Achievements and Optimizations

This week's code refresh has added a number of really irritating story display bugs that we're working on. But, it also added a number of cool optimizations that should improve performance for a lot of readers. Tap that link below to read a brief description of them, and also a few serious notes about the achievement system we launched last Wednesday.

Ok, Optimizations. These really only affect the Index2 beta users and Firefox users. You should really be in one of these 2 groups.

• CSS Sprites: Vlad combined a number of our chrome images. Vroom used the same technique to combine our top 25 topic icons into a single image. The top 25 icons appear on 60% of our stories, and the chrome images appear on every page load. These 2 changes dropped perhaps 20 requests from a typical fresh page load. That should be a measurable performance increase for a lot of people.
• Library Purge: Scott removed the last remnants of the YUI library. This was THE library to use for AJAX a few years ago, but as of now, we have totally ported to jQuery. The last 2 bits that used YUI were some animation bits, and the discussion2 threshold changing floating widget thing. Porting those 2 things to jQuery let us pull several hundred k of JS from our includes. This let us trim another 85k from our compressed JS transfers. We've cut the JS included on Slashdot in half in the last month.
• Varnish: Jamie installed varnish as a reverse proxy behind the F5 but before our apache. Really this won't be a significant performance improvement for now. We use a complex system of static pages to cache the most read content on the site, but varnish will at last let us deprecate that ancient system for something much simpler. We'll be experimenting with this more over the week, but the only real change for most cases is that most of our static content can be served w/o the latency of NFS. Not a big deal really, but it's something. But when we purge out the old caching system, a lot of things will be a lot easier to maintain and debug.
• CDN: We're probably going to test a CDN this week. The performance gains will be minor, but it will let us move 50 megabits of traffic off our main router and distribute that globally. It sure won't hurt.

A note on Achievements. We launched this as an april fools day joke. We're glad many of you got it. We had great fun with it. But achievements are actually a real, working system. And they serve a purpose. Most of the major bits of functionality on Slashdot have a corresponding achievement. Posting a Journal? Getting a Story Accepted? Being Moderated Up? Using all of your Mod Points up? While many achievements are silly jokes: getting the first block of achievements is essentially a tutorial. And getting some of the more complicated achievements would be a useful indicator for a quality contributor to the site. The heavy lifting on this was done by Chris Brown.

We're also experimenting with a thing we call 'Auto-More'. When you get to the end of the page, a second block of articles will be added to your index. The cool thing is that this means we can serve a smaller selection of stories on the main page request. Since 2/3rds of you never read past story #6, that means that you will get your page a little faster. But 10% or so of you get to the bottom of the page. And you will transparently be given more content. We're doing a bunch of logs to see if this works out. It's just an experiment tho, we may kill it if there is a problem. I think it will eventually be connected to the pause/play function available to logged in Index2 users.

This week we intend to start rolling out the Index2 beta to a very small number of firefox users. A good number of you won't notice. Some of you will tho. You won't hurt our feelings by disabling the thing immediately but I hope you give it a shot. It's great on Firefox. It has a few bugs on Safari. It will work on Chrome as soon as Google gets a Mac port out (Hint hint!). As for IE... well, you'll keep the old system for a few more weeks, but you're only like 14% of our users, and you keep shrinking.

Ok, back to work. You too.

Comments

But does it improve story quality?

[Anonymous Coward]

How about employing someone to proof-read your posts and check the links?

Re:But does it improve story quality?

[Cube Steak]

To improve story quality they just need to get rid of kdawson and ScuttleMonkey. That'll improve quality at least 5000%.

Re:But does it improve story quality?

[ushering05401]

Either that or they need to create some way for readers to weigh in on what should make it to the main pages.

Oh well, we can only wish.

Re:But does it improve story quality?

[MagicM]

create some way for readers to weigh in

Like the Firehose?

Re:But does it improve story quality?

[Chad Birch]

How about adding Unicode support so that posts aren't often filled with random garbage when commenters assume one of the major technical sites on the internet should be able to handle curved quotation marks. Never mind when someone tries to write a word/post in Japanese or any other non-English language.

Re:But does it improve story quality?

[ushering05401]

Firehose?!? I know what that means and I have no time for you GNAA trolls!

Anyhow, I am still trying to figure out what the Green/Black thing means.

Is anyone else seeing +/- on all the story headers?

I think they really should just go with the GGP suggestion and fire those guys.

Re:But does it improve story quality?

[RulerOf]

After that, they can hire another person explicitly to edit and post stories, perhaps with journalism experience, nudging the story quality up to Over 9000% better than it was before!

Re:But does it improve story quality?

[Blig]

How about employing someone to proof-read your posts and check the links?

Are you serious? The lack of proof-read is what makes this place Slashdot! ;-)

Re:But does it improve story quality?

[Qzukk]

tries to write a word/post in Japanese or any other non-English language.

I think the point is that the site wants to remain in English. There's always slashdot.jp if you want to pretend that you know Japanese.

I do admit that having a submission filter fix the most common copy/paste issues (ellipses, em dashes, curved quotes, etc) should be high on the wishlist for slashdot.

Re:But does it improve story quality?

[esocid]

Look at the color scale. The ROYGBIV(and black) is a scale of hot to cold. Like a story, push the +, don't think it's good, push the -. If a story gets to yellow or above, they usually pick it up. But sometimes they pick up ones for reasons beyond my understanding, and overlook others.

Which brings me to my point. "Fire" kdawson.

Re:But does it improve story quality?

[doctor_nation]

I suspect we are in need of at least two "Whoooosh!"'s here.

Humor is so hard to detect in text...

Re:But does it improve story quality?

[nmb3000]

To improve story quality they just need to get rid of kdawson and ScuttleMonkey.

Meh. The kdawson script is just ScuttleMonkey v2. Obviously, not only did they not get rid of all the bugs, but they introduced a bunch of new ones. Hey Taco, I think you should name ScuttleMonkey v3 "RickJames". That way if anyone complains, you can have an automated response that just says, "I'm RickJames, bitch!" No one can argue with that.

In any case, those are the only two that I know are computer programs. There's no way to tell how many other /. editors are scripts. Call me paranoid, but I wonder sometimes if Slashdot as a whole isn't a ploy by the machines to waste humanity's time while they plan their attack. You thought Caprica Six planted a virus in the Colonial defense system? Nope. She just installed Slashdot on the defense network and waited. Once everyone was busy arguing about the latest kdawson dupe the Cylons attacked.

Re:But does it improve story quality?

[Chad Birch]

I'm not sure what the random "pretend you know Japanese" jab is about, but regardless, I wasn't trying to say that it should be normal for people to write posts in other languages. However, I've seen multiple instances where someone tried to clear up some details related to a story, where the only source of information is in a foreign language. They write a post along the lines of:

"The summary isn't quite correct, because the article says '<foreign language>', which actually translates to something like '<english translation>'"

Slashdot then totally mangles the quote they took out of the article and displays it in random ASCII characters. Is it something that's totally necessary for the site to have? No, but it's 2009, sites should be able to deal with more than ASCII. I certainly think it would have been a better use of developer time than achievements.

Re:But does it improve story quality?

[RiotingPacifist]

They have provided you with a way to hide all their stories though.

Re:But does it improve story quality?

[Cube Steak]

Yeah, but that's just pretending the problem doesn't exist anymore.

Re:But does it improve story quality?

[coryking]

Perl supports Unicode just fine. It is Slashcode itself that is stripping out anything that isn't the Queens ASCII. If I could hazard a guess as to why, it would be some kind of cheap way to prevent XSS attacks or page-widening posts. Dunno

Re:But does it improve story quality?

[RiotingPacifist]

I think currency symbols and other Unicode often thrown about in geeky discussions like ^2 would be nice
â euro
£ pound
 squared
 cubed

Re:But does it improve story quality?

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

The Firehose lets us all know just how bad the Slashdot story submission poll really is. There is a lot of tripe in there; ads, dupes, polemicals, rotten formatting, dupes, enormous submissions, just plain boring stories and more dupes.

The issue of story selection is a deep and chronic one at Slashdot. Essentially, the root of the problem is that there is no real incentive to post a good submission, and more incentive to simply post a swathe of low quality submissions instead. I and many other submitters have spent considerable time an effort on compiling and editing submissions, only to have them rejected within minutes, while dupes were chosen instead.

Now, when you submit you have to accept that your story may not be posted. But when quality submissions are getting lost amid the deluge, it's easy to see how good potential submitters can become disheartened and will simply stop submitting good stories. By contrast, the shotgun submitter who spends less time on each submission, but submits more submissions in total, will be more likely to have a story posted and will continue submitting. The end result is the current, appalling state of the firehose. Admittedly the front page has improved in recent times, but the firehose is as bad as ever.

The best way to solve this problem is to give submitters a karma system. This would allow the system to distinguish between submitters who write good stories that didn't make it, and submitters who just wrote tripe. A meta moderation system for submissions would go a long way to improving the submission box and hence the front page.

Re:But does it improve story quality?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Names generally do not put up well with translation; and certain countries in Europe use characters outside ISO-8859-1 range even in names. Or is there some new rule in English that under no circumstances can a non-English character appear in English text?

Re:But does it improve story quality?

[Anonymous Coward]

They already have this. Notice how many submitters NEVER get rejected... This has been the way of Slashdot forever. If you are a "pal" your stories get posted all the time. If you are not, and you posted the story hours earlier, the pal's dupe of yours get's posted instead.

Re:But does it improve story quality?

[Idiomatick]

You can go into preferences and shut kdawson off if you like. So i fail to see the complaint.

Re:But does it improve story quality?

[rev_g33k_101]

Slashdot's power level over 9000?!?!

This can NOT be good....

Re:But does it improve story quality?

[Cube Steak]

So i fail to see the complaint.

The lack of quality standards of editors?

Re:But does it improve story quality?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the point is that the site wants to remain in English.

In general, sure. But suppose you need to mention that "A MÃÃse once bit my sister". This needs to be fixed.

Re:But does it improve story quality?

[Andy_R]

The problem with blocking kdawson is that you lose all the stories that are posted by kdawson. We don't want to get rid of the content, we just want to get rid of the editor.

Re:But does it improve story quality?

[AKAImBatman]

That would be all well and good if the FireHose really mattered. But as far as I can tell, stories make it to the front page because the editors chose them, not because they get a good score in the FireHose. I've seen more than enough stories get voted up in the FireHose only to be ignored by the editors.

Here's the truth of the situation: The FireHose is intended as a standalone story filtration system for users to go and sift through the pile of stories themselves. In this way, it's like a competitor to Digg. The scores are completely unused save for possibly allowing editors to sift through the submissions a bit easier.

Re:But does it improve story quality?

[JCSoRocks]

I think you meant... OVER 9000%!!!

Re:But does it improve story quality?

[Blakey Rat]

It doesn't help that, when you do spend a long time polishing and proofreading your post and making it perfect, the Slashdot "editors" will move links around, randomly delete half of your sentences, and generally make your submission much worse than it would have been if they'd just copied it verbatim.

One of my submissions, the "editor" changed an accurate link to an inaccurate one-- the link was something like "in this report about a new study on corporate desktops" and they changed it to, "in this report about a new study on corporate desktop" implying that the link went directly to the study and not the summary article.

Oh well.

Re:But does it improve story quality?

[Cube Steak]

One of my submissions, the "editor" changed an accurate link to an inaccurate one

kdawson?

Re:But does it improve story quality?

[Herkum01]

get rid of kdawson and ScuttleMonkey

Now that would be an Achievement worth going for!

Re:But does it improve story quality?

[Rary]

You can go into preferences and shut kdawson off if you like. So i fail to see the complaint.

Most of the stories posted by kdawson are absolute garbage. However, some of them are actually interesting stories that I'd like to read. Shutting kdawson off in preferences means sacrificing the good 20% to be rid of the bad 80%.

I would prefer to simply have a better quality editor who would post those good stories without also posting the other garbage. Is that really too much to ask?

I mean, I don't expect the editors to be perfect. But if I ran the site, and I had editors who were that bad, I'd do something about it.

Re:But does it improve story quality?

[evanbd]

Exactly. Sometimes kdawson manages to post what could have been a perfectly decent story (good topic, good article) with a horrible summary. Then no other editor will post about it because it's a dupe (I can dream, right?), and so we miss the whole /. discussion on the subject. What we really want is no kdawson, which means that those stories would be handled by a (somewhat more) competent editor.

Re:But does it improve story quality?

[sootman]

How about employing someone to proof-read your posts and check the links?

Hey, don't be so hard on them. Taco made it almost two whole words into this story without a typo. ("This weeks code refresh..." should be "This week's code refresh...")

Re:But does it improve story quality?

[Mishotaki]

go on the gametrailers.com forums, using a character that isn't recognised by their forum will delete everything after that sign...

then you'll be happy that you get your characters typed in ASCII instead of deleting everything after it...

Re:But does it improve story quality?

[greyhueofdoubt]

Because that would result in fewer stories and thus fewer discussions. I wouldn't even come to slashdot every day just to see two or three new stories. I would like the same number of stories that we have now, and I would like them to be higher quality.

I have nothing against kdawson as a person, but I've yet to see a /. post defending him. Slashdot has made its opinion very clear.

-b

Re:But does it improve story quality?

[HTH NE1]

Know your entities:

• € euro (&euro;)
• £ pound (&pound;)
• ‘ left single quotation mark (&lsquo;)
• ’ right single quotation mark (&rsquo;)
• “ left double quotation mark (&ldquo;)
• ” right double quotation mark (&rdquo;)
• – en dash (&ndash;)
• — em dash (&mdash;)

For some reason though &sup2; nor &#178; work for squared, as doesn't &sup3; or &#179; for cubed.

Other supported named entities: ¥ ¦ © ® ± ¼ ½ ¾ × ÷ À Á Â Ã Ä Å Æ Ç È É Ê Ë Ì Í Î Ï Ð Ñ Ò Ó Ô Õ Ö Ø Ù Ú Û Ü Ý ß à á â ã ä å æ ç è é ê ë ì í î ï ð ñ ò ó ô õ ö ø ù ú û ü ý ÿ.

Re:But does it improve story quality?

[bar-agent]

UTF-8 beeyatch!

Re:But does it improve story quality?

[HTH NE1]

In general, sure. But suppose you need to mention that "A MÃÃse once bit my sister". This needs to be fixed.

Use &oslash;: A Møøse once bit my sister.

Re:But does it improve story quality?

[HTH NE1]

Or is there some new rule in English that under no circumstances can a non-English character appear in English text?

¥€$, åb$ø¦û±€|ý.

Re:But does it improve story quality?

[bar-agent]

• ellipsis (&hellip;) — hm, that doesn't work.
• ellipsis (&#2026;) — nope.

Really, entities are a hack. You should be able to enter the characters directly. Here's what happens when I try:

• euro — hidden
• £ pound — works!
• ' left single quote — turned into straight quote
• ' right single quote — turned into straight quote
• " left double quote — turned into straight quote
• " right double quote — turned into straight quote
• - n-dash — turned into normal hyphen
• -- m-dash — turned into two normal hyphens
• ... ellipsis — turned into three periods

Re:But does it improve story quality?

[pjt33]

Do you mean "out of ASCII range" or can I get Slashdot to accept acute accents and n-tilde by changing my locale from es_ES.UTF-8 to es_ES.ISO-8859-1?

Re:But does it improve story quality?

[Petrushka]

Other supported named entities: ¥ ¦ © ® ± ¼ ½ ¾ × ÷ À Á Â Ã Ä Å Æ Ç È É Ê Ë Ì Í Î Ï Ð Ñ Ò Ó Ô Õ Ö Ø Ù Ú Û Ü Ý ß à á â ã ä å æ ç è é ê ë ì í î ï ð ñ ò ó ô õ ö ø ù ú û ü ý ÿ.

Great. So in a Slashdot post I can type an eth (but not a thorn, bizarrely), or a y with an umlaut, but I can't type the name of this popular piece of software. Anyway, you should know from how long it took you to type that post just how painful entities are!

In addition, I have frequently had occasion to try to quote text either with more than the usual range of Western European accents (e.g. for Eastern European names) or even in another language -- because that's the type of geek I am, a language geek. Are you really going to claim that it is the more sensible choice not to support copying and pasting in such cases?

Re:But does it improve story quality?

[HTH NE1]

Anyway, you should know from how long it took you to type that post just how painful entities are!

I actually just copied and pasted them.(*)

Are you really going to claim that it is the more sensible choice not to support copying and pasting in such cases?

See above.

It's more of an issue of people blindly complaining they can't do it at all. I'd be within my rights to ask people to turn in their geek cards for not knowing about entities.

(*) Actually, more time was spent getting past lameness filters just to test them all: first the garbage filter that complains on any 8-bit characters, then the compression filter about too much whitespace inherited from the tables from which they were copied. I was surprised the thorns weren't supported, but maybe someone thought :&THORN; was too clever of an emoticon. :Ð

Re:But does it improve story quality?

[Bozdune]

Now THAT'S funny.

Re:But does it improve story quality?

[ZosX]

Oh, I've had submissions completely rewritten. They really don't seem to like it when you include negative opinions on things it seems... :)

Re:But does it improve story quality?

[kv9]

How about adding Unicode support

silence, heathen! you will post in ASCII and like it!

Re:But does it improve story quality?

[CecilPL]

How could you tell?

Re:But does it improve story quality?

[optimus2861]

Shutting off kdawson or other irritating (to put it gently) editors may help your front page, but does nothing for the RSS feed. I rarely visit the front page, myself; I open the RSS via a Firefox live bookmark, and if I see an interesting headline, I check the story out. It's only then that I might find out the story was posted by an editor I don't like, the headline was misleading, the summary is utter tripe, etc.

So the complaint is perfectly valid. I'd go so far as to say, "Just turn him off on your page," smacks of excuse-making.

Re:But does it improve story quality?

[Alsee]

Humor is so hard to detect in text

Yea, I know what you mean.
I often wish Slashdot had some way to tip me off if other people spotted humor in a post.

-

Re:But does it improve story quality?

[Alsee]

Sorry to ße a spelling Nazi, but what the fuck is that 'b' doing in there?

-

Re:But does it improve story quality?

[Alsee]

Hell Yeah!
I'm still pissed and still boycotting the goddamn perview btton!

-

Re:But does it improve story quality?

[Alsee]

No honey, I didn't get your birthday wrong, I just made a typo!

-

Re:But does it improve story quality?

[Short Circuit]

The Queen's "American Standard Code for Information Interchange"?

Re:But does it improve story quality?

[mkarcher]

¥€$, åb$ø¦û±€|ý.

The Nethack player in me just had a heart attack.

Hmm, do I want my possessions identified?

Hope

[Yvan256]

Let's just hope these new optimizations don't href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/technology/technologynews/5105

Re:Hope

[brian0918]

Shit I think this thing is Hope (Score:3, Funny) by Yvan256 (722131) Alter Relationship on Monday April 06, @11:49AM (#27476841) Homepage Let's just hope these new optimizations don't href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/technology/technologynews/5105 Reply to This

Re:Hope

[noidentity]

You know this new Slashdot meme will only make sense to people who saw that story before they corrected the href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/technology/technologynews/5105

Re:Hope

[x2A]

No! It will only make sense to those who <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/technology/technologynews/5105!!! Get it right people! *hmph*

Re:Hope

[Wilson_6500]

Oh crap it's spreading!

Re:Hope

[X0563511]

Ah, the birth of a meme. It's much like childbirth, only retarded.

Re:Hope

[bar-agent]

Let's just hope these new optimizations don't href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/technology/technologynews/5105

Hey, you totally the link.

Re:Hope

[Mozk]

Childbirth? It's more like stillbirth.

Re:Hope

[Alsee]

Some day people around here will stop making jokes at Sarah Palin's expense.
Today is not that day.

Yes I am going to hell for this post, but that's ok. I was heading there anyway.

-

Re:Hope

[X0563511]

You didn't get the memo?

In order to cut costs, they signed a merger with Hell.

Not clear on all achievements

[brian0918]

I've got a buttload of achievements listed, but not all are described in the help. What do they all mean?

Re:Not clear on all achievements

[Anonymous Coward]

no life

Re:Not clear on all achievements

[Anonymous Coward]

If AC had an account, I'm sure AC will get all the achievements. Yes, including the one achievement that requires one to get all the achievements.

Re:Not clear on all achievements

[Lumpy]

http://foamy.libertech.net/ACH22.swf

should answer everything you need to know about achievements.

NOTE: it is NOT works safe for language and animated ookyness. (no no porn, just some southpark style animated suggestion..)

Re:Not clear on all achievements

[Xenographic]

> no life

But I thought you got that Achievement just for posting?

now...

[unfunk]

Now if only Facebook (and other big sites, I guess - I don't visit many of them) would do things like decreasing bloat while adding functionality, the web would be a much nicer place to be.

Re:now...

[MiniMike]

If Facebook were to remove all the bloat and extraneous content they would be showing mostly blank pages. Yes, the web would be a much nicer place to be...

achievements system

[Anonymous Coward]

The heavy lifting on this was done by Chris Brown.

I don't care if he can code, any man that would hit a woman is no man at all. You don't deserve Rihanna, you piece of shit, and if I ever catch you out on the street without your bodyguards - your ass is grass my friend.

Re:achievements system

[MrCrassic]

That was Dan Brown.

Re:achievements system

[StikyPad]

Well I liked him as that zebra in Madagascar.

Re:achievements system

[skeeto]

He can code if we wants to. He can leave his friends behind. 'Cause his friends don't code and if they don't code, well they're no friends of mine.

Re:achievements system

[cayenne8]

"I don't care if he can code, any man that would hit a woman is no man at all. You don't deserve Rihanna,"

And yet SHE still went back to him.

I'm sorry...I don't have a lot of sympathy for stupidity.

Re:achievements system

[chartreuse]

Everybody look at your pants!

Sleeker is better

[Kell Bengal]

Achievements strike me as yet another penis-measuring tool, rather than as something that brings more value to the site. If people never read past story #6 is it because they check the site often enough to not need to go that far back, or is it because they only care about breaking headlines (or perhaps we all just have ADH- ooh, shiny!)

I think we would all benefit much more from a streamlined site, rather than the feature creep we're seeing at the moment. Slashdot isn't much broken, so don't much fix it.

Re:Sleeker is better

[Sj0]

I'd argue it is broken, but because they're changing things.

I don't know about you, but I get really high CPU utilization with the fancy new system. By contrast, the old system's only real flaw was that the page system was broken (you'd have to click on page 5 to get page 2), but straight HTML spit out by a server-side CGI script was about the fastest way you could possibly display the insane amount of information on a slashdot comments page quickly.

Re:Sleeker is better

[johnny cashed]

I happen to like the achievements.

After all:

In my country, they speak of a man so virile, so potent, that to spend a night with such a man is to enter a world of sensual delights most women dare not dream of. This man is known as "the comedian."

Re:Sleeker is better

[Reziac]

Absolutely. The cute bells and whistles are sometimes fun, and occasionally useful, but they are NOT why I come here. I come here for the news and the conversation. It's rather like a coffeehouse or neighbourhood bar -- you go there to relax. You don't want to be forced to dress up in a power suit just to have a beer with your friends.

My internet machine is a P3 (albeit with gobs of RAM). It struggles with the full display, even in "low bandwidth" mode (on broadband). It takes 20-30 seconds for any page (even "small" ones) to download and render in Mozilla.

Aside from the fact that the whole bloody look is hard on my aging eyes (with no way to get it to be "restfully readable"), this is one reason I still use antique Netscape 3 here -- it doesn't do CSS or JS, so all I see is plain text, rendered almost instantly.

If the site's "improvements" ever get to where I can't use NS3 to read and post, I'll have to give up Slashdot -- it simply won't be worth the time or the eyestrain if I have to read it in "normal" mode.

Re:Sleeker is better

[Vanders]

I've got everything switched off. All the new menus, collapsing comments, Web 2.37a stuff. I read at -1, Nested, Oldest First with no modifiers. In fact I'd be hard pressed to tell the difference between how I see Slashdot now and how I saw it when I first started reading. Which is just the way I like it!

Re:Sleeker is better

[drinkypoo]

Achievements strike me as yet another penis-measuring tool, rather than as something that brings more value to the site.

Well, at bare minimum they should thus bring penis to the site. Er, wait, slashdot is quite the sausage party already. Actually, I have a theory that there are actually quite a few females lurking, but they don't talk because they know we wouldn't appreciate it anyway. There are of course a few regular female contributors, but if I were them I wouldn't bother - you could be deluged with sexist bullshit anywhere. The difference is that most people are even dumber than the average slashdotter and have less excuse for thinking that crap is funny.

Achievements are harmless. They don't even do anything! As long as there are no achievements based on things like first posts or negative moderation, the achievement system is unlikely to actually harm anyone. It's only when it rewards bad behavior (e.g. by allowing a negative score - thus users could compete for maximum absolute value) that it becomes dangerous.

Re:Sleeker is better

[bhtooefr]

Or because some of us use RSS, not the front page, which prevents those statistics from working. (Of course, the fact that I have the JavaScript front page turned off might also do that even if I DID use the front page. :))

Re:Sleeker is better

[Mr. Slippery]

straight HTML spit out by a server-side CGI script was about the fastest way you could possibly display the insane amount of information on a slashdot comments page quickly

Yes. Please, please, please, STOP with the pointless and annoying AJAXing of Slashdot. It is not a "web application" like Google maps where you want to be able to zoom and drag. It is an information source, so send me the information -- not a program to view the information in the way you think is cool.

Classic mode works fine (except, as the parent notes, the broken pagination), whereas attempting to use the "new and improved" system makes me want to put my fist through the screen. If they ever remove the option to use classic mode, for the safety of my hardware I'll have to stop using the site.

Re:Sleeker is better

[clang_jangle]

Using elinks is definitely the way to go when reading slashdot. Even on my screamin' new intel Mac, slashdot takes forever to load in any graphical browser.

Re:Sleeker is better

[Maxo-Texas]

I also turn everything off every chance I get.

I want flat text.

Every change they've made has annoyed me.

And get off my lawn. --- (joke portion to lighten up- but the rest above I'm serious about)

Re:Sleeker is better

[coryking]

Since I never target NS3, I'm rather curious--doesn't pretty much the entire web look like shit for you? I mean, no offense, but I never bother targeting NS3 or IE4 because I figure if you are using it, you are pretty much used to nothing on the internet working. So surely you must be used to this, right?

it doesn't do CSS

Translation: tables.

Sorry, no thanks. If I have to do tables, it means it is harder to target search engines and screen readers. I'd rather have them then people who deliberately run antique browsers and complain about how no modern website works.

I could be getting trolled though. In fact, I bet I am. Nobody uses NS3... I get more hits from the Nintendo WII and the PSP!!

Re:Sleeker is better

[garcia]

Add a mobile page which autodetects. I don't want to have to set something in my settings to get it to come up like that when I only read from my mobile page once or twice a day. It's a real fucking pain in the ass to wait 45 to 60 seconds for the page to come up because there is so much shit being loaded.

Tons of other sites have auto-mobile support. Why not a tech site like Slashdot?

Re:Sleeker is better

[0xABADC0DA]

this is one reason I still use antique Netscape 3 here -- it doesn't do CSS or JS, so all I see is plain text, rendered almost instantly.

In firefox:
    View -> Page Style -> No Style

Probably you can do this automatically with greasemonkey or something. Noscript will disable all javascript, or only js you want.

My internet machine is a P3 (albeit with gobs of RAM) ... If the site's "improvements" ever get to where I can't use NS3 to read and post, I'll have to give up Slashdot -- it simply won't be worth the time or the eyestrain

'Here's a nickel kid. Get yourself a better computer.' Also, nobody else can read Idle stories either...

Re:Sleeker is better

[ColdWetDog]

Mee too.. Just for fun, I went to my wife's machine which has just runs with Firefox / Adblock (she likes all the cruft), popped into slashdot without logging in.

My eyes.

The goggles, they do nothing!

Re:Sleeker is better

[Reziac]

Elinks? Another descendant of Lynx? this one? http://elinks.or.cz/ Thanks, I'll have to try it, next time I have a non-Windows system up (I don't see a build for Windows, and I gather it's not available as a binary??) The screenshots remind me of some of the old DOS-based graphical browsers, which were a good start but never really got to where they were useful to me. This looks more mature.

Re:Sleeker is better

[Reziac]

Nope, I really do still use NS3 as my primary browser, for any site that degrades gracefully and isn't afflicted with JS menus. (I also have image loading turned off, an old habit from the mid-1990s and very slow dialup, but even on broadband I've discovered that I really prefer NOT to be bothered with images most of the time. NS3 handles this well; Mozilla does not.)

NS3 renders CSS sites pretty much as plain text. This makes many sites FAR easier to read, as all the "busy" shit goes away (and probably because it's easier for the developer than tables, CSS sites *do* tend to have a LOT more "busy" clutter than other sites). When CSS is done right, so it degrades gracefully, there IS no "layout", but the text, menus, and links remain in catalog order, so it's just as usable, sometimes moreso.

So the fact is -- if you're doing your CSS right, I'll see a perfectly functional plaintext page, and everything will work exactly as I expect it to. No need to worry about browser quirks. :) And I already know it's going to look like plain text, so I'm not offended by it being "ugly" :)

When CSS is fucked up, the content can wind up scrambled, but that seems to come from trying to combine tables with CSS (or from combining CSS with JS to restrict browser behaviour, or for menus). When a site uses just one or the other, everything is copasetic.

As to your beautiful layouts -- they may be lovely as an art form, but if I just want to read stuff I don't CARE what it looks like, so long as it's readable for aging eyes. I have stuff set to black text on grey background because that's restful to my eyes. Glare white with black text is painful after a while, even with my monitor dialed way down. So your *gracefully-degrading* CSS is appreciated, because it DOES render as my desired black-on-grey.

Re:Sleeker is better

[Reziac]

I think that's what the low-bandwidth option is supposed to do, but in a "normal modern browser" display, it still takes for freakin' ever to load and render -- so clearly something else is needed, at least for people who may not have the option of an old browser that strips CSS.

Tho come to think of it, wasn't there an add-on for the Moz family that did nothing but strip CSS? whatever happened to that?

Re:Sleeker is better

[Reziac]

Heh, I remembered that there used to be an add-on that killed CSS and such, but it hadn't occured to me to look under "view, styles" in the current version! (when I must use a newer browser, I use Seamonkey; I detest Firefox!) Thanks for the heads-up. This will henceforth see lots of use. :)

[goes off, tries it] Well, it does work here on Slashdot, and unlike the rest of Moz/SM/FF, it actually RESPECTS my system colours -- tho it still takes about 10x as long to render the exact same page as in NS3!! And it totally falls over on Google maps (almost locked up). So I guess it's not completely stripping styles, but perhaps re-rendering 'em after the fact. Unfortunately, the entire FF/Moz family is afflicted with that sort of poor programming Zen, as Michael Abrash would say. :(

Re:Sleeker is better

[Red Flayer]

There are of course a few regular female contributors, but if I were them I wouldn't bother - you could be deluged with sexist bullshit anywhere.

True. But, it's my opinion that some slashdot female contributors are often modded up just because they are female (especially if they have "girl" in their nick). I've read lengthy posts that are seriously misinformed or offtopic, yet modded to +5 within minutes of posting... that if posted by other users, would have been slagged off with disagreeing posts immediately.

Of course, I'm also of the opinion that most users of a tech site with "girl" in their nick are either aging hairy creepsters in their underwear, or federales. :)

As for achievements being harmless... I disagree. There is potential for good as well as bad -- it's all in the implementation. It changes how users use slashdot, and thus changes the nature of slashdot. I think it can have a positive effect, but one of the things I've always liked about slashdot is how organic it is. Achievements seem like a very heavy-handed way to encourage certain behaviour.

That said, my own nature demands that I collect as many achievements as possible, within reason. This means less time discussing articles, and more time finding ways to collect achievements. Given that you've marked me as a foe, I guess to you that'd be a net positive :).

Re:Sleeker is better

[jddj]

Lighter-weight is better.

We're moving to mobile browsing guys; all the pipe-clogging, ARM-processor-choking, cursor-freezing bullshit you're sending down the line had made Slashdot a non-destination for me for a while now.

Have just shut off the Beta2 crap, and it's so much faster, so much easier to use.

Re:Sleeker is better

[XanC]

The Web Developer Toolbar allows you to easily enable and disable things like CSS and images, along with many other handy tools.

Re:Sleeker is better

[Logic and Reason]

You know you can disable stylesheets in most browsers, right? In Firefox it's something like View->Page Style->No Style. And I'd be surprised if turning off images in any browser could seriously break things when you've turned off CSS anyway... what kind of problems do you run into?

Re:Sleeker is better

[X0563511]

"made Slashdot a non-destination for me for a while now."

... and yet here you are.

Re:Sleeker is better

[0xABADC0DA]

Pages can have multiple styles... although pretty much no sites do, since they'd have to support another style. But you can set 'simple style' in your /. account prefs... then you get black bars instead of colored ones ;-(

The 10x longer is because even though there is no style the javascript is still running to abbreviate posts and whatever tf else it does. You can disable javascript using the noscript addon. Supposedly that works in seamonkey too.

Also, google maps works just fine as long as you disable style AND javascript (the url will have &output=html). Not sure why anybody would use the non-javascript view though...

Re:Sleeker is better

[Raenex]

My internet machine is a P3 (albeit with gobs of RAM).

I'm curious what somebody using a P3 thinks "gobs of RAM" is. How much?

Re:Sleeker is better

[Reziac]

It's in how the browser handles not-loading images.

Netscape leaves everything exactly the same, except there is a "hole" where the image would be -- with the ALT text visible. You can right-click and have your way with the image (load a single image, save it, etc.), and if it's an imagelink or imagemap, it still works. You don't have to wait for images to download, yet still have all their other uses, with no effect on the layout or functionality.

But when image loading is disabled in Moz/FF, it "disappears" the image, along with the blank placeholder space, the alt text, and any assocuiated imagelinks/imagemaps, and there is nothing left to rightclick OR leftclick. That's not useful, sometimes it's nonfunctional, and it's very irritating.

Re:Sleeker is better

[Reziac]

Thanks, I hadn't heard of that one -- sounds like something to look into. I use PrefBar but there are a few tweaks it doesn't do.

Re:Sleeker is better

[Reziac]

Google maps whyness: The non-JS view is MUCH faster, and if you want a *printable* map image, is much better. Yeah, you have to move it around the old fashioned way, but the image is much clearer and there's less clutter around it. AND it's faster. (And I hate their new "improved" zoom method in the full version.. makes it much harder to zero in on a feature.) So when I know I'll need to print the output, or if I'm in a hurry and just want the damned street map -- I use the old primitive no-JS view.

Yeah, I keep meaning to look into noscript... realtor.com is so fucked up now that it takes 30 seconds just for the bad script to stall out. Unusable as it is now. :(

Re:Sleeker is better

[Reziac]

1GB, which was gobs for the P3 era, and is overkill for what it does (it runs Win98 and does mostly online stuff and image editing). But RAM was cheap that week and it needed low-profile sticks, which were hard to find. So I maxed it out when I had the chance.

And frankly, if rendering web pages needs a bleeding edge machine, something is seriously wrong with what we're doing to the web.

Re:Sleeker is better

[Raenex]

Ok, I was expecting something like 256 megs :) I actually run with 1GB too, even if that is on the low end these days.

Re:Sleeker is better

[Reziac]

Makes a person feel downright retro, don't it? :)

I've never caught it using more than 450mb, so I guess the rest is there mostly for looks :)

Re:Sleeker is better

[Logic and Reason]

I just tried visiting yahoo.com in Firefox with image loading turned off, and the alt-text placeholders are there. Can you give an example of a site that works with images turned off in Netscape but not in Firefox?

Re:Sleeker is better

[Ant P.]

I've heard of low-profile AGP cards, but low-profile RAM sticks?? That must be a tiny case you're using.

Oh, and have you given links2 a try instead of NS3? It's pretty nice.

Re:Sleeker is better

[Reziac]

Maybe they fixed the mess in Firefox, but that's how it was on ALL sites in the last version of Moz....

And when I tried it just now in Seamonkey, I see they've messed it up entirely... I can RClick, block images from this server, but I can't turn off image loading globally (at least not with any handy menu item), and it ignores the Prefbar checkbox as well!

Re:Sleeker is better

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, you found it. It takes no time to build, really. Be sure to check the many config options (./configure --help | less) when building. It handles enough JS to deal with posting and logging in on slashdot, plus it does tables pretty well, and even has tabbed browsing. I find it to be the most useful of the text browsers.
I don't know if it's actually related to lynx, don't think so...

Re:Sleeker is better

[Reziac]

Actually, no... The "RAM vs HD hanger" issue was common with Tyan motherboards -- because Tyan always designed for servers (desktops were an afterthought) and even their AT-only motherboards assumed a server-width case (meaning about an inch more clearance than standard). They are wonderfully stable and long-lived, but server class mobo layouts don't always quite agree with desktop-class cases, not even high-end ones.

So... it's a server-type motherboard in a mid-tower AT case. Trouble is, the mobo is AT/ATX (swings both ways) and being a Tyan, the RAM slots are located as close to the CPU as was practical... meaning it tries to violate the laws of physics with the HD hanger when occupying an AT case. It only works at all because this was a fairly high-end case in its day, and the HD hanger is way over to one side, leaving more vertical clearance than in a typical AT case. Even so, I had to find low-clearance RAM to make it fit (such requests make your RAM dealer look at you funny). I think it's Panasonic RAM, but having not looked at it in 11 years I couldn't tell ya for sure :)

The machine started life as a 486 in 1994, and the case and PSU (also server class) are among the few remaining original parts (along with the 2nd sound card for DOS games, and the 3" floppy drive).

I have an identical motherboard in a dual AT/ATX case, and being about an inch wider to accomodate what was then the early ATX type, that one can take any height RAM. (That one is my media machine.)

Compgeeks has a nice dual-xeon mobo/CPU/RAM package for under $100, and I thought about getting one... but it won't fit even in my whopping great full tower ATX case (in the $200 range, if I'd had to buy it), because the bloody thing is an inch too wide!

Is links2 descended from eLinks 0.98? That refuses to run on Win98.

Re:Sleeker is better

[kv9]

I use Opera and the classic index on older machines, and it works great compared to Firefox. YMMV.

Re:Sleeker is better

[kv9]

that's probably because they used width/height attributes for img tags. you wont't be so lucky on sites that "forget" about that.

Re:Sleeker is better

[Reziac]

Tried Opera and found it... trying :) Just didn't like the interface. It seems to be a love-it-or-hate-it app for most people.

(I must have 20 browsers installed, way back to DOS text browsers, so it's not like I don't give 'em a try :)

Re:Sleeker is better

[jddj]

Whole different thing. Yes, I read it on the day I posted, and have been back between now and then.

The difference is that I don't read Slashdot obsessively any longer, don't often get past the front page or the article summary, have looked for other content sources to fill the void.

I'll come by and graze once in a while, but I seldom post, never moderate, just use the site less in general because it's a bit** to do so now.

I forget,

[internerdj]

how many achievements do I need to unlock the ACOG scope?

Test CDN?

[gmuslera]

At least for some site optimization schools (from the point of view of visitors, at the very least) using a CDN is almost a must.

Re:Test CDN?

[NeoSkandranon]

They could also remove idle

Better idea imo.

Re:Test CDN?

[nacturation]

Though I'm puzzled as to what effect testing a Canadian will achieve.

Achievements

[Rik Sweeney]

Is there a list of who has the most achievements? Maybe Slashdot should award titles depending upon how many achievements you have.

Re:Achievements

[RulerOf]

Create a Rank based on achievement count and quality, then split by UID or Karma level!

Though I have to admit this achievement shit that has been showing up in games is really f*cking asinine.

Re:The Maker Achievement

[unfunk]

it means you rode Shai Hulud

Re:The Maker Achievement

[eln]

Well, I don't have it, so I guess it's not related to spending ludicrous amounts of time posting stupid jokes on Slashdot instead of working...

IPv6?

[c_g_hills]

Still no support for IPv6 it seems. Has it even been given consideration?

Re:IPv6?

[Chyeld]

Still no support for IPv6 it seems. Has it even been given consideration?

Yes, as an achievement. Sadly even then, only 0.001% of us will ever see it.

Re:IPv6?

[Alsee]

0.001% of us will ever see it

You mean like if someone posts a video of it on YouTube and it winds up on Idle?

-

Flair?

[brian0918]

You mean, like flair? You know, the Nazis had pieces of flair that they made the Jews wear.

Re:Flair?

[jalefkowit]

Are you trying to tell us that visiting TGI Friday's is like visiting Auschwitz? Because we already knew that.

Erm...excuse me!

[Smivs]

It's great on Firefox. It has a few bugs on Safari. It will work on Chrome as soon as Google gets a Mac port out (Hint hint!). As for IE... well, you'll keep the old system for a few more weeks, but you're only like 14% of our users, and you keep shrinking.

Er...havn't you forgotten something. A lot of us are Sooo nerdy we use Opera

Re:Erm...excuse me!

[its_schwim]

Nobody's forgotten. /. knows that Opera readers will simply build an inline proxy that pre-reads the page, corrects any errors, add missing alignment attributes and then optimize the resulting code before passing it on to the user. For this reason, web development no longer has to take the browser into account.

Re:Erm...excuse me!

[gnick]

Opera readers will simply build an inline proxy that pre-reads the page, corrects any errors, add missing alignment attributes and then optimize the resulting code before passing it on to the user.

... which will be available as a Firefox Add-on eight months later and built into the monolith that will be known as IE 10. Firefox users (myself included) will believe and argue that FF invented this feature.

Re:Erm...excuse me!

[Urza9814]

Bah! True nerds use Chromium. On Linux.

Re:Erm...excuse me!

[Topwiz]

The Search box doesn't work correctly in Chrome. When logged in the search box and button are half covered by the menu bar. When logged out, they are on top of the menu bar. Works fine in IE7 on my pc.

IE at 14%?

[theCoder]

IE usage down to 14% seems like a major story, even for a tech heavy site like Slashdot. It would be interesting to see trends of browsers on /. over time. And maybe even OS stats?

btw, Taco, I use noscript to turn off the Javascript on /., mostly because Firefox 2 on my Solaris machine is just too slow (and there's really no hope of getting Firefox 3 working -- I'd have to compile half of Gnome in library upgrades). I can accept some of the UI weirdness (like the gray triangle on top of every story on the main page), but I hope you don't make Javascript a requirement for viewing /. That would be painful!

Re:IE at 14%?

[coryking]

It is only down to 14% on this website because this website doesn't function on any version of IE. If you try to do anything using IE, you'll quickly realize they don't test using it and you have to switch browsers. In otherwords, no it is not a major story beyond "Slashdot is a Firefox-only website"

Funny that. They should put an animated "Best viewed with Netscape" at the bottom of the page. I thought that attitude went out with Firefox.

Re:IE at 14%?

[Phroggy]

Agreed - last time I heard, IE accounted for over 50% of Slashdot page views, so dropping to under 14% is definitely significant.

What about OS share? Other than the 14%, how many of the rest are on Windows? Mac? Linux? BSD? Other?

Re:IE at 14%?

[Cube Steak]

And yet despite your claim of it not working at all in any version of IE, I was able to post this comment in IE6. Strange, eh?

Re:IE at 14%?

[otomo_1001]

Works fine in Safari 3/4, i'd imagine chrome should be fine too as its also using webkit. Albeit with a different javascript engine.

Really the lagging IE bit may be more along the lines of "we are a tech site, our visitors most likely can use a decent browser that adheres to some semblance of standards". I admit though I don't use IE 7/8 so I can't speak to how well or not those browsers work. Too lazy to fire up vmware.

Re:IE at 14%?

[Blakey Rat]

Last time you heard, the site probably worked correctly on IE. Now it doesn't at all, unless you turn on the "old" commenting system. (And even then the User page is all screwy.)

There's not a lot of significance in reporting that a site that doesn't work in IE isn't used by IE.

Re:IE at 14%?

[Phroggy]

I was unaware that it didn't work in IE, so yeah, I'd say there is some significance to that. :-P

Re:IE at 14%?

[Smivs]

These IE users could be the poor souls forced to use it by unscrupulous employers. They should be pitied, not edged out!

Re:IE at 14%?

[PSdiE]

Whether or not that is true, the Slashmins clearly believe IE users to be unimportant (you know, the users of the world's most popular browser), as post formatting is messed up in IE7.

Half the replies in this thread appear blank in IE7 on XP (e.g., whatever Hurricane78 was replying to with "Last time I checked, they were not your b*tch, ya know?"). This reply textarea I'm using now is shifted to the right on 1024x768, meaning I have to scroll right to see it.

I was away from Slashdot for a few months recently (work overload!) and have come back to mess of broken formatting. WTF happened?!

As others have pointed out, many of us either have no choice about using IE (e.g., corporate boxes, or web design professionals where it makes sense to us the same browser as the majority of your clients), or even *shock* choose it as browser of choice.

Grrrr - focus on the basics before twiddling the AJAX nobs!

Re:The Maker Achievement

[Kell Bengal]

Sounds like something my stoner friend does on the weekend.

Bring back the old user page!

[eln]

The new user page is ugly and less useful than the old one. It takes information that used to be on the main user page and makes me click on a second link in order to see it.

I respect that website maintainers like to add new shiny things to the website every once in a while, but for God's sake, don't take away functionality in the process.

Re:Bring back the old user page!

[Red Flayer]

just bookmark www.slashdot.org/users.pl

Re:Bring back the old user page!

[eln]

I suppose, until they decide to retire that page. Also, I would like to get a useful page when I click on my name at the top of the page rather than having to type in the address bar or navigate my bookmarks. Also, I prefer the role of the grumpy curmudgeon, and using an alternative user page rather than bitching about the current one is not in keeping with that role.

Re:Bring back the old user page!

[hansamurai]

I agree with you, and have been thinking about writing a Greasemonkey script to fix this, if one already hasn't been written.

Re:Bring back the old user page!

[Blakey Rat]

It also doesn't work on an iPhone. (The right-hand summary pane overlaps the post titles and hides the moderation score-- I don't know about everybody else, but the *only* reason I ever visit the user page is to see moderation scores.)

I reported a ton of bugs related to it, including the iPhone one, all ignored. As all my Slashdot bugs are.

correlation something something causation

[MagicM]

As for IE... well, you'll keep the old system for a few more weeks, but you're only like 14% of our users, and you keep shrinking.

Ah, yes. The old "if it hurts, then just stop doing it" treatment. Of course the number of IE users keeps shrinking, as they find that this site doesn't work with their browser of choice!

As an Opera user I'm still using the old-school no-beta, no-beta2 version of Slashdot, and I sincerely hope the day will never come that I have to choose between Opera and Slashdot.

Re:correlation something something causation

[VJ42]

One follows standards. One doesn't.

/. doesn't follow standards, so locking out a browser that also doesn't is hypocritical to say the least.

14%

[MMC Monster]

Had to read the last line of the article to get that tidbit. :-)

So if IE is such a small fraction, why not post browser statistics?

Along with the upgrades and fixes ...

[Samschnooks]

I see that the Slashdot programming staff has added some more skills to their resume. I don't CmdrTaco has anything to worry about - yet. But, if we start seeing Slashdot being ported over to .NET, then, well, maybe those guys will be moving on.

Now, with bigger ads!

[Animats]

The Google ad blocks seem to be bigger. And there are more of them. I thought Google limited you to one block of ads per page.

Comment Page

[sashapup]

Just annecdotal, since I don't have numbers to back it up, but comment pages seem a LOT faster with the cut over from YUI. The lil floating comment bar used to be PAINFULLY slow in letting me scroll through.

Backwards text (2:erocS)

[tepples]

How about adding Unicode support so that posts aren't often filled with random garbage when commenters assume one of the major technical sites on the internet should be able to handle curved quotation marks.

They tried that once before. But some idiots found some Unicode characters that could be used to reverse the display of Slashdot and spoof scores. See my previous post on this topic

Re:Backwards text (2:erocS)

[Idiomatick]

So fix that?

Re:Backwards text (2:erocS)

[Cube Steak]

But fixing things requires actually doing hard work rather than cheap hacks.

Re:Backwards text (2:erocS)

[Idiomatick]

There is a japanese /. which clearly allows for more characters. I'm sure it would take them whole minutes to transfer the hack.

Re:Backwards text (2:erocS)

[religious freak]

Wow. That's annoying, but honestly pretty rad. How the hell does that even work from a technical standpoint, I wonder. Hmm, how much time do I have to kill today...

Re:Backwards text (2:erocS)

[Haeleth]

It would be so much easier if the Unicode folks had thought to classify all their characters for us, so we could tell at a glance what was a printable character and what was a control character that might do undesirable things. They could have stuck all that information in some kind of Character Database. Then, I dunno, maybe the Perl folks would have been able to figure out some way of making that information available to programmers, possibly even as a straightforward extension to regular expression syntax. Then it might have been feasible to extend Slash so it supported more characters safely!

Ah, who am I kidding.

Re:10% of 1%

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

Those of us with a functioning brain switched off the Javascript Web 2.0 crap the day you foisted it on us, and we'll continue to read Slashdot the way we always have.

Those of you with functioning brains prefer larger downloads, and waiting for full page loads before replying and after moderating? Ah, right, and having to refresh the page every time you change your threshold?

Phew. Sure am glad my brain is broken then. Among other advantages, those of us with non-functional brains realize that just because a technology happens to have a buzzword attached to it doesn't mean that the technology itself is a bad thing.

Re:The Maker Achievement

[stoolpigeon]

There should be a little maker achievement to go with it.

Significant portions, anyone?

[RulerOf]

Explicitly ignoring a user-base that high is almost as ignorant as legislating against homosexuals in liberal parts of the US.

But if Taco and friends think raising the barrier to entry on their site is a good idea....

I'm not really sure what to say about that.

Re:Significant portions, anyone?

[Hurricane78]

But if Taco and friends think raising the barrier to entry on their site is a good idea....

Last time I checked, they were not your bitch, ya know? ;)

I learned in five painful years, what obeying every wish of your users results in.
Commercial companies often try to make their products simpler, so the stupidest user can use them.
Which results in them getting more stupid people on average.
Which results in there being an even lower end in that Gaussian curve.
Which results in some users still complaining and having problems.
Which results in the companies dumbing products even more down.
Until they become unusable for intelligent people.

Clippy and all the assistance in Windows are well-known results of this process.
Gnome fell into that trap too.
And I fear KDE does right now, with the new KDE 4.x desktop. (Hopefully not.)

On the other end are things like VI, that went up until it became unusable for beginners.

This made me define my philosophy of doing things as:
I do what I like and what I think is right, and then the users that use it, will automatically be those who agree with me.
And I do not run after people, or let them define my reality.

So maybe raising the barrier, is the point for Taco. Dunno, but I just want to say that is it far from being a bad idea by definition.

Re:Test

[tepples]

UTF-8 support .... that's a no.

I'm guessing that's a no on purpose. Slashdot whitelists characters so that posters can't use the bidirectional characters to destroy the layout.

I just hope

[Reapman]

You guys don't break IE functionality before my work upgrades from IE6... I absolutely despise IE (and IE6 most of all) but can't break free of it yet :(

Re:I just hope

[Leafheart]

Can't you get Firefox Portable? I use it at my company since the TI here DON'T WANT to move away from IE6, since it is the "only one that works" (their words...). I got Firefox Portable and sent to me through email, unzip on My documents and there you go.

Re:I just hope

[kbielefe]

I heard they make computers now that can run IE and firefox at the same time!

Seriously, if you hate it that much, have you looked at solutions like this?

Re:I just hope

[Reapman]

NO WAI! Who'd have THUNK THAT?!?

Hmm being Slashdot I figured people would know about the ability of scanning computers on the network for software sitting on a computer and in use... I'm already on a list for using Firefox before and already got slammed down for using an approved version of IE7 (just not approved for me it seems)

Re:I just hope

[kbielefe]

Know about the ability, yes.

Choose to stay employed somewhere so draconian as to actually employ said technology, for one second longer than financially feasible, no.

On the other hand, I don't know what to make of a company who doesn't care that you're posting to slashdot, but is so extremely anal about what web browser you use to do so.

Best Improvement

[sexconker]

The "do not use those stupid fucking boxes on the right side" button actually works now.

Mark all posts as read when hitting "more"?

[Briareos]

I know posts get marked as read when using keyboard navigation, but since I don't want to do that could hitting the "Get More Comments" button at the bottom of the page and/or the "More" link in the slider thingy please mark as read and/or collapse all already shown posts?

That would really make finding the newly added posts a lot easier...

np: Gui Boratto - Mr. Decay (Chromophobia)

AutoPager?

[macraig]

Slashdot is copying the AutoPager Firefox extension concept? Was code re-used as well?

Bug Fix Request - Comment Mismoderation

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

I really like the new system(s), especially the async page loading and 'fetch on demand' aspects of comments. But...

Please oh please, add a "submit" button next to the moderation dropdown? It should do the same asynchronous post that selection change of that dropdown does today. It's very easy (especially using a sensitive touchpad) to mis-click on a moderation option - which you can then only undo by replying in the conversation, and losing any point(s) awarded.*

A submit button would remove the accidental moderation issue, and still allow the all the ajaxified web2.0 paradigms to remain intact ;)

* then - to add insult to injury - usually get that corrective post modded down as offtopic because of some moderator a power trip

Re:Bug Fix Request - Comment Mismoderation

[Garridan]

When I've got mod points, the huge number of dropdown boxes makes the page very slow to load and scroll around on. Perhaps it would be better to switch to something more "2.0" than a dropdown box? Each comment gets a +/- corner like stories on the firehose, and when you click one, you get the usual options in the same format as moderating stories. This would require two clicks as always, and I think it should satisfy thePowerOfGrayskull's needs -- also, it has the added benefit of being 99% implemented already, and improving design coherence overall.

Re:Bug Fix Request - Comment Mismoderation

[SydShamino]

Even more important. How the hell am I supposed to use mod points right now when the auto-application is broken?

I have mod points right now. I find a post worthy of being moderated. I select the correct moderation from the drop-down box. And... nothing happens (usually). I have javascript from slashdot.org permitted. I haven't posted in the thread.

I thought that it had to do with the long delay between pressing Preview and the preview appearing for the first comment I post during any given session. (I thought I had to comment once to "wake up" the engine, then future moderations would work.) But no, I just tried that, and it didn't work at all.

On the other hand, some days it works wonderfully.

So yes, PLEASE put a "submit" button next to the drop-down box, if only so that I can actually use the points I've been entrusted with.

Re:Bug Fix Request - Comment Mismoderation

[SydShamino]

Ok, maybe I answered my own question. Now I have to permit javascript from fsdn.com, too?

Suggestion.

[LWATCDR]

How about having the username field get focus when you log in.
It would save a little time when logging in.

Re:Suggestion.

[mpcjans]

This is incredibly annoying behavior. I often already start typing the password before the page has fully loaded. The switching focus when loading has completed is annoying at best and a security risk at worst.

Re:Suggestion.

[LWATCDR]

since the current default is for none of the fields to have focus your not entering you data anywhere. When you log on you have to enter your user name first so why would you start typing in your password before it loads?
And isn't typing in your password blind the actual security risk?

Re:Suggestion.

[mpcjans]

since the current default is for none of the fields to have focus your not entering you data anywhere.

You click on the username and enter your username, press tab and start entering your password. (while checking that the password field has focus)

When you log on you have to enter your user name first so why would you start typing in your password before it loads?

Because some pages takes ages to load for example.

And isn't typing in your password blind the actual security risk?

No, because I checked the password field had focus when I started typing. However the 'feature' you suggested stole the focus and put it to username field. Any manipulation of the focus is *evil*.

Re:Suggestion.

[LWATCDR]

Huhhh.
On slashdot when you go to log in you get a pop up window with just the username and password.
Making a user use the mouse is evil so setting the focus will make the log in a little easier.
Finally even if you are using a page that takes forever to load all you have to do to make you happy is check to see if the user name field is blank. If it is give it the focus. If it is not and the password is blank give that the focus. If that is not blank give the okay button the focus.
Maybe you not using the same version of Slashdot but the issue you are suggesting just can not happen.

Re:Suggestion.

[mpcjans]

I never use the login pop up, I always use the login fields on the right side of the page. I agree that when using the pop up it will be much less of an issue.

Also instead of not changing focus when the username is filled, I would prefer only setting focus when nothing else has focus (if this is even possible).

I agree 100% on the 'require a mouseclick is evil'

Re:Suggestion.

[Inda]

I have a Greasemonkey script to disable this highly annoying feature that so many websites like to use.

Some of us, most of us on laptops, like to use the keyboard for browsing. The spacebar is used as page-down. Shift+space to go the other way. Arrow keys for smaller scrolls.

I suppose NoScript blocks this action too...

Re:Suggestion.

[penguinchris]

I am not sure if he is suggesting this occurs on slashdot. I have it set to keep me logged in, so I haven't noticed if this is the case.

But - it is certainly the case on many (most?) other websites that the focus goes to the username field when the page is finished loading. The problem, as mpcjans is trying to explain, is that pages take so long to load all their crap - by the time the page has fully loaded, I've already clicked in the username box and typed my username. I then hit tab, and start typing my password. This coincidentally is usually the time that the page finishes loading, which causes the focus to shift back to the username box, causing me to potentially type part or all of my password in the username box (if you do this all quickly, without thinking about it, which I imagine most of us do).

This is the behavior on most sites, as I said, and it is extremely annoying. If you're in the habit of not starting to type your username before the page is finished loading, perhaps it doesn't affect you.

Re:Suggestion.

[LWATCDR]

It should be possible if you go and check every field on the page to see if any of them have focus. A bit nasty but it can be done.
For the fields on the right side of the page I agree that setting the focus on those on slashdot would be a bad choice. You don't have to log on to read and even comment on Slashdot so that would be a bad idea. Not really evil but bad UI design.
But I was talking about the pop-up login.

Spoofing Firefox

[PIPBoy3000]

Actually, we IE users are spoofing our user agent to make it seem like we're Firefox whenever we visit Slashdot.

I've got a reputation as a nerd to uphold, after all.

index2?

[Anonymous Coward]

What is index2?

Classical Style

[dysfunct]

I congratulate the /. team for applying so many changes that would make the site more interesting and increase usability for a number of users. Also, I know that playing with all the new-fangled AJAX stuff is pretty and can be fun to develop.

On the other hand: Please don't ignore us users who still use the good old classic style. I simply like my /. without fancy effects and strange navigation bars. Threshold of 3, nested, oldest comments first, re-parenting comments and a link i can open in a new tab to read the stuff below my threshold is all I want and need.

Long story short: While developing all the exciting new stuff, please don't completely ignore or remove (*shock* *horror*) ye goode olde Slashdot layout. It works currently, has served many people well for quite a while now and hopefully doesn't cause too much work for you guys. Just please fix it every now and then in case you break it.

Suggested Achievement

[Anonymous Coward]

Foreigner - posted a comment with Unicode characters

Re:Suggested Achievement

[Balinares]

Touché.

Re:Suggested Achievement

[Alsee]

You missed the Übergeek Achievement: typed Unicode characters from a continental US IP address with a US keyboard.

-

how about (iPhone)

[sl0ppy]

how about jump to top trying pause, then jump to top to pause view the pause, then jump to top page pause on an pause, jump to top iPhone?

is there any way to disable all of this behavior?

Moderation Bug?

[ardle]

Of course, I've just lost moderator status so can't verify but - some time in the last week - I noticed that moderation controls were missing for the last post in a "thread", i.e. the last of this post's children (I can't say if I saw it for "threads" of size 1, like this one currently is).
Can anyone verify?
Of course, I discovered the issue when I wanted to moderate a post but couldn't because the select was missing; however the select was present for all of the post's siblings.

Re:Moderation Bug?

[ardle]

Or maybe this one?

Mods?
You don't have to mod but a comment would be useful.

Is the moderation select box available for this post?
I promise I'll stop now, Slash-filter ;-)

Re:10% of 1%

[achurch]

Those of you with functioning brains prefer larger downloads

No, those of us with functioning brains realize the download size doesn't matter -- it's the response speed. Since the majority of the download is auxiliary content (graphics, Javascript, what have you), a few kilobytes of text one way or the other won't make any noticeable difference

and waiting for full page loads before replying

Some of us like to, you know, Read The Fine Article first.

and after moderating?

Honestly, the delay had never registered with me. Maybe my ADHD quotient is too low?

Ah, right, and having to refresh the page every time you change your threshold?

I haven't changed my threshold in... good grief, I can't even remember. Years, anyway.

I've actually tried the new-style discussion interface several times since it was introduced, and frankly I just can't bring myself to like it. Partly because I hate floating widgets (they flicker too much), partly because I can't (i.e. haven't felt like taking the time to) figure out how comments are ordered, and partly, well, just because; maybe it's the Office 2007 ribbon effect of being annoyed by an arbitrarily changed interface.

Re:10% of 1%

[NeoSkandranon]

Posting anonymously for obvious reasons.

I think you're doin it wrong.

(Do I get an achievement for using that phrase legitimately?)

Re:10% of 1%

[Cube Steak]

Those of you with functioning brains prefer larger downloads,

Why should anyone care about downloading a few extra kilobytes? It's not like anyone with a decent connection is going to notice the difference.

and waiting for full page loads before replying and after moderating?

Oh noes! Not a full page load! My god that takes almost a full second! Golly gee whiz, those extra 3 milliseconds I'm going to save by going with the crappier web 2.0 interface is totally worth it!

Ah, right, and having to refresh the page every time you change your threshold?

You actually change that on a regular basis? I thought most people just set it once and forgot it. But even still, that's a whopping one second to refresh.

Phew. Sure am glad my brain is broken then. Among other advantages, those of us with non-functional brains realize that just because a technology happens to have a buzzword attached to it doesn't mean that the technology itself is a bad thing.

The funny thing is that most of the "advantages" you talk about are either ones that no one is going to care about or no one is going to notice. Most of these optimizations really only benefit the site on the server-side end.

I just hope

[techprophet]

that you write a system to delete posts with the first phrase as the subject.

But...

[Locke2005]

why are there no trolling achievements?

Re:But...

[Alsee]

There are two reasons there are no trolling achievements, and it's the same two reasons I don't reply to 3nlArge yOUr Pen1s spam.
(1) My penis is already big enough without it; and
(2) I'd really rather not encourage more spam in my mailbox.

-

Re:But...

[Locke2005]

And yet you responded to a troll about trolling... how ironic is that?

Tags

[religious freak]

I still don't understand how the hell the tags work. I brief help page write-up would satiate my curiosity - I'd be willing to bet I'm not the only one.

* Exactly how heavy of a beta are tags still under? You're aware that not every tag works (when you click the triangle sometimes you end up on your user page, or elsewhere)
* How does the algorithm work (and how the hell do some of the crazy one of a kind tags get chosen)?
* How much /. human intervention is involved (i.e. Do you guys just sometimes say "screw it, this tag is stupid, so I'll remove it")?
* Any plans for future development (suggestion: if you are using an algorithm, show the tags about to be promoted in a different color, so users can input those if they agree).

A fully automated tag system is not an easy thing to do (I would think), so I'm not griping. I'm just genuinely curious (but admittedly still too lazy to look the code up).

Re:Tags

[coryking]

I dont get tags either. I want it to work... but when I click on a tag in a story, nothing happens. It used to work a year ago, but then it broke. Back when stuff happened, the list it returned was almost useless because it was unsorted.

It seems like a useful feature that compliments search and sections. I hope they improve it.

Re:Tags

[Alsee]

I still don't understand how the hell the tags work.

That's ok. The Slashdot developers have no clue what they do or what they should do, either.

It's like when you're hanging out with your stoner friends and you get seriously toasted and someone's looking at the pot-bag and says "We should make some system for putting different tags on the different bags of pot" and you say "Yeah!! That would rock! That's a genius idea!", and you go rummage around the house and find clothes pins and you attach plastic tag-thingies to them, and you you out to the stationary store and buy some blank white sticky-paper labels, and you spend two hours rummaging through your father's attic to find his old typewriter to type stuff on the labels, and the typewriter is covered in grime and it doesn't work so you spend another two hours "fixing" it so that you can kinda sorta slide the paper left-and-right by hand and most of the letters except 'e' 'p' and 's' work ("Whoa dude that's like ESP!", and then when you're done you have no fucking clue what the hell you're going to write on the tags and you have no clue why the hell you wanted to tag your pot bags for in the first place, but heay it was a cool idea and now if while we're stoned someone figures out what it's good for now we've built it and they *will* be able to a tag on the pot bags! Yeah! Duuuude! That rocks! Cool ideas are like..... really really cool. Being able to put tags on our pot bags was really cool! That was a really smart invention we made.

Dude, I don't see any chips in the cabinet. Are there any chips?
HEAY!!! I KNOW! We should make a system for tagging the snack bags, and tagging the snackshelves in the cabinet!
Whoa! DUUUDE! That would totally rock!

Why do you want to tag the chip bags and the shelves?
Welll duh idiot! So we can write like labels and stuff on them!
What labels do you want to write on the snakes and shelves?
Uhhh.... I dunno we'll figure that out after we build it. It's a really really cooool idea, it's even better invention than the pot bag tags! It'll sort like all the snacks and shelves dude! And I've seriously got the munchies man. You KNOW how important it is to have munchies in the house. There's like no fucking chips in this cabinet. We gotta have chips! Oh I just found two bags chips, but the tags will help with like other munchies and stuff. It'll be really cool like knowing what snacks we have and so we don't not have snacks. Where the fuck did the chips go? I just had the chips right. Where are the chips?

See? If we had labels on the shelves we'd know where the damn chips are.

And that's the Slashdot tag system. It's a cool idea, and when some stoner figures out a good use for it then we've already built it. Dude.

-

Re:Tags

[religious freak]

Man, now I feel lazy, I just used to put a whole box of cheerios in a big bowl and watch cartoons...

This is Slashdot.

[argent]

I've turned off just about all the eye candy I can, and I wish I could turn off more (like the score popup).

This is Slashdot, not Facebook. If I want pages where the presentation code is five times the size of the content, I already know where to get it.

Re:Test

[evanbd]

Perhaps they could whitelist a few more characters, then. All normal ltr-printing printable characters, for starters.

Re:Test

[Lord Ender]

If direction-changing unicode characters expand outside someone's post (their div or cell) then that's a browser bug, not a slashdot bug.

Re:Test

[cbhacking]

The problem isn't the blocking of bi-di characters (or other wacky Unicode that breaks stuff). The problem is the blocking of ALL non-ASCII, even perfectly valid things like currency symbols, accented letters, and similar helpful little characters.

need these achievements

[r00t]

firstpost - posted first

troll - moderation ended with a max troll mod

flamebait - moderation ended with a max flamebait mod

goatse - posted a goatse link

blind - followed a goatse link

gone1week - survived 1 week w/o slashdot

gone1month - survived 1 month w/o slashdot

gone1year - survived 1 year w/o slashdot

storypassion - posted the most comments in a story

netcraft - explained why BSD is dying

Re:need these achievements

[Briareos]

gone1week - survived 1 week w/o slashdot

gone1month - survived 1 month w/o slashdot

gone1year - survived 1 year w/o slashdot

What, and get a sudden influx of new 7-digit accounts while people are waiting one year just to get that final achievement?

Actually, why not? :D

np: Gui Boratto - Chromophobia (Chromophobia)

Re:10% of 1%

[X0563511]

And, to expand...

The old interface took 1-2 seconds to load a full page.

The new interface takes 1 second to load the page, and anywhere from 1 to 30 (yes, 30!!!) seconds to process the script. While it does this, I/O with the browser is blocked.

Yep. I can really see the advantage here.

How about fixing the code so I can turn it OFF?

[Ungrounded Lightning]

How about fixing the code so that the {FOO}.slashdot.org servers honor my login and selection of "classic" mode, so I can read and comment on stories that are hosted on the subsidiary servers?

I have a number of machines from which I read and post. Unfortunately, some of them (unavoidably) have ancient browsers that are REALLY unhappy with the new features.

While I may chose to play with or switch to the new functionality on machines where it works, I don't appreciate being cut off from participation in slashdot when the only machines I can use are those where it's broken.

Re:The Maker Achievement

[Keith Russell]

I gotta warn you, though, that the Kwisatz Haderach achievement is a grind and a half!

Confused...

[ADRA]

I'm a firefox user AND I've been using index2 for a while (Don't know how it got activated, just showed up one day). Should I assume the behaviours is about the same as now, but faster? If so, good job!

It takes some time to get used to the new timer thing, but one used to it everything is all good. The only recommendation I could makes is that when you pop-up the resume due to inactivity dialogue, that the resume is an image, larger, centre justified, and maybe a brief description of why you're 'pausing the web page'

PS: I'm so NOT used to the whole streaming of new data thing that I still refresh excessively.

Re:Test

[HTH NE1]

Only if you insist on typing them literally.

Re:10% of 1%

[HTH NE1]

Those of you with functioning brains prefer larger downloads, and waiting for full page loads before replying and after moderating? Ah, right, and having to refresh the page every time you change your threshold?

Some of us are at workplaces that treat every page fetch as 5 minutes of slacking off. Web 2.0 can make you look in the logs like you're wasting 40 hours a day.

Re:Test

[bar-agent]

Only if you insist on typing them literally.

Which anyone sane — by which I mean any Mac user — does automatically using such convenient short-cuts as shift-option-dash, option-semicolon, option-2, option-o, option-e, etc.

Re:Test

[danieltdp]

Can't they just blacklist bidirectional characters!?

Re:Test

[pjt33]

Those of us who have them on our keyboards (i.e. who don't use an English keyboard layout) type them literally without even realising we're doing it.

Re:Test

[Ant P.]

Slashdot whitelists characters so that posters can't use the bidirectional characters to destroy the layout.

s/\P{BidiControl}//g;

The perlunicode page is not that hard to figure out, seriously.

Re:10% of 1%

[SQLGuru]

Who the hell does that? -1, Nested, Oldest First. As it should be.

Hear! Hear!

And replies are control-opened into another tab (or for those of you still mandated to use IE6 by your slave-driving management, shift-opened into another window) so as not to disrupt the reading of the comments.

Re:The Maker Achievement

[treeves]

You really dig Mark Frauenfelder?

Re:10% of 1%

[Haeleth]

Indeed. On browsers where every tab runs in the same process (*cough*Firefox*cough*) this means that all web browsing halts for an eternity on every Slashdot page load. Nicely nullifying one of the main advantages of tabs (set a bunch of pages loading in the background while you read).

Mind you, other sites are just as bad. The BBC website stopped being usable when they started insisting on loading multiple Flash media players on every single article. Guys, if I wanted to watch TV I'd switch on the TV. (Mental note: must get round to hacking blacklist functionality into Flashblock, which irritatingly only does whitelists ATM.)

Re:Test

[Tubal-Cain]

Or in my case, cut-n-paste them literally. I know that in Windows you can hold down Alt and type the proper number code into the keypad to get a Unicode character. How can I do that in Linux?

Re:10% of 1%

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

Some of us like to, you know, Read The Fine Article first.

What does that have to do with anything? Click reply. Wait for the reply page to load. Article is in a different tab and already read...

But anyway - to summarize, you're saying that I don't need the services I think I need, because you don't, and therefore nobody should. Does that about cover it?

I've actually tried the new-style discussion interface several times since it was introduced, and frankly I just can't bring myself to like it. Partly because I hate floating widgets (they flicker too much), partly because I can't (i.e. haven't felt like taking the time to) figure out how comments are ordered, and partly, well, just because; maybe it's the Office 2007 ribbon effect of being annoyed by an arbitrarily changed interface.

Fair enough, but again yours is not the only user experience. Clearly sufficient numbers of slashdotters have left it enabled and continue to use it - therefore see some value in it.

Tangentally - flickering? Actually not sure what you're referring to here, I haven't seen anything like that.

Re:Test

[HTH NE1]

Or in my case, cut-n-paste them literally. I know that in Windows you can hold down Alt and type the proper number code into the keypad to get a Unicode character. How can I do that in Linux?

I know Redhat 9 has an Accessory called Character Map. Other Linux may differ.

Re:10% of 1%

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

Haven't had those issues. Takes me a second to load the page, period. I've had no noticeable delays in processing script. I have had no other tabs get blocked while loading slashdot pages.

Your response is consistent with the theme of replies to my post: "I personally (don't use|don't like|have bad experience) with the new interface, therefore there is no advantage to it and you are wrong."

Re:10% of 1%

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

Presumably those of you at those workplaces turn off the new interface... (I do at work for the same reason.)

Re:10% of 1%

[X0563511]

I have this issue on multiple systems.

However, It's true that I only use Firefox or it's derivatives.

Re:10% of 1%

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

Same here (firefox only). Strange; I don't see it on home or work systems, or winxp and linux.

Re:Test

[Tubal-Cain]

Ubuntu has it too, but it's no key combo.

I think something was recently fixed.

[essinger]

However for a very long time I wasn't able to reply to any threads in IE7 and had a hard time reading many of them. I actually figured it was an intentional exploit of some IE incompatiblity designed to annoy and exclude IE users. I just learned to switch to a different browser when I wanted to read slashdot.

Re:Test

[momikey]

In GNOME (or GTK+, I'm not sure), you can get Unicode characters by typing Shift-Ctrl-U, the code, then Space. I found that when I was searching for a way to type ð on a US keyboard.

Here's the page in the Ubuntu Wiki: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ComposeKey

Re:10% of 1%

[achurch]

What does that have to do with anything? Click reply. Wait for the reply page to load. Article is in a different tab and already read...

I'm sorry, I thought you were talking about loading the comments page. I've never noticed any delay in loading the reply page.

But anyway - to summarize, you're saying that I don't need the services I think I need, because you don't, and therefore nobody should. Does that about cover it?

I think you've got it flipped around -- I'm arguing that I don't need or want those services even if others like them, and therefore they shouldn't be forced on me. (I probably shouldn't have carried over the "functioning brains" bit, but it was convenient.)

Tangentally - flickering? Actually not sure what you're referring to here, I haven't seen anything like that.

In a number of cases (not all, so maybe it has something to do with the library used or the particular page layout), I see floating widgets flicker for an instant whenever they move. The current D2 is at least smart enough to pin the widget to the top once you've scrolled far enough down, I'll grant -- so maybe it wouldn't be that much of an issue if I used D2 more extensively -- but the flickering as I start to scroll is just really distracting.

hooray

[XO]

Now if only it could take someone who doesn't know exactly what the minds of the slash authors were thinking when they built this crap to actually figure out how to use any of it besides the blazingly obvious.

Re:Test

[Tubal-Cain]

Perfect! Thanks!

Opera

[Redlazer]

I know I'm the minority in this, but I'd really appreciate a tiny bit more Opera support. I love the improvements, but it just doesn't quite look right sometimes. I'm using Opera 9.64 on Windows Vista and on Kubuntu.

-Red

Cheese?

[YourExperiment]

That's all well and good, but none of this explains why I need to click on a cheese grater to Configure my Preferences.

Re:Test

[Alsee]

Slashdot whitelists characters so that posters can't use the bidirectional characters to destroy the layout.

Obama is president, it's about time Slashdot gave up the broken whitelist and moved to a blacklist like they should have done in the first place.

And while we're at it, Slashdot is supposedly liberal and progressive. Should we really still be discriminating against bidirectional characters? Don't people have an equal right to engage bi characters if that is their choice?

-

I really don't get it ...

[donak]

I've got about 3 of my comments, repeated on my user page, and then a great big list of somebody else's stuff after that.
What is this crap? I hoped like hell it was just all an April Fool's Day joke, and that everything would be back to normal
a day or so afterwards ... but it's all still there.

rendering still sucks

[Hognoxious]

Rendering still sucks. The "Did you know subscribers can see articles in the future?" still partially overlaps the " Help & Preferences Subscribe ..." toolbar.

But at least the featured ad doesn't totally overlap it, so I suppose that's an improvement of sorts.

Suggested links for the CSS Sprites tip?

[mscir]

"CSS Sprites: Vlad combined a number of our chrome images..." Any suggested reading on how to do this? Thanks, Mike

Oh noes .. a new form of achieve-spam comes up ...

[freaker_TuC]

"I see you need to grow your achievements..."
"your achievements are too small..."
"Your wife says your achievement needs to be bigger!"
"Buy Achievome now for instant achievements!" ...