself. When somebody clicks on the [+] to open up the full description, use AJAX to load it into the page dynamically.

The best of both worlds: small initial page size, dynamic content.

Suggested feature

[balster neb]

This feature is a welcome addition, since I now no longer have to visit different sections to view the "sectional content".

Here's one suggestion for an improvement: How about automatically "promoting" abbreviated stories to full stories if a certain number of comments are posted on it. In other words if, say 200 comments are posted on one of these abbreviated stories, it becomes one of the main page stories and it's full summary is displayed.

The reason behind this is that if a "sectional" story is particularly popular, it probably deserves the same treatment as the major stories. I am more likely to take interest in a story if a large number of comments have been posted to it. Assuming that a good default is chosen for number of comments before an article is upgraded, this shouldn't affect your 15 stories a day rule much. Of course, registered users should be allowed to select their own minimum comment count.

In effect this would probably be a type of crude article moderation. The sectional stories are moderated up by way of user comments.

Of course, if you have more ambitious changes to story selection in mind, this wouldn't be of much relevance.

Un-relating the other stories

[slank]

There's a lot of talk of adding an upper curve on the related stories, but it makes more sense to me to have them look like the main headlines: White text on a green background. That way they just look like collapsed story boxes, and stand on their own. Using any other coloring will make them look like they are part of the story box above, as footnotes of some sort.

This will make Slashdot worse

[elliotj]

I've always liked the fact that sectional content was largely missed by the wider readership: this fact acted as a filter of sorts. The problem with Slashdot is that the signal to noise ratio of comments has been getting worse and worse. I like the fact that only a few power users had figured out how to comingle all the content on the main page, or that only people interested in a topic would routinely read the sectional stuff. This meant that those non-frontpage stories generally had better comment quality. I think this will suffer under the new system.