Slashdot Mirror
Slashdot: Podcasts, IM, Improved Discussions
Recently we added the ability to receive AIM instant messages to notify you when stories are posted, when someone posts a comment to your journal, or when one of your friends post a journal. You can turn it on from the messaging preference page. You might need to set up slashdotomatic as a friend or buddy or whatever in your IM client to make it work, but this is a good way to get fast notification of Slashdot stuffs. We hopefully will add other popular instant messaging clients in the future but for now AIM is the top dog so we started there. The code is of course all in CVS if you want to add new platforms... there's room to easily add Jabber, MSN, Yahoo or anything else really. We've talked about SMS as well, so if there's a demand for it we'll work on it.
Everyone who knows me knows what I think about the vast majority of podcasts on the internet. The Slashdot podcast currently isn't at all like that. We call it the the Slashdot Robot Overlord. All it does is use Cepstral Voices to read you Slashdot stories aloud. So if you want to listen to Slashdot stories in your car or on your phone or something, here's an easy way to do it.
Subscribers have a new option in their journals: they can restrict the discussions to logged in users. This is a nice way to minimize trolling and general crappy behavior in your journal. Of course, there's nothing to stop the ambitious jerk from creating a user account, but this will at least slow them down for a few seconds. It's worth noting that when you post a journal, you are given the option to submit your journal to Slashdot... if your journal is selected, you sacrifice that option.
Speaking of comment posting, we've added a new <quote> tag useful in comments. If you choose to encapsulate a quote in said tag, that quote is expandable and contractible via user preferences. Properly quoting comments will allow your fellow readers to have better control over their display than simply blocking a huge chunk of words in italics.
A little bit more information about the Discussion2 system before we wrap up: It's currently tested mostly under Firefox (as is all of our javascript). It also works fine under Safari (2 and 3). We have some UI improvements coming soon as well, but it already is a vast improvement over the old system. One of the next steps is to make D2 degrade cleanly to a non-javascript browser so we can maintain one code base for development. When we get to that point, we can switch over the default/anonymous view to the new system.
We have a bunch of other stuff coming after the holiday. But in the mean time, please test this stuff out and let me know if you see any glaring bugs. The address is the same as always.
I realize that this doesn't matter to a lot of the Slashdot crowd, but Discussion2 is still buggy in IE (IE7, specifically). There are JS errors on the page, the weird gray and white floating box that sits on the page which is apparently there to tell you how many posts there are in the discussion overruns the left-side navigation bar (and overall who's purpose seems a bit pointless to me in general), and its rendering is completely messed up in IE. Also, I have to use FF just to disable Discussion2 on my account, because it doesn't work in IE7.
You may want to get those issues cleared up before you consider Discussion2 complete.
A community-oriented lyrics site
Ive' noticed that Discussion2 tends to make Opera 9 chug on large comment pages (usally past 200
"I think an etch-a-sketch with an ethernet port would beat IE7 in web standards compliance."
You might want to give Slashdotomatic a more relevant buddy icon as well.
"I think an etch-a-sketch with an ethernet port would beat IE7 in web standards compliance."
This seems like the perfect chance to ask a question I've had for a while, that would have been off-topic anywhere else. If I have questions about Slashdot, such as "What does that No Karma Bonus checkbox do?", where should I ask them? Are there forums somewhere for Slashdot readers?
I asked this in IRC, but lately it doesn't seem anyone from the Slashdot SF.Inc's team is on there - if a user sets their msg prefs to IM, but they are not online at the time of the action, so the instant message cannot be sent at that time, what happens to it? Is it re-queued? For how long? Is there a fallback method such as email or web message if the IM can't be sent after X period of time? The last time I looked at the im_messages task code, I didn't see anything like that. But that was weeks ago, and I quickly skimmed it. So I might've missed quite a bit.
http://slashdot.org/~tf23/journal
The difference is that the "quote" tag uses a stylesheet so it's *cooler*. Using boring old HTML when you could be using CSS is sooooo 20th century.
For teenage girls, maybe. GTalk is "top dog" for professionals as it's built right into GMail. That, IMHO, is a much better solution than having to install 500+ IM products. And if I really need to contact a teenage girl^W^W^W someone on AIM, there's always Meebo!
Disclaimer: The above is a humorous post and should not be consumed by old people, pregnant women, or those with a weak heart. AKAImBatman disclaims all responsibility for the reader's lack of a sense of humor.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
So the difference is a preference the user can set?
My guess is that it's a preference I can set to decide how I want to see your post.
That's my guess anyway, since apparently when I signed up for the University of Michigan testing stuff it clobbered my account profile with whatever was going on at the time and now none of this "discussion2" stuff works. I don't even get this "checkbox on any article page". I can turn on and off the Michigan stuff in my profile, but the majority of the time it wouldn't work in FF or IE, and I ended up leaving it disabled.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
well, they couldve kept the blockquote tag and just added css to it. this is what blockquote was meant for. div is meaningless, and shouldnt be used in place of blockquote.
I noticed the IM option in my profile the other day as I updated it and was glad you chose to not show that publicly. Thanks for that.
Please also note that you can get Slashdot feeds via Slashdot on Twitter if you are in the need of SMS updates for the time being.
Slashdot's comment features, while not perfect, set an example that thousands of other sites have followed. Do people think the new Discussion2 system will set a new example to be copied? Or is it turning into bloat?
Developers: We can use your help.
Honestly, I don't see any difference. I thought he said there would be something to click on to make it collapse. Maybe it's because I'm using Opera.
Because that's worked so well over at Kuro5hin.
Best Slashdot Co
Taco,
"Improved Discussions" would require you delete all your current user accounts and start over.
Trolling is a art,
Yep, same here. Agreed to do the University of Michigan testing, and I don't get a Discussion2 checkbox. Since the University of Michigan Testing system basically made Slashdot unreadable thanks to how slow it ran, I have to leave it disabled.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
Some better classification and filters on Slashdot, so we can reduce the noise levels. Give the articles:
:P
a "credibility rating" (from "improbable rumor" to "we guarantee it's correct with our life".. ok pick better named)
an "importance" rating (from "something to read if you're bored with life" to "breaking effin news!!!")
and "time effect" rating (from "it was announced to happen in somewhere the next 100 years" to "it just happened now!")
Because, damn. I'm sick of all the noise on Slashdot. And that's gold I'm giving you here. If you don't use it, I'll be so pissed off, I'll start my own news site just to see it happen
i cant even find the option in preferences. anyone?
Aww man get my hopes up! Cepstral voice reading me a Slashdot story?? MEH! I would actually ENJOY listening to a new Geeks in Space. Yeah, that's so last century, but I don't care. Geeks in Space was a podcast but with out the RSS! :D
Gorkman
I like the new discussion system, but it's a hassle that it still doesn't seem to allow top-level replies. (I.e. to reply directly to the article, I need to switch it off.)
The comment slider on the left is actually kinda nice. It dynamically adjusts what comments are fully visible, "abbreviated", and hidden, replacing the old "threshold" setting quite nicely. It really doesn't take much explanation. Just navigate to an article with lots of articles, and play around with it to see how it works--no manual required.
In FireFox, I am getting some occasional JavaScript errors reported by FireBug, but overall, the new system seems to work well. Give it a chance, and give 'em feedback. That's the ONLY way it'll ever improve. Besides, you can always turn it off during this testing period.
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
Count me in on this. I couldn't figure out where this "Discussion2" checkbox was.
Same with UMT, I shut it off almost immediately due to massive overhead it imposed on loading pages. I can't figure out how someone found that to be acceptable.
I'm assuming that the vast majority of readers are here for content, and the weaknesses in that content are a great frustration.
I'm not talking about hiring New York Times journalists, only asking for basic standards like:
- Have someone, anyone check for dupes. Is it really possible that none of the "Editors" at Slashdot read their own site?
- Have someone read TFA to make sure that the summary posted actually reflects what the originating article or page says. Too often the summary is entirely different from that actual article.
- Have someone check TFA to weed out obvious self promotion. Really, there are times when this get's to be ridiculous. Same for the posts that are a restatement of some guys uninformed blog post.
- Please, have someone take charge of basic spelling and grammar, and the headlines that seem to be created from random phrase generation.
Honestly this operation is large enough, and lucrative enough, and has enough paid subscribers that it is reasonable to insist on some level of professional editorial activity.Adding AIM messaging is only useful if you can assure me that what you're delivering is good enough that my first instinct isn't to go to the source material to make sure that I'm not being misled.
Three Squirrels
That would be great, no? Here's a previous /. discussion on GeoRSS. The GeoRSS plugin for Slash is almost complete, it already works, but some efforts are required to finalize it, and I bet the Slashdot team has way more resources than my small team! :-)
And hey, we even have OpenLayers with Google Maps maps within stories. Same story as GeoRSS for Slash, this Slash plugin works (example here (temporarily disabled)), and not much is required to make it fully complete!
Animoog.org
You guys were podcasting back in the day with Geeks in Space. Those recordings viewed from now, almost a decade later, would be an awesome peek back into a different kind of internet, but I can't find the mp3's archived anywhere - I used to have 'em on a ZiP disk (heh) but even if I knew where it was, I'd have no way to read it.
Anyone have a copy of 'em lying around that they'd like to make available for research's/nostalgia's sake?
-Triv
Maybe if you've only been using IM in recent times. All of my contacts are in AIM, since that's what we've all been using since 1998 or so. I haven't used the official AIM client in probably 5 years or so. Gaim/Pidgin for me. Why would I want switch networks, let alone a web-based one that requires my browser to be open (speaking to Gmail based Gtalk...there's a standalone GTalk client, too, right?)
Hey if you're going to do a podcast (as such) why not bring back Geeks in Space?
On a similar note, I haven't noticed a duplicate article in forever. I don't know if you guys just use the tagging system to pick 'em out quicker, or if you're being more diligent about checking for dupes, but great job, guys.
I for one would like to welcome our new Slashdot Robot Overlord, but I can't find it, since the link is biffed in the article.
Anyone know where it really is?
Education is the silver bullet.
It appears that there are many of us experiencing this "University of Michigan Testing" bug. By having agreed to test that system, now we can't see/use the Discussion2 system.
I suppose it's possible that the two systems are the same thing, but based on the few screenshots I've been able to find of Discussion2, it doesn't look like they are. Moreover the University of Michigan system is very slow and buggy--I have trouble believing this is the same interface everyone else is testing. (Maybe a precursor to it, though.)
This is obviously a bug, and it would be nice if someone would mod up one of these comments so that the coders are aware of the problem. (In addition to the bug report that we should file...)
OK, so I thought "great, I can stop monitoring the RSS feed and get more timely notifications" when I read this. But I can't see any option to actually enable this in my Message Preferences page :-(
I think discussion 2 is great, but there is one thing about it that I either don't understand or doesn't seem to work correctly. Instead of trying to explain exactly what it is, I'll give an example of what I mean. In the old system, if I browsed at +3, I would see every post that was +3 or higher, no matter where it was in the thread. Now it seems that if I browse at +3, all of those are displayed if they're the top level in the discussion thread. Any +3 posts underneath a top level post gets abbreviated, but all of the +4 and +5 posts are still full text. If I browse at +3 "Full", I would like all of the +3 posts to be full text, not just the top level posts. So now the number of posts over my threshold (as displayed on the main page) doesn't match the number of "Full" posts when I read the discussion. Hopefully I'm just using it incorrectly, and if so, please correct me.
This is a quote.
This is a quote with italics.
Hey, they've fixed at least one bug! :-)
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
also add a "edit" button :) It is quite embarassing to right not gud englis & nt b abltoco rrect it later
Here.
Best Slashdot Co
Initially this confused me as well, but the way to get a comment to collapse and expand is to click its name (thought he said about quotes, but not seeing that behavior). It used to be this linked to just that comment, but with this new system you can browse at a higher level and selectively check individual comments pretty easy. On the other hand, if an entire thread is collapsed and you want to read all of it you need to individually click each header.
Curiosity was framed, Ignorance killed the cat.
Just a thought - it would be useful to be able to have two different comment view thresholds. One would be the current one, which works as it does now, another would be for use when you have moderator points (so that it could be set to a lower value.
yeah, and as a feature of your new account, you get to have a tremendously high uid, like mine!!!
Slashdot on the Master System? That's so crazy it just might work!
I like discussion2, but can they fix the threading? Digg and dailykos both manage to display replies with a click without reloading the entire page. I have to browse by Nested to avoid this.
You might have a preference set that gives a bonus to certain types of comments.
I don't think there's any way to start out at +3 without any moderation. Even if you have Karma Bonus and are a subscriber, you'll only start out at +2, the bonuses aren't cumulative. (And if you don't want subscribers to get a bonus you can change that in your personal preferences, too.)
Just as an example, I'm a subscriber and I also get the karma point, but when I submit this (I won't disable either, although as a general rule I normally check 'No Karma Bonus' for offtopic/meta comments) it'll just be +2 before it gets moderated.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Have you played with the preferences? It seems like Display Mode: Flat, Sort Order: Highest Scores First, and Threshold: +4 might be what you want.
Preventive War is like committing suicide for fear of death. - Otto Von Bismarck
After having finished teh college, time available to spend on /. has decreased. I've found that most posts that get at least one mod point are probably worth reading. I like the discussion2 system because it allows me to pull out all the posts that got a positive mod point, even those by a 'Coward' that only got a single point.
:)
With that in mind, these are the pertinent Discussion2 settings that I use:
Highlight Threshold: 2: Score +2 (displays all the comments in the thread that are scored 2 or higher)
Reason Modifier: +1 for Insightful, Informative, Interesting and Funny
Friends & Fans: +1 (want to see who likes what I have to say)
Foes & Freaks: +1 (want to see who hates what I have to say)
Anonymous modifier: +1 (plenty of good posts by teh Cowards - this gets their posts over my '2' threshold if they get modded up)
Karma Bonus: 0 (too many people have the bonus now for it to be meaningful)
Now if I could only get it to automatically collapse all the top-level 1-rated comments in the stories, it'd be perfect.
Thanks for the update, Mr. Taco - it's always nice to hear a bit about what's going on behind the screen.
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
Um, I thought nested view was "all expanded", whereas threaded view is equivalent to "all abbreviated".
I'm not sure I see the point of pagination, except maybe to keep the height of the entire page below the magic 65K pixel limit.
We've secretly replaced Slashdot with new Folgers Crystals - let's see if it notices.
This is a blockquote with italics.
This is a quote.
This is a quote with italics. This is your brain on drugs. Any questions?
Negative. They did not fix the bug, they provided a workaround.
Actually, intelligently styling the <blockquote> tag would have been much better than defining their own <quote> tag, especially since there are already two tags meant for quoting; blockquote quotes blocks (like paragraphs) and <q> (note: not an allowed tag here on slashdot) quotes inline content (some text inside a paragraph, for example. So instead of fixing the problem, they did something else stupid.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
http://blog.nexusuk.org
Still, as far as I can see, no indication that the parent post is below my threshold - meaning much confusion when trying to follow threads.
Anything but a direct reply to the article is indented and has a light grey "L" shape to the left (a tree link) indicating a link to the parent - but if the parent is below my threshold, it looks as if the child is linked to the comment above the parent. This leads to silliness like
Insightful post here
|
+- Re: Goatse
How about it, guys?
A simple icon change would make it clear that there's no relation between these two posts - perhaps a cross to show that there's no link:
Insightful post here
X
+- Re: Goatse
crumley,
That looks like what I was hoping to see, I just did not know of the feature.
Thanks for pointing me in the right direction!
It was only last week that we heard about Voice Chat killing the mood, right? Perfect time to launch a Slashdot Podcast.
If you don't use it, I'll be so pissed off, I'll start my own news site just to see it happen
With hookers and blackjack! In fact, forget the news site.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
that says I'm posting too fast to the discussion - WHEN THE DISCUSSION IS HOURS OLD AND NOBODY ELSE IS POSTING - I don't give a shit what you've changed.
Buy another server if you can't handle the load. morons.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Yeah, yeah, I know. The HTML generated by the new quote tags is pretty daft as well. But at least it doesn't ignore my explicit formatting as blockquote does!
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
I've had the University of Michigan stuff turned off for ages too - it simply doesn't work properly, and is quite stunningly slow once the comment count gets over a couple of hundred (and this is on a X2 4400+ with 2GB of RAM...). I was wondering where the discussion 2 checkbox was; I don't get it either.
Oh well, guess I'll be sticking with the Slashdotter extension for a while yet then.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Put in the same IM contact information?
Heh.
If we don't fight for ourselves no one will.
Agreed! Bring back Geeks in Space! Several years ago the reason for not continuing it was that it was too hard to get everyone together to record an episode. With apps like Skype and Ventrillo that's no longer an excuse.
"Upon attaching the waterblock to my penis, I began to notice that I know nothing about computers." -- JRockway
Since Slashdot has a filtering system that lets you filter news based on whether it hit the frontpage or not, Slashdot really needs to add in a option for that in their feed. I tried to find an email or contact us page but it seems they took it down. Even Digg keeps their contact information on their page.
When used in conjunction with the discussion2 system, anything in quote tags is omitted from the message summery. This way you can tell at a glance what the message is saying, rather then what they are replying to. This is a very nice feature.
Request a Linux Shockwave player here: http://www.macromedia.com/support/email/wishform/
Will there be any funstuff going on to celebrate?
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
A feature that I really want: being able to see which comments were added since the last time I loaded the page.
Currently, there is not way to follow discussions you haven't participated. D2 doesn't even have the possibility to temporarily sort comments or threads from newest to oldest without doing it through the preferences page (which you need to access again if you want to change it back when you load a new story). For stories with a large number of comments this means that new comments will barely be read by anyone.
This is not a complaint by someone who is pissed of that no one will read his comments (see diggers and their new discussion system) but by someone who appreciates the overall quality of discussion on slashdot. Let's face it, these days there are better places to get the news, slashdot's quality is in the comments. This is where new features should go to.
How exactly is this better than the current comment karma cut-off scheme?
In particular, how is it not much worse for multi-page discussions?
Were that I say, pancakes?
Firehose has problems with FF 3 and Seamonkey 2 (aka Suiterunner).
Slider for filter doesn't work.
Voting buttons don't work.
I have emailed the firehose address a few times with error messages and stuff.
No I don't have js turned off or the no script extension installed.
The Singularity is closer than you think
Quant
Well, if you think of it like this, when I view a SERP (Search Engine Results Page) a well thought out one would provide the results in several modules, and permit sorting and filtering on variables such as relevancy, date, author, domain, language, etc (features that regrettably are absent from Google, although I can restrict on the advanced search query things like the domain or language). What I do not get from Google, though, is grouping all the results by a domain, language, author, etc. (for instance all the results from CNN.com grouped together).
I mention this, even though it seems off-topic, to prepare a context in which to consider the sorting features on Slashdot. Some of these already exist, for instance, if I click on my user name, I can see everything I have submitted to Slashdot while logged in under my username. So, on your point/question of how might it break up multipage discussions, I would agree that it can (which is not so good). However in the Web 2.0 world, the features, at one level, are all about the user defining how he or she elects to view the content, rather than conforming to static definitions. Greasemonkey is popular, despite its deficiencies precisely because it permits such flexibility. Other technologies, like Snowflake, to mention but one, are similar in principle: don't tie down the user. Yes, have default settings that represent the way you want the page and its results/threads delivered, but permit the choices to the user. It might not always be appropriate to view in this manner (such as in your example). Is this a geek feature to be employed by but a few. Yes, probably at first, but more long-term (which in the world of IT could be months to a few years) it will be simply the way that a professional website is expected to perform.
This is our little way of excluding the boneheaded marketing droids, evil salesmen, RIAA lawyers, Microsoft PR people, etc.
So in order to view "nested" mode in the new system, I have to click on every comment? Isn't that pretty much threaded?
Reply button in a new random place too.
My AIM account is "buddy-list only" which means I need to add the Screen Name Slashdot is using before they'll be able to send me messages. Anyone know what it is?
The best trolls, at least on scientific/technical matters, know their subject intimately.
Best Slashdot Co
I thought you were claiming bugs in the new discussion system, which doesn't _have_ "oldest post first", and i thought you were complaining at the lack of a nested view _button_ or pagination settings. It's a bit ridiculous to claim that i'm insulting you because I thought you were talking about the new discussion system in a story about the new discussion system.
We've secretly replaced Slashdot with new Folgers Crystals - let's see if it notices.
I, on the other hand, expect the issue to be completely fixed via a total rewrite - considering that there has, in fact, been a total rewrite. Why waste time fixing bugs in a codebase they're about to throw away?
We've secretly replaced Slashdot with new Folgers Crystals - let's see if it notices.
etc. (for instance all the results from CNN.com grouped together). Actually, you do. It does it automagically whenever it decides there are too many (possibly similar)
results from the domain. Regardless, a *threaded discussion* is not a set of search results.
There is no such thing as "the Web 2.0 world," just people fucking around with UIs, sometimes for the better,
often for the worse. It's not Burger King, or a database, and they've no reason to serve you steak tartar on
a bun just because you think it would be a good idea.
Were that I say, pancakes?
I've got the same problem. No option for Discussion2.
I found a way to enable Discussions2 if you previously signed up for the Univ of Michigan testing, but it isn't straight forward.
There are two ways to do it.
1. If you are using Firefox, you can install the Firebug Addon and then go to the comments preference page and click on the firebug icon in the status bar. Then click "Inspect" Firebug button and click on the "University of Michigan Testing" button and click on the HTML tab in Firebug. Change the value from "uofm" to "slashdot". Then make sure the "University of Michigan Testing" is selected and submit the page.
2. If you can't or won't use Firebug, you can do it manually by going to the comment page and saving the page on to your computer and editing the HTML to change the "uofm" value to "slashdot" and then change the submit URL from "/users.pl" to "http://slashdot.org/users.pl". Then open this page in your browser and select the "University of Michigan Testing" style option and submit the page.
Either way, if you did it correctly, then neither option under "Discussion Style" will be checked and you will be using the new Discussion2 style. You can then use the Discussion2 style without having to wait for a fix.
Haha wow, thanks. Firebug fixed it.
;)
As for option 2, I tried that first since I didn't have Firebug installed, and it appears that slahdot does some kind of referrer checking, which is probably a very good thing
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
I tried checking the "I'm willing to help" checkbox and hitting the "Submit Query" button. Bit of a bizarre, incomprehensible name there, but I figured it was what someone wanted me to do. As far as I could tell, all it did was erase that line of menus and the "Change" and "Reply" buttons just below the message. I couldn't find any way to do what I'm doing now, i.e., post a reply. I read a while, tried replying to someone's comment - and found that I couldn't.
/., so that shouldn't be causing the problems.
So is there a description somewhere of how it's supposed to work? Others are obviously posting replies successfully. I am, too, since I unchecked "I'm willing to help" and hit the "Submit Query" again.
I'm using SeaMonkey 1.1.2 right now. It has NoScripts installed, but I've enabled scripts for
Some people mentioned a "floating box" with sliders. I think I saw that a few months ago, but I don't see it any more.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
It's not a referrer check, but a form of id check to make sure you loaded the page first. If you load the comment preference page and save it and then with the page still open, edit the saved page open it in a new tab and the submit it, it will work. But basically you have to go the the preference page and save it, every time you want to do the trick, you can't just keep reusing the old saved page.